Journey Period V: A dream and a memory to cherish

[ ~ Chapter • Start ~ ]

Hans woke up in fields of grey, wondering what was going on.

Was this a dream? He asked himself, yet whatever he felt around here was surreal. He knew it was impossible for Hitogami to be here since he wasn't sitting in a pure white realm.

Observing wherever he was now, he noticed that there was a bright blue sky, yet there was no sun anywhere, protentially covered by the dark, monochromatic clouds. No sound was present except his own breath and steps, no wind was even present in this place.

Thus place looked very liminal.

And in front of him was a massive, ashen-colored tree in the distance, which has a.... familiar(?) woman resting near it.

"My child...."

A gentle voice suddenly came from that general direction, and making him feel something familiar from that feminine voice alone....

Suddenly, a tingling sensation appeared inside his head, as if desperately wanting to recall a lost memory that can still be recovered.

The figure in the distance raised it's hand and waved it, gesturing him to come to her, and Hans did as asked.

The move he walked towards the figure, the more he felt like he was relaxed, as if all his inner emotional pains were being washed away and his past regrets slowly becoming forgotten.

There was still the headache he kept feeling, yet it became weaker the more he moved closer to the figure.

Once he was close enough, he became surprised.

Not just by the fact that the figure called him her son, but the fact that she also looked exactly like him, but has pale skin and wide, gentle eyes of blue. She was probably the most beautiful woman he's ever met.

It appears she was also wearing a long, pristine white dress more fitting for.... a corpse.

As if becoming slightly offended, the woman who looked just like him gave him a soft glare.

"How rude! At least treat someone who's already dead with some semblance of respect, especially when whoever was in front of you is your mother!" The woman then pouted while looking below towards him, crossing her arms below her bountiful chest.

It was the moment when Hans realized that this woman might actually be his mother as he still has his doubts about her.

As if she read his expression, the woman heaved out a short puff and staring at him with an inquisitive look.

And having enough of the silence going around, Hans wanted to ask her something.

"We can't really just stare at each other silently, right? Alright, I have a few questions to ask...." Hans immediately thought of his questions he wanted to shoot out, "Where are we, who are you, and what happened to you?"

A small smile came from the woman, though her look was distant and half-empty.

"We're in the World of Dragons. Or at least, a remnant only held stable due to my own existence alone. The only problem was that in a few hundred years this world will fully collapse." She explained, not letting her smile fall. "And as I had said to you earlier, I'm your mother, Lunaria."

Suddenly, Hans's head began to feel like it had been stung by a few bees as he knelt on the ground and clenched his head.

Seeing this, Lunaria approached Hans and pulled him closer to her, before a gentle light spread around him.

Though while she had done exactly that, Hans was already asleep soundly, yet Lunaria could not help but shed a tear that fell to his cheek.

"I'm glad you're alive..." She spoke with a solemn smile before she leaned back on the tree's ashen trunk.

She had been alone in this place for thousands of years, but anybody would be surprised if they realized she hasn't even gone insane from all that happened to her in this realm.

All alone, with nobody to interact with until this moment. In fact, she was the one who pulled Hans's consciousness to this place just for her to interact with him for a short while, even if it had its own costs.

For example, her soul really is fading due to her trying to keep this world stable and now it's begun accelerating due to her recent action.

Yet she couldn't help but notice his expression changing slowly which was now one of sorrow and despair.

'He must have regained his memories as a newborn child....' Lunaria thought, recollecting the time when she failed to protect him and ended up dying with her newborn son.

She was obviously happy to see him just grown up into a teenager, but their time was beginning to run short like a candle.

After a short while, Hans's eyes opened while grabbing his face in fear.

"Huh..... never thought dying hours after just being born would be the worst thing to happen to me..." He spoke, sobbing in realization. "That Hitogami..... he really doesn't want anybody to be a thorn to his plans, to the point where he tried to kill me and mother, and succeeded....."

The more he thought about his memory that had been recently recovered, the more he realized something was totally off.

