Burning

Gawain gazed toward the horizon for a long time. In the first few minutes, the sheer clash with his understanding of reality left him unable even to guess what he was seeing—whatever it was, it was utterly unlike the sun he knew.

That broad, magnificent arc continued to rise, and in its initial ascent it moved far faster than the sun. Before long, Gawain could see a small section of its curved surface. It was indeed glowing, its edges blurred with hazy colors and indistinct, cloudlike structures. This world's Light and Heat must have come from that thing, yet its radiance was nowhere near as blinding as the sun—quite the opposite, in fact. Gawain could not only stare directly at the arc, but even make out faint patterns upon its surface.

After roughly judging its curvature, Gawain realized that its apparent diameter was dozens, perhaps even hundreds of times greater than that of the sun. Of course, its actual size should have been smaller than a normal star—it was simply far too close to the ground.

At this distance, if it rose fully, it might cover roughly one-fifth of the sky... Of course, that was only Gawain's rough impression. He was far too shaken, and instinctive estimates were bound to be wildly inaccurate.

The oppressive feeling of watching a gigantic celestial body rise before one's eyes was difficult to put into words.

He rapidly searched through Gawain Cecil's memories and, sure enough, found countless similarly spectacular "sunrises." The thing in the sky was not some strange astronomical phenomenon, but the most ordinary sight in this world.

Then what was the explanation?

Based on the knowledge he possessed, Gawain quickly came up with several interpretations. Perhaps the physical laws of this world were utterly different from those of the universe he came from, resulting in stars that emitted Light and Heat with extremely low efficiency. The planet beneath his feet might be very close to its star, allowing the sun to appear so enormous without scorching the land. Or perhaps that was not a sun at all, but a hole emitting light and thermal radiation—or some other completely unscientific yet thoroughly magical thing...

But the more likely possibility was that the planet beneath his feet did not orbit the sun at all. Instead, it orbited a gaseous giant planet. It was not a planet, but a satellite of the latter. The thing rising in the sky...

Was this satellite's parent planet.

At that moment, Gawain felt more strongly than ever that he was truly in another world.

"Ancestor? Ancestor?" Heti's voice came from beside him, finally jolting Gawain out of his dazed contemplation.

"Ah... ah?" Gawain snapped back to his senses and looked uncertainly at his Nth-generation granddaughter.

The beautiful Noblewoman had left behind the dark, cramped, danger-filled underground tunnel, and some of her former poise had returned. She gave Gawain a slight bow. "Ancestor, you were spacing out just now, but we need to leave this place first."

Gawain mumbled a couple of vague responses before noticing that the tunnel exit was an exposed little hillside. With the surrounding situation unclear, standing around here like fools was indeed not a wise choice. He nodded. "Let's get to higher ground and check the area first. The terrain I know is from Seven Hundred Years Ago; it may not be reliable today."

So, under Gawain's direction, the group headed toward a nearby hill. Along the way, Gawain could not help glancing up at that enormous "sun" several more times.

"Ancestor, you keep looking at the sun," Rebecca, walking behind Gawain, asked with concern. "Is something wrong?"

Amber casually remarked from the side, "Your old ancestor spent seven hundred years without seeing daylight. Of course he'd look a few extra times after finally seeing the sun."

Ignoring Amber, Gawain glanced at his N+1-generation granddaughter and gently shook his head. At the same time, he confirmed what the locals called that thing in the sky—sure enough, they called it the sun as well.

Or rather, regardless of how that word was pronounced, in this world, the thing it referred to in people's minds was the sun and nothing else.

Gawain searched through the original owner's memories again. After trying several keywords and vague fragments of information, he finally felt a sudden realization and raised his head, gazing toward the still somewhat Dim Sky on The Other Side.

In that sky, which had yet to fully brighten and still held many stars, he found a "star" about the size of a grain of rice, brighter than all the others.

The people of this world called that special star "Ao" and invested it with many symbolic meanings in religion and magical rituals.

The first two guesses could probably be discarded. Only the third one was plausible.

"Ao" was the star of this solar system, unimaginably distant. The light it cast upon the land beneath Gawain's feet was almost as cold as the other starlight.

And in the cool morning breeze, Gawain climbed to the top of the hill.

Before them lay a land ravaged by war, burned to ruin, and twisted into a grotesquely festering state.

It was as though strong acid had been poured over flesh. The ground was rotten beyond recognition. Vast stretches of rock and soil had turned ash-black, with cracks spreading everywhere. All vegetation had long since been corrupted away, while the remaining Tree Trunks had twisted into demonic, clawlike forms. Farther away stood collapsed walls, charred houses, and the ancient Cecil Family castle shrouded in Smoke and Dust.

