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It all happened when Jody was very young.
There was a mountain in town with a spooky name: Ghost Mountain. Since ancient times, there have been many people who committed suicide there. It was also rumored to be full of dead people buried in secret graves.
No one knew for exactly how long, but even before Jody was born, there was a strange person living on that mountain.
“Building a house on ghost mountain, that’s not normal.”
“Look at him, he’s so gloomy…”
“That thing rolls into town, and it became even more unlucky.”
“Wahaha, it’s a monster, monster!”
They were talking about a man named Charon. The adults felt repulsed by him and the younger children called him a monster. Dark green hair like seaweed and a somber atmosphere. Even from a distance, he was a man with a gloomy aura.
Children who liked to tell scary stories said he was the one who conjured the ghosts on Ghost Mountain. Some said he dug up corpses from the bottom of the mountain and used them as guinea pigs.
But no one really knew the truth about Charon; he rarely came out of the haunted mountain. All they knew was that he wasn’t originally from the village.
Everyone was afraid of him. Jody didn’t pay much attention to him, either. The first time Jody got involved with Charon was because of a prank the village children played on him.
“…What do you want me to get?”
“Charon’s hair!”
Even then, Jody was bullied by the village children for being an orphan. They told him that if he didn’t come back with Charon’s hair, he would have to face the consequences.
In the end, Jody had no choice but to hide in Charon’s cabin.
“Who are you?”
A low, eerie voice spoke. It was Charon.
It was the first time Jody heard Charon’s voice.
“Please spare me!”
Jody immediately fell flat on the floor and begged. What if he planned to use him as an experiment? Recalling what the children said, his young heart was pounding with fear.
“Get up.”
“I was wrong…”
“You have a scratch on your forehead.”
In the end, Charon didn’t eat Jody or use him for an experiment. He lifted the child’s forehead off of the bare floor and swept off the dirt. He then roughly applied some medicine and even allowed Jody to pluck some of his hair.
Jody wasn’t bullied by the other kids that day. After that, he often visited Charon’s cabin.
Although he always had a gloomy face and spoke little, Jody felt comfortable with Charon. Charon didn’t stop Jody from visiting either. In this way, Charon soon became Jody’s only friend and refuge.
Contrary to the rumors in the village, Charon was a pretty good person, though he also had some strange quirks.
“What should I do?”
“I should say… something.”
“But if I do…”
Sometimes he’d mutter unintelligible things to himself.
“What is this, a crystal ball?”
“Huh?”
“Wow, it’s pretty!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, give it to me…!”
He also seemed like he was hiding something. He sometimes got startled and looked around, making an anxious face as if he was being chased. He was a strange man in many ways, but Jody didn’t mind, he felt comfortable with him.
That day too, Jody was on his way back from visiting Charon’s cabin.
The snow sparkled in the sunlight. Jody had just left the cabin and was running through the dense forest filled with bare trees.
“Ugh!”
Then, all of a sudden, he collided head-on with someone. Jody fell flat on the snow, landing on his butt.
“Ouch…”
“Hey, are you alright?”
A large hand reached out, along with a heavy voice.
It was a man wearing a hood. The man seemed as tall as a tree. Eyes resembling the clear sky and light golden hair. Jody looked up from the ground and could clearly see the man’s face. It was unfamiliar.
Who was he?
The man who helped Jody up walked away after confirming that the child was not injured. He was heading towards Charon’s hut.
He’s obviously not from this village, but came to visit Charon?
Jody, who saw a guest coming to visit Charon for the first time, was curious, but continued on toward the village. He thought he’d just be able to ask Charon about it later and went down the mountain. He had no idea what was going to happen.
It had been raining ever since he left the cabin that afternoon. It was such a heavy rain it felt like there was a hole in the sky with water pouring out of it. Loud thunder sounded, making it feel like the sky was going to shatter. The heavy rain poured non-stop all night long.
The next morning the rain finally stopped. Jody ran to Charon’s cabin before the ground even dried. He was worried that the cabin might’ve been flooded due to the heavy rain. The small child’s steps were hurried.
“Charon!”
However, it was not Charon who greeted Jody.
“Uh…?”
The cabin was smoking. The roof burned down and collapsed, sending ashes flying around the building, only the outer walls remained standing.
“Oh my god… What on earth happened?”
“It looks like there was a fire last night. Someone saw a flash in the middle of the night and thought it was a lightning strike…”
“It’s all charred and burnt.”
Soon, the villagers gathered around the hut. A loud exclamation went up as they saw the devastation.
“What about the people? What happened to the man who lived there?”
“With the house burnt like that, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“But I heard there was no body found in the cabin?”
“I guess it all burnt up.”
“Ah, I guess he really was unlucky. He was always so gloomy. I guess it’s fortunate that it didn’t spread into a forest fire.”
