Chapter 2

The sound of cannonballs gouging the ground woke Yuichiro up, and when he opened his thin eyelids, he could see a small body clinging to him. It was a boy, probably still in his early teens, with pearly white hair and skin. Of course, the boy was no acquaintance of Yuichiro’s. Yuichiro blinked a few times while sprawling on his back.

Then, Yuichiro’s ears rang, causing headaches. He darted his eyes around without moving his head. The room he was currently in, was a small, dimly lit room.

‘Is this place a cave? Or is it an air-raid shelter?]

“Move away,” Yuichiro hoarsely voiced, to the boy who clung to his chest while trembling. The boy looked up in surprise—his vividly blue eyes that were staring back at Yuichiro, almost blinding him. While feeling dull, numbing pain in his spine, Yuichiro raised his upper body; which was covered in blood. ‘This…probably Oswald’s blood’, he believed. And later, true to his expectations, his partner Oswald was nowhere to be seen.

“Where am I?” Yuichiro asked

In addition to the boy huddling him, he noticed another figure crouching beside the boy. Similar to the boy, that man also had white hair and fair skin. The man later clasped his hands together in front of him and muttered in an unknown language akin to praying to a God. Stumped, Yuichiro reluctantly grabbed the boy’s shoulders and peered into the boy’s eyes.

“Where am I? Who is attacking us?”

For unknown reasons, the boy responded with a hostile glare and pursed his lips.

“—…. Ena…”

“What?”

“—the one…you…”

The language, which at first he could not comprehend, unknowingly reassembled in his mind automatically. Yuichiro felt the process was like an unsolved, vague puzzle in his head being solved as if someone assembled the puzzle pieces together one by one.

“You’re not…”

Sounds of gunfire ensued, near them three.

“You are no goddess.”

As soon as the words were connected in the back of Yuichiro’s mind, his mouth broke into a twitch of laughter.

‘How could a thirty-seven-year-old man like me be a goddess?’

“I don’t know what kind of joke you’re making, but I don’t have time for this boring talk right now.”

Yuichiro drew his face away from the boy’s hostile gaze and stared toward the direction of the gunfire sounds. Soon after, he was able to deduce his whereabouts; the place he was currently in now was probably a cave. In addition, based on the vibrations, it was situated shallowly beneath the ground. Even in the darkness, Yuichiro faintly observed his surroundings, owed to the pale lights emitting from the rocks on the walls.

‘That rock… I’ve never seen rocks that can emit that kind of light before. Maybe because they’re made of unique materials.’

“Where is this place? Someone tell me where we are!”

Yuichiro stood up, staggering as he endured the dull pain. In response, the man who had previously been chanting strange incantations raised his head at Yuichiro’s repetitive questions.

Yuichiro, having clear sights on the man for the first time, had trouble discerning the individual’s actual gender due to his androgynous face with his pure white hair reaching down to his waist. Not to mention, Yuichiro also guessed that the man was maybe younger than him.

The moment the androgynous man saw Yuichiro’s face, he took a deep breath and slightly averted his gaze. From an outsider, it appeared he was embarrassed by something. While averting his face the other way, the young man opened his moist lips.

“This is an underground temple about a thousand roth away from southwest of Am Wallace.”

“Am Wallace? Roth?”

Hearing the unknown names of this place and a measurement unit he had never heard before, Yuichiro unconsciously furrowed his brows. The young man, perhaps noticing Yuichiro’s questioning gaze, quickly added, “Am Wallace is the capital of our country, Jeweld. A roth is the length from one fingertip to the other when an adult male spreads his arms to the right and left.”

‘If that’s the case, then roth is probably 1 meter long. But there are certainly more things I don’t understand than the things that I actually did.’

“I’ve never heard of a country called Jeweld before.”

“That’s because the world you were in and this world are two different places.”

[It makes more sense now. I was probably confused before. It was as if my brain was fogged up, and I couldn’t think straight.] Just as Yuichiro was about to open his mouth to ask what was going on, the ceiling above collapsed with an explosion, as if a cannonball had landed somewhere close, and rock fragments started falling down.

The boy screamed briefly and clung to his waist.

“My brother is going to kill us all!”

