Episode 17 : Ragon Arises - Part 1

fall drop-by-drop

 Icy drops of water dripped down.

 It's been dripping down at regular intervals since a while ago.

 It is a sound that irritates the nerves of those who listen to it to an unbearable degree.

 Also--

 It'll fall off.

 The water drips down on the rocks and overflows over the rocks, soaking the ground. In a little light, only the ground beneath it appears to glisten with wetness, like eyes filled with tears. However, it never reaches us.

 fall drop-by-drop

 I fell again.

 For a long, long time, it hovers there, listening to the sound, wondering when it will fall, when it will fall - and the one who does so is thirsty and has not been given even a drop of water. --

 And if I could only be tied to the rock, unable to reach it with my tongue, unable to move my body closer to it, watching the drops of water drip silently down this seemingly inaccessible area--

 It would have been hard to imagine a more elaborate, more certain way to drive a man mad, weaken him, and eventually kill him.

 He did not know whether the people who had tied him there had thought that far through, and whether they had put him in a hole hollowed out of the rock for the purpose of torture, and had tortured him as hard as they could with the chain that was tied to the far end.

 However, since a while ago, Guin has been feeling very thirsty. It was a natural consequence of having crossed that valley of salt, the beautiful white valley of death, and having eaten a little of the rock salt.

 Guin refuses to speak of it. Perhaps it is because he knows that it is useless to complain, or perhaps it is because he fears that by complaining he will show his weakness to his enemy. He stretches out his legs and leans his back against the rock, where his body is most comfortable. No matter how anxious he may be inwardly, there is nothing in his half-human, half-beastly monstrous figure that can make us sense such an inner thought.

 Again, drops of water trickled down like a mockery.

 How much time has passed since I passed through the Valley of White Salt, met the four Lagoons, and was brought to them as their prisoner?

 Guin had no way of knowing this, as he was trapped in this rocky house with no morning, noon or night.

 One day, one hour, or half a day.

 On the other hand, they may have simply left the captive, half-beast, half-man, monster, without feeding him.

 When we are huddled in the dark, our eyes open to the darkness, the flow of time loses all its certainty and meaning, and like a strange black amoeba, it becomes nothing more than a slimy huddle, stretching and shrinking.

 But--

 Guin could not surrender herself to its sweetness, which was also wondrously indulgent, and drift in licentious idleness.

 Because the reason why he came all the way across the desert to this mountainous region to visit the barbarian tribe of Ragon was to ask for Ragon's help in the crisis of the Semites, and for that purpose, Guin was given four whole days by the Semites. Guin only had four days to spare.

 After those four days, the Semites intend to execute without mercy Paro's orphans, Princess Linda and Prince Remus, whom they have kept as hostages. For they will regard Guin, who has not returned after the expiration of four days, as a coward who betrayed them and fled alone to save his life.

 Of course, Guin - and Lothor, the great chief of the Rak, whose lovely grandson Suni's life had been saved by Paro's holy twins - would insist on waiting, and might even stand and fight for Linda and Remus. But on the other hand, the chief of the Glo, Osa Iracheli, would be the strongest opponent, and the newcomer (Guin had no doubt that his forcible campaign against the Karoi, which he had orchestrated with Istvan, had worked), Osa Gaulo of the Karoi, was also as fierce and bloodthirsty as Iracheli of the Glo. The Karoi chieftain, Osa Gauro, was no less ferocious and bloodthirsty than the Iracelli of Glo. On top of that, the Karoi routinely mocked the gentle Rak as brown-haired cowards.

 Only the Tubai of the Yid-keepers and the Rasa, who are related to the Laks, may be in favour of Loto. But even then, there is no telling how things will turn out in the end if the masses are pushed aside by Iracheli and Gaulo. It is. The Glo and Karoi were generally well-built, and on top of that, as a race of warriors in all of Shem, they were extremely belligerent and rough. It is not a place where Rak and Rasa, who are of a mild nature by nature, would have fared well.

At least... at least, if you don't mind waiting for me in the midst of a confrontation and a crisis...

 Guin couldn't tell you how many times he wished he could tear his guts out.

