Chapter 115: Chapter 115

When the exploration party ‘Green Eyes’ had visited in the past, this Altoan city, though fallen into decay, had retained its former appearance to some extent.

However, nothing but ashes remained here now.

Needless to say for wood or other soft materials, even the fairly sturdy stone ramparts had melted down under the intense heat.

At the sight of stone melting and fusing together (a scene utterly impossible to accept by common sense) everyone groaned softly.

“Wow…”

“This is that, right? The Flames of Purification.”

“It would be impossible unless it were that.”

Once ignited, it was difficult to extinguish without using special methods, and if left to burn continuously, its temperature reached several times that of ordinary fire.

The ruin before their eyes was the result of pouring out the flame that burned all evil to the point of abuse.

Seeing this state, one could understand why the Crusaders of the Ajun Kingdom had failed to find any trace of the cockatrice.

Unless it were the carcass of a true dragon out of legend, no meaningful trace could have remained inside that place.

“Tsk, there ought to have been quite a few good things inside.”

Roden clicked his tongue while looking at the ruins that had once been a city.

At the time, they had been a mere four people, and because the Crusaders had suddenly stormed in, they had hurriedly gathered only usable items and fled.

Had those bastards not completely burned this city down, they would surely have been able to obtain something more useful.

Truly, sighs came forth for those ignorant fools who knew nothing but how to destroy in the name of religion.

At any rate, since they had no further business in this city, they began searching for the secret facility around the city as planned.

The only thing to rely on here was Shan’s memory.

“Hmm, so… is it this way? Probably.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’? Let’s be certain. If it turns out to be a wild goose chase after coming all this way, I might actually lie down and collapse.”

At Shan’s somewhat uncertain words, Roden spoke with an incredulous expression.

Even so, it could not be helped, as Shan had been synchronized with the hydra’s nine heads at the time, and the creature had been half out of its mind with excitement and terror.

Needless to say, the surroundings had been in chaos because dozens of large monsters were bursting forth.

In such a situation, clearly confirming exactly which part outside the city the laboratory had been located in was a difficult matter.

Furthermore, given how much time had passed, there was a high possibility that the underground facility was buried due to crustal shifts or the like.

After scattering on horseback on the first day to look around the expected area, Shan came to the conclusion that a hill that might once have been a small mountain had collapsed and blocked the entrance.

“Here?”

“Probably.”

The place where they stood was quite far removed from the perimeter of the ruined city.

Had the distance been just a bit further, they would have entered a zone where the environment shifted every few days.

Had that been the case, they truly would not have been able to find it.

For it would be difficult for an underground facility to remain intact in a place that repeatedly became covered in snow and ice, turned into a swamp, or transformed into a desert.

After the location was finalized, they pitched tents properly to set up a campsite and took up shovels to begin excavation in earnest.

“Heave-ho!”

Thud, the sharp blade of the shovel dug into the ground and lifted, scooping up a large amount of dirt.

A Mana Stone was embedded in each shovel handle, containing ‘Reinforcement’ and ‘Cutting’ respectively.

These were magic devices prepared specifically for this excavation.

Thanks to this, they were able to dig through the hard ground with shovels without expending much effort.

“Ngh, why am I doing this kind of work…”

Sir Colun, who had lived as a knight his entire life and had never even held a shovel in his hand, grumbled before looking to his side and shutting his mouth.

When even Shan, the strongest knight in the Arman Alliance and a duke of the kingdom, was shoveling with his entire body covered in dirt, what right did he have to complain?

Moreover, Shan was even the most outstanding laborer among the people gathered here.

Every time he drove the shovel into the ground, scooped up dirt, and tossed it behind him, he executed every movement without the slightest loss of strength, allowing him to move without resting for over an hour once he started.

In the first place, among those here, Shan was the most familiar with this kind of chore.

Of course, the others were no push-overs either.

Roden scooped up an amount of dirt as large as a person’s upper body with every single shovel stroke using his signature monstrous strength, while Lug moved dirt from one end to the other without even stepping around thanks to his long, spider-like limbs.

With the knights working like that, the squires naturally felt self-conscious and worked until they foamed at the mouth and needed help from the priests.

The mages and priests assisted them while loading the excavated dirt onto carts pulled by warhorses to haul it away.

The squires who needed to rest after becoming exhausted during work guarded the area and dispatched monsters that approached after smelling the scent or hearing the noise.

Despite it being fairly hard labor, Asha never took off her mask through all of it.

