Chapter 244 : Chapter 244
Chapter 244: The Key (2)
Loisia, 4th Rank of the Tower of Earthquakes, had tried to use the key when defeat at Bahav Enverque’s hands was right before her.
That meant this key was also used as a means of escape.
It also meant that the place beyond the imaginary door was safe.
It would only be safe for Loisia, of course.
It was surely a space prepared by the Otherworld.
When he turned the key, he heard the sound of a door opening.
He could not see it, but it had opened. Harad immediately knew that an unseen passage had opened before him.
If he took only a single step, he would vanish from this place.
Harad kicked the crystal ball lying at his feet.
The crystal ball vanished at the point where the key had been inserted into empty air, just as the two mages Duke had lost and Shura had vanished.
‘At least three.’
Duke had seen only one key.
That meant a single key could carry at least three people across.
‘Me, Ellen….’
Grand Duke Aratus had ordered judgment.
The Moon had threatened that if he went, he would die.
He had to keep both in mind. The Moon did not want Harad dead.
If he was going to take someone, then that someone had to be strong.
Harad thought of Serzila’s superhumans. Those reliable Sword Masters were stationed before the Wall, but if he wanted, he could bring them.
That was why Grand Duke Aratus had demanded judgment.
If Shura died, the North’s dignity would become a laughingstock. Its laws would be reduced to nothing more than glossy nonsense.
‘Still, he would be disappointed.’
The Grand Duke had entrusted the judgment to Harad.
He would lend him a Sword Master if necessary, but he would surely be disappointed in Harad himself.
That sentiment was trivial.
Shura was at stake.
‘Toremot. Mores Palaz. The 4th Knights Commander….’
Harad thought of the Sword Masters who felt most dependable after Grand Duke Aratus.
Each one of them was tantamount to a calamity.
Perhaps they could pass judgment on whatever lay beyond the door even alone.
‘The one I spoke best with was Mores Palaz.’
That had been true in his previous life.
Like the veteran knight he was, the retired man possessed something called flexibility.
‘Toremot is surprisingly easy to deal with too.’
That had been true in this life.
He might not be on the Grand Duke’s level, but the Commander of the 1st Knights was unquestionably a monster. He was also rather easy to reason with. He was a superhuman who trusted his instincts more than the world’s prejudices….
That was when someone suddenly shoved Harad in the back.
To call it a shove was putting it mildly. Harad shot forward so hard he felt weightless.
The force was monstrous.
No matter who saw it, they would know it was Ellen’s doing.
As he flew, Harad turned to look behind him.
By then it was already too late. Behind him there was no longer Ellen or Kubel’s annex, but a strange wall.
He had crossed the door.
Crossed the space.
The Moon’s Crystal Ball, which had gone through first, lay on the floor up ahead, dim and lifeless.
The wall was pale brown, like skin peeling with dryness.
To Harad’s eyes, it looked like the skin of a tree.
Not dry skin, but bark.
Patches of moss clung here and there.
‘So this isn’t a space that sprang up overnight.’
This vague place seemed to have preserved the passage of time.
The wall Harad had emerged from wriggled.
Then it spat out a person.
It was Ellen.
“What took you so long? You turned the key dramatically enough.”
“Did you close the door?”
“How was I supposed to do that?”
Ellen tilted her head.
Apparently she had pushed Harad through and then come after him at once.
“……What if you’d come first?”
“Would that have been bad?”
“Not exactly, but it would’ve gotten troublesome.”
The wall wriggled again and spat out another person.
“Oh.”
It was Cassion.
He looked around like some country bumpkin and gaped.
“That one?”
Ellen pointed at Cassion.
Harad shook his head.
The wall wriggled once more.
As expected, and inconveniently, this time it was Kubel.
“Shura!”
The moment he arrived, Kubel looked frantically around.
A lit cigarette was clenched between his teeth, burning fiercely. His slightly parted lips vented smoke.
There was a great deal of it.
It was harsh and hot.
An impressive accomplishment, but this time it was not enough. Kubel was still only 3rd Rank.
This was the place where the Moon, itself 5th Rank and the Moon in truth, had warned that Harad, the sun, would die.
Creak.
They heard the sound of a door closing inside the wall.
So there was either a time limit, or a capacity of four people.
Whichever it was, Harad felt half-relieved.
At least Duke had not crossed over as well.
“Ah.”
Only then did Ellen scratch her neck awkwardly.
