Death was supposed to be the end of everything.
At least, that was what he had believed.
Cold steel pierced through his body.
The roar of tens of thousands thundered in his ears, drowning the world beneath a single, deafening tide.
Pain erupted from the center of his chest and raced through every nerve, so overwhelming that even breathing had become impossible.
And yet, beneath all that agony, one sensation stood out with almost unnatural clarity.
Relief.
At last—
The plan had reached its final act.
The hatred of the entire world had been gathered onto one man.
Onto him.
And now, with his death, that hatred would finally be released.
Beyond the veil of tears clouding his vision, someone’s face trembled before him.
Small hands desperately tried to hold on to his fading body.
A voice called out to him, broken by such grief that it threatened to shatter a heart already slowing toward its final beat.
But he could not remember her name.
Before he could force out even one final word—
Darkness swallowed everything.
Then a voice spoke.
It was not human.
It did not travel through air, nor did it need to.
The voice simply existed, carrying with it an authority that seemed to reject the very concept of disobedience.
“You truly believed a mortal had the right to steal an ending from the gods?”
His dead body could no longer answer.
But his soul—
His soul stared back without lowering its head.
That silent defiance only deepened the fury within the voice.
“You deceived the world.
You twisted fate itself.
Through your own death, you created a future We never granted you.”
The darkness trembled.
“You are unworthy even of resting among the souls of that world.”
White light tore through the void.
“Then be exiled.”
“Live in a world you do not know.”
“Without a name.”
“Without a throne.”
“And without a single soul who remembers you.”
Judgment descended.
Countless memories were ripped from him at once.
Laughter.
Promises.
Battlefields.
A black mask.
And the violet eyes of a young girl more precious to him than anything else in the world.
They shattered into countless fragments of light.
He reached for them desperately.
Just her name.
If nothing else—
Let him keep that.
But when his fingers closed…
There was nothing.
Only emptiness.
Then his soul began to fall.
Far from the world he had known.
Farther still.
Until even the wrathful god who had cast him away could no longer see where he would land.
THUD!
Lelouch’s eyes snapped open to the rustling of leaves.
His first breath tore violently into his lungs.
He rolled onto his side, coughing until his chest ached, then planted one palm against the damp, cool earth to steady himself.
The scent of soil.
Moss.
Trees after rainfall.
Morning sunlight filtered through the canopy in narrow shafts, and a flock of tiny blue birds startled from the branches above him.
There was no roaring crowd.
No sword.
No blood staining his clothes.
Yet the sensation of having just died remained lodged in the center of his chest.
“Where…
am I?”
His voice came out hoarse.
Lelouch slowly surveyed his surroundings.
He was lying beneath an enormous tree in an unfamiliar forest.
He wore only a white shirt, black trousers, and leather shoes.
No luggage.
No weapon.
Not even a single coin.
His hand slipped beneath his shirt and pressed against the center of his chest.
No wound.
His heart beat normally.
But the moment he tried to remember why he had expected to find a hole left by a blade—
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
A flash of crimson crossed his vision.
Then vanished before he could make out what it was.
Lelouch dropped to one knee and breathed heavily until the pain subsided.
He remembered nothing.
He did not know where he had come from.
He did not know what he had done before waking here.
He did not know why he had been abandoned in the middle of a forest.
Only a single word remained in his mind.
“Lelouch…”
His own name escaped his dry lips.
At least—
That much felt right.
Everything that should have followed it was gone.
Lelouch closed his eyes and forced his breathing into a steady rhythm.
Panic was useless.
If his memories truly had been erased, then lamenting what he no longer possessed would accomplish nothing.
He would simply have to rebuild his understanding from the information available to him.
There were several overlapping wagon tracks in the soil to the east.
The mud inside them had not yet dried.
People had passed through recently.
Moss grew heavily along one side of the nearby trees, though the position of the morning sun provided a far more reliable sense of direction.
Which meant—
He was probably not far from a road.
And a road carrying multiple wagons would most likely lead to a settlement of reasonable size.
The deductions surfaced so naturally that he barely needed to think about them.
Lelouch stared at the tracks for a moment.
He might have no idea who he was.
But apparently—
He still knew how to think.
For the moment, that was the only good news this morning had given him.
He followed the wagon tracks for nearly half an hour.
His body proved disappointing almost immediately.
He tired far faster than expected.
Low branches made him stumble twice, and merely climbing a steep incline was enough to leave his breathing uneven.
“What an utterly useless body…”
The irritated mutter escaped before he could stop it.
Lelouch paused.
The complaint had come too naturally.
As though he had said something similar to himself countless times before.
“…Wonderful.”
Apparently, even without his memories, his body was determined to remind him of its shortcomings.
Eventually, the trees opened onto a broad dirt road.
Three merchant wagons had stopped nearby while their owners rested the horses.
Every merchant turned at once when a filthy young man emerged from the forest.
A large, mustached man guarding the first wagon immediately gripped the axe at his waist.
