Chapter 56

What is a dream, and what is reality?

Actually, distinguishing between the two phenomena wasn’t important. Whether dream or reality, it was meaningless either way.

“Quil?”

Quilbion looked at the first pig sitting down while removing his hat. Pitch-black fur caught his eye.

“You turned black.”

“I must’ve been in the sun too long. My fur got dyed like this.”

“It suits you well.”

Oink oink oink.

The first pig let out a murky laugh while organizing invoices.

“This month’s in the red.”

“The construction’s been halted.”

“Quil, try to bring in some work from somewhere. At this rate our shop will close.”

“Is that easy to do in a recession?”

The first pig scratched his head hard with his front hoof.

“Is it time to move to another city? Competitors keep increasing, so we can’t hold on.”

Ding—the door opened with a sound. What poked its head in was a wolf with an elongated mouth.

“Oh my, you’re still doing business.”

The wolf grinned while scanning the shop’s interior, then clicked his tongue.

“The door’s open, but there don’t seem to be any customers?”

“This guy, look at this.”

The first pig jumped up and approached the wolf.

The two argued for a while before soon going outside and raising their voices.

Quilbion watched them with his chin propped up, then tilted his head back.

Swoosh!

A rock passed before his eyes.

Quilbion let out a deep sigh while crouching. Behind him, the pig and wolf were scuffling, and before his eyes was a headless cat.

The cat had the minor characteristics of being the size of a human torso and having arms attached to its shoulders in addition to the four legs supporting its body, but it was a cat nonetheless.

“Why? You got something to say too?”

The goblin—whether it had stolen the cat’s body or just happened to resemble a cat—threw another rock.

A heavy whoosh passed beside Quilbion’s head.

It had good strength, but terrible accuracy.

“If you throw like that, you won’t even hit a blind bird, yeah?”

He had to show an example.

Quilbion gripped a rolling pebble. He let nark flow into the clutched stone.

“Watch closely.”

He threw it lightly toward the cat. The pebble flew in a smooth parabola.

The cat leaped up into a tree. Thinking it had dodged perfectly, the cat that landed on a branch acted leisurely.

Quilbion tilted his head.

“You’ll die doing that.”

The pebble that had been curving downward shot upward. The cat couldn’t react.

The pebble pierced through the cat’s torso.

The nark the cat held exploded along with its torso. He extended his hand toward the scattering nark.

Black currents seeped in along Quilbion’s skin.

“I gave you a hint—you should’ve quit while you were ahead.”

“Really, this person! Words won’t work on you!”

Quilbion sniffled and looked back. The wolf and pig were warmly exchanging punches.

That’s right, swing! Eh-hey, you should’ve dodged that one. Quilbion leaned against a tree and watched their fight.

Before long, people rushed out and separated the two. It was when the huffing wolf opened its mouth wide.

Along with intense tinnitus, murky light covered his vision. Quilbion closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

The pig and wolf, the people, the workshop full of timber smells—everything disappeared.

What remained was only the dense greenery and the melting cat goblin.

Quilbion sat before the half-melted cat.

“Hey, what seems real to you? Does the pig and wolf fighting seem like reality, or does the headless cat eating people seem like reality?”

The cat had no answer.

Quilbion raised his foot sharply and crushed the cat’s corpse, then turned around.

It was a lousy day.

On days like this, he had to lie in the hammock and just look up at the sky.

He climbed the tree and laid his body in the cozy bed.

“Quil.”

Drich was lying in the hammock across from him.

“What?”

“You know, how long are you going to live like this?”

“What do you mean, live like this?”

“Look at yourself right now.”

Quilbion lowered his head. Shabby work clothes came into view. Work boots worn through with slight holes were a bonus.

“What’s wrong with this?”

“A man should have big dreams. It’s time we started a business with our names on it.”

“Hey, leaving the guild means suffering like hell. It’s better to just live moderately within the fence.”

“What happens after you give up your youth there? It’s really the end.”

Drich, who’d jumped up from the bed, threw open the window.

“This place has changed a lot too. It was a village with nothing, but now it’s no less than any city.”

“That’s right.”

“While our foundation changed like this, what did we get in our hands? We have nothing.”

Drich, who’d been looking outside, looked at Quilbion again.

“Quil, but you know.”

“What now?”

“Are you really okay living like that? Haven’t you forgotten something?”

The same question thrown repeatedly.

Quilbion looked down at his body one more time.

Cloth scraps rotted and almost completely gone. Bare feet turned pitch black. Countless scars.

“……”

Quilbion grimaced and pressed hard on his eyes.

“What did I forget? Drich, huh?”

He looked to the side. Only tree branches caught in his vision. Quilbion let out a hollow laugh.

“Damn bastard, you should give an answer before disappearing.”

Are you really okay living like that?

It was a question that mercilessly scratched his nerves. It had been truly ages since his head ached.

He’d forgotten the word worry itself for a while, but it suddenly came back to life.

Damn bastard.

Can’t stand to see a friend live comfortably.

He sat up. His broken brain latched onto the tail of the question. The problem with this brain was it didn’t listen to its owner.

When he thought “I shouldn’t think about it,” it made him think. When he thought “I should forget,” it kept showing him.

