Wild Mage
Wild Mage
A bitter expression settled over Aslan's face, exhaustion carved into every line.
The overheated muscles beneath his skin showed red, and his hair steamed, still radiating heat.
He looked precarious — weary features, worn through, no small amount of his own blood spilled.
But Aslan neither collapsed nor sagged to the ground. He stood catching his breath.
"Eum... ma..."
The Lesser Deity lay dying, crawling along the ground with its spine split open.
Aslan leveled a blade of white divinity at the creature's throat.
The wraiths had shattered apart the moment the Lesser Deity fell. Only the Lesser Deity itself remained. Aslan considered.
'Should I finish this?'
It was a malformed giant that seemed to have neither the will nor the strength left to resist. With its spine split, movement was impossible.
In the end, Aslan closed his eyes. His fighting spirit receded, and purity withdrew with it.
Shrrr
The sword blade, forced to endure monstrous strength throughout the entire battle, crumbled into powder and scattered.
The weapon held as long as fighting spirit remained, but it could not endure the doubled durability drain and the brute force the malformed giant unleashed. When purity faded, the blade simply shattered under the shock it should have absorbed long ago.
"Eum, ma... not, ya..."
With divinity withdrawn, the Lesser Deity — who perceived the world through souls — groped its way through the words.
Only Aslan's soul was visible to its eyes now.
A soul shining in colors it had never seen before.
At the sight of that vast and beautiful soul, the Lesser Deity's hand trembled faintly. A reaching hand. Aslan did not evade or strike it away.
Fingertips touched the place where his heart would be, quivering.
"Pretty color..."
Thud.
Aslan killed the Evil God.
What lingered afterward was not a sense of mission fulfilled. Only bitterness.
He had been forced to kill a Lesser Deity driven mad in the end — a being crammed into an ill-fitting giant's body, made a wild magic user, and broken by its own understanding of souls.
The hilt slipped from his slackened hand, and with a bitter expression he picked up Ereta's double-headed axe — dropped earlier — and returned it to the harness across his back.
It had been necessary.
So he did not regret it.
It simply left a foul taste.
Aslan walked with exhausted limbs, and Ereta spoke.
"...Why did you kill her?"
His eyes caught Ereta in their teal gleam.
"Why did you talk to her? You could have ambushed her instead."
From Ereta's perspective, his actions made little sense.
If he meant to kill her anyway, the longbow he carried could have ended things easily. If he'd only struck from concealment.
Even without the bow, an ambush would have let him start the fight on vastly favorable terms.
There had been no need to speak, no need to provoke.
"I wanted to know if she was an Evil God or not. I would've preferred to move on without fighting if that was possible. But she was an Evil God. She would kill people. Probably already had. So I killed her."
His voice was tired. Ereta did not understand.
The reason he killed Evil Gods but spared villains — she still did not understand.
"Then why don't you kill me? I've hurt people just the same. I might hurt people again. So why do you let me live and kill that Ancient God?"
Something like impatience crept into Ereta's voice when Aslan did not answer.
"If you're keeping me alive to kill Evil Gods, then you didn't have to kill that Ancient God, did you? That kind of power would have been an immense asset going forward. You could have used it in the fight against the gods."
"I know."
"Then why...? What makes me different from her?"
Ereta could not grasp the distinction.
She was not asking to die. She simply could not comprehend it on a fundamental level.
A mode of thought so alien, a pattern of behavior so unknown — she asked out of pure bewilderment.
Aslan did not answer right away. He only looked at her with those sunken eyes.
Emotions drifted through that piercing teal gaze.
"You are a villain," he said at last. "And that Ancient God was an Evil God."
He opened his mouth again.
"Villains can't change the world, because they're human. Even I couldn't change the world in twelve years. A single human changing the world is nearly impossible. The world is too vast, and there are countless people in it. One person can't change every other person."
His gaze lifted to the empty air. A faint, wistful sort of longing passed through those teal eyes.
"This world — Geladrion — is broken. The people have no hope. No future. They can't even dream of tomorrow. They accept the gods' theft as inevitable, and they've forgotten that living itself is a given. If they can't live, they just submit. Like surrendering to a storm without raising a hand."
"...Isn't that natural?"
Aslan shook his head at her answer. When he raised his head again, the fatigue in his eyes had thinned. His gaze was luminous, gleaming teal.
