CHAPTER 70: RELIC OF THE PAST

"So... You stalked an injured woman into a more secluded area?"

"No...no no no... We just wanted to be of help, and...and when we reached the strange temple that we hadn’t ever seen before, we knew we had made a mmistake... Some of us got... uh, a little spooked, tried to leave... She noticed and... and misunderstood..."

Sweat flowed down the face of the man like his body was desperate to lose every bit of water it had.

The man had his face down now, only looking towards Noctis from the corner of his eyes.

Noctis didn’t react and only said,

"Misunderstood, huh? Go on. What then?"

"Truly... truly... misunderstood... She was angered but didn’t seem to want to kill us.

She waved her hands around as an earthquake hit the place; something invisible bound everyone one of us present there. We froze in our tracks.

She carved something on the temple floor, and soon light started radiating all around her, blinding us into closing our eyes.

The next moment we opened our eyes, the temple was empty, and we had already been cursed, as we couldn’t leave for the outskirts no matter what we tried."

After reciting the tale like a buffering radio, the man didn’t say anything but only looked down while kneeling before him.

It seemed some shame was still remaining in those filthy hearts.

Noctis’ cold eyes bore down onto him with overbearing judgement.

Deep down, Noctis’ heart was in an uncanny turmoil.

From the moment he had woken up, he had instinctively attributed all his senses of self to his last life.

He didn’t treat the short life here as more than a summary fit for a debrief used for further development of the mission.

Perhaps he had been right too at the moment of just waking up; after all, his emotions were too occupied solely with the notion of freedom he had yearned for throughout his life and still does.

But since then he had been proven time and again; he was not the same man he used to be in the past.

Subject 42 would never come back to the village in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t benefit him in any way whatsoever with his past life’s standards.

For his future development as well as the viability of missions, leaving with the noble girl was the best situation. But he came back. Noctis came back.

The memories were no more of a film that he was watching as a bystander. It shaped his psyche more than the years of the propaganda of the facility ever could.

He knew he had a past before being adopted by his foster mother, as he had vague ideas of it. But if his experiences in the world had taught him anything, it was to not overlook such strange phenomena.

And this one... this just screamed future trouble in his face.

They were faint impressions now, but he knew there would come a time when something would trigger them to resurface.

Even disregarding all that, if the details were actually true...then there was a high chance that...the wounded woman was his biological mother.

Or at least the body’s biological mother.

.

.

.

"Tsk."

Noctis stopped thinking about it as it got more and more jumbled up in his head.

’We’ll see as it comes, right, Minerva?’

’Kyuu? Kyuu?... Krr~’

The little critter was startled awake by the sudden motion, confused, but reassured Noctis all the same.

"Take me to this temple."

"Huh... oh... yeah... Thank you so much, young lord; we’ll never forget such—"

After finally hearing something spoken after a long wait, the man hurriedly said while struggling to stand back up but was interrupted rudely.

"Shhh! Do what’s said."

Noctis got annoyed by the very sound of these bastards now.

"Y-yes, right away. Just...these...things in my body...if you just..."

"Can’t do anything about it now."

He lied. Sure, they were already cut off and embedded into his organs like actual threads, but they were still plants.

He could manipulate them out, safely too if he were a tad bit careful, but... it wasn’t as if he was going to die anyway.

The man swallowed whatever he was about to say and bore through the pain and started moving towards the direction they had come from in the hopes of relieving the pain once and for all.

The others were still blindfolded tightly, neither able to see nor speak but only hearing the exchange as they realized they were being left but could do nothing; even struggling hurt with all the thorns rubbing against the wounds.

The man with a hole in his heart also tried moving, crooked and broken as he was, but persevering with the same hope as Dunk.

***

After about an hour of walking slowly with broken bodies, they reached the mysterious temple.

At first glance, even the most ordinary individuals could tell there was something deeply intriguing about the temple.

The moment Noctis had reached the temple clearing, he pulled out a crude dagger he had brought with him and took guard.

He didn’t sense any danger. At least not the way one would suspect.

Rather, it was because he didn’t sense any danger that he felt worried.

The moment till he had reached the clearing, he couldn’t see the temple even a little bit.

Moving a little to the back, he saw the two men and the temple vanish the moment he stepped into the woods.

It looked as if the same normal forest existed ahead of him, but the moment he took a step, a clearing appeared with the majestic stone temple standing proudly.

The temple stood on a square base of black stone, its surface glinting faintly like metal in the half-light.

Square, crudely carved pillars held up the roof, their sides cut with strange patterns and grooves that reminded him of something foreign, almost out of place.

Above, a compact tower tapered upward in stacked tiers, its carvings half-hidden by moss and creeping vines.

Various figures of men and animals were carved in various descriptions.

It looked small, quiet, and utterly out of place in the forest, like a relic waiting to be stumbled upon.