43.Trace of Dream: alone the world

Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy

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“The Sacred Daughter hid herself again! Find her, find her!”

“Why is she always pulling this kind of prank?! You, over there, did you find her?!”

“Like hell we did! Dammit, we can’t afford to let her in danger! Find her, quickly!”

With the commotion beside me as if someone had just poked a beehive, I slid myself into the maintenance walkway that was set up on the exterior wall.

I learned the route to my destination after “she”, who proudly showed it to me the first time with a proud look on her face, led me on many escape runs together. For someone in her position, she was surprisingly quite the tomboyish girl.

Following a complicated but well-defined route, I ducked into a small crack in one of the outer walls, which had apparently been overlooked during repairs after a battle long ago, and into which a single person could somehow dive. It was easy for her to proceed, but a little tough for me, but at least I could pass through, one of a few things I appreciated about not having been blessed with much physique.

When I went under there, past the outer wall and looked down… I could finally see the ground far below for a hundred meters.

Without hesitation, I leaped into the air, and as I did so, I felt my wings appear on my back, shining as usual. With a single swipe, I immediately soared up, catching the wind and launching myself into the sky with a mighty leap.

She… the girl they referred to as “Sacred Daughter”, for some reason, was good at finding these secret paths, and causing the guards a lot of headache. However, I had no obligation or duty to report her, so I had not told them about it, in fact, I was an accomplice to her, since I used this secret pathway myself from time to time.

Suddenly, I looked down and saw the structure that had just appeared… A huge tower taller than mountains and more than 10 kilometers in diameter, painted in a chalk-white color… The so-called “Fully Environmental Multi-Layered Enclosed City”, which was said to have been built with the pinnacle of magical science. It was built as a last stronghold for the people to prepare for a crisis that might one day come, but in reality, it was a city full of self-worshipping bigwigs and clergymen, along with those conceited Highborns who believed themselves to be the descendants of messengers of the Goddess.

“…How arrogant. Did they actually aim to bring down even God when constructing that tower?”

I spat out hatefully at the city, which they called “Acropolis”, and flapped my wings toward where “she” might be.

It didn’t take long to find the person I was looking for, just about 30 minutes of flying away from the city, which amounted to nothing more than a short walk to me.

As for her… she was in a flower garden that was well-lit by the afternoon sun, while surrounded by numerous animals, sleeping soundly at the center of it all.

The same was true for the animals around her, some snuggled up together for a nap, some just staring at her, and there was even a little one that climbed up her sleeping body and enjoyed itself in silence.

This moment of peace seemed to last forever.

“…You always have this fairytale-esque air around you, don’t you?”

How carefree of her, not knowing the hardships of the guards who were probably desperately searching for her right now. I sighed in dismay, feeling sympathy for them, even though I usually didn’t think well of them.

I landed on the ground a short distance away in a steep descent, then extinguished the shining wings on my back and walked up to her.

Perhaps because they sensed my anger, the little animals left like spiders scattering.

A huge wolf was offering its fur in place of her bedding… Phantasmal Beast Sirius, also known as the Celestial Wolf. It was definitely not the kind of being that could just appear around human settlements like this.

The disturbance just now seemed to cause it some annoyance, but it merely sighed and then returned to sleep.

Unfortunately, perhaps sensing various movements around her, she, who had been sleeping peacefully, let out a troubled breath, and her closed eyelids quivered.

And now the wolf was enraged. So I hastily tried to quell its anger.

Fortunately, it seemed to be devoted to its role as her pillow. Because we both knew she would be sad if we started fighting each other.

Eventually, she snapped her eyelids open, revealing her clear, amethyst eyes with long eyelashes. As she drew back in surprise, her long silver hair, which was shimmering with a pale iridescence, slipped down and immediately became a curtain that framed her well-featured face.

The girl, whose beauty was praised by the populace as “heavenly”, sleepily looked around her surroundings, and finally noticed my presence.

“…Ah, it’s you! Hi~”

She wiped the tears on the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand and greeted me in a relaxed manner.

I almost shuddered at such a sight, but managed to pull myself back together.

Then, as if trying to give off as much “I’m so mad at you” vibe as possible, I put one hand on my hip, covered one eye with the other, and sighed as loudly as possible.

She simply shrugged her shoulders and tried to mock a glare.

“Ahahahaha, how many times did I tell you already? That pose doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Shut up. Try putting yourself in my shoes for once… At the very least, you could have told me before you left.”

