Arifureta Zero: Volume 1

by Ryo Shirakome

  These are the most troublesome friends I’ve ever made. However, he’d already heard Miledi and Oscar’s tales. He’d known from the start that they wouldn’t be shaken so easily. He understood now why a flat refusal hadn’t been enough. Unless he gave them a reason for his refusal they wouldn’t back down. No, they couldn’t back down. Realizing it was his own fault for dragging things on this long, Naiz smiled bitterly to himself and made his decision. He would tell them of his sin.

  “Do you know of a village called Gruen?” Miledi and Oscar shook their heads simultaneously. Naiz took a deep breath before continuing.

  “It’s the village I was born in... and the village I destroyed.” Oscar and Miledi gulped.

  Eyes downcast, Naiz began his tale.

  “My full name is Naiz Gruen Caliente.”

  “Caliente’s the region furthest to the north, isn’t it?”

  Naiz nodded.

  “Gruen was the village closest to the region’s capital. My father was a soldier in the fiefdom’s army. I always looked up to him, and wanted to be a soldier just like him. Me, my best friend Yogun, and my little brother Est would always practice swordplay together. My mother was the kindest person I’d ever known. Not only that, she was also a talented mage. Thinking back on it now, I realize I was truly blessed.” He’d had a loving family, and friends who shared the same dreams. Not only that, he’d been a rather talented young boy. That certainly was what one called blessed.

  Oscar glanced over at Miledi. Though she’d been born into a wealthy household, her family hadn’t shown her an ounce of love. Miledi noticed his gaze and looked over. She guessed what he was thinking from his expression, but she didn’t seem the least bit depressed about her situation. In fact, she flashed Oscar a warm smile.

  Seeing as he didn’t have to worry about his partner, Oscar adjusted his glasses and returned his gaze to Naiz.

  “My dad was usually away for work, but he’d come back for a few days every month to spend time with us. Mom always told us not to bother him because he was tired, but Yogun and I would always beg him to train us. My dad was the strongest warrior in the village, and I was always eager to show him how much I’d grown.” Naiz spoke wistfully about the past. He’d obviously been very fond of his friends and family.

  “Yogun had a saying, ‘No true hero meets their end in a backwater village.’ He wanted to fight for important people in important places and rise up in the world. His ambitions were always greater than mine, always looking toward to the future. And even though he was a talented fighter himself, he was always jealous of my skills.” Unlike Naiz, who’d only wanted to be a soldier like his father, Yogun had been dreaming big. And Naiz had envied that part of him.

  Naiz smiled briefly, reminiscing. But before long, his dark expression returned. Oscar couldn’t tell if it was anger or regret that clouded Naiz’s face.

  “I never realized just how deep that jealousy ran. Even though I was always with him, I never noticed what he was really thinking.”

  On a day like any other, Naiz’s father, Solda, had returned home and started sparring with Yogun. The hour had grown late, and Solda was planning on returning home when a bunch of the villagers ran up to him. Their faces were pale, and they were screaming about a monster attack.

  The village had its own guards, of course. Most of the threats that showed up were dealt with by said guards. The reason they’d come to Solda this time was because the monster had been too powerful for the village guards to handle.

  Solda knew his duty, and he immediately agreed to go help. The monster that had shown up was too powerful for the guards, but a professional soldier like Solda should have had no trouble beating it.

  “Yogun and I begged my dad to let us go with him. We were already 15 by then. In one year we would have been eligible to join the army. My dad thought it would make good training for us, so he agreed.” The two of them had happily followed Solda to the village gates... and that was where everything went wrong.

  “There were actually more monsters than the villagers had mentioned in their report. We’d just finished dealing with the ones the villagers had told us about, so we’d let our guard down, which was why neither me nor Yogun noticed them burrowing behind us.” By the time they’d heard Solda’s warning, they were nearly in the monster’s jaws.

