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There was almost no human presence inside the temple, so it was easy to tell where they were. They had moved to a different room after I had left, probably by Selene’s suggestion. She might look emotionless and curt, but she actually is a rather sensible dragon.

With heavy steps, I walked down the corridor before stopping in front of a door. I took a deep breath, resisted the urge to run away, and knocked with a trembling hand. There was barely any sound, which would have been inaudible if there were other people making noise in the temple. I felt someone approaching the door soon after, which made me feel even more nervous, until the door opened, it was Karin.

“Lapis?!”
“Oh…hello.”

I did not know what more to say after that, so I just shut my mouth, but Karin reached out to my hand.

“Are you okay? Did your wounds heal?”
“Ah…yeah. I healed them earlier.”
“I see…I’m glad. Come in.”

Before I could reply in any way, I was forcefully dragged inside the room. Luvias, Ciel, and Diaria were all there, and they quickly surrounded me, as if not wanting to let me escape. I was lost for words, trying to understand what was going on, but before I could think of anything they all bowed down at the same time.

“Err…”
“We’re sorry, Lapis. It wasn’t our intention to hurt you.”

They apologized again, even though they had done nothing wrong. That alone started making my mind go wild, so I had to force myself to remain calm.

“…Please don’t apologize. I’m the one who should be doing that, so…”

My voice was shaky, and I turned my eyes up to look at the ceiling and try to fake it. I could not cry now! That would not help at all! I bit my lip, and clenched my fists, my nails digging into my skin. After taking two deep breaths, I managed to calm down and looked at them again.

“I want to tell you…about my past. About what kind of person I was, and what I went through to end up like this.”

I said that in a low voice, and they all nodded meekly.

§　§　§

I did not know where to start, so I decided to go all the way to the beginning, explaining what sort of family I was born to, and my experiences since then. I was born to a family of knights, living in an old house. Even though they had been knights for generations, they only owned a small territory in a remote region, which was not enough to feed all of us, so we always had to find side jobs. It was a rather poor family.

I barely remember the faces of my parents while living there, mainly because they passed away before I really became aware. At the time, there were seldom wars between countries, but instead the attacks from monsters and demons kept increasing. That was how my parents died too, an honorable death of a warrior. My father fought with a sword, and my mother was mostly a magician, but their skill was only slightly better than average, so when the battle turned fierce they were unable to survive.

I do not hold a grudge against them for that now. They knew what they were doing when they went to a battlefield, and such a death is part of the job. But there was one person who thought differently, the father of my father, my grandfather who was my only relative left alive.

All I remember from him was him being a scary person that looked like an ogre, and constantly worked me to the bone. We had almost no normal conversations, he only raised his voice to order me around, or to say things like “I can’t believe you can’t do something this easy”, or “You think you’ll stand a chance against the Demon King like this?”. I hated him, even more than the demons that had killed my parents. But that was an obvious outcome, any child would hate a person like that, who hurted them for no reason whatsoever.

His training regime grew stricter and harsher as well, to the point any regular person would have died many times over going through it. A part of him had probably been lost when his son and daughter-in-law passed away. If he was sane, he would have realized that no human could survive through such reckless training at the very least.

But…somehow I made it through. My infantile body developed muscles and magic power unnatural for a child, and the many blessings I obtained from the gods protected me, which allowed me to get so strong I could resist all the torment my grandfather could conjure.

Rather than being annoyed by that, he was overtaken with joy. Now the demons would die, his grandfather would bring ruin to that cursed race. His next idea was to find warriors that boasted of their own power all over the land, and get them to fight me. His way to accomplish that was to offer a sum of money if they won. Being paid to beat up a child was an easy way of getting money for warriors of all skill levels, so an insane amount of people came. Most of them struggled to even put up a fight, but there were a handful that managed to win. Every time there was someone like that, my grandfather would beg them to stay and train me.

Many would refuse, leaving as soon as they got the money, but others agreed to stay and trained me for a long time. My life at the time was composed entirely of sleeping, eating, taking baths, and training. I didn’t even take any time to do practice swings, it was all combat training. My grandfather’s philosophy was that no training compared to an actual fight.

A life of grueling days like that followed until I turned fifteen and left his house. It was not that his training had ended, or that he had become satisfied with my strength, it was simply that his days came to an end. One day while I was eating breakfast at the same time as always, I noticed my grandfather would not come no matter how long I waited, so I went to his room just in case. There I saw him, his body poised up like he had run out of strength while getting out of bed. To this day, I do not know whether he had been struck by illness, or if he had a sudden heart attack. But I felt no emotion in particular, I simply hurried to bury him as quickly as I could, and went on a trip to kill the Demon King.

Not because I thought killing him was my duty, but because I had no other goals I could think of.