🔊 TTS Settings
chapter 25
‘This should keep that stupid, carp-brained idiot from pestering me for a while.’
The boy limped back to the detached palace, favoring his twisted ankle.
‘Even after all this time, it’s just as disgusting as ever….’
The one who came every single day to force poison down his throat, and the one who couldn’t control his temper and lashed out with fists and feet at the slightest provocation. They were equally revolting.
Still, he had shaken off Lucius for now, and that alone was a relief. Returning to his bedroom, the boy threw his dirt-covered body onto the bed.
‘I’m sleepy.’
Honestly, the pain in his bruised cheek and leg didn’t matter.
“Damn dream….”
It had already been three days since he’d had a proper night’s sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, the dream came. More precisely, what unfolded vividly within it was someone’s future.
Each night, the boy became another person and witnessed their days to come.
One of the four Authorities of the White Forest: Dreamt Foresight.
But to Lasian, it was nothing more than a useless power that had never once predicted anything with perfect accuracy.
The dreams consumed mental strength and left him with relentless insomnia and splitting headaches.
The boy buried his right cheek into the pillow and blinked his heavy eyelids.
An irresistible force of the world swept away his consciousness and hurled it into someone else’s future.
The vision began.
Monster Wave.
The term referred to the large-scale outbreak of monsters that occurred irregularly in the Colden Mountain Range, the northern borderlands of the Bertel Empire.
Though the timing was unpredictable, a full-fledged Monster Wave was always preceded by signs.
Frozen Wolves, Frozen Orcs, and Ice Slimes—creatures commonly seen in the Colden Mountains—would descend to the foothills. Snow Fairies would appear in greater numbers than usual.
From there, stronger monsters would gradually descend, until at last tens of thousands of them would pour down in a horde. That was a Monster Wave.
As befitted a family that had guarded the border for over a century, the Hezeit territory had detailed countermeasures prepared for such omens.
Thanks to that, in the thirty years since the current Margrave of Hezeit began leading the family, not once had a Monster Wave occurred.
And yet.
And yet….
The boy stared blankly at the scene unfolding before him.
He had become someone in the Hezeit territory and was witnessing the future that would befall it.
“Aaaah! Save me!”
“Run! Get inside the castle!”
“You must lower the drawbridge, Young Lord! If you don’t, the castle will be overrun! If we lose the final shelter, we’re all finished!”
How did it come to this?
The nightmare had begun when a soldier dispatched to the border returned bearing a blood-soaked banner.
Dreamt Foresight was the ability to see the future within a dream. Its precise activation condition and manifestation were to infiltrate the unconscious of someone Lasian had encountered at least once and directly experience the future that person would live through.
In other words, a kind of future synchronization.
‘Whose consciousness did I just enter? Brother Glen?’
Amid the chaos, familiar faces appeared.
Knight Commander Norman Tombell. And the young lord, Glen Hezeit.
“Most of the reinforcements have fallen. The monsters are climbing the ice cliffs. It’s on a scale we’ve never heard of or seen before!”
“Sir Dunken? Sir Roel and Sir Mion?”
“……”
“And my father? What happened to the vanguard he led?”
“We have no way of knowing the vanguard’s fate. Before we could even reach the lord, we were ambushed by a pack of Frozen Wolves. The Vice Commander was at the front… he ordered us to return and deliver the news, and after that….”
The lord’s life and death were uncertain.
Then the only one who could lead the territory now was the young lord.
Glen, his eyes bloodshot, bowed his head briefly before the corpse of the fallen soldier.
When he raised it again, the blue eyes that once shone like a clear lake had darkened into the depths of the sea.
“Send the women, children, and elderly to the main tower! Lower the first gate! Close the second and third gates sequentially as the townspeople come in!”
Glen dragged the back of his hand across his cheek. The tear tracks vanished as if wiped clean, and a sharp glint flashed across his face. He would not allow any more deaths.
