Fuyila slumped in the corner, her back against the cold wall, her whole body feeling as though it had fallen apart, every muscle protesting.
Her cloak had come loose in the battering, revealing a coarse dress washed pale beneath it, its hem covered in mud and dust. Her hair had come completely undone, long snow-white strands spilling messily over her shoulders, making her little face look even paler and thinner.
She did not cry.
At least, not at first. She merely bit her lip and stared fixedly at the black figure in the doorway, her blood-red eyes full of stubbornness and defiance. She was like a little beast caught in a trap, knowing perfectly well she could not escape yet still struggling, still resisting, still baring her teeth at her enemy with the last of her strength.
But the black figure did not move. He did not even come inside. He simply stood in the doorway, watching her quietly, as though waiting for something.
Fuyila did not know what she herself was waiting for. All she knew was that her strength was draining away, little by little, and the red ripples in her palms were gradually fading. She could not beat him. She could not even touch his clothes. She did not even know what he was.
That helplessness hurt her more than the pain in her body.
She did not know when the tears began to fall.
At first, it was only one drop, sliding down her cheek and landing on her clenched fist. Then came a second, a third, and then they fell like beads from a broken string, impossible to stop. She did not sob aloud. The tears simply kept flowing, washing two faint tracks through the dust on her face.
"Mom..."
Her voice was so quiet that she seemed to be speaking only to herself.
"Mom... where are you..."
She buried her face in her knees, her shoulders shaking in little spasms, like a cat abandoned on a rainy night.
Only muffled, broken sobs remained in the stone house.
King Ghidorah stood in the doorway, watching the little figure curled up in the corner.
Back in the valley, all three heads of his true body tilted at once, an indefinable emotion flickering through his golden slit pupils. It was not sympathy-King Ghidorah the King had no need to sympathize with anyone.
Nor was it guilt-he had done nothing heinous. He had merely swatted away a little thing that lunged at him, deliberately holding back his strength. Otherwise, that single slap could have flattened even an eighth-tier being into a meat patty, let alone a fourth-tier one.
It was just...
He watched the little girl curl up in the corner, hugging her knees, calling for her mother and trembling all over as she cried. The sight reminded him of some memories belonging to the human named Gu Chi.
Those memories had already grown somewhat hazy, as though behind frosted glass. He could not see them clearly, but he vaguely knew something was there.
King Ghidorah sighed inwardly.
What a hassle.
He controlled Black Owl and stepped into the stone house.
The footsteps sounded especially clear in the silent room, each step landing on the dirt floor with a dull thud. Fuyila abruptly stiffened, her sobs cutting off. She did not look up, only curled in on herself even more tightly, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, pretending that danger did not exist if she could not see it.
Black Owl crouched before her.
The armor's joints made a faint mechanical scraping sound, especially distinct in the quiet stone house. The black figure loomed over Fuyila, enveloping her entirely in shadow.
"All right, all right." Black Owl's voice was still that same neutral, neither-warm-nor-cold tone, but he spoke a little more slowly, as though addressing a frightened kitten. "Tell me, what's your name?"
Silence.
Fuyila neither looked up nor spoke. She simply kept her face buried in her knees, her shoulders still trembling slightly.
King Ghidorah rolled his eyes inwardly. In this life-no, in both his lives combined-he had never comforted a child. Not as a human, and certainly not after becoming King Ghidorah.
When facing world administrators, he simply slapped them. Whether they wanted to submit or not, they had to. But now he was facing an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl who was crying and calling for her mother. Surely he could not just slap her?
Though he could. He just did not want to yet.
Tch.
"Stop crying," Black Owl said.
Fuyila's shoulders shook once, and her sobbing quieted a little, but she still did not look up.
King Ghidorah controlled Black Owl, extending a hand clad in black armor and waving it before Fuyila. He did not touch her, merely waved it.
"I didn't hit you. You were the one who lunged at me."
Fuyila finally raised her head.
Her eyes were red, still brimming with tears, tiny droplets clinging to her long lashes. Her tears had washed two tracks through the dust on her face, revealing the fair skin beneath.
She looked at the black, faceless fellow before her, whatever he was, her lips trembling slightly. She wanted to say something, then swallowed it back.
"You... who are you?" Her voice was hoarse and thick with tears, but she still tried hard not to sound so frightened. "Are you here to chase me?"
"Of course not." Black Owl waved a hand. "I'm just passing through."
Fuyila stared at his mask for several seconds, as though trying to judge whether he was telling the truth. She could not tell. That mask had no eyes, no expression, nothing she could read.
"You... really aren't here to chase me?" she asked again, much more quietly, as though afraid she had misheard.
"No."
Fuyila fell silent for a few seconds, seemingly digesting this information. Then she asked a question that nearly made King Ghidorah lose his composure.
"Then what are you here for?"
He could hardly say, "I was bored in the valley, sensed an unfamiliar presence, and sent an avatar to take a look," could he?
"Passing through," Black Owl said without a change of expression-he had no face anyway. "I was passing through, heard something here, and came to look."
Fuyila did not press him. She did not know how perfunctory that answer was, nor how little sense "passing through" made here. She was simply tired, very tired, too tired to question a strange black figure who appeared in an abandoned stone house in the dead of night.
