The monsters were killed under the sky covered by grayish clouds.
Skyler and Elijah watched the flames gradually dissipate across the bridge. The vast sea separated them from the rest like they were the only people in that gloomy world. The pungent smell of the carcasses of burning monsters hung in the air.
It was so nauseating that it made Skyler grit her teeth, trying not to throw up for the second time in a row. Even her stomach rumbled in disgust.
Elijah picked up the extinguished torch from the ground and extended it towards the burning carcass of a monster, lighting it.
He then turned to Skyler and smiled. "Incredible, you were amazing. You're pretty tough for a witch."
"H-how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me a witch?" Skyler retorted, her voice becoming soft. "Rather, y-you were very strong in facing th-those monsters."
Elijah laughed weakly. "It's all thanks to my dad who trained me since I was little. In the end, the hard training paid off. Er, what can I even say... well, thanks for helping me, Skyler Hall."
"Well, th-the pleasure is all mine." Skyler replied faintly with blushing cheeks.
Inside, she felt like she hadn't accomplished much. After all, running across the bridge while Elijah held off the monsters wasn't much of a feat.
Even though she did kill the monsters in the end, it was because she had the parchment with her. Sure, the plan had worked, but it was only Elijah's credit that Skyler had gotten this far.
"Perfect, now we just need to defeat the Cursed Beast, and we can go home." Elijah exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Do you t-think we can defeat it?"
"Ah, what are you asking? Of course we'll defeat the beast. With my strength and the parchment, defeating it will be very easy."
"Well, that's what I hope."
Whilst saying those words, Skyler tightened the necklace around her neck and looked down. Doubts and uncertainties were getting the better of her. She could only laugh wryly at the emotions she was feeling.
Such emotions were not allowed in a hostile situation like this, nevertheless, such emotions were growing more and more inside her.
"You sure are a pessimist. My father always tells me that pessimists always die in the end because they don't believe in their own abilities." Elijah expressed, voice deep.
"I'm really sorry if I come across as so negative to you. But honestly, we're about to face an entity we know absolutely nothing about."
"Eeeesh, those are cutting words. Well, it's fine to have some doubts, but remember that you can't let those doubts stifle your skills. You've to be confident in your abilities, or you risk putting those around you in danger."
Elijah offered his candid and wise advice to her, phrased with an air of superiority.
Albeit his words were rational, Skyler felt unnerved by the fact that he was taking the situation too lightly. She turned and began to analyze the central tower.
As she walked cautiously, Elijah cleared his throat with "Aham-aham" and added, "It's going to be hard to find that Cursed Beast. I suggest we search every floor of the tower. It's been about ten minutes since you arrived, so we still have some time."
Looking around in the darkness, Skyler barely noticed that there were stairs leading to both the floors above and below.
Tap! Tap! Tap! She took a few steps forward, her bare feet hitting the stony ground, stinging her coldly. She was sure that sooner or later she would no longer feel her legs.
"Ehm… I suggest we go down to the ground floor. It's best to avoid running into more monsters." Skyler suggested.
"Wouldn't it be better to search on every floor? Besides, we don't even know where that beast is, so it would be better to check."
"Yea, but t-the thing is, w-we don't have much time. Do you have a-any idea how long it'll take us to e-explore the tower? W-we don't even know if those m-monsters are around or not."
"Who can guarantee me that the Cursed Beast is on the ground floor? And what if it turns out to be a waste of time? The best solution is to explore every floor."
Elijah shared his opinion in a rather serious tone.
The thought of exploring every single floor of the tower was unnerving, and it made Skyler feel uneasy. It was definitely the first time she'd reacted that way to someone. She couldn't take it anymore. She wanted this to be over and to go home to Benson.
Elijah stood beside her and looked down at the tower with the torch in his right hand.
"What's wrong? Are you tired already?" Elijah asked.
Skyler didn't answer Elijah's question. Instead, she clutched her necklace tightly while staring at her feet. She'd no way to answer his question.
In response to her complete silence, Elijah sighed and began walking down the stairs with his back to her. Skyler followed him without thinking, also because without his help she wouldn't come out of the tower alive.
"Look, let's try that floor down there." Elijah exclaimed.
As Elijah reached out with the hand holding the torch, an arched corridor entered Skyler's field of vision. Step-by-step, they headed down the floor beneath—just like the entrance to the tower they had ascended from, even the stone corridor was draped in darkness, with the torch as their only source of light.
Immediately after she entered the floor, Skyler felt an overwhelming sense of unease. A clump of unease.
"Didn't you feel a queer sensation?" Skyler asked, voice faint.
"A queer sensation? Mm, no, quite the opposite. I can feel the excitement running through me," Elijah turned his head, his lips curled up, "I wonder what we'll discover, perhaps a forgotten history! Heh, I can't wait for that!"
"Who knows where he gets all that energy from." Skyler thought, laughing wryly.
Elijah wagged his tail with an expression of enthusiasm on his soft face, then turned his head and pointed the torch upwards. Circular. In the midst of the dim light, a stone carved circular room could be glimpsed. The expansive design created a feeling of being left without boundaries.