Except for Shan, who knew what was inside the mask, everyone advised her that it was fine to take it off, but Asha steadfastly insisted on wearing the mask.

That was how much she likely did not want it revealed that an Altoan like herself held the position of High Priestess.

After sweating all day like that, they gathered before the stove, ate food, and chatted to relieve the day’s fatigue.

Food had been brought in abundance from the Treba territory, and water was used by purifying the dirty water peculiar to the Demonic Realm flowing in the drainage.

With four priests alone, including the powerful High Priestess Asha among them, there was no shortage of water for about twenty people to use.

The topics of conversation were varied.

From grand matters such as the kingdom’s future or political landscape, to trivial things like their personal pasts or family affairs.

There were also those who wondered if Asha was seriously dating Viscount of Treba, but this taciturn High Priestess never gave an answer.

However, what they were most curious about, after all, was the true identity of the ruins they were searching for.

Was it not time to let them know the identity of the ruins they were mobilizing the Lord Protector, royal knights, several skilled high mages, and even a High Priestess to excavate?

Shan answered simply to a priest’s question.

“Truthfully, I do not know well either.”

“…Is that so?”

“Yes. I am a complete layman when it comes to magic.”

It was not a complete lie; although he roughly knew what kind of facility this had been, he did not know what they could find here either.

Cheryn probably did not know either.

At this response, questions directed at him vanished, but expectation only grew greater instead.

Wondering just how grand a secret it must be for it to be kept hidden even from Shan, who could be called the closest confidant among confidants.

It was the fourth day of devoting themselves diligently to the excavation.

Just as everyone was growing exhausted, Shan’s squire Vico finally picked up the first trace of the facility.

“Huh?”

Clang, at the sound of scraping stone, Vico, who had been wearing an annoyed expression thinking he had found yet another large rock, realized that what he had found was no ordinary boulder.

Although heavily coated in dirt and dust, it was a stone wall that stretched vertically and had clean angles, which anyone could tell was man-made…

“Here, it’s over here!”

At his shout, the others joined him with joyful faces.

This was because everyone had slowly grown anxious about just how long they would have to continue this damn shoveling.

“Oh…”

“Well done, Vico!”

“Finally!”

Once a clue was found, the work caught fire in an instant.

Using the stone wall as a baseline and digging up all directions, that afternoon, the entrance door leading into the facility was finally excavated.

*

Just as in Shan’s memory, it was a passage so large that large monsters could easily pass through.

“Ooh…”

“So this is an Altoan ruin.”

“This must be why explorers go on expeditions.”

Knights and mages marveled at excavating a ruin for the first time… and an underground ruin at that, rather than some aboveground city or town.

In fact, it was not just them; the guide Randol was equally amazed.

For he too had excavated things called ruins a couple of times in the past, but most of them had been nothing more than fortunately preserved homes or public facilities.

It was his first time finding a facility this colossal and secretive.

Except perhaps for ancient explorers back when Altoan ruins were abundant, those who had excavated a facility of this scale could be counted on one hand.

“It would be best not to enter immediately. In an underground facility that has been buried for this long, there is a high possibility that foul air remains inside. It would be ideal to ventilate it for about a day before going in…”

“Let us inject wind into the ruins.”

The one who spoke up was Udin, a mage of the expedition team.

He was a former high-ranking member of the Magic Society and a disciple of Court Count Tenon, the head of the society, making him something of a senior fellow disciple to Cheryn.

“Is that possible?”

“Yes. We already have all the catalysts prepared to cast the relevant spell. Her Majesty the Queen told us to bring them along, likely anticipating a situation like this.”

Originally, it was a spell meant to blow wind into sails on the sea or large rivers, but it could also be used to push wind into underground spaces to flush out foul air.

He and two other mages spent a considerable amount of time painstakingly drawing a magic circle at the entrance of the ruins before placing various catalysts within it.

Then, they laboriously chanted an incantation for nearly ten minutes.

[“Zetinarkumas… Abileurgo-on…”]

[“Sakredebeli-an…”]

The others, who had been watching with half expectation and half boredom, wore surprised expressions as wind began to blow before long.

Generally, within the Demonic Realm, wind hardly blew in urban sectors where the terrain did not shift every moment like where they were.

Yet right now, a fairly strong wind arose around the mages and flowed into the depths of the underground ruins.

A moment later, the mages, drenched in sweat after finishing their incantation, let out sighs and spoke.

