89. Goodbye, Dad
89. Goodbye, Dad
-Whoosh.
A desolate city I had set foot in once before.
A hollow wind blew through it, and fog shrouded everything around me...
Through the déjà vu I felt, I realized I had safely entered the dream I had dreamt the night before.
To think I'd come in just by losing consciousness. Should I be thanking that bastard for this?
"Philoi! Are you here?! Philoi!"
Whatever the case, finding Philoi came first.
Thinking only of that as I crossed the ruins, I spotted a figure standing motionless amid the fog.
Was it Philoi?
"Heh heh. So you've come after all."
No, his body was far too withered to be a normal human.
An old dead man wrapped in black rags.
A figure who could be defined by that one sentence alone—I knew him, too.
"...Gorgon Zola."
More precisely, it was the curse he had planted in me—a mass of will that replicated his memories.
"You don't need to be so wary. Right now, I can't exert any power over you."
The reason his voice sounded so drained wasn't just because I had resisted his curse and held onto my consciousness for three months.
I could tell just by looking at him.
"What a fierce child. At first, I let you be since it helped me nurture you, but when you directly rejected me, she cast me aside, saying I was useless."
Powder drifting from the tip of his raised hand.
The fact that the body manifested in this mind was already breaking apart meant his power had weakened that much.
Yeah, if I left him alone, he'd disappear soon enough.
"Just where did she pick up such a monstrous existence?"
Yet even though he was aware of his imminent disappearance, there was amusement in his voice.
Even if he was only a curse, this was the estimation of one of the Four Horsemen—the greatest calamities known to humanity.
A lowly Foreign Worker like me had no business taking it lightly.
"...Where's Philoi?"
Even so, my priority remained unchanged.
As I recalled the child who had laughed innocently in my arms and shook off my hesitation, Gorgon composed himself and began to stir his steps.
"Follow me. I'll tell you about my homeland, and take you to where that child is."
"...Homeland?"
"It won't hurt you. This story will help you understand that child."
Gorgon Zola strode through the fog-veiled ruined city without hesitation.
Until he reached the ruined castle at its center, there was not a trace of hesitation in his steps.
This ruined city, which I'd thought had no connection to him, seemed as if it were the "homeland" he had spoken of.
****
"Do you know of the Kingdom of Britannia?"
After arriving inside the ruined castle, I found myself in the audience chamber.
The chair there showed neither grandeur nor elegance.
Only a weightiness that faintly recalled past authority remained.
"...Coincidentally, I don't know much about this world's history."
"Well, you're from another world, aren't you."
I should understand that much, Gorgon Zola murmured, then gazed at the two chairs before him.
"Briton IV... His renown spread far and wide, reaching not only his vassals and the residents of the capital but even farmers at the edge of the kingdom. A wise king who dedicated himself solely to governance for the people and preserving the nation's proud history and traditions."
The fourth king of Britannia.
If he was the owner of this throne, did that mean Gorgon Zola had been his vassal in life?
If this space was built on the memories of the person who formed the basis of Philoi, then did she also belong to the nation of Britannia?
"But ironically, the country he ruled could not be called entirely peaceful or easy to live in."
Even as such questions arose, Gorgon Zola continued his story.
"Before otherworlders like you flooded into this world, humanity was focused on taking more for their own factions."
In the voice recounting a nation's history, there was none of the playfulness I had sensed at our first encounter.
Like an old man sitting beside a campfire and looking back on his life.
Only bitterness could be felt in that voice.
"...So humans waged war against each other?"
"War, wherever you went. Blood flowed everywhere, people who hungered for power multiplied everywhere, and those who had nothing were swept up in their greed, losing their wealth, their homelands, even their lives and dignity."
A gaunt hand stroking the throne.
Gorgon Zola's hand, too, had at last crumbled to dust. He looked down at his empty hand and let out a bitter laugh.
"In such an era, it was only natural that a king who knew nothing but his people would call himself an 'ally.'"
"......."
"...But because he was such a foolish king, he felt greater desperation than any other leader in that age of war. Even as he trained his people to protect the country and sent them to the front lines, he agonized endlessly over how to avoid war at any cost."
Gorgon Zola, having at last distanced himself from the throne, approached a sword lying on the floor.
He picked up the sword with his yet-unvanished hand, held it upright before my eyes, and spoke.
"And then, at last, that chance came. A preposterous calamity that could render wars between humans meaningless."
"A calamity?"
"A dragon. A monster that had only appeared in legends suddenly emerged and annihilated several nations entirely."
A dragon.
Even when I first came to this world, I dismissed them as legends, but if such a thing truly existed, it wouldn't be that big of a deal now.
Because this world was full of absurd calamities that could make even a monster capable of destroying a nation with a single breath seem "trivial."