The Hitogami inside his memory completely targeted him first, but his mother shielded him from his attack. The only problem was Hitogami seemed to have expected that to happen, so what Hans saw at last was a pure white hand covered in blood grabbing his face and crushing it slowly and painfully.

Hans felt what his baby self felt, and that caused him to glare at the distance in rage while clutching his face, feeling the phantom pains of whatever that bastard did to him.

Upon observing his actions that would prove dangerous to his mind, Lunaria kept him close and began to sing with a gentle tune to calm him down while using a part of her remaining mana to strengthen the effects of her song.

Eventually, Hans had begun to relax, and admit that he had never felt that unstable in his entire life.

Lunaria began to feel slightly nauseous and weak after that, and Hans's figure had become blurry by the moment.

If she keeps this up, then her life would be shortened by an entire decade. But, she wanted to interact with her son longer, so it didn't matter for her.

She had been lonely for thousands of years, after all.

"My son, can you tell me the name you have been given?" Lunaria asked whilst she gently caressed his cheek.

"Mmh. It's Hans Orsted, and you haven't answered my third question."

She knew that he had recalled his memory as a mere newborn baby, so there was no need to explain that.

After her death, she woke up in front of an ashen tree, near thousands of dragons who had already died and whose corpses were decayed. There was nothing but sadness and sorrow filling her heart for all these dragons, and to not let them turn into monsters, she reluctantly turned them into mana that she absorbed through her knowledge of magic.

She was alone here, in devastation upon the knowledge that the worlds she once knew were destroyed or on the verge of collapsing, and she did try to leave this world and move to the World of Humans, only for her efforts to be in vain, as if she had been cursed to stay even until her death.

Lunaria had only begun spending her time doing everything she can do, but boredom eventually got to her and sleeping seemed to be the only option she had.

Sometimes she would observe the nearby world to find even some enjoyment watching whatever was happening there.

Until she felt a familiar boy, that was Hans, and recently she had summoned him to this realm while he was asleep.

".... And that's the end." The spirit of Hans's mother huffed and gave him a small smile to allow him to process all that, when suddenly he noticed that his figure was beginning to flicker and fade from time to time again.

He stared at his mother, who kept a gentle smile, before standing up from the lap pillow Lunaria had given him.

"I guess this is goodbye? Well, I technically have another question left, so I'll also ask this: Where can I find a blonde, drill haired elf?"

"She's where you want to go, at southeast working as an adventurer, you might meet her in pubs or taverns." Lunaria answered, before she stood up and hugged Hans tightly. "Anyways, I shall use a bit of my remaining energy to give you the knowledge and skills I had gained and nurtured alone.... and...."

That was all Hans heard before he was gone, returning to his body on the Six-faced world.

In the distance, the island she was inhabiting began to collapse quickly, beginning at the edge and approaching her. Yet she wasn't ever threatened by this. In fact, she's accepted her end with a gentle smile and with not a single tear running down her eyes and soon enough, this world will collapse with her.

"..... I'm truly glad to meet you, Hans Orsted..... I wish you brutally murder that asshole who took over your grandfather's body, and I wish that eventually you will have healthy grandsons.... with the last of my strength, I can definitely see it, that bright future!"

And this crumbling world was no more. Lunaria was no more, a "Goodbye" that could be muttered no longer could be. She would no longer suffer for she and this dead world were replaced by the kind silence of the all-encompassing black void.

[ ~ Line • Break ~ ]

Meanwhile, our protagonist woke up slowly all while feeling better and lighter, as if weights inside him were removed. He also felt as if he was more capable of using and manipulating mana more freely and feeling like he had was learning many things, slowly.

"Oi brat! Come out of there, breakfast's ready!" Rev's voice came from outside the tent, and Hans eventually got out of the bed, stretching for a few minutes.

Soon enough, he exited the tent, ready to go with the Fleeting Feather to a C-ranked dungeon.

[ ~ Chapter • End ~ ]