Continuing from the perspective of the Great Sage back when he was still young, fifty years ago.

***

My name is Otfried.


I’m the mage of the Hero’s party, and recently, people have started calling me a Sage.


As the Hero Rudolf and I made our way through the forest, we found the blue-haired Dryad waiting for us at the entrance to the sanctuary.

There was no sign of Fidessa, even though she should have been ahead of us.
It seemed we had caught up to the Dryad before she did.


The Hero had only just had one of his arms severed by the older Dryad.
I cautiously stepped half a pace in front of him, positioning myself to shield the injured Hero.

Noticing us, the Dryad gave us a hostile glare and raised her voice in anger.


“How dare you betray me, Hero!”


The Dryad used spirit magic and conjured poisonous blades in midair.
The blades flew towards us like a flurry of arrows, threatening to pierce both the Hero and me.
I created a shield with earth magic, blocking all of her attacks.


“If you wanted me gone, you could have just told me so…!”


Unable to accept what was happening, the Dryad let her emotions explode.
However, the Hero seemed just as confused. He desperately tried to reason with the Dryad who had been his lover.


“You’re the one who came to me this morning and said you wanted to break up with me!? Did you suddenly change your mind about leaving the forest?”


Just as I thought I was beginning to understand what all the commotion this morning had been about, the Dryad shouted back.


“You were the one who rejected me first! You came to see me at dawn and said that you couldn’t be with a spirit after all…”

“What are you talking about…?” the Hero muttered, as though he had just realized something.


Supposedly, the Hero Rudolf had gone to see the Dryad at dawn, and then that morning, the Dryad had gone to see the Hero.
And after that came the incident involving both Dryad sisters from earlier.
If I remembered correctly, the whole thing had started when the older Dryad stumbled upon her younger sister in the Hero’s tent.


If both of their accounts were true, then somehow, each of them had gone to the other that morning and tried to end their relationship.
And yet, for some reason, neither of them seemed to have any memory of doing so.
Something wasn’t adding up here.



Before I could finish thinking, thunder clapped and a fierce gust of wind swept past us.

When I opened my eyes, Fidessa had driven both of her blades into the Dryad’s chest.
She must’ve taken advantage of the fact that the Dryad’s attention was focused on us to launch a surprise attack.


“So you called your other companions here to finish me off… you set me up, Hero?!”


The Dryad glared at the Hero with a sorrowful expression.
Fidessa’s twin swords were still embedded in her body.


“If I’d known things would end like this, I wish I’d never met you. I don’t ever want to see your face again. I just want to forget everything and disappear.”

“…I don’t feel that way.”


The Hero began walking towards the Dryad and called out to the swordswoman, who still had her swords drawn.


“Fidessa, put away your swords.”

“…Understood.”


As the Hero asked, Fidessa pulled out her swords and stepped back.
Then, the Hero came to a quiet stop in front of the Dryad.


“Please, let me talk to you alone one more time.”

“……I can’t trust you.”

“Then I’ll leave my sword behind. You’ll feel safer if I’m unarmed, right?”


The Hero tossed the Holy Sword to me.
Normally, I might have thought he was asking for divine punishment, treating a sacred relic so carelessly, but I was in no state of mind to worry about something like that.


A strange, door-like space appeared between the two of them.

The Dryad teleported inside.
The Hero followed her, slowly stepping through the doorway.
And just like that, the two of them disappeared into the sanctuary.


But the door to the sanctuary remained open.
So… what do I do now?


“Hey, Fidessa.”


I called out to the swordswoman, only to find that she was gone.
Where did she go?

Before I could do anything else, I heard a woman scream from beyond the doorway.

Realizing something was wrong, I rushed into the sanctuary.


That’s when I saw a massive poisonous blade protruding from the Hero’s back.
The blade had pierced straight through his abdomen, driven into him from the front by the Dryad.
I knew immediately that the Hero was already dead.


The Hero’s Helmet lay on the ground.
If he had used that helmet, he should’ve been able to block an attack like that.
And yet, he didn’t. My chest ached as I wondered why.


“You had a sword just a moment ago… so why…?” the Dryad murmured quietly.


Instead of a sword, the Hero was clutching a single blue flower in his hand.
It looked like he was trying to propose to her again.


The Dryad took the blue flower from the Hero’s hand and slipped it into her hair.

Then, with an expression filled with hatred for everything around her, she glared at me.

That’s when I noticed it.


──Her left eye was gone.


At some point, the Dryad’s left eye had been gouged out by a slash.
That meant someone had attacked her inside the sanctuary.

But the Hero should’ve been the only other person in there.
And I was holding the Hero’s Holy Sword.
So who then, exactly, was the one who had cut the Dryad’s left eye?


The Dryad’s remaining right eye, twisted with enough malice to make my skin crawl, stared straight through me.


“Get out.”


At the Dryad’s command, I was thrown out of the sanctuary.
The sanctuary door slammed shut, and since I had been standing near its boundary, I must have been forced back outside.

