Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 195

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 195.
Choose the Dawn (7)
Boris hadn’t spoken out of any particular animosity. Yet a certain discomfort lingered within him.
He didn’t consider himself arrogant enough to overestimate his abilities, but neither did he believe his skills were so pitiful that he should bow before someone he’d just met. Even Nauplion had once said that when training techniques capable of taking someone’s life, at minimum a degree of confidence was required.
“Well, that’s something you wouldn’t know. Whether you’re aware or not, that sword belongs neither to you nor to us. It’s more akin to an unleashed beast, so tell me—who does it pose greater danger to, me or you?”
“Since you see it that way, I’ll be frank. I’m going to muzzle it again.”
They locked eyes once more. Their heights were nearly identical. Then, a voice that should have reached his ears instead resonated within Boris’s mind.
Are you seeking the Old Man’s Well?
Endymion suddenly came to mind. It was exactly like when that child would press their foreheads together and breathe thoughts directly into his consciousness.
Epibiono before him continued to observe Boris intently. In those clear eyes of a twenty-year-old who had lived a thousand years, I could see the wind flowing through them.
A being forced to continue a life he never desired… A survivor unable to die even when death was sought… At last, I remembered where I’d heard his name.
Epibiono—a name meaning “to survive.”
How immense was the power of a name that allowed survival even amid ruin? Or perhaps, had destiny been foreseen, and thus he was given such a name?
Eventually, Boris nodded.
“Yes. Now I understand. I think I know who you are and why you’ve come to me.”
After sleeping deeply, I awoke to find it was evening once more.
When Boris opened his eyes, Epibiono was again seated with his back turned, facing westward. Though the sun had already set, he was undoubtedly gazing toward where it had been.
Was this a habit formed naturally over a thousand years of solitude, like counting the passage of time? His ashen hair gleamed with a bluish sheen in the evening air—like the fur of a silver-grey wolf I’d once seen during my travels across the Continent with Nauplion.
Epibiono noticed Boris had awakened and turned his head.
“Your beasts have returned over there.”
It was true. Two llamas stood quietly in the gathering dusk. As Boris rose, he asked with some curiosity.
“Do you not sleep?”
Epibiono drew forth a skeletal hand from within his sleeve, revealing it briefly.
“You can’t tell because of the cloak, but most of my body is in this state. I have no need for the rest or sustenance that human bodies require. What maintains my form is only the strength of will for the self.”
“…”
Boris woke Nayatrey, and the three of them shared a simple meal before setting out along the road.
Epibiono was a name that had surfaced briefly when Boris met with adult spirits regarding Oizis’s matter and heard of Ganapoli’s destruction.
According to their account, the young Epibiono, who had earned renown as a prodigy from the age of seven, was among the mages who gathered at Dawn Tower Simerone to prevent the calamity of Arcadia.
Thus, when Princess Evbzenis’s “Origin of Annihilation” failed, he too should have perished. Yet, as the spirits there had raised a light question, Epibiono—bearing a name meaning “to survive”—truly did survive.
Moreover, he persisted in a grotesque state where a corpse’s body that required a cloak to conceal coexisted with the beautiful face he’d worn at death. He had lived alone for a thousand years since.
Even Epibiono himself could not explain what had made him this way.
Of course, in the strict sense, he was not alone. Other spirits existed in this place. Yet they were not beings capable of communication.
Honest about his inevitable loneliness, Epibiono said he had attempted to restore consciousness to those spirits, but ultimately abandoned the effort and chose domination instead.
“Those incompletely dead possess no positive desire whatsoever. They feel only that something is unpleasant and unsatisfied, yet know not how to satisfy themselves. Thus they commit destruction and murder to fill that strange dissatisfaction. Therefore, the only thing that suppresses them is fear, and if you remain at my side, whom they fear, you will be safe even in this land.”
When Epibiono spoke of his loneliness, Boris found himself studying his face anew. Humans could suffer terribly from mere days of isolation—was it truly possible to have lived a thousand years alone, not merely decades or centuries?
“It’s difficult to imagine what a thousand years of solitude must feel like.”
“Hmph, I didn’t know myself until I experienced it.”
He even made jokes, and remarkably, most of them were comprehensible for words spoken by a human from a thousand years past. Though his manner of speech was archaic, his vocabulary was similar to that of people today.
Boris recalled what the spirits had said—that it was difficult for them to maintain their sense of self without observing human life nearby—and asked.
“You haven’t remained only here, then?”
“So it’s not ten years or a hundred years, yet spending all day staring at nothing but the Wasteland—isn’t that the kind of work only a ‘mono-maniac’ (he seemed quite satisfied with this unfamiliar word) would do? There was a time when I couldn’t bear the suffocation, so I wandered across the Continent.”
“In that form?”
After speaking, I wondered if I’d made a slight mistake, but Epibiono shrugged his mysterious shoulders beneath his cloak and replied.
“What do people these days think of the sorcerer of Ganapoli? Changing one’s appearance is nothing—even modern sorcerers can manage that much. Do you think I revealed myself before you because I lacked the skill? Such a misunderstanding is most regrettable.”