  There wasn’t even enough time to cast a barrier. Even if there had been, both Yogun and Naiz were too terrified to move. However, the crisis had awoken a slumbering power inside Naiz, and he moved entirely on instinct.

  “That was the first time you used spatial magic, right?” Naiz nodded silently.

  “Yogun, my dad, and even I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I’d shredded the monster in front of everyone’s eyes. I’d unconsciously opened a rift in space where the monster was. No incantations, no magic circle.”

  “When your dad and Yogun found out you could use magic from the age of the gods, what did...”

  It was obvious the awakening of his powers had been directly linked to the destruction of Naiz’s village. Miledi scrunched up her face. Oscar took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself.

  “My dad made me and Yogun promise to keep what I’d done a secret. Though the people of the desert are believers of Ehit now, we used to worship nature. Everyone pays lip service to the Holy Church here too, of course, but most people aren’t as devout. There are many people who still follow the old ways in secret.”

  “And your dad was one of them, wasn’t he? That was why he wanted to keep your powers a secret. Your father really loved you, but then...” Oscar furrowed his brows. He could guess what must have happened next. Naiz’s secret had gotten out. And since it was clear Solda loved his son, that only left... Naiz simply continued his tale.

  “The next year, me and Yogun joined the army. At first we worked together, aiming to rise up the ranks... but then things changed. Yogun started to act odd, and he often looked at me with barely concealed contempt. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice...” With the awakening of his powers, an unbridgeable gap had been created between Naiz’s abilities and Yogun’s. Furthermore, Naiz discovered he had an aptitude for all kinds of magic. In order to keep his powers a secret he used fake magic circles and incantations, but he continued honing his ability to manipulate mana directly. Naturally, his skill with spatial magic grew along with that of the other elements.

  Yogun burned with jealousy. There was no logic behind it, but he grew to resent Naiz. And so, in the end, he broke his word and spilled Naiz’s secret.

  He told his lord that he knew someone who could use ancient magic. He’d gone to his lord and not the Holy Church, because he’d known that the Holy Church wouldn’t have given him a reward for the information. They would have said serving Ehit was reward enough.

  However, the results of his betrayal were disastrous. Yogun hadn’t realized how far someone in power would be willing to go to get their hands on an ancient magic wielder.

  The lord of Caliente, Bolemos, decided to adopt Naiz as his own son, and then step aside to make him the new lord. He wanted his region, Caliente, to be the predominant member of the Sharod alliance, and making an ancient magic wielder the lord of the region was the best way to achieve that dream.

  “So then, Bolemos would have found your original family... a hindrance.”

  “That’s right. There was a big rainstorm that day. My dad barged into my house, told me to take my brother and mother, and run. Bolemos had sent people to arrest my entire family. In order to let the rest of us escape, my dad...”

  Naiz would never forget that stormy day. The sight of his father, yelling at him to save Est and his mother, while facing down the soldiers that had been sent to kill him, had been burned into his skull.

  Warriors of the desert were taught to never show their tears, but Naiz cried that night. He wept, cursed his own helplessness, and left his father to die.

  He would never forget what happened right after either. Another unit of soldiers
ambushed him as he left his house. He was too distraught to fight back, and was nearly captured. But then, someone came to save him.

  “It was Yogun. Yogun came to save me. He was the one who had told my father Bolemos’ plan. In the fight that followed, he was mortally injured. With his dying breath, he told me everything.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, Naiz. I-I’ve done something terrible. Please forgive me.” He died begging for Naiz’s forgiveness, but Naiz wasn’t able to say “I forgive you.”

  Even now, he wasn’t sure how he felt about Yogun.

  Naiz hated Yogun for destroying his family, but he also couldn’t deny that he shared some of the blame. He’d spent the most time with Yogun, and yet he hadn’t been able to see how his strength was eating away at his best friend. No, he’d pretended not to see it. When he thought about things that way, he couldn’t say with certainty that he should hate Yogun.

