A little over two years had passed since the subjugation of the magical beasts.
The days passed uneventfully for Abel.
He spent them alone, training in magic and swordsmanship.
Once, he had pestered Walter to give him sword lessons.
Walter had smiled in amusement and replied,
“Listen, Abel. You can’t assume the enemy will be close by. More often than not, you have to spend days walking just to find them. On top of that, you’ll be wearing heavy armor and other gear. You’ll be exhausted before you even swing your sword, and plenty of people lose that way.
In other words, while taking up the sword to get stronger seems correct, the order is wrong.”
“So you mean, train my body first?”
“Exactly. Try running with a load on your back. Building arm strength with heavy objects is effective, too. Swinging a sword looks cool, but that alone won’t make you useful.”
It was sound advice, the kind expected from an experienced veteran.
Abel had taken the words to heart, and from then on, he carried a sandbag on his back and walked through the hills and fields from morning to evening.
At times, he joined Ayla and Walter in the mountains to learn hunting and gather medicinal herbs.
Understanding which plants could be used as medicine proved to be very useful knowledge, and his parents taught him with care. Likely with that in mind.
He also sought information from books.
Walter bought him about twenty new ones at his request.
Since there was no printing technology, all books were handwritten copies.
Abel had once asked Walter if they couldn’t be magically duplicated, but Walter explained that no such magic existed. Besides, even if it did, parchment was expensive to buy in large quantities, so it wouldn’t be practical.
This had surprised Abel. Walter was one of the more knowledgeable people in this world and understood the importance of books, yet he had never even considered producing them in large numbers.
Abel thought this might be because there was so little demand for books in the first place. After all, they were worthless to those who couldn’t read.
For a moment, he considered making a printing press himself but quickly abandoned the idea.
True, if he invested enough of his life into it, he could probably manage papermaking and printing.
But he had decided not to interfere too much with this world….
On an early afternoon, Abel sat in the shade of green leaves, flipping through a history book.
The title read The Birth and Fall of Nations.
The author was Rai Kana.
Abel planned to explain the book’s contents to Sharle later, so he continued reading.
It seemed that writing had been invented roughly five thousand years ago.
Because of that, almost no records remained from before that time.
However, oral traditions had been passed down. These were gathered together to create the very first book.
This was The First Book, known as the oldest historical text.
The ‘First Book’ began with the oral traditions of the human Wasul-Tataha tribe.
According to their legend, all races had been blown away by the breath of the gods and had come here from a faraway world.
The Wasul-Tataha tribe was a people of horsemen.
Though small at first, they gradually gained strength and eventually formed a great nation by seizing control of the central plains of the continent.
After the founding of their nation, the narrative continued for a while with tales of kings and vassals.
From time to time, a person named As would appear.
She seemed to be female, and in some scenes was nicknamed “the Witch”.
Thus, she was also known as the Witch As.
She was a fascinating figure. She appears out of nowhere to offer advice or even steps in to help directly with powerful magic.
However, about three hundred years later, the Wasul-Tataha tribe perished, and a new tribe called the Starki appeared. And once again, Ase showed up.
It seemed that this Witch Ase had been a real person. A mage of immense power.
From time to time, she would appear before humans and aid them in founding nations.
Stories remained of her feats in various wars and the bridges she built in certain places.
From then on, countless wars broke out, and more nations were born and destroyed than one could remember.
From reading, it became clear that humans and non-humans sometimes fought and sometimes cooperated.
Over the course of about four thousand years, many civilizations rose… only to disappear without exception.
Time flowed on and on…
About a thousand years ago, something unusual happened in human history.
For the first time, a unified government that was called the Great Empire was born.
Until then, humans had never gathered under a single banner, but at last they were united.
The leader of this great empire was a man known as the First Emperor.
His real name was not recorded.
He had simply commanded that he be called the First Emperor.
What caught his attention was that here, once again, a person named Ase began to appear from time to time.
Since thousands of years had passed since the tales of the Witch Ase recorded in The First Book, she was, of course, a different person… probably.