The Dryad emerged from the sanctuary covered in blood.
Dryads are spirits. They don’t bleed.
Which meant that all that red blood had to have belonged to the Hero.


Poisonous blades shot out from beneath the ground and towards me. I could feel their murderous intent as they rapidly closed in.
Still in a daze, I couldn’t even react.


“Quit spacing out, Otfried!”


Just before one of the blades could pierce me, Fidessa knocked it aside with her sword.

Even after nearly being killed myself, I still couldn’t accept that my best friend was actually dead.
But in the end, it was Fidessa’s voice that finally snapped me back to my senses.



Before I even had time to sort through the confusion in my head, we found ourselves in a fight with the Dryad.


From every corner of the forest came voices repeating the same words, crying, “I hate humans.”
The Dryad attacked us relentlessly from every direction.

Having lost our leader, the Hero, we had no choice but to flee the forest.


But when we finally escaped, for some reason, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army was waiting in ambush.
And they weren’t alone. There was even a massive Ice Dragon covered in blue scales.
We had fallen right into someone’s trap.

One by one, my companions were killed.
In the end, only Fidessa and I remained.

But Fidessa died too.

All I could do was use the opening she created with her dying breath to escape with wind magic.


Even now, her final words still echo in my ears—
“You must live.”


After our defeat, I returned to the royal capital alone.
Our journey to defeat the Demon King had ended in failure.


I took Fidessa’s twin swords, the final mementos I had brought back of her, and stored them away in the deepest corner of my family’s shed.
There, along with the memories of my companions, those two mythical-class swords would fall into a long slumber.


Later, I learned that the older Dryad had joined the Demon King’s army and became one of the Four Heavenly Kings.



Looking back now, a lot of strange things had happened in that forest.

But all of it had been part of a trap orchestrated by the Dryad.
That would explain why one of the remaining Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army had been waiting to ambush us outside the forest.


Then again, it was possible that the Dryad had nothing to do with it, and the whole thing was another scheme devised by the Demon King’s army.

Either way, there was nothing I could do to change what had already happened.



That was when I remembered something.

I had managed to bring the Hero’s Holy Sword back to the royal capital, but the helmet was still somewhere in that forest.
His remains were still there as well.

But as I was then, I didn’t have the courage to approach that forest alone, not while it was under the Dryad’s control.


And with nearly all of my companions dead, there was no way I could destroy the Demon King’s army by myself.


Then all I had to do was become strong enough.
If I became a stronger man, strong enough to stand against them on my own, then there wouldn’t be a problem.


And so, day after day, I devoted myself to training.

Several decades passed, and eventually, I came to be known as the Great Sage.


But by then, I had already built a family, one that was precious to me.
Having left the battlefield behind, I never once went near the Forest of Dryades again.



Before I knew it, fifty years had passed, and I found myself traveling alongside my beloved grandson.



Then one day, in a remote village, I saw a white-haired girl whose parents had supposedly been killed, and I was reminded of her.
Fidessa had the same kind of white hair.

At the same time, I found myself thinking about the Forest of Dryades, which wasn’t far from where we were.


With the strength I possess now, even if I were to fight the Dryad who became one of the Four Heavenly Kings, I wouldn’t be defeated so easily.

Deciding that I would probably be safe even if I entered the forest, I chose to visit the Forest of Dryades for the first time in decades while making my way back to the royal capital from the mountainous region.
I searched the eastern forest while trying to placate my grandson, who kept muttering about wanting honey.


And there, for the first time in fifty years, I was reunited with the younger Dryad.

When she asked me about what had happened fifty years ago, I decided to tell her everything I remembered from back then.
It had happened so long ago that I couldn’t say for certain whether every detail of my story was accurate.

Even so, I told the Dryad everything about my former companions without hiding a thing.

Fifty years ago, she asked me, “Please look after my sister.” Perhaps the regret I still felt today over failing to fulfill her request was what made me so honest.


The older Dryad is still one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s Four Heavenly Kings, now known as the Fallen Spirit Princess.

According to my sources, the Demon King’s army might attack this region sometime soon.

I had gone into the mountains beforehand to hunt down dragons in hopes of preventing that from happening, but unfortunately, I came back empty-handed.


When I warned the Dryad about the possibility of an attack by the Demon King’s army, she seemed intent on making preparations.
She told me she would find allies who could help her.


Hopefully, someone powerful enough to stand against the Demon King’s army will appear.


And so, I left behind that fateful forest where my companions had fallen fifty years ago, hoping, at the very least, that the younger Dryad who remained would never suffer the same misfortune as her older sister.

***

Author’s Note:

And that wraps up the story of the Great Sage from fifty years ago, back when he was a member of the Hero’s party.
A few days after the Alraune gave nectar to the nectar-crazed boy and the Great Sage spotted the little witch in the village, the Great Sage told this story to the younger Dryad.
And as it happened, the next ones to arrive in the Forest of Dryades after that were the Alraune and the little witch.

Next Time: The Dryad’s Memories