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Edge of Civilization, Entrance to the Zolran Mountain Range (Kyle POV)

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An endless purple sunset stretched across the horizon. At least half an hour must have passed since I last moved. I just laid on the ground and continued to stare at the sky blankly while my  tears were the only thing keeping my eyes from drying out after staring unblinkingly at the sunset for so long.

But eventually, I ran out of tears to cry. And I finally closed my eyes.

No. Seriously. I think I’m slowly starting to die from dehydration.

I've been crying nonstop for over half an hour after running around outside for a few hours in the blazing sun while tending to Eliza’s garden. And to add onto that, I went around smashing holes in the ground nearby with my bare fists. I even lost a good amount of blood after injuring my hands so much, so at this point, I'd be surprised if I didn't need some water.

"... I've had enough. I'm already out of tears. I need to find water before I shrivel up." (Kyle)

I slowly got up off the ground before picking up my backpack, which was thrown over to the side earlier. I opened it up and, after checking to see the contents were still all fine, rummaged through the cooking utensils before taking out the map.

The first thing I noticed on the map was a big red X mark and what seemed like Eliza's handwriting under it. At first, I wasn't even sure if it really was her handwriting since I only had vague memories of what her handwriting looked like. But after reading the contents of the short message, I was 100% sure it was her handwriting. After all, only Eliza would be so bad with words and leave a badly drawn doodle of a smiley face at the bottom.

Hey Ky, I've sent you down to where the red X mark is. Don't worry about me and Olivia anymore, we'll be fine. Olivia will make sure everything's running smooth around here like she always does. I promise I'll even clean my room from now on too. So just enjoy the rest of your life. And if you still have no idea what to do, then go to the capital city of the nearest kingdom and be a chef or something. Just promise me one thing, that you'll be happy from now on.

P.S. I know you won’t just let it go like this. So if you wanna help me out as thanks for everything I’ve done for you, just go and spread love around or something like that. I’m not entirely sure how it’ll work, but it might help me get some more faith energy.

The last bits of moisture in my eyes were leaking out as I held the map with trembling hands and stared at the messy handwriting.

I really am gonna die from dehydration at this rate, aren’t I? I gave a big sigh and I looked up to the sky as my hoarse voice sounded out again.

"... Hey, Eliza… What the hell do you even mean by ‘spread love around?’ If you want me to help you out, then don't be so vague! And I doubt anyone I find down here would even want to follow a lazy goddess who does nothing all day and has to rely on her heroic spirit to handle everything like you. Even your suggestion to be a chef is awful. I only know how to make simple homemade dishes from over a millennium ago! I can't just show up to a restaurant in the capital city and start as their five star ace chef! I'd probably barely even be hired as a waiter or a potato peeler in the kitchen. Hell, even if I did get hired as a chef, I wouldn't want to spend all day panicking in the kitchen anyway, a slow and easy life is the way for me. And lastly, don't make promises you can't keep. I don’t believe it for a second that you’ll ever clean your room!" (Kyle)

After finally finishing my cathartic rant at the sky, I sat down and gasped for breath. The dryness in my throat finally caught up to me, and I stood there for a moment before deciding to go find some water.

I looked as the map again and searched for the nearest water source, which happened to be a large river nearby.

***

After a few minutes of walking it had become twilight. I caught sight of the river which looked like it had a pretty strong current going northwards towards a town nearby. I crouched down by the riverside and washed the dried blood off my hands, which had already started to heal back up. Then I rinsed the dirt off my face and hair, and finally drank a large portion of the river water to quench my thirst. The feeling of dehydration finally disappeared and I cupped some river water in my hands before staring at my choppy reflection.

"Alright. I'm done." (Kyle)

I splashed the water onto my face, and after opening my eyes again to see the stars starting to show themselves in the night sky, I felt oddly refreshed.

"I've had enough crying, enough of being a god. From now on, it’ll just be Kyle. No more True God of Death… just Kyle, the guy who won’t cry anymore, the guy who's gonna live a carefree life running a small alchemy shop or something in the capital." (Kyle)

I took a deep breath after my voice rang out with a quiet conviction, and I thought about what to do from now on, but it was then that I heard the faint sound of a roar.

I looked up at the sky behind me as I saw the shadow of what seemed to be a dragon flying in my direction. Yes, a dragon. The kind with scales, wings, and everything.

