Chapter 59

Quilbion pressed down firmly on the last burial mound with his hand, then turned around. Thirty-three small mounds.

He spoke to the nameless people who would be lying beneath them.

“I’m very late, but rest in peace.”

Were Royle and Zen among the countless skulls? He pondered briefly, but there was no way to know.

They might have been real people, or they might have been figments of his imagination.

He simply accepted the clear fact that people had lived here, and had died here.

Quilbion looked at the last burial mound.

The small girl Royle had introduced him to at the end.

Yale.

No wonder she’d felt familiar—she was the innkeeper’s daughter.

Where had reality begun, and where had the illusions ended?

The hawk descended with flapping wings. It held a bundle of straight branches in its beak.

He stuck the branches into the burial mounds one by one. He couldn’t erect gravestones, so hopefully this would suffice.

The hawk spread its massive wings and took flight. A single feather fluttered down, its length easily exceeding 20 centimeters.

“Are you still growing?”

That one wasn’t a normal hawk either.

He brushed the dirt from his hands and turned around.

Now that he’d finished, it was time to return.

He looked toward where the dormitories were.

Was Winte still there?

He tapped his feet lightly. His body stretched out smoothly. Thick branches blocked his path, but it didn’t matter.

With a rustling sound, the branches blocking his way snapped apart. To wound his toughened skin, you’d need to bring at least something made of metal.

This was a body that had withstood the nark wielded by goblins.

A physical form that had drifted far beyond the realm of ordinary humans. If he fought Geron now, he wouldn’t lose.

No, wouldn’t he actually kill him easily?

He kicked a tree that came into view. The tree cracked and splintered, and his body shot high into the sky.

He ran and ran again with the momentum to catch up to the hawk flying overhead.

Before long, the dormitories—detestable yet somehow welcoming—came into view.

The four standing dormitories seemed to exist one step removed from the flow of time.

Every building in the special livestock pen had crumbled and been devoured by vines, yet here……

He raised his head while examining the buildings maintained in perfect condition without a single crack.

If it was Winte, he’d surely be on the rooftop.

His eye based on sixth sense moved busily searching for golden light.

“He’s not here.”

He couldn’t find golden light anywhere in the dormitories.

Had he left to find someone else to brew coffee?

Quilbion entered Friendship House. He swept his eyes over the installed strings and entered the bedroom.

He saw the tally marks filling the wall.

He ran his hand over them and thought.

How old am I right now?

He lay on the bed and stared vacantly out the window.

The sun born from Winte’s hands was slowly sinking out of view.

Familiar darkness enveloped his body.

The sun rose and set.

Ten days passed.

He hadn’t moved a single step from the bed during that time. Time flowed endlessly, yet he felt nothing at all.

A state where hunger and the need for sleep had been severed.

Furthermore, the auditory and visual hallucinations had disappeared.

The hawk that occasionally visited to cry briefly, toss him an apple, and leave—and the rising and setting sun—were the only ways he could sense any change.

“This is maddening in its own way.”

Was it because his life floundering in fantasy had been too long?

The state where he couldn’t hear anything and couldn’t see anything bothered him.

“Funny, isn’t it?”

Quilbion spoke to the apple he’d placed on the opposite bed. Of course, the apple remained silent.

It would be nice if it at least had a mouth.

Another ten days passed.

“You don’t look well.”

He said while looking at the discolored apple.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed mold had grown too.

He picked up the apple and crunched through it. The taste was intense. He placed a new apple the hawk had brought on Drich’s bed.

“Nice to meet you, new friend.”

He giggled to himself, then walked outside with a serious expression.

For the first time in a while, he felt bored.

He left the bedroom and came into the hallway. A mirror he’d passed when entering caught his eye.

“What a sight.”

The man in the mirror looked extremely nature-friendly. No wonder his head felt heavy.

His hardened hair stuck to the back of his head like some kind of stick. Impressive that I lived with this thing attached.

Looking back, it had been somewhat uncomfortable lying down.

He gripped it with both hands and snapped it. It was hair, yet it broke off with a crack. The absurdity of it made him laugh.

He went to the stream, washed properly, and stood before the mirror again.

The beard covering his lower face like sheep’s wool. He snapped off the end of the mirror and scraped it briskly on the floor. It became a fairly usable razor blade.

He ran it across his palm to test the sharpened edge. It only felt like a scratch—the flesh didn’t split.

“Not human, not human at all.”

He shaved off the beard with the razor. Having occasionally pulled it out with his hands, the left side of his jaw had short stubble.

He finished shaving and stood before the mirror again.

Quilbion grimaced.

Even so, isn’t this going too far?

Early twenties? Mid-twenties?

He plopped down on the floor.

Even if the concept of time had completely vanished, he could roughly gauge through accumulated memories.

At least twenty years.

There was no way everything he’d experienced until now was fantasy. If it had all been illusions, his transformed body couldn’t be explained.

I lived in this forest catching goblins for at least twenty years.

A fact he couldn’t deny… or so he wanted to believe.

Quilbion looked in the mirror, tugged at his cheeks, then went outside. He ran eastward without any particular destination.

His destination was the sky-barrier.

The sky-barrier that severed world from world was visible in the distance. Looking at it with his sixth sense eye, he realized just how absurd a phenomenon the sky-barrier was.

It was neither nark nor mana.

What formed the sky-barrier was a mass of indescribable power.

What on earth is that thing?

