Black Badger

I ran the experiments several times.

But it seemed Cecil was right after all. To cast magic on me required nearly twice the amount of mana than what would be considered the normal expenditure. Everything—from lifting me into the air to changing my hair color.

‘But we’re in different dimensions?’

I muttered in disbelief.

‘Is the transfer really that powerful? Kyle isn’t even in this world, is he?’

‘Seems so.’

Cecil murmured as she restored my hair, which she’d dyed black, back to white.

‘I didn’t know either. I didn’t think the connection would be this strong....’

Research into the children of the World Tree continued steadily until the Empire fell.

Under the supervision of the temples and the mage towers. I had never taken interest in that research. Every time I encountered studies about the World Tree’s children, the image of that nauseating village resurfaced in my mind.

But it didn’t seem Cecil knew much either.

After sinking deep into thought, she spoke again.

‘If I’ve healed you this much, then a healing spell must have reached Kyle as well.’

Ah.

‘It’s strange enough that spells cast on you still affect him even though no transfer is happening right now, but....’

Right. That was strange too.

Not that we could run experiments with this.

‘Either way, he’s alive.’

The archmage concluded.

‘I can’t say what condition he’s in—but Kyle is alive.’

Those words flew straight into my chest and lodged there.

All kinds of emotions boiled up inside me. I’d existed like a statue for a long time, but the moment I heard Cecil’s words, emotions surged in so violently I wanted to label them as just that—violent.

I didn’t try to identify each emotion.

Instead, I grasped the situation.

‘But I’m here.’

I muttered blankly, looking at the mage.

‘And Kyle’s the only one left over there?’

Was it possible to feel both profound relief at news of someone’s survival—and terror so intense it felt insane?

My body trembled at what the mage had brought me.

I had to go back.

And I thought of those who remained.

I had to return to my subordinates.

***

I stopped playing statue.

Instead, I searched for an exit.

‘That bizarre life-form—has it not been coming around lately?’

‘It hasn’t shown up since you arrived.’

Cecil answered hesitantly.

‘It comes and goes as it pleases.... I don’t even know how it gets here. I’m sorry—I’m not much help.’

‘No.’

I tore through the ruins.

If there was a way in, then there had to be a way out.

I clung to hope in the claim that this place was easier to access than other dimensions. I didn’t know what the entrance looked like, or if it truly existed—but I intended to do whatever I could.

I overturned the ruins, searching for anything unusual.

Thanks to Cecil, I could move my limbs now.

The place had no visible end, but time was the only thing I had left.

If I had my sword, I could have swept the area clean in one go, but....

‘You’re not fully healed yet.’

Cecil trailed after me as I lifted chunks of concrete and twisted rebar.

‘You don’t have to rush... Digging through the ground like that doesn’t mean anything will appear. I told you—the only things that shine are fragments of other people’s memories....’

‘But didn’t it say there was an exit?’

I continued rummaging through the ruins without looking at her.

I had no intention of missing even the slightest anomaly. This place was monochrome—anything that shone stood out immediately. As Cecil said, everything that had glimmered so far had been someone else’s memories.

Still, if there was even a chance, I checked without hesitation.

Every time I grabbed something that shone, Cecil flinched—but after dozens of repetitions, she gave up trying to stop me.

She kept healing me.

Following me around while I barely even looked at her.

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Pardon?’

‘About looking into your memories without permission....’

‘Ah. It’s fine.’

‘I didn’t see everything.’

She continued to follow me, apologizing again and again.

Maybe my indifferent replies made her think I was still angry.

Or maybe the past she’d seen was shocking enough to crush her with guilt.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

I had no idea what condition Kyle was in.

I had no way of knowing what situation my subordinates were facing. Ignorance fed anxiety, and so I didn’t stop until Cecil physically put the brakes on me.

What if a recovered Kyle finally pushed humanity to the brink?

Even if not—what if he was hunting down, one by one, those deemed traitors to their own kind and cutting their throats?

The best-case scenario was that the war had ended, and Kyle had gathered the remaining kin and quietly blended them into human society.

But things rarely went that well.

‘It’s time for treatment.’

Cecil stopped me at regular intervals.

‘Come here and sit down. I’ll heal you. You know you’re not fully recovered yet.’

‘There’s no major inconvenience in moving now, so I think it’d be fine to stop the treatment.’

‘Can you move your body as agilely as before?’

She calmly rebutted me every time.

‘I’m used to this kind of stubbornness from your people.’

As she treated me after forcibly making me sit, Cecil spoke.

‘He was like that too.’

‘You mean Kysis?’

‘Yes.’

I hadn’t looked into her memories.

Cecil had offered to show them to me, but I refused. I didn’t have the emotional leeway ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) for it.

Still, curiosity wasn’t entirely absent.

‘How did you meet Kysis?’

I asked a question I’d never even dared to voice in the Empire.

A story countless people had wondered about—but no one had ever heard the truth of.

‘It’s a cliché story. I saved him on the day I heard he was possessed by a demon.’

Cecil answered quietly.

‘I was born with too much mana in my body, so I kept doing all sorts of strange things. I was born into a family that believed in something warped, and at some point, I was treated as a dead daughter. I was the second daughter of a noble house—but I grew up in a barn.’

‘So Kysis saved you.’

‘He was young too. He was fifteen at the time.’

That was unimaginably long ago.

‘The family was wiped out, so you wouldn’t recognize the name.’

That made sense. It must have happened before I ever reached the imperial capital.