Giant Aberrant monsters wandered across that wasteland like titans.

The fields and crops had long been swallowed by the Magic Tide stirred up by the monsters, leaving them completely unrecognizable.

"The family's territory..." Rebecca lay prone on the hillside, clenching her teeth so hard that her eyes reddened. Tears of either rage or grief swirled in her eyes. The young woman had only just inherited the family estate and had not even grown accustomed to being a lord, yet now she seemed to have lost everything.

"This is what land corrupted by the Magic Tide looks like," Gawain sighed. "Back then, the Gondor Empire was corrupted into this state from within and without. I suppose those corruptions are still entrenched in the old empire's wastelands even today—yet now a new corruption has appeared within the borders of civilization."

Amber broke out in a cold sweat. "Shadow God above... We were surrounded by these things the whole time?"

Heti, meanwhile, was considering whether the family could recover. "Can it still be saved?"

"No." Gawain shook his head. "You failed to stop the Aberrants' advance. They have already formed a group resonance, and the elemental contamination caused by the Magic Tide is irreversible. Even if every monster is destroyed, the pollution occupying this land will persist for a very long time."

"How long?" Heti still seemed unwilling to give up.

"Has Human Civilization returned to the lands of the Gondor Empire?" Gawain asked a seemingly unrelated question.

"...It is still a forbidden zone of life. No one dares set foot on the land beyond the Magnificent barrier."

Gawain shrugged. "Then it looks like the corruption of Cecil Territory will last at least seven hundred years as well."

Rebecca and Heti stared at their ancestor in astonishment. They could not understand how the great founder of the Cecil Family could remain so calm while witnessing the destruction of the family's final territory by monsters—he showed neither anger nor sorrow, as though he were watching something that had nothing to do with him. His attitude even frightened them a little.

However, Gawain quickly noticed their looks and took the initiative to ask, "Is there a problem?"

"Ancestor, aren't you... angry?" Rebecca asked cautiously. "This is the Cecil Family's last territory..."

Gawain froze, immediately realizing that he still had not fully gotten into character and had exposed a flaw. He hurriedly put on a stern expression and squeezed out every scrap of acting ability he had. "Dwelling on such things is useless. Gawain Cecil was a pioneer. Every inch of land and every bit of wealth this family possessed was built by my own hands from nothing. So what if the territory is gone? We can always find another place to reclaim—why fuss over it like old women?"

Heti and Rebecca hurriedly nodded again and again, their admiration for their ancestor reaching new heights. As expected of a legendary ancestor. His vision and breadth of heart really are different... They just did not know where their ancestor planned to reclaim land in an age when all territory had already been divided among the existing noble system and nearly all unclaimed land belonged to forbidden zones...

"There's nothing more to see here. We need to plan our route next. First, we find a town, then figure out how to meet up with the group that broke through the encirclement," Gawain said, quickly changing the subject while the aftereffects of his grand performance still lingered. "I remember it was a knight named Philip who led people out, right? Did you agree on a meeting place?"

Rebecca promptly answered, "We agreed on Tanzan Town to the north. If Tanzan had also been attacked by monsters, we would continue north along Kingdom Avenue."

Gawain nodded and was about to leave when an unusual sensation suddenly stopped him in his tracks.

After a brief stunned pause, he and Knight Byron shouted almost at the same time, "Get down! Hide!"

Though they had no idea what was happening, Rebecca and Heti immediately followed Knight Byron beneath a nearby boulder. The instant Gawain spoke, Amber had already vanished into the shadows and slipped off into some unknown corner. Gawain hid behind Rebecca, only to suddenly see Betty, the somewhat foolish-looking little maid, still standing in place with a frying pan in hand and a bewildered expression on her face. He shot out and dragged her back—and almost at that very moment, a crushing pressure that made everyone's hearts tremble descended from the sky.

In the glow of the gradually rising "giant sun," an elegant yet colossal creature slowly flew through the sky.

It was a giant dragon dozens of meters long.

In her terror, Heti instinctively cast the third-tier spell Light Bending Field, concealing everyone's forms. But she did not dare assume that such a rudimentary spell could deceive the eyes of a legendary creature.

Yet the dragon truly did not notice the people on the ground—or perhaps it simply could not be bothered with them. He or she merely beat its Wings slowly, flying through the sky with elegance and majesty, its enormous eyes reflecting the lands of Cecil Territory destroyed by the Magic Tide.

Then it took a gulp of salty soda... Oh, it breathed fire and burned the place.