After hearing the name "Heart Eater," they exchanged a brief glance; the name sounded strange to their ears. Roko only said in surprise, "Heart Eater? Who is that person?"
The old woman's body trembled, she lost her balance, and couldn't even hold onto her cane, falling to the ground with a faint sound.
Her face became even paler. The old woman held onto the chair she was sitting on. A trembling voice came from her throat; her strong voice faded and became weak, appearing like a large tree whose leaves had withered. "I don't know… much about him, but why don't you search his story? You may find a few texts speaking of him, though they are rare."
Sweat fell from the old woman's face, who seemed about to faint at any moment. Roko felt there was a trap, so he prepared himself differently than before. From the intensity of her pain, she held her cheeks, and dark tears began bleeding from her eyes.
Roko looked at Seiji, then nodded his head to the right in a gesture meaning readiness.
"I can't speak… much… I… I told you that there is a monster inside me, so I think our meeting now has ended." This is what the old woman said. She began pressing on her face while Roko raised his sword, moving it right and left, ready to attack.
But the wood Roko was standing on shattered, and a black circular hole appeared beneath it, while the hut began to fade. Roko and Seiji fell.
Neither of them felt anything, nor could they even open their mouths to say a single word. They only watched the hut gradually disappear as they fell into darkness, unsure where it would take them. But before vanishing, Seiji heard whispers from the old woman, who had fallen to the ground, holding her face and writhing in mysterious pain.
"You are not ready."
These were her last words before she disappeared along with her hut.
In a moment, Roko and Seiji fell into a strange forest, surrounded by massive green mountains, and strong winds blowing from the front towards them. Trees blocked the sunlight, forming an overwhelming barrier.
Roko hit the ground after the fall, feeling the soft soil and damp earth. Due to the soil's moisture, Roko's white clothes got dirty with dirt mixed with dried blood from the city.
As they regained their balance, the wind intensified, but Roko felt it the most.
The sleeves of his kimono swayed in the strong wind, and the belt around his waist creaked with each gust. He had to tighten it with his hands to maintain balance. What worsened his pain was that the burned side of his face flared; Roko felt intense heat and strong wind — not natural, but deliberately controlled forces.
This made him scream loudly, a roar born not of losing something important, but from pain. "Damn it, why did I wear a white kimono? Am I an idiot?" Roko cursed the moment he wore this outfit, quickly forgetting about that old woman.
Seiji wanted to quiet Roko, feeling annoyed. "How can you think of something trivial after everything that happened?" Roko didn't consider where they had arrived. "Shut up for a moment, Roko, we are now in the city of Nemoria." Seiji realized their destination.
"How did we reach Nemoria so fast? We reached two cities in just two days." Even someone unaware would understand that the Old Kingdom was the size of an entire continent, and crossing Valemir alone to reach Nemoria would take at least a full month.
Seiji reached one conclusion: "The old woman is the reason we arrived here so quickly. The hole that brought us out of that hut transported us to Nemoria."
"I don't know much about the Old Kingdom or its cities, so I don't know what Nemoria is, but what I heard is that each city differs from the previous one." Roko neither lied nor pretended to know about this kingdom; he was just honest and didn't know how to lie.
Hearing what Roko said, a calm side-smile appeared on Seiji's face, yet it carried some pride from realizing something Roko didn't know. He said in a hoarse voice:
"Nemoria, sometimes called the Wise Forest, is closer to a mysterious fictional city, while all other cities focus only on urban development without caring for the beauty of nature. Nemoria combines both urban and forest, that's what I've discovered so far, but how they manage to merge civilization with nature isn't explained in the books."
Then Seiji looked at the road ahead leading to Nemoria — only a path of dirt and small rocks. "Alright, let's go there, but be careful; this strong wind is caused by the whistle of angry spirits." Seiji pressed his hands, lowering his ronin hat over his face, and the two of them moved forward toward a dark city lit only by old lights that could go out at any moment.
"There's no sound on this path, only hidden whispers and the whistling of angry spirits trying to lure us — me and Seiji."
After ten minutes of continuous walking, Roko and Seiji arrived at Nemoria. It wasn't a city with just trees and flowers; it resembled the cities in fairy tales. Large palaces were covered in ivy, and houses matched the big forest trees. The city didn't need sidewalks; its plants weren't thorny. Yet, no humans remained.
The place was so quiet that upon entering, Roko didn't even hear the echo of his own footsteps.
Roko entered Nemoria prepared, pulling the katana engraved with ice and blood. He was no longer the shocked Roko who entered Valemir, but the third leader of the samurai.
This city was covered only by crows digging into the ground; some stared at Roko and shied away from him.
Roko spoke in a low, heavy, sharp voice:
"Crows don't gather for nothing; they feed on corpses. But I see no corpses… why are they gathered so strangely?"
Beside them, above scattered swords breaking the silence, the sharp caws of the crows rose: "Kraaaah! Kraaaah!" With the cawing came sudden wing flaps.
Doubt grew in Roko's mind. Why doesn't he see anyone? Are they in an illusion again? Or were the corpses hidden? Or is it a trap for the crows?
After their sharp cawing, the crows disappeared as if they never existed; they didn't fly away far — they simply vanished, like people appearing suddenly and disappearing before you.
Seiji looked at the walls of the houses and found old scratch marks and scattered sharp blades on the ground, remnants of broken swords.
From this, Seiji realized something he shouldn't know yet:
"The blood has decomposed and disappeared with the corpses, and the Old Kingdom was supposed to have been destroyed ten days ago, and there are traces of a war that took place thirty days ago."
And this led to only one conclusion: "How did we reach Nemoria? So fast?"
"The minutes we spent inside the hut outside were not mere minutes, but thirty days."
While they thought, unaware of who was behind them, the Lightning Ruler Ryuujin, who had been watching them since they entered Nemoria, hid his power behind them. Ryuujin looked at the beautiful trees.
"Does this kingdom deserve annihilation at his hands? The death of many humans for no reason — that's what I thought, but I was foolish."
Before leaving, Ryuujin saw something suspicious in this nature; his instinct did not lie. Beneath the soil, the tree roots were just hands of decomposed corpses, showing failed experiments left to rot.
End of chapter.