Bro, I'm not an Undead!

He was frustrated and confused.

His war-driven soul, built as such from the experiences preceding his capture and imprisonment into Fulgardt’s prison, couldn’t make peace with his previous story as well as this one.

What was right?

Was he even in the correct mind to make this choice?

Pathetic!

He wanted to blame it all on Skullius but…

That would be foolish.

His tale was written in the annals of Direction long before the tomato flinger came to be in Aigas.

If he was seeking someone to blame, it would have to be existence itself.

‘Magra…’ Sila called in the silence, nought but a vibration giving proof as to the fact that he had actually spoken.

This word…

This name.

It belonged to the woman he had loved and devoted his entirety to for the longest time.

A woman who was obsessed with growing tomatoes.

Having grown in a time that came after the coming of the Giants, mankind and Sif kind having driven them away with a rush of evolution and power, palpable emotion was vibrant everywhere.

Religion was strongest.

Focus was at its purest.

Everyone could feel metaphorical sets of chains torn from their bodies, alleviating the tension that was felt even by those who had been born after the First Grand War.

This was even more so for those that lived in Pelian, a nation that was young and new, birthed and groomed by a single man with a vision that quelled the mutual wrath of Maqi and Emeradis.

They all felt it.

A palpable sense of freedom.

Sila had felt the same.

He was born into a rather ordinary family. Nothing to complain about, nothing to cry about.

One would even call it the perfect family.

With the reverence of the Deities given by everyone, his family did not fall short in this praise.

They visited the temples everyday to hear the words from the Deities preached by the Priests, carriers of the message.

They delighted in it.

When it came time to pick their Directions, Sila who was the second child among four boys was found to be more suited as a combatant, a bright future being promised by the sagely voice of the Priest who attended to him.

The family was overjoyed.

The Capital Service was very welcoming of young aspirant fighters, especially those called for such, the whole facet going as far as to be completely subservient to the Purity which had set up their base in this nation.

Knighthood came for Sila when he reached eighteen years and it was quite the duty. Entertaining, thrilling and exciting.

Clearing Clusters, hunting down thieves and bandits and so on.

It was true.

The ministration of the Priest for his Direction was true.

Things only got better when in the time of his service, Sila found a pretty woman, humble by nature, simplistic in mind and attitude but gloriously fair.

She had absolute faith in the words of the Deities, trusting them when she was told her prosperity laid in gardening and farming.

Magra, as was her name, accepted it joyfully.

And it turned out to bread the truth.

Many people flocked for her crops, especially her tomatoes which she paid much more attention to than the others, watching them grow up to the size of an average human’s head!

People in the town she settled in said she had blessed hands but she denied it with a smile, tirelessly devoting herself to her work.

Sila had appreciated her simplistic nature.

Such an age of peace pushed him to desire someone of the same mind-set. Someone who took things as they were and made them their life.

Sila won her after constant rejection, her work being the excuse most of the time yet he eventually wore her down, for one with his persistence and for another, by proving he shared a simple motive for life.

Enjoying all that came, good and bad.

The love between them was blissful.

There were no qualms or quarrels between them, and for the most part, they understood each other perfectly, making a beautiful home anchored on service to the nation through duty and tomatoes.

Yet, things would take a turn when a looming darkness would spread over Feinheath to announce the coming of a second age of terror, one longer than the last.

Society collapsed in a few months.

The once peaceful continent turned chaotic, death and immorality reigning as everything that everyone believed was challenged by a single man.

The lovely peace that Sila and Magra enjoyed tried to persist, keeping its innocence intact but…

The world grew too brutal.

What had been an enjoyable experience for Sila as a Knight, comically chasing tame bad men like in the old fantasy folktales while barely mastering the truth about a blade, bloodshed, was burnt to the ground.

Sila was forced to hone his sword for true kills, in war, and even in society where even the best of men turned hysterical and mad.

He slew hundreds in the first three months, what had been loving next door neighbours becoming scraps of barely recognisable human on the ground before him day after day.

He turned cold and distrusting, taking away Magra from the town they lived in and to a better place where Sila deemed fit for temporary settlement.

While Sila divulged into darkness, Magra tried to keep a positive mind, doing her best to maintain her calm by growing tomatoes.

To her, watching them grow even in this cruel reality meant that there was still hope.

The would wouldn’t burst into flame.

The Deities wouldn’t allow that to happen…. right?

Unfortunately, Sila believed otherwise.

Seeing Magra keep to the old had driven him to fury.

He grabbed Magra but the hands and spoke with the most meaningful angry tone he could conjure.

“This isn’t a world that can be harvested of any good anymore. Leave this, it will only get you killed! Instead…” Sila placed a knife in Magra’s hand, the poor woman quivering. “From now on, we fight. Maybe…somewhere in the future, when this is over, we can plant your tomatoes again. For now. Let’s survive.”

Of course, for the woman who knew only the simplest of tasks, it was hard to transition to this – forcefully dragged onto a path that wasn’t hers was difficult.

Learning to fight, grooming her body through mana and Enriching gems, spilling blood…

The colour red held sacred meaning to her but when it flowed from the severed neck of a man or woman, it warped her view.

Decades of this life of running and fighting still did not turn her into a fighter and she couldn’t be much use to Sila who always had to cover for her, making sure she remained alive.

His words of comfort barely scraped the darkness that coated her heart, making her burst into sorrowful tears from time to time, even during a tense battle.

She wasn’t a fighter.

She was a gardener, a farmer.

Only growing tomatoes brought her happiness. That and living with the man she loved peacefully.

It was cruel, but Sila refused to leave her behind even as she constantly screamed, “I can’t do this! Please just let me die! That way, at least you won’t have me as a burden!”

Roughly a century after the start of Fulgardt’s campaign, Sila had heard about a place that could grant power, a promise propounded by the infamous Order of the Trodden Rose secretly to those in Pelian.

To Sila, this was a chance.

He didn’t care if that Order of women was despised or not.

He didn’t care if it could be a mere rumour, a lie.

All he knew was that it was the only choice he had.

If these women chose to give out power to anyone who wished, he would make sure that Magra got her break through this.

He didn’t even ask for permission from Magra as he followed every lead he could over six years to reach the Temple which was buried underwater in the Urja, an expansive magic array around it then, before what it had now.

Against the woman’s pleas, Sila with good intention had dove right in with Magra for the first attempt at getting the legacy of one of the most vile group of humans in that age.

This was the first of multiple attempts that only led to bitter effort without the payoff that Sila sought for his beloved…