They will never forgive Mother for her sins; they who were born as one, they who forgot the very thing they were supposed to represent, they will never forget their hatred, their desire for revenge, with rage as their only fuel. We may have defeated them, but they will return sooner or later, just as we did, and the day they return will be the day the flame of their wrath will consume this world.

I, Amira Fire Primordial Dragon, will wait here in the very same place where they and Mother fell for their return as my punishment and duty.

A recurrent flapping could be heard, and it was quite explosive, but it wasn't anything to be afraid of, as it wasn't the sound of wing flapping or any other sound produced by a monster, but rather the sound of me vigorously flapping my wet clothes.

I was currently submerged by water up to my knees, and the streamy sound of the flow of water was cradling the surroundings.

The recurring flapping was caused by me attempting to dry water from the semblance of clothes I usually wear.

Though I couldn't attest to its aesthetic appearance, I could boast that it was made of the finest and smoothest monster's skin we'd ever encountered, handmade by the most survivalist human child of the Iharana Great Forest, and I, myself, could attest to its warmth and ability to not be a hindrance in combat or mobility like most monster-fur-made clothing does.

We continued our journey south for a few days after I killed that dragon with my attack. Earlier in the morning, we met some weak monsters, slew them for edible purposes, and settled for a camp next to a river for the night. Being close to a water source, I figured it was finally time for me to wash these clothes since they were really starting to stink from not being washed for such a long period of time.

After removing the majority of the water from the fur clothing by flapping it repeatedly into thin air, I proceeded to enhance the fabric with aina and extract the remaining water from it.

I draped the cloth over my shoulder and began cleaning myself.

When I washed my face, my hand went to its right side; the left side was smooth, but the right side was teemed with cut and burn scars. When I rubbed my limbs, I came to my right arm, whose skin had cracked like a rusty piece of metal due to the constant injuries I received from training that attack of mine, especially the lightning part, and finally, when I washed my chest, I felt the scar left by that empaling I received back then.

A living museum for scars and injuries.

I couldn't help but stay still and think about my reflection in the water.

"I must resemble nothing right now,"

I said while blowing a warm breath into my joined palms. The warm and heavy breath signaled the arrival of my once-feared old foe. "Winter."

In certain areas of the forest, the winter comes slightly earlier than in others. I believe we are on the earlier side here.

Once done with bathing myself, I left the water stream, put my clothes back on, and headed to where our campfire was. After all, we were in the middle of the night. Heon was gnashing her teeth at a monster corpse, and Han,... well, he was there.

"So what do we do tomorrow, chief?"

I went to grab a piece of meat, which I left under the fire before I went to wash my clothes and take a bath. "Tomorrow we’ll enter that part of the forest,... I admit it’s quite a shame that I just got to like this part of the forest. Now we already have to leave it. "

After traveling for three months or so in this area, we’ve currently reached the end of the glade within the great forest and are at the end of the outskirts of yet another area of the forest.

I lay on the ground facing the sky, saying, "I like the feeling of having an open sky above me. What does it look like? "

"What ?"

"The sky."

"Well, it’s dark blue, bright, with no moon, no clouds, but only stars, a lot of them. You have the small ones, medium ones, and then the big and bright ones, but still, the brightness of the sky was mainly because of the agglomeration of the small ones. The bright ones were there, but the fact that they were less numerous and far away from each other gave the impression that they were mainly standing out for their loneliness, and they were easily outshone by the small one’s agglutination. "

"I see. I think I can picture that. Quite impressive given how horrible you used to be at describing things. "

"I guess we all eventually improve with time."

I remained silent, reminiscing about the key moments of this journey, and couldn't help but agree more.

I have come a long way, done many questionable things, but things are better now, without doubt, a thousand times better than when they began.

Things got better, they improved, which is why, I believe, I grew afraid of the change, and seeing how this all was going to end.

***

As soon as I woke up, we left the beloved treeless area for the next tree-filled area of the forest.

I wasn’t discouraged by it anymore, it’s just that I would slightly miss that place.

We advanced at a quite rapid pace for a whole half-day, riding on Heon’s back, because I could and she allowed me to; I was expecting the next area to be like those we’ve seen so far, but it wasn’t.

Well, it did look like what we have seen so far. The trees, the environment, everything looked pretty generic except for one thing.

