Fateful Encounter

After a few more weeks of wandering through the jungle, I found something that drastically hampered my plans.

As I unsuspectingly walked through the thick jungle, completely unaware, I eventually reached its ending.

But before I could exit the biome completely, I found myself at the bottom of a tall cliff that stretched on endlessly beyond what I could perceive with my rex.

I looked up at the amber-colored rock, tilting my head back as far as I could in hopes of seeing its peak, but it was so high that the clouds were obstructing its whole elevation.

Lost for words at this untimely obstruction, I resigned to my instincts and touched the ancient cliff with my hand, seeing if I would be able to at least infer something interesting about it.

It was a weird body of land which cut off the jungle in an abrupt, peculiar way. Aside from its height, I could tell that its breadth was just as massive.

If it had been hollow, I would have made a hole in it and passed right through, but the reality was far from it.

Probably dozens of miles wide, my only option was to go around this thing.

Why?

Because there were no guarantees in life… especially mine…

I couldn’t possibly leave myself in a weakened state after ascending this cliff when there was a chance of the blood red entity wandering around in the vicinity.

Trying to decide on the direction to go in, I took an alien-looking flower and started peeling its innumerous petals off, one by one.

…right…

…left…

…right…

…left…

…right…

…what the hell is going on with this flower?

Suddenly the petals started regrowing.

Everything was going against me.

As I threw the flower over my shoulder, I heard something snapping behind me.

Breaking out into a light sweat and unamused by these turn of events, I slightly rotated my head, trying to see what caused the noise from the corner of my eye.

There didn’t seem to be anything there, but I wasn’t going to blindly follow a conclusion I made with something as unreliable as vision, so I spread my consciousness to confirm using rex.

Something was wrong.

I kept falling further into the blue sky, which was rapidly turning into darkness.

Suddenly everything warped around and I was thrust into a vivid memory.

“AAHHHH!” I yelled, falling to the floor and breaking out of my descent into nothingness.

Innumerous, relentless screams filled my head.

A mage from ancient times was facing hundreds of filthy red, orange, and black life forces in front of him…

Breathing heavily, even though I was not using rex anymore, the gory, bloody memories kept displaying themselves within my head.

Painful yelling and begging resonated throughout my ears. I could barely stay upright.

I was nauseous.

I don’t want to see this anymore…

My skull was about to split open.

“WHY ARE YOU FORCING ME TO SEE THIS?!” I hollered.

Before my eyes, the mage was brutally slaughtering every single entity, mutilating them all beyond recognition.

On first glance, it was a fragile old man, as thin as a stick, filled with despair and resentment towards the people he was erasing from the face of the earth now.

His bright orange eyes were engulfed in hatred.

Enraged and tears falling down his old face he continued until there was no one left alive.

“Who are you…” I asked the old man who couldn’t hear me.

He came up to the cliff and started scribbling something on it, despair and anguish not letting up for even a second.

In memory of Gogar village.

Forgive me, my people… your elder has failed you.

I apologize for not rescuing all of you… for arriving too late…

Without you, my life is meaningless…

If someone had to die first, it should have been me…

Please… rest in peace, for I have avenged all of you by taking the lives of the perpetrators…

May we meet again...

He slit his own throat.

…the memory stopped.

I looked at my feet, knowing that I could be standing on the exact place that served as the extermination site of a hundred or more people, good or bad.

Dark, grey clouds replaced the previously blue sky.

It started pouring heavily.

Strong winds shook the jungle from side to side, wind whistling loudly.

A big lightning strike thundered to the ground, completely shattering a tree in front of me and sending sharp debris right at my face.

I hastily enclosed myself with an earth shelter, within which, my bodily reflexes forced me to throw up from the memory I saw earlier.

I felt like I was about to disgorge all of my insides, the strangers’ screams still echoing inside my head.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it…

…who was he…

…what did those people do to his village…

…and most importantly… what was his relationship with Zepsis…

…

I woke up lying in my own vomit.

As I forcefully lifted myself from the ground, my body was hurting all over.

I prepared a small water container with some artificially heated water to clean my ragged, dirty clothing.

After finishing my preparations, I ate what little food I could find and started my travel around the cliff, choosing to go to the left, which was the northern direction.

Having seen it in all its glory after hours of walking, it would be unfair to continue calling it a cliff.

This geographical landmark was enormous.

Thinking about it, there were two possibilities for its origins in a weird place like this:

Either it was a natural phenomenon I didn’t know about, which could definitely be the case considering my limited knowledge on Validaean geography and the fact that more extreme things like Gateways to Tartarus exist; or, although hard to believe, it was a byproduct of an exceptionally strong mage running wild centuries ago.

The person I saw yesterday in my vision was from the ancient times, but it was already there…

Although it was traumatizing to think about maps given my unfortunate experience using one, I still wondered if this thing had a proper name…

If not, then I will bestow a fitting name upon you.

…Magnaim...

Slowly circling this landmark around the left on my way to Ors Juna – or going in the complete opposite direction for all I knew – I began my slow conquering of this obstacle that hopefully wouldn’t be in vain.

…

After a couple of weeks, for the first time since Acolatum, I confirmed I made the right decision.

I was finally travelling in a normal, favorable biome.

It was your average forest, without any food or climate problems.

Hopeful that I was truly making way towards Ors Juna, I increased my pace even more than usual.

A couple hours later, I stopped circling Magnaim, and embraced the beautiful nature, journeying through the luscious forest instead.

As I continued walking through the splendid region, the terrain started getting more and more mountainous, meaning I would have to watch my step.

Suddenly, I came out into a big opening, where a young girl sat next to a long water stream flowing through the mountains.

Her gaze faithful to a single spot on water, she was completely unaware of her own surroundings.

Then I understood the reason.

She was crying.

Hugging her knees and sobbing, she continued shedding her unending tears.

Slightly on guard because of what happened in that Zetre village, I sat down directly opposite her on the other side of the stream.

I was only a couple feet away, yet she didn’t notice.

She was dressed in clothes that didn’t look much better than mine.

Probably from a poor village…

A couple years younger than me, she had long, slate gray hair.

Looking miserable, I couldn’t help but feel empathetic.

For I could relate…

I sat there, silently stacking some rocks and keeping her company, until suddenly, she stopped crying.

Slowly raising her head and alarmedly looking at me sitting not too far away, her pearl blue eyes met mine.