You see, in Aias, dragons are classified as monsters, one of the strongest types in fact, and the strongest ones can often live up to thousands of years. The color of a dragon’s scales classified what type of element their dragon lineage originated from. For example red dragons were usually classic fire breathing dragons that could even swim in lava, but they were weak to water and the extreme cold, while white dragons were ice based dragons that hated extreme heat, blue dragons harnessed the power of lightning, and so on.

Dragons usually make their nests on mountain tops or in caves, and back when I was still running around, there were often requests made to the adventurer's guild to have teams of A and S rank adventurers chase dragons out of their nests when they were in inconvenient spots. Dragons usually don't do much all day except sleep and eat, just like a certain lazy Goddess of Love, and the only times they'll come out are when they're chasing big prey or fighting over their territory. Well, I'm just a tiny manaless human, so it'll probably just ignore me and look for some bigger prey.

"Hmm, looks like it’s a dragon. It probably made its nest on the mountain and is out looking for food or something. Eh, none of my business. I should probably get going to the closest town, I might even have to camp out tonight at this rate." (Kyle)

I flicked the last of the moisture off my hands and prepared to leave, however, as I got up, I heard another noise from the same direction as the dragon.

On the small ledge behind me, the sound of faint rustling from deep in the bushes between the trees gave me a bad feeling again. My misfortune senses were tingling as I turned around and laughed to myself.

"Ah, good thing that all my bad luck's been used up for today. NOTHING, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BAD will happen to me again. Ahahahahaha." (Kyle)

I put my backpack on and turned northwards preparing to follow the river, but the moment I turned in that direction, the rustling sound got louder and I heard a panicked female voice followed by the ear-piercing roar of a dragon.

"The river! If I can just make it to the river!"

I turned towards the bushes with a distressed face.

Then it was as if time slowed down to a crawl for me.

I watched in abject horror as from between the bushes emerged a beautiful woman with short, crimson red hair. She looked like she was around her late teens or early twenties and firmly strapped to her back was a large two-handed greatsword that was almost the size of her, while her outfit consisted of some dirty, scratched up light armor that made it seem like she had been running through the forest for a while.

She leaped out of the bushes and off the ledge towards me with a speeding red dragon above her.

Then she glanced down at me and our eyes met. The expression on her face instantly turned to one of dismay. She screamed out at me.

"Out of the way!"

But alas, it was too late, she was already inches away from me by the time she yelled.

I see. It's just not my day today, is it? There you go God, you got me, I give up. Like I said before, the joke's over now. So just let me go already.

I patiently waited for some sort of miracle to happen, like waking up in bed after this nightmare, or for everything in my sight to actually just be an illusion and disappear... but nothing happened.

Welp, looks like my entire existence was cursed from the start. If only that frying pan incident earlier today really had just killed me.

I sighed internally.

Well, I guess sometimes, life just finds a way to screw you over.

As I came back to my senses and accepted my fate, I had an oddly satisfied smile on my face, but the angry twitch in my smile and what I screamed out towards the sky afterward was anything but the sound of a man satisfied with life.

"Come on! At least let me wallow in depression a bit before throwing death flags at me! It hasn't even been an hour!" (Kyle)

Then, after I let out the last of my grievances, there was a loud crash, a splash, and the roar of a dragon.

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Edge of Civilization, Zolran Mountain Range (Aria POV)

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"I'll be waiting for you."

It was four years ago when my father left me alone with those words and a dream. A dream to restore our fallen House of Irisveil to nobility.

A year after my father passed away, the Head Captain of the Imperial Knights, a close friend of my father, returned to the capital and visited my father’s grave to mourn his death. But ironically it was the mourning of my father’s death that caused the Head Captain to discover the talent I had for swordsmanship, the traditional Irisveil style swordsmanship that my father painstakingly taught me every day before he passed.

The Head Captain told me I was one of the greatest geniuses in swordsmanship he had ever seen and after discovering my talent, he let the Emperor of the Raidion Empire know of my existence.

It was two years after the Emperor learned about my talent for swordsmanship that he presented to me an opportunity. A test of my potential. I was to go and slay the dragon that had made it home on the Zolran mountain range at the edge of the Empire's territory. The Emperor promised me that if I succeeded in slaying the dragon, then he would use my achievement as a dragon slayer to keep other opposing nobles silent and grant me a title of nobility along with a position as one of the Empire’s Thirteen Knight Captains, a position that needed to be filled due to the recent retirement of one of the Captains.

