“An honourable man, aren’t we?” I scorned him.

He laid prone to the ground, pressed against the dirt by my foot on his back. His right leg was turned in the wrong direction, thanks to my successful launch of the mace.

“Please! Wait a moment! Can we talk about this?” he begged in a panicked tone.

“Talk? There is nothing to talk about. We had a deal, you ran away, the bill went up. Now, shut your f*****g mouth”

I moved my foot and put my right hand on his shoulder to turn him around. Our gazes met. He was incredibly pale, terrified by my presence. I raised my free hand and closed it tightly into a fist. The punch set off like a bullet towards his face.

“You’re right!” he cried with all the strength he had.

My fist stopped against his skin, making contact without any strength. Contrary to my words, there was a lot to talk about. I wanted to finish this before I could hesitate, but I wasn’t fast enough.

I growled, annoyed. I wanted answers.

“Go on,” I said in an ice-cold tone.

His eyes shone brightly and his skin regained colour. He had the expression of someone who had narrowly escaped death.

“You’re right! I’m a thief! I stole your idea! I’m a dirty plagiarist! I took your story and made a book out of it!” he shamelessly admitted.

In the face of inescapable danger, his lofty demeanour had completely disappeared. His state was such that he would do anything to escape with his life. At this moment, his most basic instincts had taken over: nothing mattered but surviving.

“One more reason to dispose of you,” I monotonously stated, raising my fist once again.

His eyes trembled and all blood drained from his face.

“But we were friends! We were friends before ending up here! Please, don’t do this!”

I stopped, frozen in place. Suddenly, everything fell into place. My head hurt and a vague memory surfaced to my mind.

It was a simple scene. There were two people, sitting in a blurry room and exchanging indistinct words. Their voices were unknown, but strangely familiar. I could decipher only a few words. “Mana”, “aura”, “Legion”.

It was clear who the two people were and what they were talking about. They were us, me and Caleb, talking about the story of this world. In our previous life, we had been close friends, close enough for me to exchange with him all the ideas which swirled in my mind.

In my past life, I was someone who had the tendency to let his imagination run wild. I didn’t know why or for what purpose. Maybe it was for tabletop role-playing games, maybe it was simply because I was weird. I could not tell.

What I could tell was that I didn’t simply keep those ideas to myself.

“Tell me more,” I ordered him.

He complied. He spoke about his life before this.

“I was looking for something worthwhile in my life,” he told me.

“You were the one trying out all those religions,” I suddenly remembered.

He told me about his online works.

“The readers refused to recognize my masterpiece and chose that piece of crap. They discarded my precious original creation for that cliché tale”

“I made that “piece of crap” precisely to show you your “masterpiece” was worse”

He spoke about his last day of his previous life.

“After reading that comment, I escaped death with all my might. But after going to sleep, I woke up in a new body”

“So you are the reason we ended up here”

He spoke about his life here.

“And so I grabbed the opportunity and became the hero. I hoped I could also get to know Lily and Chloe better…”

“Although the idea disgusts me, I can understand Lily, but Chloe? Really? I didn’t design her. She is your own creation, your daughter basically”

He continued to tell his story. I didn’t listen to everything he listed, as I wasn’t interested in his daily routines or his academic exploits. We finally reached the present day.

After that, it was silence. I stood over him, my feet solidly planted on his chest, pressing him down. A chaotic whirlwind of thoughts ran through my mind. Anger still burned my entire soul. In front of me, there laid the usurper.

“You have been thorough. I will ask you one last question,” I finally said.

“Certainly, you can ask anything,” he responded with a reassured tone. He definitely thought he had escaped the danger.

“What was my name?” I asked.

He froze. His face turned from a smile to a distorted white sheet of paper. He broke out in a cold sweat. He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, mumbling unintelligible things.

“”Why can’t I remember it?” he cried out loud in the end.

My fist fell down on him and his face caved in. The mark of my knuckles remained impressed in his broken cheekbones and his teeth flew around, falling to the ground like a light drizzle.

I stepped back and rested myself against the trunk of a tree. I looked at my bloodied hands. Contrasting feelings ran through my mind. I was delighted to have finally fulfilled my promise, but I also felt displeased.

Even if they were incredibly vague, I held memories about him. Although he wasn’t anymore, he had been my friend. He couldn’t remember my name, but neither could I. An external force had brought us here and most likely the same force had tried to uproot me.

