Chapter 1164: 151. Burial

Alan spoke a great, great deal in one breath.

This story was indeed just as he had said. It was far less beautiful than the version passed down in Annabawei. The brave hero Alan did not exist at all. In the true history, that fellow named Alan was actually nothing more than a coward who had been running away the entire time.

“Even my madness, in a certain sense, was only a way of escaping.”

Alan laughed at himself again, personally tearing away his final layer of cover.

Thinking carefully about it, even if he had been affected by the Goddess of Night and had become mad and lost, it was not as if he had been like that the entire time. Throughout this long span of time, there had always been moments when he was clearheaded.

But regarding everything that was happening in Annabawei, regarding those people struggling bitterly, he had neither tried to change things nor revealed the truth.

He knew it was meaningless.

For Annabawei, the truth was the most useless thing of all. So what if they knew of the Goddess’s painstaking intentions? So what if they knew the truth of the night? For the ordinary people of Annabawei, that would only be an even deeper layer of despair.

The Goddess of Night had probably thought the same way.

—Having an “evildoer” they could curse, and a direction they could move toward, was better than being in this boundless deep night without even being able to find the direction ahead.

If it was not said, there was still precious hope to pursue.

If it was said, only despair remained.

“I can understand. Back then, I seem to have been deceiving myself in the same way.”

Muen shook his head and comforted him.

“But I don’t think that’s anything shameful.”

At that time... when he had faintly noticed something, why had he deliberately stopped thinking more deeply about it?

Because he had probably already realized that what was hidden behind Annabawei was an “unsolvable” problem.

For a problem that could not be solved, the best way to handle it was not to face it...

Yet in the end, he had still stepped into it, and had even tried to find a “solution” for this “unsolvable” problem.

How stupid.

But now that things had reached this point, with so many fools around, one more of him was not exactly much.

“Right. This is for you.”

Alan searched over the armor on his body for a while, then suddenly handed Muen a strange object.

Muen lowered his head and looked. In his palm, one pattern after another drifted free.

An ornament?

“No.”

Heat burned behind him. A bell rang. Muen stirred the power of time.

Those constantly leaping patterns finally stabilized before Muen’s eyes, and in the end, they outlined the illusory image of a clock.

“That ancient relic related to time.”

Muen’s gaze focused. He reached out to touch it... But what came into his hand was not some clock, but... a hand.

Judging from its length, it was a minute hand.

“This was... given to me by the Goddess. It was precisely because I had it that I could cooperate with long periods of sleep and live this long.”

Alan lifted the armor on his body slightly, opening a narrow gap to show Muen his shriveled flesh.

Only then did Muen discover that Alan was actually already very old. His loose skin was like straw paper that had been rubbed again and again. It was difficult to imagine that a body like this had actually been able to fight him to that extent just now.

“You’re giving it to me?”

“You recognize it. It also appears to be something you are looking for.”

“What about you?”

“I should have been a dead man long ago. What right does someone like me have to drag out an existence in this world for so many years? I had only thickened my face before so I could stay at the Goddess’s side and atone for the sins I committed.”

Alan gently lifted Andri on his back a little higher and said tenderly, “Now, I no longer need it.”

“Then...”

Muen held the clock hand, bitterness in his mouth. He wanted to say something, but at this point, he could not utter a single word.

What else could he say?

To someone whose heart was already set on death.

So after mumbling for a long while, he only said one thing.

“Then, good morning, Hero Alan. May you and Miss Andri have a good sleep.”

The sun slowly, slowly finally rose above the Fog Wall. Gentle sunlight shone upon all things, and it did not begrudge Alan’s old armor a layer of radiance.

The sunlight pierced through his faceplate, as if illuminating that aged face back into its high-spirited past. Back then, he had stood in the boundless black night, utterly fearless before the unknown road ahead... He had firmly believed that he himself was that round of sun.

Time had passed. Annabawei no longer needed anyone to become the sun.

“Thank you.”

Alan was dazed for a while, then thanked him softly.

“That is the greeting that has made me happiest so far.”

Muen shook his head, then turned and left with Marcie and Landa.

Regarding Priscilla, regarding the information about those survivors, he had not gained much, but there was no longer anything for him to do here.

Alan, meanwhile, carried the Goddess of Night on his back and faced the sunlight, thinking hard... Where should he bury the Goddess?

This seemed to be a very difficult decision, because it had to match the status of the Goddess of Night, and in this barren Annabawei, such a place was truly difficult to find.

Yet it also seemed to be a question that did not need to be thought about at all, because for the Goddess of Night... she would probably be happy no matter where she was buried.

Alan still felt he should search properly, so he carried the Goddess of Night around in a circle. In the end, he chose a place on a ridge.

This was the highest place in Annabawei. If the weather were a little better, one could probably see all of Annabawei clearly.

For this Goddess... or mother who loved to worry, this should count as the best place.

Alan set the Goddess of Night down and began digging with his rusted sword.

At first, he dug with great strength, but later, his movements gradually slowed.

After that relic had been sent away, his body aged at an even faster speed. Now, he was already on the verge of the lamp running dry.

—In the end, the fact that he had been able to live for several hundred years had itself been a miracle granted to him by the Goddess.

Fortunately, this miracle still supported him until the very end.

It was only a pity that he had just finished burying the Goddess of Night and had not yet had time to dig his own grave when he collapsed beside her.

Collapsed onto the barren land.

“So this is the ending that belongs to me?”

Alan curled the corner of his mouth in self-mockery. To be left exposed in the wilderness, for a false hero, it did indeed count as...

Hm?

At that moment, he suddenly saw a deep shadow flash across the highest point of the sky. The sunlight was blocked, and the world also darkened for an instant. Fortunately, in the end, brightness returned.

He thought it was merely an illusion before death, but when he struggled to lift his eyelids, he found that beside him, before that small mound of earth, there truly was a fiery-red figure standing there, valiant, aloof from the world.

She stood there quietly, for a very, very long time. Her majestic golden pupils were dim and lightless, and no one knew where she was gazing.

Alan thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and pulled himself back slightly from the edge of death. Then he rested for a very long time before he could make himself say one complete sentence.

“Um... could I ask you to help bury me? Thank you.”

The fiery-red figure abruptly turned her head, seeming not to have expected that this “corpse” beside her could still open his mouth and speak.

She even had to think for a moment before realizing that those words had been spoken to her.

Asking her to help bury him?

...Ridiculous.

Humans were truly this ignorant and troublesome.

The fiery-red figure no longer paid attention to him. She simply continued standing there quietly, her gaze drifting somewhere unknown, her thoughts also unknown.

Only after a very long time did her figure flash. The enormous shadow rose into the sky once more, circling in an extremely distant place.

The sun gradually slanted westward. The red evening glow kissed the earth like a young girl, and then with a lifting motion of light and shadow, behind the two small mounds of earth atop the ridge, it scraped out a tide-like night.

Peaceful and gentle.