The Archer of Beast Woods Read online

  The overcast sky was thin enough to permit the western sun to filter through, but even with my head tilted towards it, I couldn’t feel its warmth. I didn’t think I needed to worry about frostbite, but the numbing chill of the air was hard to ignore.

  This area’s climate rarely had snow even when it was cold. When it did snow, there would be a thin layer on the ground at most. I’d known this back when I was in the temple. Even now it was “just” freezing, and there was no sign whatsoever that snow was coming.

  I pulled my cloak tighter around me and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. I was walking on the dirt by the side of a cobblestone road. Walking on the road would actually have been dangerous. It had already deteriorated with age and was full of holes. I’d be likely to trip unless I was very careful.

  “Ugh... Too cold.” My breath came out as a white mist.

  Setting out in winter had, I thought, been a bad move from a common-sense perspective.

  I, William G. Maryblood, had left the temple only a few days after that final battle with the god of undeath where I fought to defend my parents’ souls. That final battle had been on the day of the winter solstice. That is to say, the middle of winter.

  To be honest, even I thought it hadn’t been a very wise thing to do, but if I’d spent the winter at that cozy temple waiting for spring after I’d made graves for Mary and Blood and given them a funeral, I’d have wanted to stay forever. I’d protect their graves and persuade Gus to let me live my life as the protector of the seal that had long kept the demons’ High King imprisoned in that city. It was an attractive, almost irresistible idea, even though I knew it was wrong. However, the act of holing myself up and being spoiled by the gentle tolerance of my family would have been just the same as my previous life. If I stopped moving, if I didn’t take action, I could tell that this idea would grow and grow inside me. So I couldn’t hesitate. I had to believe in myself and step forward.

  That said, I was making very sure I wasn’t going to collapse and die by the roadside in the cold weather. If worst came to worst, I was even considering turning around and heading back to the temple for the time being. Gus would probably laugh at me after the overly dramatic way I left, but there was no need to feel bad about turning back. I could just think of it as reconnaissance and set out again in the spring, having checked the condition of the roads and the places that could be used for camping out. Even that would be a much better use of time than just sitting inside and doing nothing. So I took little breaks from time to time, set up camp when night fell, and all the time in between I walked, just walked, with my gear on my back, enduring the cold.

  I’d had several encounters with demons already. That city of the dead was where the High King was sealed, and some of them had probably been keeping watch over it. It wasn’t surprising that they were coming to attack me. A human had come out of that city, so they’d obviously want to capture me and make me tell them what I knew. But small fry like them were no match for me. I’d been trained by Blood, Mary, and Gus.

  I had several surprise attacks launched against me by strange and misshapen demons that were a blend of animals and humans, but I sensed them coming, preempted them, and with the aid of my spear, Pale Moon, I systematically turned them to dust. It was my first time fighting against demons that hadn’t been turned undead, but they didn’t give me any real problems. I dispatched them swiftly and without hesitation, just as Blood and Gus had taught me to do. I’d fought with an immortal god; no-name demons weren’t going to get the better of me now. As for the city of the dead, Gus had told me he’d be strengthening its defenses with a grand magic called Maze Fog, so there was probably no need to worry about it.

  My seemingly endless trek occasionally took me past some ruined stone buildings of various sizes. They had probably once been post stations or resting places along the highway. Many of them had either collapsed or been burned or destroyed, the victims of an old war. But there were still some left that retained much of their original structure and promised to make that night’s camp somewhat less of a hassle.

  Looking at how there had been facilities like this available, I thought that Mary, Gus, and Blood must have lived in a pretty advanced civilization while they were alive. The ancient Roman Empire came to mind from memories of my past life.

  “Which would currently put me at the fall of ancient Rome... no, after that. Except we were invaded by demons and not by barbarians...”

  From what I could picture based on my previous world’s history, it didn’t seem likely that things were very good. I used to like history and stuff, enough that I didn’t just swallow all the talk about Rome being civilized and the Middle Ages being some kind of “Dark Ages,” but even so...

  “It’s been a couple centuries since then, and people still haven’t come back here... That can’t be a good sign... can it?”

  I was talking to myself again. This was what walking on your own for so long did to you, apparently. To keep from being bored I’d also been singing to myself, but even with two worlds’ worth of songs to draw from, I was fast running out of material. I’d already gotten sick of the landscape around here, too, but I looked around again just for the sake of it.

  To the right and a reasonable distance from the main road, there was a pretty impressive river that must have been a few hundred meters wide. The area near it was an expanse of sparse shrubland. I could imagine that when the weather got warmer, those shrubs would grow taller, making it a lot more difficult to see across. The reason there were no big trees along the river was probably that they kept getting flooded out whenever the river swelled, so they weren’t able to grow uninterrupted.

