by Akira Kareno
Stories of automated world purifiers awakening, after sleeping in the depths of the abyss since the beginning of time.
The majority were the writers simply putting their fantasies to paper half for their own amusement, with very few actually attempting to reach the truth. At any rate, the world was ending. No matter what the truth happened to be, it would not change the reality that they were a threat out of control. Even if the truth was proven to be something like “A single tomato got mixed up in a potato field, couldn’t handle the loneliness, and evolved into a being beyond our understanding,” what effect would that have had on their daily lives?
But they were invaders.
And they were mass murderers.
They were irrationalities, having taken the form of seventeen different Beasts.
The Beasts began devouring the world at an alarming rate, and the emnetwiht could do nothing to fight back against this new threat.
In just a few days, two countries disappeared from the map.
At the beginning of the week, five countries, four islands, and two oceans were gone.
And by the start of the following week, there was almost no point in a map anymore.
They say it didn’t even take a year after they appeared for the emnetwiht race to perish.
Though the emnetwiht were gone, their force could not be stopped.
The elves fought to protect the great forests, and they perished.
The underground morians fought to protect the great, sacred mountains, and they perished.
The dragons fought to protect their dignity as the pinnacle of life on earth, and they perished.
Everything began to vanish from the land, like some sort of joke.
Someone finally noticed—there was no longer a future for anyone left on the surface.
If they wanted to live, they had to run far away from the surface, to a place where the Beasts’ fangs could not reach.
Since then, a long time has passed, and now—
2. The Unmarked Man
What am I? Willem thought.
The answer was simple: He was an emnetwiht, a race that shouldn’t be here, a life that shouldn’t exist.
He had a place to return to, but no way to get there—making him an eternal stray.
He repaid thirty-two thousand bradal.
There was one hundred and fifty thousand left on his debt.
The main streets were lively at this time of day when the sun was setting. The lighting crystals affixed here and there throughout town illuminated the area, night or day.
People came and went, swirling around the faint lavender smoke that hung in the air. The boggard touts shouted their promotions. An ailuranthrope shopkeeper was burning tobacco. The young orcs paraded through town, laughing boisterously.
The back streets were quiet compared to all that.
It was silent, smelled of nothing, and lacked the presence of any people—almost unbelievable considering just a single building stood between this place and all the hustle and bustle.
“Haven’t seen you in half a year, huh, Glick.”
Willem had come to a table by the back wall in a cheap cafeteria. Facing his old friend, he beamed a lifeless smile.
He kept his worn-out coat on but removed his hood, baring his lack of features to the world.
“…”
The man named Glick—fitting every stereotype of a boggard—only gave a small, discontented snort as he counted the money.
The envelope was stuffed with small bradal bills. It would take a while to count them all.
A strange atmosphere had sprung up between them.
“Umm, right. How’re Anala and the others?”
“They messed up last month, got gobbled up by Three,” Glick replied bluntly, never taking his eyes off the cash. “Gurgula died, too. Remember how Island No. 47 sunk over the summer? Got caught up in the whole collapse, and now I bet there’s nothing left but a smudge on the ground.”
“…Sorry. That was inconsiderate of me.”
The young man dropped his shoulders guiltily.
Glick cackled.
“Don’t worry about it; we’re all salvagers. When I followed my dreams and went down to the surface for the first time, I was already set to die and let die. And well, I guess you could say they lived a long life. Most salvagers die their first day down on the surface.”
He finished counting the money.
“Thirty-two thousand. Got it.”
He tapped the edges of the stack of bills on the table to align them.
“…Hey, Willem. You really okay with this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Thirty thousand in six months. You got a hundred and fifty thousand left. If all goes well, you’ll be done in two and a half years.”
“Oh yeah, that. Sorry, I won’t be making any savings if I pay any more than this.”
“I’m not asking you to pay more. You should know that already.” He stuck the envelope into an old leather bag. “This is a semifer island, and they hate people without horns or scales or beast ears—the featureless. You’ve got no features as far as anyone can tell, so there’s no way you can get good work here. And you’re just barely getting by with cheap day labor.”
“Well, that’s true…” Willem’s gaze drifted upward.
Glick narrowed his eyes. “That means this is practically all your savings from these past six months. Right?”
“I take out money for food. The jobs I’ve been taking recently don’t provide meals.”
“That’s not the problem, sheesh.” The boggard impatiently tapped his finger on the table. “Don’t you have anything else to do besides pay this debt back? It’s been a year and a half since you woke up. Haven’t you found anything you want to do or a way to have fun?”
“I guess you could say I’m just enjoying life.”