A hysterical scream pierced his eardrums. he roughly grabbed the boy by his chest and forced him to stand up. After the rough treatment, the young boy stood up in dismay.

“Is it your brother who is attacking you?” Yuichiro looked straight into the boy’s eyes and questioned indifferently. The boy nodded his head with a hint of tears in his eyes.

“Is there any room for negotiation? Can the bombardment be stopped?”

“Impossible, I can’t. My brothers can’t help but want to kill me.”

“Then, if I offer them your corpse, will that stop the attack?” The boy’s face turned pale as he listened to Yuichiro’s cold-blooded remark.

As Yuichiro gazed at the boy’s cheeks, which had turned as pale as a dead man’s, the young man raised his voice.

“Even if you give them Noah-sama, you will not be saved.”

[Apparently, this boy’s name is Noah.]

“Why? I am a stranger and have nothing to do with you.”

“You are a goddess who has come to bring us victory. And I believe the brothers’ attack on this underground temple is an attempt to destroy the Goddess.”

Once more, Yuichiro burst out in laughter at the word “goddess”.

“I’m just a thirty-seven-year-old man, and it’s a stupid joke to call me a goddess.”

“You may not understand it yet, but you are undeniably the Goddess of our country. Please understand that this bombardment is aimed at your life as well.”

Yuichiro could not sense a hint of malice or deceit behind the young man’s apathetic words. He removed his hand from the boy’s chest and turned, facing the young man.

“Is it possible that the other side’s cannonballs will run out?”

“Impossible, brothers’ army is allying with the neighboring country of Goldar. There are enough supplies to rot.”

“Can we expect any relief?”

“We have no hope. Even if relief were to come, it would take four eighths.”

The young man briefly said that an eighth is a day divided into fifty parts, which means about thirty minutes.

[In other words, about 30 minutes. Four eights would mean two hours.]

It was hard to believe that this cave could withstand a storm of bombardment for two hours. Yuichiro looked around again.

“Is there only one way out?”

“No, there is another old exit in the spring at the back of the underground temple…It is now submerged underwater, but if you dive…You may be lucky enough to get out into the canal.”

After hearing this, Yuichiro immediately walked to the other side, where he could listen to the shelling. If the cannonballs continued to bombard the place incessantly, the temple would soon collapse any minute. He did not want to be buried alive in an unfamiliar place, as he thought internally.

“Please wait!”

The young man shouted. When he turned around, the young man held something familiar.

“This appeared in this world with you. Please take it.” It was an AK-47 and a backpack.

Yuichiro took the items, slung them over his shoulder, and started to move forward again. He could see the boy, accompanied by the young man, following him closely from behind.

Walking through the dark and narrow tunnels, he wondered if this might be hell. Being called a ‘goddess’ in hell was still a laughable joke. He bent his upper body as he trotted through the narrow underground caverns. The cave, exposed to constant bombardment, shook irregularly, raining rock debris on my head. It would not be surprising if the ceiling collapsed at this very moment, and he was buried alive; he pondered.

The young man and Noah frantically chased after Yuichiro, who was running. After running for a while, they arrived at a vast open space. The ceiling was high and luminous with a silvery white light. Directly below it was a crystal-clear spring.

Yuichiro approached and touched the water with his fingertips. It was neither hot nor cold. When he licked it, it was tasteless. He then decided that this would be a decent place to dive.

He looked back again and saw the young man and Noah, both out of breath.

“Can you swim?”

Yuichiro spoke in a tone more like an order than a question. Noah shook his head from side to side with a hopeless expression, his lips half open. Then he looked at the young man, and this time he received a nod.

“I’ll swim.”

[I liked the way he answered, “he would swim,” rather than “I could swim”].

When Yuichiro smiled, the young man averted his gaze with a surprised expression. His eyes were distorted with agony, yet faintly red.

Later, Noah hurriedly spoke with his tongue-twisting. “I can’t swim! I’ve never swam before!”

“Then choose between drowning or being crushed to death by a rock.” Noah gave me stern looks in response to my previous cold words.

He then violently removed his cloak from his shoulders. He began by removing the ostentatious clothes one by one, piling them on top of each other until he was left with only a simple white garment.

“I should be able to swim ……!” Noah’s voice trembled faintly as he bellowed.