People were talking as if they’d seen it happen. Everyone said that Charon was dead. But no one mourned his death. To them, Charon’s death was nothing more than an unfortunate event that only added a little more ominousness to Ghost Mountain.
The only one who mourned was little Jody. Jody then searched the ruined cabin. After the heavy rain, the ground was a mess with a mixture of ash and rainwater.
Jody dug around the cabin and its surroundings, trudging through the mud. He couldn’t believe they’d been separated so suddenly. The times they spent together felt like a dying dream, like the burned down cabin.
He wanted to find some of Charon’s belongings so he could reassure himself that his memories of Charon weren’t just a dream.
“This is…”
However, what Jody found was something that belonged to a completely different person. Beneath the roots of a thick, gnarled tree, a pendant was buried in the thick mud. It was hard to see unless you looked closely in the light.
Jody saw the pendant and recognized it immediately. The pendant was worn by the man who crashed into him in front of the cabin that day.
The writing on the pendant was scorched and unreadable.
It wasn’t until much later that he found out what the name was.
* * *
After finishing his story, Jody clenched his jaw tightly.
“A few years after that incident, ghosts really started to appear on Ghost Mountain.”
One day, the people who entered Ghost Mountain began to disappear. Or, more accurately, people stopped coming out alive. Sometimes they’d be found dead at the bottom of the mountain, their faces all looking like they’d seen something terrible.
“They say it’s because of Charon that Ghost Mountain is like that. They don’t know anything, but they blame him.”
Jody clenched his fists on his lap in frustration.
“But it wasn’t until Walter came that this began happening. He’s probably the reason Charon’s dead.”
“…”
Elaine and Ash could not easily come up with an answer. Elaine stifled a groan when she looked at the boy’s face as he bit his lip with a resentful look.
She couldn’t decide whether the boy’s assumptions were true or not. From the story Jody told, it was also difficult to determine whether Walter was alive or dead.
Jody said that Charon’s death was caused by Walter, but it was only a young boy’s guess. If Walter had killed Charon, there was no reason for him to be missing as well. The only thing they could infer from the situation was that the cabin burning incident and Walter’s disappearance were probably related.
‘Could it be that Sir Walter was caught up in the fire like Charon?’
Elaine shook her head. No, there was no way a sword master could have lost his life in a simple fire.
Then what had happened to him in that cabin? Why did Walter disappear?
‘The only thing we can be certain of is that Sir Walter came here to see a man named Charon.’
Then who is this Charon? What was so important about him that Walter would travel this far just to look for him?
“Jody, can you tell me more about Charon?”
When Elaine asked cautiously, Jody scratched his cheek and hesitated.
“About Charon? Well… It might be a bit strange to hear this, but the truth is, I don’t know much about Charon.”
It really was strange, considering the fact that Jody saw him often.
“Charon never talked about himself. I didn’t even bother to ask.”
One of the things Jodi learned from being close to Charon was that he didn’t mix with people intentionally. He was as secretive as he was strange.
Jody didn’t delve into his business, and Charon was comfortable with that aspect of Jody. That may be why their relationship was able to last. Even so, there were definitely things he would’ve noticed as they spent time together.
“When I think about it, Charon was acting a bit strange not long before Walter came here.”
He was more agitated than usual, pacing around. He remembered Charon seemed nervous and anxious, constantly looking out the window. Maybe he knew someone was coming for him.
After hearing that, Ash asked if there was anything else out of the ordinary, and Jody, who’d been thinking about it, nodded.
“Yeah, actually, I don’t know if I should tell you this, but… Charon has another name.”
“What do you mean, he has another name?”
“There was only one time when Charon got really drunk. I was visiting at that time and overheard it…”
It was a cold, windy winter. Jody arrived at the cabin as usual and noticed that the door was slightly ajar.
Suddenly feeling mischievous, Jody snuck up to the door on tip toes and slipped inside to surprise Charon, but what she saw was unexpected.
The table in the center of the room was lined with bottles, and Charon was slumped over it. His face was flushed red and he was drunk. Jody was shocked, unable to move, he’d never seen him so drunk.
He then heard Charon muttering to himself.
‘How… Why did it end up like this?’
‘How long do I have to live like this…’
‘I, I used to be…’
That’s when he heard it. Charon’s real name. Unfamiliar syllables scattered like sighs over a glass of wine.
Jody said, remembering the name.
“Talos. He said his name was Talos Asgar.”
Jodi’s voice rang clear in Elaine’s ears. It felt familiar, like she’d heard it before.
…Where had she heard that name?
As soon as she thought of the question, a sentence popped into her head.
[… Talos Asgar, commander of the 7th Magic Division]
Elaine froze.
Yes, she knew that name. To be precise, she’d seen it.
On the list of the evil dragon subjugation team.