"What made the world like that — what stole everything from people who should have been allowed to live — were the Evil Gods."
"That doesn't answer my question. I..."
"You are a villain."
He cut her off. Ereta started to protest, but the weight of his stare pressed her back into silence.
"Villains have crimes, and they have punishments. They might face personal revenge. They might receive judgment from others. They might wander with their sins on their shoulders, atoning for the rest of their lives. But... Evil Gods have no crimes and no punishments. No one can punish a god."
Because gods are the world itself. Saying this, Aslan seated himself on a fallen tree. The rising dawn pushed back the shadows stretched deep through the forest.
"Humans can't change the world. So they change themselves. They adapt and survive. But Evil Gods can change the world. So if they are wrong, they remake the world."
"..."
"Evil Gods subjugate the world. Humans submit to it or choose another path. You can persuade a human, but you cannot persuade a god. Gods are unfathomable. There is only one way to stop an Evil God."
Kill it.
The words slipped from Ereta's mouth before she could stop them. Aslan glanced at her.
"The reason I don't kill you is that you're a villain — a human. If you're human, there's an end to your crimes. Punishment, repentance, revenge... you can choose freely."
"And you won't be the one to punish me?"
"I have no right to. If you come at me trying to kill me, I'll fight to survive. If you commit atrocities in front of me, I'll stop you. But I'm only one man. One human. I don't have the right to judge my own kind."
He rose as he spoke. He secured the axe across his back and approached her.
"My business was finished the moment I killed the Saintess of Slaughter, high priestess of an Evil God."
He drew closer. Meeting his eyes, Ereta's pupils quaked. Unfathomable. He was more unfathomable than any god.
"Why... why do you do something like that? No one does things like that. You're strange. You're insane. Strange."
The unfathomable was terrifying. Incomprehensible, and therefore terrifying. Ereta felt her fear slowly transmuting into something else, something quieter.
"Because no one else will. No one else even knows what's wrong."
A faint smile touched Aslan's lips.
"Because I am the only one who knows this world is broken."
Hearing that light smile and those unassuming words, Ereta sensed the sheer enormity of the purpose hidden beneath them. She could only gape, confounded.
"I will kill the gods. I will change the world. That is something only I can do."
It was too vast a story. Too grand an ambition. She could not wrap her mind around it. Ereta fumbled for words. "Why?" she asked.
Aslan seemed to stare into space at the question, then laughed softly.
"Do you know what I like?"
"...What?"
Ereta blinked at the sudden shift.
"I like wheat fields washed in gold."
As he spoke, he painted a scene in words.
Children running through those fields, the wheat rustling as their small limbs brushed past, bending and springing back. Borne on a breeze woven of pure innocence.
The children see smoke rising from chimneys, catch the smell of cooking mixed into it, and race home.
Following the children, people return to their houses, their minds already on tomorrow.
Aslan's voice was thick with emotion when he finished.
"I like people who live with tomorrow in their thoughts. I love the quiet peace they carry with them. I long for a peace that doesn't exist in this world."
The wry smile faded, and he lifted his gaze.
"If it were me, I'd desperately wish someone would give that back. So that's all I'm doing. Giving it back."
His eyes were shining.
"For that, I can set good and evil aside for a while. If you want to be punished once everything is over, do as you like."
"You..."
"For now, help me. If there's something you want — something not evil — I'll give you anything. Help me so I can change this world."
The unfathomable within Ereta slowly cracked. Through those fissures seeped the words and images Aslan had let fall.
She thought: 'This man... really has no intention of killing me.'
Ereta mistook the way Aslan's eyes looked at her for radiance.
She sensed the incomprehensible in herself — the faint terror, the deep-seated masochistic craving — leading toward an impulse she could not understand.
It was something like possessiveness.
Ereta stepped closer. The hands that had been wringing her collar rose, hesitant, reaching and retreating, until they came to rest on Aslan's shoulders.
And Ereta pressed herself into his arms, into sweat and blood.
'Wait, why am I doing this?'
Driven by an impulse she herself could not explain, she buried her face against him without understanding why. The height difference was more than a head, so what she felt against her cheek was a solid chest.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and held tight. She drew a deep breath. Between the smells of blood and sweat, the faint scent of his skin teased her nostrils. A strange sensation, as if her brain were melting. A craving satisfied, like finally scratching an unreachable itch. With her possessiveness filling, she felt only confusion.