“It is done. The wind will blow inside for a few hours. Since we are blowing wind across about half the width of the passage, the foul air inside will escape through the open space.”

Though they did not understand the technical details, they could roughly tell that the foul air was being drawn out.

Shan looked at the continuously blowing wind and spoke in admiration.

“Impressive. I have never seen magic of this scale before…”

Even Cheryn, the most outstanding mage he knew, was adept at handling various tools or creating things, but she had never shown a display of altering natural phenomena like this.

Mage Udin spoke with a peculiar expression mixed with half pride and half self-deprecation.

“Of course, it is not something just anyone can do, but in truth, the magical formula to realize this was created by Her Majesty the Queen. Combined with expensive catalysts, it would be embarrassing to say we accomplished this with our own power.”

The cost of the catalysts used for this magic was by no means small.

They had used plenty of rare wind spirit essences, plus griffon wing feathers (of which even the Magic Society had few) beaks of harpy flock lords, and even Mana Stones.

After hearing that explanation, they could understand how such a miracle had been wrought.

Inwardly, Shan and the other knights felt it was a pity, thinking it would have been better if another good magic device had come out of the Mana Stones used for that spell.

The next morning, having taken sufficient rest, the expedition team attempted to enter the ruins in earnest.

Well-armed knights and squires checked various weapons and gear in preparation for any unforeseen events inside.

Given that it was a place buried for a long time, it was highly probable no monsters remained inside, but apart from that, cases of being attacked by magical weaponry of the ancient Altoan Empire were not unheard of.

“Alright, shall we get going then?”

“Be careful.”

One knight, five squires, and two priests guarded the camp outside, while a total of fourteen people (the remaining four knights, four squires, two mages, three priests, and the guide Randol) decided to enter.

Unlike the others who held or attached lamp magic devices to their bodies, Shan stood at the front without adding any light source to himself.

His eyes glowed green, brightly illuminating the murky interior of the ruins.

“Yeah, I’m certain. It’s here.”

Traces of the facility he had seen from the hydra’s perspective in the past could be glimpsed here and there.

Of course, let alone being buried for ages, it had been exposed to the outside wind even before then, so it had deteriorated significantly.

While advancing, Shan came to a halt at a presence felt from ahead.

“Everyone, halt.”

For there to be something moving in a facility closed for easily hundreds, perhaps a thousand years?

Perplexed only briefly, Shan recognized its identity as he watched it approach.

“They’re ghouls, aren’t they?”

Corpse monsters whose brains were eaten away by insects, ghouls shrieked with a groan and approached toward them.

The long rods they held were familiar to his eyes.

Something similar to the weapons of the Altoan guards that had been aimed at escaping monsters, seen through the hydra’s eyes in the past…

Apparently, these creatures were guards from the era of the Altoan Empire who had fallen into suspended animation after turning into ghouls, only to awaken now.

‘Then does that make them roughly thousand-year-old ghouls?’

A thousand-year-old hydra was enormously large and strong compared to an ordinary hydra, but fortunately, the ghouls did not seem to be.

They were weak beyond measure, to the extent of bursting apart from a light kick.

In the first place, ghouls were creatures an ordinary adult man could defeat if well-armed and fighting with his wits about him.

Furthermore, perhaps because their corpses were so old, they were weaker and slower than normal ghouls.

Even so, there was no need to keep fighting.

As High Priestess Asha, who was following from the center of the formation, extended her hand, a brilliant light surged forth, and the ghouls collapsed where they stood.

“Light of Purification?”

“Yes. It is fatal to ghosts or undead-type monsters.”

“There is no need to use such power to take down small fry like these.”

At Shan’s request to save her strength, Asha silently nodded.

Upon investigation, the staves held by the ghouls turned out to be items lacking any special magical power.

To be precise, it would be correct to say that while some magical design was present, there was no practical efficacy, and the mages lacked the knowledge to figure out what it was.

“Perhaps they were forbidden from using edged weapons for religious reasons?”

“That may be so.”

Unlike the mages chattering away like that, Shan deduced that the staves they used must have been practical weapons.

For back then, they had been flustered when nothing happened as they pointed their staves at the monsters.

Though why they failed to function remained unknown.

Along with various discussions, the expedition team relied on lamp magic devices as they walked deeper and deeper inside.

Before long, doors began to appear here and there along the large passage.

Most of them were half-rotted, opening with a loud kick, but occasionally a ghoul popped out from inside, startling the group.

[Kraaaa-!]