She had finally realized that this was not a place Kubel ought to have crossed into, and that Duke had nearly come instead.
“So that’s why you were trying to come through last. I’m sorry.”
“No. Even so, this is still acceptable.”
Kubel was a simple, kind, perceptive mage.
He surely understood that he had come somewhere he should not have.
But unlike usual, he neither smiled sheepishly nor apologized.
“It’s enough that Duke didn’t come. It would be shameless of me to try to stop even Kubel.”
This was the road to beat down the mages who had kidnapped his daughter.
If they left behind a father who wanted to go with them just because he was weak, there could be nothing crueler.
“……Thank you, Harad.”
As expected, Kubel was overflowing with determination.
That determination was rage, killing intent, and desperation mixed together.
Shura was the reason Kubel lived.
“That’s only natural. That you came with us, and that from here on you need to be careful.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
Regrettable as it was to say, Kubel was close to being a liability.
But since Cassion had crossed over with them, it would even out.
“What a remarkable Magical Item.”
“…….”
Cassion, who had once been Gu Poison, was both knowledgeable about the Otherworld and utterly ignorant.
He knew the common sense of it, but not its deeper knowledge.
Even so, he was undeniably a useful ally.
5th Rank. Commander of the 2nd Knights of Serzila. By either measure, he was a formidable warrior.
He was just an idiot.
“Just trust me. I’ll protect Kubel and Lady Ellen.”
“…….”
“What.”
“You’re so reassuring.”
“I know.”
“…….”
Harad found himself missing the steel ring.
If he had had it, he would have handed it to Kubel.
But the Extinguished Torch had completed the tempering on its own, and the ring was gone.
He would have to pay more attention to Kubel’s safety.
“It looks like a passage.”
As Harad thought, Ellen had been keeping watch on their surroundings.
She was right. This place resembled a passage.
It was like a corridor.
If he had to compare it, the wall they had come from was the end of a corridor on one side.
There was only one path, so their direction was fixed.
The walls resembled the surface of wood.
Not just the entrance, but every direction did.
It felt as though they had entered the trunk of a tree.
Or perhaps an enormous branch.
“It should be a passage. A Magical Item that crosses space in an instant can hardly be common.”
One could probably find such things if one looked.
But for Loisia, a mere 4th Rank mage, it would have been far beyond her means.
Compression.
That was the vague principle Harad thought this wooden passage possessed.
It compressed space and shortened distance.
Where did the space beyond the key lead?
‘Not the Otherworld. Not the Boundary.’
That was nearly a certainty.
The Moon—that old bitch—could see, hear, and even exercise magic through the crystal ball.
But it still could not come directly to the Village of Embers.
‘The Otherworld is very far away. The Boundary is even farther from the imperial capital.’
Loisia had tried to use the key from the imperial capital.
So the far end of this passage had to be somewhere on the continent.
Somewhere the Otherworld had prepared.
‘The entrance was at a dead end. The exit likely will be too.’
Harad started walking.
Cassion and Ellen moved ahead of him, while Kubel walked at his side.
Kubel lit a fresh cigarette.
It was the correct formation.
The lower one’s Rank, the more thorough one’s preparation needed to be.
***
Cough.
Kubel coughed softly.
He had smoked too many cigarettes in succession.
For all their preparation, the passage remained quiet.
And long.
Harad had assumed it would be short.
As though the map had simply been folded so that two points touched, a new road opened and distance shortened.
‘The real distance must be great.’
The longer they walked here, the greater the true distance must be.
But he could not guess where they were.
Even for the regressed Harad, this was a form of magic—and a passage—he was experiencing for the first time.
“Shouldn’t we be moving faster?”
Ellen suddenly spoke.
The wooden passage was safe. They had all felt that for themselves.
Which meant there was no reason not to hurry.
Time had become a disadvantage.
If they delayed too long, there was no telling what might happen to Shura.
“If we die rushing, that would be worse than not going at all.”
The corridor being long was a good sign.
They had to think of it not as a hallway they were crossing with their feet, but as a hallway their minds were traversing.
Thud, thud, thud!
The farther Ellen went, the heavier her footsteps grew.
She was frantic.
If Harad had not been there, she would already have reached the exit and gone through it.
“Stay calm. Don’t get impatient.”
“How can you say that right now… Why do you think that?”
Ellen flared up, then stopped herself.
It was because Harad had been the one to say it.
He must have a reason.
Northerners who knew Harad had all grown used to thinking that first.