  Looking beyond the river, there was another expanse, this one of forest. Trees were covering the whole area. It was the same to my left: almost all trees. It was a completely virgin forest, dark and quiet, and pervaded by an atmosphere that felt... I don’t know, forbidding, like it demanded my respect. If I wandered carelessly into it, I would be constantly tripped up and forced to slow down, and if I lost my sense of direction inside, there would literally be no coming back. So I was avoiding it for now, only going in when I needed to search for firewood for camp, and even then only as far as I had to. I was lucky to have this road right next to a source of water; there was no reason to make things hard for myself. I just needed to follow the path.

  I walked a while longer, and the sun started to set. The road was leading me up a hill, and I couldn’t tell what the situation was like beyond. I traipsed up it in silence.

  When at last the scenery came into view, my breath was taken away.

  “Wow...”

  The ruins of a vast stone city were lit up by the glow of the setting sun. Streets of countless houses spread outwards in a circular fashion from both banks of the large river. Judging by how there were still traces of supports, a large bridge seemed to have once connected the two sides of the city. I could see facilities like a river port and warehouses. This would probably have been quite a prosperous place where traders gathered with their goods.

  But now, all of it was horribly destroyed and reduced to ruins.

  The wall surrounding the city was pitifully broken in numerous places, and the blackening still visible on the houses suggested they had been burned down, probably shot by flaming arrows. I could also see deep, bowl-shaped craters in various places. It must have been a pretty big spell they used to cause that. And finally, water from the river had flooded in through the destroyed structures, and the town was half-submerged.

  Prosperity and ruin. The greatness of human accomplishment and the heartlessness of conflict. The flow of time and the impermanence of all things. This sight made all of it more real.
>
  I stood on the hill for a while taking it in and then, after tracing the road ahead of me with my eyes...

  “Aghhh...”

  Downstream, the large river had forked into several branches—perhaps the destruction of the city or a weir had changed its flow—and one of those branches had completely swallowed up the road I was meant to be following.

  I put my hand to my forehead and sighed deeply. “The terrain’s changed...”

  Well, of course a river’s not going to still be the same after two hundred years. Yup. Nothing I could do about that.

  ...Now what?

  ◆

  I spent that evening in the ruined city, offering the prayer of Divine Torch so the souls wandering here could pass on. The lost souls followed its flame like fireflies and returned to the night sky. Together with the shadows of the destroyed city wavering in the light of the campfire, they produced a very fantastic scene.

  I got up early the following morning and prayed to the god of the flame. I scooped up some water and used a Word to purify it before I drank. Then I used benediction to create holy bread and ate it with some of my supply of meat jerky.

  I puzzled over what to do about the road for a little while, but there weren’t actually any real choices to be made. I had nothing to help me cross the river, so I just decided to follow its outermost branch downstream.

  The ground started to become sludgy with mud; it probably had something to do with the river splitting into lots of tiny branches. The forest around me was feeling increasingly oppressive.

  It would be a mistake to venture much farther from the river than where I could still hear it flowing. I decided that if I was unlucky enough to get lost in the forest, I would forgo any other plans and just focus on finding the river and heading upstream. I’d be able to return to the temple that way at the very worst.

  How many days had it been now since I left the temple? The fact that I hadn’t talked to anyone for days was leaving me feeling very lonely and empty. I prayed as I walked, offering this loneliness, this emptiness, in dedication to my god.

  Everything was so quiet.

  I was already starting to run out of the meat jerky and other preserved food I’d brought with me. Needless to say, there was a limit to the amount of food I could carry. If this were an ordinary journey, I’m sure I would have just replenished my stocks as needed by buying food from a store or a house as circumstances dictated. But the first goal of this journey was to find a dwelling like that, so resupplying on the way clearly wasn’t going to be possible. I was getting to experience firsthand why mountaineers who took on unexplored mountains were so insistent on their food being lightweight and high in calories.

  Noon had passed some time ago. It looked like it was going to be another day without discovering any signs of people. If I hadn’t learned to produce holy bread with benediction like Mary, the very act of leaving the temple and seeking human habitation might have been physically impossible to begin with, due to the radius of how far I could travel. I felt another wave of appreciation for the god of the flame, and an obligation to express it. For a little while, I immersed myself in prayer.

  Suddenly, I heard something. A loud rustling. Something rushing through the forest thickets at a furious speed.

  Now, I was fully alert. I flung off the leather sheathing Pale Moon’s blade and held the spear at the ready. I was just beginning to wonder if it was another demon attack when a large boar came charging out at me.

  Not only was it a bit bigger than an ordinary boar, something seemed to have made it very agitated. Its eyes were bloodshot and it was foaming at the mouth. Its sharp, curved tusks came up to about my thighs.

  While my brain was uselessly reminding me that getting stabbed in the femoral artery was no laughing matter, my muscles, trained by Blood, were moving on their own. I sidestepped the hog’s attack and jabbed my spear in close to where its front legs met its body and it had its most vital organs: its heart and lungs. I felt the blade pierce its skin, and as soon as I knew the blade had gone in deep enough, I yanked it back out to prevent it from being ripped out of my hands. The hog’s momentum carried it straight forward, and it crashed headlong into a tree. It staggered about for a while, then spewed blood, collapsed, and stopped breathing.

