Chapter 95: Resurrection of the Dead (2)
‘Why am I here? Where is this place?’
Zeraphe Gnaude was currently in a strange space.
‘Could this be the afterlife advocated by the Church of Light? Hmm, I didn't believe in religion.’
His last memory was the Manticore’s widely opened maw, its abyss approaching.
Followed by his entire body being crunched by sharp, sawtooth-like teeth, and horrific agony─
‘...It’s better to stop thinking about it.’
It was too horrific a sensation to revisit.
Anyway, the human named Zeraphe Gnaude must have shattered into mere pieces of flesh.
Or perhaps entered that enormous stomach, mixed with tingling gastric juices, and melted away without a single piece of flesh remaining.
But how was he existing intact in such a strange space?
‘No. Am I even ‘existing’?’
He was clearly dead, but for some reason, Zeraphe could continue thinking and reasoning.
As if consciousness had been separated and cut out from the body.
‘...How much time has passed?’
It felt like a very long time had passed, yet also like he was eternally adrift in a fleeting moment.
This place, where no thought was necessary, consequently felt no pain.
However, one fact became increasingly clear.
That he, ‘Zeraphe Gnaude’, had failed.
‘Hahaha! To think I'd be used as a discardable piece like this.’
Zeraphe gave a bitter smile.
‘Should I not have trusted him after all...’
Zeraphe Gnaude. He was brothers with the leader of Depicio, the Mountain Elder.
Born from the same mother's womb, the only two full brothers.
-My dear younger brother. Try trusting me. After all, aren't we blood brothers?
Zeraphe closed his eyes. Not knowing if he even had a body, he didn't know if the organs called eyes had closed or opened their lids according to his will...
His memory slowly began to turn towards the distant past.
It was decades ago from now.
“Zeraphe! Hurry up~! Let’s go play by the river today!”
“Ah! Wait up, brother!”
In their childhood, the brothers were no different from any other siblings.
They played together joyfully, sometimes fought over trivial things, and then quickly made up as if they had never fought.
“Our Gnaude tribe can purify polluted nature and return it to its original state.”
The brothers were born with inherently powerful mana and received the most special treatment within the tribe.
To the extent that tribal elders and exceptionally talented individuals personally guided and taught them.
“All things in this world eventually return to nature... We Gnaude can truly be called agents of nature.”
The teacher assigned to the brothers by the Gnaude tribe placed his tree root into the polluted lakeside.
Paaaaaaat!
As the tree root pulsed and absorbed the toxins mixed in the water, the lakeside was purified as if it had never been dirty, becoming clear and serene.
“Wow! The dirty lake became clean in an instant...! Cool!”
“Teacher, amazing! I want to try too!”
“Hahaha! You two will surely be able to do it soon.”
Zeraphe loved his tribe, his family, his brother with all his heart.
‘Someday, I want to grow up wonderfully and contribute to our beloved tribe together with my brother.’
That was young Zeraphe's dream and wish.
Then one day, Zeraphe met someone who would completely overturn his smooth life.
Like an inevitable coincidence, or a trick of fate.
“...Young Master, Young Master Zeraphe. You must absolutely not enter that forest, nor even approach near it.”
The adults of the Gnaude tribe, including his teacher, always emphasized this with stern expressions.
“That forest is cursed. A fearsome monster lives there...! It is dangerous for you two, young and frail. Please promise me.”
“Yes, I understand! I won't go in. I promise.”
“...”
His brother answered immediately that he understood. But Zeraphe didn't answer until the end.
He was puzzled.
“It looks like an ordinary forest to anyone... Why tell me not to go in?”
Zeraphe, born with strong curiosity, secretly entered the ‘cursed forest’ that his brother and tribe members considered taboo.
Because secrets always hold a subtle, alluring power.
But inside the forest he reached, unlike the adults' words, there was neither a curse nor a monster.
“Wh-Who are you?”
There was a person there. A girl with long, light green hair.
Like dew settled at dawn, faintly transparent.
“I-I’m... called Prie.”
The girl was trapped. Inside a small, single-section shrine where her outstretched legs could touch the end.
Zeraphe spoke a lot with Prie through the tightly spaced iron bars.
“Who are you? Why are you here alone?”
“...”
“Should I help you get out? With magic ”
“...”
“Hey. Can't you talk? No. You answered at first. That's too much~ Someone keeps talking to you, and you don't answer. If you keep doing that, even someone like me gets hurt.”
“...! W-Were you hurt? Because of me?”
At first, she hadn't intended to give any answer, but as Zeraphe persistently visited and spoke to her, she gave a cautious reply.
“What. So you can talk after all.”
She was of the same tribe as him.
“Are you also from the Gnaude tribe? Same as me! Then let’s go together.”
“...I can't, Young Master. I cannot leave this shrine. This is the fate... I must endure.”
Prie said with a faint smile.
“Please hurry back. Your family must be looking for you. And please don't come looking for me again.”
“...”
“I was truly happy that you visited all this time. I mean it.”
But Zeraphe had a contrarian streak since childhood.
It wasn't for nothing that he committed the crazy act of trying to release the ancient monster. The signs were there from the beginning.
“I don't want to. Why should I? I'll keep coming to see you.”
Day after day, he secretly slipped out of his house and went to meet Prie.
