***
A magical beast originally refers to a creation of an evil god. In the era of gods when the three gods—Kunkan, Takna, and Galpa—exercised their power in the heavens, their descendants sown in the world were the targets.
However, as time passed, the meaning of magical beast changed. Because the creations of evil gods no longer served their creators or had gone extinct, the targets to refer to had greatly decreased.
Magical beast became a derogatory term for all animals that committed evil acts, even if they were not creations of an evil god. The magical beast that attacked Luman’s village was an example.
About eighty years ago, a group of magical beasts reached the Goeten Earldom.
No one knew where that race was originally born or how they had come. What was certain was that it was not the Ice Peninsula. Because Dithmarschen was blocking the peninsula. A single individual might have, but a group could not cross.
They were magical beasts with heads like pigs, walking on two legs like humans, and their height was slightly larger than a dwarf’s.
Their intelligence was lower than a giant’s, so they couldn't even use language.
However, their reproduction was faster than any other magical beast.
To the point that when their existence was first revealed, they already numbered over several hundred.
However, even so, it should not have been a big problem. Was it not an Earldom?
It was also a long time before the Osnober Kingdom was engulfed in civil war.
Could Earl Goeten not catch a mere group of magical beasts?
The problem was the crumbled vigilance.
A man who had come as a son-in-law to Dithmarschen in the north had been continuing his rule for over 200 years.
As he culled the magical beasts of the Ice Peninsula, the southern people lowered their guard significantly.
‘Surely, would magical beasts come?’
Even if they happened to cross over by chance, they would be a weak race.
The army that should have been on guard against magical beasts was consumed to obtain territory the size of a grain of millet, and the magical beasts successfully grew into an army.
Earl Goeten must have realized his stupidity the moment he faced the magical beasts in his pajamas.
It was then that Ulrih of Dithmarschen moved. Hearing the news, he led magical beast hunters and hunted the magical beasts that had become an army.
The place the magical beasts reached at the end while fleeing, after catching humans and increasing their numbers, was Luman’s village.
The boy Luman was one of the children who survived that day.
#
Summer sunlight beat down through the wide-open window of the room.
The village chief Luman was standing in front of Ulrih while supporting his gaunt body with his skeletal two legs.
Also, he was gripping Ulrih’s hand with his skeletal two hands.
Ulrih paid no heed to the old man’s actions and closed his eyes as if lost in thought. In Luman’s cloudy pupils, Ulrih was young.
He was so young that he looked younger than Luman’s grandson. However, the reality was different. He was a human older than Luman.
Someone said that he had sought out the frozen land of the north more than three hundred years ago.
Luman had no way to distinguish whether that claim was true or false. Nor did he have the intention to do so.
Only one thing was important. The single fact that the person before his eyes was the person he had met in the year Luman was nine years old, the person he had met only once then.
“I remember now.”
Ulrih spoke as he opened his eyes.
“There was a child who fled while carrying his sister on his back.”
“That is right. You remember.”
Luman drew a deep smile on his wrinkled face. Luman also remembered that day Ulrih spoke of.
Even now, eighty years later, if he tried to recall that day, it came to mind strangely vividly.
Time makes even memories one vowed not to forget become blurry and overpaints them with the name of nostalgia, yet the memory of that day was an exception.
It was an afternoon when the world was dyed red, whether due to the sunset or the flames.
Magical beasts appeared and killed the adults. The children were taken away, and the boy’s sister was injured.
After striking down one magical beast with his father’s sword, Luman fled to the plains where there was no place to hide while carrying his sister on his back.
To his sister’s words, spoken listlessly, to leave her behind, the boy answered “No” in a voice mixed with tears.
The siblings had nowhere to run.
Even the children who were alone could not flee because their steps were too slow, so how could he not catch a boy carrying his sister?
He felt his sister’s blood soaking his back, and he also felt the sound of the following magical beast’s footsteps gradually growing louder.
Eventually, as the boy collapsed, the magical beast snatched the siblings.
Ulrih arrived then, with his group.
“You, Lord Ulrih, raised me after I collapsed.”
“Your sister? Her wound must have been deep.”
“Fortunately, the priest healed her. No disability remained, and she was healthy. And she passed away twenty years ago. Because I was the youngest among the children you saved, I am still alive.”
The villagers who survived that day numbered thirteen.
Because they were all boys and girls who had not had their coming-of-age ceremonies, they could not maintain the village.
Afterward, he seated a new Lord in the vacant Goeten Earldom. She was someone from the Hilderson clan.
The Countess of Goeven helped the recovery by exempting the taxes of the damaged areas, including Luman’s village, for several years.
There is a saying that the ground hardens after rain. Luman considered his life to be like that.
He was swept away by a storm, but once the storm ceased, his life only went up.
Of course, the wounds made by the storm left scars that tormented him all his life, but he stood up.
“We sent tributes once... do you know about that?”
“I have no memory of that. You sent tributes?”
“Yes. Because we thought that was the only way we could repay you......”
Ulrih shook his head.
“You thought wrong. Did you think such things held meaning for me?”
It was as he said. After Luman and the survivors found stability, they sent several tributes to him, but no matter how many times they sent them, they returned.
They even returned with increased quantities, and seeing this, they did not dare to send them again.
“...Adnan must have done that.”
Ulrih said he was a vassal who served him at that time.
“He was a person with blue hair, wasn't he?”
“You know him. Did you meet him?”
“When we sought you out, he welcomed us.”
At that time Luman had thought that if he wouldn't accept tributes, he should express his gratitude directly.
Thus, he came to Dithmarschen with his sister, but the Lord happened to be in a deep sleep. Instead, an old knight named Adnan welcomed the Luman siblings.
