A withered land, water flowing across it. A chart of stars spinning, a stone monunt falling. A crimson sky, with skeletons bursting forth from the ground...
Flowers... a Flower Sea of eerie blue. The vines were transparent, with golden blood flowing within, like lava through a sea of dark cyan.
Baron stood in the Flower Sea, gazing at the phantasmagorical scene before him, his heart a swirl of shock and doubt.
’Is this Hell or Heaven?’
’Am I alive or dead?’
He felt his chest. The spot where his wound should have been was completely unscathed. He pinched his cheek—he could feel it. He was solid.
’What in the world... is going on?’
Suddenly, as if guided by so premonition, he looked up and beheld the most bizarre, most magnificent sight of his life.
A young woman in a Bonnet Hat, her face bare of makeup and her skin a bloodless white, sat atop a black sheep. She held a Bell Staff, and her lips, as crimson as fresh blood, began to move:
"O traveler of a strange dream, I ask that you find the remains of God in this Dreamland, this slumbering shore... I will offer you a small yet pure prayer... Master of Dreams... Master of Dreams..."
’Master of Dreams? That na sounds vaguely familiar.’
The mont the thought surfaced in Baron’s mind, the girl’s words receded like an echo in the void.
A sense of weightlessness washed over him.
He was falling, endlessly falling. Wind howled against his face, and the damp mist made it nearly impossible to breathe.
All he could hear was the girl’s voice, a murmur fading into the distance.
"Please, find the organs of the Master of Dreams... It is the only way to save Dreamland... The dream itself will guide your path through Dreamland..."
’Find his organs? Save Dreamland? Hey, lady, are you sure you’ve got the right guy for this quest? Or is this so kind of requirent to get into Heaven? If I fail, do I go to Hell?’
---
Baron’s eyes fluttered open. He struggled up from a pile of straw, looking around in a daze.
The scratchy, jostling pile of straw beneath him, the sliver of muddy road visible through the gap in the wagon’s canvas, the sound of horses whinnying behind him—from these clues, he deduced he was in a horse-drawn wagon loaded with straw.
’A wagon... Am I on the Inner Side? My clothes have been changed, but my two revolvers and my Gentiana Pattern Ring are still here. I’m not tied up, and my ass doesn’t hurt... Did soone rescue ?’
’No, it’s not that simple. Two other n are sleeping soundly in the wagon... and they each have three runes drawn on the back of their hands. It’s the unique Geis—also known as a Command Spell—of the Silver Faction Demon Hunters.’
Baron had learned about them systematically back at the Bagins Clinic, with Don Quixote’s help.
There are typically three spells: the anti-magic Silver rcury Mist, a Blood Arrow ford from the user’s own blood, and the Blue Fire used to incinerate the corpses of Demon Fiends. All of them are single-use.
In contrast, Beast Hunters have no Command Spells, relying instead on Beastification, a power derived from a Branding.
Just like Bill Frank the other day.
’Does this an I’ve been intercepted by the Demon Hunter Association?’
Baron’s heart sank. He knew he couldn’t stay here. He carefully rose, lifted the wagon’s flap, and prepared to jump out and run, but the mont he looked up, he froze.
Hanging brightly in the vast, cloudless sky were two moons!
A ROAR went through Baron’s head, and his mind went completely blank.
"Hey, Feinan kid. It’s just a simple scouting mission. Thinking of running away already?"
A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder. A middle-aged Hunter with a diagonal scar across his face sat down next to him. He twisted open a tal flask, took a long swig, and followed Baron’s gaze up to the twin moons.
"Zod, what’s the point of talking to this outlander who won’t even give us his na? I’ve had it with this guy. It’d be better if he ran off... At least then he wouldn’t be dragging our squad down. Besides, the Rose Comrce Association’s bounty is no joke."
The other man in the wagon woke up. He was a young Hunter whom Zod called Maguire. He took the flask from Zod, took a deep drink, and shot Baron a look of cold disgust.
"Snatching Lady Yalilan’s recruitnt post, taking the deposit, and then trying to run... A ’deposit hunter’ who gives real Bounty Hunters a bad na..."
Maguire muttered, "No wonder that Andre fellow looks down on you... A black-haired man from Feinan working as a Bounty Hunter in Gillian, refusing to even give his na... and now Zod catches you trying to flee....
He turned to Zod. "I say we should just hand him over to Andre. Let that guy turn him in and call it a favor. It would make our mission a lot easier..."
