Chapter 385

Chapter 385

“Finally found it. The damn thing.”
It’s a thrilling moment.
It was the first crack I’d heard of.
A fissure gaped open in front of me, large enough for a giant to walk through.
It was a bit of a bumpy ride to get here, but I’m happy with the outcome.
“Utscha.”
The sword that drew the arc is back in place.
The entire space warped for a moment, and then the crack closed.
I ran my hand over it to check, and felt nothing.
“Damn, how many years will it take me to find all of this?
It was rewarding, but not without its challenges.
Now we’ve only destroyed one.
Even with the help of a newly tamed flying squirrel, this star was too wide.
Suddenly, I saw a stream trickling through the woods.
It was the same red color as the ocean.
It was in a gap in the white trees, so it was particularly visible.
“I don’t want to sound weak already.”
But that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be done.
I squatted down in front of the stream and began to wash my face.
The color is color, so I wasn’t too happy.
It’s also chewy when you drink it.
“Mr. Ronan is—what the hell are you doing?”
“Huh? What?”
Out of the blue, Letancier called me.
I wiped my face roughly on my sleeve and turned my head away.
She stood there, not far away, as blank as a doll.
“Hey, this doesn’t make sense—.”
Letancie wasn’t looking at me.
Her gaze was fixed on the three giants sprawled out on the ground.
The bodies lying on the broken wood were all missing their heads.
Blue blood was gurgling from the clean cut.
Oh, I said again.
“How does that not make sense? There are only three of them.”
“The world ended because we didn’t catch those three!”
Letancier went white and freaked out.
That was my reaction every time I caught a giant.
It was a great attitude to have as an audience member at a magic show, but I was getting tired of it.
“What are you screaming at, do you want to die?”
“Oops, sin, sorry!”
“And did I call those bald guys? You called them.”
I nudged her arm, and she reflexively jerked her shoulder.
The humor, if there was any humor, was that he hadn’t hit me since we first met.
“There’ll be a lot more of them coming, and the six-headed ones are getting a little annoying, so you’ll have to learn to stay out of their way. Either that or develop a spell to transport you to the Bald World.”
“Well, I can’t–why don’t you just add more people to the group, it’ll make it easier to fight them.”
“It’s jammed. And we’ll have to increase it when we get a good one.”
I shook my head emphatically.
As of today, it’s been three days since I’ve been with her.
The provocation of referencing the Bald One certainly worked.
As proof, an average of five bald people a day came to me to verify its authenticity.
You’re still sending it out with a scouting feel.
You’re a bunch of douchebags.
Letancier grunted.
“At least—two of them were good.”
“It wasn’t great by my standards.”
I’ve smashed ten roots and one crack in the meantime.
Finding the roots was pretty easy, unlike some cracks that require a lot of digging.
Basically, it was big, and the beams from the tower could be seen from a distance.
Six of the ten roots contained the followers of Nebula Clazier.
“What a bunch of bums, begging for their lives without knowing the subject matter.”
Like Letancier, they were reduced to parts.
They all begged for mercy, and I didn’t spare a single one.
Because there was no reason to.
My blood, if drunk or applied to a weapon, could strike a giant, but there was not a drop of it to give to the fools who sold the world.
Letancier bowed his head deeply, unable to respond.
“If you’re an archbishop, I’ll consider it. By the way, can’t you make food with your magic? I’m getting a little sick of eating the same old stuff.”
“Sin, I’m sorry, I don’t have that kind of magic—.”
“Eh, useless, the archbishop is nothing.”
“——black.”
Letancier clenched his fists.
The fluttering was worth it.
The breeze that blew through the white trees flipped her bangs.
The sky had darkened noticeably and it looked like the sun was about to set.
“Let’s move before we camp. How far is it to recover mana?”
“—Yes. A little.”
“Yeah. I’ll walk.”
We started walking.
As much as I wanted to keep exploring in the air, Letansi needed time to recover her mana.
I swung my sword, and I was hungry.
