Chapter 1: A Daring Venture

There once was a saying in the land of Medietus: “What is neither possible nor impossible is neither achievable nor unachievable. All of it simply depends on the individual’s point of view.” 

It was a fine morning on the industrial mountain of Lagoda. Grimy factories and their smokestacks— smeared charcoal-black by the fumes rising from them— took up almost all the land on the crowded mountain. Below the factories were residential areas.

One side of the mountain was uninhabited. There, a handful of rusty, rundown factories stood in solitude. 

At the foot of Mount Lagoda was a small river that wound around it in a complete circle. 

This mountain was not part of any range; it stood alone, and forests surrounded it on almost all sides, and beyond them were vast plains that extended to the capital city. 

Ishida Sakai was a young man who lived on this isolated mountain. Ishida’s house, a small wooden cabin, was located on the highest point of the mountaintop. 

This morning, he woke up on his small, cozy bed in his small, cozy house. It was about time for the morning rally, even though the sun was still well below the horizon. 

Ishida shook himself awake and rubbed some water on his eyes. Looking out the window, he saw that the mountaintop was covered in grey snow and that the air was smoggy, as it always was.

After brewing himself some warm tea, Ishida had a brief breakfast, as was his usual morning schedule. 

Ishida’s occupation was quite different from that of everyone else; his job was not to work in a factory or to repair aircraft engines, but rather, to rouse the people of Mount Lagoda and rally them to work. 

This was, surprisingly, a high-paying job. Ishida often found it difficult to convince his neighbors to rise early each morning to work twelve-hour-long shifts in the factories. But to him, persuasion was a form of art. 

To make his job easier, Ishida had purchased a long stick with an iron hook on its top. He would raise the stick to the level of his neighbors’ windows and knock on them with the iron hook, producing an ear-piercing noise that no one could possibly sleep through.

Ishida hastily brushed his teeth and grabbed his stick. Before he left, he paused and looked fondly at his banner. It was genuinely his own, for it had taken an entire week to design. 

This banner was a yellow flag with a red hammer on a green mountain with a snow-capped top and a blue river circling its foot. 

Ishida picked up his banner and his “wake-up stick” and rushed outside. The morning air on the summit of the mountain was not refreshing even though the factories were still asleep. 

This morning seemed no different than all the others.

But as he was running down the slope of the mountain ridge into the village, Ishida somehow felt that something was going to happen that day that would change his life forever…

Every morning, in the narrow streets of the town center of Mount Lagoda, footsteps would be heard. These footsteps would usually be followed by a loud commotion. 

This was not a mob or a street fight, but a “morning rally.” 

As Ishida reached the first few houses, which were grouped closely together to preserve heat, he took a deep breath and began his work.

“Alright everyone, it’s time to get up!” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he strode down the cobblestone street, waving his banner in the cool morning air.

“Shake off the deadly slumber; the time to work has come! We must produce, produce, and produce. Our mountain is the industrial heartland of this country! No other place in Medietus can produce as much as we can. I’d like to see that we keep it that way. Get up, valiant workers of Lagoda! Get up and start working!”

The banner may have helped Ishida a little bit in rallying the villagers to work, but nothing helped him more than his “wake-up” stick. 

When Ishida saw that everyone was still asleep (or trying to ignore him), he raised his stick and knocked on the window of a villager’s house. 

The sound produced was so deafening that the owners of the house weren’t the only ones who heard it— dozens of villagers opened their windows and stared at the young man who came to wake them up. Their eyes were barely open. 

Ishida saw their exhausted faces and smiled. “Let’s start working, people! New days always come with new opportunities!” 

By seven in the morning, the entire town was up and the water wheels on the river began spinning. Men rushed out of their houses and up the mountain to their steel factories while women rushed down the mountain to their cotton factories. 

The calm atmosphere of the silent morning was now gone and was replaced with a busy, noisy one. The entire mountain was now producing at full industrial capacity, with pillars of black smoke choking the azure sky.

Having more or less finished his work for the day, Ishida headed down to the river with his fishing pole. 

He remembered the time when he was living alone in his old house— clad in tattered rags— when the town’s officials suddenly came to him and offered him an opportunity to improve his life: a high-paying job. 

They had warned him it would not be easy, and that he would need to find an effective way to wake all the villagers up an hour earlier than usual, but also that they would be willing to pay him a large sum because no one else was willing to do it. 

Rallying the villagers each morning had a substantial effect on Ishida’s reputation. He was the most well-known yet infamous person on Mount Lagoda. 

