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A gentle breeze blew through the window, waking up a young boy who looked to be about 10 years old.

When he opened his eyes, he found that he recognized the ceiling he was looking up at. It was the plain wooden ceiling of Norwood Castle’s infirmary ward. The potent smell of disinfecting alcohol confirmed this fact.

“Ah, my head… doesn’t hurt?”

The boy sat up and tried to rub his forehead with his hand, but then noticed that he had no arms. The two little stubs attached to his shoulders wiggled helplessly.

sigh

He was only slightly annoyed by this, as if it weren’t his own arms that were missing. After concentrating for a moment, the ends of the stubs bubbled disgustingly before growing into a pair of arms that almost looked normal. The boy only winced slightly during this procedure and checked to see if his arms had grown back normally.

These arms were usable, but were completely covered in ugly stretch marks and scars. He noted that his sense of touch also seemed to be dulled, but wasn’t sure if this was an issue with his brain or the arms themselves. It didn’t matter anyways, the muscles underneath his skin would start developing tumors soon enough, so he’d have to replace them soon enough.

A girl with cute dog ears and a long black tail had been silently observing this boy for quite some time now. Having decided that she had observed for long enough, she finally spoke:

“Do you know how wound up here, Pax?”

Pax looked up when he heard Eris speak, but narrowed his eyes in deep thought when he realized that large portions of his memory were missing.

“...No… wait, hold on… I think I do remember actually.”

- - - - - - -

A sword of bone was swung hard to the side, hitting no one but flinging off most of the blood that was stuck to its blade. The blood spattered with a satisfying sound that almost made the art of war seem graceful. The battlefield was quiet as a church out of session, but behind the last person standing atop the landfill of corpses, a woman in a white sundress was joyfully frolicking and taking in the scenery. Though she was walking barefoot and tread on the backs of dead soldiers, not a single drop of blood would stick to her feet, and her sundress was white as snow like usual.

Smiling joyfully, she broke the silence:

“You’ve always had a flair for theatrics.”

The boy she was talking to was completely drenched in blood, but a slight frown could be seen upon his face. Then, perhaps either forgetting the misery or finding joy in the madness, the frown was replaced with a toothy grin.

“I’ve always wanted to do something like this…” said the boy, before tossing the bone sword over his shoulder as if it were trash. “Not that I have a reason to do so.”

Normally, the boy would be in excruciating pain from the spell that he was constantly casting upon himself, but the drug that was victory in battle could make one forget all about such things. Casually brushing his hair off from his face, he took a deep breath of air and enjoyed the afternoon sky with a bright smile upon his face.

“I wonder if the Major will be upset at me for going overboard again?”

Captain Vincent had recently been promoted to Major and now had a much greater influence over the war, but he still used the “band of lunatics” as his personal champions. Pax had been ordered to delay the Rebel forces so that the Old Artenian soldiers could retreat, but had had just went and killed them all instead.

The woman in the white sundress didn’t answer his question, instead deciding to change the subject.

“Hey, who’s that dipshit?”

Turning his head over to where the bitch was pointing, Pax squinted his eyes. In the distance there was a man wearing armor reminiscent to that of the New Artenian Rebels’, but his aura was completely different from a regular soldier’s.

“Heh… aura…”

“Hey, I’m serious! His aura is different! It’s like I’ll catch something just being close to him…”

The man disappeared and reappeared much closer to Pax. In reality, he had just run really fast, but if you were an ordinary pedestrian it would have looked like he teleported. Now that the strange man was close enough, he finally spoke:

“Ah, I came here to help my brothers exterminate you royalists, but to think that I would find nothing but a lil’ brat.” But then the man’s eyes opened wide in shock, “Ah! You must be the Bloodweeping Spider! To think I have the honor of killing such a blight upon Lord Lagrimas’s beautiful land…”

“This guy talks too much… Pax, kick his ass.”