 After all, Shem must be pre-human. They are brave, and they have a certain culture, but they cannot accept abstract thought beyond a certain level. Strategy, long term calculation, foresight - these are things that even the great Lotho, the wisest of Shem, could not understand. Their intelligence, like that of their bodies, is similar to that of a child.

 They will not understand why Guin should abandon the field of battle where he now holds the upper hand and urgently ask for reinforcements from the Lagoons. That's why we can only think that Leopard-man Leard is planning to run away without us.

 They do not know why they have fought so many battles in the past, and why they have turned every disadvantage into an advantage and managed to beat the army of Mongols, which is twice their number, in spite of their inferiority. The Semites do not even realize the extent of Guin's painstaking efforts to use the Id, to exploit psychological gaps, to use decoys, to use stratagems to rouse Karoi, and finally to almost annihilate the two thousand blue knights of Count Mars, the pride of Mongol. However, the Little Barbarians have faithfully carried out the orders of this leopard-headed hero, and have been successful in battle.

 But they have no idea why they keep winning, and they don't think they need to. Shem and the others follow Guin's orders because they trust him, that's all.

 If Guin had failed just once, the Shem would have dismissed him as their leader with surprising swiftness, saying that the Shem had their own way of fighting. For Guin, everything had been, from the beginning, nothing but a perilous tug-of-war over the Valley of the White Blade. So far, he had managed to get across, which was good, but there was no guarantee that he would be safe on the next step.

But still--

 Guin muttered to himself as he crouched in the darkness, listening to the nerve-wracking drip, drip, drip of water.

Even so, things are moving forward somehow. If you are blinded and tremble before the rope, nothing will start. If you cross the rope even if you have to hold on to it, things will move forward that much more. no matter what hardships I have to overcome... compared to the situation I was in when I first appeared in the forest of ludes... which was nothing less than the beginning of all my memories, How far things have come!

At that time, I was no different from a newborn beast. I had no iron on my body, nothing around me was familiar, and all around me stood a strange deep forest, a strange cannibalistic spirit of death, and the hostile knights of Mongol.

 At that time, Guin stood in the forest of Ruud as a strange baby who had just been born, naked, covered in blood, and with the head of a Leopard from the neck up, with nothing but his name and the word "Aura," which he did not understand, in his memory. He stood in the forest of the Rood as a strange baby who had just been born.

 Then, by chance, he meets two of Paro's orphaned children, who are about to be captured by the pursuers of Castle Staphorus, and he rescues them, almost instinctively, without having a clear intention to do so.

 Then, by chance, I became their companion, and together we were prisoners in the castle of Staphorus, and we escaped when Staphorus was burned down by the night raids of the Karoi.

 Istvan of Valachia and Suni of the Rak joined them, and the five of them threw themselves on rafts into the river Kes, and escaped from Arvon's pursuers and entered Nosferus.

 He had been running, fighting and hiding to survive as a fugitive, not even knowing the meaning of being chased, but he finally found a friend to fight with, and that was the small barbarian tribe of Shem in the desert.

 There was no telling how different Guin's fate might have been had it been the forces of another nation in the Middle Plains, or at least a resistance force committed to the rebirth of Paro. If only it had been a modern army that knew how to ride a horse and fight with tactics.

 But Guin doesn't think that either. He was given the Semites, the Id, and Nosferus.

 As long as that is the case, he is betting that he will use them to do everything he can to get rid of Mongol's army. For him, fate is merely a card given to him, and the rest he has to make by himself.

 But--

(What if-- what if, before Shem waited for me to return and delayed the twins' execution or confronted me, Shem's army couldn't hold out in the face of Mongol's onslaught? The four days I begged them to hold out somehow - that was the least amount of time that Shem could trust me, and at the same time, with my pre-planned moves and Shem's advantage, they could barely keep this battle at a standstill, It's the last possible moment.

 But--

 If he miscalculated any of his readings. Or if he's right but something new comes up in the four days he's away that he hasn't thought of.

 Then all his efforts will be for naught.

 Moreover - he only had two days left until the last day of his bet - at least, that's when he was captured by Ragon across the Salt Valley.

