"I'll remain in the army, follow King Gilgamesh's command, and protect my family and the land beneath my feet." The middle-aged soldier spoke without the slightest hesitation.
"If you stay in the army, you might die," Higashino Kanade said gravely.
"Hahaha, everyone dies eventually, don't they? I'm already thirty-two this year, so I've lived longer than most. Besides, death isn't such a frightening thing. Goddess Ereshkigal will take us in. Perhaps in the Underworld, my family and I will have a chance to reunite someday."
The middle-aged soldier laughed heartily, treating death as casually as deciding whether to move house.
In this era where humans and gods coexisted and the Underworld still remained, humanity was generally optimistic and resilient. They did not fear death all that much and valued living in the present. That was also why the people of this age had managed to hold back the demonic beasts for half a year.
Ereshkigal... Higashino Kanade felt a faint pain in his stomach. It would have been one thing if the man had not mentioned that name, but now that he had, Kanade remembered that he had an enemy in this era.
Thinking of Ereshkigal's nearly pathological obsession with him during the Fifth Holy Grail War, Higashino Kanade felt that he ought to stay far away from her. He needed to avoid that troublesome woman. But the problem was that if he wanted to defeat Tiamat, he had to rely on Ereshkigal's help. That left him in quite a bind.
This damned romantic curse of mine... Higashino Kanade let out a long sigh. Hadn't he merely stolen some of her souls? Was there really any need for her to keep thinking about him for so long? Come to think of it, Ereshkigal seemed to have left a mark on