“...Alright Princess, if you insist…”

Before the strange man could finish talking, Pax stepped and punched the guy’s face. The strange man went flying, but Pax felt something strange in the place where his fist contacted the guy’s face. When he looked down at his hand, he noticed that a strange blight had begun spreading towards his arm, corroding it in the process.

He chopped off his arm below the elbow and looked towards where the man had landed. Though the freak had lost a few teeth, he was standing strong and smiling.

Pax sighed, “Well this is goanna be a pain in the ass.”

- - - - - - -

“Wait, the freak actually did me in?!”

“No…you killed him real good but just fell asleep afterwards. I’m guessing chopping off and regrowing your arms so many times made you a bit sleepy from the blood loss.”

With a sigh of relief, Pax nodded his head saying, “...Right. So how long was I out?”

“About three days, give or take. Sakura was freaking out when she found you though, you should thank her when you see her.”

“Right…”

Upon seeing that Pax was strangely remorseful, Eris smiled, “Welcome back Pax…”

Pax was confused at those words until he realized that there had been something missing this entire time: The pain of the rapid aging spell was gone. While Pax was still processing this fact, Eris continued:

“They say that some time ago, a god descended upon this land…”

“What?”

Pax didn’t like how much information Eris was throwing at him, and wanted to protest. But Eris simply kept going with her story:

“The god saw mankind waging senseless war upon itself and took pity upon us. Thus he spoke, in effort to change mankind’s ways:

‘Why do you fight? Would you not be happier if you simply loved one another?’

But man could not understand the tongue of the gods, and so they continued killing one another.

The god soon got upset with the humans for not even trying to understand it’s intentions. He thought to smite all these creatures that defied his will.

But the god was no fool. He realized what he had almost done. Because the humans and gods did not understand one another, he almost exterminated them all out of anger.

He understood that the humans must have been the same as him: They fought because they did not understand one another. They could not trust someone that they did not understand.

And so the god willed:

From this point onwards, all intelligent creatures shall speak the same language.

Now the various tribes could speak to one another without issue.

But the wars did not stop”

“...”

Though it was a short story, it was filled with so many obvious lies and insane revelations that Pax was stunned.

“...Any thoughts?”

Pax looked towards the foot of his bed for a moment then answered:

“I think that there are many things wrong with this story, and many more things that are strange about it…”

Eris smiled slightly and tilted her head, as if she wanted Pax to continue talking. And so he did:

“For starters, who wrote such a story? It had to have been a human, but how would they know what a god’s thoughts are? It sounds to me that they just assumed the god got rid of all languages out of kindness, but in my opinion it’s more likely that the god was too lazy to learn a new language and decided to just make everyone speak the same language as him…”

Eris wasn’t saying anything so Pax just kept talking. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

“You know Eris, this is the first time that I’ve ever heard someone mention the word, ‘language’ before. Anyone I’ve ever told it to has simply been unable to comprehend the idea of it, so how does this story exist? And why are you telling it to me?”

Eris tilted her head as she responded. “In this story, Pax, who do you resonate more with? The god or the men waging war?”

It was no doubt a strange question. It threw off Pax so much that he didn’t even realize that Eris had rudely answered his question with another question.

“I… What are you trying to say Eris?”

“Do you know the pain of being forgotten? Or the pain of forgetting?… I have forgotten nearly all that happened to me beyond a few years ago but for some reason that story has been stuck in my mind. I can’t make heads or tails of it, but what about you?”

“I… I don’t know what you want me to say… But there is something off about the story, I… I feel like I know the answer, but it’s hard to form the thought.”

Indeed, something was off about the story that Eris had told. It messed with the minds of those who’d heard it, causing them to be unable to see the truth between the words and stopping them from asking the right questions.

Maybe it was because of the foreign object influencing Pax, or maybe it was due to the fact that he had come from another world. In any case, the curse’s influence wasn’t strong enough to suppress Pax’s mind and he managed to finish his thought.

With pale face and shaky breath, Pax spoke this thought aloud: