The Laughing Swordsman

Chapter 316 – Forgotten

The moment people got onto the roof, they let out shocked gasps.

"Oh no…"

"Poor boy."

"Who could have done this?"

There were many signs pointing towards Apollo being the killer, in particular, the blood splashed all across his clothes. Along with the fact that the screams were fairly recent, it would be hard for anyone to get away with doing this from the roof.

However, this was also a world of magic and the people here knew that.

Seeing Apollo crying over the dead body was enough to convince them that it was just an unfortunate child that had his mother murdered.

Apollo's crying had gotten rather violent as he twisted his body around. A person from the crowd rushed forth and grabbed onto Apollo's waist.

"Child, don't look anymore."

It was Seth.

Apollo fiercely struggled, hitting his elbows against the person restraining him. However, Seth held on strong despite the pain. A deep frown was plastered across his face as he saw the mutilated body parts on the floor.

He sucked in a cold breath and muttered to himself.

"…So this type of thing could even happen in this village."

Apollo continued to resist, flailing his limbs around.

"Let go of me! Let go!"

Seth let out a soft sigh.

"Child… you have to forget."

He noticed that Apollo was still looking at the corpse, thus held his hand in front of Apollo's eyes.

"You have to forget."

…

Apollo came back to his senses, gasping for air. The fingers of his free hand dug into his chest as though he was trying to pull out his heart.

He blinked a few times before realizing he had finally finished falling out of the city. However, that was not his focus.

Apollo grabbed onto the side of his head.

"I… I killed my mother?"

"Mm… I think so?"

The voice in his head was rather nonchalant. It seemed to be completely unfazed.

"My memory of it isn't that good. Do you remember anything?"

Apollo furrowed his brows.

"I… I remember it all. Everything that happened…"

A trace of insanity flashed by his eyes and a smile formed on his face. However, it quickly disappeared.

"There… there was so much blood. But then who was our mother?…"

The voice in his head let out a soft hum.

"Well, don't we have a few mothers?"

Apollo raised an eyebrow.

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

The voice seemed equally confused.

"Hm? Did I say something weird?"

Apollo furrowed his brows.

"It's only possible to have one mother, right?"

The voice laughed as though Apollo was sorely mistaken about something obvious.

"Are you kidding me? That doesn't make any sense!"

Apollo paused, unable to understand.

"…Could you elaborate?"

The voice audibly clicked its tongue before speaking up with disdain.

"That's just common sense! After all, I've heard-"

Before it finished, an unbelievably strong gust of wind took control over them. It was so loud, that Apollo couldn't even hear himself think, and by proxy that voice. He immediately tried to resist, but quickly found that this was not the kind of force one could resist.

It was as though a mountain had fallen down onto him while he was just an ant. Sure, he could try to hold up the mountain, but at the end of the day, he would always be crushed.

Nonetheless, Apollo struggled. He let out painful grunts as the overly fast wind tore through his skin.

However, it did not take long for Apollo to feel overwhelmed. The wind prevented any air from entering Apollo, thus making it impossible to breathe. Various cracking sounds came from his bones as the wind pulled his body to the very limits.

His vision of the surroundings had distorted severely. It was as though the world around him wasn't actually real, but a very realistic painting on a piece of rubber. Then, that rubber was stretched to its limits.

The last thing Apollo could remember was that his body was catapulting through the air. It was so fast, that it beat anything he had experienced with Layla and did so multiple times over.

Before the fear could even really settle into his mind, he lost consciousness.

…

Suddenly, Apollo sat up while his eyes shot open.

He was laying down in a deep layer of snow. It was enough to reach his waist while standing up, thus only his head poked up once he did sit up.

Apollo furrowed his brows.

"Where am I?…"

He then thought about the other personality he had.

"Hey… Hey. You there?"

There was no response. It seemed that somehow along the way, his other personality ended up falling asleep.

Apollo did feel a little cold, but was able to easily shrug it off. After standing up, he took a survey of his surroundings. However, it was a little hard to do so.

Though it was snowing in the places he had been at before, it was not nearly as intense. On top of that, there were trees that ended up blocking some of the snow. However, there were no trees in sight here.

Instead, there was just violent billowing snow, that was far louder than it had any right to be.

Suddenly, Apollo thought about something.

The Shadows.

It had been so long since he had last entered that place. He had almost forgotten that there was a finished mission for him to claim. Though… would there really be one of those bases here?

Apollo decided to try despite not having much faith, stepping into the shadow world.

To his surprise, there was actually one fairly nearby, despite this being in the middle of nowhere.

Apollo went into it and found himself in a familiar black room right by a desk made of grey mist.

He walked over and flipped his coin.

Mist immediately formed and a few things formed on the table in front of him.. There was a torn piece of parchment along with an eye that seemed a little bloodshot.