As we got deeper and deeper, it became more and more apparent, but the lack of life in this area was quite disturbing, I mean, the tree was there, but not a single insect nor monster could be sensed within kilometers.

And there was something else bothering me, but I couldn’t quite put my hand on what exactly it was.

The heavy silence of this place was whispering danger in my ear.

"There is something wrong with this place."

"..."

"You two felt it too?"

"Whatever the cause of this is, I have the impression that we’re getting closer and closer. So what are we doing? Do we bail out of this place and take a detour? "

As I previously stated, the silence of this place was whispering danger in my ear, but I was curious.

It is not within our habit to avoid direct confrontation with monsters, but that was us until one year ago when we met Heon. We stopped killing whatever came into sight. Avoiding conflict isn’t all that bad after all. However, we never ran away from monsters, either.

That being said, I must admit that the reason why I wanted to see for myself the reason behind this area’s situation was even a mystery to me, it wasn’t just my pride of not running away from a monster or just curiosity; something was itching me, it was beyond curiosity and I wanted to find out what it was.

"I know it’s risky, but I’d like to see what the source of this is."

"... "

"Well, why not? Even if it gets more than we can handle, all we’ll have to do is to immediately fall back. After all, we have Heon and her speed, I doubt any monster can outrun her."

I still have no idea what kind of monster she was, but she’s really impressive. She uses only one element, which is light magic, which gives her the high ground compared to other monsters in terms of speed.

So we kept advancing deep into the woods. As we advanced, I noticed that Heon’s footsteps were getting slower and slower, more and more hesitant, but despite that, she kept advancing.

After thirty minutes, we finally arrived at what we believed to be the reason for this area's situation.

"What the-?!"

"Why? Why?! Why"

Even though I don’t see it, I could feel it. I can easily picture it in my head.

It wasn't visible from a distance, but as we got closer, it became clear.

A barrier, just like the one protecting humans, with the only difference that this one was on the smaller side and that it hadn’t started to attack us.

I immediately realised what was itching me earlier. It wasn’t curiosity or anything, it was nostalgia, but it wasn’t all. I felt something that I couldn’t describe very well but the closest thing to it would be resentment and anger.

That strange silence resembled the one from the place in the outer section of the forest, I descended from Heon’s back and got closer to it.

I got closer to reading myself from an incoming attack, but after a few steps, nothing happened. It didn’t attack me as I expected it would.

This barrier was similar to but distinct from the one found on the human continent, but its presence here could only mean one thing: the presence of other humans, or worse, remnants.

The memory of my last encounter with a remnant was still vivid, yet I couldn’t understand why I did it.

I reached my hand onto the barrier, the moment I did, no in fact before it even came into contact, it was as if I was instantly sucked in.

Even from the way it acted, the barrier was entirely different. It wasn’t like I was sucked then sent on the other side of the barrier like the one from the human continent does, instead, it felt like I was transported to an entirely different place.

I was a few minutes ago in an almost jungly forest. Now I was in the middle of a wide grassland with no resemblance to the forestry ambiance, yet silent from earlier.

There was no trace of Han and Heon. And the most frightening aspect of this place was that there was no longer any trace of the barrier.

Despite my condition, I usually have a good grasp of the cardinal points, but I was completely lost as to where I could possibly be.

"Hello, there."

I couldn’t help but sigh with relief. But his silhouette was nowhere to be seen.

"Any idea of what’s going on here?"

"Absolutely not. Where is Heon? "

"I didn’t know we’d been separated upon entering the barrier. That being said, we have a more urgent matter. There is something, some sort of magic, within this place that is disturbing anything related to magic and mana, I can’t even fully take form anymore. I am no different than a ghost with no physical form. "

To confirm his claims, I tried to use the little light and lightning magic embedded in my sword, but couldn’t.

Luckily for me, Aina was still usable.

"We must leave this place."

"Yeah, but how?"

Except for casually passing through the barrier like we did to get in, breaking through the barrier was our best shot to get out of here. The problem is that there is no longer any barrier to break through, at least I don’t sense it.

We were currently in a grassland that seemed to spread endlessly on each cardinal points.