 How many hours had passed since then? If a day has passed, he now has only one day left - and if the next sun has already almost set, it is the end of all.

 And yet, he still languishes in this rocky dungeon, helpless to do anything about it, and without the chance to speak out on the river to move Ragon's heart!

(There will be preparations for the battle, and the distance to cross Mt. Gutou and get to the battlefield.)

 Considering that, it would have been more logical to think that even if he had seduced Ragon here, the reinforcements would not have been able to save Shem and Paro's twins in time, and that it was all too late.

Oh, if I could only get my hands on Paro's secret! If I only knew the mystery of the ancient mechanism that had transported the twins Linda and Remus from the flaming Crystal Palace to the Forest of Ludes by the distant castle of Staphorus in an instant. I wouldn't have been able to bring Lagon's army into the middle of Mongol's army in an instant. Oh, Linda, Remus, you don't know. You don't know how terrible you are... and how irreplaceable you are. No wonder Mongol pursues them like a madman, for they are worth more than even a treasure a thousand times their weight. Whoever gets them and holds the secret of Paro will control the world - yes, not only Nakahara but the whole world.

 However, after thinking to that extent, Guin leaned his head back and drove the idea out of his mind. It is better not to think about things that cannot be helped. And he was not willing to give up, to give in to fate and wait for the catastrophe, even in this desperate situation where there was no way out.

 The only time he would have stopped fighting would have been after the death of the Paro twins before his eyes, the end of the Shem race, and the end of his own life at last.

 The water fell again.

 The monotonous sound that seemed to stir up his thirst and impatience - he swallowed down all the frustration, the desire for a difficult fate, and the unbearable anxious thoughts, He sat motionless and still.

 From the outside, there is no evidence of the fierceness and madness of the storm that is raging in the heart of this leopard-headed monster.

 Ragon--

 Guin forced himself to turn his thoughts back to the barbarian who had captured him, in order to turn his burning heart to something else.

 This is the first time in hundreds of years, perhaps centuries, that a living human being has stepped into the home of this fantastic barbarian race, the legendary giant race.

 Shem and Ragon, those are the two freakish pre-humans who roam the cursed land of Nosferus with an air of selfishness.

 But how different the two races were, even though they both called Nosferus home.

 In contrast to Shem, who was a short man of only one tar, weighed as much as a ten-year-old child, and had a diminutive appearance that closely resembled that of an ape, Ragon was, as his name implied, a giant.

 He was two and a half feet tall and weighed as much as a three-year-old horse. On top of its cloud-like physique, it has sprawling hair, and from the nape of its neck to its waist, from the nape of its neck to its waist, it is covered with a whirlpool of bristly hair that might be called a mane, and unlike Shem, it has no tail.

 The development of their brains is not proportional to their capacity, and Shem is only at a stage worthy of the name pre-human, ape-man, while Ragon probably has a good deal of intelligence. This is because, in spite of their ugly faces, their eyes shine as brightly as lamps, and they had just come to collect white sand, or rock salt, when they captured Guin.

 The Semites are in the primitive predatory stage, and though they have at last mastered the art of boiling and cooking, they are still desert hunters.

 But the lagons seemed to know how to take salt and store it, and to preserve meat and food from spoiling by dipping them in it. They even used it in their trade, it seemed. For, when Guin asked what they were doing here, as they were being captured and escorted to the village of Lagon, the Lagonists, pitying his ignorance, said, "We are not here to trade,

"The white sand is sacred to Lagon. The blessings of the white sand will not spoil your food."

"The white sand can be traded for all sorts of things - the little human lagons will come to you for as much as they want."

 Because I said so.

"A little person - you mean Shem?"

"It is not Shem. You don't know anything, beast-headed ragon. Shem is not a man, Ragon. He's a monkey, Shem. A desert beast. Our little human lagon calls himself Kitai."

"Kitai!"

 It was also a startling piece of information for Guin.

