Darkness. Heavy, and profound. All around, my soul was crushed by the immense pressure of nothingness. Oh, death. Have you come to take me like it had taken everything from me. Perhaps after this darkness, I could find myself in one of the fifteen promised afterlives? I don't even recall which one my family believed in anymore.
Did we perhaps believe in the Salierian heaven of eternal melodies? No, no one in my family loved music like that. Then perhaps it's the wheat fields of Graecia? No, not that one either. We weren't the farmers, we… We built the tools for farming. The scythes, rakes, hoes. We even had a chance to work with the new machines that Western empires brought in. Perhaps then, our afterlife is destined to be the metals of the forge god.
Yes, that beautiful orange glow of his eternal forge in the sky. A nebula from which ceaseless stars come from, to be launched into the skies and handled by Alprepie, the Forge God's beautiful assistant. To die is to turn into one of his beloved stars. I believe that's a good afterlife.
Still, I was in that unfathomable darkness, and in front of me something began to come out. It looked as though it crawled out of the darkness, the world rippling around it. That ink-like creature whose parts leaked out and fell to the ground. It crawled so terribly slow towards me.
At that moment, all I could do was scream. So scream I did. I screamed until my lungs gave out, until my throat fell away and all that's left was stifled breaths. Still, that beast approached. It didn't attack, it simply approached.
I ran back and tripped until all I could do was flail helplessly across the inky dark nothingness. Until it was above me, dripping the viscous black liquid all around and towards my face. I wanted to scream even more, but the fear that some of that liquid might enter my body overrode all fear.
Then, the beast revealed my face. It was my mother's, then my father's, then my uncle's, then it began to cycle through all the faces of the fallen that I had witnessed throughout the years. The numerous villagers and adventurers that entered that forest and never came out. It groaned and wept all around me, each face showing its sorrow.
Was I next? Was this the true creature that had eaten all of them? What a terrible end, truly terrible.
I woke up in a cold sweat, my throat hoarse from screaming the entire night. My head throbbed with a cruel pain that never went away, I wanted to sob, or rather I was already sobbing. I couldn't take it, not after seeing my mother's face again.
The room was a deep quiet. Windowless so that no light could get in, though it was barely lit up by the orange glow of an open candle. I couldn't tell what time it was, who could? At the very least, I recognized where this place was. It was the shed right next to my fallen house, where I had chosen to sleep.
I suppose it was Alisa's idea to bring me to my room. I might have to thank her. What I didn't want to thank her for, was allowing this certain presence to be in my room when I was so weak, "You're name's Soren, right?" Lilus asked, his feline eyes glowed faintly in this dimness.
"I would appreciate it if you weren't in my room," My sword wasn't beside me, and even then I was too weak to even bring him down, but if it came to it I would fight with my life.
"Woh! Calm down!" He raised his arms up and immediately leapt from my bed to be beside my door, "I didn't mean harm—I mean, if I even as much as touched you badly, that crazy woman would kill me. I just wanted to ask if you're doing okay now."
Both his tail and ears were raised in attention. Just from that alone I knew he was telling the truth, "I'm okay now, but what do you mean crazy lady?"
"Well," His voice lowered, almost into a whisper, "That witch, you know. When I woke up she was already very much in charge of this village, ordering people around while she put down those circles everywhere."
"Circles?! What's she doing with them? Is everyone brainwashed, are YOU brainwashed?"
"What? No? At least, I don't think I am." Lilus then rubbed his chin, as if deep in thought, then he began to touch his face, pinching it every now and then. Maybe he wanted to check if he was truly brainwashed… through self harm? Maybe I should stop him before it gets worse.
"Didn't you say you want to kill her?"
"Huh? Yeah, I do. But you saw how she beat my ass, right? No way am I going to try that again until I'm strong enough," He chuckled pathetically while rubbing the back of his head. From where I sat, this cat boy was the worst guy I've ever seen.
But currently, that was the least of my concern. I quickly stood up and went for the door, "She's out there, right?"
"Right now?" He stepped to the side and let me get out, "No, not at all."
"What?"
The moment I felt the kiss of the outside world, I was immediately in shock. The village was vastly different from when I last saw it. The villagers moved with much vitality, hauling wood, stone all across the place. They all looked well, very well. Suspiciously well, "Mr. Tang!" I yelled to a familiar face that passed by.