"I don’t know, but we must leave this place, I have a very bad feeling about this place. Being curious about the thing causing the state of the forest was a terrible mistake. "

"It’s useless to lament over that right now. Let’s explore the surroundings. Maybe we’ll find a way out of here. "

"Let’s try that."

After all, that was all the option we had.

I walked and never in my life have I felt so lost, I had the horrible impression of walking in a circle. The worst part was that even with Han’s description, I wasn’t helped at all.

Until we arrived at a place where I sensed the presence of something resembling the barrier. But that was all it resembled, just that.

"What’s that again?"

In front of us, in the middle of the wide verdant grassland, in which we were lost earlier, was something resembling a barrier, but wasn’t a barrier. It was a giant egg-like sky-blue watery bubble. In appearance, it looked like a barrier, but something was different, I couldn’t tell well, but this one seemed thicker than the other one.

But that wasn’t all we found. There was something-or to be exact, someone.

A man in full-body rusty armour bowed his head and supported himself on a sword resting on the ground on one knee. On his back was an old and rusty iron shield.

His helmet was designed with two pairs of horns that resembled those of a dragon. His plastron teemed with holes and dirt, but one could tell at a glance that that armor was, at its time, a beautiful piece of art. His sword had a very unique design of red blood from the tip of the blade to the handle.

The man had his back facing our direction and was facing the giant egg-like thing. The entire scenery seemed to make it look like he was there to protect that ovoid thing.

My hand was already grasping my sword, I had already prepared myself for an attack.

We had already met quite enough remnants for me to tell you that this man was yet another remnant. And if there was something I knew from all my interactions with remnants, it is that they are never in the right state of mind to engage in a diplomatic conversation. Instead, they tend to get very hostile.

We were around fifty meters away from him, yet the man, as if awakened from a deep slumber, slowly turned his head toward us.

Only then were his eyes glowing. Golden eyes become visible.

The remnant stood up, and only then did we get to see how immense the man was. He removed his sword from the ground and said, "Quoi? … Encore un autre, …. Pas que ça ne fasse de différence… Mon devoir reste la même. "

Hearing remnant spouting some kind of bulshit has became a common sight for us at this point.

And every goddamn time it’s always before…

He turned his back to face us, then it happened.

… they proceed to attack us.

"Hon, watch out!"

I immediately drew my sword to block what was coming at me from behind me,

Coming at me with a powerful upward slash was the remnant.

I was able to block it with my sword, but my body was sent flying away by the strength behind that attack, but then it happened again. This time, from where I was flying to, I immediately repositioned myself to once again block another incoming attack..

The attack, which clearly intended to sever me in half, launched my body several meters away.I quickly repositioned myself on the ground, bracing myself for another wave of incoming slashes.

Thirteen slashes came at me behind them, the weight of a mountain and the agility of a cat, I deflected them with the best of my ability, for evading these attacks wasn’t even a given option.

Having deflected the thirteenth slash upward, I closed up the distance to land a swipe on his chest, but before I could land it, he had already retracted himself out of reach of my blade.

I immediately took advantage of it to draw some distance, even though I knew that its magic drawing distance was something completely useless.

"What the hell was that?! Teleportation?!"

"I’m dont’ know!"

It all happened too fast, It all happened within the course of a dozen seconds. I didn’t even have the time to be shocked by what happened.

Was that some sort of teleporting magic?

That remnant was using magic to draw the distance between us to naught.

And what the hell was that agility and that technique?

That remnant magic wasn’t the only thing that was frightening about that monster. Earlier, that thing, aside from teleporting to close the distance between us, hadn’t used anything else related to magic. It was all mastery of Aina.

"Hon, Listen well. This whole area, it’s only now that I realize it but this whole area is filled with this armored bastard’s mana. This guy, he’s the one behind the barrier. It’s only a guess, but teleportation is clearly not his main magic, but merely a side magic he’s using in fighting. I’m sorry, but in the state of things, I can’t do anything to help you, Heon’s isn’t here, and even if she was, with magic disabled, she would be more of a dead weight than anything else. Running away from it would be a very bad idea, so... …"

"I’ll have to take care of it myself."

"Exactly, I can provide moral support anytime you need some."

"Thanks, but I’d highly appreciate it if you were to keep it down."

"Okay, Sir."

With that, I readied my sword for the incoming battle that awaited me.