The townspeople loathed him for taking away their peaceful morning and depriving them of their rest. He was the kind of person no one wanted to be around. When he strolled down the streets, children would stare at him as their parents dragged them away. 

Everyone he knew was cruel to him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had an actual conversation with any of the villagers. His parents were an exception, but they had left him to live by himself many years ago.

Ishida spent his free time— which consisted of the daylight hours after the morning rally— wandering around on the mountainside and exploring the forests across the river. 

But today, he had a rather new thought. 

While Ishida’s parents were still with him, they had always warned him never to travel to the back side of the mountain, telling him that it was too dangerous.

Ishida had seen some treasure hunters go there in the past. They never returned. 

The young man wondered what motivated them and what made them never return. Wanting to explore the place, he headed not down the mountain, to the river, but up. 

Ishida rested his fishing pole on the grass near the river and continued uphill. He walked for some time until he reached a roadblock with a rusty sign nailed onto it. On it were some nearly illegible letters that read, “DANGER! NO ENTRY PERMITTED UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.”

Ishida had just turned sixteen. He was a teenager now, and curiosity was urging him to enter the restricted area. 

Of course, he had considered doing it before, but each time he tried, he was forced to stop here— at the roadblock— and return to his cabin. 

Today, unlike other days, Ishida was determined to find out what was on the uninhabited side of the mountain and began searching for a way in.

A bolted chain-link gate was part of the roadblock that stood in his way. This was the only entrance, for there was an electric barbed wire fence covering the rest of the mountainside. 

Without hesitating, Ishida rammed himself shoulder-first into the gate several times, hoping to knock it over or at least cause some damage to it. Regardless of being centuries old, the gate refused to budge, just as if it was warning him to stay back. 

Ishida, being the stubborn teenager he was, wasn’t going to give up any time soon. This time, he tried to hammer his way in, but his effort did not leave even a single dent on the gate. 

Next, Ishida picked up a small log and tried once again to knock down the barrier, but all he did was shatter the log.

He thought of giving up, but an idea came to him: Why don’t I try climbing the gate? 

Ishida grabbed onto the openings in the chain-link— which were barely large enough for his fingers and toes to get in— and began climbing. 

The gate was much taller than it seemed, and it took the ambitious teenager quite a long time to get to the other side.

Jumping down onto the ground with a terrific thud, Ishida was finally in the restricted area! Having achieved his goal, he felt a sense of both pride and fear. 

What could have caused the entire area to be abandoned? Ishida wondered. Maybe it was contaminated by a deadly disease? Or perhaps there was a factory accident that spilled out deadly chemicals?

These thoughts lingered in his head as he advanced deeper into unknown land. 

Approaching a rundown factory, Ishida felt a chill go down his spine. It looked nothing like the factories on the inhabited half of the mountain.

This factory was probably built when people first settled on Mount Lagoda— at least three thousand years ago. 

Despite being such an ancient building, its single smokestack was still intact, albeit crooked and with a sizable crack on its side. 

The factory’s windows were no longer there, and the ground was littered with scraps of metal, shards of broken glass, and other debris. 

Ishida closed his eyes and tried not to imagine the dangers that could be waiting for him. He took a deep breath. He then dashed through the abandoned factory and out of it as fast as he could.

That wasn’t so bad, he thought. 

The young man proceeded into the building once again. His heart pounded, but he couldn’t restrain himself from looking around. There were vines and small plants all over the building— even on the walls and the ceiling. All the machines that were once there were either damaged beyond repair or simply gone. 

They were probably taken by the villagers to build the new factories on the inhabited side, Ishida told himself.

He walked under one of the smokestacks and looked up. He could see the fleecy white clouds in the azure sky above. Sauntering out of the factory, the 16-year-old had the feeling that he had achieved something great. 

“I wonder what else I’ll find here,” he said out loud, walking hurriedly towards a dilapidated ammunition factory that seemed at least a thousand years old. 

It was probably constructed during the war with Medietapolis, now the capital city of the country that Mount Lagoda had been part of for more than a thousand years: the Medietan Empire. 

Ishida spent a few minutes circling the ammunition factory, stepping closer each time he made a full circle. 

Although it was tempting to go in, something deep inside him told him to stay as far away from the building as possible. 

At last, the temptation was too much for him to resist, and he stepped inside. 

What now stood before Ishida would forever change the lives of him and every man, woman, and child on Mount Lagoda.