Spirit King POV (***I’m trying to add extra POVs into the translations to make things less confusing. This novel shifts perspectives quite often)
-Cakin! Creck!- A crack gradually enters the ice coffin little by little, more and more…
Soon I can get out of here.
In order to protect myself, most of the higher level spirits had been abused by the descendants who had inherited Zecheyer’s flesh and blood, and most of them had disappeared. The lower level fire lizards (salamanders) that lurked in the ground when I searched for their spirit energy, seemed to remain, sleeping deep underground.
“O lamplight that remains in the land of the north, answer my call, rage on, answer the remaining fire of the Ifrit.”
The fire lizard that had penetrated deep into the ground and protected itself from the ice with the mucus of its body quietly woke up at the faint call of the Spirit King of the Northern Lands.
‘Fire spirit fire lizard (Salamander), burn the frozen earth with your sacred flame, join my power…”
The fire lizard began to shake its body in the ground, melting the frozen earth little by little as it jiggled. The flames that had been lit began to swell up with the blessing of Ifrit and the power of the Spirit King of the Northern Lands.
The earth vibrated and the castle began to collapse.
I heard a slurping sound crawling on the floor. It was the source that bound me here and had put me to sleep.
“Oh, oh, evil, oh, power…”
The lower half of the body turned into a long snake-like appearance, and from the mouth that is torn on the side, the tip of the tongue is split into two pieces. It slithers in and out.
I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it! I can’t afford to be eaten as it is. I can’t let my family members’ lives be wasted and just be eaten like this!
This time, in exchange for my existence, I must destroy this black goddess.
However, the black goddess has taken on the form of the evil goddess herself, spewing black miasma from her body.
The battle between the evil god and the spirits had begun, and the cracks in the ice were spreading.
Already, the spirit barrier in the northern city had disappeared, and waves of people fleeing from there on horseback or on foot looked like ants pouring out of their nests. They all intended to travel overland to the Eastern country.
***
Fii POV
I had a strange dream.
It wasn’t a memory of Japan, but a memory of a much, much older, distant past, so far away that it seemed almost uncanny.
In that dream, I was not the person I am now, but a person I did not know.
I was alone at a very young age amidst the recurring warfare between tribes, and my parents were dead.
But there were many other children in the tribe who also had no parents, and those who did were gathered together in the same place, and the weakest among them were the first to die.
One day, a beautiful, non-human person appeared in front of me.
A being who took the form of a person with beautiful silvery white hair and light purple eyes.
He took me like a kidnapper into an unknown mountain.
A pale hand stroked my head and held me gently. Warm, how warm it was…
“I’ve been waiting for you to come into this world. Now you will live with me.”
And he gave me a warm bed and good food.
“I love you very much.”
“You love…?”
I was too young to understand the meaning of the word.
“My name is Noyer. You will call me Noyer.”
“Noyer?”
“Yes. Noyer. What’s your name?”
“No…no name.”
“Well, if there isn’t, then I’ll call you Fii. It means wind.”
“Fii.”
“It’s a name that suits you well.”
Then he gently stroked my head.
I was very confused because I had never heard such kind words before, but I gradually got used to them and came to love the warmth of his arms.
It was just the two of us, in that dreamy, tender place.
But that tender moment was stolen by someone who appeared out of the blue when I was old enough to understand. A horrible, scary person. She looked so much like my favorite Noyer, yet she was someone completely different.
I wanted to see Noyer. I called his name.
“Noyer!”
“Noyer!”
“Noyer!”
The hand that reached out to the heavens never reached him…
I jumped up from the dream and was breathing wildly.
Then there was a knock on my room door and a figure that looked just like Noyer in the dream appeared.
“Zak……Noyer?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. You had a scary dream, didn’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“I had a dream, too. The same dream…”
Then he sat down on the bed and pulled me in for a hug.
“Fii…the wind. My Fii.”
“Yeah, that’s the name Zak gave me…”
It was an unforgettable event.
***
After a long time, I came back to Elementia for a week’s vacation, so I was relaxing at Zak’s house and enjoying a stroll in the garden with my friend Pikuri, while I spent my time at my usual detached house.
There are many different kinds of plants in the garden, and you can harvest berries, pomegranates, pears, peaches, and grapes while strolling along it, regardless of the season.
Zak is very busy with reconstruction projects in the south and east, and with the future of Elementia. There is a lot of communication between the countries, and as one of the country’s representatives, he is very busy. Even so, I sometimes feel both sorry and happy for the way he takes time out for me and makes a tearful effort to spend as much time with me as possible.
The little bird, Pikuri, and I had been playing in the garden for a long time, happily frolicking around, pecking at berries and rubbing his beak against a tree branch, when all of a sudden, Pikuri was startled by something and let out a sad, shrill cry, rolling around on the ground in distress.
“What-what’s wrong?”
The moment I was about to take a step forward, Pikuri’s plump brown body popped and scattered like a balloon popping, and a small ball of light flew out from inside.