Truth be told, I wasn’t even that mad. I just didn’t find it funny that she went out without even telling me… I was just sulking, if I do say so myself, but what’s not funny is not funny.

I moved closer and slumped down next to her. After staring blankly at me for a moment… she slid in next to me, intertwined my arms with hers, and leaned her soft body on mine.

“But you did take your sweet time to look for me, so I’m grateful for that, my fiancée.”

“…Hmph.”

At the sight of her smile, carefree and full of joy, I could no longer say anything… because I had already fallen in love with that smile.

“Come here, I’ll take it all in

Like warm light shining through the trees

I’ll surely become your sun

Don’t be afraid, give it all to me

Seeds of hope I’ve gathered so much

I’ll surely bring them to you…”

…I could hear her singing. Her song was like a gentle embrace to everything in the world.

I laid there in a daze, admiring her figure, which I was afraid might pass into fantasy at any moment… until I felt asleep.

When I jumped up in a hurry, it was already dark around us, and the stars were beginning to twinkle overhead. Next to me, she was smiling and looking at me in a good mood.

I suppose there would be no point in making an excuse if I took her home now, so I sat down again with a sense of resignation, thinking that a few more minutes of delay would not make any difference.

“The stars are so beautiful… We couldn’t see them in the city because of the ceiling being in the way, though. That makes today’s trip worth it, don’t you think?”

“Not so worth if we caused uproar throughout the entire city , if you ask me… I’m sure the maids are going to give you one hell of a sermon when we get back.”

I could see it in her eyes. That sermon was well beyond the time she usually slept, and I am sure she would wake up tomorrow with a drowsy look on her face.  Then she would doze off again on official business and get scolded.

“Ugh… Can we not go home? I want to stay here until morning.”

“…Sounds good to me. Actually, not just until morning, but forever, just the two of us, somewhere no one knows you.”

“…Pardon?”

She looked back at me with a slightly surprised look on her face, probably not expecting an affirmation. But the truth is, this was my true intention. If we didn’t want to go back, then we should never go back.

“Rather than just a walk in the neighborhood like this, I wish we could run off to somewhere far away…”

“That’s not going to happen. If we did that, everyone would be in trouble, wouldn’t they?”

“Like I care about that… ‘Sacred Daughter’ this, ‘Sacred Daughter that’, you shouldn’t have been sent out into the world to deal with such trivial matters.”

There, I spat it out.

She was one of the last… no, she was the very last confirmed bearer of that white healing light. A “prodigy” with unblemished, pure white wings that occasionally appeared only in her bloodline, with far superior capabilities than others. She should have been revered and live modestly and peacefully as an inviolable being, as did her ancestors generations ago. In fact, she was supposed to.

The reason why she became the last of her kind was because… we, the Lightwing race, exchanged our birth rate for longevity, and even that not-so-high birth rate had decreased significantly nowadays. Coupled with the fact that we were wounded and fell in battle in the midst of dealing with the “Wounds of the World” that had become more active recently, our number continued to decrease further.

She herself… was ill-suited for fighting. No matter how hard we fought to protect her, somebody would eventually get hurt, and eventually they might even die. Whenever there was a casualty, she would raise her sorrowful lamentations alone in a secluded place. She, who was better at purification and healing than anyone else, also had the kindest heart of anyone.

“The reason you were sent out in the first place is because those bigwigs have been using our people like disposable tools, caging us in their hands and making us bleed recklessly. Only after our numbers became too low and no more children were born did they rush to protect us… They only start making a fuss when it’s already too late.”

“…Pfft. You really hate people, don’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?! I really mean it, you know, why don’t we run away together? I’ll take you anywhere, as long as you want to…!”

She held up a finger to stifle my words, her face on the verge of tears.

“…Hehe, I like it when you care about me so much, but I still can’t do it. If there’s no one left to do that ‘duty’, who would protect the people… Wah?!”

“It doesn’t matter! You only have to nod once, and I’ll go to the end of the world for you…!”

Impulsively, I grabbed her shoulders hard and pushed her down onto the soft field of flowers, raising my voice. The petals flew into the air from the impact, and I immediately came back to my senses and panicked at what I just did.

In the midst of all this, her eyes widened in surprise… gradually, her cheeks turned cherry red. However…

“…I’m so sorry, I still can’t do it. They all believe in me, and that’s why I’m able to keep going. The food I eat, the clothes I wear, the people who serve me… I can’t betray them, after all these years they’ve been giving it to me.”

Again, as usual, she only smiled sadly.