  “I ran all the way back to my village. I couldn’t teleport as freely as I can now. If I could have, maybe things wouldn’t have ended up the way they did.” When he’d arrived at his village, he knew he was too late. His mother and brother were dead. Hundreds of Bolemos’ soldiers had stormed the village, with Bolemos at their head. The corpses of Naiz’s brother and mother were at the center of the town. They were surrounded by the other villagers.

  “He killed them? He didn’t try to take them hostage for leverage?” That would have been the smart decision. The only way to keep control of someone as powerful as Naiz would have been to take hostages to keep him pacified.

  “According to Yogun, Bolemos had been planning on killing them all along and just saying he had them hostage. He’d told the other villagers that my mother and brother had been condemned as heretics and ordered them brought out. That was why Bolemos had gone in person. His words were backed by authority. If he was there, the villagers couldn’t disobey.” Bolemos had wanted to remove any trace that his soon-to-be adopted son had ever had a real family.

  That was why he’d planned to capture Naiz, kill his father, and condemn his mother and brother as heretics. That way, there would be no one to question his story. Anyone who knew the truth wouldn’t speak out in fear of being silenced by Bolemos’ assassins.

  Oscar and Miledi looked at each other again. There was one part of Naiz’s tale that didn’t make sense: Naiz had said that Bolemos had ordered the villagers to bring Naiz’s family to him.

  Bolemos had needed Naiz to believe his family was still alive to hold any power over him, so he would never have killed them with witnesses around.

  It would have made more sense to take them away and then quietly dispose of them later. That way, even if Naiz found a way to question the villagers, they wouldn’t know whether his family was alive or dead either.

  Chances were, the people who really killed Naiz’s family were the villagers themselves. They’d done it to save their own skins. Having been told that Naiz’s family were heretics, they would have wanted to show that they had nothing to do with his mother or brother. That the rest of the village was pure. And so, they’d killed Naiz’s family to prove their loyalty.

  After all, Bolemos had brought hundreds of soldiers with him just to capture two people. The villagers weren’t fools. They knew the soldiers had come to destroy their village.

  Bolemos had claimed Naiz’s family were heretics, but he hadn’t even brought a single priest to confirm that.

  It was obviously suspicious. The villagers knew their lives were forfeit once they gave up Naiz’s mother and brother.

  So, like how a drowning man tries to drag others down with him, they’d killed Naiz’s family. At least that way, Bolemos couldn’t claim that they had been harboring heretics.

  Of course, Naiz must have noticed that too, which was why—

  “When I came to, there was nothing around me. I was holding my family’s corpses in the empty desert. Bolemos, the villagers, and even the village itself had vanished.” Naiz remembered how the villagers had looked at him near the end. They’d all worn the guilty expressions of men and women who knew they’d done something wrong, but had felt they’d had no choice. He remembered how Bolemos had just looked annoyed that his plan had been ruined. He remembered the soldiers looking warily at him, scared of what he might do. But more than anything, he remembered the rage he felt.

  What did my family ever do to deserve this!? You want power that badly!? Fine, I’ll let you taste it, then!

  He’d let his anger fuel him, and cast the most powerful spell he was capable of. He’d utterly destroyed a section of space. In other words, he quite literally wiped Gruen off the map, along with the villagers and Bolemos.

  As Naiz finished his story, Miledi and Oscar let out breaths they hadn’t even known they were holding.

  He looked up at them for the first time since starting his tale.

  “Even if Bolemos was guilty, I’m sure many of the soldiers following him were just doing their duty. They might have been good people, with families to return home to. I’m still not sure whether I hate the villagers for what they did or not, but that still wasn’t a good reason to kill them all. What I did was horrible.”

  So that’s why he said he’s helping people to atone. And because he’s doing it to atone, it’s not something he wants to be praised or thanked for.

  A monster like Naiz didn’t deserve to be loved. That was what he believed, at least. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he was surrounded by people thanking him.

