And You Are Already Mortal

Mityad halted outside the woodland.

As a junior officer of Lokos's Ninety-Seventh Great Company, few things could make him stop his platinum-colored heavy boots, grip the middle of his spear, mobilize his full spirit, and repeatedly ponder if his words and actions could defend the glory of the Tyrant.

When he passed through the city-state's marketplace, or when he unintentionally enjoyed the farmers' upward gazes in the kingdom's fields, he didn't deny the surging pride spreading through his limbs.

But today, his pride was infinitely diminished.

Like ordinary habitable lands on the planet Olympia, the forest beneath this cliff was primitive and dense. Leaves and branches rubbed against each other, unknown birds whispered in the guards' ears, and the scent of earth and vegetation seeped through the gaps in his armor. Nature was always trying to tell strange stories in a language they didn't understand, and Mityad enjoyed these hidden experiences.

However, his worries were steadily accumulating as the guards explored deeper.

For the Lokos region, there were too few living things here; animal tracks and signs of life decreased layer by layer from the forest's periphery inward, bird songs grew more distant, as if an invisible dam or rift had blocked other sentient life from entering, leaving only the trees unable to uproot themselves and escape, and the guards who were foolishly and audaciously venturing into this untouched land.

The air grew heavy, and Mityad preferred to believe it was an illusion.

Through the gaps in the narrow, dark green short leaves overhead, in the grayish-blue sky, that wisp of vertical gray-black smoke became more obvious.

For days, they had been following the orders of Tyrant Dameks, descending into the rarely visited dense forest at the bottom of the cliff, following the possible traces of people living in the wild, searching for their target.

Mityad lowered his head slightly, hoping the shadow of his helmet would hide the expression in his eyes. He waved forward, and the Lokos guard continued onward.

The thorny dwarf ferns and the fragile carapaces of unknown insects in the forest were yielding to their hard iron boots, which made Mityad feel a little better psychologically.

He borrowed new courage, ignoring the thin, long cut marks on the tree trunks that could only be made by a high-speed, extremely sharp blade, the unrecoverable scorched dead branches from sources of flame, and did his best to ignore the incomplete animal bones being decomposed and consumed by nature.

"There's no problem," Mityad told himself, "a god-given boy who can kill Yepidae can do all of this."

He began to control his breathing, because he knew that if he didn't, he would surely fall into a shameful faint due to his excessively high breathing rate.

He looked back and asked the soldier next to him in a low voice, "How much further do we have?"

"I don't know, sir," the soldier replied honestly, then suddenly his eyes widened, his mouth agape like a novice attendant, "Look! Sir!"

Mityad suddenly turned forward.

The forest parted to the sides.

The overlapping branches in the air no longer overlapped, and the pale gray sky poured out from the gaps in the leaves. Both the winding, gnarled vines and the straight, sturdy trees slid to his sides and opened.

Amidst a massive roar heavier than thunder, the land twisted and undulated like waves, rocks sank and shifted, and the dry, hardened topsoil was pushed open, cracked, and peeled away by the moist, dark brown earth rising from below. A black road, flanked by trees, grew before the guard.

Then, fine ice crystals arrived late, spreading from the tip of every leaf and the end of every broken root, towards everything in Mityad's eyes.

A delicate, icy blue filled all the unevenness and imperfections of the entire world before his eyes, ultimately forming a pure, brilliant, and magnificent icy scene.

Even the highest snow-capped mountains of all of Olympia did not possess such a clean area.

If this was the work of human hands, then Mityad could foresee that for the rest of his life, he would never encounter a case where a living craftsman surpassed the divine nature.

Mors retracted the light shining from his fingertips and loudly taunted into the forest, "Your footsteps are as slow as those of mollusks crawling on their own mucus," and let the wind carry the words to the ears of the Lokos guard.

Peturabo was almost done roasting the fish, and these professional soldiers still hadn't arrived.

What were they dawdling about in the forest? Competing to see who could crush fewer leaves?

Someone poked his arm, and Mors took two strings of roasted fish, which exceeded his expectations. Before he took his first bite, Peturabo interrupted him.

"Do I need to excuse myself from your conversation?" he said.

"Our conversation?"

"Your conversation with those Lokos people."

Mors tore the fish meat with his teeth. At that moment, he suspected Peturabo was independently researching seasoning ratios, otherwise, he couldn't explain the history of the birth of this dry, salty, bitter, and sweet concoction.

He chewed the contents of his mouth and mumbled, "Why would I talk to them? These people are looking for you, so naturally, you're the one to talk."

He took another bite. Eating this weird-tasting stuff occasionally helped broaden one's physical and mental boundaries and reignite a love for life. "I'll leave the space for you after I finish eating the fish."

"Can't you be present?" Peturabo's voice was calm, his fingers slightly curled.

"What would I do there? Play epic music on a leaf flute for the first meeting between Lokos and Peturabo?"

"I'll go with them."

Mors narrowed his eyes. What was Peturabo thinking?

He waved Peturabo over, and when the boy approached, he patted his shoulder affectionately, his tone lacking sincerity: "Goodbye, Peturabo. I wish you a great future."

Peturabo stared at him intently, his pupils widening in his ice-blue eyes. His chest heaved several times before he managed to say, "I don't want to."

"Don't tell me you've fallen in love with sleeping in the grass at my place," Mors's tone suddenly turned cold. "If you don't want to go, refuse them yourself."

"I can't," the boy spoke quickly, his lips barely keeping up with his voice. "You go."

Mors withdrew his hand, his patience disappearing like his smile. "What do you think I am to you? Why should I speak for you?"

"Then what am I to you!" Peturabo snatched the other string of roasted fish from Mors's hand before he could take a bite and threw it away fiercely. "A stranger? A boarder? A tool?"

"Your self-awareness is very clear."

"Damn it! So you're going to abandon me, you can't wait for me to be taken away by the Lokos people! What will you get from this? Will the Lokos people reward you?"

Mors pondered for a few seconds. It was said that if you picked up food within three seconds of it falling to the ground, it wouldn't be dirty, so he made the roasted fish fly into the air and condensed light to give it a simple scorching disinfection.

The roasted fish flew back into his hand, and then he pointed it at the trembling Peturabo.

"Take it," Mors said.

The metal skewer, piercing the roasted fish, seemed to have also punctured Peturabo's anger. The boy's imposing presence deflated like a leaky balloon.

He slowly reached out, bewildered, then suddenly accelerated as he was about to take the roasted fish. Peturabo remained in a daze as Mors smoothly let go, handing the fish to him.

"Sit," Mors said.

The boy sat on the ground.

"Deep breaths?"

Peturabo complied.

Mors shrugged and continued eating the fish. The fish was almost gone, and the parts not thoroughly marinated by the strange seasoning were still tender.

He finished his food, clapping his hands. "You're scared, Peturabo."

"I…"

"No? No, you're afraid of seeing the Lokos. Do you know why?"

Peturabo lowered his head, his body's trembling clearly reflected in his swaying hair. He let the awkward silence stretch, each wasted second bringing the Lokos a step closer.

"They aren't looking for me," the boy whispered. "They're looking for an omnipotent prodigy, a heroic figure who has achieved great deeds."

Mors stared at him, thoughtful. "And you are already a mortal, Peturabo."