Mr. Tang looked at me with a smile, "Oh! Soren, are you alright now?"
"Uhm, yes. I do feel a bit thirsty, and hungry, but that's not important. Are you alright? Did she do anything to you?"
Mr. Tang tilted his head in confusion, before breaking out into a small smile, "Ah! You mean Lady Hana? I mean… she's alright. Certainly eccentric but it's not like she's not helping us."
"Helping? Helping how? She's putting you guys in labor for her own benefit!" I tried to reason with him, but it seemed that he was more confused about my reaction that anything.
"Soren, I volunteered."
"What?"
"Yes, she insisted on rebuilding the houses on her own using magic. We can't really sit idly by while someone like that is doing such labor, you know? And besides, she already taught the Nir's kid how to do that thing with the soil, so we may as well be set on food."
The… soil.
I looked away from him, and towards the farms around the village. My eyes were immediately beset by the sea of gold beneath the pale blue sky. It was like bearing witness to a miracle, one that I couldn't have dreamt in all my years of existence.
It wasn't a dream. That lone golden wheat wasn't a dream. She can actually do it, she can bring my beloved home back up, and she was doing it for us. No, she absolutely wasn't, she had a goal and she wasn't telling it to us, or rather she didn't tell it to me, perhaps… Perhaps, "What does she want?"
Mr. Tang put down the construction materials that he carried. Around us, the villagers who had no hope and were simply waiting for the inevitability of inexistence now moved with purpose. Some shouted for assistance, others were more than keen to give it. He patted me on the shoulder as I collapsed to my knees.
"She wants to see if she can create a kingdom that's better than all the others of our time."
So that's how it was.
An experiment.
Hahahahaha…how cruel. All this, just to be an experiment. She truly was a fiend.
—-------------------------------------------
A deafening explosion rocked the forest outside Soleil. The witch stood firm as she tidied her skirt. Around her, the flora of the forest were singed with golden flames. She analyzed the enemy before her. They wore dark armor lined with gold. On the chest was a pulsating emblem, perhaps a power source? It glowed with a magnificent golden hue, and with each pulsation, rays of golden light emanated from it towards the golden linings. It was like a heart pumping blood.
That armored knight carried a sword that was as large as they were. It was no ordinary greatsword, she felt its power firsthand. Made from Venian Steel, the hardest steel that the Western Empires could muster from their deep mining wells, it can very much withstand even the toughest of the witch's attacks.
It would be safe to assume then that the armor, as well as the magic which emanated from it, were made with a similar principle in mind. The knight in front of the witch was a knight that would never falter even among her strongest abilities. That is, if she could even find the time to cast them.
"Who are you, and state your business here," The man in the suit of armor asked, his voice stern, unyielding. Much like the sword and armor that held him so tightly.
"I should be asking you the same," Hana fired another spell that was quickly deflected.
It wasn't as if she was running out of options. The worst case scenario, she had something of an instant-kill ability that she could use against this man, but what worried her was the gap in her knowledge. Sure, she locked herself out for two-hundred years, but nothing truly indicated in the books she read about armor like this.
It was a new experience, and that's precisely why she's outside in the first place. So, she hedged her knowledge to figure out what had caused armor like this to appear, and in this village too.
From what she knew, the village of Soleil was located between the Mire Kingdom and the Laein Confederacy. It was supposed to be a vital trading village between them, with a river that ran through the center of the village and a small dock that invited merchants traveling both ways.
She recalled before locking herself in the Grand Library that both those states were at war with one another. It was a small thing that turned into something huge, a bar brawl in the Mire Kingdom wherein a merchant from the Laein smashed a bottle over a man's head.
It was a complicated affair, one where the Laein citizen was tried without even being expelled back to his country, (Which, from what Hana recalled, was only a week's worth of travel away.) In that affair, the Laein man was executed, and that tension blew up into a total war between the two.
Constant warfare weakens states. It deprives them of manpower and capital, often to the point of internal collapse. She's witnessed it countless times, at least from the history books that the Grand Library had. At the same time, the statuses of these wars could go on for decades, some even centuries. A slow, attritious crawl, often being years before the next battle would take place.
