GRP Chapter 26

They had said it with so much theatrical confidence that even Mariaeks could not help but react.

A different light entered her clear eyes.

Eight years old. Garthe at eight years old.

She could not picture his young face at all. He seemed the type to have been born with a solid body and great strength from the very first moment.

"The god they called 'Paradise' became the Anir's very first offering!"

"A god with the ability to enchant living beings. They say she ruled over thousands of humans with beauty alone—just hearing it described, it's hard to imagine what that would even look like..."

The men paused and stared at Mariaeks.

"Ahem, ahem. Anyway... The faction worshipping Paradise grew larger with time. Her voluntary devotees absorbed nearby territories and small villages. The Anir was an ordinary boy from a small village, one of the many caught up in that aggressive expansion."

An ordinary boy. These were words that suited Garthe not at all. Not ordinary. Not a boy.

"Paradise's power was truly extraordinary—they say even people dragged there against their will would press their lips to her feet and feel overwhelmed with reverence. But who is our Anir? Different from the very beginning. He was not enchanted at all, not by Paradise's beauty or her power of fascination!"

"Paradise, too, came to know the Anir's special nature! She smiled and pointed at the young Anir. 'Offer that child to me as a sacrifice!'"

The men were reasonably good storytellers. Even knowing the ending—a god dies, a new hero is born—Mariaeks found herself beginning to wonder how the ordinary boy had overcome his hardships and trials.

"The Anir was bound and offered up to the altar!"

"Paradise approached the Anir with a radiant smile!"

"The zealots cheered at her smile!"

"The moment death was right there before him, that very moment!"

They described it as if they had witnessed it with their own eyes.

"The Anir's divine nature awakened!"

"The boy's hand pierced Paradise's heart! Black flames that destroy everything burned through the heart! Paradise screamed, vomited blood, and collapsed, and at last met her death!"

"The monster that had devoured hundreds of thousands of humans and grown its power knelt before the divinity of an eight-year-old boy!"

Applause erupted around them. The men drank deeply, proud as if the heroic tale were their own achievement.

"And so Paradise of Olgidphaenn died, and the chronicle of the hero Garthe of Olgidphaenn began. Up to this very day."

Olgidphaenn. The familiar name brought Mariaeks's gaze back to the men.

"Olgidphaenn?"

She had kept her mouth pressed shut through the entirety of the story. It was her first question. They broke into bright smiles.

There it was. Any living creature would be drawn in by kin, land, and fellowship!

"Yes! Did we not mention it? Ah, our Anir is from this very Olgidphaenn."

"Why, it's right on Heimdrykze's doorstep!"

"Perhaps the two of you might have even met once? Ha-heh, truly fate, isn't it!"

The image of one man formed clearly in her mind. Large frame, dark hair, pale skin. Features like the humans she had seen before, in those times. A typical northerner. She found herself thinking she should have realized sooner.

Her attention snagged on a point that didn't quite fit the story. A powerful god, 'Paradise of Olgidphaenn,' and thousands of zealots worshipping her? If a group of that scale had existed, she would have heard of it, even living in the mountains.

Moreover, it had been nearly a hundred years since even traces of humans had been nearly impossible to find anywhere nearby. How had so many humans come to gather in the first place?

She had heard from Rhaevydie that humans were making a nuisance of themselves with their fortresses and such, but that had been an extremely recent development.

Only when she had thought this far did Mariaeks realize. The birth of the hero Garthe was not a recent story. A hundred years ago, when humans had still lived in this land.

Mariaeks had no skill at judging a human's age by appearance alone. There had been no particular opportunity to think about it. While she was near Garthe, there was no way she could have had a thought as relaxed as 'how old might he be?'

"If it's not rude to ask, how old might you be, Mariaeks...?"

"...A little over a hundred and fifty years."

"Oh! Oh, goodness! Similar ages, even! Our Anir turned 144 this year. Ahh, they say these days a twenty-year difference barely registers as a gap!"

The men's nonsense confirmed her understanding. The age of that man who looked so vigorous and young was well over a hundred years.

