A Hometown Remembered
A land of secrets forbidden to humanity.
The Frost Field.
Braving the savage cold and howling blizzard, an army was crossing over a ridgeline.
“Bwahahaha! What fun! What fun this is!”
Chronos, riding atop a massive Undead Crab, let out a peal of mad laughter. Every time he rocked his body with mirth, the crab's pincers clattered and clicked along with him.
“The northern bastards must be in an uproar by now! Just imagining that rotting scowl on the Grand Duke's face sets my heart racing!”
“Sir Chronos.”
Count Boldmont walked up beside him and spoke.
“The soldiers are exhausted and freezing to death. Are you not pushing the march a bit too fast?”
“Haha! Don't fuss over a soldier or two, Count!”
Chronos laughed cheerfully and spread a new magic circle across his palm.
“Who knows when the Grand Duke's pursuit party might catch up? We need to hurry and seize the Northern God and claim the Frost Field for ourselves. Onward!”
Having just crafted the circle, he studied it with satisfaction, then flicked his wrist and sent it floating into the air.
The magic circle rose up like a balloon, and the Count's head tilted back to follow it of its own accord.
Goooong!
Above the marching Kingdom army hung a colossal magic circle, like an artificial sun stretched across the sky. Chronos's newly created circle drifted up and attached itself into an empty space on the great array, its circuits linking into the whole.
Like meshing gears, the formulas across the vast circle began to change in turn.
“A gift for you, my friends!”
Chronos turned back and shouted.
“I've just deadened most of your sense of touch! No more feeling the cold, either!”
The circle's color grew redder and redder. A faint crimson glow settled over the soldiers' bodies, and their movements quickened all the more.
“Well, this is a bit of a surprise, Count.”
Chronos turned to look at Count Boldmont.
“I absolutely despise tedious things like fine-tuned curse control, so by default I curse every human except me and Romario. So how is it you're moving around just fine?”
“Thanks to my artifacts, each imbued with curse resistance.”
When the Count spread open his coat, countless trinkets and charms could be seen dangling from it in clusters.
“I prepared them especially for my meeting with you, Sir Chronos.”
“Hahahaha! Just as thorough as they say you are! You got me on that one.”
The Count's eyes turned serious and sharp.
“When this business is over, I will take governance of the northern territories, as promised.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. Why else do you think a Watcher exists?”
Having said that, Chronos rubbed his jaw and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Come to think of it, it's about time that pursuit party showed up~”
“The Grand Duke will not come.”
Commander Romario, walking at the front, said in a low voice.
“He is not the sort to move rashly and ruin his own plans. We focus on the Northern God's destruction.”
“Right, right.”
Count Boldmont unfolded a map, checked his compass, and pointed ahead.
“It's right there, my lord.”
The Kingdom army finally crested the mountaintop and looked down. Romario's and Chronos's eyes widened at the same instant.
“A chilling sight.”
Romario said.
“A breathtaking one.”
Chronos said.
Watching their opposite reactions, the Count bowed his head respectfully.
“That place is the hidden sanctuary of the Northern God, who has ruled the Frost Field for over a thousand years — the Abyss.”
What spread out beneath the mountain was a floor of blood-red.
The Abyss sprawled across an empty basin in the middle of the Frost Field's mountain range. Nests of every manner of undead had been built there, and creatures freshly emerged from those nests scurried about with startling speed. And among the nests, dead center, a gigantic hole gaped open in the earth.
A hole so deep and so dark that its end could not be seen.
“The Northern God is hiding down there, right?”
Chronos dragged his tongue across his lips and smirked. It was then that Romario, still gazing at the Abyss, quietly turned around.
“Here they come.”
“Huh? What? The Grand Duke's pursuit party?”
“No.”
Rrrrumble!
The entire mountain heaved. From the countless ridgelines rising around them like a painted landscape, avalanches began pouring down.
Every one of those avalanches was shifting direction like a living thing, bearing down on the Kingdom army.
