Chapter 1

The sunlight splitting through the leaves with the wind stung my eyes.

From a distance I thought there was no better place than this, but apparently my eye for scenery was lacking.

From quite far off came the sound of horses snorting and armor clashing.

Damn—three weeks had already passed since the beast that killed people, whether wolf or bear, appeared and caused chaos around us.

The herbalist who went into the woods was missing.

The hunter who went looking for him ended up babbling nonsense with his side ripped open and died.

From listening to the adults’ conversation, it seemed a few vagrants had vanished too.

If only they’d done that earlier, it’d be better.

I squinted at the procession, clicked my tongue, and watched.

In any case, it was a spectacle.

Warhorses gleaming with glossy fur strode forward without hesitation.

When the soldiers in armor came into view, villagers one by one came out to watch.

Rare in these times, it naturally resembled the kind of knightly expedition one only heard of in heroic tales.

Of course, they weren’t knights, and it wasn’t any grand crusade.

There were only two soldiers mounted on horses.

The other six followed diligently, carrying hunting knives and bows.

If the hunter had been alive, they probably wouldn’t have bothered.

The villagers were simply amazed by the unfamiliar sight of soldiers.

A few who met their eyes hurriedly bowed their heads in respect.

“Please slay those devilish beasts!”

“Burn them so their bodies can’t be found!”

Among them were apparently family members of the victims.

Children staring blankly at the scene flinched and hid behind the adults.

Occasionally rude remarks slipped out, but the soldiers, seeming to understand, only nodded.

Before I knew it the soldiers had disappeared over the small hill, and people began dispersing to their tasks.

No more naps for me; I dusted myself off and got up to work.

My parents were merchants.

They didn’t bring goods from neighboring estates or make handsome profits through trade; they stocked items the villagers needed and sold them as necessary.

Still, there were only my parents and me—three people—so we lived comfortably without much worry.

Blacksmiths, herb sellers, and tanners preferred steady income over direct selling, so transactions continued without issue.

The problem was that the herbalist had died, and the stock of herbs we needed was running low.

Other goods could be used until they broke or wore out, but without widely used herbs, it was hard to keep the shop going.

So these days my job was to wander around and gather herbs.

I could recognize the plants well enough to harvest roughly what we needed.

But doing it day after day grew unbearably boring.

I tried goofing off for the first time in my life—and even that failed.

I was about to sigh, but instead let out a broad, sheepish laugh.

It seemed I’d finally grown used to the peace of this age.

No one could keep living on after using up the lifetimes they’d been given.

Those who had once tried to cling to life had ultimately perished.

Thus began the age of humans.

I, too, had intended to burn up the life given to me and become kindling that lights the way, but for some reason I opened my eyes again.

At first I thought I had fallen into hell.

All I saw was a burning lump of blood and huge, crude noises I couldn’t identify.

I could do nothing but scream with all my might in fear.

As I cried and collapsed in helplessness over and over, colorful lights beyond my blurred vision began to brighten my sight.

But that scene was unbelievable too.

Giants tended me like a child—feeding me and putting me to sleep though I couldn’t move a finger.

I was amazed I hadn’t gone insane.

Only after several months did I accept that I had become an infant.

My God.

I thought I’d died fighting hordes of evil beasts with heroes and slain the wicked dragon, but instead I was reborn somewhere unheard of as a nursing infant, wobbling about.

My memories from that time are hazy.

I basically lived half-resigned until I could run on my own. And then,

‘At last!’

After my head grew a bit, I learned to count.

I studied words hard and began reading books that I occasionally had the chance to get my hands on.

As I asked about things I didn’t know and tried to understand my situation, I found our myths had been dismissed as children’s fairy tales.

Countless centuries later, and human times had continued for at least several hundred years.

The feeling after learning that was still hard to accept.

A sense of emptiness.

I finally reached the ending I wanted, only to lose my purpose.

There may be other records, but that was all I could ascertain from the current situation.

Tales of terrifying beasts that ate people or entities that overturned the earth and burned the sky were reduced to nothing more than my father’s mischievous jokes.

For a while I lay on the hill and watched the sun rise and set.

At night I took in the starry sky that seemed about to pour down, listening to the insects and low cries of birds.

A mundane life continued, and before I knew it I was nineteen.

I ate tasty meals and studied things unrelated to survival while listening to my mother’s songs.

