CHAPTER 38: CHAPTER 37: PARADISE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST (11)

After the incident of the leader’s son being killed, the gray ones did not attack us, but they expelled us without even trying to hear our side of the story.

They did not allow us to gather our belongings. I left with my people back into the forest, all of us feeling betrayed.

But this time we had something we did not have before. We had learned from the gray ones how to survive in the wild.

We started gathering the few edible fruits, hunting whatever we could hunt,

and we built a simple camp in an area far from their caves. It was exhausting, far more difficult than living among them.

Yet the situation was far better than our first entry into the forest.

Most of us had gained experience in hunting and survival, and our hearts began regaining some calm.

But the peace we had, as always, was temporary.

One night, a massive beast attacked us, its body covered in fur and its eyes glowing under the moonlight.

It killed many of our men before we managed to escape. We ran between the trees and barely survived in the end.

After that, we went back to wandering, searching for a place to shelter ourselves. Years passed while we lived like that.

I do not remember the exact number, but I remember how unbelievably difficult they were for me.

They were some of the most exhausting years of my life. Every attempt to settle down ended in disaster, as if the forest itself conspired to kill us.

I lost my knights one after another. They died from sickness or in clashes with unknown beasts.

Only my loyal companion remained, my right hand, the man who had been with me since childhood and through my youth. As the years passed,

I could no longer remember his name or even his face clearly. His image became incredibly blurry.

I looked for land to settle on, a safe place where we could rebuild what my great grandfather once did when he founded his kingdom.

But unfortunately it seems I learned nothing from his mistakes.

One day, while we were walking in an area thick with trees, the leaves of those trees were black, and the place was filled with black fog.

When we walked through it, strange illusions began to appear around us.

Distant voices, shadows moving between the trees, images of people who had died long ago during the journey.

We lost more men there, and I even lost my companion and right hand in that place.

He disappeared into the fog, and I could not touch him or even say farewell.

And then, in the heart of the fog, I saw him.

A mythical creature, his features hidden beneath a hood and a dark robe.

He looked as though he did not belong to this world. When I approached him, I felt crushed even though he did nothing.

I tried speaking to him, and I offered him a deal as I remembered from the stories my father told about what my great grandfather did with the spirit that once protected us.

And contrary to what I expected, he agreed.

He said he would build us a city and protect us. When I asked him what he wanted in return, he did not answer. He only said that he would take what he wanted in the end, whatever it was.

With his help the city was built in a short time. I thought I had been reborn, as if life had given me another chance.

The place was unbelievably perfect.

The air was pure and the sun shone all year, food was abundant, diseases disappeared entirely.

And the people felt safe for the first time in many years. I finally saw smiles return to their faces, and I regained their trust.

I thought it was the best deal I had ever made, although I had forgotten most of its details.

I did not know back then that all this beauty was nothing but a curse.

During the first hundred years everything was perfect.

The city was peaceful, the faces were calm, and life moved at a quiet rhythm.

I walked in its streets and felt I had achieved what my ancestors failed to. I thought I had finally built the perfect city.

As years passed, I began noticing small details that were slightly strange.

Buildings suddenly changed places. Homes whose locations I had known for decades appeared the next day in another corner of the street.

A group of people close to me behaved differently each time I met them.

Their features changed slightly every time.

I tried ignoring it. I tried convincing myself that I was imagining things.

Decades of wandering and exhaustion are enough to confuse any mind. I told myself I was only seeing things that were not real because of old doubts.

But when the first group of outsiders visited the city, all those excuses collapsed.

They were a simple group of adventurers, or at least that is what they called themselves.

They loved the city from the first moment. And the longer they stayed, the more unnaturally attached they became to it.

Through them I noticed new things that had not existed before their arrival. A weapon shop appeared suddenly on a street that previously had only houses.

A shop for armor next to it, with no one remembering its opening. And even a new tavern, full of people claiming to be adventurers from Fox Tail.

I had never seen them before. I had never heard of their name.

And when I asked anyone about them, they looked at me as if I was stating something obvious.

Everyone acted as though they had lived here for many years.

I tried to play along, acting as though their presence was normal.

But after only a few days everything disappeared.

The shops, the tavern, the Fox Tail adventurers, even their footprints vanished from the dirt.

And when I asked people about them again, this time they acted as though I was talking about people who never existed.

With more searching, I began seeing some of those adventurers again, but dressed similarly to the city’s residents.

And whenever I asked them about Fox Tail, they completely denied knowing anything about it.

I tried contacting that mythical creature, but I failed.

I had not heard his voice since the day of the agreement. It was as if he had vanished or perhaps was simply watching.

I decided to escape, and despite everyone trying to stop me, I managed to leave through the gate.

I ran into the forest. But the farther I went, the more the trees around me changed.

Until I found myself at the gate again.

I repeated this dozens of times for hundreds of years, and every time I returned directly to the gate.

The city changed, its people changed, and my face among them became the face of a stranger.

I was no longer their king, and in the end I stopped trying.

I lost count and lost the desire to continue.

And I even lost the name of the only man who accompanied me during the first journey.

I do not know how I ended up in those dungeons.

All I know is that I sat there for years, I do not know how many, staring at the void only.