Shring!
Romario drew his sword.
“The Northern God's army.”
Indeed, within the cascading snow, large and small eyes could be seen glinting everywhere. Chronos snickered and spread magic circles across both palms.
“Watch and learn!”
He launched the circles into the air and fitted them onto the great array in the sky. The crimson light surged fiercer, and the soldiers' eyes blazed.
“This is how I, Chronos, the All-Army Necromancer, deal with an ambush!”
The North had decided not to chase the Kingdom army, but to move on the planned date.
The Grand Duke, too, had little time to spare watching Simon's training these two days. He had to pour his strength into restoring Hate and rebuilding the 2nd Legion's fighting power.
So Simon had begun training on his own. The Grand Duke had drawn up a detailed training schedule before leaving to recover the 2nd Legion, and Simon simply followed it.
And whenever spare time or rest days came along, he focused on uncovering the Geheim of his Ancient Undead.
[You've been playing with me a lot lately, haven't you, kid?]
Herseba said. Perched atop her staff, which floated lazily in the air, was a woman of long sandy hair formed entirely from desert sand.
[What's on the training docket today? Mummy control? Or shall we open the World of Sand for old times' sake?]
“That one drains an enormous amount of your power. We're deploying soon.”
Simon stopped walking, sat down on a rock, and rummaged through his bag.
“Today I want to talk instead of train.”
[About what?]
“About your life before you became undead.”
What Simon pulled from his bag was, of all things, a set of painting supplies.
Clicking the legs of a small easel open, he set it on the ground and placed a canvas on top.
“And about the place you used to live.”
[I told you before, didn't I? I can't remember it well!]
“Then take this chance to remember it nice and slow.”
Simon took out his pigments.
[Wait, you're going to paint?]
“That too. Don't mind this part.”
This canvas had originally been used in Kizen's Sovereign Studies class. It was one of the materials for learning the peculiar scripts of various nations, but Simon had been more interested in drawing than in penmanship, so he'd bought pigments as well.
Granted, he wasn't much of a painter, but back in the idle days at Leshill he had some experience painting the occasional landscape.
[You're going to paint, while listening to my story?]
“Both.”
Simon slapped a rough base coat across the white canvas.
“You said you reigned as a king before becoming undead, right?”
[Of course! I was a king who led a great many subjects!]
Herseba began to chatter.
Before becoming undead, she had been a Dungeon Master. But she remembered nothing of why she had been in a dungeon, or how she had come to be its king.
Perhaps because of that, she always grew a little shy whenever he asked her to talk about the past. She'd grumble that she couldn't remember anyway, that it didn't seem like a particularly happy memory, and why did he keep asking.
But Simon was sensing a peculiar emotion in her voice.
Longing.
Simon believed he must not let that emotion slip away.
“How long had it been since you became king?”
[No idea. Time didn't really exist back then…… It just felt like I reigned for an awfully long while?]
“I see. How did it feel, being king?”
Since she couldn't properly remember her past life, Simon mostly asked about her emotions instead.
[Hmm, let's see?]
She pondered for a while before answering.
[Loneliness?]
“You were lonely?”
Simon's brush stopped in surprise.
“A king is a ruler over countless people. You'd hardly expect to have a moment to feel lonely.”
[That's the thing……]
She scratched at her sand-formed hair, looking sheepish.
[My memory's hazy, but — my subjects were kinda, well… off.]
“In what way?”
[They never reacted. Mechanical, I guess you'd call it? They never did anything for me on their own. They just went about their business, stiff as stone.]
Her voice lost its strength.
[If I asked them to play, they'd play. If I asked for a hug, they'd hug me. But they only moved when I gave a clear command. They never, not once, came to me first.]
“…….”
[So honestly? I like it better now.]
She lifted her head and gazed up at the blue sky.