Aside from that, as soon as Skyler and Elijah stepped foot into the room, they realized that the room itself was designed to form small floors, and that they were located on the lowest, surrounded by layers rising outward. The books were so numerous as to be uncountable. The Crescent Moon Library and Sallon University were nothing in comparison.
"Damn, it's even bigger than the libraries of my homeland. Come on, let's read some books." said Elijah, raising his furry ears as he approached the bookshelf beside him.
"What a-are you doing? Look, we d-don't have time to waste, we have to defeat the Cursed Beast?"
"Hah, there'll be time for that. Don't you see? We finally have the chance to uncover things that ordinary people don't know about, and yet you persist in refusing a precious opportunity like this!?."
"Um, yea! What's even the point of that? The priority now is the beast, not the books!"
"Listen, if you really want to defeat the beast, why don't you simply go alone? I'll stay here and read at least one of these books." Elijah expressed as he took a yellowish book from the shelf.
With gritted teeth and a frown creasing at his words, Skyler grimaced and walked away from Elijah. In the darkness of the room that was coldly embracing her, she raised her left hand and began to touch what should look like books.
Reaching out her fingers, she carefully took a book from the shelf and began to flip carefully through the yellowish-brown pages. With Elijah's torch illuminating her weakly from across the room, an ancient mosaic met Skyler's eyes.
It was a beautiful land of lush green bathed in sunlight with steep hills one above the other. In the center of the mosaic was a giant. A giant in black armor and a pitch black claymore was mounted on a charming white fox with golden eyes and seven tails. There was a figure next to them. It was a woman. Her face was covered by a black tunic that reached her heels with a purple cloak, as if she wanted to hide her identity.
"The Giant Beast King and Sovereign Mother of Heaven and Earth…" murmured Skyler.
Glancing slightly down, she caught sight of a group of demihumans gathered beside the mighty sovereigns. For a species so old-fashioned compared to humans, they were dressed rather well—with white robes that gave them a touch of elegance along with the swords they had in their hands. However, there was one thing that caught Skyler's attention. Because on their chests, a giant eye was firmly engraved on them, though it was something symbolic.
"These are the soldiers who invaded the Human World centuries ago. So, back then, Mother Sovereign of Heaven and Earth and the Giant Beast King were allies." Skyler thought out loud.
"What you're looking at right now is probably the Demihuman World, the world that used to be ruled by the Giant Beast King."
Before she could even get absorbed in her thoughts, Elijah's voice cut through her murmurs.
Feeling a stinging heat on the back of her neck like it would melt her skin, Skyler turned her head and saw Elijah with his chin gently resting on her shoulder. His torch completely illuminated the ancient mosaic she was looking at.
"During the Old Testament Century, the Giant Beast King ruled the Demihuman World, and it was one of the strongest worlds in my opinion." Elijah declared, raising his chin. "But I didn't know that this Sovereign Mother of Heaven and Earth was his ally. I thought the only one on his level was the Dragon God of Miracle and Concealment."
"From what I remembered, the Dragon God of Miracle and Concealment must've banished the Daemon Realm after the war." Skyler added in a calm tone.
Upon hearing that, Elijah's bushy tail flapped whilst gnashing in anger, "Yes, those filthy daemons dared to attack my homeland and shed blood throughout the world. If I could, I'd kill them all."
"Hmm, this is the first time I've seen him so agitated. Well, I don't blame him since demihumans and daemons have always despised each other," Skyler cleared her throat and asked. "Just out of curiosity, if I'm not mistaken, the daemons used to live in the Southern Continent, right?"
At that moment, Elijah's eyes widened in amazement, "Hah, what are you babbling about? Look, they lived in the Eastern Continent before the First Disaster, and after their departure, the entire continent disappeared."
"But if there was a kingdom during the Samuel Dynasty, how can you say the Eastern Continent had disappeared even before the Genesis Testament Century?"
Stroking her chin with her fingers, Skyler tried to remember what her father had told her. According to him, in the New Testament Century, there was a kingdom called Zarathustra, ruled solely by the Morina family. While little was known about the kingdom, her father told her only that it was destroyed during the Second Disaster.
"I'm telling you, it's impossible that there was ever a land there." Elijah paused, scratching his head. "What you've heard is probably just one of the many legends about the continent."
"You are wrong! There was a kingdom back then—and from the record, it was called Zarathustra Kingdom."
"Listen to me for a second, if that kingdom really existed like you say, then why doesn't anyone know about it? And anyway, who even told you that nonsense?"
"It's not nonsense! My father told me! He was an Explorer, and he said it really—" Just when she was about to finish speaking, Skyler suddenly trailed off her words. "Right… now that I think about it, I've never heard of this kingdom except from dad, even having studied history for many years… these inconsistencies between the Old Testament and New Testament Centuries. It's possible that the Gods were behind all of it…"
With her bare feet going numb from the cold stone floor, she clutched the necklace around her neck, trying to make sense of what she'd discovered.
