Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash: Volume 20 (eBook)

Ao Jyumonji (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-0642-4 (ISBN)

Infos

The sekaishu are everywhere, and people have been dying left and right—even Kuzaku and Setora. Why has the world turned out like this? Because of Merry? No. It’s because of the No-Life King that took her place. And Haruhiro can’t help but blame himself for all of it.
At least there’s a light beyond the darkness: a reunion with the strongest volunteer soldiers. A new life will be conceived in the base where the survivors are gathering. The world may be falling apart, but this isn’t the end yet. There may be a way to stop the devastation.
According to an old legend, a red star was once struck down by the primordial dragon, and its fragments became the black tumors known as the sekaishu that are infesting the world. This story may hold the key to saving Grimgar. It’s time for friends to stand together and put an end to this threat once and for all.

Textauszug

1. If Life’s Made Up of Nothing but Mistakes

What happened?

Do you really want to know?

Yeah, I figured.

But consider how I feel, having to answer your question.

It’s not a simple tale. There were a lot of different circumstances that played a part. It was a complicated situation in all kinds of ways. And it’s not like I even understand it all myself. Hell, forget understanding everything, my knowledge barely amounts to a fistful of sand. And even that may be overstating it. What I know might be closer to a single grain of sand.

But even that single grain of sand will be a long story.

If I were to try to tell you from the beginning—at least, the beginning as far back as I can remember it, when I heard the word “Awaken” and opened my eyes—it would take far too long. It’s not that I don’t have enough time, though. To be honest, it’s just that it’s hard for me to talk about. And I don’t want to. There’s that too.

Let’s start in the middle, back when I was called Haruhiro.

I mean, back when there were still people who called me that.

Yeah.

I had a few of those.

People who mattered to me.

It would have been, I think, January of the 660th year of the Arabakian Calendar. Yeah, on the twenty-second. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the year right, but who knows. I’m not quite so confident about the day. But anyway, it was either January twenty-first or twenty-second of 660 A.C. Or maybe it was the twenty-third? Somewhere around there.

Back then, I wasn’t alone.

I had comrades.

Ranta.

He wasn’t as tall as me, so you’d probably say he was short. But short though he was, he was capable of releasing these incredible bursts of explosive strength—and calling them “explosive” is not even remotely an exaggeration. Was that something he was born with? Probably not. He wasn’t the type to work hard and slowly build up to something, but he had some real tenacity to him. He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ever just sit there quietly while someone looked down at him from on high. He was noisy, and stubborn as hell. No matter how life beat him down, he never let it keep him there. More than anything, he was strong of heart, and brimming with vital energy.

I could never bring myself to like Ranta. We were never able to get along, from the first time we met, and there were countless times when I thought I couldn’t keep working with him. We parted after a fight once, and there was a long time after that when we were each doing our own thing. As for him, I’ll bet he hated my indecisiveness. No matter how much time went by, we were like water and oil.

Even now, I hate the guy. Just remembering the way his voice grated on my ears makes me mad. He had curly hair, and whenever it got too long, he’d wrap it around his fingers, then cut it with a knife. That move always pissed me off. Like I said before, I was called Haruhiro back then. But that guy would deliberately call me Parupiro, Parupirorin, and other similar names. That kind of stupid flippant behavior really rubbed me the wrong way.

He had all sorts of things I lacked.

Was I jealous of him? No. I will insist to my dying breath that I was not. I never wished that I was more like him. Not once.

But before I knew it, I found myself following him. He always kept on pushing forward. He wasn’t the type to look back and wait for me to catch up. If I had stayed where I was, he’d have left me behind. I don’t know if he was aware that he was pulling me, pulling us, along. I’m not him, so how could I know? But I doubt it.

He was just living true to himself.

Come to think of it, he had a scar on his face. It started on the upper right part of his forehead, crossed his brow, and ended under his left ear. It was a big, prominent scar. Yet he kept his head high, as if to say that scar was just a part of him. There were times when he seemed so radiant to me.

Then there was Yume.

If she hadn’t been around, our journey would have been much shorter, and no one would be here now, looking back on it.

I’d never known anyone as agile and robust as she was. I still don’t. Obviously, that’s nothing more than my personal perspective. Others might disagree. But I won’t let anyone who didn’t know Yume reject my view of her. I genuinely liked her. I could never hate her, no matter what. There was nothing to hate about her.

