***
‘It is exactly the same as then.’
Roberta recalled Rasid.
The old knight Rasid—it was exactly the same as when the monster he believed was his son attacked Ulrih. At that time too, Ulrih had no wounds. No, the wounds existed but disappeared. As if they had never existed in the first place.
It was a marvelous recovery. To the point that seeing it again, she wondered if she had seen an illusion. Was his endless stamina and his unknown lifespan also related to this? She narrowed her eyes.
“I am sorry. I could not save him.”
Ulrih exited the pit while carrying the body. Only the upper body remained, and it was soaked with gastric juices. He had searched through the stomach of the magical beast in the soil where he couldn't even open his eyes and pulled it out.
“...No. Rather, I should thank you.”
Duke Bailen seemed to be shaken, but he soon spoke while controlling his emotions. He spoke while turning his gaze elsewhere.
“Still, because the Duke of Dithmarschen stepped forward, Ballido survived.”
Upon receiving Bailen’s gaze, Ballido examined his own body and nodded to signify he was fine. The wound pierced by the pincer jaws had healed considerably with Roberta’s emergency treatment. If a little more time were spent, only a scar would remain soon.
“More than that... are you alright, Duke?”
“I am fine. It just hurts a little.”
Ulrih let out a short sigh.
“Do not worry about me. This much is not a problem.”
Roberta, who was treating Ballido’s injury, raised her head. Suddenly, she felt intense fatigue from his voice. But was it an illusion? He quickly regained his calmness as always.
“The problem is you all. From now on, you will encounter races more dangerous than this, yet you have too little vigilance.”
Roberta nodded while looking at the pit.
Looking back, they had too little vigilance. Was it not also because the two had walked away from the line as they pleased that they fell into the pit?
After spending several days on the snowy mountain and becoming accustomed to its ruggedness, and the fact that no one had died until now, must have given birth to ‘the complacency that it is manageable even if it is hard.’
According to the magical beast tome Ulrih wrote, the magical beasts encountered on the mountain were only a small fraction, and there were countless magical beasts more dangerous than them.
“Do not rely on me. I cannot protect you all.”
“I will keep that in mind. And... will you give me a moment?”
As Ulrih nodded, Bailen approached Roberta.
“I have spent a long time with him. If possible, I would like the priest to preside over a prayer for him.”
Roberta accepted in silence. It was her job. She folded both hands and made a ritual gesture, performing a brief ceremony for his spirit.
After the ceremony ended, Ulrih spoke.
“It is a sorry thing to say, but we cannot stay long after this. This is the Ice Peninsula, and once night comes, magical beasts will swarm. We must move to the next location before then.”
“Understood.”
They buried the body and left.
As Ulrih warned, the crisis was just beginning.
A day later, another person died. While Ulrih and Roberta were out hunting, he went out of the cave alone to relieve himself and did not return. In the morning, a part of his body was found nearby.
Three days later, they were attacked by a monstrous bird. Its height was larger than an adult’s, yet its movements were so swift that there was a dangerous moment even for her. If Ulrih hadn't tripped her and made her fall, her neck would have been pierced by its beak.
And the following day, one person was injured. Fortunately, he survived, but because he lost one leg, he could not walk. Bailen carried him on his back.
#
“Duke of Dithmarschen, is the place visible over there the right one?”
Duke Bailen asked.
When fourteen days had passed since leaving Dithmarschen, a mountain began to be visible at the end of the horizon. It was one of the nameless mountains of the Caldorekai range that divided the Ice Peninsula, and its peak was high enough to pierce the clouds.
Why had they only now seen such a high mountain? Ulrih said that it was visible from the time they descended the mountain, but because of the fog, it could not be distinguished from the sky.
“Yes, Narbakayani has settled somewhere over there.”
“You don't mean we have to go and find him, do you?”
“Do not worry. That won't happen.”
“...That’s a relief.”
She swept her chest in relief. Climbing the mountain again was terrible, and the thought of wandering to find the nest made her feel dizzy.
“Why would they live in such a place?”
“Consider that it is suitable for them to live precisely because it is such a place.”
Suitable to live? Because it is such a place?
“The environment of the Ice Peninsula is merely terrible from our human perspective, but from a dragon’s perspective, it is nothing special. Rather, it is good. If they settle in such a place, they can naturally block the invasion of upper predators, can't they?”
I see, that’s plausible, Roberta muttered.
The dragons she had encountered in literature were more powerful than any other race and were familiar with mana, were they not? The trials Roberta’s group underwent would be nothing special from a dragon’s perspective.
“Calling humans upper predators gives a peculiar feeling.”
“It is a correct statement if you see humans as a group rather than individuals.”
Roberta watched the mountain for a moment and then followed Ulrih.
As the sun began to descend from the middle of the sky, he led the group toward the next base. That place was a tower. Judging from the way the collapsed fortress walls around it formed snow-covered hills, it must have been a watchtower.
The first artificial structure she saw after entering the Ice Peninsula looked like a square single-story house because the upper part had fallen off.
Did the dwarves or elves who lived here in the distant past build it? Or did the army of Emperor Tywin, who carried out a campaign that ended in failure, build it?
While she was examining the tower from the outside, the group lit a campfire, and Ulrih took out the meat of the prey he had caught the previous day and roasted it.
Prey—to put it euphemistically—it was a magical beast. He did not bring the whole magical beast every time he caught one. He only brought a portion of the flesh, and when asked why, he only gave a silent smile.