"Listen, I'll look around and see if I can find a book about my homeland. You stay here and don't move." Elijah said.
He then turned and headed towards the shelves at the back of the room, his footsteps echoing as the glow of his torch faded further and further away. Skyler turned to face the shelf beside her. The titles of these books all contained unfamiliar names. But despite this, she brushed her fingers along a row, book-by-book.
Then, she grabbed the spine of a book with a black clover and eased it out from the stuffed bookshelf. The book's title was a name that Skyler wasn't cognizant of. Opening the book, a name appeared in Skyler's sight—Daemon of Sloth—and afterward, a clouding of the consciousness came.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
A girl, a sole girl had begun to exist.
Humble white dress under her slender figure, her black hair blowing in the gray sky. Behind the girl, with her feet wet by the waves of the mossy shore, horses laid on the grass. They looked dead—no, they were all dead.
All the vegetation around the girl was dead. The girl was alone, crying.
No one would console her, loneliness was the one and only source of comfort she had. Even death itself was her only friend. After all, wherever she went everything died. Animals, plants, insects, and even people. Everything she interacted with was destined to die.
Maybe that's why everyone in the village wanted her dead. She was the personification of pestilence, and it was only natural that they wanted to kill her.
Walking along the mossy shore, the white flowers and grass she trampled under her bare feet quickly withered. As her magenta eyes darted at the tree in front of her, it suddenly burst into flame. With her feet dirty with mud and the air that became dry, the girl turned her gaze at the sky with tears running down her face.
"I get it… I represent the evil of humanity…" She said, voice faint.
In the next instant, the dead horses began to rot, swarms of flies as thick as black fog began to buzz the gloomy shore, while the lake turned murky black.
Death. Everything was dying. Everything was ending. Death itself was pouring out from within her.
She had lost everything. Her loving parents, her precious friends, her dear animals, everything was lost. Before her, shrouded in black, a figure with glowing magenta lights that looked like eyes, extended its vaporising arms. It seemed to want to merge with her.
"Most people don't understand you, but I do." said the figure. "If you accept me, I can make all your troubles vanish."
Becoming one with the figure. Having no other choice, the girl reached out and hugged it. She melted. She was becoming one with that figure.
Her old self died, and her new self was born.
Then, the flies vanished and the darkness around the girl disappeared. In its place, with the metallic smell entering her nostrils, a pile of rotting corpses lay around her, the shore's grass covering most of their decayed skin. The pestilence death slowly grew and grew, until it became a full-blown raging tempest, capable of sweeping anything within its path.
Blood, cadavers, withering, corruption, and decay were devouring the whole shore.
Deep down she knew that killing was a sin, but she killed those people anyway. On the other hand, they not only confined her, but even attempted to kill her. She was no longer a useful object for them, therefore, she'd no reason to show mercy to those who hate her.
She walked down among the pile of corpses, but more than walking, it seemed like she was dancing. The shore was her domain and the corpses formed her throne and as she kept walking, the girl lazily stroked her black hair with her wet fingers and yawned heavily.
Shortly after, she looked forward, a sinister smile forming on her moist lips.
"What a pain, you saw my face…" She murmured.
Someone saw her, someone saw her, someone saw her. Although there was no one else beside her, she knew very well that someone had just seen her. And with this awareness, her amethyst eyes turned to the person concerned.
"Whoever learns about me won't have an easy life."
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
"Ah, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?"
In the blink of an eye, Skyler's head jumped backward like she was being flicked away, and fell backwards.
What she'd been holding in her hands was dropped, she saw the world spinning around her. She took a wrenching breath, her lungs were having occasional panic attacks at her gasping breaths.
"Oi, Skyler!?" The demihuman boy with furry tail and ears—Elijah ran towards her.
"I-I am… Ah. Eh? I am… h-h-h-here—" Skyler tried to formulate the words.
Her mouth was opening and closing intermittently and her eyes were wide with terror. As the freezing cold of the room became present, she glanced down at her own pale hands.
Trembling, her hands were trembling.
"Deep breaths! Take deep breaths! Try to control yourself, okay?" Elijah exclaimed desperately.
Daemon of Sloth. Just hearing those words made Skyler's heart freeze, leaving her with no choice but to acknowledge that she's afraid.
Unable to hold back his concern, Elijah put his palm against Skyler's shoulder, at a loss whilst asking an uncertain question.
"—What's wrong? You're very pale, what did you see in that book?"
"—Let's go away." Skyler muttered weakly, cutting off Elijah's voice midway as she clutched her necklace strongly.
She had enough, overwhelmed by everything.
"Huh? Ah, what are you talking about? I still have to look for the—"
But how long does Elijah want to be obsessed with finding that damn book? Why won't he listen to her?
He was so frustrating that it made Skyler frown her brow in anger.
"I told you that we have to get out of here, now!!" She threw away the words she wanted to say, anger boiling hot in her throat as tears streamed down her face.
That book beneath her was the worst thing she ever came across.