Death was a subject no one could ever truly avoid.
The word itself could seem very light. Light enough to be spoken casually, light enough for people to complain that they were dying after nothing more than a difficult day, and sometimes even light enough to be used as leverage when arguing with family.
But the word could also be unbearably heavy. Only when you personally witnessed a life end before its time did you truly understand the weight carried by death.
Of course, insects did not count.
People grew in many different ways throughout their lives, and one experience nearly everyone eventually faced was the death of someone close to them.
Death meant a permanent farewell. It meant accepting that you would never meet again. People often comforted themselves by believing another world existed after death, that they would reunite there, or by believing in reincarnation and telling themselves that, after enough time had passed, there might come another day when they would meet again.
But within the present moment, within the time and reality you currently inhabited, death meant something very simple. The person in front of you would never smile at you again, never cry in front of you again, never ramble endlessly beside your ear, never joke with you, never worry about you, never scold you, and never annoy you again.
They had simply fallen asleep forever.
Mydei knelt on the charred earth, staring at the body in his arms as it gradually grew cold. At that moment, he finally understood just how heavy the word death could be.
The body belonged to one of his comrades, a friend who had fought beside him against the Black Tide.
Before the battle, the young man had laughed and told Mydei that he had grown up in a family of musicians and was an excellent instrumentalist. Once the fighting was over, he had promised to play something for everyone in celebration.
Now he would never play again.
Mydei remembered that when the young man had first joined the unit, he had been painfully shy and hardly fit in with the others. He was quiet, withdrawn, and seemed unable to find his place among them.
During training, he would always hide in a corner by himself and repeat the most basic movements over and over again.
That was when Mydei had stepped forward and accepted responsibility as his captain. He had taught the young man, trained him, helped him become a capable soldier, and encouraged him until he finally regained his confidence.
But now regret surged through Mydei's heart. If he had simply left him alone back then, would the young man have failed the evaluation and gone back to being a musician? Even if he had not been dismissed, someone so poorly suited to combat might only have been assigned to logistics instead of the front lines.
It had been Mydei.
Mydei had trained him, brought him onto the battlefield, and then failed to bring him home.
"Sita..."
Mydei softly spoke his friend's name. The quiet young man who had loved music would never speak again, nor would those pale, delicate hands of his ever touch the strings of an instrument.
There were others as well.
Leon. Phisin. Ptolemy. Pardikas...
None of those comrades would ever speak to him again. They would never joke with him or laugh beside him as they had before.
Their lives had ended here forever.
Mydei silently rose from the ground and watched another group of Black Tide monsters gathering in the distance. He did not roar in anger. He merely clenched his fists and stared at them with the expression of a wounded beast trapped with nowhere left to run.
By the time the forces in the rear realized that the Black Tide had spread far beyond expectations and dispatched large numbers of reinforcements, they found every monster in the area torn apart and scattered across the ground.
Standing atop the mountain of corpses was Mydei.
His upper body was bare, his skin covered in golden blood. His body had already been pushed beyond exhaustion, and wounds of every size covered him, but he still remained standing.
He stared forward like a lion guarding its territory.
Because the bodies of his comrades still lay behind him.
When Mydei finally woke, two days had passed. Even the doctors treating him were astonished. Several of his internal organs had been damaged, and he had suffered severe internal bleeding, yet not only had he survived, he had regained consciousness with unbelievable speed.
He was practically superhuman.
After spending another day recovering enough to stand, Mydei forced himself out of bed and left the hospital.
He went to a large refrigerated facility nearby where the dead were being preserved and found the frozen bodies of his teammates.
"I was their captain, but I couldn't bring them home."
Those were the first words Mydei spoke after waking.
"How am I supposed to tell their parents? How am I supposed to tell them their sons are dead, and that their captain failed them?"
The bodies from his own unit were not the only ones stored there. Mydei saw many others. Some belonged to Chrysos Heirs who had also taken part in the fighting, while others were ordinary civilians whose bodies had been recovered from areas devastated by the Black Tide.
At that moment, the young man gained a painfully concrete understanding of what an apocalypse truly meant.
It tore away things you had once taken for granted. It gave you no time to prepare and no warning before taking away everything beautiful.
"I'm going to defeat the Black Tide."
For the first time in his life, Mydei had found a goal that truly belonged to him.
Until now, he had simply followed his teacher's arrangements. He had accepted Caelus's lessons and worked hard to become the person his teacher wanted him to be.
But with the tragedy of the apocalypse laid out before him, with the knowledge that his fallen comrades had been no older than himself and were little more than students, and with the memory of their parents crying in front of him, Mydei could only clench his fists.
He never wanted this to happen again.
So he had to defeat the Black Tide.
He had to end this apocalypse and bring back the ordinary days everyone had once taken for granted.
For the first time, he stopped merely following someone else's wishes and began moving forward of his own accord.
Afterward, Mydei personally visited the parents of his fallen comrades. Some forgave him. Others blamed him. He saw the devastation on their faces, the pain in their eyes, and the tears they could not hold back.
And those families were only a fraction of the suffering caused by the Black Tide. Countless others had lost their homes. More parents had lost their children, and more children had lost their parents.
Tragedies were unfolding everywhere.
From then on, Mydei began taking part in missions alone. Relying on his near-immortal regenerative ability, he frequently entered contaminated zones by himself, fighting and killing without pause.
He no longer wanted comrades beside him because he always volunteered for the most dangerous assignments. He did not want anyone else risking their life alongside him.
His regenerative ability was powerful enough that, no matter how painful or difficult things became, he could usually complete the mission. If other people accompanied him, they might only end up throwing their lives away.
After that, people began calling him Mydei the Undying.
Perhaps some had even begun to forget that his true name was Mydeimos. The name Mydei had once meant one who could stand against ten thousand enemies, and now people had come to acknowledge that title from the bottom of their hearts.
He truly was becoming a hero.
But if he wanted to become a Pathstrider of the Hunt, there was still one thing missing.
An obsession with vengeance.
(To be continued.)
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◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)