My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Linga walked up the side of a hill where a tamberry tree grew at the very top. From there, the tree overlooked the entire town. When he reached the top, he stopped beneath its branches and glanced back at Abellona, who had followed him there.

He smiled faintly.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Princess? Apologies for not giving you a proper greeting earlier. I assumed you wanted to keep your identity hidden."

Abellona frowned slightly, wondering how he had known it was her.

"I recognized you from my days in the military. You were a lot younger back then."

She nodded, then slowly looked at him.

"Linga, I heard you fought in the same division as me, right? Under Sera’s Blade..."

His expression immediately tightened when he heard that.

"My days in the military are far behind me. Yes, I did. I fought in that horrible war. Ever since then, I swore never to fight in another one again."

Abellona watched him quietly before nodding. She understood. War was horrible. No one should ever have to live through such a nightmare.

"You were in one of the squads commanded by Godric Ravenscroft."

The moment she said the name, Linga’s face contorted with anger. His jaw clenched, and the muscles around his eyes tightened as though the mere mention of Godric had dragged an old wound back to the surface.

"Yes. Unfortunately, I was."

Abellona nodded before reaching into her spatial ring. She pulled out a small magical artifact designed to detect falsehoods, concealing it beneath a simple distortion rune she had learned from Damon. It was one of those things he liked to show off during their pillow talk, and she had picked up a few things from him over time.

"I have some questions about your time in the military. I hope you don’t mind answering them."

Linga paced slowly beneath the tree, his fingers brushing against his lips for a moment before he looked at her again.

"What do you want to know? Because trust me, if it’s about that scum, there is always something to say."

She could hear the raw anger in his voice. It was a deep hatred that had survived even after Godric’s death.

"Godric was an honorable man, as far as everyone knows, but you seem to think differently."

"Honorable?" Linga’s voice rose as the veins on his neck began to stand out. "He was a fraud! He was human garbage!"

"Yes, so you said. And you were discharged from the military in disgrace. I want to hear your side of the story."

Linga stared at her for a moment before looking away.

"Why does that matter? The past is gone, and Godric is long dead. Justice has already been served for my comrades."

"Then what about the others he may have harmed?"

Linga’s eyes narrowed.

"As we speak, many people have been hurt. Many lives have been lost, even that of a child, because we don’t know the full truth. That’s why I came here to hear it from you."

A long silence followed.

Linga’s expression slowly changed as an old memory surfaced in his mind.

The face of a man with dark hair and a stalwart expression appeared in his thoughts. Someone truly honorable. Someone gentle despite the horrors surrounding him.

"What do you wish to know?" he finally asked, turning his gaze toward the small town below.

"Your squad leaders. What were their names? Just like you, all the members of your squad were effectively erased from the records."

Linga gave a bitter laugh.

"Hah. Figures. He would try to erase us after what he did to our squad."

He turned and walked toward the tamberry tree, reaching out to rest his palm against its rough bark.

"This tree was planted by me when we first founded New Town. It was years ago, and it’s symbolic, though I’m the only one who knows what it means."

Abellona followed him with her eyes.

"What does the tree have to do with any of this?"

"It does."

Linga’s fingers slowly curled around the bark.

"The vice squad leader always looked for tamberry trees so she could pick their fruits. She would find a chance to make tamberry cakes for the squad whenever she could, even when it was difficult to do so. She did it because it was her son’s favorite, and doing it gave her the will to keep going. She believed that one day she’d return to him."

Abellona wasn’t surprised. War was a hopeless thing, and people always needed something to give them a reason to keep moving forward.

"The squad leader was her husband, and he’d always help her. We really enjoyed those tamberry cakes. You could tell how much of her heart she put into them."

A touch of melancholy entered Linga’s voice, one that even the passage of years could not completely conceal.

"I don’t understand why this is so important," Abellona said with a slight frown.

Linga turned toward her.

"It is because her son is Damon Grey."

Abellona’s eyes widened.

A gust of wind swept across the hill, catching her dark hair and sending leaves spiraling down from the tamberry tree.

"Wait. Then you’re telling me your vice squad leader was Lady Ranar Brightwater?"

"Yes. Although we didn’t know that at the time. We knew her as Ranar Grey, the wife of the squad leader, Noctis Grey. She was mysterious and rarely took off her helm, but it didn’t matter to us because she was strong. She had kept many of us alive."

His expression softened as he remembered her.

"More than that, she felt like the sun. She was the best thing that happened to humanity. Truly, she was a picture of gentle divinity."

His words alone showed how much he admired her. Abellona could see that Ranar had been deeply loved by those who fought beside her.

"Her husband, the squad leader, was a stoic man. Gentle and serious. He was someone we all admired, an ideal that almost didn’t seem human. He was righteous and true to the ideals he spoke about. He never faltered before power or pressure. We were all honored to follow him, even to death."

Abellona remained silent for a moment.

She didn’t know Noctis Grey, but she did know Ranar Brightwater. She had faint memories of the woman from her childhood, and even those memories were enough to remind her of just how remarkable she had been.

"Lady Ranar Brightwater had been declared dead long before the war," Abellona said.

"It was only years later, when Damon Grey appeared and House Brightwater acknowledged him, that the truth of her death was revealed. She was, in fact, alive and had married a commoner."

Linga gave a faint, bitter smile.

"It cost House Brightwater a lot of face. But the extraordinary nature of Damon Grey made the whole world shut up. After all, he was too outstanding. Even if he had commoner blood, the nobles could only pretend he had been born full-blooded. After all, can anyone compare to Damon Grey?"

He looked away toward the distant town, his expression becoming difficult to read.

"There is more to this tale, but not knowing is better than knowing."

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