Chapter 220

“It is not okay that the world makes your pain feel normal.” Six hundred years ago. I found a single shred of kindness in this ravaged world. A girl in a cage—Naturia Lumiere. I had a humble birth in the Mulnite Empire. Nobody celebrated. My mother was a slave of war abducted from the Enchanted Lands, and she died of an epidemic shortly after I was born. This was in the last years of the warring states period, when all nations were far more exclusionary than now, and it was forbidden for the different races to mingle with one another. Were it to come to light that I had Immortal blood in me, the Gemini family would have lost its status in the Empire. They treated me like I didn’t exist and confined me to a room in the mansion. I was a real shut-in, through and through. My family constantly yelled at me and reprimanded me, and they didn’t give me any blood, a vital nutrient for vampires. They could’ve killed me, but my father’s wife had just enough kindness to feel bad about taking my life. In the middle of the gloom, out of the blue, I met her. My one and only friend. Maybe I bonded with her out of sympathy, since she was imprisoned, too. I would escape every chance I got and go to her cage to talk, have a snack, and play board games. But the happy times didn’t last long. Naturia was the Miko, a cursed child kept as the bedrock of the Mulnite Empire. A person who should have been far out of reach of a lowly vampire like me. My situation grew dire after the bigwigs found out. They insulted me, beat me, and humiliated me. In the end, she and I decided to leave this world full of conflict. Naturia said, “Let’s shut ourselves in another room.” Had she not taken my hand, I would have never known what it meant to live. Naturia made me human. Naturia took me to elsewhere; I said good-bye to the Foreworld. We went to the second world: a strange place with two suns they called the Netherworld. It was a pure realm, populated only by innocent shut-ins. Their civilization was underdeveloped compared to the Foreworld’s. Mana was bountiful, yet the people didn’t know how to use magic. They would look at me with surprise and glee when I showed them a spell to start a fire. As I taught them more and more spells, they began calling me the Scholar (while Naturia kept her title of the Miko). They accepted us, and we became leaders of the world to unify these kind shut-ins. The village we used as our base came to be called Lumiere—probably a nicer name than Gemini. So much happened back then. The pope at the time, Clement I, visited us; the elders gave us the Dark Cores (as symbols of our leadership, apparently); we made a lollipop factory; we began expanding our territory all over the Netherworld… It was a bright life, a 180-degree departure from my time in the Gemini manor’s locked room. I had access to sufficient food, clothing, and shelter, and unlimited kindness. All my memories go back to Naturia. Everything was fun because I was with her. I wished for those peaceful days to go on forever. An eternity in this warm cradle where no one could hurt us. But then, I heard the peace begin to crack. “The Foreworld is in the middle of a two-hundred-year-long war. Its people cannot bring about peace on their own anymore—which is why we’ve come here. The Netherworld will become nutrients for the first world.” Six people showed up out of nowhere. They called themselves the Fools of Observatory. They were invaders, there was no way around it. They opened the gates between worlds, and the armies from the first world attacked. The Netherworld was a goldmine of mana and a source of invaluable land. The Fools wanted to force the war to an end by making the Six Nations turn their eyes to the Netherworld. Those insects spilled out from the six gates to the Netherworld, encroaching upon our paradise. They began establishing nations of their own without the permission of the Miko or the Scholar. The Mulnite Empire, the Lapelico Kingdom, the Heavenly Paradise, the Polar Empire, the Aruka Kingdom, the Enchanted Lands—colonies of the first world. Massive numbers of people crossed the gates into the Netherworld and declared it their second homeland. The original population of the Netherworld was hunted down in no time. The Netherworld’s shut-ins were nothing but nuisances for the invaders. Naturia and I ran. We ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran… And one day, we had to fight the Fools. The battle took place right by a white monument, the God Slayer Tower. The Fools were after the Netherworld’s Dark Cores. We had no idea what they would do with them, but it couldn’t be anything good. I fought as hard as I could, but I was unable to beat their Extermination Armors. Naturia was gravely injured and near death. So I prayed to the Dark Cores to “save Naturia.” According to the elders, there were various limitations to the Dark Cores. “The Dark Cores make wishes come true, but there are two things they cannot do. First, they cannot alter a person’s will. That is, they can’t delete, kill, or resurrect someone. Second, they cannot grant a true wish. They only realize concrete requests. For example, world peace would be too abstract for them to understand. Or they might grant it in a horrific way you can’t imagine.” In the end, Naturia was sealed in the tower. I don’t understand why, but the Fools said Naturia was a “destroyer.” Letting her free would inevitably put her in danger, so there was a need to keep her locked away, safe from anybody’s reach. At the last moment, Naturia used her Core Implosion, Paradox Oracle, and said to me, “Don’t worry. Let’s meet again in 622 cycles of the seasons, next to the Heavenly Jewel.” I believed her. After hiding Naturia, I went to my supporters to let them conceal the Dark Cores. Otherwise, the Fools would use them to rewrite the world’s order again. But then, things took a turn for the worse. “People are infinitely foolish. They have such bountiful resources, and they don’t share them across the nations. Instead, they start wars to hoard everything for themselves. At this rate, the Netherworld will also fall into a warring states period of its own. We have no choice but to use our last resort.” Ultimately, I couldn’t do anything. The Fools had multiple plans for exploiting the Netherworld. “We’ve abandoned the subplan to obtain the Netherworld’s Dark Cores. Our wishes have been adjusted and put in motion. The Netherworld will be a boxed garden to provide for the first world. You will die here.” They activated the Dark Cores in the Foreworld. A sudden gust enveloped the Netherworld. The trees rattled, the skies were torn, and our paradise was ruined before my eyes. All of a sudden, I found myself floating. “…! I’ll take back the Netherworld! I’ll make it a paradise with Naturia again! I’ll never…ever…give up…!” The Fools did not hear my screams. I was swept up by the tornado and lost consciousness in the dark clouds.