“Ugh!”

Surprised by the ghoul that suddenly rushed out, Lug extended his leg straight out.

His long leg blew the ghoul away in a single strike like a spear.

“Why are you so surprised? It’s just a ghoul.”

“Well, the atmosphere is a bit…”

Lug looked around with a fearful expression.

Apparently, an environment where corpses attacked from the dark scared him beyond the actual threat level.

Even though he could laughably slay a hundred ghouls if they attacked.

In fact, it was not just him; quite a few warriors among the expedition team were excessively tense.

In contrast, Roden stepped forward quite actively, if not as much as Shan, as the fact that the ghouls here did not carry edged weapons seemed to put his mind at ease.

“Now then, let’s take our time looking for usable items! Don’t overlook even a single document!”

Of course, most paper items had long since rotted away, but a few documents stuck onto tables like dried residue still remained.

Whenever that happened, the two mages ran over and copied the written text onto parchment.

Once copied, the contents could be carefully analyzed after going back up.

Before long, they realized that remaining grouped together in one single lump as they were now was quite an inconvenient setup for exploration.

After a brief discussion, they decided to split the group into four.

Four knights and squires formed a squad each, with the mages, priests, and the guide Randol divided among them.

As promised, Shan paired up into a squad with High Priestess Asha.

With his squire Vico joining in, there were three people in total, making theirs the smallest in number among the split squads.

“Stay close to my side, Priestess Asha.”

“Yes.”

“Vico, I leave the rear to you.”

“I will lay down my life to protect the High Priestess!”

“Don’t raise your voice so loudly. It echoes because we’re underground.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

Vico snorted and shouted loudly to demonstrate his loyalty, only to whisper softly right after.

He had not meant for him to speak quite that quietly.

Shan let out a chuckle before taking the lead and moving forward.

After turning several corners here and there, they collected a few inscriptions and picked up several objects (uncertain whether they were magic devices or not) and placed them into a basket.

In the middle of that, Asha spoke toward Shan.

“Your Grace the Duke.”

“Yes?”

“Are you seriously courting Her Majesty the Queen, Your Grace?”

As Shan was not the only one surprised by the unexpected question, Vico behind him made a sound almost like a person being strangled.

For a topic that might be the most sensitive issue in Pendia to come up right in the middle of underground ruins.

Seeing his squire pretending not to notice, Shan let out a small sigh and asked.

“The reason you ask that question all of a sudden…”

“You already know, do you not?”

He could roughly guess.

While the doctrines of the New Faith did not forbid priests from marrying, she found it difficult to advance into a deep relationship with Viscount of Treba due to her identity.

To put it bluntly, Asha was not someone who had accomplished grand feats like Shan, but merely a powerful priestess.

If an Altoan were to be joined with a landed noble based on merely that level of background, the gazes of those around them could not possibly be favorable.

In such a situation, if Shan were to become the Prince Consort of Pendia, it would serve as a splendid first precedent of an Altoan blending into the upper stratum of society.

After hesitating briefly, Shan organized his thoughts and gave an answer.

“I am working toward that.”

“I see.”

Answering only that much, Asha added a moment later.

“I shall root for you.”

Wondering whether he should reply with thanks, Shan was choosing his answer when he grimaced at a voice heard from afar.

Though he was not certain, it sounded like a human scream…

“Let’s go over there.”

The situation might be urgent, but even so, he could not simply abandon Asha here with Vico, so Shan moved at the front while matching his pace so the two could keep up.

Before long, screams and shouted resounded along with the distinct clatter of edged weapons clashing.

Mage Udin shouted in an urgent voice.

“Why on earth are you doing this, Your Grace! Get a hold of yourself!”

“Stand back! It is obvious that His Grace is being controlled by an evil spirit of the ruins…”

“Then was the High Priestess done in!?”

For some reason, the two were talking about him, who was standing right here.

Perplexed by the contents of their conversation, Shan quickened his steps.

As he rounded a corner, he saw a priest and a mage who were startled upon seeing him emerge from the dark.

“…Your Grace!”

“Why?”

Far from being overjoyed to see Shan, they displayed flustered reactions.

Baffled by this only briefly, he turned his head and could see the reason why.

“Ugh…!”

An opponent pulled a blade from the shoulder of Lug, who had somehow become drenched in blood, and retreated.

A warrior clad in pale golden armor and holding a red longsword faced Shan with an expressionless face.

His eyes glowed bright green in the dark.