Emilia's Perspective
I just woke up. My head hurts, and I'm too hungry and thirsty. It's been three days since I ate or drank something. I need to find food; I don't even remember when I slept. All I recall is that I was crying for hours. Now I see myself here, still in the place I remember being, next to the core building.
I'm probably going to go the village to see if I can find any type of food. I got up and started going on my way. I'm not sure if I can keep up mentally if the village is more destroyed than I imagine, but as that weird prince said, I shouldn't give up. For that, I have to toughen up; that's the only way.
I tried becoming all merciless when I first came into this world, but I failed because my environment was too good for that. Now, nothing is stopping me. No, there is something that's stopping me: myself. Deep down, something is telling me to stay the way I was in my last life, even though it was the reason I suffered the most. But I know I can't change in just a small period of time. Maybe I can't change now, but I will over time. For now, just acting like I've changed is enough for me; I need to put on a strong façade, even stronger than the one I lie to myself with.
I got up and started walking in the direction of the village. It's a 20-minute walk, and I'm not planning on using mana to make it faster. After all, I need to minimize my mana usage because abusing mana before it fully develops can lead to some dangerous things. I have no idea what these things are, but I'm quite pessimistic, and my mana still hasn't fully developed. I remember it fully develops in the middle of puberty, and emptying myself out of mana in my case is just dangerous as hell. They say emptying mana more than five times can lead 100% to these dangerous things, and I already did that three times and am about to face challenges that will most likely make me in need of using a lot of my mana.
While I'm thinking about all of this, the village comes into sight, and the moment I get a good look at it, I drop to my knees and feel sick. I want to throw up at that exact moment, but I have nothing to spew. The village is nothing like the one I remembered; Maybe it is another village.. No it's not. I wish it was, but it wasn't. Everything there was real—too real for me to bear. Each single house has turned into ruins, and all the living beings were killed in a brutal, disgusting way.
After a couple of minutes, I was able to stand up, but I felt purely depressed. The reason for that wasn't just this but everything that happened starting from Edward's betrayal. So I started searching for some food in the remaining ruins.
But out of nowhere, I remembered something. There was a place where the villagers here stocked their food and random important items that they might need in the future might need, and it's a bit far from the houses, so it's probably unharmed by demons.
I decided to head that way, and luckily, it wasn't harmed. It was just a big room. I decided to enter; it was dark. I started looking around after I lit a small fire in my hand. There were just regular things: food, random items, nothing too special. I kept looking around and wasn't finding anything, so I just started gathering what I would need.
I took the best backpack I could find; it was gray and medium-sized. I looked inside; it was empty, but this made me realize how much space it had. It could fit a lot of things, and I could feel a bit of mana from it—hardly any mana, so it was most likely good at compressing weight. Some small weight manipulation is part of the technique in magic; it doesn't really change that much weight to be useful in battle.
So I kept looking for anything useful, and I found some warm, light clothes to wear. Winter was coming really soon, after all. They were pretty good; they didn't really interrupt my movement, so fighting while wearing them would be pretty easy. These clothes were gray as well, so they matched the backpack. They were gray, thick, long-sleeved, high-collared garments, and some pants that matched in color and everything, and a dark gray cape. They looked good, kept me warm, and still didn't make fighting harder, so I took off my old clothes and put on the new ones. They were a bit bigger than me, but that wasn't really much of a problem since I'm growing quite fastly right now. I folded my old clothes and put them where I had removed the new clothes.
I started my search for food, which was everywhere. I collected some food of different types. It was mostly small food that provided a lot of calories; after all, I only needed to survive. Fortunately, everything was still fresh because this room was always cold. I started putting the food into the backpack, which managed to hold a lot of food. This should probably be enough to keep me alive for around a month. However, I still ate a lot of food and drank a lot of water; it's been a long time since I put anything in my mouth.
I needed to get a bit of money as well, so I took as much as I could carry. I also found a pretty small tent, so I decided to open it. It was just big enough to fit a person and super small when folded. I still managed to put it in the backpack.
In the end, I got the most important thing: a map of the continent Luthara. After all, I'm not going to stay in this village for the rest of my life; it has nothing. Actually, no. It has chaos and destruction. The map is very detailed; it shows everything I need to know about my surroundings. This map shows the types of terrain, where the countries, regions, cities, and even some villages are. Even though the country aspect isn't significant since Valoria rules the whole continent, each region in the country has its own ruler and capital, so it's more of an empire, and the map contains even more information than this.
After I got ready, I pulled out my map and laid it on the ground because it was too big to be held in my small arms. I then decided to head to a town named Dawnwick. It's a minimum four-month trip, but I'll visit multiple other cities and towns along the way. Dawnwick is facing the ocean, so it's the best and closest town from my current point to escape this continent, which is the way Edward will probably go. He'll think I revealed what he did, so he'll just try to escape this continent as soon as possible. I want to take revenge on him, even though I have no chance in a fight against him. I'll try to set a trap, but that's if I'm even capable of doing that. He traumatized me. Every time I think of him, I panic. I remember his terrifying eyes perfectly. For some reason, I recall him saying after i lost consciousness something like, "Oh, I see," in a strange way.
And here I am, feeling fearful again because I remembered him. I will just stop thinking about him and his hidden motives. So I folded the map and then headed north, walking towards the forest where I always trained, the one where I had my first fight.
After a couple of hours of walking, it was already evening, so I decided to start searching for a good spot to stay. I was still generally in that forest; its name on the map was The Great Forest. After all, it's the biggest one on the whole continent, and it's not even close. It will probably take me around two weeks just to get out of it, and then I'll find a small city close by.
Lucky for me, I didn't encounter any harmful monsters and even found some edible food thanks to my cooking skills; I can identify what is good to eat and what I should never eat.
Finally, I found a good spot. It was flat and clean, with no rocks. I set up the tent and a campfire in front of it, then sat on the ground facing the fire. I got some food out of my backpack; it looked like raw pudding but a bit bigger. I decided to eat two of them; that was enough to fill me up completely. So I'm just waiting to feel sleepy so that going to sleep won't be hard.
After around an hour, I still didn't feel sleepy. I hadn't slept for three days—this was the fourth one. It was already dark everywhere, and I needed a lot of energy for tomorrow, but I just couldn't get in the mood to sleep. So there was one solution: forcing myself.
I extinguished the campfire and then got inside my tent and laid down, but I started feeling a weird sensation. It felt like déjà vu, but a bit different. It felt more emotional and bad. Ah, I know what it is; I just don't want to be alone again. It's truly the worst feeling ever; Loneliness. It shows me how cruel the world can be, making someone face everything out of nowhere with no help.
Living is truly the worst form of torture ever, and sometimes I question whether our existence and life have a purpose. What should we try to accomplish in this cruel life? It seems like happiness, but as time goes on, I doubt this more and more.
I'm lost; I'm just living my life in a way that every random passing breeze changes me, but I have nothing to do. At least having a final goal will make life seem easier to me, so I'll just try to find my happiness in this cruel reality where I can't even recognize this feeling.
I'm tired of living, but I still have to go on living my life more and more. And why am I even still going? The reason is unknown, and I doubt I'll ever know the answer for this question in my life.
While I'm deep in thought, I feel a small tear rolling down my face. Then I say a bit loudly while tears well up in my eyes more and more:
"What a crybaby!"After all, I truly am one.
Finally, I start to feel sleepy after several minutes of crying, and then I fall asleep.