"After a few nations were wiped out, humanity, which had been pointing swords at each other, finally ceased their quarrels and began to join forces to stop the dragon. The peace that the king called ally had so longed for in the age of war was finally realized—only after a common enemy appeared."
Ironic, if anything.
But as I listened silently, I could faintly guess what would follow.
Because to a king who wished for the well-being of humanity beyond his own country, a calamity that could only be stopped by humanity uniting would seem like an opportunity in itself.
"And to seize that opportunity, the king summoned to his castle one of the mercenaries he had hired to protect the country. A woman of unknown nationality and origin, who had only ever obsessed over killing people for pay and earning glory—to raise her up as a hero."
Not war, but legend.
If an individual, not an army, could defeat a being that only existed in legend and be revered for it, they would gain the support of all. Uniting the masses and making them forget their hostilities toward one another—that was something I could infer just from how even now, people obsess over heroes and produce them.
"Even if she couldn't slay the dragon, even if she could only manage to mutually destroy it or inflict a fatal wound, he thought there would be no more need to kill each other..."
-Clang!
The moment his remaining hand crumbled and the sword he held fell helplessly to the floor.
But Gorgon Zola's gaze had already left it, turning toward the window beyond the throne.
"Ironically, before he could even hear the outcome, countless calamities had already struck this world to the point that such things became meaningless. Even the kingdom that awaited her return began to collapse beyond recovery as an unidentified plague spread."
A city that could only show how prosperous it once was by the vastness of its grounds—now an empty place where only sand-laden winds blew.
Even the corpses scattered about had probably been weathered away by the passage of time.
"The king regretted his choice."
A kingdom wise yet foolish.
The country he wanted to protect, and everything within it.
"Perhaps because he dreamed the ideal of uniting humanity through a common enemy, unbearable calamities had engulfed the world and ultimately drove everything he sought to protect into ruin."
Foolishly, so foolishly...
Even as he muttered those laments, I saw the face beneath his rags cracking apart.
"...In such a current, how could the tale of a hero who vanished along with the dragon be passed down to the world?"
-Crunch, crumble.
The sound of deterioration echoing from all over his body.
Then, as the crumbled powder pattered down from beneath the rags he wore, the clone who had inherited the dead man's memories let a bitter feeling toward me begin to seep out.
"The world you live in is that kind of world. No matter how great the hero, no matter how long and proud the history, in the end nothing remains... At best, only walking corpses can barely maintain their existence."
At last, when the rags covering his body sank entirely to the floor, only the fragments of his body scattered and began to create a black haze around him.
"I pity you. Even though you've cultivated power in a human body that rivals calamities, you were chosen by a clone of one who was never acknowledged as a hero."
The echo that came from the darkness that followed must have truly come from the heart.
As even that gradually faded, I suddenly realized the haze that had concealed my surroundings was gone and looked around.
"This is..."
It was hell.
The moment I set foot in, that thought struck me—only gruesomeness existed around me.
Weapons stuck upside down everywhere, crows settling on corpses abandoned in flowing blood among them, and the faintly visible movement of maggots...
Just as a chill ran through me at such a realistic atrocity, a sound that should never be heard in this place began to reach my ears.
"Mom, where are you?"
A child.
A child who should never have set foot on this battlefield, sitting alone among the corpses, sobbing.
"Why did you abandon me? Just why...?"
How that child survived this slaughter, where her guardian was.
Even though such questions naturally arose, the first thought that came to my mind was: what did it matter?
The bloodstained armor she wore.
And a blade so crimson that it obscured even the reflection from its steel—told me that this girl was part of this atrocity.
"Answer me, Mom. I... why do I have to go through this?"
Yet the dissonance that came from the piteous sobs escaping her lips...
Was it telling me that this was nothing more than part of a nightmare?
-Whoosh!
At that moment, a sand-laden wind struck again, blocking my vision, and the stench of iron that clung to it choked even my breath.
The moment I unconsciously took a step forward on reflex to resist the flow.
With that action, the wind that had assailed my face vanished, and I felt cold moisture engulf my feet.
-Splash.
Yes, enough water to cover my ankles filled the surroundings.
Had I stumbled into a pool of blood?
No; when I opened my eyes, all I saw was a puddle stretching to the horizon.
"When the battle ends..."
The girl standing before the puddle spoke to me.
"After the fighting ended, I would soak myself in the lake near the battlefield, armor and all. Because that was the only way to wash the filth off my sword and armor."
Though it was the same voice as the girl who had been crying, it was an infinitely cold and curt voice.
"...Philoi?"
"Goodbye, Dad."
A girl who had grown remarkably compared to the dream from last night... No, someone I'd call a child soldier greeted me there.
"I wanted to remain a cute daughter in front of you, but my memories came back much faster than I expected."
Though she would become a hero someday, her beginning was nothing more than a girl abandoned in the age of war.
"...What a pity, really."
In the form of a fragment from the living hell I had passed through.