Chapter 9.4.2 - Epilogue (LN Content)

Here ya go ladies and gents, second part of the LN Epilogue. Side-Story coming up next!

A girl looked at her twin brother.

She observed him as he swung his sword, going through the motions and slashing at imaginary enemies with all his might.

They’d been together since forever, and as much as she liked him, it was impossible for her not to admit that he had no talent with the blade.

Or perhaps he did have talent, but just hasn’t been able to make it flourish with self-study.

“Haa…Ha….”

“Brother, here, have some water.”

“Oh, thanks.”

The brother gulped down the water with gusto, and promptly got back to swinging his sword.

The twins had a powerful enemy they wanted to defeat. They had to kill him at all cost to avenge their father – and that was not going to be easy.

That was the driving force behind the boy’s frenetic training.

He wanted to use that very sword to avenge his parent.

“Brother, the sun is setting…”

“Just a little more.”

“…I’ll go back first.”

The brother did not reply any further, and just kept on swinging.

Seeing this, the girl let out a small sigh.

She had given up. Her brother would never be a match for their enemy, even if he trained for months. Even years of practice might not be enough.

As much as she wanted to enact justice for her father and mother, she didn’t want to lose her brother, her last living relative.

Yet she just couldn’t bring herself to ask him to stop.

“I wish someone, somewhere, would just kill him…”

She wasn’t yet aware.

She did not yet know that the Orc Hero would bring an end to their quest for revenge.

A Succubus stood in the wilderness, under the night sky,

A human city was in the horizon, illuminated by the pale light of the stars, yet her eyes did not pay attention to it at all. She simply looked up, caught up in her thoughts.

Being here brought back memories for her. Memories of the past, of the war. She recalled all the comrades and friends that fought alongside her.

[Those were the days… We fought without a superfluous thought, slept like the dead when we were tired, and just as we were falling into deep sleep, we would be woken up by the blaring alarms announcing an attack…]

She was constantly exhausted back then but fighting felt fulfilling. Like she was serving a greater purpose.

[Ah, why am I thinking about this…]

She couldn’t help but think about the circumstances that brought her to this dump. That made her camp in the wild.

Due to her being a Succubus, she wasn’t allowed to stay in the town and was chased out.

“Peace…peace really is…”

There was no lack of lords and leaders who looked down on Succubi, and most people didn’t even try to hide their disgust when faced with a Succubus.

Contempt and ridicule was the standard reaction.

The war was over now. There is peace now. These were good times.

At least, that’s what most people said and believed. Unfortunately, the benefits of peace weren’t equal for all races.

“Peace is a stinking pile of horseshit…!”

The Succubus gazed at the stars.

She recalled that she once looked at these same stars, standing alongside an Orc, in the desert.

She wasn’t yet aware.

She did not yet know that the Orc Hero would one day bring true peace to the world.

There were two Dragons.

Let’s call one of them “Bones”.

Bones was an odd Dragon.

He was often curious about the life of “people”, and often went down the villages to give them a fright.

The other Dragon weren’t exactly sure why Bones was doing this. They believed that people were just small, not yet eaten food that most of the time should just be left alone.

But Bones had always been interested in “people”, and even shapeshifted to mate with them. He had even born their eggs.

Not like there weren’t Dragons that defied the norms during the long history of the world, but it was still strange.

Dragon society as a whole didn’t really ostracize weirdoes.

To Bones, “people” stories were interesting and fun.

He wasn’t interested in the stories themselves, but he enjoyed the enthusiastic way the “people” talked about them, full of joy and life.

Then, one day, Bones died.

Previously, a tiny being visited and had convinced him to leave him them.

And thus, Bones truly became bones.

He had participated in a war between the little people and ended up getting killed.

Bones corpse was taken away by the ones who had defeated him. Apparently, for “people”, Dragon bodies were full of valuable materials.

The puny people could only bring back his skull to his fellow Dragons.

They were profusely apologizing to Bone’s friend.

And for the first times, that Dragon felt sorrow. It was not the first time it had experienced the death of its own kind, but the person’s apology was so sincere that he understood something irreparable had happened.

The Dragon spent a whole year in mourning. It flew around from time to time, killing and eating people. It could simply not understand why Bones had taken part in the people’s war.

When all this was over, the Dragon suddenly felt an emotion it had never felt before.

Interest.

The dragon became interested in humans. It wondered how such a small, weak beings, who could only run away when a Dragon came, could kill Bones.

It still was not aware.

It still did not know that it was the one the Orcs called “Hero” that had slain Bones.

That last part about the Dragons was confusing as all hell to translate. The whole thing might be wrong, and might lead to some continuity errors further in the story. I’ll come back and fix it if need be.