Taming the Fox
Once upon a time, there lived a truly wicked dragon.
Whenever the wicked dragon appeared, everyone screamed and ran for their lives.
That was because wherever the wicked dragon passed, nothing remained.
Fields were trampled, houses collapsed, and livestock were devoured.
And the wicked dragon’s rampage did not end there.
It burned down the elves’ forest and plundered the dwarves’ treasures.
The Ardeena Continent was dyed in sorrow, rage, and despair.
But just as the cries and grief of every race reached the heavens, the Red Dragon Grasid appeared.
Grasid came to stop the wicked dragon’s tyranny, and there he made a pact with a human.
That human’s name was Zigrid. He was an ordinary commoner with no special talents whatsoever.
And yet, though Zigrid possessed no extraordinary power, he had one enormous advantage.
He was braver than anyone else.
Human and dragon.
A human no bigger than a dragon’s claw, facing a dragon as large as a castle.
There was no way a mere human could stand against a dragon that wielded magic with such ease.
And yet Zigrid, with Grasid’s help, did not back down.
Flames came crashing down, ice surged up, thunder split the sky, and the earth itself cracked open, but Zigrid did not stop.
And at last, the great dragon fell before the tiny human.
Having achieved that magnificent feat, Zigrid founded a nation on the spot where the wicked dragon had fallen, and in honor of Grasid, who had helped him, he named the country Grasis.
Moved by Zigrid’s devotion, Grasid gave him a new language and a treasure, and thus began the great Grasis.
That is the story.
Or rather, wasn’t the title Zigrid’s Adventure?
It was a book every child in Grasis knew by heart, a Bible of sorts for them.
If it was called a fairy tale, it felt too much like a historical account, and if it was called a history, it felt too much like a fairy tale; I remember it as a book whose title, Zigrid’s Adventure, suited it perfectly.
As far as I knew, the story of Zigrid’s Adventure had been somewhat embellished, but it was based on real events.
Zigrid, with Grasid’s aid, defeated the wicked dragon, founded Grasis, and named the kingdom after the Red Dragon in gratitude for his help. He also received the language and the treasure.
Because of that, Grasis came to use its own language, the kingdom’s tongue called Granic, instead of Arkish.
Even though Arkish, the language created by the Ro Arca Empire, already existed.
Some highbrows say Grasid must have leaned on them.
Otherwise, why would they have abandoned Arkish, which worked perfectly well, to use Granic instead?
Whether that was true or false, it no longer meant anything now.
Grasis had fallen.
And the number of people who knew Granic would keep dwindling until, in the end, it survived only as a sentence tucked into some history book’s corner: “There was once such a language.”
...That was what I thought, anyway.
“Granic?”
Who would have thought an Apostle would be able to speak Granic?
I gripped my sword tightly with both hands and stared at the woman, who looked back at me in shock.
Her grip was strange, and her stance was strange too.
She didn’t even seem to have any intention of attacking in the first place, but at that angle, even if she swung the blade, there was no way it would deliver any real force.
I’d figured out the identity of those swarms of bugs lately—no, of the things attacking me.
At first I had been suspicious, but after observing them closely, I realized most of the attackers were the same people who’d come around several times before.
After hearing the blacksmith’s story, I’d become certain that their true identities were Apostles.
And the strange presence I’d felt must have been because of Edel’s blessing.
Once I realized they revived and came back again, it all made sense: the way they accepted death so easily, and the endless tide of them that kept coming.
Of course, knowing they were Apostles didn’t change how I dealt with them.
I cut, I stabbed, I sent them flying, just as before.
And after killing them over and over, my infamy must have spread among the Apostles, because their attacks dropped off sharply.
Later, perhaps after giving up, a few of them even started doing bizarre things.
The most absurd was the one who showed up out of nowhere and set up a meal table.
I was really at a loss then…. A saying from my previous life came to mind—apparently even dogs don’t bite you when you’re eating—so I let him finish before I did anything.
Anyway, the woman in front of me seemed to have heard of my reputation too. That must be why she was trembling like that.
I didn’t know why she’d come all the way out here despite that, but wasn’t she one of those oddballs who liked doing bizarre things?
“You know Granic?”
“Granic? Grasis? Uh, what was it… a little! Listen!”
“Hmm.”
Looks like she hadn’t really learned it properly.
She could probably manage only the very basics—listening and speaking a little.
I stared at the woman for a moment longer, then gave my sword a brisk shake and slid it back into its sheath.
I’d come here to eat and, while I was at it, do a little cleanup after remembering how good the cocatrice I’d had last time tasted, but this time it was a person rather than a bug.
I picked up the severed head I’d sent flying, took it with the body, and headed home.
Because I was short, the limp cocatrice corpse dragged along the ground behind me.
If it was a person rather than a bug, and not hostile, then there was no reason to kill them.
* * *
The gravekeeper, carrying the cocatrice’s corpse, turned her back.
The cocatrice’s dragging legs traced a circle in the dirt as they followed along behind her.
When Journey heard the soft voice drifting out from beneath the cape, the chat room froze for a moment.