He looked this way and shouted.
“Stay inside, Aril. Tanesa, take her away!”
Aril?
The boy was startled.
Was he calling the owner of this body?
‘Whose future am I seeing right now?’
The next moment, the body flew through the air.
“Come on! You can’t stay here!”
Tanesa, pale as a sheet, lifted the boy in her arms.
But the body moved on its own and shook off her grasp.
This was not the boy’s will. It was the will of the body’s true owner—the one he had synchronized with.
The body spun around and began to run.
No wonder the field of vision felt so low. The owner of this future he was glimpsing seemed to be a small child.
Emotions not his own flooded in.
Just that morning, the mountain range had been serene beneath a blanket of white snow. Now it was twisting grotesquely.
Tens of thousands of monsters raced down the peaks toward the territory.
White-furred Frozen Wolves. Orcs and goblins with bodies of ice as hard as diamond. Snow Fairies launching ice-attribute magic.
Their types and numbers were beyond counting. It was a calamity.
“Why…? Why so soon…?”
An avalanche from the mountains buried the roads. After a momentary lull in the snowstorm, an even greater torrent of snow began pouring down.
The child ran to the bedroom she had been lying in just that morning. Beside the bed were five emergency potions made by Doctor Sergio. She pulled the corks and drank all five bottles in one gulp.
“Needle, take me to the highest point of the castle!”
The rabbit doll sprawled on the bed opened its mouth wide.
—You’re going to use your remaining chance now? Really?
The voice was cold enough to freeze one’s bones.
The doll floated into the air and looked down like a judge delivering a final sentence.
—So you’ll end up living the most miserable life of all, Sage.
“No.”
The child—more precisely, the future’s owner the boy was observing—clenched a small, chubby fist.
“I’m going to live.”
—Live?
“I can’t just let everyone die like this!”
She glared at the open window. Thunderous roars and earth-shaking tremors swept through the entire castle. This body was small and young—too small to leap from the window frame.
“Help me.”
—…….
“Help me, Needle.”
Three clock hands rose into the air.
The child grabbed the ring at the end of one and kicked off the window frame. The silver-gray Authority conjured by the hands effortlessly lifted her small body.
“Arilleti!”
Tanesa’s desperate cry was swallowed by an explosion beyond the castle gates.
With terrifying force, the hands pulled the child upward. In an instant she reached the top of the main tower and looked out in all directions.
The townspeople screamed as they fled from the hordes of monsters.
She spotted Mrs. Hampson and her little “general,” Ralph Hampson, whom she had spoken with during the last territorial inspection.
The peaceful, tranquil landscape of the territory had been shattered to pieces.
From deep within, something surged.
‘Revenge? A fight for the imperial throne? What’s the point of any of that?’
The boy could hear clearly the inner thoughts of the girl he inhabited.
‘I don’t care about any of that.’
Right now, there was only one resolve filling her soul.
‘But at the very least, this place isn’t somewhere that should be trampled so meaninglessly!’
The Needle, having read its master’s will, rose above her head.
Taking position at the highest point of the territory, the hands gathered into a single focal point and pointed in different directions.
The present: March 31st, 1347 of the Inabachio Calendar, 10:34:21 a.m.
A fierce voice burst from her lips.
“If it’s not me, then no one can bring down Hezeit. So this territory will never fall.”
‘Not to anyone!’
The strength of that will sent a shiver through the boy.
—…Honestly.
The Authority transformed into clock hands clicked its tongue softly.
—If you’re going to justify it like that, what can I even say?
Beyond the castle walls, Glen Hezeit blocked a goblin’s ice spear with his sword and spun around.
He immediately tilted his head upward, looking this way. Only someone who had once witnessed a miracle could sense such déjà vu.
The child clenched her open fist tight.
Flash—an intense burst of light swept across the territory.
The domain of the Time Mage was declared.
And in the next instant, the entire world shattered.
