A burning city, and people running every which way in a hellish pandemonium as they fled.
I was walking down the middle of the main road, in the opposite direction from the fleeing crowds.
As I climbed over and crossed the remains of burning wooden houses, searing flames brushed my cheek.
Yet the skin that had been burned by the fire quickly returned to its original, unblemished state, as if nothing had happened at all.
‘……It’s a dream.’
But it was no ordinary dream.
It was, in the truest sense, a terrible nightmare.
A cruel nightmare that forcibly dragged out the memories sleeping within me—memories I did not much wish to recall.
My body was certainly moving, but I could only feel its sensations; I could not move it as I wished.
The reason I was having this dream was perfectly clear.
It was probably because yesterday, in order to let Aldhelm pass on, I had forcibly drawn out Abel’s soul.
This was the deadliest price and side effect of the ability I possessed.
The power I held could truly be called immense, but I was bound by several restrictions that came with powerful side effects.
One of them was that, in proportion to the magnitude of the power I used, the moment I fell asleep I would be trapped in a nightmare and forced to endlessly replay horrific memories.
Whether it was magic, or the authority that belonged solely to me, if I used even the slightest bit, some degree of side effect was inevitable.
But if it was something that ended in the span between falling asleep and waking up, then at least outwardly, it was no different from having no side effect at all.
That was why I had always tried to use as little power as possible.
By suppressing the side effects to the “bare minimum” that took my sleeping time into account, the power I could wield amounted to, at best, barely reaching the threshold of the realm of a Transcendent.
Even that alone would probably place me among the handful of strongest beings in the world, so from that perspective it was an extraordinary level.
Up to that point, it was a structure that could be maintained so long as my mental strength allowed.
After all, if the level that took the side effects into consideration was that of a Transcendent, then in other words, using ordinary everyday magic would pass in the time it took to blink a few times.
However, on a day when I used far too vast a power, causing the side effects to swell without end……
I had no choice but to fall into a sleep from which I could not awaken for exactly that price, and endlessly repeat the nightmare.
No matter how many long years it might become.
And the cruelest thing about this nightmare was that I was not allowed to look away.
It projected and showed, with even greater clarity, the parts I tried by any means to avert my eyes from.
My body, moving through the nightmare, had at some point arrived at an alley, and before it stood a young man leading the people.
His short brown hair, standing straight upward, and his red eyes seemed to speak of his blazing temperament.
He was the ringleader of this great chaos, and at the same time……
He was also a disciple I had cherished.
“Master, why can’t you understand!!”
“…….”
I wanted to say something, but contrary to my will, my body did not utter a word.
And my body, regardless of my intent, slowly raised its hand and pointed with its index finger toward his chest.
Stop.
“If that is how you will be, then even if you are my master, I will simply overcome you and move forward……!!”
The young man drew the sword at his waist and circulated an enormous amount of mana through his body, explosively enhancing his physical abilities.
My body paid it no mind and, without the slightest movement, aimed at his heart.
Yet tears gradually gathered in my eyes, and before long one drop ran down my cheek.
Please.
Please stop……
I screamed desperately within my heart, but it did not reach my body at all, and my hand did not lower.
The young man raised his sword and kicked off the ground, rushing toward me in an instant, then swung his blade at my neck in a flash.
At the same time, a light as bright as the sun was released from my hand.
After a single moment of light……
In the alley, now silent after the people had dispersed, I was holding the young man’s body in my arms as he lay collapsed, his heart pierced through, coughing up blood.
“Master……”
“……No, I……”
The young man before me continued to say something, but my vision was obscured by flowing tears, and with emotions swelling endlessly within me, only incoherent words tumbled out.
“Master’s embrace is……. still so warm……”
Leaving those words as his last, he quietly breathed his final breath in my arms.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I……”
As if mourning his death, rain began to fall from the sky, one drop at a time.
But I simply remained there, pouring out my emotions as I continued to apologize to the child I had sent away with my own hands.
Both the me projected within the nightmare, and the real me inside it.
◇
As expected, forcibly pulling over a soul must have been quite a strain, because the nightmare lasted longer than I had thought.
Considering that there had been a suitable body to contain and maintain the soul, I had gone right up to the doorstep of resurrection, which was said to be a miracle only the Chief God could perform.
Even so, it was only one person, and only for half a day at that, so I had thought the backlash would not be too great. I had miscalculated.
Because of that, I woke up later than I had expected, and as a result, Illiana caught me in the midst of having a nightmare.
It was not good.
Because if possible, I did not want to show the children—especially Illiana—a weak side of myself.
It was not a matter of being embarrassed or anything like that.
If it had been merely that sort of problem, I would not have had to worry.
“Teacher, are you really all right……?”
“I’m really fine.”
“Really, really……?”
“I said I’m really, truly fine.”
“Really? You’re not lying, right……?”
Like this, ever since she saw me having a nightmare this morning, Illiana had been visibly anxious.