Up to now, there had been all kinds of speculation about the gravekeeper’s identity.
Some said she was a sword saint who had accomplished everything she ever could and retired from the world. Some said she was a magical weapon left behind by ancient ruins. Some said that, since she hardly spoke at all, she must be an undead....
And among those theories, there had even been guesses that she was a child, given her small build, but those were usually dismissed as creepily childish nonsense or completely ridiculous jokes.
That was because, in the realistic world of Silia, no child could possess that level of power.
In fact, among the NPCs players encountered, almost everyone who had even one foot in the ranks of the strong was in the prime of their twenties.
From there, they grew stronger as they aged, and in this world, those who crossed the wall before old age truly set in became even more powerful, while those who failed to cross it were worn down by the passage of time and disappeared.
That was the Silia the players knew.
And then it actually happened.
She still needed to take off the cape to be certain, but judging by the voice and her size, there was no way she could be an adult.
What, is she a polymorphed dragon? But does Silia even have polymorph magic...? Or is she a dwarf?
So it was only natural that such questions were swirling around in Journey’s head.
-I’ve now asked what just happened for the 156,189th time.
-Stop standing there and follow her!
-What was that weird language she used?
“Ah, ah! Right, I should follow her!”
From the moment the gravekeeper lowered her sword, Journey’s combat state had been canceled.
Only after belatedly coming to her senses did she begin running along the drag marks gouged into the ground, answering her viewers’ questions as she went.
“What she just spoke was Granic, the language used by the Grasis Kingdom.”
“The Grasis Kingdom?”
“A kingdom that fell a year ago. And this place—the mountain where the gravekeeper lives—used to be part of Grasis territory.”
Since the kingdom had fallen only a year ago, the name Grasis wasn’t exactly obscure.
Street vendors talked about it, passing travelers mentioned it, and rumors drifting through the streets all said the same thing.
But despite how easy the information was to come by, there were fewer players who actually knew much about Grasis than one might expect, and most of them only knew the bare minimum: there had been a kingdom, and it had fallen.
The reason was the nature of Silia Online.
When a player first started Silia Online, they were dropped into a village housing a Liberi branch with no further ceremony.
All a player was given was the status of a mercenary under Liberi and Edel’s blessing; unlike other MMORPGs, there was no main storyline or main quest at all.
As if the game were saying, “You’re a resident of this world now too,” you had to set your own grand goals and create your own thrilling adventures without being handed an objective by the game itself.
Journey liked that very much.
“There just aren’t that many people who look into the finer details, so I guess not knowing is understandable.”
Especially for people sprinting toward first clear, there was probably no time to spare.
There was even a separate pattern-analysis team for the sake of clearing things faster than anyone else, so of course they wouldn’t have time to waste on stuff like this.
Of course, anyone interested in that sort of thing would gather and share the information, so it was easy enough to find online.
And maybe the players who were now running themselves ragged would, once they had time, grow interested in it and start digging through posts other users had made or even look into Silia’s history themselves—but Silia Online had only been out for half a year.
There was a lot to do and a lot they wanted to do, so unless they were already the type to care about such things, it would naturally be pushed to the back burner.
“The language players use is Arkish, the imperial tongue created by the Ro Arca Empire. And Grasis was at war with the Empire even until the day it fell.”
-Did the Empire destroy them??
“Not exactly, but it was probably one of the causes. Anyway... I figured the gravekeeper might be a Grasis native.”
A mountain located in the fallen territory of Grasis. A gravekeeper who concealed herself and lived in isolation. A grave that looked like it had a story behind it.
Just from the look of it, you could practically feel that there was something there.
“If she’s holed up in the mountains because of Grasis’s fall, then she probably doesn’t have warm feelings toward the Empire, and using Arkish wouldn’t have sat well with her either.”
That was only if.
It might not have been for that reason, and she might not have disliked the Empire at all.
Journey had rolled the dice, trusting in a low probability, and the dice had simply come up six.
“Guess I was lucky.”
She was grateful that the Granic she had learned by asking NPCs hadn’t gone to waste.
-But most NPCs can understand normal speech, right? Even the people in towns inside the old kingdom’s territory can understand it.
-Sometimes there are NPCs who speak kind of awkwardly, though. Are they from the kingdom too?
“I heard Grasis had already been heading toward ruin for decades. Maybe they’d been preparing for it in advance? I don’t know that much either.”
Anyone who had lived through it would know.
Journey’s eyes shifted to the gravekeeper’s back, visible in the distance.
-Most people wouldn’t even think to learn a language;
-This is a victory of sheer obsession
-Our leader is the real deal
-Go, Journey!
“Thanks for the praise.”
At the chat’s warm response, Journey let out a pleased little laugh.
“...But she won’t kill me just for following her, right?”
-Our leader is the real deal..
-Huh? She was definitely cool a second ago..?
-SoJourney
“Haa... fine! No guts, no glory!”
She’d come this far already, so she couldn’t just turn around and go back!
Patting both cheeks and pumping herself full of courage, she hurriedly put one foot in front of the other.
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