New Incidents (2)
The soft touch against my skin felt like I was lying on a pretty comfortable patch of grass.
With the warm morning sunlight pouring down on me, it was the perfect way for a person to rest.
Sunbathing, I guess.
I supposed it was something like that.
I’d heard that, except for a few species, plants lived on nothing but sunlight and water. If that was true, then this wasn’t all that different.
“……Mm.”
I slowly opened my eyes where I lay.
“Where am I……?”
As I woke, I looked around in confusion, tilting my head at the strange sense that something was off.
Past Land, the Departed Forest
Where was this place?
Where had Rain and his companions gone, and why wasn’t this the forest where I’d originally fallen asleep?
Could they have abandoned me somewhere weird? No, that didn’t seem right. My head was still fuzzy, but I could be sure they hadn’t left me behind.
This place…….
It wasn’t the world I originally lived in.
I’d never been here myself, and yet for some reason I was certain it was some place buried in my memories.
-Rustle!
Suddenly, I heard something moving in the brush.
A wild beast? Or a monster? I wasn’t sure what it was.
But one thing was certain: it was about to rush me. I couldn’t feel any killing intent, but a beast was definitely staring at me like I was prey.
Here it comes.
Anyway, I’d better get up and put that arrogant bastard in his place.
I didn’t know what kind of creature it was, but the nerve of it, thinking it could eat me. That sort of thing needed a lesson.
-Thud!
-Thud!
-Thud!
……But wasn’t that a little too big?
“Huh?”
I’d made a mistake.
That wasn’t a beast. It was a dragon.
“Grrrrr……!!!”
The ground trembled so violently it was hard to stand, and when I looked up, there before me was a giant red creature commonly called a dragon.
Why was that thing coming out of there?
It was a massive dragon, so huge it made the earth feel as if it might crack beneath its feet, and its wings spread out behind it wide enough to cover dozens of people my size.
For now, let’s kill it. If that bastard was aiming at me, then I’d have to retaliate in kind…….
-Thud!
What the hell, why is this happening?
……Dammit.
For some reason, my body wouldn’t move.
I collapsed right where I stood, and all I could do was tremble in terror and stare at the dragon in front of me.
At the very least, if it was going to be like this, I should have run. The fact that I couldn’t was maddening, and I still had no idea why I was like this.
“Ah, ah?”
-Plop!
“Ugh! Gross…….”
Its saliva splashed down over my head.
The hot, sticky, slimy liquid soaked through my body, slid down my face, crossed my chest, and left me damp all the way to below my lower abdomen, which was disgustingly unpleasant.
Normally I’d have chained the thing up and thrown it into the sea, so why wasn’t this body moving?
Why was I afraid of some giant lizard?
It was just a lizard. A little bigger than most, sure, but still only a lizard.
Granted, it was a lizard from the distant past, the kind that existed ages ago and no longer could be found now…….
But it wasn’t like it was impossible to beat.
So why?
“■■……! Where are you?! Answer me if you can hear me!”
Then suddenly, I heard a man’s voice.
“Ah, ■■■■……! I’m here!”
And I desperately shouted my location to the owner of that voice, to…….
“I’m here……!!!”
I yelled until my throat was about to tear.
Of course, none of it was up to me.
It felt like watching back a recorded video.
Now I understood.
This was someone’s memory, someone else’s experience. It wasn’t something I’d gone through myself, but……I was being made to live through it once more.
“Found her! Over there, sis!”
“Really? She’s over there! Hurry!”
Soon after, girls’ voices reached me too.
Before long, two blonde elf girls emerged from the brush. Aside from having slightly different hairstyles, they looked so alike they could have been twins.
“……Honestly, if you were going to play tag, why did you cross the sea? No wonder you got lost.”
The one who looked like the older sister said that.
“Eek.”
She sighed and came toward me, but when she saw my body covered in saliva, she flinched and stopped short.
