Chapter 70
Gift From Gods
"Do I really need to toss bodies at it until it croaks?" Sylas groaned in frustration, shooting himself back into the tree, sitting down. A year and a half—that's how much time he left at the Thrall. That was his estimate, anyway. Somewhere around that.
It was becoming… painful, to say the least. Reliving the very same week, over and over again, with virtually no deviation was… painful. Though he'd had long-lasting loops already, most of them had some variance to it—this one didn't. He had to rush through the same road through the mountains each and every time, and then he had four days before the Thrall arrived. And those four days were almost always spent crafting talismans with Ryne since it was, objectively, the best way he could spend time.
Every now and then he'd try something different, but if it wasn't layers worse, it was at best neutral. And every time, without a fault, the loop would end in the same way—him getting killed by the Thrall. His frustrations had been mounting for quite some time now and yet he didn't truly have an outlet for them. Well, except yelling really loudly when alone and isolated. But even that wasn't helping much lately.
As he truly saw no other avenue, he decided to give it a shot at least—the notoriously inhumane idea, the one employed by the most desperate sort who truly saw no way out: toss bodies at it until it dies. Deep in his soul, he was praying that the increased body count would perhaps reveal a weakness or something, though he very much doubted it. What was far likelier to happen was the Thrall having a field day with everyone and enjoying a good day's massacre at their behest.
"Ah, whatever, I'll just reset it," Sylas groaned. "It won't be the first time I sacrifice people temporarily. Jesus, my brain's changing…"
Resetting once more, he immediately chattered away with Derrek, the conversation he had basically memorized word-for-word by now, before the two men charged off toward Valen, informing him of the attack. Sylas delayed the departure till dawn, but everyone spent the night working tirelessly, mostly in preparing the bandits for departure as well. With little rest, however, Sylas delayed it once more till midday.
With everyone (relatively) rested and (relatively) prepared, the entire, massive entourage departed. Their speed was, naturally, incomparable to when it was just Derrek, Tenner, and him, but it was still much faster than when they departed from the castle. The breaks were less frequent, and those truly incapable of walking on their own anymore—mostly captured elderly from the bandit camp and the servants—were tossed over onto wagons and carried.
In the end, Valen settled on splitting the ground—he send forth half the 'army' alongside Tenner to prepare the castle and the people inside, while the rest of the entourage would settle immediately upon arrival, with everything waiting for them.
"Do you think we're at fault?" Valen asked Sylas suddenly as the group was passing underneath two cliffs that were hugging each other, creating a thin bridge of sorts above.
"What do you mean?"
"What we saw up there, the army," Valen said. "Do you think… do you think we drew their eyes toward us?"
"Their eyes were already on us, I'm afraid," Sylas shrugged. "Right, I keep forgetting to ask you: did you do what I asked of you? The research?"
"Y-yes, yes I did," Sylas, due to the business with Thrall and consistently losing his mind, had completely forgotten that he had asked Valen to check into the Kingdom's history for any discrepancies.
"And? Did you find anything?"
"Possibly," Valen nodded. "As you instructed me, I tried discarding all my prior bias and read the histories from the perspective of an outsider. A few things, especially with the founding of the Kingdom, were extremely vague and brushed over. Furthermore, there is remarkably little history when it comes to the northern parts of the peninsula, and most of it is centered on the rebellions that originated there. I hadn't connected the dots before, but did you know that, across Kingdoms, there were over sixty rebellions that were started within the northern regions in the last five hundred years?"
"…" Sylas nodded knowingly, though he hardly knew a thing.
"That had me digging deeper—most rebellions, naturally, were extinguished fairly quickly. After all, northern ends of all the Kingdoms are quite barren, both in men as well as in resources. But one rebellion was fairly successful—it was ignited within Eun Kingdom, our neighbor's neighbor, some four hundred years ago. While our Kingdom extends toward the peninsula's eastern edge, Eun's is toward the west, and the tip extends even deeper out into the sea.
"Though I've studied the rebellion before as it is quite an outliner, something caught my attention this time around—supposedly, the rebellion's one man could match ten of the official, royal army. And I… I think it has to do with the Ghouls. Though there is no mention of Ghouls almost anywhere, I'm fairly certain that most of these rebellions were kindled out of sheer desperation. And that the reason Eun's was as successful as it was is due to the fact that, after facing an army of Ghouls, an army of men is hardly as scary.
"Another few discrepancies I've discovered have to do with years—they are extremely inconsistent, at least within the framework. Though I jotted the ones I noticed before to simply being a human error, I think… I think it's more than that. I think the dates were written to be misaligned on purpose. In fact, when I tried stringing together the peninsula's entire history in chronological order, I've noticed that many events overlapped—such as the ascension of the Sun-king and the crowning of one of our Princesses, Asheena."
"And?"
"And… the issue is that according to the records I read back home, Asheena and the Sun-king were born literally centuries apart."