 The people of Kitai, the great nation of the east, have crossed the mountains into Nosferus from the east and are trading with Lagon. While the nations of the Middle Plains, separated from each other by this horrible white desert of death, were busy fighting for supremacy in the Middle Plains, which they regarded as the eastern end of the dead-end world. The Kitai merchants, who would go out to any port in the world as long as they could do business, opened up more and more routes to the frontiers of the country, and might finally reach the borders of the three great duchies of Gora from the banks of the Kesu River.

(Mongol, perhaps for some reason, has finally begun to look towards Nosferus now. But even that came too late - 20,000 ... The first expeditionary force to Nosferus was 20,000. It's a drop in the bucket, but that's how much Mongol underestimated the frontier. He thought that such a desert, which was only a nest of monkeys, savage giants, and horrible id and sandhills without brains, was nothing but good bait that he could catch with his bare hands in front of 20,000 of Mongol's elites. And perhaps he was right.

Nosferus, a barren land of unknown wonders.

 Someday, Nosferus will be a point of interest to the entire world-- or so Guin suddenly thought. There is something about Nosferus. When that something comes to light, not only Mongol, but also Yulania and Kumu of the Three Gorgas, Kitai bordering Nosferus on the east, and even the ancient kingdom of Hainam, which calls itself a descendant of Canaan, and the dark evil sect of Ferrara, as well as the surrounding nations will all come rushing to this unexplored fruit.

 But that was only a premonition. Now, for most of those countries, Nosferus is still just a blank on the map, a great fault line between the eastern and western halves of the world.

 The village of Lagon was located in the mountains, not far from the Salt Valley.

 Legend has it that the Lagon are a wandering people with no fixed abode. Other legends say that the gigantic, phantom-like lagoons in the Canaan Mountains are responsible for protecting the ruins of Canaan, which were destroyed in ancient times, from the hands of grave robbers.

 Today, however, Guin has discovered that both theories are both correct and incorrect.

 The village of Lagon is located in the mountains leading to the Canaan Mountains, and as a sign that the culture of the Lagon people is somewhat more advanced than that of the Semitic people, it is a stone village built from quarried rocks, rather than a dwelling built in the form of a pit.

 The stone-built houses are dark and cool, and some of the buildings are used as common storehouses for the whole village, in which they keep salted meat and iwahiyu.

 That, alone, was wisdom unknown to the Semites. But as Guin was led through the village under the gaze of the curious giants, he saw that it was not necessarily the ancestral home of the Lagoons, but that they had moved from place to place in the mountains, and had spent years and decades there, building houses of stone. After that, they seemed to go off in search of the next place.

 They may have been cautious lest the wolves, or the Semites, should discover their stronghold, and in a few years they should have devoured all the food that was there. Even though they had begun to store food, they still did not know how to till the soil, and even if they had, there was no land in the rocky mountains and no grain that could grow in the desert.

 In a sense, the Lagoons are a race of people who are halfway between the Semites and the civilized peoples of the Middle Plains and the East, who have not yet become farmers and settlers, but who are on the verge of escaping from predation and wandering.

Where did the two branches of the dwarf race, Shem and the giant race, Ragon, become so divided, while speaking the same language - yes, the language of Shem and Ragon comes from the same basic trunk - while even speaking the same language? Where did these two branches become so divided? No, these two races are descendants of the ancient empire of Canaan, which means that they are descended from the same people as we are, believe it or not. What devil's hand could have worked in the same people to transform them so much? Nosferus, Nosferus - the thought always comes back to that. If we can understand this, if we can solve this mystery, we can solve the hidden mystery of Nosferus.

He who controls it will be able to control the world, just as he controlled the ancient machine of Paro.

When, why, and how did a man just like us...

(Same as us)

 Suddenly, Guin sagged as if an icy hand had grabbed his heart.

We... then I'm human!

The head of this miserable beast-- am I a man or am I not a man?

(They said, "Ragon, the head of the beast.")

What am I-- what am I?

 Unwittingly, a guttural moan, which had not escaped even in his earlier agitation, escaped from the mouth of Guin's huge Leopard. He grasped his own accursed head as wildly as his chained hands could carry it, and shook it violently as if he were trying to pluck off the Leopard's head.

 That's when it happened.

 Suddenly, he lets go his hand and glances at you.

 Someone was peeking out.