The fear of death, which he could not hide, was blurring through the raspy end of his voice. The moment Yuichiro heard his voice, he felt a sudden surge of fear up his spine. It reminded him of his first battle.

Yuichiro had just turned twenty. He remembered holding a heavy gun in his hands that it felt as if his hands would break into a thousand pieces, and he couldn’t stop shaking at the sound of bullets grazing his ears. In the end, he just pissed himself and left without firing a single shot. Later, Yuichiro’s superior beat him so hard that he broke his nose. The superior then reprimanded Yuichiro by saying his own comrades could have died because he couldn’t shoot. That memory still shook Yuichiro to his core as if his whole body had been sucked into a pitch-black hole.

Letting out a short breath, Yuichiro also took off his jacket. Afterward, he quickly took off his laced boots and, put them in a waterproof bag, slipped it inside his backpack.

“Don’t take a deep breath before you dive,” Yuichiro reminded. “Your brain will run out of oxygen, and you will black out.”

Just as he was about to dive into the spring, he heard the young man’s voice.

“I am Temeraire. Temeraire-Arc Radcliffe, and I am a servant.” Temeraire spoke while putting his palm on his chest.

“A servant?”

“Yes, to you.”

One of Yuichiro’s eyebrows raised unexpectedly at the sound of these delusional words.

Suddenly, a thought, precisely an image of a man, entered his mind. Yuichiro recalled Oswald, the man who forced him to read the Bible and shielded Yuichiro from a hand grenade with his own body. [He was a moron. The man who gave up his life for the sake of others].

“I’m Yuichiro Ogami. And I’m not a goddess.”

The young man who introduced himself as Temeraire retorted in a clumsy tone, “Yuichiro-sama.”

As if to emphasize its importance, the delicate phrase echoed subtly, humming through Yuichiro’s ears. It somehow made him uneasy. To shake off his feelings, Yuichiro crudely responded, “Don’t call disposable mercenaries by their honorifics. I’m not going to help you guys.”

“The reason we are here together now is because I need someone to guide me through this strange place,” Yuichiro declared.

Temeraire’s expression remained unchanged in the face of Yuichiro’s harsh words. “Still, I pray to you, Yuichiro-sama.”

Yuichiro looked back at Temeraire in astonishment. Temeraire was staring straight at Yuichiro. His gaze was so sincere that Yuichiro hesitated to say something back. Yuichiro shook his head from side to side and sighed.

“Suit yourself.”

Leaving the matter behind, Yuichiro dived into the spring in a single breath. Cool water immediately enveloped his entire body. Like the ceiling, the bottom of the spring was also emitting light of the same pale silver color. Thanks to this, his visibility was good, even underwater. After Yuichiro looked left and right, he spotted an opening at the side of the spring.

When he turned around to confirm, Temeraire, who had dived into the spring along with Yuichiro, nodded in agreement. Temeraire grabbed Noah’s arm, which looked like he was dying.

While underwater, Yuichiro motioned his arms again to wade in the water. He made his way toward the hole and swam through a narrow passage submerged in the water. As he struggled to breathe, he finally saw the surface of the water. He rose to the surface and took a deep breath as soon as he emerged from the water. His chest heaved and fell with every labored breath.

A few seconds later, Noah and Temeraire’s heads emerged a few feet apart. They emerged in the middle of an open river. Yuichiro swam to the shore, which he could see a few dozen meters away, and crawled to the ground.

He listened carefully to his heartbeat, which was pounding loudly inside his body. The sound of the shelling was distant, but it had not yet ceased. He grabbed Noah and Temeraire, who were still gasping for air as they held onto the shore by their clothes, and then dragged them up to the ground.

Translator’s Notes

Just to clarify again, this world seems to have its own measurement unit, roth (approx, 1 meter or 3.3 feet). You’ll see other units of measurement that will be introduced later in the series. In addition, the mentioned capital city Am Wallace is situated in the country of Jeweld. When I was translating the country’s name, I’m not really sure whether I should translate it as Jewel (literal translation of the word) or Jeweld. But, I decided on the latter since it might be confusing later on in the series if I had to write the actual word ‘jewel’ anywhere later.

And… RIP to Oswald. But, you’ll probably see him again in later chapters.

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