Seven Arahan, Anutara, and Shan.
Shan had never imagined he would beco part of such a strange combination.
That was because he had too little 'inherent power' to beco an Arahan,
And he had no special connection with Anutara either.
Moreover, for him to be useful here after leaving the desert, he would need to reclaim the marshlands or sothing,
But no matter how he looked at it, now wasn't the atmosphere for that.
Shan suppressed his curiosity and silently followed the Arahan and Anutara.
The ground containing swamps and marshlands beca even more muddy, and the dark green earth had sohow turned black.
No longer could grass or small vegetation be seen.
It was as if only this place where the land existed had everything dead.
Shan wanted to flee from the strange black earth, but couldn't bring himself to do so and desperately followed the Arahan and Anutara.
Slowly crawling fog enveloped them.
Shan discovered a collapsed mountain in the direction the Arahan and Anutara were heading.
The middle section of the mountain was split cleanly as if soone had applied force to break it.
It was a strange place.
With fog, black muddy soil, and a place where everything seed dead.
They stopped walking only when they reached directly below the collapsed mountain.
What were they going to do in a place piled high with stones that had fallen from the mountain and all kinds of debris?
The Arahan and Shan looked at Anutara with questions in their eyes.
Anutara gestured toward the back. Only after the Arahan stepped aside to either side to make a path did Shan realize he was calling him.
"Do, do you need here?"
What was he supposed to do on top of these stones?
When Shan asked in bewildernt, Anutara said concisely.
"Dig here."
"...Here? But it's stone?"
Had Anutara lived so long that his mind wasn't sound?
Shan looked back and forth between the pile of stones and Anutara, but Anutara was firm.
"You must dig here."
"With, with bare hands? Even to dig out anything, it's difficult without tools."
"The Arahan and I will help. Below this is a lake made of mud. Dig until that cos out."
"Really? What exactly is here..."
Shan almost asked what exactly had been buried here.
But if he did that, the next thing to be buried might be himself...
Eventually, Shan reluctantly began digging out the pile of stones with the help of three Arahan and Anutara.
When the Arahan and Anutara moved large stones that humans couldn't carry, he would carry out the small stones and gravel underneath.
Shan grew resentful of Anutara, who didn't tell him to stop whether his back and waist bent or not.
In this place where even the sun wasn't clearly visible due to fog and the flow of ti couldn't be predicted,
Shan's hand, working frantically, touched sothing cool and squishy.
"Aaaah!"
What was this!
When Shan unconsciously stepped backward, soone pushed his shoulder from behind and rushed forward.
It was Anutara.
He who had been monitoring progress near the pile of stones or lifting heavy rocks suddenly changed his attitude and jumped in directly.
Anutara cleared away stones and gravel as Shan had been doing, revealing what was buried underneath.
Black mud writhed and flowed down over the rocks.
Anutara, who had been touching the flowing earth, muttered blankly.
"Isn't this the place?"
What exactly wasn't this the place for?
But already, Shan and the Arahan were of no concern to him.
Anutara continued clearing stones and going deeper, while the Arahan and Shan, though flustered, couldn't think to stop him and together cleared rocks and stones.
-Gurgle...
When the last rock was moved outside the mud, Anutara suddenly raised his head and watched that direction.
The hand extending from under his robe held a water container made from the organs of a giant desert scorpion.
He sprinkled the liquid in the container over the black mud.
As if that wasn't enough, he roughly threw away even the container and began heading toward deeper places, causing Shan and the Arahan to be shocked.
"Anutara! Where are you going!"
"Co back! More rocks might fall!"
"Anutara!"
Shan even followed Anutara into the mud,
But the more he walked, the more the heavy earth wrapping around his entire body made it impossible to advance further, and he could only struggle.
Yet Anutara steadfastly continued on his way.
When the mud passed over Anutara's legs, knees, and waist, he suddenly stopped walking.
Then he bent his waist and began feeling around in the mud.
Watching Anutara's sudden behavior, Shan thought he seed to be looking for sothing.
And as if to prove Shan's guess, Anutara pulled sothing out from the pitch-black mud.
Looking quietly at sothing so dirty its form couldn't be known, he rubbed it clean with his hands.
Following the path of his touch, a whitish color was revealed from within the mud.
Standing there for a long ti cleaning off the mud, he suddenly realized sothing and took off his old robe.
Pale golden hair that had been hidden under the robe poured down like a waterfall.
Anutara carefully wrapped what he had been holding to his chest with the robe, then lifted it up and erged from the mud pond.
The Arahan and Shan witnessed Anutara's appearance without his robe for the first ti.
Like other Shambhala people, his hair was also golden, but the color was particularly pale.