“I ain’t interested in whatever excuses you have for a boring life,” Glick said sharply. “I live for whatever I find fun. It’s a sea of treasure down there. Lost tools, material, and technology are everywhere. I love looking for it, finding it, taking it home, and turning it into money. The times I don’t find anything and go into the red—well, you could say that’s a spice of life, too. That time we made a mess and stumbled into Six’s nest, I’d never felt so alive in my entire life—so much happened.” There was a far-off look in Glick’s eyes for a moment. “We were salvagers. So, Willem, what about you? I know it suits your personality to take things slow and honestly. I don’t mind that. But haven’t you thought at all about what you’re gonna do once you’re finished paying this off?”
“…The coffee here’s kind of salty.”
His attempt to deflect was too obvious.
Glick’s face twisted into an odd expression, and Willem, unable to find the words he wanted to say next, just plastered a vague smile on his lips.
An awkward atmosphere settled between them.
The boggards were all fundamentally simple, emotional, and faithful to their instincts. There were individual differences, of course—Glick was surprisingly rational and reasonable, as well as sympathetic, which made people doubt his heritage sometimes.
Willem found that he had a hard time dealing with the boggard’s sympathetic side sometimes.
“…Hey, there’s a job I think you should take,” Glick murmured, broaching the subject. “I know someone, and well—she’s got a decent job, and she’s looking for people. It’s a long commitment where you’ll have to deal with featureless, and I hear she’s having a hard time finding candidates. You wouldn’t mind working with featureless, would you? You are one yourself, after all.”
“It shouldn’t be a big deal to you, either. You’re my good friend, after all.”
“I’m a salvager. I left my soul down on the surface. I have no plans to be tied to a job way up here.” He chuckled. “The job is, in short, looking after the Winged Guard’s secret weapons.”
“Military stuff? Secret weapons?”
Those weren’t very comforting words.
Regule Aire’s military was a public organization, equipped with enough firepower to stand against invasion attempts made by their external enemies, the Seventeen Beasts. Though they had the great benefit of being up in the sky, it did not overcome the massive disadvantage they had when facing the Seventeen Beasts, who’d once destroyed all life on the land. Consequently, they were using every method possible to secure military power, regardless of appearances—or so Willem had heard.
“You know I can’t fight anymore.”
“I realize. We’re talking about the Guard, but it’s not like you’re gonna be slicing and dicing on the front lines. There’s other behind-the-scenes kind of desk work, y’know.”
“Like what?” That explanation didn’t give him a very good idea what to expect. “Is it the kind of work where you can just follow what your employer tells you to do?”
“Probably not. But well, I’ll do something about your documents.” Glick cackled. Nothing he had said helped put Willem’s mind at ease. “Well, listen. I’ve heard that it’s the Orlandry Alliance that actually manages, maintains, and uses the weapons. According to Regule Aire law, citizens aren’t allowed to own weapons above a certain caliber—you know that already. But Orlandry is an important sponsor for the Guard, so they don’t want to offend ’em. And they know that even if the Winged Guard just collected those weapons themselves, they couldn’t decently manage or maintain any of it with their own technology and funds alone. So—”
“It belongs to the Guard in name but is actually Alliance property?”
“Exactly. Them Guards send out a manager for show, but they don’t do anything else. That manager is an empty posting for real members of the Guard. Not only do they have no authority whatsoever on site, they can’t be publicly recognized for any military honors since the weapons are kept secret. The job completely cuts them off from earning any promotions for their career. That’s how they ended up searching for someone outside the ranks.” The boggard’s amber-specked eyes were looking straight at Willem.
“Like I said before, I can take care of your position in the Guard. The manager is only a position for show, so you don’t need any special skills or qualifications. Just tight lips and endurance. Including the danger pay and hush money, the pay isn’t bad at all. Even after you repay all your debt, you’ll have plenty left over. Use it to find some kind of life for yourself. I know you have your own stuff going on, but don’t waste the life someone handed back to you. Live a real life in this world, will ya? That’s all those guys and I wish—”
Glick stopped there, then shook his head.
“Sorry. The number of familiar faces keeps dwindling, so I guess I’ve been getting more and more insecure.”
The young boggard’s face twisted into an obviously forced smile, so much so that any other race could tell.
Willem couldn’t say no to him after all that.
“I get it. Tell me a little more.”
“So you’ll take the job?”
“I’ll decide after I hear a bit more, so don’t tell me anything that will force me to accept just yet.”
“All right. First things first…” After a clear smile spread across his face, Glick dropped his gaze to the coffee in his hands and said, “…The coffee here’s kind of salty,” then grinned.
Glick was a rational and reasonable, as well as sympathetic boggard—a good guy.
Willem had a hard time dealing with that side of him sometimes.
Regule Aire was a cluster of over a hundred floating islands.
Roughly in the center was Island No. 1. The numbers started counting up from there outward in a spiral. Islands on the inside had smaller numbers, and the farther out the island, the greater its number.