I pulled the leaf-wrapped jerky out of my coat pocket.
It looked normal, but unlike normal meat, it had a blackish color.
Letancier frowned.
“Ugh.”
“You’re hungry, too, aren’t you?”
“Me, I’m good!”
She shook her head, white as a sheet.
By the look on his face, it was like I asked him to eat a cockroach.
In fact, it’s probably a toss-up on the disgusting scale.
This was cannibalization in the broadest sense.
The raw material for jerky was the flesh of giants.
“You have every right to be tired of it, after all the trouble you put me through yesterday.”
“I swear, I thought I was going to die—oops!”
Letancier gagged.
It was clear that the trauma had run deep.
One piece of meat, falsely labeled as emergency food, nearly killed Letancier.
She collapsed with difficulty breathing as she swallowed the giant’s flesh.
I’m glad I vomited it up before it got all the way down my esophagus, or I would have been a fiery mess.
“Okay. I’ll have to find something else to eat then.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s all for my own good, and you’re not dead yet.”
The fact that he could wield telekinesis alone made him worth keeping alive.I bit into the jerky roughly.
I made this in a hurry, so it was still juicy.
It’s kind of–it’s not terrible, but it has a subtle flavor that I can’t really find a replacement for.
I must be a freak, because I’ve eaten almost a pig’s worth of food in the last three days and still feel fine.
“We should hope to find a land with life, and there must be food there, just as the waters of the deep are blue.”
“I wish there was a resistance. It’s so hard to look at that face.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been three years since I last heard the rumor—haha.”
Letancier sighed.
He didn’t look very confident.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand.
Three years was a long time in the world of baldness.
I opened my mouth to speak, staring at the sky like a blank canvas.
“I’ll find it no matter what, and by the way, why doesn’t the sky change color? It’s been pale all day.”
“That’s the roots. We’re spraying a special ingredient in the air to make the environment similar to where they came from, and the haze you see sometimes is a combination of those ingredients.
“They’re the ones who’re going to throw it away anyway, not the ones who’re going to get it. Don’t bother.”
This was why you couldn’t see blue in the sky or the ocean.
We kept walking, talking about this and that.
When I camped, I preferred to do so in a high, open area.
Discovering someone.
It was a good place for someone to find us.
There was no sign of life in the lifeless forest.
Silence, without the song of grasshoppers or the busy chatter of birds.
It fades into silence, leaving only the sound of shuffling footsteps.
Voila!
I snapped my fingers, suddenly remembering last night’s conversation.
“Oh, I’m bored, just give me the latest news. Who did I even ask?”
“He asked me about a werewolf named Didikan, and I said I’d never heard of him.”
“Yeah, he did. Waste of a man.”
I can’t help but smile bitterly.
Since yesterday, I’ve been asking Lehtansi to check in on people he knows.
Most of them are tragedies.
Didikan, who should have been a great inventor, never got his chance to shine and was swept away in the flood of history.
I’m guessing you died when the cave giant went on a rampage.
With my mentor, Doron.
“Wasteful.”
I can still see myself tapping on the invisible armor.
I knew it was inevitable, but it left a bad aftertaste.
This is the world where Adeshan failed.
There have been countless lives lost in this way.
“So Didikan is dead, and who do we hear from this time—.”
“Feel free to ask.
If you’ve been influential enough, you’ll remember most of them.
But you know some of the big guys, so I guess you’re not really from another world.”
“Shut up, man. Mmm——Okay, I’ve decided.”
I took an inaudible deep breath.
I was actually going to ask at the end, but I thought it would be better to sell first.
It was something I was going to have to deal with at some point.
Whoa- I let out a long breath and said her name.
“Adeshan.”
“Oh, of course I know.”
Letancier responded.
I was prepared.
I took out a cigarette and put it in my mouth.
“The Imperial High Chancellor was the trickiest of them all, predicting our behavior as if she knew the future. If it weren’t for her, the arrival of the stars would have been much sooner.”