And it was the morning before I left the capital that I saw for the last time, my friend since childhood, Max Almus, the primary successor to the Almus family, the Irisveil family's closest ally since the founding of the Empire, and it was also the moment where he confessed that he fell in love with me when we first met.

I was torn at the time. One side of me wanted to stay, I was unbelievably happy once I learned that Max loved me the same way I loved him, but at the same time the other side of me wanted to accomplish my father's dream. In the end, I decided to finish what my father started first, and so, Max left me with the same words my father did.

"I'll be waiting for you.”

Those were the words that the two most important people in my life left for me. For my father, it was the passing of his dream to me, a dream to reinstate our fallen noble household, to reignite our ancient heritage as knights of the Raidion Empire, and to bring honor once more to the noble name of Irisveil. But for Max, it was a promise, a promise that he would wait for the end of my journey, a promise that he would not forget me even after the years passed.

It was those five words that led the woman, Aria Irisveil, on her journey. It was her one and only chance to complete what her father had left to her and to also live happily for herself after that.

And so it was exactly one year ago on this day that I set off to one of the several adventurer towns that lined the edge of the Empire's territory, the adventurer town of Delhurst. Delhurst was the closest adventurer town to the Zolran Mountain range and its purpose was to keep the monsters in the mountain range from entering the Empire's territory. Subjugation quests were the norm for the adventurers there and over the years, it’s grown from a quaint town to a small city.

After I registered and started as an active solo adventurer in Delhurst, I completed subjugation quests day after day, and recently, I finally worked my way up to a B-rank adventurer. Being a B-rank adventurer came with plenty of perks, but the biggest one for me was access to the Guild's information about the red dragon that lives on the mountain range.

The moment I reached B-rank, I made a request to the guild master for the information and I finally received the data yesterday.

Today was the day that I decided to check if the information that the guild gave me was true. According to the guild’s information, this particular red dragon liked to sleep for days at a time during the summer.

It was around noon time when I arrived at the red dragon's nest, a rocky cave on the side of the mountain, and the next few hours until sunset consisted of observing the cave.

According to my own observations, it seemed that the information the guild had was true as the dragon didn't wake up even once during the whole time I was camping outside its nest.

It was approaching twilight when I finally decided to start the trek back to Delhurst since the stronger monsters would start to come out at night.

My plan was to come back and observe the dragon again tomorrow, but as I was looking at the sunset to try and judge what time it was... a terrifying chill suddenly ran down my spine.

The sounds of countless birds scattering and the faint noise of what sounded like a roar came from somewhere down the mountain before I felt an insane amount of bloodlust wash over me. The burst of mind-numbing bloodlust only lasted for a brief moment, but it felt like a blade was slowly carving into my throat the whole time. My instincts were screaming at me to lose myself in fear, but somehow I managed to regain enough control of my body to cover my mouth with my hands and keep myself from screaming as I sat there drenched in cold sweat. However, even though I managed to keep quiet, another dangerous monster woke up, the red dragon.

The dragon exited its cave, probably startled by the bloodlust earlier, and let out a deafening roar as it looked around in a panic. My legs were still frozen from the bloodlust earlier, and I could sense its mana spreading out to search for any threats nearby.

When the dragon discovered me hiding in the trees nearby, it let out another roar before starting to chase me.

I was in no condition to fight. I only had the bare necessities for a day-long scouting mission along with my greatsword on me. I didn’t have anything capable of taking on the dragon, so I had to run.

I stumbled backward past the trees until my legs woke up from the impact and chantlessly cast body strengthening magic on myself as I began to sprint down the mountain as fast as I could while the dragon took to the skies after me.

I ran and ran and ran and ran.

Luckily the bloodlust from earlier scared off the rest of the monsters as I couldn’t sense the mana of any other creatures besides the dragon. I randomly weaved through the trees at a breakneck speed and used the foliage to try and hide myself as I ran, but my efforts seemed like they were in vain, as no matter what I did the dragon was still locked onto me.

Time passed as I ran for my life and it was twilight now.