No matter how many times… I told her over and over again… I couldn’t change her gentle mind.

Until the bitter end…

A bundle of parched paper fell down with a thud, waking me up from a shallow sleep.

I looked around and found a book on the floor next to my bunk, which I had been using to shield my face from the light.

“…Another sweet dream.”

I shook my head and raised myself up. Looking around, I saw a room with crude bunks and simple desks that looked like a miner’s rest room… It was, however, quite cluttered with books and laboratory equipment that I brought in from outside without permission. Not that anyone was left to give me permission, though.

However, from a few minutes ago, I felt a fine vibration, as if something large was going haywire. It seemed that this is the reason why the book fell down.

“…How noisy.”

I strained my ears and heard the high pitched squeaking of goblins outside my room. This was an old mine shaft that had been turned into a goblin den, but at the beginning, I had made it clear that I was the one in charge, and I had given them strict orders not to go near my room, which I had offered them in exchange for a small boon of technology.

“…Come to think of it, their boss is dead now, and these loser dogs are now running back. I went to the trouble of giving them knowledge of the latest magical explosive, but looks like even such a toy is too much for those barbarians.”

Shrugging, I started shoving my stuff into my bag. If the boss had been killed, a subjugation force would be coming here soon. It would be a shame to let go of the hideout I had just begun to get used to, but there was nothing I could do.

Just as I was thinking this, someone unceremoniously burst in, making noisy footsteps and kicking open the door with a loud thud.

“Huh? What da human doing here?”

A dark-skinned, muscular body, well over two meters tall…

“Just a troll…”

I instantly lost my interest in the intruder. Trolls were a warrior-like race who excelled in muscle strength and self-regeneration ability and were often devoted to their own training first and foremost, but this noisy specimen of a troll seemed to have no sense of propriety.

Well, I heard most of the information from my partner, which I did not want to hear anyway, so I was going to summarize by saying that he was wandering around after being chased out of his village, and found a settlement of those weaker than him in just the right place, so he decided to take it. Simply ridiculous.

“…Tch, there’re misfits who fall behind the rest, no matter the community, after all.”

I spat out in self-mockery.

“Da hell ya say, weak-lookin’ human?!”

The surprisingly sharp hearing troll raged and raised his fist in the air… but it would never be swung down.

As for why… the moment he took hostile action, a dark-colored serpent appeared out of nowhere, instantly constricting him in the blink of an eye and completely immobilized his body.

“Nice one, Crom.”

“W-What dis thin’ doin’…?! Lemme go…!”

“Huh? Savages like you… should just grovel.”

“Gaah?!”

The serpent, still restraining his movements, forced the troll in front of me to kneel down, while shattering his supposedly strong body with a cracking sound.

I finally began to see the fear in his eyes. Looking down at him like some roadside filth, I said what just suddenly came to mind.

“Since I’m in a very, very good mood after seeing ‘her’ again after so long, even if it was just a dream, I shall refrain from simply strangling you to death and give you a choice. Either become Crom’s food… or bow down to me in apology for your rudeness, and be granted power in return?”

He hesitated for a moment at my words, and then, more quickly than I had expected, he submitted, albeit reluctantly. That was easy.

These savages had so little pride that they’d take the bait right after I dangled it in front of them… without even suspecting the possibility of poisoning.

Well then, let’s continue this little game for a while longer… I even heard one of the companions of that accursed “Sorcerer King” who gave me such a hard time before was nearby, so if I could get him caught in the chaos and make him suffer, all the better.

With a casual flash of my right hand into the air, a high-pitched, crystal-shattering sound rang out from a space that should have been empty.

“…? W-What you doin’… guh, argh?!”

The troll looked up with a question mark in his eyes at the sudden high-pitched sound, and something crystalline sprouted from behind his eyes. It quickly ate through his head and upper body from inside out, the troll screaming in agony each time it did.

“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right? Though I can’t guarantee how much of an ego you’ll have left if you survive… Let’s go, Crom.”

With the giant body dancing around in the middle of the room, sprawled out in extreme pain, and the small goblins moving right and left around it, I left the room with the now-miniature serpent that had come up to me entwined in my arm.

When I glanced behind me as the door closed, the room had already turned into an alien world covered in mysterious crystals.

Glowing a dark, murky color like darkness of night, the three tattered wings, as if they had been bitten off, opened behind me, and I took flight into the night.

To the southeast… I stared in the direction of the far-off abominable enclosed city that I couldn’t see now.