"So, a lot of discrepancies all around," Sylas nodded. Though he wasn't surprised that Valen found quite a few things that didn't add up, there still seemed to be a distinct lack of anything that connected the events. "Look into more recent history next," Sylas said. "Last fifty years or so—especially starting with your Father's crowning. What other major events happened around that time, what forces fell, what came into light, and all that. Again, note anything that stands out. Eventually, we'll figure out the answers."
Valen fell silent, sighing. Without Sylas' urging, he would have never looked into history the way he did. Though he always considered himself a skeptic, someone who looked at his Kingdom's history quite critically, he still missed a lot of things.
It was hardly on him, however. Sylas doubted that Valen had the remotest idea on how life was in the northern parts prior to arriving here, and even then, the year he spent here was, from the sound of it, entirely uneventful—in that there were no Ghoulish invasions, no bandits, no nothing. It all changed when Sylas arrived. It was as though his arrival triggered dominos falling, and, ever since then, one after another were just hitting each other at the every-accelerated rate. It's gotten to the point that there were so many points to keep a track of that Sylas was forced to jot them down each and every loop lest he forgot.
The entire entourage arrived with a day and a half to spare. Though the journey could have been optimized a bit more, Sylas predicted that this was likely the best they could do on such short notice. Furthermore, he'd likely scrap that half a day so that everyone could rest and reconfigure. It meant that there was a day before the Ghouls arrived. I'll have to come earlier again, to assist Ryne with talismans. I can come with Derrek, and have Tenner lead the second splinter and Valen in the rear. Consecutive arrivals, a couple of days apart… should be fine-ish.
The last day seemed to go by so fast—everyone was in a rampart hurry, running left and right. And though the preparations were hastened, they were still decent, all things considered. Nowhere near enough to hold the wall, but fairly decent nonetheless.
Sylas stood on the wall once more, wishing the wind was a bit gentler, ripe with anticipation. Most others were doused in horror and uncertainty, especially as the seconds ticked by. Inevitably, they saw them—the approaching wave, the rollout of the dead.
Mowing them down was easy, however—after all, this time around, they had the most experienced archers present on the wall, and their targets were slow-moving, incapable-of-dodging Ghouls. Derrek, once more, took it upon himself to kill the Infernal Ghoul, which is when the rollout seemed to slow down. It was then that Derrek and Sylas felt it—the first changes.
The two men glanced at each other and took a deep breath each—though for very different reasons. Derrek was praying for a good death through his breath, and Sylas was praying that he would discover something that could be exploited.
The trees began to fall and the ground began to shake. In concord, panic slowly began to seep into the eyes, and the souls perched on top of the wall. Valen was, naturally, among them. Though he knew of the term 'Thrall', he never learned their appearance or prowess. He only knew that they were qualified as 'extremely dangerous'. That was enough, however, as the label was given to creatures that could single-handedly conquer a castle.
The behemoth emerged from the trees and cries and yelps of shock and horror followed immediately afterward, forming a symphony. This time… this time, please, for the love of God, give me something! Come on system! You want me to move forward, right?! Well, I can't fuckin' do that if this tree-sized fuck is standing in my way!
"T-that's… a Thrall?" Valen mumbled, though, to Sylas' surprise, there was a distinct lack of panic, horror, and abject hopelessness he was expecting from the young Prince.
"Yes. Why?" Sylas quizzed, noticing from the corner of his eyes that Derrek was about to jump down.
"But… it's just a small child," Valen said, looking at Sylas. It was then that the latter noticed something different. Though the Prince always had quite the light shade when it came to his eyes, they seemed to be… glowing. No, they were definitely glowing.
"Derrek, stop!" Sylas suddenly yelled out, drawing attention to himself. Derrek, who was just about to leap down, came to an abrupt halt, shooting him a 'what the hell man? I was ready for a good death!' looking. "Can you… talk to it—the child, I mean?"
"Why? You can't? It's just a kid," Valen said, facing forward once again. "Bring me down." Sylas immediately shot a look at Derrek, the 'get the hell over here' look. The Captain rolled his eyes but rushed over, passing many confused souls on his way before reaching Sylas.
"What? What's going on?"
"Grab the Prince and jump down," Sylas said. "Let's go and say hi to that thing."
"… excuse me. I think I misheard."
"You didn't. Let's go. Don't lag behind."
"…" Derrek watched aghast as Sylas jumped from the wall and onto the pile of corpses. Glancing between the cursing messiah and the Prince, Derrek sighed, relenting. They'd all die, anyway. May as well do what the messiah wants. Grabbing the Prince and, once more shocking the entire wall, he jumped down and landed squarely and easily, even with the extra body to bear.
Seemingly unaware of what was happening, the moment Valen touched the ground, he began walking forward toward the Thrall, as though suicidal.
"Prince—"
"Let him be," Sylas interrupted, stopping next to Derrek. The stench forced the Captain to pinch his nose for a moment. "I gotta see how this plays out. If this was the solution this entire time… I'll kill myself. Seriously. I'll kill myself a few times, in fact."
"…" a few minutes later, Sylas felt tears surging in his eyes. "Goddammit, I'll fucking kill myself. This is so depressing…"