Mariaeks was caught by a feeling she couldn't name. On the day this entire region froze, every human had met their death. Mariaeks had witnessed all of it. She had believed every living thing was buried beneath the white snow. And there had been one who survived.

Mariaeks's fingers, folded neatly in her lap, moved without her intending them to.

Several feelings mixed together, and began spreading slowly into a color she did not know.

Just as she was about to turn the name of the feeling over in her mind, a commotion erupted.

Drunk humans had gotten into a fight. The men with Mariaeks quickly moved to break it up. Thud-da-DUMP, kuh-da-DUMP—dishes flew through the air and tables overturned. The tavern owner compiled a list of broken items with the calm of someone well-used to this.

A struck man flew through the air and crashed into a wooden crate that had been serving as a chair. The crate shattered and whatever was inside burst out. One of them rolled to Mariaeks's feet.

Mariaeks cut her eyes carefully around the room. The tavern was chaos with the brawl. That she bent quietly and picked it up went unnoticed by anyone.

The reclamation of Olgidphaenn proceeded by seizing several key positions of strategic value, then slowly expanding from those footholds. Breaking the territory's dominant powers one by one, demolishing monster lairs and raising human fortresses in their place.

After roughly ten years of this, Garthe's name had spread to cover every corner of Olgidphaenn. Without anyone having declared it, everyone came to understand that a single human had become the master of Olgidphaenn.

Of course, not all the monsters had been eliminated. The territory was vast, and ten-odd years was far too short. When you factored in those that fled into the divine territory across the river, a complete conquest remained a distant prospect.

Monster attacks appeared without warning frequently enough that people had come to regard the threat as a natural phenomenon—simply there. And so Garthe, too, had not paid close attention to the monster mob that had quietly built its strength and seized Jüllaphan in a single move.

White monsters filled the snowfield.

Garthe swept a cold, indifferent gaze across them. Exactly as described in the report from the scouts. Quadrupeds roughly the size of bears. White fur that blended with the surroundings. Sharp claws. At a glance they could pass for large northern wolves. Face to face, there was no mistaking them for ordinary animals.

Where a head should have been, multiple human faces were attached instead. The number varied by individual, from one to more than ten. A young girl's face made crying sounds: "Mama, mama." An old man's face begged in a phlegm-thickened voice: "T-tell me. Tell me." They seemed to be imitating voices they had heard.

The image of the scout who had shuddered while making the report passed through his mind. Quite so. To a human, this would be far more unsettling than monsters that simply howled.

Garthe's mouth took on a cold curve. He had seen worse things many times, and there was something faintly amusing about the fact that these unsettling creatures were now cautiously backing away from him. As befitted monsters living by kill-or-be-killed, they seemed to have understood the moment they faced him who was predator and who was prey. The conflict pooled in thousands of pairs of eyes confirmed it.

Were they trying to flee? Or did they want to combine their strength and consume the strong, become stronger? Garthe wanted to inform them that neither choice was wise.

The monsters showed an unexpected reaction.

Those that had been rolling, crawling, and leaping about all at once pressed themselves flat to the ground.

Garthe raised both brows.

Well, then.

Smarter than expected.

Going soft for no reason... He was saying words he didn't mean. Garthe drew his sword—easy, frictionless, untroubled. A clean death in a single stroke. That much mercy he could spare.

Then one of the monsters tilted its heads back in the posture of a wolf howling at the moon and spoke.

"A-, ah-beau-tiful, eter...nal P-Pa-ra-dise—"

One of Garthe's eyes narrowed.

"Th-this ten-der... pu-ure of-fering, re-ceive, and ple-ase, bl-ess—"

The sword drew a clean line through the air. Dark red blood poured from the monster, split in half in an instant. At this, the remaining monsters pressed their heads lower still.

"W-with a smile like moon-light, bless us—"

"Sh-share your lo-ove— with u-us!"

"To k-kind and beau-ti-ful Pa-ra-dise— my heart and my so-ul, I of-fer—"

Familiar phrases pricked something buried in memory.

Garthe stared, still, at the white snow-covered expanse. A kingdom that no longer existed sketched itself faintly before his eyes. The zealots. And, even, 'Paradise' herself—with her smile like moonlight, who had ruled them all.