Ellen more than anyone.
“Jis was nowhere to be seen. Not even today, when it’s Shura’s birthday.”
Fireball had been seconded to the Wall.
It was at the request of Kesera, Commander of the 5th Knights.
There had been no reason to refuse. It would not hurt Fireball’s position to rise higher.
Jis was different.
He had not been seconded anywhere.
Jis had been deeply moved by Shura.
Unlike Harad and Ellen, there was no way he had forgotten Shura’s birthday.
Jis should have been preparing for it more earnestly than anyone.
And yet Jis had not been at Kubel’s annex.
“The host of the party matters more than the party itself. Jis probably followed Shura.”
Which meant the bare minimum of safety had been in place.
They did not know what kind of kidnappers these were or what sort of place lay beyond the key, but Jis was a 5th Rank mage who could wander in and out of even the Church’s Sanctuary as though it were his own home.
“Jis is smarter than anyone. There must have been a reason he didn’t attack before crossing through the passage.”
Duke had killed two of the four.
That meant two mages remained.
Jis would have been wary of them.
He must have sensed that they were no ordinary foes and followed after them.
If there was no time limit, then the key’s capacity was four.
The two kidnappers, Shura, and Jis made exactly four.
“Either he rescued her but the distance back is long, or he’s trailing them in secret, waiting for an opening.”
Or he was struggling against them.
As Harad saw it, there were three possibilities.
He discarded the first one.
There was no need to be that optimistic.
“Jis is both a brilliant child and a powerful mage. And he cannot die.”
He had been afflicted by the Prohibition Curse.
Jis had an immortal body.
It was unpleasant to say, but that curse could only help in a situation like this.
For Shura’s sake, Jis was the kind of child who would take death in her place again and again.
Ellen nodded.
Cassion and Kubel did as well, heavily.
Then they all stopped.
They had reached a dead end.
Before them, a wall like tree bark rippled as though it were the surface of water.
The four of them did not look at one another.
Their purpose was the same.
As though they had already agreed to it, they hurled themselves into the wall at the same time.
***
The bizarre world of tree bark vanished.
The scenery changed all at once.
Harad did not have the leisure to take it in.
Someone was standing right before him.
“Who are you?”
The man’s voice was rough, yet polite.
If Harad had to say who he sounded like, he would say a soldier.
He was dressed like one.
Armor and helmet as well.
All of it looked shabby, as though scavenged.
“State your identity.”
The man spoke again.
Out of habit, Harad studied his armaments.
There was a sword at his waist.
A short, thick axe was strapped to his back.
‘Rust.’
There was rust on the pommel.
If it were a true weapon, that would have been impossible.
‘Of course.’
This was the exit Loisia had originally intended to reach.
The person guarding it was hardly going to be a mere soldier.
“I’m not from the Tower of Earthquakes.”
Harad said it openly.
Ellen, Cassion, and Kubel all twitched.
Only Harad and the soldier remained calm.
“Even so, you must state your identity.”
“How rude.”
“This is land prepared by our Tower. Please understand.”
He was not a soldier, but a mage disguised as one.
It was proof that they were on the continent.
“I refuse.”
Harad deliberately acted arrogant.
“Must I really say it?”
“Yes.”
The mage disguised as a soldier was firm.
“You must.”
He had not expected this.
“If you refuse, you will not be allowed to pass.”
He had no intention of sending them back either.
That mage had already begun to suspect them.
Crk, crk.
Strange sounds came from all around.
It was the sound of wood shifting.
‘He’s quite good.’
Now that he looked closer, the man was not merely a mage, but a gatekeeper.
He was not so strong that Harad could not kill him.
On the contrary, he could burn him to death in an instant.
But they had only just arrived.
For now, understanding the situation came first.
And Harad was confident in pretending to be an Otherworld mage.
“Fuck.”
The curse flew from Harad’s mouth at that very moment.
Without warning, the gatekeeper’s head leapt into the air.
……Harad had thought he was behaving as calmly as usual.
But the truth was that he was just as agitated as Ellen and Kubel.
He realized that only when he saw the gatekeeper’s head flying upward and the headless body spurting blood.
“Whew. That was close.”
Cassion, who had severed the gatekeeper’s neck, let out a sigh of relief.
“You don’t need to thank me, Harad. It was only natural.”
“…….”
“Now come on! Shura’s crying.”
He really should have warned that bastard not to charge in and show off.