Chapter 12: Night Ambience
"Ugh, seriously," Ron slammed his earthen mug on the table, spilling some of the contents everywhere. "Renji's an impatient guy, you know? I know that goblins are too weak for us, but that doesn't mean we have to face the main boss right away, either."
"You mean the orcs?"
The Undying King made a big alliance of five different races, and basically brought down the kingdom of the humans a century or so ago using them, forcing the Kingdom of Arabakia to retreat south of the Tenryu mountains.
'What's the point of the title 'Undying' if he's rumored to die in the end?'
The Undying King contradicted his name and died. The Alliance of Kings, as they called it, disbanded shortly after. It is said that the gray elves, a race still related to the elves in the Shadow Forest, were forced to their original homeland in Broken Valley due to the alleged cause of his death. The kobolds and goblins were swept to the border closest to humans, while the undead and orcs inhabited the former Kingdoms of Nahnanka and Ishtanmal far beyond the border. It is no exaggeration to say that they are the two main forces in Grimgar.
I don't think the Undying King is completely dead, though. The Undead were created directly by him, and the curse that causes corpses not cremated within a few days to turn into zombies, skeletons, and essentially mindless moving corpses, is still at work to this day. It doesn't take a genius to know that some other conspiracies were at play here.
'There's still so many things I don't know about this world.'
It would certainly take not a short amount of time to uncover those mysteries.
Anyway, the closest of both of the duo races are orcs.
It's called Deadhead Watching Keep. It was an orc fortress that seemed to be in charge of watching the movements of humans. It was located only six kilometers north of Alterna.
"Yeah," Ron confirmed my guess with a dizzy nod. "They say that you're not yet a complete volunteer soldier before killing orcs. Still, there's a process to getting to that level, you know what I mean?"
"I am aware."
That is one thing that separates the two of us.
'His ego is simply too high.'
He only uses those who are equal to him, or can keep up with him with little trouble. I don't know what Renji was thinking when we met earlier in the hallway, but I wouldn't be surprised if inside, he at least had it in his own way that others were not as great as him, and not many people had as much courage. He couldn't make them follow his steps as faster as he could.
'If he can't even understand that much, he's hopeless.'
At some point, I couldn't hear Ron's babbling anymore. Looking over at him, I found him lying face down on the table, obviously asleep. I sighed. Was I going to have to escort him to his room?
"It's okay," the woman in her late twenties, or maybe early thirties, remarked with her typical serious face. "You can simply leave him there."
This inn's bar was not very big. It was small, rather. It was only enough to accommodate less than twenty people inside. That was probably what made this place popular among the individuals who wanted to be alone. Thanks to that, the atmosphere inside here is almost silent as well, and I like it.
By the time I got up to the second floor, past the hallway, and into my team's room that was flanked by two other doors which I didn't know if one of them was occupied or not, the lanterns had all gone out, leaving only a few candles in the living room.
"You're still up?"
I went to Sasha who had been sitting on the sofa, one leg up to the couch as she was staring at the night sky beyond the translucent glass door.
"Something wrong with that?"
"Not really," I sat down next to her. "You have something on your mind?"
"What makes you think that?"
"I think you already know why."
She didn't say anything for a while.
"Aren't you afraid of the unknown?"
"No," I answered immediately.
Sasha turned to me in surprise. "You're not...?"
"When you face something you don't know," I began. "Sure, it's normal to fear their existence. You don't know what they can be, after all. However, rather than regretting your ignorance of them, wouldn't it be better to use that to try to find out more about them? Your way might lead to something unrepeatable, and you might regret it for the rest of your life, but that's the risk of experimenting with the unknown. It's a process of trial and error. If you don't want that kind of risk, unless you're forced into the situation of facing them, it's fine for you to back off."
Frankly, I don't care if she's on my team or not. Working alone has its own advantages. I don't need to consider them in my strategy. I can't simply sacrifice them without careful thought, after all. They weren't so stupid as to fall into such a trap.
'Even if she still chooses to be with me in the end, it won't change things.'
I was aware of my own defects. My personality, my way of thinking, my actions, and myself as a whole. Among a group of people with their own defects, I was probably the most defective among them.
'In that group, there's the high ego, the arrogant fellow, and the brainless child. The wishy-washy boy, the unstable man, and the fake persona. Last but not least, the slowpoke, and I, the emotionless kid. Honestly, we were nothing but a bunch of defects.'
The girls are just as defective. Except for that little girl, I think I can figure out the defects of the other three.
'Was there some meaning with this, as well?'
I will never run out of time to ask about the ignorance that enveloped my mind at the moment. I never tire of trying to unravel it, though I still have no requirements for doing so.
"Did you never think about why you were in this situation in the first place?"
"Huh?" She seemed unable to understand what I was saying.
"We woke up in a strange tower with no entrance without knowing anything other than our names. Shortly after, we're practically forced to become volunteer soldiers because we have no other choice and kill creatures like us who are just trying to live their lives in peace, all in order to support ourselves. Don't you ever think about the reasons why we have to do those things to begin with?"
She didn't answer. "...I don't have the time to."
"Well, that's what they want us to."
By giving us all a poor start, we will be forced to think about the situation we are in, leaving no time to think about the unknown. Humans naturally fix their eyes on the things that are more apparently addressed and the current state of things they face. They know in their subconscious that it's pointless to dwell on things that don't even have a basis to dwell on for long. It's simply useless.
'It's a smart move on their part. Although there must be some that could easily overcome the problem of that issue and think about their absurd condition, and work with the thought of unraveling it.'
"What about the other volunteer soldiers who don't find it all that difficult?"
"Secured, perhaps."
"Secured?"
"The mastermind behind our memory loss and the Alterna ruler are undoubtedly connected. Alterna clearly benefited from the help the volunteer soldiers in the tower provided, making it very likely that the inhabitants of the tower were behind the scenes of Alterna, or rather, the Kingdom of Arabakia. It could also be a completely independent group and made certain agreements with Alterna. However, the benefits they get are completely unknown if that is the case.
"The point I'm making is that they must have expected that there are those who are capable enough to get through it all easily. They would likely had come up with some way to make them unable to fight back. For your case, that is to use threats."
For my case, meanwhile, I would take the very place of Alterna itself.
"That's... some long explanation," Sasha took a deep breath. "But I understand what you're trying to say. More or less."
'That's good.'
In the time I'm in the guild's basic lesson, I have think many things about all of unknown things shrouded in this world.
"Have you thought about your decision?"
I have guessed her answer, though.
"Yeah,'" she nodded confidently. "I will find out about the unknown. I'm prepared for all the risks."
'Yeah, I wonder about that.'
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