I couldn’t help but reach out my hand as I felt the little piece of light, a small spirit, seeking something, trying to head somewhere to help. The moment I entered the mixture of lights, it was as if all the little spirits that exist here and there felt something and screamed out that they must not make a mistake this time in order to share their fate with the Spirit King.
It was very strange, but I was flying in the middle of it. I was vaguely aware of what it was that the little spirit was trying to protect, but I didn’t feel the same disgust as when I was pulled in front of it and separated from Zak.
The overflowing light compensated for the Spirit King’s wounded and weakened body, and he chose to fight the powerful and evil black monster. What should I do? What do I want to do?
The black monster emitted a dark, stagnant, evil aura, and a horrible odor that could not even be compared to the miasma in Cubic territory or the magical stagnation that invaded Zak when we first met.
Fiara noticed that her hair color and eye color were the same as those of a familiar person, even though she was no longer in human form and was scary.
“The same coloring as Zak…”
It evoked a strange feeling, though it did go away again.
Sad and painful and nostalgic…
“Fii!!”
I suddenly jumped to the northern land with the little spirits and brought my body as well as my spirit with me. As I descended to the northern palace where the monsters were, I was surprised to see Zak land behind me, hugging my shoulders as I descended to the northern palace.
“Oh, Zak, how did you—”
“I am with you. And I knew this day would come. But I will never do anything to lose you again. I love you so much.”
He hugged me tightly and I noticed that Zak’s magic was passing through me.
I knew he was checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt.
Zak’s eyes were bright and clear as he looked down once and then at the monster.
“I hate you. There was a time when we came from the same place time after time, but that doesn’t erase the fact that you hurt and robbed me of my loved one. You don’t need to exist.”
“Evil Evil, Evil!, I…will, will…I will kill!!! Kill. Kill!!!!”
The monster crawling on the floor with its eyes on me was very scary.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!”
Facing its crawling long back, a beautiful ice spirit, crystal clear and beautiful, had pierced through it with a blade of ice.
“This longstanding grudge, I’ll return it to you! Know this!!”
However, the evil god, which looks like a mass of black resentment, didn’t hold back from being stabbed through with its blade, and was sneaking this way and that, spitting out black filth.
“Wraaaaaah!!!”
As it slithered inevitably closer, its obsession to take in Zak and its aggravation towards me approached heavily. I can’t allow such a dirty, twisted thing to touch my precious Zak.
“No, absolutely not! I hate it! Don’t touch my precious Zak, I won’t allow you to…”
The desire to protect him overflowed as it rose from within my body.
If these eyes of mine are to purge the darkness, I want to purge all of this sludge that is trying to take him in. I have been reborn many times over the years, and I have finally come back to him. This time I have a way to fight back too.
The murky, terrifying, black miasma of evil has turned into a dark cloud and is threatening to turn the whole area into darkness.
In order to stop the miasma, magic circles are deployed around Zak, and the letters of the ancient language are constructed into a hexagram.
The blue glowing magic circle is released one after another and begins to flash blue in order to bind the evil god to the space. But even when the body is destroyed into a thousand pieces and the black tendrils are scattered around, the obsession with Zak and the hatred for me does not stop…
The terrifyingly distorted emotions become daggers and are directed at me, the source of the hatred, but Zak catches all of the attacks with his magical power.
“I will never again let my precious one be taken away from me. I will completely contain you so that you cannot return to the circle of reincarnation.”
I think Zak and I were thinking the same thing at that moment.
The two of us joined hands and turned our free palms to the black sludge. All I can think is that this sludge will turn from this world into nothingness. That it will disappear without leaving even a shred of it ever again.
From Zak’s body, a sharp sword of light that seems to pierce everything with a swirl of blue flame appears in the air, and when the overflowing green-gold purifying power activated from my hands overlaps with it and becomes one, the area suddenly changes into a serene world.
—In that moment, a sword clad in dazzling light was swung down from the heavens.
It was like a lightning bolt that tore the evil god from its brain to its tail, and in an instant, it was reduced to dust.
Then, once I finally became aware, I realized that Zak and I were standing in the usual green remote garden.
Surrounded by silence, Zak wrapped up me in his arms.
No one else was there, nothing else was there.
We were always happy just the two of us, just like this.
“I’ve always wanted to do this with Fii…and I guess this is what I’ve always wanted since I was born into this world…”
I faced Zak.
After a long time of wandering around, I finally met my beloved once again in this world.
He had been waiting for me for all these long and daunting years.
And I, too, was reborn, waiting for the time to return here.
As it was, we were standing in the garden, cuddled together for a long time…
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T/N: That’s the last chapter of this first volume! There will just be one more bonus story to finish it off. That said, I kinda felt like everything built up like crazy, only to end anticlimactically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. What do you guys think? However, there are still 3 or 4 more volumes going, so I’m guessing that more happens in the future!
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