“What’s wrong with you now? Don’t tell me you got swallowed by those tentacles in the swamp?”
I tried to tell her about the dragon, but by then the creature was gone.
I didn’t know when it had disappeared, but it was already far away, flying off beyond the sky.
“Hmm, can’t be helped. Wait a moment.”
-Crackle!
Then the older sister pointed at me with her finger and used magic to evaporate every bit of that liquid clinging to my body.
I still felt a little gross, but at least I was clean now.
I would have preferred to wash properly, but unfortunately there was no river nearby where I could do that.
“There. Now you’re clean, right?”
“Sis, then I’ll go get Dad. Keep an eye on her so she doesn’t wander off somewhere weird again.”
“Yeah, leave it to me. Be careful on your way!”
With that, the younger sister disappeared back into the brush.
Left to the older of the twin elves, I simply sat there in silence without saying a word.
I had no idea whether I’d done something wrong, and nothing came to mind that I wanted to say first.
“……Do you know how worried ■■■ and Dad were? I was worried too. At least ■■■■-nim told us where your land was, so we could find you.”
“Yeah.”
I can’t understand a thing.
For some reason, I could only make out the parts of their voices that seemed to be names.
I felt like I should know who they were, but strangely enough, my mind just couldn’t grasp it.
“I mean, who do you take after to turn out like this? Why did Father ■■■ make you such a troublemaker and put us through all this—”
“Wait. What did you just say?”
But there was one name I could understand.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
The name of “him” that the older sister had just said.
“You just……. The sister said his name…….”
“Who? Oh, you mean Delatroros-nim?”
I couldn’t make out anything else, but his name alone was seared clearly into my mind.
“Ah…….”
Just hearing that name sent a strange shudder through me.
Whether it was my body feeling fear or not, my hands and feet began trembling again.
Or maybe even I myself was afraid of that name. I’d only heard it, and yet…….
Why was I so terrified?
“……Delatroros.”
The name of the one carved into my mind.
The name that made me feel fear from the very start.
……And at the same time, an existence that was, to me, that kind of being.
A wave of pain struck my head as I heard it.
“Ngh.”
I shuddered.
This wasn’t the fear I’d felt when I met the dragon a moment ago. This was a biologically inexplicable kind of fear. I was truly afraid of him, and just hearing his name made the anxiety begin to rise inside me.
-Crunch!
I realized I shouldn’t be saying that name at all.
“Sis…… I, my stomach feels a little…….”
My trembling wouldn’t settle no matter what I did, so I decided to ask her for help.
The one right in front of me, the one I felt such a deep, aching longing for—
“……?”
But there was no answer.
I sensed something was wrong and lifted my head.
When I looked up, I thought she would still be beside me. I thought she’d always cared for me, always looked after me, and that she’d smile gently and soothe me.
But that had been nothing more than my mistake.
“……Sis?”
What remained there was only an empty shell.
“Huh?”
A face had vanished…… eyes, nose, mouth, everything gone, and nothing at all was staring back at me.
It still resembled her, but what stood there now was nothing more than a doll with her face erased.
-Slink
She was no longer here.
“What…… what happened to sis?”
And then, it began to move toward me.
Dragging only its arms and legs like a zombie, it came for me in order to eat me.
I sensed danger and tried to run.
“D-Don’t come!”
-I can’t let that thing touch me.
-I can’t let it catch me.
-I can’t face it.
So I ran through the forest with everything I had.
To escape this place, to get out of this hopeless forest, to flee this futureless stretch of time.
I tore past trees, shoved aside brush, and kept running even when stones and thorns scraped my feet raw and drew blood.
From that thing, chasing me in order to devour me.
-Snap!
“Ah…….”
But even that had reached its limit now.
I didn’t know how long I’d been running.
That thing was still chasing me, but there was no longer any “world” where I was trying to flee.
……A shattered space, a forest draped in black shadows, and nothing but a vast, dark, unknowable emptiness spread out before me.