This was exactly what I had been worried about.
At a glance, it might have seemed that the emotional wounds she had received from the black mage had all healed, but clear scars still remained.
The reason she could find peace of mind and live normally was because there was an immaculate and absolute protector called me.
Her stability was only possible because she was certain that I would protect her without fail, no matter the situation.
And yet I had shown her such a sight.
It was not strange for her to grow anxious while imagining what-ifs.
I sighed inwardly.
While I was thinking that, Cassian and Illiana began fighting, as always, over something utterly trivial.
“Hey, can’t you hear Master? He’s been saying he’s fine since earlier! Why do you keep doing that?”
“……Be quiet, please.”
“What? You’re the one being louder.”
“……Hmph.”
“Why, you little……!!”
After bickering, Cassian soon raised his fist and charged at Illiana, who was hiding behind my back.
Cassian had never actually hit Illiana, so I was not worried, but still.
I quickly brought out my fist and knocked Cassian on the crown of his head with a light thump.
Around this time last year, he had still been shorter than me, but now that he had grown taller than me, even giving him a flick on the forehead had become difficult.
Having taken a hit, Cassian clutched the top of his head and looked at me as if he had been wronged.
“Damn it, why is it always only me!”
“Sorry. But you be the one to hold back.”
I felt bad for Cassian, but I needed to give her trust and ease her anxiety even in small matters like this.
Cassian himself was well aware that Illiana’s mind was unstable, so even if he did not understand it, he accepted it without complaint.
Still, I could not use that as an excuse to scold only one side all the time, so I then cautioned Illiana as well, who had been hiding behind me and secretly sticking her tongue out at Cassian.
“Illiana, you stop it too.”
“……Yes.”
Somehow, as time passed, it felt less like the two of them were getting closer and more like their fights were only increasing.
◇
The sweltering summer was now showing signs that it would soon depart.
Though it was still hot enough that, if we walked at midday, the children were liable to pour sweat.
Even though, since we had kept heading south, it should have been natural for the weather to grow hotter, I could feel the temperature dropping little by little as the days went by.
Above all, the clearest sign separating late summer from early autumn had appeared: the golden wheat fields.
Even now, if I opened the inn’s window slightly and looked outside, a golden field stretching all the way to the horizon spread out before me.
For a place with farming that good, the inn’s facilities were not particularly fine, but when I thought back to the time when I had helped Aldhelm pass on, there was no reason to be dissatisfied.
We spread a large map, showing the region from around here down to the south, across the floor of the inn room, and sat around it.
With my index finger, I pointed to a spot near the upper edge of the map—where we currently were.
“We’re here right now.”
Then I moved my finger downward, drawing the path that headed south.
My hand, passing through several cities as it advanced without hesitation, stopped around the middle of the map, leaving one mountain range below it.
At the place where my finger stopped, there was a city drawn with the name D’ardim written beneath it.
“It’ll probably be early winter by the time we arrive around here, so let’s spend this year’s winter here.”
“We’re not going farther down?”
Cassian, for whom traveling through falling snow until the dead of winter was nothing unusual, asked in return.
At that, I pointed to the vast space beyond the mountain range.
At a glance, it might have looked like an empty space with nothing drawn on it, but in the very center, these words were written.
〔Aiber Desert〕
“Even if it’s only early winter, crossing this desert would be too difficult. If I were alone, that’d be one thing, but at night, both of you would freeze to death.”
To give a sense of just how bad it was, during the period when the cold of night reached its peak, your breath would freeze inside your mouth before you could even exhale.
Conversely, in midsummer, it sometimes boasted temperatures so high that trees would spontaneously ignite on their own.
And yet this desert was nearly the only land corridor connecting the northern and southern parts of the continent.
It was not for nothing that this eastern continent was divided into north and south.
Once we crossed this desert, from there it could be called the center of the continent, and if we went a little farther south again and crossed the lower part of the central mountain range, then from that point on it would be the southern continent.
In other words, it meant we had gotten quite close to smashing the black mages’ heads in.
After adjusting our future schedule like that, when the sunset began, we had dinner on the first floor of the inn.
As we sat at a table in a suitable corner, eating stew and bread, the door of the inn burst open along with a loud voice.
“Who cares about that?”
“No, it’s not something you can just say ‘who cares’ about!”
Because they were noisy, I glanced over to check what sort of people they were.
If they were troublesome people, avoiding involvement as much as possible was the best course of action.
At that moment, for a very brief instant, my eyes trembled slightly.
A black-haired swordsman wearing light armor; a red-haired mage whose clothes were nothing special, but who held a wooden staff.
And entering with them, a brown-haired priest wearing a long white robe.
They were people I had only brushed past for about three days, but I remembered them clearly.
They were the very people I had seen early last spring, around the time I beat up the lunatic who had been poisoning the river.
At the same time, I remembered being treated like Cassian’s little sister.
“…….”
I absolutely must not get involved.