Archs, beasts and, although I had encountered a single one, even genais had become naturally hostile towards me the moment I had rebuilt my body and disowned my own world. Only a handful of people, those that were somewhat related to me or to the main story, were the exception.

I looked up, beyond the foliage and towards the sky. Night had fallen and the stars shone in the dark celestial vault. Although I didn’t perceive it clearly I couldn’t free myself of the feeling that there, beyond everything, “something” laid in waiting, looking down on this world.

I returned my gaze to the barely breathing Caleb. He had lost consciousness and was in critical conditions, but given enough time he would definitely recover, even without external help. If I wanted to get rid of him I needed to end his life once and for all.

I stood up straight and walked towards him. I raised my foot, ready to strike him down and reduce his head to a pulp.

But I hesitated. There were three main reasons why I couldn’t immediately bring myself to kill him.

Firstly, Tobias had ordered me not to. I was confident I could maintain the secret for a long time, but not forever. Moreover, I would have to kill everyone who had accompanied him, and I didn’t want to kill Isaac and Lily. Although I hadn’t looked after them, they were still my creations.

Secondly, when I had accepted to help them defeat the spider, I had promised not to kill Caleb. At the end of the day, the only thing that mattered to me were my decisions, my commitments. For some reason, they were more important to me than any moral imperative. Breaking the word I gave was inconceivable.

Thirdly … that was the most important reason.

“Dammit!” I cried out loud, feeling helpless.

The trees trembled all around me. I put my foot back down on the ground. I could not kill him. Even if he was a cowardly bastard who would certainly seek vengeance, I could not kill him. My head hurt just thinking about it.

There was a reason why I felt I had to kill him immediately the first time I saw him. Probably I had already understood that if I didn’t do it then, I would not be able to bring myself to complete the deed in the future. I still despised Caleb and I still wanted to see him dead, but even if I tried to force myself to end him with my own two hands, I couldn’t do it. My head was hurting again.

After hearing his story, a feeling which had been suppressed for an incredibly long time had finally surfaced. I missed my home. I longed for my previous life, for a mother and a father I did not remember, for brothers or sisters I didn’t even know if they ever existed, and for a world that was no more. My head hurt more thinking about it.

I loathed Caleb. But he was the only proof my previous life was not a lie. He was proof this world was a simple fantasy turned reality. He was not a character, he was not my creation. He was a real person who had been brought into this world. The idea of having his blood on my hands weighed heavily on my mind. My head kept hurting just thinking about it.

I had managed to avoid thinking about a lot of things for all this time, but now the veil that had covered my mind seemed to have been torn. I didn’t know why I had been called into this world. I didn’t even know why or how someone like me, who had been a normal person, could become this violent. Maybe it was to eliminate Caleb, who was an outsider and a usurper, but I strongly doubted a weakling lying unconscious at my mercy could be the target of my savage tendencies. My head hurt thinking about it.

Suddenly, a strong wind rose and the trees cried. I covered my ears.The piercing screech was unbearable. The roar continued for an uncomfortably long period of time. It finally stopped. I was slumped on the ground, feeling like I had just been concussed.

I stood up. Strangely enough, my head didn’t hurt anymore. All the confusion and indecisiveness which had plagued me was no more. I looked towards Caleb. Now that my thoughts were more in order, I was less reticent on the idea of killing him. After the cry of the forest, it was like a weight pressing on my mind had been removed.

Nevertheless, it was too late.

“Caleb!” I heard a calling coming from the trees. Whoever it was, they were far too near for me to try and do anything. Moreover, at the moment, I was incredibly vulnerable. I had spent my last forces breaking Caleb’s bones. No more aura flowed through my veins and my lymph was just starting to regenerate.

I turned around and ran through the forest. There were exactly zero minutes to waste. There was no possibility Isaac or Lily would attack me, but I could not say the same for the rest of them. I ran and ran without stopping, disappearing into the foliage. Only once no sound beside the rustling of the leaves could reach me I stopped moving.

I looked around. There was no one, only trees around me, sparser than they were in other regions of the forest. I freed my mind from any useless thoughts and focused on the present moment.

Now, it was time to finally accomplish what I had come here for. The real danger started now.

“Let’s start our conversation,” I spoke to the Garden of The Green.

And the Garden answered.