Four, maybe five hours have passed since we first set from the forest. By now, the sun has fully risen, showering the bloody battlefield with enough light to bring any sane man to the end of his wits.
The sun's light washed away all the shadows, all the falsehood, all the pathos of how a naive person would see war. With no more darkness to hide the gruesome, bloody marks of the massacre, I had no other choice but to come face-to-face with the grim reality.
As easy as it was to forget when I focused mostly on my numbers growing, every time I added a new record to my battle log... I would effectively reap someone's life.
Most shockingly, I was shaken by the gore and awful stench left after the battle rather than the moral consequences of taking a major part in it.
Sure, I felt bad for all those who died, be they humans, celestials, or divines. It was a pity they had to die here, just to lay the foundation of a proper negotiation...
But I hardly felt anything beyond the natural sympathy towards the pitiful... lessers? Just like I would feel sorry for a bird or other small animal getting run over.
'I can feel something... lacking...'
The tense air that I could still remember from my stand-off with my dearest of aunts. Even though there was no blood spilled there, just the mere presence of humans from the earth ready to fight made the atmosphere grow thicker.
And here, in the middle of the battlefield, I was merely inconvenienced by all the gruesomeness and the overwhelming, awful stench.
I felt no exhilaration over the victory nor grief or sense of guilt over those who died for it.
'Strange,' I summed up my thoughts before shaking my head to refocus my attention.
The only reason why I could allow myself that much stray thinking, was because the effects of my Eye of Time were quickly running out. Right now, I still had a bit of distance to cover before reaching the first of the checkpoints that continued to flare up in my mental task list.
"Haaa..." I exhaled a lungful of air before slowly taking in the cold, wet air of the morning.
As awful as it was in taste, it still served well to clear my thoughts.
I made countermeasures for all sorts of ways, means, and tricks Claudy could use to wiggle himself out of the deal now that I've fulfilled my end of it. What I didn't expect, though, was him happily reaching out to shake my hand while asking for errands!
And while, in fact, did mention a job I had for some of Claudy's men in mind...
I shook my head before slapping my hands against my cheek.
Slightly to the side and hiding behind my back, Fay twitched at this display of self-violence only for her fingers to grasp tighter at the loose cloth of my simple, casual even, outfit.
"I will need you and some of your men to come to the camp and properly bury the dead," I revealed my grand plan... Or at the very least, the part of it that involved Claudy and his soldiers.
"And?" Claudy asked, leaning his head over to the side with a look of slight loss.
"That's it." I smiled in response before looking away and then up, to the already bright sky.
Then, as the wind blew past my ears, as the warmth of Fay's body coated my arm and shoulder, as the disgusting smell of feces and death filled my nostrils...
A strange thought appeared in my head. Seemingly out of nowhere, born foreign to the grounds of my experience... yet still extremely familiar, like a distant echo of a lost memory.
"Some might believe I'm a catalyst, but I'm merely a herald of massive change this world will undergo."
Prompted by this strange sensation, I allowed it to overflow from my soul and spill out through my mouth, etching its mark into the very fabric of the world around me.
"By human nature and simple convenience, my name shall ring through major events to come," the words continued to flow, but the essence of the inspiration that filled me quickly started to dry out.
By the time I closed my mouth, the essence, the echo of a lost memory completely vanished, as if it never existed to begin with. Yet, carried by the momentum it already gained, my mouth opened up once more.
This time, though, it wasn't this strange sliver of inspiration guiding my words, but a crude, imperfect imitation, reflection of it.
"So I really don't want to start my story as a harbinger of the plague who cursed and decimated the grand imperial army, do I?"