This Lostbelt... or rather, this island, carried many problems.
Although Shiomi could use Runes to gather information about the fairies, the Primordial Runes could not reveal the past and future as clearly as Solomon's Clairvoyance. Even so, after arriving here and spending a month in the Rain Clan's palace, he began to notice a growing sense of dissonance.
The Land of Rain was not a nation made up entirely of fairies—humans did exist here. Yet both their status and their relationship with the fairies felt strangely off.
Take the present situation, for example—
Aesc had gone to consult her father and mother, the king and queen. Shiomi had intended to accompany her, but for once, Aesc firmly stopped him.
So Shiomi wandered outside, walking alone through the city streets.
All along the way, he could clearly feel the fairies' eyes on him, accompanied by countless whispers.
"That must be the human the princess picked up from the forest."
"Yeah, I heard he's good at Magecraft. The princess spends every day with him in the library."
"Lucky her. I want a human who can use Magecraft too."
"Why don't we ask Aesc? Maybe she'll lend him to us for a few days."
"Forget it. She picked him up herself. What if we break him?"
Shiomi heard exchanges like this no fewer than ten times on his way from the palace to the city gate.
The way they spoke of him as if he were a pet or toy, and the unabashed gleam of pure desire in their eyes—when Shiomi turned to meet their gaze, they didn't show the slightest hint of shame.
If anything, their attitude was closer to people expecting a stray cat or dog to come trotting over, eager to be fed.
The fairies of the Rain Clan were clearly fascinated by Shiomi for being human, but since he was "the human Aesc liked," they refrained from acting on it. Of course, the "like" in their mouths was the kind reserved for objects.
Though their intellect and appearance were very similar to humans, there was always something unmistakably "non-human" about them that made Shiomi feel a rare sense of unease.
It wasn't like traveling to another country, nor like Rayshifting to another era.
It was that in certain ways—including values—they were fundamentally different from humans.
If he had to draw a comparison, the closest being he had ever encountered to these fairies was Lady Avalon, who once manifested in Uruk as a Servant. But Merlin always balanced her non-human side when dealing with people.
So in the end, neither in nature nor in essence could she be directly equated to these fairies.
As these thoughts occupied him, Shiomi walked down a street where snow hadn't been fully cleared when a figure collapsed ahead of him.
It was a human girl, about thirteen or fourteen.
Blood seeped through her clothing from her leg, quickly staining the snow crimson. The fairy girl beside her wore an expression of troubled puzzlement.
"Is your leg ruined? Maybe we should just cut it off. Frostbite like this won't heal no matter how you treat it. Keep dragging it around and you'll die, right?" the fairy muttered. "But if you lose a leg, you won't be able to walk..."
Her voice carried no trace of kindness—only a brutally "rational" evaluation of worth.
As if she were saying, "A cat with only three legs isn't worth keeping."
Shiomi's hands, hidden in the wide sleeves of his robe, clenched unconsciously.
To treat a human this way was something he could not accept.
But remembering that this was a Lostbelt—a history utterly incompatible with his own—his hands slowly loosened.
Rather than flaring up in anger here, it was far more important to uncover the full scope of this Lostbelt, to learn the history between fairies and humans.
As for now...
"Let me take a look." Shiomi walked over to the fairy girl.
"Huh?" The fairy girl turned her head at the sound of his voice. "You're that human Aesc brought back..."
Though surprised, she didn't stop him, only watched as Shiomi lifted the girl's skirt to reveal a crudely bandaged wound.
He untied the cloth, studied the injury in silence for a few seconds, then placed his hand above it. A faint green light flickered. When he withdrew his hand, the wound was gone.
"..." The human girl stared at him in shock, unable to speak.
"It's fine now." Shiomi released his hand and rose, moving away from her. Without so much as a glance at the fairy girl, he turned and continued down the road alone.
"Hey, you! You're a human who knows Magecraft, right? Something of mine's broken—fix it for me!" the fairy girl called after him.
Shiomi paused only slightly, turned his head, and gave her a cold look. "Fix it yourself."
The fairy girl froze under his gaze and quickly urged the human girl to get up, no longer daring to address him.
Shiomi was beginning to understand why this world had been pruned.
If the prosperity of humanity was the uncut template of Proper Human History, then by comparison, this world—already developed to its current scale 6,000 years ago—where humans and fairies coexisted in such a twisted way... it was no surprise it had vanished.
He stood on a hill outside the city, gazing north at the towering Imaginary Tree that pierced the clouds, the one the fairies called the World Tree.
The wind and snow that had rarely ceased for the past month had finally cleared, yet what stretched above him was not a clear blue sky, but one perpetually dyed in the colors of dusk.
Morgan had said nothing, given him no guidance. She wanted Shiomi to see it himself, to witness this world that should have been pruned away.
But... if that was the case...
The cold wind brushed against his face, his black robe whipping in the gusts, the hood nearly blown from his head.
"Tenkei!"
Aesc's voice rang out from behind. Shiomi turned abruptly to see her, breathless, as if she had run all the way from the palace to find him.
"What's wrong? Why are you in such a rush—did something happen?" Shiomi reached out, straightening the hat that had nearly fallen from her head after her frantic run.
"No..." Aesc lowered her gaze. "I just heard from the clan's fairies that you went outside the city..."
And she had also heard about what had happened on the street.
Sensing the abnormality more sharply than the others, Aesc had hurried after him, following his magical energy until she found him here.
"I thought... I thought..." Her voice trembled with unease. "I thought you were planning to leave the Land of Rain... to go to the mainland of Britannia."
...
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