The wastelands sank into the darkness of the night. The plains of Krios, once said to be verdant, had been incinerated at the hands of the people of Terea following the war of the Silver Age.
The fortress city of Krios, which had once taken great pride in its influence, no longer retained even a shadow of its former glory. It was now no more than a pile of rubble strewn across the ground.
There was only one feature that spoke of the kingdom’s former prosperity—the remains of its extensive aqueducts, which the Tereans had not managed to level completely, still stretched across the landscape.
Beneath the encroaching night, the hero Falaina and the decaying aqueducts were both no more than shadows, difficult to distinguish. A desiccated wind blew through the wasteland. The dust in the air was largely made up of the eroded ruins. As if rebuked by the passage of time, Falaina collapsed on the ground, finally succumbing to the destiny that had not concluded five hundred years prior.
“Falaina...” murmured Prodotis, king of Krios, emerging from a teleportation gate. Motionless on the ground, Falaina’s skull was shattered. The red ichor seeping from his head would no longer heal his wounds. The hero Falaina, the white whale, one of the Seven Generals of Krios, had truly died in this place.
Prodotis’s astonished expression turned hard with loathing. The ancient king turned his murderous intent toward the culprits of this slaughter. “So, as ever, you will join forces with your most bitter foes if it means the destruction of Krios...will you not, Tereans...?!”
Dill swung his sword, red blood falling from it and staining the ground. He then thrust the point of the blade toward Prodotis. “My name is Dill Steel-Link. Remember it. It is the name of the man who will kill you.”
Veins stood out on Prodotis’s temples. “What insolence is this? Prodotis himself now stands before you.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are. I am Dill Steel-Link. I will, without a doubt, take back my daughter.”
Prodotis was silent for a moment. “...We call such impossible acts ‘miracles.’” Then he vanished.
“Uh-oh...looks like you picked a fight with a legendary hero,” said the poet Rick, with a dazed half smile. “Guess we’re part of the myth now.”
“Master!” Sid, who had undone his transformation, ran up to Dill. The mercenaries, along with the Reincarnators, sighed and let themselves relax. That was the moment where first a few observant people suddenly stood still. That number of people steadily grew. Blusterer had been chatting the whole time, but when he noticed the tremors at his feet suddenly grow larger, he fell quiet.
“Does this world also have earthquakes from time to time...?”
“We do have them, but all such events are sent to us from the Ex Machina or Titans, and are considered ill portents.”
Hearing this, Toiler smirked for a moment. The rumbling in the ground became a roar. In the distance, the shadow of the ruins of Castle Krios began to heave up out of the earth. All gathered there quickly realized this was no simple shift in the earth’s crust.
Underneath the ruins, raised up like a pillar, was something colossal—immeasurably huge, holding the ruins up. As the dust settled, it was revealed to be humanoid in form.
“A...Hundred-Handed One?” Those present murmured the name of the ancient tribe. But the being that rose out from beneath the land of Krios had only five arms. The other arms had all been lost, either broken in half or withered away. It was not told in any myth or history that such things slumbered beneath the earth in Krios. The children of men there could only stand in shock, mouths agape.
The tremors finally subsided. The mercenaries and Reincarnators looked up. The size of the thing, so ridiculously large it could not even be compared to the giant whom they had defeated a short while ago, stretched to tens, perhaps hundreds of meters. They couldn’t tell. In the wasteland at night, there was nothing to measure it against.
The titan, lifting the ruins of Krios with its remaining five arms along with the land beneath it, began to move again. It was slow, but perhaps it only appeared so due to its colossal size. Its head, drooping low as a result of supporting the ruined castle, faced the south. Then it started to walk.
One step. There was a strange tremor. Another step. Its foot descended on the wasteland, leaving a footprint like a crater, then carried on moving. It proceeded in the direction of...
“Aspro Terea.”
“The Mainland.”
The voices of the mercenaries and the Reincarnators overlapped. Both terms referred to the same place.
“Prodotis’s next objective is most likely the Imperial Capital. Toiler, can you ready cars and bikes to match our numbers?”
“Toiler? Ah, you mean me? Yeah. I think we can! We still have a few parked nearby. Shall we get after them right away? That walking castle may look sluggish from here, but we can’t be sure that it’s not traveling several kilometers per hour.”
The band hastily made preparations to set off. As a matter of necessity, they would have to wait to bring up their former grudges yet again.
In the middle of those preparations, something else happened.
“Hey, isn’t that...” Rick, whose gaze remained fixed on the walking castle of Krios, was the first to realize, and point it out.
“A Jumper’s...teleportation gate?! But it’s...” It was just too big. A black vortex appeared ahead of the castle of Krios, now a walking fortress, on a scale in keeping with its size.
“Is that Prodotis’s Skill?” muttered Dill. Starlight, the band’s resident Jumper, refuted this guess.
“That’s impossible. Regardless of how far our Manager, Yuujin, has convinced himself through self-suggestion that he’s an ancient hero, in order to stabilize his unstable mental state...you cannot exceed the limits of a Skill’s influence, which corresponds to the amount of Liquid Computer in one’s system.”
“That’s not quite right.” Sid spoke as his eyes drank in the scene before him, staring at the castle of Krios stepping into the supermassive teleportation gate. “The one that activated that Skill is the giant underneath the castle.”
“That must have hurt, Princess of the Titans. I was sure to miss any vital spots, but you still fell from quite a height.” A man’s deep voice echoed through the courtyard in the ruins of Krios. Nue, who had taken a spear to one of the wings granted by her transformation and fallen back to the ground, struggled desperately to pull the weapon out. However, footsteps ruthlessly made their way toward Nue before stopping right in front of her.
Nue’s red eyes glared sharply up at her enemy, then opened wide in surprise. What stood before her was a boy, his height no different from Nue’s or Sid’s.
“Forgive me. I take no pleasure in harming young girls, but the lord of this castle told me not to let you escape.” Despite looking no older than twelve, he said this in a man’s voice that had long since deepened. His prominent Adam’s apple was strangely sharp. The sun had already set, but Nue’s vision was superior to a human’s, so she was easily able to perceive all of this. “Excuse me, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Nefritis. When I still lived in this world, I was known by two other names—King of Adventures and King of Courage. I do not know whether or not those names were passed down to the present day...”
“You were a hero too?” Nue’s transformation was undone, her wings melting away and falling as black water. The spear that had pierced her fell away with them. By the time she had expressed her doubts, she was already convinced that this boy was the real thing. He was, without a doubt, one of the legends Dill had told her about—the hero Nefritis.