"A question that made the flame inside him tremble and shattered the mind that had comprehended the knowledge of existence."
Silence filled the raft while Ellen’s final words remained hanging in the air.
Looking behind us, we had already passed the ancient bones and left them far away, while the details of the other side became visible to my eyes.
"So what was the question?" Elliot asked, his tone a mixture of awe and curiosity.
Even I stayed silent and listened to what the princess would say.
But unexpectedly, she let out a sigh filled with disappointment. "Haaa... I don’t know."
Everyone had been full of anticipation, so for a few moments we stayed silent trying to process what she had said, until someone exploded.
"You don’t know?... What do you mean you don’t know?... What the hell, you made us listen to that whole story only to cut it off at the best part!" Izel’s annoyed voice echoed across the raft as she quickly turned toward Ellen, causing the raft to sway across the water.
The latter simply shrugged. "It’s not my fault it’s incomplete."
Izel clicked her tongue. "Tsk... whatever."
I looked at Ellen’s back in front of me as I asked. "Where did you read or hear this story?"
She gave me a glance over her shoulder as she answered hesitantly. "Umm, it was in my father’s private library."
Let me guess, she sneaked in there to read his books without him knowing...
Leona turned around and sat cross-legged. "Is that person mentioned an alien from outside our world?"
"Well, you can’t really call him an alien when we ourselves are aliens who came from another world." Ellen answered.
"Makes sense in a ridiculous way." Izel added.
"Is there a specific source for this story?" Elliot spoke while pushing the raft forward, and Ellen shook her head.
"No, my father inherited those books from my ancestors."
Everyone fell silent for a while as we drew closer to the other side.
There ahead of us, one or two kilometers beyond the blue waters, another shore began.
But instead of yellow sand, it was black, and behind it rose a chain of towering black mountains.
As though everything had burned long ago and refused to return to life again.
"Do you think it’s real..." The source of the words made everyone look toward Elliot.
"About that person, and what happened to him with finding the fire, making the wish, then meeting the First Ones."
I turned my head toward him lazily. "You know, the possibility of that story being real is the same as it being just a legend."
He turned his head toward me. "So it could be real."
I shrugged. "Yeah, and what are you going to do with that anyway?... Become like him and travel between worlds to see other races or something?"
Izel raised her hand and placed it on her chin as though a great idea had just struck her. "So there are other races we don’t know about."
The moment she said that, everyone looked at her. Even I was a little stunned.
Is she actually serious?
Even Kyle, who was adding feathers to what looked like bone arrows, stopped what he was doing and stared at her.
When she saw all of us blinking at her without saying anything, annoyance spread across her face like it always did.
"What the hell are you all staring at?" She sounded angry.
Leona smiled apologetically. "Umm, Izel, I’m not mocking what you said of course, but... isn’t that obvious?"
"She’s saying you’re the only human who just thought of that now... and she’s not mocking what you said, she’s saying you’re stupid." I added.
Izel gritted her teeth, the raft swaying beneath us even more. "I know... I know, idiot."
"What I meant was why haven’t we met any of them until now?"
"Oh... you should’ve said that from the start... well, maybe they’re just shy around us." She spoke while her glare burned into my face.
Not literally of course, but maybe it would become literal.
Ellen sighed. "Please don’t start this here, I have no desire to finish the trip to the shore by swimming."
"And there are many possible explanations for this." She looked at Izel while saying that as Leona clasped her hands together.
"Maybe none of them know we exist in the first place."
"Or they simply don’t care." Surprisingly, it was Kyle who answered this time before returning his attention to making arrows indifferently.
"It doesn’t really matter either way." I said lazily.
Izel’s gaze returned to burning my face. "Nothing matters to you."
I raised a finger in objection. "No, you’re wrong, there are many things that matter to me."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Like when I’ll become rich and be able to eat or buy whatever I want, and many other things."
She shook her head and turned to look toward the other side. "Idiot."
We had already gotten close to reaching the black shore, with only a few dozen meters left.
I looked toward the horizon where those towering mountains rose into the sky while one thought from that story continued circling endlessly in my head.
The First Ones.
They were the only thing I was certain about in that story.
And perhaps there wasn’t much left before they achieved their dreams and saw aliens.
But that didn’t matter now, because what mattered more was that we had reached the other shore.
With a scraping sound, the raft advanced across the sand before its front climbed onto the black shore.
The first to get off was Leona, followed by Izel, before I and the others stood up to join them.
The smell of ash and dust slipped into my nose while my feet sank into the black shore.
The moment he stepped down, Kyle extended his hand while holding a handful of black sand curiously. "This is volcanic ash."
I nodded while staring at the peaks of the black mountains. Fortunately, there were no signs of an actual volcano about to erupt.
The sky was clear without any rising dust or smoke, showing that a long time had passed since this place formed.
I cast one last look at the skeleton behind us before turning my gaze forward again.
"Looks like it’s time to climb now."
Looking at those mountains, they were extremely steep, nearly reaching eighty degrees.
So without much delay, we began moving across the sandy shore toward them.
As we approached, I sensed something between the large cracks in those black rocks.
Then another, and another.
There were many Rank 2 monsters ahead of us.
After we advanced further, I opened my mouth to inform them. "There’s a group of monsters ahead."
Beside me, Izel clicked her tongue. "Tsk... won’t this place leave us alone already?"
I almost mocked her words. "For your information, it’s amazing that nothing jumped out of the water to eat us."
"That’s amazing for you. All I want is to walk peacefully instead of running after monsters like a lunatic."
"I think you all should pay attention because they’re coming toward us." Kyle’s voice echoed as he stared ahead.
I had already sensed them moving and emerging from the large cracks toward us, so I drew my swords and the others did the same.
Moments later, dust rose before us while strange screeching sounds filled the area, and several silhouettes rushed toward us at high speed.
...
The ugly gray corpses fell across the black shore while their blood seeped out and mixed with the sand.
As a result, another smell was added to the scent of ash, making the atmosphere even darker and gloomier.
I stood before one of those things, its body several times larger than mine lying lifeless before me.
Their bodies were covered in a hard gray layer with many grooves stretching across their skin, secreting strange red fluids.
They had eight long jointed legs, while their heads contained no eyes. Instead, there was one huge mouth... or something like a pit filled with teeth in the middle of their heads, producing irritating sounds.
Anyway, they were dead now, and I had no desire to stare at these things for long.
So after absorbing every last drop of essence from the body before me, I pulled my hand away and turned my head toward a certain direction.
There, Elliot stood before another corpse.
But I wasn’t staring at him himself... but at his soul.
A soul that had already reached Rank 3.
He had broken through almost a week ago, and that had caused his strength to soar once again.
True, his progress was slower compared to mine when we obtained the same resources, but with every breakthrough he climbed above me once again.
And he had proven that in this battle judging by the corpses that had lost half their bodies because of his destructive attacks.
With a bit of jealousy, I shook my head and directed my attention toward the sky where the peaks of the black mountains stood.
"This is going to be a long climb."