  It looked like I’d gotten a good stab through its major organs. But I knew never to underestimate the toughness of wild animals. You could approach them thinking they were dead, only for them to suddenly go into a frenzy. It was possible to end up seriously injured that way.

  I watched it for a moment, and as I started to consider using Pale Moon to stab it one last time from a distance to make sure it was definitely dead, I noticed something. Stuck in the side of the hog opposite to where I’d stabbed it, there was a white-feathered arrow.

  “What—”

  Before my thoughts could arrive at the meaning of it, I heard the sound of underbrush rustling again behind me. I turned. Between the trees, shadowed by branches, there was the figure of a person.

  They were wearing a cloak with a hood that made it difficult to see their eyes. They were holding a uniquely decorated bow in their hand. An arrow had already been nocked on the string. It had white feathers. They hadn’t drawn the bowstring back yet, but they seemed to have an alertness about them that told me they could have that done in an instant if they felt like it. Their cloak and outer clothing had a soil-and-grass color scheme, and they were wearing tall leather boots and leather gloves. A short machete was hanging from their waist, and they had several other knives as well. This person was probably a hunter.

  Dead silence.

  Me versus presumed hunter. Neither of us spoke or moved.

  The tension thickened with every passing moment.

  Not good, I thought. I should have been appreciating the emotion of my first meeting with another living person right now, but I couldn’t even afford to do that. This was seriously not good.

  First contact had accidentally been established between two complete and total strangers in the middle of the woods. My previous life’s knowledge alone could have told me this was an extremely dangerous situation. After all, this was a forest far from civilization. There was no judicial system or law enforcement here. In other words, if violence suddenly broke out, I couldn’t hope to receive the slightest bit of assistance. It was a place like that where we had run into each other, both of us strangers, and both of us armed.

  Now... what would be the right course of action here?

  Should I smile and ask for a handshake or something? I put myself in his shoes: If an armed man I’d suddenly run into grinned back at me and held out his hand... could I take that hand?

  Maybe I was supposed to let go of my weapon to show I was harmless? What if they already intended on fighting me? And what if they suspected a trap? What about the possibility that when I let go of my weapon, that movement could be misinterpreted as the first sign of an attack?

  Use benediction to show I’m a devout follower of a god? No, that would still leave the possibility of me being a priest of an evil god, trying to hide my true nature. What’s more, I had to question whether they’d really just stand and watch while I started to use a skill right in front of them.

  Yes—I had no way of proving I wasn’t a threat. And even worse, I didn’t belong to a community. Therefore, I couldn’t even provide the name of someone who could vouch for me. That meant I had no way to prove my character. In my previous world, cultural anthropologists had warned of the dangers of accidental first contact with unknown people. Tension and wariness ran high in this kind of situation, and it was possible for that to develop directly into a lethal fight.

  My heart rate was creeping upwards. The hunter was still deciding how to handle this situation, but I could tell that they were as tense and on their guard as I was; the sharp stare being cast over my equipment from the depths of their hood was proof. They were being pressed to make a decision between fight or flight.

  The hunte
r dropped their hips a tiny amount. The tingling sensation on my skin grew stronger.

  This was bad. Just really bad. At this rate, we were going to end up fighting to kill each other.

  As I desperately searched for the right words and turned my eyes to what the person was carrying, I suddenly realized: the bow the presumed hunter was carrying—I’d seen that style of bow before, in Gus’s natural history lectures. Yes, that was—So I should—

  Panicking internally and moving very slowly so as not to trigger an attack from my opponent, I placed my right palm on the left side of my chest, and pronouncing every word as clearly and carefully as possible, I spoke—

  “‘The stars shine on the hour of our meeting.’”

  The hooded person before me went wide-eyed. “Old Elvish...?” they said with a tremor of shock in their voice. It was a beautiful voice as clear as a bell. “You have a connection to the elves?”

  “No. But I thought you might.”

  I had a memory of that type of bow. According to Gus’s lectures on natural history, Rhea Silvia, the free-spirited goddess of water and greenery, had as her minions a race of beautiful and long-lived people descending from the greater fae that had been created long ago by the Progenitor. They were a race called the elves, and it was to them that this bow belonged. So I thought that using an Elvish greeting might help to loosen a little of the tension.

  “Keh!” the hunter spat out disdainfully. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

  I’d guessed right. The hunter’s voice had softened a little, but this time it was my turn to be surprised: despite having quite a musical voice, their tone sounded pretty rough. I’d heard that the elves’ long lives made them a patient and very graceful race...

  “Eh. Whatever.” The hunter relaxed their posture and pulled off their hood.

  The first thing that caught my eye was the silver hair. Furrowed eyebrows, sharp eyes of jade, a slender nose, elegant chin line, and tight, thin lips. From under the hood, the face of a boy with a somehow feminine beauty was revealed.