Yet this new Ase was also a woman. And apparently a mage as well.
Her epithet was “Ase the Wise”.
Ase entered the story at the moment when the chief of a certain tribe fathered an illegitimate child.
That child would one day grow up to call himself the First Emperor.
It was said that As kindly helped the boy in many ways as he grew.
Eventually, in his childhood, the First Emperor awakened to a ferocious magical power.
His first battle was when he single-handedly slaughtered nearly an entire enemy tribe.
He was said to have been only nine years old.
After that, he gathered slaves, mages, and warriors, launching a ferocious campaign of conquest.
He proclaimed the ideal of bringing peace to the world, but in truth, it was simply invasion….and at the same time, the start of mass slaughter.
Whether non-human or human, it made no difference; the First Emperor killed all who stood in his way.
It seemed Ase was one of his loyal vassals.
The First Emperor often used Ase in his wars and massacres, rewarding her with immense riches.
At one point, the mighty mage that was the First Emperor wished to see what the land he had conquered looked like.
Ase gave him advice.
She said that if that was his wish, then he should set out on a journey to the “Heavenly Realm”.
The First Emperor used a variety of spells to reach the far-off world above called the Heavenly Realm.
There, he became the first of the human race to confirm that the world was a sphere.
He named this star the “Main Sphere”.
The First Emperor was, in history, an unparalleled genius.
And though he was more ruthless than any leader before or since, he was also compassionate.
In time, he conquered all of humanity and most of the non-human races.
The First Emperor’s vast armies and capable vassals even defeated evil dragons and maddened magical beasts, ushering in an era of peace for a time.
This period was said to be the pinnacle of human history.
Strongholds of the Great Empire were built all across the continent.
Both humans and non-humans found joy in following the charismatic First Emperor.
However, once the great work of unifying the world had settled, the First Emperor grew increasingly reclusive.
One day, the First Emperor declared that he had learned all there was to know about this world.
He lamented that he was unbearably bored.
So once again, he sought Ase’s advice.
Ase replied:
“It may be time for you to take a wife and settle down…”
Here, she made an unusual proposal.
Ase suggested that she herself should become the First Emperor’s wife.
Though it was a proposal from Ase who had always acted with precision at critical moments, the First Emperor refused.
The reason was not recorded in any book.
Ase then gave the First Emperor another piece of advice.
If he had already come to know the Heavenly Realm, why not visit another world entirely?
This marks the first recorded appearance of space-time magic in history.
The First Emperor became obsessed with this new magic.
It seems he had always had a near-fanatical streak when it came to the pursuit of magical knowledge.
For several years, he all but vanished from sight, entrusting politics to his retainers and devoting himself entirely to research.
And then, the fateful day arrived.
The First Emperor announced that he had completed space-time magic.
Since it was a completely unknown system of magic that no one had ever seen before, not a single person understood what it truly was.
The First Emperor told his retainers that he would now demonstrate space-time magic in action.
Before the eyes of countless retainers, the Emperor’s figure vanished.
He never returned.
The Great Empire, which should have been stronger than any before it, collapsed with astonishing speed the moment the First Emperor disappeared.
Because it had been forcefully and rapidly unified by the overwhelming presence of the First Emperor alone, the instant that keystone was gone, it crumbled with explosive speed.
And so began a long, long era of bloody civil wars and fragmentation.
Countless factions rose and fell in succession until at last the Empire of the Emperor and the Kingdom of the True King were founded.
From the moment of their creation, the two nations were destined to be enemies, locked in a cycle of tension and release.
Abel closed the book he had just finished reading, The Birth and Fall of Nations.
On the final page was a brief note about the author’s background.
It stated that the writer Rai Kana was apparently of the demon race.
A man of great curiosity. He was said to travel across the continent investigating ancient ruins.
Being of the long-lived demon race, it seemed he had already been at it for over fifty years.
Abel reached for the next book.
The autumn of his eighth year passed in peace.
Leave a Reply