His long hair reached his waist, and his forearms and shoulders were lighter in color than any they had seen. Perhaps even lighter than Tika's.
His firmly closed mouth and soft, high nose bridge created an ambiguous boundary between beauty and wild charm.
And above all, his vivid red eyes.
Shan hadn't been mistaken. He had redder eyes than anything in the world.
A red more vivid than desert scorpion shells, more vivid than the red sun setting beyond sand dunes.
Shan was lost in a daze, then fumbled when he saw Anutara's robe getting soaked in damp mud.
"That, that person."
"...Soone I know."
Shan almost asked back, "You're lying, aren't you?"
Regardless of what circumstances had led to the person in Anutara's arms being buried in mud,
No one looked at just soone they knew with such an expression.
Anutara spoke to the Arahan who were standing dumbfounded like Shan, passing by the flustered Shan.
"Go back first. Get out of the black land before other dangers strike."
"What about you, Anutara? Are you alright? Your clothes have gotten dirty too."
"I'll follow soon."
The Arahan hesitated but eventually chose to leave Anutara alone.
Their Anutara wouldn't abandon Shambhala and wouldn't run away from those born and raised in Shambhala.
Shan looked back several tis while following the Arahan group due to Anutara's dismissal,
But he too didn't have the courage to stay alone beside Anutara and that 'soone he knew.'
Eventually, only Anutara and the one wrapped in his robe remained alone on the black land.
Just as he and ■■ had once been, long ago.
*
He dread while in a state where even he couldn't tell whether he was dead or alive.
In the dream, he was sotis in Korea, sotis in the ducal castle wearing Arenheit's body.
Neither was painful or difficult. Rather, the daily life of living peacefully together with his younger brother, or with Leandros, Arndt, Alia, Russel, and Verde was too sweet.
The most perfect and peaceful ti he could imagine.
A world where everything that had happened could be laughed off as a nightmare he had while napping.
If it was such a world, he would be fine continuing to die.
No, rather, it was a world where he wanted to die on purpose and continue regressing. Here was everything he had so longed for.
"...Uh, that..."
At so point, an earthquake began.
The earthquake didn't end with just once. His younger brother, people, everything was fine, but only he continued to shake.
He felt that if he beca aware of this earthquake, the daily life would end.
His instincts sounded warnings, so he desperately ignored the earthquake.
He couldn't lose what he had finally obtained.
He just had to pretend nothing was wrong, just him.
"Spit... a little... well..."
Everything was jumbled.
He just had to endure. Then he could safely protect this daily life. Why was this happening? Why couldn't he even endure this?
"...seong! More... keep like that..."
No. He didn't want to go.
He would stay here. Couldn't they stop tornting him? He didn't want to die anymore. Couldn't they just leave him like this?
He was strange. Surely sothing was broken sowhere. If not, it couldn't be this painful.
"Open your eyes!"
His vision flashed white.
Instead of the things he loved, cruel reality and the weight of his body pulled his consciousness up.
The black mud covering his eyes fell away.
His constituent elents that had only been stolen by the outside finally found their place, granting existence to the individual that was him.
The painful and nauseating process of regeneration.
The reason he had been shaking was that his lungs and stomach were among the first organs to regenerate,
And his body was being squeezed to expel the mud that had filled them.
"Cough! Urgh, ugh,"
"Almost done. Just a little more."
At the touch of a hand patting his back, he reflexively spat out what was rising from within.
He could hear the sound of viscous liquid pouring onto the ground with dripping sounds.
"I've removed everything that got into your ears and nose. It's okay."
"Huff, huff, ugh..."
He didn't have ti to feel the sentint 'I've finally awakened.'
Like soone who had just escaped from water, he crawled on the ground vomiting and coughing, and damp mud soaked with bodily fluids accumulated.
When he finally stopped spitting anything out, soone properly laid him down.
When he lay down using sothing hard as a pillow, his flickering vision barely cleared and blurry colors returned.
When his eyes, sensitive to light from long disuse, lost focus and wandered, soone asked.
"How is it?"
"How is, what..."
A voice ca out that was clogged and close to the creaking of a rusty machine.
The touch rubbing his throat, still not having regained his senses, was gentle and affectionate.
"You waited a long ti."
He wondered who this person was to say they had waited for him.
Everyone who waited for him wasn't here. He had already foolishly lost them and was regretting it.
Even though he said nothing, the unfamiliar yet familiar voice continued whispering.
Open your eyes. You said we'd et later. So wake up now and look at .
Listening to those words made him dizzy, so he closed his eyes.
He thought he knew who was speaking.
"You, ...it's you."
"It's ."
Probably with that answer, he had smiled brightly.
The one who had killed him several tis, This ti had saved him.
User Comments
0 comments from readers