Quilbion spread his palm and touched the sky-barrier.

The moment he made contact, he was certain.

He couldn’t break it. No matter what he did, he couldn’t cross to the other side.

Winte, who came and went through here, was simply incredible. A man truly approaching divinity.

At the same time, he recalled ‘that woman’ who descended from the sky.

That woman must possess power similar to Winte’s. That’s why she crossed the sky-barrier to come here.

Those eyes that looked down upon all creation.

An existence he’d had no choice but to prostrate before and worship.

His skin crawled. It was only because he’d known nothing, because he couldn’t see, that he’d been able to strike that woman’s foot with a rock.

Quilbion could guarantee it.

If that woman appeared before him now, he’d probably unhesitatingly rip out his heart and offer it respectfully.

He returned to the bedroom in Friendship House.

He sat on the bed and spent the day in a daze.

“……Want some coffee?”

He asked the apple on the opposite side.

Naturally, there was no answer.

He couldn’t break the sky-barrier, and there were no goblins around to hunt.

A creature that wasn’t quite human named Quilbion, and the hawk.

That meant there were only two residents total living in the territory inside the sky-barrier.

According to Lil, there should be humans or animals that unluckily got caught up and fell into the surface realm, but he rarely saw any.

Perhaps something had changed after ‘that woman’s’ visit.

Another six months passed.

He looked in the mirror after a long time.

A man with nothing changed was staring back crookedly.

He neither gained nor lost weight.

Only his hair grew vigorously—he couldn’t find any other physical changes.

“Could it be I don’t die?”

An empty laugh escaped.

Even if he hanged himself, the rope would rot away first, and metal implements couldn’t pierce his skin either……

Out of pure curiosity, he climbed to the dormitory rooftop. He looked down.

“It’s not that high.”

It was a height he could climb back up with a light stomp. Still, just in case, he dove headfirst.

Thud!

He did collapse head-first in a straight line. It was a flawless fall.

And he was perfectly fine.

His neck felt slightly sore, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the impact of the fall or from desperately hoping it would hurt.

He went to the stream and lay down properly.

He stayed like that for two days.

He realized he could live without breathing.

Feeling bored, he came outside and started a fire. He placed his hand over the flames.

It seemed warm, or maybe it didn’t.

While he had the fire going anyway, he tossed in a potato the hawk had brought.

Even though he’d told it several times he didn’t need to eat, the hawk had kept bringing food ever since he returned to the dormitories.

As if telling him not to give up on eating.

He chewed thoroughly on the dry, crumbly potato.

He continued eating out of habit.

Another six months flowed by.

Quilbion looked at the tally marks filling the wall.

“There’s an empty spot here.”

He brought his fingernail to the empty space and scraped down. A deep groove formed in the wall.

There was no more room to carve on the left wall. Quilbion looked at the wall where Drich’s bed was attached.

“Drich, I’ll probably have to use that side starting tomorrow.”

Quilbion spoke while looking at the smooth stone placed on Drich’s bed.

He knew full well that wasn’t a person, and it certainly wasn’t Drich.

But he’d given it a name anyway.

Because using the bedroom alone felt lonely.

He entered the storage room holding his coffee cup. He stuck his head into the bag that had been full of coffee beans.

Only a few crumbs were visible.

At last, the abundant coffee beans had run out.

It was the moment another pastime disappeared.

He gathered up the last coffee beans by turning the bag inside out. He placed them between his palms and rubbed with force.

He wrapped the finely ground coffee powder in cloth. After wetting it with water, he pressed it between his palms again.

He caught the coffee dripping down in his cup and drank it.

Actually, it tasted terrible. The coffee beans reeked of rot.

He took his coffee cup and went outside. He sat in the chair he’d stuck in the middle of the clearing and stared blankly at the sky.

The hawk descended with a low cry and perched beside him.

“How long are you going to keep growing? Hm?”

A hawk the size of a cow.

It was embarrassing to even call it a hawk anymore.

“Does your owner know you’re growing this recklessly?”

He stroked the hawk’s head relentlessly, then looked at the sun approaching from the distance.

He looked at the sun once, then at the hawk again.

“Let me ask you a favor.”

The hawk tilted its head.

Quilbion grinned and pointed at the sun.

A mass of power created by Winte.

The hawk spread its wings wide. A long shadow formed. Quilbion stood up and patted his own shoulders.

“You can grip tight.”

The hawk let out a long cry and rose gently, then snatched Quilbion’s shoulders with its sharp talons.

His body lifted.

With a single flap of its wings, the ground receded far below.

Quilbion brought his thumb before his eyes. The dormitories had shrunk small enough to hide behind his thumb.

As the hawk moved its wings, the sun drew closer.

The sun observed up close was like a living creature ruthlessly emanating power.

The lingering resonance of power that remained even after Winte disappeared.

The hawk soared upward, then stopped.

It must have touched the sky-barrier.

Quilbion looked at the sun positioned below his feet.

Fire becomes hotter the closer you get. It was common knowledge that standing under the midday sun would cook your flesh.

Yet the sun before his eyes was merely bright—there was no sense of heat at all.

“Let go. Just in case, stay far away.”

The hawk, which had always obediently listened, resisted for the first time. The feet gripping his shoulders refused to release.

“It’s fine.”

He patted the hawk’s rough legs reassuringly.

The resisting hawk let out a long cry, then relaxed its grip.

Quilbion plummeted straight toward the sun.