“Of course he did. He’s competent.”
“Yes. I’ve been caught so many times, assassination attempts all botched, and if I hadn’t put a death penalty on my congregation for speaking out about the arrival of the stars, my plans would’ve been exposed long ago, you damned bitch. No use being annoying when you’re going to die anyway—.”
Letancier pursed his lips.
Judging by his heated tone, he must have been a difficult opponent.
Bam!
After listening in silence, I ruffled her hair.
“Awww, go, why are you hitting me all of a sudden!”
“Don’t curse at him.”
“Oh, okay—sorry.”
Letancier wrapped his hands around his wounds and sobbed.
Actually, I was the one who wanted to cry.
Adeshan, the regressor, was a different person than the woman who would become my wife, but he was still a boss worthy of respect.
—and honestly, I think I liked it a little bit.
The smoke that had been lingering dispersed in the wind.
“How did the Great Warrior die?”
“It was an epic final battle, and she–not he–survived and fought on until the arrival of the stars, fighting alongside the Imperials and the big guns the Order hadn’t yet dealt with.”
Letancier even used gestures to describe the time.
The last war was fought in a different place than my first life.
It was Nirvana, not Ahayute, and there were fewer people left.
The only thing that matched was the result.
Defeat.
“So did ——.”
“Uh–are you okay?”
Letancier smirked.
It wasn’t unreasonable.
I’m probably making a face I’ve never seen before.
It sucks even if you know it.
The general was killed in battle with the giant.
I blinked rapidly.
“Huh, Ronan.”
“Why.”
“I see a light over there, I think it’s a root?”
Le Tansier tapped me on the shoulder.
I looked in the direction she was pointing with bloodshot eyes.
Five lights flickered in the distance through the trees.
As I squinted, I saw the shape of a giant hand reaching for the sky.
“Sure.”
“Great. Let’s break that and camp out tonight, how about that?”
His voice was strangely excited.
Exploited by the bald men, Letancier reveled in the act of destroying roots.
I didn’t like her, but our interests were aligned.
“Yeah. It’s getting late.”
“Yes! Then I’m full of mana, so I’ll just—”
Letancier was about to cast a telekinesis spell.
Suddenly, the hairs on the nape of my neck stood up.
It was a different kind of threat than a giant.
I was looking around to see if anyone was there.
Kaaaaaahhh!!!
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion above the roots.
Black flames engulfed the hand’s form, consuming it completely.
The beams shooting into the sky faded.
A shockwave of belatedness hit us.
“Kyaak! Moo, what!”
Letancier stirred.
The trees that had been lying down for a while stood up with a recoil.
The flames had barely died down.
Once again, goosebumps ran up my arms.
“——!!!”
There was no doubt.
This was an aura I recognized.
After I managed to calm my excitement, I called Letancier.
“Hey. Flying squirrel.”
“Huh–huh–what’s wrong?”
“Can you swear you’ll never betray me again?”
“All of a sudden? All, all, all, of course I can!”
“Good.”
He shoved her as he finished speaking.
This was the moment when Letancier kicked him in the ass.
Kwazik!
Something flew diagonally across the sky and landed between her and me.
“Heh heh heh!”
Letancier’s eyes widened.
A black spear was embedded deep in the ground.
You were right where you were before.
The double-spiraled window was a deep black color, like a late-night cutout.
“What the hell is this—!”
“I can’t believe you thought to make something like this with ribs. You’re an asshole.”
I muttered with the corners of my mouth raised.
I was so happy to see it, I couldn’t help but smile.
He swiped at his face once, then turned his head away.
Not far away, in a tree, sat a Sacaman man.
“—How did you know that?”
He muttered.
He was impressive in many ways.
His eyes were red and his hair was long enough to reach his waist.
On top of his head were two horns.
“That doesn’t look good.”
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t the same guy I knew.
The black man glared at me in silence.
I opened my mouth, my eyes fixed on one broken horn.
“Orsay.”