Thus, there were only two options for those two kingdoms. Either they were still up and kicking, using the technology of distant lands to use against one another, or that they were completely eradicated from existence, their lands taken by larger empires.
She can only ask one question, as the smoke from their clash began to dissipate. She stepped back, a flicker of anticipation, and from beyond the smoke was the crescent slash of the armored knight. It missed her by a hair's breadth, if she were delayed by even a single microsecond, then she would be nursing a wound across her neck. If she could even.
"Whew~ Going for the kill, huh? Is that how Miran knights fight nowadays?" She teased, trying to get any semblance of interaction out of him that didn't involve one of them giving out everything—or dying.
The knight scoffed, but he didn't change his stance. In contrast, the witch was far more relaxed even though she had almost faced death, "A Miran's love for honor is what drove them to their doom, pray that I carry such baseless sentiment."
Not Miran, but he didn't say he was from Laein either. Rather, his lack of mention for Laein may indicate that they had both indeed collapsed. Then, "Right~ So where might you be from?" She asked directly, without a single flourish.
"Is it not obvious?"
Should it have been obvious? The witch tilted her head, her eyes cast upon the sword for any sort of micromovement, then back at the knight's helmet, which covered all of his face. Venian steel with such a masterful accumulation of magic. She ran her mind through the various empires she knew still existed two-hundred years ago. All the while she fired her wand and evaded her pursuer as much as possible.
Not the Wickes Empire, Gant Complex, nor Carrian Republics for they didn't have much of a proficiency with magic despite their riches and otherwise easy access to Venian steel. It can't be the Sakilo-Jawani Empire either, for they were incredibly poor despite having blocked the access between the East and West.
It can only be, "Ah!~ why is a knight from Calx so far from home?" Another dodge as they found themselves in a large grove in the middle of the forest. The knight used the momentum of his final swing to spin around and eventually land the sword behind him.
Then, "HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!" His laugh echoed across the whole forest, "Calx!? You think I scavenged my sword and armor!? You're a foolish lass, aren't you?"
Scavenge, so Calx has fallen too. She really needed to find a modern map to get a feel for this place again, "Quite, I just got here," She laughed nervously as she readied her wand once more.
"Calx has been gone for 60 years now, I am Valerian."
Valerian. That name sounded like bitter medicine in her mouth. She should've expected something like this to happen to those two states that fought in the middle of this village. In that instant, Hana found the full picture of the immediate situation of the kingdoms around Soleil.
The Mire Kingdom collapsed during its war with Laein, and while the fate of Laein was still unknown to here, it was clear that Mire collapsed from the inside. Valeria was one of the noble families that controlled the kingdom, and perhaps between the two hundred years since she last saw the place, they eventually got power.
In that assumption, Soleil was under Valerian jurisdiction, and this knight was their primary inspector. Hana scoffed, "Thank you. That's everything I need."
Suddenly, the knight felt his skin crawl. He never noticed it until now. All around the branches of the trees that surrounded this grove, all of them aimed at him, at the small nicks and dents that the witch had put on his armor.
A small, yet powerful explosion rocked the forest outside Soleil.
—-------------------------------------------
I never quite realized how delicious bread was when you're not dying just to eat it. Still, the misery from what I had learned earlier wasn't quite welled by having a stomach full of bread and ale.
"Come on, Soren, shouldn't you be happy? We finally got things working around here!" Alisa exclaimed, she had been busy at work following the witch's instructions when it came to the fields. All she had to do was trace a line in the dirt around large areas of it and—
"I don't even want to think about it right now," I slumped down the table and groaned. The witch's blessing was too much for someone like me. She's daring me to hope, and what if all of that was quickly dashed away?
"Didn't you go to the forest in the first place because you wanted to fight the big guy? The big guy's gone, and a bigger guy's helping us be normal people again."
Normal, as if there was nothing normal about our toiling. Our suffering. I tried to push myself up to talk back against this magic-addled child's brain, but I was quickly stopped by the sudden shock of a door being kicked open.
There, on the entrance of this restaurant, was the witch. She still looked like the calm beauty that exuded so much charm just by existing, yet on her shoulder was a man stripped bear. She threw him to the ground, and it was clear that he was still breathing, "Soren!~ I need your help." She called out to me with a smile, and I've never been so terrified in my life.