She had no intention of grumbling about what they ate in such a place, but the unpleasantness could not be helped. She looked at Ulrih, who was cutting pieces of meat and hanging them over the campfire, and asked.
“Why would there be such magical beasts?”
“Because of the evil gods, of course.”
The answer was given by Duke Bailen, not Ulrih.
“Is it not because Kunkan, Takna, and Galpa sowed seeds wantonly in opposition to the creation of the main gods, making the whole world full of magical beasts?”
“No, I am not talking about that.”
“Then?”
“I also received education at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before receiving my priestly ordination. Therefore, I know about magical beasts and evil gods better than most priests. However... I have never seen or heard of the magical beasts here anywhere.”
It was common for every magical realm to have one or two magical beasts that could not be seen in other magical realms, but the degree of it in the Ice Peninsula was excessive. Most of the magical beasts they had encountered so far were new species that neither she nor the Pantheon knew. In the first place, that was why she had thought ‘no way’ even after seeing Ulrih’s magical beast tome.
“I suppose so.”
Ulrih nodded.
“Because the concentration of mana here is thicker than other places, and the flow is larger and more irregular. It cannot be helped that the evolution of life is accelerated.”
Mana is the element the gods shed into the world for the creation of life. Therefore, if the concentration of mana is thick and its movement is large, the influence life receives must also be large.
“In that case, why did the movement become so large and the concentration so high?”
“It is because there was an event large enough to shatter the balance.”
He took out the teacup in which he had steeped Songhwacha from the campfire.
“This land called the Ice Peninsula today was originally divided into an island and a mainland. Toward the end of the era of dwarves, when they used the island as a base and resisted, the elves pulled the island and merged it with the mainland.”
“...They pulled an island?”
She asked in a tone of it being absurd.
Glancing at the other companions, they also had the same reaction.
Ulrih scanned everyone and answered, “Yes,” and drew a map on the ground with his index finger. It was simple, but it was Osnober and the Ice Peninsula to its north.
“Look. The line I just drew through the middle is the main body of the mountains we have been climbing for several days, the Caldorekai. Everything to the west of this mountain range was an island.”
Roberta touched her lips.
The peninsula is an area similar to the entire Osnober Kingdom, and the west of the mountain range is half of the peninsula. If Ulrih’s claim was true?
It meant that the elves of the old era pulled a giant island corresponding to half of a country’s territory and crashed it into the mainland with their own strength.
“If such a feat is performed, consider how much nature will be twisted. Since what goes up must come down, would the flow of mana be the same as before?”
After saying that, he added that besides the Ice Peninsula, there were many places where the flow of mana became unbalanced for the same reason.
“A race that says they love nature caused pollution that no one else could, all to protect nature. Even if they realized their mistake and regretted it later, it was too late. Because regret is always late, no matter how early it is. Even though I opposed it so much.”
Roberta did not hear his muttering properly.
Pulling an island and crashing it into the mainland? She had nothing to say except that it was absurd. Even though she had heard all sorts of claims from the Lord, this time too, it was hard to believe as always.
“But as the Lord also knows—”
“Yes. It is a story that remains neither in literature nor in oral tradition.”
He cut off her words like a person who had read her inner thoughts.
“...Yes. I think that if the elves had truly performed such a grand achievement, there should be some mention of it somewhere. For example, in the scriptures.”
“The scriptures were not compiled to simply list historical facts. Their purpose is to arouse faith. In that case, would they write down the achievements of a race that humans once served as masters, rather than humans?”
Roberta felt several gazes. The companions, including Duke Bailen, cautiously scanned her reaction. Since he had uttered words that found fault with the scriptures in front of a priest, they must have been somewhat worried. However, Roberta only furrowed her brows slightly and did not say much.
“That is not all. The result met by this tower is also one of the reasons.”
Ulrih rose from his seat and stood near the wall. And he poured Songhwacha to melt the frost on the wall. Carved words were revealed. He pointed to them and asked Roberta.
“Can you read them?”
They were crude words. It was clear to anyone that they were not words carved by a stonemason. When Roberta narrowed her eyes and examined them, they looked like ancient characters.
After the gods left, the language and characters they had spread changed little by little according to the era. The characters carved on the wall before her eyes were also one of those that had undergone such a process.
“No... I cannot read them.”
Roberta had a memory of seeing characters similar to these, but she did not know how to read them. She merely speculated that they might be characters used in the era before the era of humans—that is, the era of dwarves and elves.
Ulrih pointed to the characters and read the meaning slowly.
“‘We, here, die.’ That is the meaning.”
They were ominous words.
“What does this mean?”
“Exactly what it says. It is like a last will.”
“Pardon? A last will?”
A last will—Roberta blinked.
The Ice Peninsula was once a battlefield between the two races, dwarves and elves, and eventually the elves won and opened their era. Perhaps these words were carved by a dwarf facing defeat?
“It is something left by a civilization before our history.”
Ulrih answered after hearing her deduction.
“The owner of the tower is neither a dwarf nor an elf. It was built by a civilization that did not belong to those two civilizations, and it is what they left at the end.”
“Neither a dwarf nor an elf...”
Roberta looked at the words again.
‘We die here.’
When she thought that it was the last will left by someone in the past nearly ten thousand years ago, she felt a peculiar feeling. Who were they, why were they here, and how did they perish?
“Consider this. Did history appear suddenly at some point? It becomes history only when it survives after repeating all sorts of failures and collapses.”
He placed his hand on the words.
“This place is a trace of a civilization that collapsed like that and did not survive.”