Archive Of Potentialities.

Short story: The bane of history 13.5

"It's not your fault." For the past hour I've been hearing the same thing from my subordinates and others.

Two individuals had infiltrated the barrier I had so much confidence in, that barrier was the foundation of all my faith.

Before coming into the cardinal world, I had lived in oppression. I was a citizen of Japan, but my conditions were unlike that of the average person.

Kidnapped on my way home from school one day, I was taken from my home country and shipped like cargo to an unfamiliar place. Compared to the life of poverty I led prior to it, my new situation wasn't much worse.

I was always a rebellious person, and in my stubbornness I had tried to escape after months of captivity and abuse, thinking that living as a homeless person was more acceptable than the inevitable fate of being sold to some shady people.

My attempt didn't go as I had planned it and soon after escaping I was under assault by the men who had captured me.

It was a hopeless situation, my physical abilities weren't admirable and I didn't have any special skills to help me. I was weak and alone.

Then I was here, in the cardinal world, once again under the control of people whose plans for me were unknown.

It was such a sudden thing, I did not notice when I was summoned. And I was just as clueless when I had been saved by Demon Lord Leon, after what felt like ages after I was summoned.

'Saved' might be an odd term, it was no mystery or secret that he was complicit in the summoning, he made that perfectly clear. But he was the one that freed me and the other otherworlders who were left to rot. He might have been apathetic towards what we wanted to do with our lives but he was still the one that gave me purpose again.

Many of my peers decided to roam the world, apparently some great war had just ended and things were finally stabilizing globally. I, on the other hand, decided to head to El dorado, it felt like the best place for me after we had all gotten a rundown of the different options available to us.

There was also Tempest, which some of my peers chose as a travel destination. They all seemed excited about the land mainly populated with monsters.

Tempest.....

Now that the battle was over, I could let go of the emotion that had been closest to my heart, throughout the whole ordeal one thing had maintained a constant presence within me.

Fear, immense fear.

Having been alive since the era where the Tenma war was still fresh in the minds of the Cardinal world's inhabitants, the name Rimuru Tempest wasn't unfamiliar to me.

The powerful demon lord who played a huge part in stopping the war that overtook the planet, the benevolent ruler of the Jura-Tempest Federation, a being described with such reverence that it was inevitable for me to know how he looked.

After seeing the two invaders I had my suspicions, but it seemed too outlandish to be true.

Why would someone with godlike power suddenly show up in my office after centuries of dormancy?

But the fact that they had been invaded didn't change, so I fought while keeping the mysterious person in mind. I had hidden it well but the fear she felt at the suspicious blue haired entity had taken a toll on my battle efficiency.

"How long till we can get the barrier to a passable working state?" I asked one of my subordinates in charge of directing the repairs of the wrecked castle.

"I'm sorry, my lady. At this speed it will take at least five days." He replied in a barely restrained tone, I could sense the anger boiling beneath his painstakingly maintained formal speech.