“What is this.”
Even if I reached out there, there was nothing I could grasp.
But some instinct inside me was refusing to go that way, warning me that if I moved forward I could never come back.
……And yet I couldn’t stop here either.
-Rustle!
■■……Where do you think you’re going?
It was already right behind me.
If it caught me, I knew I’d never be able to return.
However this turned out, the process was all that changed; the result waiting for me would be the same.
This is bad.
……And yet, strangely enough, this felt familiar.
Hadn’t I gone through something like this before? Something similar, something that felt like a scene from a horror film?
A world where everything disappeared, a world where all things began to vanish, like the end of the world itself.
I had already experienced an apocalypse like this before.
-Crash!
“Ngh?!”
And…….
Just like then, the one who saved me was the same person.
[Idiot! Open your eyes! Do you still think you’re me?! If I were you, I’d get out of a nightmare like this fast!]
Waving pure white silver hair, she shattered the space and made a dramatic entrance into this world where I stood.
“What the hell, why are you here—”
……It was me. Me, Sian.
She appeared after breaking through space itself and grabbed me by the collar as she shouted.
[Wake up already. If you die, I die too! And you’re going to be killed by something that pathetic?!]
Her speech, however, was a little crude.
Compared to her lovely face and clear, youthful voice, the way she talked had a somewhat masculine edge to it, if I had to put it one way.
It definitely hadn’t sounded like that before.
[Haa, fine. I’ll wake you up myself this once…… But there won’t be a second time, so remember that.]
She said it with a sigh.
Since I couldn’t escape this nightmare on my own, she would help me directly, but next time I’d have to wake up by myself.
I still didn’t fully understand what she meant, but I nodded anyway and answered her.
[This’ll hurt a little.]
-Crack!
“……Ngh!”
A moment later, a wave of indescribable pain struck my head.
It hurt like my skull was about to split open.
I winced and endured the pain.
[And when you wake up, remember this: never trust the words of a Transcendent. They don’t lie, but that’s all they do, so you absolutely must—]
But before long, I no longer understood what she was saying.
……What is she talking about?
Not long after, my consciousness was severed.
-Whoosh!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
1.
-Rustle
“…….”
My consciousness returned.
Warm sunlight drifted down from the sky, while a fresh breeze blew in from somewhere deeper in the forest.
Well, it was a forest, so of course it did, but since it was morning there were birds singing too, and pale smoke was still rising from the campfire, which must have gone out not long ago.
But what was this now?
This is suffocating.
I felt like I was being boxed in from both sides.
“Mmyaa……”
And right in front of my face were two white, round hills.
The same was true behind me.
Only this time, they had a brownish tint instead of white.
At the same time, there was a soft, warm sensation…….
If I just closed my eyes like this, I felt like I could fall asleep again in perfect comfort.
The two hills were wrapping around my face, making it feel as though I had two plush pillows pressed against me.
But it was suffocating.
Going back to sleep would be nice too, but now it was time to do what needed doing.
If I kept sleeping like this, I’d end up doing what people call oversleeping.
“……Alright, you jerks, get off me!”
-Boom!
“Kyah?!”
“Ah, whoa?”
So I woke the two girls who had been sleeping while hugging me.
Even when I tried to get away from them, they didn’t seem willing to let go, so I even released my mana on purpose.
On one side, a priestess; on the other, a dwarf.
Sleeping while being hugged by two women.
Objectively speaking, that might have been a great experience, but unfortunately I no longer had anything like male lust left in me.
Honestly, all it did was make me feel cramped and uncomfortable.
“Phew. So that’s why I had such a damn weird dream.”
-Clink
“?”
As I casually shook myself out and stood, something strange suddenly dropped onto the ground.
“This is……?”
◈ A necklace made from a soul stone.
◈ Unknown.
The reddish ornament that I’d received from the Transcendent Diabella was now clutched in the hand that had been sleeping.