She lowered her head, looked at her dust-covered hands, and fell silent.
Black Owl said nothing either. King Ghidorah kept his avatar crouched before the girl, quietly waiting for her to recover. His true body in the valley yawned, its three heads closing and opening their eyes in turn as he waited in utter boredom for this inexplicable "comforting a child" routine to end.
After a long while, Fuyila finally spoke.
"My name is... Fuyila." Her voice was very quiet, as though she feared someone might hear.
"Mm." Black Owl nodded. "So what are you, then?"
Fuyila raised her head, her red eyes full of confusion.
"I'm not an idiot."
"..." King Ghidorah froze for a moment before understanding.
"I wasn't asking whether you were an idiot," Black Owl corrected patiently, though King Ghidorah's patience was nearly exhausted. "I was asking what... what kind of person are you? Or rather, what race are you?"
Fuyila blinked.
It felt as though she had heard that question many times, yet also as though she had never heard it at all.
When she was little, in that big house, people often looked at her strangely and whispered behind her back, but she had never received a definite answer. Nobody told her what she was. They only told her through their actions-she was not a "normal person."
"I don't know." Fuyila lowered her head, her voice muffled. "I remember... when I was little, Mom and I lived somewhere. A big house, very, very big, with lots of rooms, lots of corridors, lots of windows, but all those windows were shut. I didn't like it there. I wasn't free."
Her description was vague, as though she were recalling a dream from long ago, with only scattered, faded images remaining.
"Then one day, Mom said she was taking me away. She... she tore that house open." Fuyila's voice trembled slightly. "I don't know how she did it. She just put her hand on the wall, and then the wall split open, like paper.
"Everyone inside ran away in fear, screaming and running everywhere. Then..." She paused. "Then lots of people came after us."
King Ghidorah listened, his mind racing.
Tore open a wall? That required at least professional-level strength. This girl's mother most likely wasn't an ordinary person. And from her description-'big house,' 'lots of rooms,' 'all the windows were shut'-it sounded like some sort of facility for confinement or protection. Add in the pursuers...
Tch, wasn't this the standard 'mysterious origins' template? King Ghidorah grumbled inwardly. He had read so many novels and watched so much anime in his previous life that he knew this setup all too well.
An imprisoned, mysterious girl, an identity of unknown origin, and the stone hidden in her cloak that gave off faint energy fluctuations-he had sensed it the moment he entered the stone house.
"Then what?" Black Owl asked.
"Then... there were lots of people chasing us. Mom brought me to a town and told me to hide, and then she... she disappeared."
Fuyila's voice grew quieter and quieter until it was almost inaudible. "People were chasing me before, but I shook them off when it was raining hard and windy."
King Ghidorah nodded and asked no more questions.
He could feel that this little girl was telling the truth. Not because his perception was particularly powerful, but because her answers were too real-genuinely vague, genuinely confused, genuinely unable to remember clearly.
Had she made it up, she would have spoken more clearly, more coherently, more logically. Instead, she spoke in fits and starts, jumping from one thing to another, contradicting herself in places and being vague in others. These were real memories, washed over by time, fragmented, with only the most vivid images remaining.
King Ghidorah studied Fuyila carefully again. Long white hair, red eyes, crimson horns. He went through every fantasy setting he had encountered in his previous life, but none matched. Not an elf, not a vampire, not a succubus-at least, she did not look like one. Succubi did not have horns like that, and their bearing was not like this either...
He pondered for ages without reaching any conclusion.
I should have asked Apekus for an encyclopedia. That fellow had lived for hundreds of thousands of years and witnessed the rise and fall of sixteen eras. He surely knew the classifications of every intelligent race in the world.
But Apekus had already sunk into the deep sea to recover from his injuries. He could hardly call him back up to ask, "By the way, what race is a little girl with white hair, red eyes, and red horns on her head?"
Forget it.
King Ghidorah controlled Black Owl and stood. The armor's joints once again made a faint mechanical scraping sound, especially distinct in the quiet stone house.
"All right." Black Owl looked down at Fuyila, still curled up in the corner. "Do you need something to eat?"
Fuyila raised her head, a glimmer flashing through her red eyes.
It was not gratitude or trust, only the most instinctive, most primal thing-hunger.
She had not eaten in two days.
She nodded, a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
King Ghidorah's true body shook its heads in the valley. All three heads gave a silent sigh at once.
He was the mighty King Ghidorah the King, a cosmic-level Titan of destruction. He had come to another world, whipped up a storm over half a continent, beaten up a world administrator, collected treasures from various eras, and then-
Then he crouched in an abandoned, dilapidated house, coaxing an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl to eat.
What even was this?
Black Owl turned and walked toward the stone house's doorway. At the entrance, he paused and turned his head, pointing that faceless mask toward Fuyila.
"Follow me. Don't dawdle."
Fuyila hesitated, then braced herself against the wall and stood. Her legs were still weak, her knees still trembling, but she supported herself against the wall and followed the black figure, step by step, into the night.
Moonlight spilled through gaps in the clouds, laying a thin coat of silver frost across the ground.