Prie always seemed troubled, but she didn't seem to dislike Zeraphe.
As time gradually piled up softly between the two, their feelings grew along with it.
“...I want to see her soon.”
Today too, wanting to hold her hand through the iron bars, Zeraphe left earlier than his usual time.
That was the starting point of the tragedy.
“What... is that!?”
Eventually, Zeraphe witnessed it.
The giant tree trunk surrounding Prie's shrine taking ‘something’ from Prie's body.
And in an instant, the sight of Prie completely drying up and turning into a tree...!
“Prie! Prie-!”
“...Young Master Zeraphe? Why are you here?”
The one stopping Zeraphe, who was running over in horror, was the teacher who taught the brothers.
“I certainly told you not to come. Why have you come? Young Master...”
“More importantly, why, why did Prie become like that? Is that tree Prie? Teacher, please tell me...!”
There was no time to wonder at his deeply regretful appearance. Zeraphe desperately grabbed him and asked.
“Do you truly wish to hear the truth? Once you know, you can no longer return to how things were before.”
But Zeraphe was young and brave. There was no hesitation in his answering voice.
“I want to know!”
He didn't know.
“...Is that the truth?”
That sometimes, the truth is relentlessly cruel.
The secret the tribe kept tightly hidden carried more weight than that.
“The history of our Gnaude tribe is exceedingly long and ancient. Perhaps it stretches back even before the empty spaces in history.”
He said.
“We... have always been the weak throughout that long history. Always, in every era, by the strong... we ended up being ‘eaten’.”
The unique characteristic of the Gnaude tribe.
‘Sacrifice Devouring.’
It wasn't such a convenient ability to gain power by devouring what was offered as a sacrifice.
‘Being eaten as a sacrifice.’
The sacrifice being offered was precisely the Gnaude tribe. That was the essence of the Gnaude tribe.
Those words calling themselves agents of nature were purely their wish!
“There was only one era when we shone brightly. The time when the Beastkin King ruled. When beastkin placed all humans beneath their feet.”
Suddenly, sparks flew in his eyes.
It gave the strange impression of completely burnt ashes reigniting.
“To avoid repeating the fate of being ‘eaten’ again, we must bring about the second coming of the Beastkin King.”
In other words, it meant they were voluntarily sacrificing the lives of their own tribe members to resurrect the Beastkin King.
“Uweeeeeeek!”
It was disgusting...!
On the day Zeraphe learned the truth about the Gnaude tribe, his brother also heard the truth.
“...I see. I understand. That it cannot be helped.”
And unlike his brother, who accepted the tribe's fate as his life's mission, Zeraphe couldn't bring himself to do so.
In the darkest night, Zeraphe stole Prie, who had turned into an old tree, and fled.
Thus... the fates of the brothers diverged.
Zeraphe, running around everywhere to revive Prie, whose body was gradually drying up as the ‘Sacrifice Devouring’ progressed.
His brother, who became the leader of Depicio, the first ever from a different race—not the assassination Umbra Clan—and inherited the title of ‘Mountain Elder’.
‘To restore Prie, who had completely become a tree, I went to find my brother as a last resort.’
When he earnestly pleaded and begged, his brother, as if helpless, told him the method.
That if he brought the ancient monster, Manticore, sealed in the Mediale underground labyrinth, he could save her.
‘But in the end...’
Now, Zeraphe couldn't distinguish his own feelings.
Whether he was angry and resentful for being betrayed by his brother, or sad and sorry for failing to save the woman he loved.
‘I cannot tell.’
In reality, everything seemed clear, but in this strange space, everything was unclear.
Like his ideal, which always seemed within reach but never graspable.
─It was then!
“Zera...”
He heard a voice like a breath, as if someone were whispering right next to his ear.
“...phe, Gna...”
He heard it again!
For a moment, he wondered if it was an auditory hallucination, but his instincts as a mage told him someone seemed to be calling him.
Then the question arose here. Who could be calling him?
His brother, who had thoroughly used and cleanly discarded his younger sibling?
His lover, who had already become a tree, hidden in a secret place unknown to anyone?
Unfortunately, Zeraphe had no properly formed bonds other than these two people.
Although he prided himself on not having a harsh disposition, the life he had lived so far had been too rough to live smoothly.
“Ze... phe! Gna... ude!”
However, the voice calling him grew progressively louder and clearer.
“Zeraphe Gnaude!”
For an instant, that voice sounded as loud as thunder.
Brilliant light shone down.
Before Zeraphe's eyes, after reflexively closing them at the sudden luminescence and then opening them again, was...
“Welcome to being reborn! Is this your first resurrection?”
There was a boy with dazzling blond hair.
“...Ah?”
Reborn? Resurrection? What?
Zeraphe was dumbfounded. He couldn't grasp the unfolding situation at all.
But without a shred of consideration for him, the boy consecutively threw out shocking statements.
“You must be very bewildered, but meanwhile, there’s someone I’d like to introduce.”
He pointed to the gray-haired man standing blankly beside him, looking exceedingly inadequate and foolish, and exclaimed brightly.
“Now, let me introduce you. This person is the father of the newly reborn Mr. Zeraphe!”
“...Ha? What does that mean...!!”
“...Me? Why? No, how come-?!”
The shocked voices of the two formed a duet, spreading far and beautifully.