“…It took me quite a long time, but I’ve mostly recovered now… and that ‘Sorcerer King’ nuisance is no longer in this world… Just a little longer… then you will all pay… for taking ‘her’ from me…!”

I reached out my arm in that direction, as if trying to catch her shadow, which was now far out of reach. However, the feelings slipped through my fingers along with the dream and scattered into the starry sky.

All what remained in my heart, was this flame of anger, as dark and gloomy as the wings on my back.

Even after all these years, it was still scorching like an inferno.

Iris

I felt like I was having a warm, but sad dream.

When I awoke unexpectedly, before I knew it, tears were running down my cheeks, and they did not stop for a while, even after I wiped them away.

Eyes still completely blurred by tears, I quietly went outside and sat down on a comfortable-looking rock, so as not to wake up the other women assigned to the same tent as me… Milly-san, Lenny-san and Philias-san.

The cool night air was clear and pleasant to my red, swollen, feverish eyes.

There was nothing around except the light of a bonfire, which seemed to be standing guard in a distance.

In the midst of all this, the cloudless night sky was lit by two moons, proving that this was another world, whether I liked it or not, and there was a starry sky all around, as if jewels had been crushed and scattered.

“So beautiful…”

At night, my breath was still white, and the cold made me clutch the front of my cloak over my nightgown, and when I looked up at the sky, I couldn’t help but let out an exclamation of admiration.

Lying on my back atop the flat rock, there was no obstruction to my view of the sky, now that we had left the forested area, I felt as if I were floating in the starry sky above…

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever had the time to leisurely look up at the stars like this ever since I came here…

Suddenly, a sense of loneliness that I don’t quite understand took over my heart.

I thought back to the dream I just had. A dream of a girl with the same hair color as mine now, looking at the sky intimately with an unfamiliar boy.

I felt something nostalgic about these two people, whom I was sure I had never met before.

It was not as clear as my memories of my mother, but rather a nostalgia that is somewhere far, far away, faint as a haze.

But I was left with the impression that the girl looked somewhat forlorn and the boy somewhat pained, which still grips me to the bone when I wake up.

“Who could the two of you be…?”

I reached for the starry sky and clenched my fist as if clutching the memory of a dream that is dissipating. However, such an action meant nothing, and it slipped through my fingers and scattered into the night sky.

(TL Note: omg the parallels)

But I guess it’s just my own instincts… I couldn’t help but somehow understand that those two are “the same” as me. And that… neither of them was here anymore.

“Extinct race…”

I was the only one of my kind in this world.

I hadn’t paid that any thought because I always had Reiji-san and Saul-niisama by my side.

However, when finally confronted with it, I could not help but feel that this fact, of which I had never been aware before, pierced my heart like a knife.

“Rrha ki…… tie…… ni en nha……?

Wa……a……mea yor……al……”

As if to fill up the loneliness in my heart, I tried to remember the memories of the dream and hum the song “she” sang in the dream, hoping to reproduce it somehow. But it was an unknown language to me… probably the old magical civilization language at the time of the game… Most of it had slipped from my memory, and I could only stammer out the lyrics and melodies. Still, I kept repeating, over and over again, seeking the shadow of “her” who should not be here.

I mulled over such a sentiment for a while, when…

“…! AAAAAARGH?!”

Intense pain suddenly pierced my entire body, making me scream and curl my body, trying to endure it… This was the third time I’d had this pain. There was no question about what caused the pain.

Around me, the tethered horses, perhaps feeling uneasy because of their unique animal senses, began to run amok, and suddenly the caravan was in an uproar. The commotion caused all of the mercenaries, who had been sleeping, to jump out of their beds. Then…

“Iris-chan?!”

“Iris-sama, are you injured?!”

“I’m… fine…”

I somehow managed to tell everyone who rushed out, apparently having heard the earlier screams, that I’m not injured, although I was dripping with greasy sweat. However, the matter might be much more serious than that.

“…I think… a new ‘Wound of the World’… has opened… somewhere…”

I could feel the people around me gasp at my words as I barely managed to hold back the pain.

(Author’s Note)

For convenience, “her” song was described in Japanese, but as Iris sings, it is actually in a special language.

I have no talent for writing lyrics.

Including the troll race this time around, the setting for the monsters in the work was greatly influenced by the TRPG “Sword World 2.0”.

(TL’s Nonsense Rambling)

Sacred Fireflies, Forgotten in Dreams is a certified banger, but the song that comes right after it is the most epic thing in existence.