Dawn- An age of Darkness

Slash!

Swing!

Blast!

I cleared all the snakes and crocs and it almost rained blood. 

I\'d changed my mind, mostly because I reconsidered the spirit\'s logic. If I could save a local, I could extract information. So in the end, it was just for my own sake I\'d saved her. 

The young knight had her bottom clenched tightly to the ground, soaking wet. She\'d fallen down when I\'d used my magic to blind the monsters and attack them.

She was breathing very weirdly and it was almost as though she was afraid of me. Talk about being grateful to your savior.

She already disgusted me. 

"Is there any villages or cities nearby?" My voice came out a bit crooked and loud. Unintentional. 

She remained quiet. Sweating, teeth shaking, and clattering. Her whole body was covered, her joints were less guarded but it sufficed to say, that the armor was heavy. I couldn\'t see anything other than just her eyes: shining blue eyes. 

She was perhaps a bit too scared of all this or startled, I guess. 

I tried my best not to shout. "Is there any villages or-" Language shouldn\'t have been a problem.

She shook her head very vigorously. 

I guess that was no.

Was she mute?

No, she called for help just moments ago. So then what? 

\'She\'s that afraid of me?\'

"Where can I find civilization or on second thought, where am I?" I tried to speak a bit more calmly.

I needed information from her, so I had to tread carefully.

There were crocs and snakes nearby and I could even spot other kinds of menaces here and there. So, time was of the essence. 

"Y-yo\'you\'re lost?" She finally spoke, after stuttering for a good long minute. 

I couldn\'t make heads from tail but- I understood her regardless. 

"Kind of."

She still breathed hard but was about to relax when- I pulled my knife out of my belt and sliced straight at the knight. Or towards her shoulder to be more specific. 

"EKKH!" She let out a rather high-pitched scream as blood again splattered like rain. She was still breathing audibly and gasping for air. "Th-thanks." But her breathing calmed as she looked behind her. 

She was more afraid of the environment than me. 

"No, problem." Apparently, a rather large snake was about to bite her shoulder. I\'d taken care of it before it got to that state. "There\'s more coming, so I\'d hurry up if I were you."

"Who are you?" She finally stood up; a bit composed. She was slightly taller than me. I couldn\'t tell if she was larger or not though, thanks to that armor.

It took her a while but- she was still breathing erratically. She did seem a lot more composed than before. She calmed down significantly when she understood I wasn\'t a foe and the monsters here posed no threat to me, in turn, her. 

"Just an adventurer. Now, where are we and where should I go to find people?"

"You-you\'re in the outskirts of Galbatia," she said. "We\'re in the west region. To reach a village in the far north, we\'d need to travel for a week at the very least."

Galbatia, and the west no less?

\'Did she just say we?\' 

But I was a human and this knight didn\'t even once try to say anything about my race and all that… Very suspicious. 

\'Or maybe she just thinks I\'m a half-dead or something?\'

Hmmm…

"And what might you be doing here so far away?"

This knight seemed a bit suspicious to me. She was in her full body armor in this terribly humid weather and she only had one slender spear. This kind of gear was definitely not suited for this type of atmosphere. 

Her equipment was designed to fight large opponents and things that weren\'t naturally protected. But- yeah, very suspicious. 

"I-I came to escape this place and gather allies to fight beside me. The whole kingdom is in trouble."

She wasn\'t lying- at least it didn\'t seem like it. But why the hell would someone just say something like that to a random stranger?

I chuckled; I couldn\'t control myself. "Pardon: didn\'t mean to laugh." I controlled myself. "There\'s an ocean just crossing this forest, straight ahead. Oh and- is there any ruins nearby?"

According to Alisa-

Alisa. 

She was dead. But she\'d talked about the remnants of her kingdom, and the ruins of the goblins and all that, their location. I couldn\'t save her but- I could at least take a look at her destroyed kingdom and find out more about the goblins before confronting the emperor. At least that way I had another purpose. 

Our plan was to get to west Galbatia after the training in Dracona. But in the end, everything just got messed up. 

"Ruins? There might be some behind that mountain but-"

"But?"

"But what about you? Why are you here and you haven\'t told me your name?"

I guess it\'d only make sense that she\'d be curious. But just after I\'d asked about the ruins, she could have at least taken a bit of a hint. 

I was actually not even remotely interested in her but I pretended to be, just for the sake of information gathering. It didn\'t hurt to be nice.  "Shouldn\'t you say your name first? Anyway, it\'s Daarc and I\'d appreciate if you didn\'t make any witty comments about my name."

"I see. I\'m Marmine. A knight of Bravendale." She clenched her hand on her chest and did some sort of a salute. 

I wasn\'t even remotely interested in that. 

"Great, and thanks for the info." And I was done now. "Good luck on your journey."

There was another reason for me to act nice. The fact that this knight was trying to save a kingdom meant, she was probably some highborn noble\'s daughter or something. In that sense, it was best for me to not antagonize her. I didn\'t want to get involved but I didn\'t want to make enemies either. 

"Daa- no, Sir Dark! Would you please aid me? I don\'t have much now, but I can promise you an adequate amount of compensation. Your skills, they\'ll be very valuable and-"

And she almost got my name right too. 

Almost. 

"Sorry, but you should look elsewhere. I have my own shit to worry about."

She looked a bit down. "Very well, Sir Dark. May we meet again."

With that said, she left hurriedly. \'Rather straightforward.\'

Now that she wasn\'t surrounded, I saw more of her strength. She was fast and that armor wasn\'t slowing her down one bit. 

I didn\'t know why she was going around searching for strong people but it certainly had nothing to do with me.

\'She has a way to cross the ocean, I guess?\'

I watched her go and walked ahead myself.

The marshes were full of monsters and other animals but they were strangely avoiding me. It was almost as though everything was afraid of me. 

Oh well.

\'The ruins, huh?\' And I guess the geezer was right. There was a moon in Galbatia after all. Even during the day, I could see a broken moon in the sky. 

On that note, I actually had forgotten about something.

I opened my ring and looked around inside it. The monsters here were completely avoiding me, so I had nothing to worry about- yet. 

I couldn\'t find the sleeping goblin- meaning, it had probably woken up.

This goblin was different and I\'d promised some goblin to look into this whole thing. Maybe I was just being stupid, maybe I was just looking for another thing to give my life meaning but- in the end, I really wanted more reasons. 

But at this point, even that felt like hypocrisy. I wanted reasons, but I didn\'t want to get involved in anything… I just wanted revenge. 

Hypocrisy. 

Sigh.