Adnan had said:
“The Elder does not wish for such things. How many lives do you think he has saved? The more each of you does that, the more it only burdens him.”
And he strictly told them never to seek him out again.
“That’s right. He was that kind of child, Adnan was.”
Ulrih gave a light laugh and nodded his head.
“He always said he was serving me, but in reality, should I say he was protecting me? He had a talent for doing the actions I should do before me and making sure they didn't reach me. He was like a nanny.”
“To us, he was just a scary person.”
“I can see why you would feel that way.”
Luman gave a bitter smile.
“At that time, I thought we were just unlucky.”
“Because it must have been a time when I was asleep. The timing didn't match.”
“Yes, that is right. However... eventually, I get to see you like this.”
Luman said that fate was a truly strange thing while examining Ulrih’s appearance.
He did not just have a young appearance. He was exactly as he had appeared before the boy Luman on that day eighty years ago.
The boy had become an old man and had lived a life where it wouldn't be strange for him to face his end at any moment, yet Ulrih had not changed even a little.
As if the past had been placed intact into the present.
No suspicion arose.
Who would devise a lie to play a joke on an old man in such a remote region?
And who could remember his old appearance and play the part so perfectly?
Luman sometimes thought his life was too long.
He thought that even if each day was not painful, didn't it continue pointlessly?
But at this moment, he felt he knew the reason it had been so long.
#
Ulrih stayed in Luman’s village for only one day.
Even though there was leeway in the schedule because they had cut through the Eyesforest, he did not seem to have any intention of taking his time until they arrived in Eiselburg.
Luman subtly asked him to stay for a few more days, but he shook his head.
However, the departure time the following day was delayed until the afternoon.
It was because there were several babies in the village who had not received the Sacrament of Infancy and several people showing mild symptoms of illness.
For some reason, the priests of Goeten were not visiting Luman’s village.
No matter how incompetent and corrupt a priest might be, they cannot recklessly delay the Sacrament of Infancy.
Yet such an absurd situation was happening before her eyes.
Considering it strange, she expressed to Ulrih her wish to perform the sacraments and healing in place of the priests of Goeten.
That was the reason they left the village after noon.
“Lord Ulrih.”
As the group led their horses out of the village, Luman and the villagers came out to see them off.
The people’s gazes gathered on Ulrih. It seemed they had heard some story from Luman.
“Do you see? These are the appearances of the children you saved.”
Luman approached Ulrih and spoke.
Gunther tried to support him from the side, but Luman refused and stood personally on his skeletal two legs.
And he stretched out his arm and pointed to the villagers.
The nine-year-old boy Luman had become an adult and had six children. Those six had also become adults and each had their own children, and the twelve who survived with the boy had walked the same path.
Between them, several refugees in the same situation had been added.
As time passed and became eighty years, the number of people forming the village was now close to two hundred.
Someone might scoff. Asking if it wasn't just a small village after all.
However, seeing this small village, Roberta recalled the story of a certain human.
That when Hestio descended from the heavens and handed fire to humans, the number of humans was not greater than this.
“I have taught the children about you. I will continue to do so in the future. Even if I die soon, I will make sure my descendants remember your name and pass down what you have done......”
“No, do not do that.”
Ulrih shook his head.
“I merely caught you so you wouldn't fall from the edge of the precipice. The one who climbed up was you. I did not raise you. Because even if everything is given, if there is no will to act, it is of no use.”
“Lord Ulrih—”
“As time passes, gratitude merely turns into belief. You do not need to be bound to me. Because you proved your life yourself.”
“...Do you think my life was alright?”
“Yes, more than I hoped for.”
The boy who had become an old man smiled in silence.
Seeing that smile, Ulrih mounted his horse.
He greeted him by just slightly lowering his head and turned his back to move forward. Roberta and Fritz followed behind him.
The village was in the middle of a flat and wide field.
Even though they had moved forward for a long time, if they looked back, the sight of Luman’s people watching the three of them was still visible.
While Fritz was repeatedly glancing back to see when the people would go inside, Ulrih opened his mouth.
“Roberta, do you remember the ruins we saw in the Ice Peninsula?”
The ruins in the Ice Peninsula—she could not forget them even if she wanted to.
“The civilization before human history... you mean?”
On the fourteen days after leaving Dithmarschen to meet the dragon named Narbakayani, they had stayed in a tower to avoid the snow-wind.
On the wall of that tower, there were words carved by the people of old. Ulrih had said they were in ancient characters and meant ‘We die here.’ She had felt it was ominous, like a terminal scream left by an old civilization.
“Actually, there was more content after that.”
“Is that so?”
“It was content that even if they died, they would not be defeated.”
She stared vacantly at his back a few steps ahead.
“I like those words.”
A back shouldn't have an expression, yet she felt like she had seen a smile.
“Because it contained the meaning that although their civilization was destroyed, humans would achieve their intent.
That is because humans were not created to be defeated, they would stand up even if they faced death.”
Was this the reason he sought out Luman’s village?
He had said it was to shorten the path, but in reality, Roberta thought that perhaps he had chosen the journey to retrace his old memories.
For him, Luman’s village would have been a confirmation of the appearance of a human who had once collapsed in his memory and stood up again.
Furthermore, the future journey would also be so.
Because for a human who had gone through many names and long years like Ulrih, Laurant, and Oscar, a journey would be a path of traveling through memories.
“It’s truly... a good saying.”
Roberta drove her horse side by side to Ulrih’s left with a slight smile. Subsequently, Fritz also followed to Ulrih’s right.
The three of them crossed the horizon.
The sun was already hanging in the middle of the sky, yet they went down below the boundary where the earth and sky met.
Luman watched until the moment their backs sank.