“Stop right there!
Who are you?”
Lelouch obeyed.
In a single glance, he counted the people.
Their weapons.
The position of the wagons.
The distance back to the forest.
Three horses.
Several armed adults.
If these people were bandits, running would be meaningless.
With his current physical condition, he doubted he could outrun a particularly determined goat, much less mounted pursuers.
The optimal course was obvious.
Convince them that he was not a threat.
“My name is…
Lelouch.”
He raised both hands where everyone could see them.
“I woke up in the forest without any belongings, and I have no memory of what happened before that.
I’m looking for the nearest settlement.”
“Amnesia?”
A middle-aged woman sitting on the second wagon examined him from head to toe.
Her gaze paused on his hands.
“No calluses.
And that skin doesn’t belong to someone accustomed to traveling.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“With a face like that, maybe you’re some nobleman’s son who got kidnapped for ransom.”
“Or bait planted by bandits,” the mustached man countered.
The woman snorted.
“If the bandits picked bait that gets winded after walking through the forest for half an hour, they should seriously reconsider their profession.”
Lelouch froze.
The other merchants burst out laughing.
The woman laughed with them, then tossed him a waterskin.
“Get on.
We’re headed for Orario.
If you’re lying, Borg can throw you off the wagon himself.”
“Gladly.”
The mustached man—apparently Borg—patted the handle of his axe.
Lelouch caught the waterskin.
He inclined his head with effortless courtesy.
“I’ll remember your kindness.”
The woman stared at him.
Then laughed again.
“You really do talk like a noble.”
Orario appeared on the horizon several hours later.
Enormous walls surrounded the entire city.
At its center stood a colossal white tower, rising so high that it seemed to pierce the heavens themselves.
Carriages, travelers, merchants, and people of countless races flowed constantly through the gates.
Lelouch saw elves with pointed ears.
Beastmen with tails swaying behind them.
Dwarves carrying hammers several times larger than their own bodies.
Some instinct told him that such sights ought to be extraordinary.
Unfortunately, his memories were too empty to provide any useful definition of what an ordinary world was supposed to look like.
“That’s the Tower of Babel,” the merchant woman explained when she noticed where he was looking.
“The entrance to the Dungeon is underneath it.
That’s why adventurers from all over the world gather here.”
“The Dungeon?”
“An underground labyrinth that produces monsters without end.
Magic stones, rare materials, money, fame—everything a greedy fool could want is down there.”
Borg scoffed from behind them.
“Along with graves for idiots who don’t know their limits.”
While waiting in line to enter the city, Lelouch learned more about the world he had fallen into.
The gods had descended from Heaven to live among mortals.
Those who received a god’s blessing gained something called Falna and gathered beneath that deity as a Familia.
Each Familia served a different purpose.
Dungeon exploration.
Commerce.
Medicine.
Craftsmanship.
And countless other professions.
The Guild, despite its name, was not an adventurers’ association.
It was the central administrative organization responsible for managing both Orario and the Dungeon.
Lelouch quietly organized the information.
In other words—
Military strength, economic influence, and religious authority were all concentrated around individual rulers.
The only meaningful difference was that those rulers were literal gods.
For reasons he could not explain, something deep inside him recoiled at the idea.
A cold, instinctive disgust.
As though he had already witnessed what happened when overwhelming authority belonged to those who regarded human lives as nothing more than pieces on a board.
“If I wanted to join a Familia,” Lelouch asked, “where would you recommend I begin?”
Conversation around the wagon stopped.
Borg slowly looked him over from head to toe.
Then pointed at Lelouch’s almost nonexistent upper-arm muscles.
“With a body like that?”
“Falna increases a person’s physical capabilities, doesn’t it?”
“Sure,” the merchant woman replied.
“But it doesn’t turn someone who just crawled out of a forest into a hero overnight.”
Her expression became more serious.
“And the city’s a mess right now.
Evilus causes trouble constantly.
Good Familias are terrified of infiltrators, while the ones that accept strangers too easily usually plan to use new recruits as shields in the Dungeon.”
“Some adventurers are worse than the bandits outside the walls,” Borg added.
“They have blessings, weapons, and the confidence that comes from knowing exactly who can’t fight back.”
He spat to the side.
“Even if the Dungeon doesn’t kill you, your own companions might leave you behind for the monsters.”
Lelouch listened without interrupting.
He did not abandon the idea.
He merely recalculated.
No money.
No shelter.
No identity.
Almost no knowledge of the world.
Joining an established organization remained the fastest method of building a foundation from which he could recover.
That conclusion had not changed.
Only one variable had.
He would have to choose the organization carefully.
Entrusting his life to the first group willing to accept him would be idiotic.
….
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….
I also have many more novels in my collection that you might be interested in I upload ten novels a day, with 3 to 4 chapters per title depending on the length.
If you’re following a particular series, please wait your turn a little If there’s a particular novel you’re enjoying on Patron, please give it a ‘like’ so I know to focus on it