"That’s enough, Maguire," Zod cut in. "So he has a feud with Andre. He’s on our team now, and that makes him our teammate." Zod shot Baron a conspiratorial wink. "Right, Feinan kid?"
Baron was silent for a mont. "L."
The two n looked at him.
Baron said coolly, "My na is L."
The two exchanged a strange look, as if they were surprised the mute man could speak. Finally, Zod broke into a grin and offered the flask to Baron. "L, care for a drink?"
Baron took the flask and drained it.
He had always been able to hold his liquor—he could drink more than his fair share of spirits—and now that he was a Contract Knight, his physical constitution was much stronger.
The drink in the flask was potent, but it only left him feeling slightly buzzed.
Zod let out a hearty laugh. "Now there’s a spirited young man! That’s more like it! I was starting to think the Feinan People couldn’t handle the strong liquor of the Prole Continent!"
’Prole Continent...’ Baron’s mind raced. ’My geography teacher in my past life certainly never ntioned a continent with that na on Earth.’
’Then again, Earth didn’t have two moons in its night sky, either.’
With that thought, Baron finished his drink, wiped his mouth, and adopted the posture of a seasoned regular at the drinking table. He looked up at the sky and steered the conversation. "The twin moons are perfectly round tonight."
"Well, it is a Regression Day, after all..." Zod took the bait.
As the wagon rumbled on, Baron used a few drinking jokes from his past life to quickly win over both Zod and Maguire. From their conversation, he began to piece together the general background of the world he was in.
He had transmigrated. Again.
He was on a continent nad Prole, which consisted of one great Empire, five major duchies, and nurous smaller nations. Across the sea lay another duchy, the one Maguire had ntioned: Feinan, a land where the people were mostly black-haired and, supposedly, everyone was a Dragon Master.
They were currently within the borders of Fude City, part of the Gillian Duchy on the southern side of the continent. Their official status was that of Bounty Hunters who had accepted a job from the Hunter’s Guild.
The mission: to follow Yalilan, the "Pure-blooded Fierce Tiger" of the Rose Comrce Association, and investigate the appearance of the Divine Punishnt Fire in Mundra Town.
’Did I die and transmigrate again, or is this all because of that Master of Dreams? A continent where ti resets every four days... The Prole Continent... Don’t tell this is the Dreamland that woman was talking about... My current identity is a Bounty Hunter... and I’m starving...’
Baron took the coarse bread Maguire offered him, broke off a piece, and wolfed it down, washing it back with the strong liquor.
The gnawing hunger in his stomach subsided.
Maguire grumbled, "Slow down. No one’s gonna steal it from you..."
After a short while together, the ironclad friendship between n was quickly forged.
Baron had also more or less figured out the full story behind Maguire’s initial hostility.
There were only twenty posters for this bounty, distributed on a first-co, first-served basis.
Since the bounty was posted by the Rose Comrce Association—the Continent’s First Comrce Association—everyone considered the job a golden opportunity.
However, the local Hunter gang leader, Andre, had put the word out: he was taking fifteen of the twenty bounties for his own people. The other five were fair ga.
Intimidated by Andre’s reputation and thods, the local Bounty Hunters had stopped after claiming the fifth poster.
In the end, however, Andre only managed to get fourteen—because an outsider from out of town had taken the sixth.
And so Baron, the black-haired, black-eyed "man from Feinan," had beco a thorn in Andre’s side.
This, in turn, had dragged Zod and Maguire into his ss. They had managed to snag two of the five available spots, only to be assigned to his team and forced to ride with him in a straw wagon to the mission site.
The jolting of the wagon suddenly eased.
Zod said, "The dirt road’s turned to gravel. We’re in town."
Baron lifted the canvas flap.
Sure enough, the bumpy dirt track had given way to a paved gravel road. The scenery had also transford from endless dark woods to a mishmash of buildings constructed from listone and marble in a chaotic mix of styles.
The wagon soon ca to a halt. A whistle blew from the front of the convoy, signaling them to assemble. The three n hopped down and saw, in the distance, a Gothic spire that seed to pierce the sky. A cluster of bonfires blazed at its base, looking from afar like burning, fallen trees gathered around a mountain.
In the distance, through the hazy, chaotic glow of the flas, Baron vaguely made out a wine-red figure on horseback. A jolt went through him, and an inexplicable joy surged in his heart.
His lips parted, but he only managed to mouth the na silently: "Car...n."
"Out of the way, out of the way... Feinan! Don’t block the path!"
Just as Baron stood there, lost in the mont, a burly figure maliciously slamd into him from behind!
User Comments
0 comments from readers