There were a couple other things of note. The islands closest to the center—more specifically, those numbered up to forty—actually weren’t that far away from one another. Since most of these islands were stabilized by their close contact, there were even places fixed together with giant chains and bridges. Their closeness facilitated a great amount of trade, which directly correlated to the prosperity of the cities on those islands.
On the other hand, the islands at the periphery—numbered seventy and up—were not only incredibly far away from one another, but were themselves not very big. It was rare to see cities, much less a flourishing settlement, so these places didn’t even fall on the public commuter airship’s circle route.
The island with the facilities in question was No. 68. It was in a weird spot.
The public commuter airship didn’t go there directly.
Of course, there were plenty of ways to get there without choosing a specific one. Buying or renting an airship would provide direct access. But if cost was a concern, then that wasn’t an option. There was a community of lizardfolk on Island No. 53, the closest stop on the public airship route. There, Willem would find an airship ferryman to take him there.
His calculations of the total cost were correct. Willem arrived safely at Island No. 68.
But his calculations failed spectacularly with regard to a different metric…
When he arrived, the sun had completely set.
A strong wind howled.
“Ha-ha… Man, I messed up.”
As he stood in the port district, Willem laughed to himself.
The hem of the coat he wore over the unfamiliar military uniform flapped violently in the wind.
The ferryman he hired promptly tossed him out and immediately returned to Island No. 53. The path of retreat was already cut off.
Before him stood a sign, tattered from exposure to the strong winds.
It said downtown was two thousand marmer to the right. The Orlandry Alliance Warehouse No. 4 was five hundred marmer in the other direction. On either side were red arrows pointing in each direction.
“Is this it?”
The Orlandry Alliance Warehouse No. 4.
Wasn’t it supposed to be under the Guard’s name, even if just nominally? That’s what he thought, but there were probably many things here they weren’t too concerned about if they were going to put him in a position of responsibility despite the fact that he wasn’t a member of the Guard or anything at all.
The arrow pointed to a narrow path that led into a dark, black forest.
Of course, there weren’t any streetlamps or anything sensible like that.
Without any light to guide him, he entered the woods. It didn’t make for a very exciting story, but nonetheless, he couldn’t sit there and wait for morning. He did briefly entertain the idea of going into town and staying at an inn, but he would have to take the dark roads there anyway. And from what he could tell from the sign, it was far away.
“Oh, well.”
He looked up once to the starry sky above, then stepped into the shadows.
It was dark. But of course, he knew that already.
He couldn’t see his feet but had been aware of that from the start, too.
Thanks to the starlight that occasionally peeked in through the canopy, he managed to somehow keep to the path. But due to that, his pace was absurdly slow.
He vaguely recalled a fairy tale he had read when he was a child. It was about a boy who pushed deep into a forest on a summer night and never returned. The story went that he was abducted by faeries deep in the forest, then whisked away to their kingdom in another world.
At the time, he’d thought something like that could happen to him, so he’d vowed never to go near the woods at night. Then, his master, his daughter, and the others made fun of him for his fears. But now he could look back on it and laugh, since he was much too old to be called a boy anymore.
“No dangerous animals or anything, I hope…”
That was what he was worried about now.
Island No. 68 was reasonably large. This forest was also quite big. It was fairly impressive, even compared to similar places in Regule Aire, and could almost be said to reflect a
piece of nature that once existed on the surface, transplanted into the sky. Therefore, it wasn’t impossible that wolves and bears, vicious animals once considered threats on the surface, were skulking around.
Could he get away safely if he came across any of those the way he was now?
Willem considered. For his old self, of course it wouldn’t have been a problem. His training wasn’t so scant that he’d have struggled to survive an encounter with one or two wild animals. Now that he had been rendered powerless, though, in many senses of the word, he couldn’t be as optimistic as he’d once been.
Squish. He felt his feet dampen.
He’d been so lost in thought, he’d stepped off the path a bit. He gave a bit of a sniff and could smell the faint scent of water. Judging by the feel and the smell, there was no doubt that this was a swamp.
The smell of water, earth, and wind all mixed together. He felt a vague pang of wistfulness.
Sheesh, are we really in the sky here? As he thought that, a bitter smile no one else could see passed briefly across his face.
Then a light shone in the corner of his eye.
“Oh?”
It rapidly zigzagged as it grew bigger.
Something was coming.
“Is that my welcome party?”
Now that he thought about it, when the ferryman’s airship pulled up to the port, a message should have been automatically dispatched to the facility here. If so, then it wouldn’t be odd if an engineer or researcher or whatnot noticed it and came out to greet him.
Well, then there was really no need for him to walk all this way.
As he thought about all that, he turned to face the illumination, and—
“Yaaaaaahhhhh!”
The light leaped.
It was a battle cry, one a little too cute to be called a woman’s scream.
A wooden sword thrust out at him from the darkness with surprisingly keen swordsmanship.
Why?
He couldn’t think of any reason he would be attacked here and now.
This is bad.