Unable to understand herself, she thought: 'So this is human warmth.'
It was comfortable. His overheated body was pleasantly warm. The odd, tingling ache low in her belly made her smile faintly.
The ghost of a laugh in her voice, Ereta said,
"So... even this, you won't kill me for?"
Aslan was just as lost as she was. He had no idea why Ereta was suddenly doing this. At most, he had predicted certain requests based on her dummy data.
This behavior was entirely outside his expectations, so he remained silent. Into that silence, Ereta spoke.
"Your way of thinking is interesting. Strange, and that's what I enjoy. There will never be another person like you in this world."
What he had said was true — what Aslan wanted could only be achieved by Aslan himself.
Even if he needed help, in the end, he had to be the one to do it.
A singular man.
Ereta felt her interest kindle at that singularity.
"Let me watch how you live. And if I... play these little games sometimes, just let it pass. That will be enough."
Aslan hesitated a moment, then said, '"...Fine. If that's all you want. As much as you like."'
At that permission, Ereta closed her eyes and pressed her face against his chest for a long moment.
*
By the time they had buried the God of Burial and turned back toward the Giant's Fortress village, the sky had darkened once more.
The moon was a thin sliver, the clouds dense, and moonlight barely reached the ground.
Their return was not slow, but the distance was great. That was unavoidable.
A long road, and so they were weary. Aslan drove his exhausted stride forward, crossing the desert with Ereta beside him.
And as they drew nearer to the Giant's Fortress village, Aslan noticed the commotion.
'What's going on?'
The noise was not the noise of giants.
It was closer to the sound of a great mass of people. Through the gloom, Aslan made out the banners fluttering at the fortress entrance.
Three hill-sigils stacked in a triangle, with a horn device above them.
The banner of House Hilsinger.
Aslan's eyes widened as the situation registered.
'They've come for me.'
The next main quest was straightforward. In the Kingdom of Bida, in the Duchy of Hilsinger, the protagonist was to meet the duke and receive an offer of alliance.
The duke was a man who could piece together the stirrings and rumors — the last remnant of the Ancient Gods, the one the gods pursued — from scattered reports alone.
A man shrewd enough to deduce all that from mere gossip, from the fact that priests were moving urgently, from ancient texts and a little interrogation.
That was Duke Hilsinger.
How he had discovered that Aslan had slipped out of Kardi and fled to the Giant's Fortress village was unclear, but it was not a welcome development.
"What's wrong? Is something there?"
Aslan ground his teeth, already sick of a main quest coming to find the player. Ereta, lacking the sight to pierce the darkness, frowned toward the village but saw nothing.
Only Aslan grasped the situation, chewing his lip anxiously. As if mocking his hesitation, a system window flickered up belatedly.
Looking at the window, Aslan braced himself for a thoroughly tangled mess.
[Main Quest in Progress]
[ ! 恁뺤껜 椅녿뒗 蟻뤰隣좊쾶]
'What the hell is this.'
Corrupted text, just like when the effect for Purity had appeared. He frowned, seeing it fill the space beneath the main quest entry.
A main quest whose meaning was entirely indecipherable — glyphs that gave no hint of their objective. Behind Aslan's consternation, Ereta whispered.
"Aslan, someone..."
"Found you at last."
A rich male voice rang out behind Ereta's. A middle-aged voice. Aslan turned his head slowly.
The man who stood watching Ereta as she warily brought a hand to her weapon was middle-aged, with striking, long golden hair.
The cloak draped over him was fine work, embroidered with gold thread, and his armor was equally masterful.
An unmistakably aristocratic figure. He wore a sword at his hip and a shield across his back.
Aslan knew him.
A face he had seen often, even in the game.
"...Duke Hilsinger."
The middle-aged man nodded as though Aslan's murmur had confirmed something, and Aslan stared back at him with open dismay. This was trouble.
If the man proposed an alliance here and now, everything would tangle beyond repair. His plans would unravel.
As Aslan struggled for a response, the duke said something he had not expected.
"Help me, Master of Combat."
His voice was desperate.
"...Excuse me?"
"You are the only one who can save Kardi."
Amid the confusion, one thing became clear to Aslan.
The main quest he knew had changed.