After running randomly for so long, I had already forgotten where I was on the mountain and how long I had been fleeing from the dragon, but I knew I was reaching my limit. My body was screaming for me to stop, I was covered in cuts and scratches, my mana pool was dwindling, and my body strengthening magic was already beginning to wane.

I desperately went through all the possibilities that I had to escape in my head, when suddenly, I faintly heard the sound of running water. Suddenly, I realized how I could escape. I had to make it to the river, the dragon behind me was a red dragon, a typical fire elemental one, so if I could manage to dive into the river, it would probably let me go unless it was hell-bent on killing me.

As I strained my body to desperately work for just a few more moments, I spotted a clearing through the trees ahead and the sound of running water grew louder.

There!

As I quickly made my way towards the river, I faintly heard what seemed to be a voice and some crazy laughter, but the sound of my raging heart beat along with the roaring of the river drowned it out. I reassured myself as my only hope was getting closer.

"The river! If I can just make it to the river!" (Aria)

I broke through the bushes into the clearing and with the last ounce of strength left in my legs I pushed my body as fast as I could towards the direction of the river as the dragon followed behind me.

Then it was as if time slowed down to a crawl for me.

I looked down and saw a young man who seemed to be around my age. He had hair as white as snow, tied into a ponytail, a pair of piercing golden eyes, and a distressed look plastered all over his face. He had a slightly slender build and wasn’t wearing any armor at all, just some common clothes you could find anywhere, a scratched up white shirt and some brown pants along with a small backpack.

Our eyes met and my face twisted in dismay as I realized I was stuck in a mid-air collision course with him.

As I was a moment away from crashing into him, I yelled out.

"Out of the way!" (Aria)

But it was too late. I was flying through the air too fast and he was already too close to me to move anyway. I tried to maneuver myself into a position where I could hug him the moment we made contact and we could both dive into the river, but right before the collision, I saw the man shift his formerly distressed face into a weird angry smile and scream at the sky.

"Come on! At least let me wallow in depression a bit before throwing death flags at me! It hasn't even been an hour!" (Kyle)

Then, I crashed into him. I was expecting to hit a soft body before tackling him into the river, but in reality, it felt like I was smashing headfirst into a steel wall and I screamed internally from the pain.

Argh! Just what the hell is he made of!?

The last of my strength dissipated with the impact and all I heard before losing consciousness was a loud crash, a splash, and the roar of a dragon.

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Edge of Civilization, Zolran River (Kyle POV)

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I'm sorry God. I won't yell angrily at the sky anymore. I was wrong alright, just please stop screwing me over like this!

I get it, the woman tackling me into the river was my punishment for pissing you off, but couldn't you at least give me someone who isn't carrying a damn greatsword the size of her entire body? I mean who the hell carries around a greatsword this big with them. I’m surprised she can even run and jump around so fast with something like this strapped to her back. Are you sure she’s not Cloud Strife's long lost sister or something?

Once we fell into the river, the strong undercurrent ended up sweeping us along for a while as the red dragon that was following us made a sharp turn and flew upwards to circle overhead a few times while slowly following us down the river.

A moment passed before I managed to bring both our heads above the water to breathe by swimming upwards while holding the unconscious woman and her stupidly large sword, and after about 15 minutes of bobbing above and below the surface of the river to try and hide from the dragon, it finally gave up on trying to eat us and left. I waited a bit after the dragon left to make sure that it was actually gone and not just waiting for us to just come out of the water, but after about two more minutes, there was no sign of it, so I broke free from the current and dragged both of us back to dry land.

I checked to make sure the woman was still breathing and made her spit out as much water as possible before another feeling of dread washed over me.

It felt like something very important to me was missing.

And it was then that I realized the backpack Olivia gave me was missing.

“No… It can't be... Not! Like! This!” (Kyle)

I desperately looked up and down the riverside and even went back into the river for a bit to look for my stuff, but it was all to no avail.

My trusty Excalibur was gone.

I screamed into the evening sky once again.

"Excalibur!!! Come back to me!!!" (Kyle)

It was on that day, that I once again pounded the ground in agony and shed pain-filled tears approximately half an hour after promising myself to never cry again.

After mourning my loss for about ten minutes, I finally remembered about the unconscious woman on the ground behind me, and with lifeless eyes, I somberly began to carry her to the closest town that I remembered seeing on the map, the adventurer town of Delhurst just down the river.