Usually, a child born with abundant mana would be celebrated as a future mage—but if they were talking about demons, then the family likely didn’t believe in the World Tree properly.

A heretical household.

They committed acts that would have made even me—who’d seen everything—sick to my stomach.

‘I had aphasia when I was rescued.’

Her voice, recounting an incident the Empire had covered up, carried no emotion.

‘For a long time, I thought I was born with something wrong with my language ability. I grew up being scolded every time I couldn’t speak properly.’

‘So that’s why you avoided speaking.’

‘Even though it’s improved a lot, wounds from childhood never heal without scars.’

Kysis helped correct her speech.

He hadn’t done anything special, she said—just patiently, steadily, without making a fuss, helped her reclaim her voice.

She eventually learned to speak normally, but the scars of persecution remained.

She said she only spoke a lot when it was just the two of them.

‘I talked more than usual around you too. You probably didn’t notice.’

Cecil smiled faintly.

I blinked.

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah. You were strangely easier to talk to than most people.’

She said my upbringing in the temple—and perhaps the way I treated people without caring much about status—made her feel at ease.

But there were always too many people around me, so she couldn’t talk at length.

‘Kysis was especially fond of you too.’

‘Was he.’

I replied flatly, and Cecil looked at me sadly.

After finishing the treatment as usual, she quietly made a suggestion.

‘I know you don’t feel sleepy, but you can still sleep. How about sleeping sometimes?’

‘I want to go back as soon as possible.’

‘...You know that sometimes you just sit there, not moving?’

The unexpected information made my eyes widen.

The sorrow in Cecil’s golden eyes deepened.

‘You don’t hear me calling you. Even when I shake you, you don’t come out of it easily.’

I hadn’t realized it until she said so.

‘You sink into it for a long time, then come back to yourself.’

She said she had no ability to heal that—and cried a little.

After wiping her tears, she asked again if I could try sleeping.

‘It might help. Even a little.’

I couldn’t refuse.

***

I wandered the world for a long time.

Even without any sense of time’s passage, it was long. I slept, woke, searched for the exit, and received treatment over and over. Even with an archmage at my side, the recovery was this slow.

My charred body regained its pace at an exasperating crawl.

Sometimes, unexplained fevers struck.

Regardless, even while being treated, I never stopped searching for a way back.

I didn’t go mad. Probably because I had Cecil as someone to talk to—and a clear goal.

We grew close.

With only the two of us left in the world, it was inevitable.

‘Finish the story you were telling before.’

Cecil liked hearing stories from when I’d been active as a knight.

A life where I couldn’t act boldly because of my injuries.

But in truth, it seemed she enjoyed hearing about the world I’d once traversed so passionately.

I grew to enjoy telling her old stories too. She was a good listener. It felt like reading fairy tales to a child.

For a human, this world was unbearably lonely.

If I’d been alone, I truly would have lost myself and gone mad—like that thing that was presumed to have been alone here for a very long time.

For a while, we shared what stories we knew and searched the world together.

We carved paths through the ash-gray world and kept moving forward.

***

At some point, Cecil began urging me to sleep for longer stretches.

She said the time I spent sunk into myself was increasing.

‘I’m scared.’

She said it aloud.

‘I’m afraid you might end up in an irreversible state. When you think about it, it’s only natural your condition would worsen. You keep revisiting painful memories while searching for an exit.’

‘I don’t think sleeping will fix that.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to—it just didn’t seem like a fundamental solution.

Cecil bit her lip.

‘That’s true.’

She ignored me when I told her to stop biting her lip.

‘But I can’t leave you like this.... Even without looking into memories, this is a place that drives people mad.’

‘Well, there’s not much else we can do.’

‘No.’

Cecil shook her head vigorously.

Then she showed that bad habit again—grabbing her own head.

‘I told you not to clutch your head like that.’

‘I can’t just do nothing.’

Even when I pulled her hands away, she continued pacing anxiously—until she suddenly looked up.

Her eyes shone.

‘What about forgetting the painful memories?’

I stared at her for a long time.

I didn’t understand at first.

After carefully organizing my thoughts, I answered.

‘I don’t want that.’

‘I won’t erase everything. Just the memories that cause you pain—one by one, minimizing conflicts between memories.’

‘That wouldn’t change reality.’

It was nothing more than avoidance.

‘And if you cast that spell on me, wouldn’t Kyle’s memories be erased too?’

‘Unless we erase memories you share in common, it shouldn’t work that way. Memory-erasure magic, like rampage-treatment magic, has to be done slowly and meticulously.’

Cecil then launched into a long explanation of the history and mechanisms behind memory-removal spells.

I listened with a furrowed brow, then cut her off.

‘How much are you planning to erase?’

Seeing my displeasure, Cecil flinched slightly.

But she still said what she meant to say.

‘Things like the final moments of the war....’

‘Around when Rei’s presence was cut off?’

‘Isn’t this better than you turning into a statue and letting your life end? And even if the memory-erasure spell transfers to Kyle, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Maybe even better?’

‘I don’t know.’

I replied quietly.

‘Unless there’s a guarantee that everything’s resolved, I’m not sure this is a good idea. I appreciate the intention. But I don’t want to forget Rei’s death.’

‘You can think about yourself now.’

Cecil didn’t back down.

‘You can’t just leave this abnormality alone! Enduring isn’t always the answer. I endured in that barn, and things only got worse!’

The memory was torn away right there.

As if someone had grabbed it and ripped it out by force.