Are you really okay living like that?

Even the sound of wind began to sound like that.

“Ugh, what am I supposed to do about it?”

He wanders around and catches goblins when he sees them. After spending the day like that, when the light disappears…… ah, when the sun sets, he returns to bed and waits for sleep that won’t come.

It was an unchanging routine.

A fixed life with no room for idle thoughts to intervene.

How nice is that?

Pfft, a blank laugh escaped.

Nice, my ass.

The brain that had completely given up on thinking worked for the first time in ages. Thoughts, thoughts, more thoughts.

The fantasies that had always been by his side disappeared.

The time when the boundary between reality and dreams became clear had arrived.

It was the moment Quilbion hated most.

Because every time he came to his senses, he felt like shit.

Of course, recognizing that he’d come to his senses was itself a contradiction. Because the subject verifying validity was ‘me.’ What can a crazy bastard distinguish?

So he merely felt like he’d come to his senses.

The problem was that having that feeling itself was unsettling.

Quilbion rolled his head while smelling the scent the wet forest produced.

How many days had passed? No, how many months or years had gone by?

His sense of time was completely distorted.

Because sleep had disappeared.

A continuation of thoughts without severance.

He detected the flow of time through the phenomenon of the sun rising and setting, but it didn’t remain in his mind.

Fragments of reality with nothing to change and the appearance of Quilbion within fantasies now perfectly incorporated into reality seized his head without order.

It had been like that just moments ago too.

His brain showed him a pig fighting a wolf, and his eyes looked at the goblin of reality before him.

It was an overlapped state, but there was no confusion.

Because that had become ordinary daily life.

To the point where even self-deprecating about being insane became mere grumbling, Quilbion was aware that he was broken.

“Let’s see.”

Quilbion looked at the ground.

He traced through the memories of the past few weeks while looking at crawling insects.

Catching goblins, then catching more goblins. Then catching goblins again.

“Ah!”

Royle, and Zen.

Were those guys living well?

Since he remembered, he moved.

The probability was very high that he’d space out along the way, forget his purpose and wander, then return to the tree again, but anyway, his brain was working now.

It was definitely Daisy.

Whether he’d met her yesterday, last month, or seen her last year.

It was confusing, but anyway he’d seen her several times, and when he picked up humans while wandering around, he’d delivered them to that person.

Finding traces was easy work.

Because clustered humans scattered nark. If he followed the mixed nark, he could meet them easily.

How many times had day and night changed like that?

Quilbion discovered humans huddled together. They’d set up camp in front of huts while holding weapons made from carved wood.

He pondered seriously while looking at them.

How many of those humans have I killed?

It might have been so.

He’d recognized them as goblins and killed them, but they might actually have been human. Because things done by a crazy bastard are generally a mess.

“If I did something wrong, I’ll apologize first anyway.”

“……Who is it?”

“Ah. You don’t know me.”

He understood why the other side was hostile. They must have thought he was a goblin in human form.

Should he explain that he’s not a goblin?

Then this thought suddenly occurred.

Is there really a need to explain the situation and look for those kids? If they had good skills and luck followed, they’d be alive, and if not, they’d be dead.

“They’re probably dead.”

Quilbion smiled bitterly.

This was a domain where goblins ran wild.

Only humans with fucking terrible luck fell to this place. How long could humans who were transferred here with only their bodies and no means of survival really last?

He knew there were groups that stubbornly survived for years, groups that wouldn’t be strange to call tribes.

But they were an extreme minority.

Most disappeared. Whether they went into a goblin’s belly or into the belly of a comrade who’d been guarding the seat next to them.

Either way, they went into a belly.

“Live well. I’ll be going then.”

It was when he waved his hand and turned around.

“Wait a moment.”

Someone emerged from the crowd.

It was a fairly tall young man. His eyes were piercing too. The humans around looked at the young man who’d stepped forward with trust.

A spiritual pillar?

Quilbion stared blankly at the young man who’d stopped him. If you called someone, you should speak, but the young man only moved his mouth slightly.

“Can’t talk?”

So he asked first.

“No. I can.”

“Then do it.”

“It’s just…… I can’t believe it.”

“The world’s originally full of unbelievable things. I know that well.”

The young man put down the crude stone axe he was holding and approached. The people standing behind made worried sounds.

“Do you remember me?”

The young man asked.

“That’s a really difficult question. You see, I look fine on the outside right now, but……”

He looked down while speaking.

A human running around wearing only rags.

The other side’s appearance wasn’t particularly good either, but still, they wore tanned leather wrapped around their bodies.

“I don’t look fine.”

He chuckled, then continued speaking.

“Anyway, my head’s gone bad. So I can’t recognize people well. So I’ll ask you. Do you know me?”

“I know, I don’t know well, but I definitely know.”

The young man approached and gripped Quilbion’s hand.

It was a person’s touch he’d felt after so long that it was extremely awkward.

“I’m Royle.”

The young man said.

Quilbion went “Ah” and nodded, then looked up at the sky.

“I’m really fucked.”

The little kid in his memory had already become an adult.

Then how many years have I spent here?

At the terrible thought, only snickers kept escaping.