In that peaceful age, I had been granted a second life.

A blessing from the gods—what else could it be?

Assuming those who died with me then received similar rewards, I decided to fully enjoy the life I was given.

As the son of a small merchant couple in a peaceful rural village.

Raising just enough strength to be free from the bullying of older peers.

With a relaxed heart, I began gathering herbs growing in the nearby woods.

Not wanting to meet a screaming death, I avoided deep areas and picked sporadic herbs from shallow spots where I could flee back to the village at once.

In a day or two, when the soldiers dragged in the beast carcasses, things would probably get easier.

If I harvested a good armful from the herbalist’s plot, we’d be fine for a while.

Even better if a new herbalist showed up in the meantime.

A spot was open, so someone would surely be eyeing it.

Anyway, there weren’t that many herbs at the forest’s edge, and what I did was not much different from women strolling and picking flowers.

My parents probably expected this when they let me do the job, but I couldn’t stand the itch to move.

Sometimes you have to loosen your body.

I passed a fallen log and arrived at a hidden clearing.

I grabbed the wooden sword I had stuck in the ground and began swinging it with practiced motions.

I’d traded it for a writing implement I received last birthday; it wasn’t bad.

I summoned my memory to swing the sword and adjusted my stance to my not-fully-grown body.

Even if it was wood, it had enough weight for my body that by the end I was drenched in sweat.

Just as I was about to get in some exercise today, a voice calling me came from afar.

“Huff… Hah… Kamil!”

Messy brown hair and a scrawny body. I’d seen him around but didn’t know his name.

He looked like his legs had given out; he panted with his mouth opening and closing, and a nameless unease swept over me as I, almost trance-like, approached the boy who looked slightly younger than me.

Then

“So—soldiers…! In the village… hurry!”

Soldiers? Soldiers for what?

The boy grabbed my collar with a face as if the world had fallen apart, his arm shaking like mad.

Something was clearly happening.

I wanted to hear more, but seeing him panting as if he might choke, I couldn’t press him further.

This was the kind of time when it seemed faster to go straight to the village myself.

The boy watched me without answering, restless.

I pointed to the fallen log and the bushes.

“Hide over there for now. I’ll go to the village.”

Then, as if some strength surged up, he grabbed my collar more desperately and shook his head vigorously.

“You can’t go! To the castle… you have to flee to the castle!”

To the castle?

My head went blank for a moment. What reason could there be to flee to the castle in such a peaceful rural domain?

Wolves or bears hadn’t come out of the woods, nor was the village so small that bandits would raid it.

Once my thoughts reached that point, I couldn’t hesitate any longer.

“Go ahead and leave first!”

“Hey!”

I shook off the boy’s arm and ran straight toward the village.

My parents. I had to find them.

At this hour they would surely both be at the shop.

The castle wasn’t that far; maybe they’d already fled there.

As my head filled with ominous thoughts, the village began to come into view through the thick undergrowth.

What I heard first was the urgent ringing of bells, followed by people’s screams and children wailing.

Far off, the isolated hunter’s house was swallowed by sharp flames, only shadows flickering, while all sorts of beasts had broken loose, sprawled over the ruined rubble, vomiting dark red tongues.

A literal pandemonium.

Leaving fleeing people behind, I ran toward the shop and saw a knight carrying a shield with a blue hawk emblem.

And soldiers followed him.

They all, as if fleeing from something, mixed with the crowd and ran toward the castle gate.

“Close the gate! It’s too dangerous! Protect the lord and the castle!”

At the knight’s shout while crossing the bridge over the moat, the following crowd panicked and shoved one another, desperately surging into the castle.

In an instant the bridge was cut off and the heavy gate slammed shut.

“No!”

“Please have mercy!”

Some who couldn’t make it inside begged desperately and one who ran toward the gate mis-stepped and was swept away by the strong current.

Some soldiers threw ropes to save them, but those left behind were only elderly or vagrants too weak to grab the lifeline.

The captain of the guard looked at the scene from the battlements with a devastated face, squeezed his eyes shut, and turned away, and I finally reached the wide-open shop.

“…How.”

What I faced was a beast staring into the void with twisted eyes, its maw mixing bright yellow saliva and red blood, tearing at my fallen father’s limbs and ripping open his belly, was the form of a beast.