Guide to tamming vilanesses

Approximately ten days have passed since my previous report.

Luckily, I am no longer confined, so I have been able to keep track of the passage of days more easily. However, I have noticed a strange phenomenon, and I believe I have discovered its cause, though I will discuss that later.

What I need to report first of all is that, in this place, memory is a terrible measure of the passage of time.

Entire hunting expeditions seem distant only hours after returning. Conversations fade with alarming speed unless I deliberately write them down.

Faces remain familiar, names remain recognizable, but the order of events slips away as though someone quietly tears pages from my memory while I sleep. Fortunately, memories from before entering this dimension remain perfectly intact.

I can still remember my homeland, my studies, and everyone I met before arriving here with absolute clarity. Only memories formed inside this dimension seem to dissolve.

One thing I have learned beyond any doubt is that the Amazons are not merely hunters. They are, in many respects, the reason this forest has not consumed itself.

Their hunting parties rarely pursue monsters for food alone. Every expedition has a purpose that appears to have been refined over countless years of practice.

Scouts constantly patrol the enormous territories surrounding the village. Whenever they discover a monster nest, they rarely destroy it immediately. Instead, they observe it for days, sometimes weeks.

The warriors identify breeding grounds, migration routes, territorial boundaries, and even feeding patterns before launching an attack. Only then do they strike.

The attack itself surprised me. Rather than charging recklessly, as I expected, several Amazons quietly surround the entire area.

The strongest warriors confront the largest monsters directly, forcing them into carefully chosen terrain while hidden spearwomen eliminate younger creatures attempting to escape.

Their objective is almost never complete extermination. Instead, they eliminate enough adults to prevent population explosions while intentionally leaving a handful alive to preserve the species.

At first, I questioned this practice. One of the older hunt leaders simply laughed.

"If we kill them all," she explained, "something worse comes looking for the empty territory."

After observing several hunts and asking the opinions of other Amazons, I believe she is correct. The monsters help keep each other under control, as well as the vegetation.

All of that explains why so few large-scale monster outbreaks occur around their territory despite their being surrounded by a forest teeming with enemies. I believe many of their hunting tactics could actually be extremely beneficial if brought back to the Tower.

The greatest discovery, however, came not from accompanying another hunt, but simply from listening.

And this was how I discovered a bizarre fact. If what they tell me is true, these women have been alive for thousands of years, hunting in this same place.

The memory loss phenomenon I described is probably what preserves their sanity. To them, years inside this dimension quickly blur together. Entire decades become difficult to distinguish.

Now, after experiencing the same strange deterioration in my own recent memories, I cannot ignore the possibility. If this dimension truly exists outside the normal flow of time, it would explain much.

From what I have been able to discover, the reason for their absurdly long lives is that time does not pass in the Lost Dimension. Or, more accurately, the passage of time does not affect those imprisoned within it as it normally should.

The effect it has on me is uncertain, but I believe that if I stayed here for a decade, I would still age by a decade.

After learning that they have been alive since before being sealed in this place, I naturally began asking about their lives before the imprisonment.

As I said before, they are not a tribe that easily trusts outsiders. However, thanks to alcohol, hard work, and many favors, I have uncovered an astonishing history.

Once again, I must take what they told me with a grain of salt, as I have no physical evidence to support their claims. However, they spoke of a massive war that occurred so long ago that they no longer know when it took place.

Possibly thousands of years in the past, if their measurements of time are to be trusted, their imprisonment was the consequence of a war against humanity.

But even before that, one of them told me, though with a tone of uncertainty that makes this information difficult to verify, that their ancestors entered into a pact.

No Amazon could explain with whom the agreement had originally been made. Most admitted they simply repeated what previous queens had taught them.

The pact ensured that every child born to their people would be female. When I asked why, nobody knew. Several simply answered, "Because that is our blessing."

Another revelation was even more astonishing. Apparently, long ago, their god descended upon the world, taking for himself the body of the Demon Lord. According to them, this was the reason they sided with the demons during the war.

Apparently, this mysterious figure, the Demon Lord himself, fathered most of the tribe. The current queen is said to be one of his daughters.

Their stories describe him as stern, impossibly powerful, and deeply respected, but also as someone who personally fought beside them. Whether these accounts are true or merely legendary is impossible for me to determine.

Especially because, as I mentioned before, most of the current Amazons are supposedly daughters of the Demon Lord. The previous generation, the Demon Lord’s wives and the women who fought in that legendary war, have all died.

As a result, their knowledge of the Great War itself is surprisingly limited. They know the demons lost. They know humanity eventually turned against its former allies. They know the Demon Lord was sealed rather than killed. Beyond that, the details become fragmented.

Yet something deeply troubles me. The history they describe does not resemble the history I was taught, not merely in interpretation, but in its most fundamental facts. The kingdoms they mention do not exist.

For God’s sake, demons have never been mentioned as anything more than myths in our history.

One final legend deserves mention. The Amazons know nothing of the great Tower that dominates our own age. However, they preserve an ancient tale claiming that the Human Queen once intended to construct a tower so immense that it would reach the realm of the gods themselves.

They speak of it as an unfinished and sinful ambition rather than an accomplished feat. Whether this legend eventually became the Tower known today, or whether it refers to something else entirely, I cannot yet determine.

For the first time since arriving, I find myself questioning not merely what happened in history, but whether the history I learned before entering this prison was ever complete in the first place.

Or even whether the humans I encountered here originate from the same reality as my own.