So I can understand why Ranta loved her so strongly and deeply. It would be strange not to love someone like her. I think the reason I didn’t love her in that way was because I simply liked her. My affection for her was—and I realize how weird it is to be saying this myself—incredibly innocent. I’m sure the idea of trying to make her my own never even crossed my mind. Not once. She cared about me too. I never once doubted the trust and kindness she offered me. I never needed to ask something of her. She gave everything freely, without being asked. And always without expecting anything in return.

I don’t think Ranta expected anything in return from her either. But maybe, in order to keep himself strong, he wanted her to be someone he could show his weakness to without restraint—basically someone who would indulge him. Yume was probably the only person who could have done that for a guy like Ranta.

It was around January twenty-second, 660 A.C.

I was working with Ranta and Yume. Yume’s master Itsukushima and the wolf-dog Poochie were with us too.

Itsukushima was a generation older than us, or more like two generations. He always seemed more like a parent than a big brother figure, so it feels a little bit wrong to call him one of us. He was a hunter adept in the art of survival, and a thoughtful adult.

Ranta, Yume, and I had spent many years in Grimgar, so we weren’t kids anymore. We were adults, at least in some respects. But looking back on it now, I think maybe we hadn’t fully matured. Me in particular.

Through a series of events, I had become the leader of the group, yet I can’t help but feel like I might have been the least mature of all of us. And because of that, having Itsukushima with us was a big help.

Itsukushima basically never told us how things were, or what we ought to do in any given circumstance. He moved on his own, and showed by example, not by words. That was the style of that most hunter-like of hunters. And, though I guess this should be obvious, Poochie didn’t talk either. As I recall, Poochie was fairly old for a wolf-dog. Maybe that was why whenever he sat in silence like an old forest sage, he seemed to understand the nature of things far better than us humans. I honestly believe that Poochie had a high degree of intelligence, even if it wasn’t the same kind that we have. The fact is, there are any number of creatures out there that are wiser than us crafty humans.

Around January twenty-second of 660 A.C., we returned to Alterna.

Yes, that Alterna.

Or what was left of it.

It was in awful shape. I could say that it wasn’t even a shadow of its former self, but that doesn’t quite capture it. It wasn’t that it was a pile of rubble, or that it had been laid to waste, or anything like that.

They were gone. The people. Not one of them was left.

In their place, the sekaishu—those dark, tubelike entities—were swarming all over the place.

Sekaishu. Back then, we didn’t really know what they were. Or rather, it’s fair to say that we had absolutely no clue whatsoever.

I think I sensed that something felt off about them. Like they were clearly not of this world. But, well, that wasn’t all that uncommon in Grimgar. Still, the sekaishu were bizarre.

Black. The sekaishu were pitch black. A pure black, without a hint of luster. They didn’t reflect so much as a mote of light. Does any material like that exist in the natural world? They were flexible, expanding and contracting, but could also be hard as well. Even if you slashed at them with a blade, they weren’t easy to cut through. You couldn’t hurt them. They moved. But at the same time, it was hard to imagine that they were alive. I didn’t sense anything resembling life from them.

They were incompatible with this world, Grimgar—one of many worlds, created according to certain rules—and they were a thing, or a phenomenon, that was impossible to define as living or unliving.

That was basically what the sekaishu were.

If I were to try to put it into words back then, that was the sort of fuzzy understanding that I had.

Back then, we were resting at the building that had once been the Temple of Lumiaris in the North District, which was located on an elevated bit of terrain. Then I went out to scout.

I was going to the thieves’ guild in West Town. I had a feeling that, even with the state the town was in, one of the mentors, Eliza, might still have been there. If even she was gone, then that would mean there wasn’t a soul left in Alterna. I wanted to check. I’d been a thief myself, so I was used to operating solo. Working that way was easier for me too. I cared about my comrades. Cared far too much. I didn’t want to lose anyone. Couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

The thieves’ guild was empty. Eliza wasn’t there. How did that make me feel? I can’t recall.

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Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.6.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
• Illustrationen: Eiri Shirai
• Übersetzer: Sean McCann
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Adventure • Battle • Fantasy • Light Novel • Magic • other world • Survival
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-0642-3 / 1718306423
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-0642-4 / 9781718306424