Even having lived a thousand years, a sorcerer remained a sorcerer. That degree of confidence was nearly an essential virtue of their kind.
Nayatrey’s demeanor was interesting in its own way. She showed no curiosity about whether Epibiono possessed skeletal hands or had lived a thousand years, nor did she seem afraid. She didn’t even appear to be on guard.
Boris, knowing how sensitive Nayatrey was to unfamiliar presences, thought to himself that if her animal instincts had judged this one to be harmless, perhaps he could trust that assessment.
Epibiono promised to guide them both to Old Man’s Well. It was an exceedingly welcome offer for those who had been about to wander aimlessly across such vast terrain.
When Boris asked why he was showing kindness, Epibiono answered, “To avoid your danger, my danger, the dangers of the past, and the dangers of present and future.”
Boris pondered the meaning of those words over several days, then eventually forgot about it altogether.
Thus they traveled southward, ever southward for five days, following the Boreios Road—if one trusted Epibiono’s memory.
Boris mentioned midway that they should head in the direction where he’d heard there was a Sacred Spring, but Epibiono shook his head with his characteristic expression of knowing everything. He seemed to suggest there were ways to replenish water regardless.
When they finally ran out of water, Epibiono veered from the path and traveled eastward for some distance before discovering a place where the ground was cracked in various places and called the two over.
In that parched place where not a single drop of moisture could be found, Epibiono asked in a leisurely tone, “You wanted to replenish water, yes?”
Nayatrey sat on the ground without any suspicion, following his instructions. When Boris looked on with skeptical eyes, Epibiono chuckled softly like a young boy and spoke.
“Doubtful young friend, please, I beg you—trust in magic.”
Epibiono, standing with his arms crossed within his cloak, neither chanted any particular incantation nor even drew runes on the ground.
Yet before long, both Boris and Nayatrey, sitting on the ground, felt a tremor gradually strengthening beneath them. Shortly after, Boris’s eyes widened as he saw black water rising up and filling the cracks before them.
Water gushing forth in the middle of the Wasteland, when even the Sea lay so far away?
Moreover, it was so dark it seemed like grape juice, and it gleamed with an otherworldly shimmer. As the water rose higher, Boris instinctively tried to back away. Yet the water merely overflowed slightly from the cracks before stopping its ascent.
Boris saw Epibiono gesture and asked in bewilderment.
“You want me to drink that?”
“Does the color bother you? It’s neither poison nor contaminated water, so don’t worry. In fact, it’s far superior to the clear water you commonly see. Hmm, listen. I’ve shown you kindness, and if you hesitate, it embarrasses me, doesn’t it?”
Where a human from a thousand years ago learned to persuade so skillfully was a mystery, but in any case, Boris approached the water and tasted a little on his fingertip before drinking. The water seemed slightly bitter, but it didn’t taste significantly different from ordinary water.
Yet Boris glanced at Nayatrey beside him and was startled once more. Nayatrey was scooping up water with both hands and drinking it repeatedly, as if nothing were amiss.
Seeing that, no matter how long they’d gone without speaking, I couldn’t help but say something.
“I envy how at peace you are in situations like this.”
An unexpected reply came.
“It’s Obsidian Water. It was so rare that I could barely drink two sips in a year.”
Epibiono laughed clearly from beside us.
“The Myo Tribe still knows of Obsidian Water. That you can find Obsidian Water even now without the Golden Cat—that’s quite a remarkable tale. In any case, it’s good. Yes, even two sips a year would have been helpful enough. Whether a thousand years ago or now, the Wasteland is a difficult place to survive without such things.”
“Wait, wouldn’t this place not have been a Wasteland a thousand years ago?”
Epibiono raised one eyebrow.
“You don’t know that Ganapoli was originally built upon a desert.”
“It was a desert even then?”
I couldn’t understand what he meant. When I imagined Ganapoli, what came to mind were the castle and houses built of blue stone that I’d seen in the land of spirits, and the lush forest like the Forest of Hearts. Moreover, I had once seen Arcadia’s form directly with the aid of the spirits’ power. Wasn’t it a clean, grand, and beautiful city—far from a desert?
What Epibiono said next astonished me even more.
“Not just Ganapoli, but the entire Island was originally a desert.”
“The Island?”
“This land we’re standing on. Ah, you call it the Continent, don’t you? But isn’t it rather small for a continent? In any case, the land we called the Continent is somewhere else.”
Boris fell silent for a moment before a sudden memory surfaced.
“Ah… Could it be that the airship fleet departing from Ganapoli was heading toward… that continent? Where exactly is it?”
Now it came back to him. Moon Island was merely where they had crash-landed; the continent that the people of Ganapoli had intended to reach was somewhere else entirely.
Yet the people of the Continent now—even those from The Island—were they not ignorant of such a place’s existence?
“It’s far too distant for modern humans to discover anyway. Forget about it. Our ancestors transformed this island from a desert into what it is today. However, we left only the northern region—the Boreios Road area—as a wasteland. There are various reasons for it, but I’m too lazy to explain, so let’s move on.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————