  “This is the last time I’ll say this.” Miledi gulped. Oscar furrowed his brow.

  “I won’t join you guys. I swore to never again use my powers to fight, even if that means my death.” Naiz had decided to only ever use them to run or protect.

  He would never fight again, so he couldn’t help Miledi achieve her dream. His refusal this time was absolute.

  “But, Nacchan—”

  “Please let this be the end. Don’t come see me ever again. If you do, I’ll leave. If I keep running, you’ll have a hard time chasing after me and continuing your own journey at the same time.”

  He’s right. Even if I can track him there’s no way we can keep up with the speed of his teleportation. The only reason they’d been able to chase him thus far was because he never strayed out of the desert.

  If he really tried to run, they’d never be able to chase him down. Unless they restrained him somehow, anyway. If they did that though, they’d be no different from Bolemos.

  Naiz waved a hand and a gate appeared behind the pair.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miledi Reisen, Oscar Orcus. I doubt we’ll see each other again, but I wish you luck in your travels.” Miledi opened her mouth to say something, but no words came to her.

  “Let’s go, Miledi.”

  “O-kun...”

  Oscar put a hand on her shoulder. Miledi sighed and stood up. And then, the two of them walked over to the gate.

  Miledi hung her head for a moment, then turned back to Naiz, a sad expression on her face.

  “Nacchan... No, Naiz Gruen. Is this really what you want?” What saddened her wasn’t that Naiz refused her. Rather, it was the path he’d chosen.

  “It is.”

  “I see...” Miledi gave him a small smile and walked through the gate. Oscar didn’t turn around, but he had some parting words for Naiz too.

  “Someday, when our journey is finally over...”

  “What?”

  “Can we come visit you again, as just friends?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Satisfied, Oscar nodded and stepped through the gate.

  Naiz stared at the empty space where his friends had sat.

  “What happened to ‘I doubt we’ll ever see each other again?’” His tone was full of self-derision.

  Chapter IV: The Liberators and God’s Apostles

  Miledi plodded forward, away from the Red Dragon’s Mountain. Oscar walked silently beside her, his umbrella shading them from the su
n.

  Miledi didn’t have the energy to summon a breeze or her ice block, so the umbrella was all that staved off the heat. However, ice lined the edges of the umbrella, and a slight breeze wafted from its canopy.

  Oscar looked over at Miledi. She was clearly depressed.

  This must be how she felt when I refused her too. Even now, Oscar didn’t think he had been wrong to refuse her back then. However, that didn’t make him feel any less guilty. It hurt to imagine Miledi wandering Velnika’s streets looking so depressed.

  When she was happy she was a handful, and when she was sad she was still a handful. Oscar breathed a small sigh.

  “Are you depressed because he didn’t join us? Or because of how sad his story was?”

  “Both.”

  “You can’t accept the choice he made, can you?”

  “I can’t.”

  “But he’s the one who made that choice.”

  “I know. That’s why I won’t try and convince him anymore.” She didn’t sound the least bit happy about it, though. Miledi puffed out her cheeks and pouted.

  Naiz had given them a reason now, so they had no choice but to respect his decision. Pushing any harder would have been the same as forcing their will on him. And Miledi knew that

  Still, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Her feelings showed plain on her face as they walked back.

  Naiz’s berserk rampage had caused irreparable damage. Like he’d said himself, he’d killed all of the villagers, and hundreds of soldiers. Most of them likely had families to return to, and had only been doing their duty.

  However, he was also a teenager who’d just seen his family killed before his eyes. Even a fully mature adult would have been hard-pressed to act rationally in that situation.

  Despite that, Naiz still blamed himself. And he would spend the rest of his life atoning for it, forever alone in the cave he called a home. Oscar knew even if they tried to go back he’d just run away and start helping people somewhere else.

  Isn’t that just too sad?

  “Haaah...” Miledi let out a heavy sigh. She looked utterly wretched.