[Pier nags at me, Erzebet and I fight every single day, Prince and I build sandcastles together, and Akemus is gruff but kind. Even when I just sit still, everyone comes to me first. They do things I never asked for, things I never expected. Sometimes it makes me mad, but—]
The corners of her mouth lifted.
[That's why I love it. This new life.]
Simon smiled too.
“I'm glad to hear that.”
Simon kept coaxing her to tell him about the past, and Herseba, digging through her memories, talked on and on as things came to her.
And Simon began to form an impression.
The emotion in her voice whenever she spoke of her city was unmistakably longing, wistfulness, and yearning.
Yet at the same time, she didn't seem to have been satisfied with her life as Dungeon Master.
'She's unsatisfied with her time as Dungeon Master, and yet she yearns for it and misses it?'
Something didn't add up.
But the more he listened to Herseba, the stronger a strange impression grew upon him, until at last Simon understood.
What she felt longing for was not her life as Dungeon Master.
'Something further back.'
He didn't know why she became a Dungeon Master, but even before that, it seemed she had lived some other kind of life.
Her ability told the story.
She held a power that built the life she yearned for out of sand. The reason her subjects never reacted was likely because she had constructed them with that same power.
[Funny, isn't it?]
She said with a wry smile.
[Yearning after the edge of a dream I can't even remember.]
She could not be certain whether that life was something she had truly experienced, or a fiction she had conjured inside her own imagination.
So she thought herself ridiculous — a woman bound to a life she couldn't even remember.
“Whether it's real or not isn't what matters.”
A smile formed at the corner of Simon's mouth.
“What matters is what you make of it, and what meaning it holds for you. Which just makes me want to hear your stories all the more.”
Tap.
At last Simon finished the painting and set down his brush. Then, with a somewhat embarrassed expression, he lifted the canvas and showed it to Herseba.
[Ah.]
Her eyes went wide.
It was the golden city — the same one Herseba had built as the World of Sand.
But.
“I painted the hometown you imagine — just with a few more colors.”
The golden city was made entirely of sand. One color, flat and unchanging.
The city Simon had painted was different.
Wooden houses stood side by side with brick ones; grass and trees grew in the streets; and people were smiling.
[Ah.]
To be honest, it wasn't exactly a masterpiece — but the evidence of effort was written all over it.
Her body began to tremble.
[Ah… ah.]
She was — he thought — crying.
A body of sand could shed no tears, but the emotion was there. If she had possessed flesh, he thought, this would have been the moment they would have fallen.
Then Simon stepped closer and wiped at her eyes with his fingertips.
It made her happy.
That there was someone who acknowledged something that didn't exist, and respected it.
[Th… thank you.]
As if giving voice to her emotion, jet-black energy began to rise slowly from Herseba's body.
Kukukukukukuku!
She was casting Goldification. She was trying to recreate, right now, the very city Simon had just painted.
Whoa.
Simon stepped back, caught up in a strange, soaring exhilaration.
This felt like.
'It's close to the feeling I get when Prince uses Corpse Explosion……!'
Kukukukukukukukukukuku!
Herseba unleashed Goldification, and a city larger than any she had ever built outside the World of Sand began to rise.
[Aaaaah!]
Watching the buildings surge upward, Simon was certain.
'This is it.'
This was Herseba's Geheim.
[Ah!]
Rrrrumble!
The very next moment, with a shriek of protest from her, Herseba's city collapsed like a seaside sandcastle washed away by the tide.
Simon, who had been watching, smiled wryly.
'Still a long road ahead of her, it seems.'
[Augh!]
She shook her body in frustration.
“Why did it suddenly fail?”
[I don't have enough imagination! I can build the city center just fine, but I don't know how to make the outskirts!]
“You're close enough.”
Simon rolled up his sleeves and sat back down in front of the canvas.
“I can paint you as many pictures as you want. Let's try again! Anything else coming to mind about the city?”
And so, after a long series of attempts —
Just before the war against the Northern God, Herseba's Geheim was ready.