INTERLUDE
THREE ORPHANS, A CRY IN THE NIGHT, AND A BLOODY MAZE
Chigusa Hitachi and Ouka Kashima were at a loss.
“Please! Please help us! Ruu’s gone back to the church!”
They were near the northwestern outskirts of Daedalus Street. A large number of the Labyrinth District’s residents were gathered in this spot not far from East Main Street, one of the city’s central arteries. The evacuation order the Guild issued several days prior had instructed them to gather there. Takemikazuchi Familia was among this crowd, surrounded by children.
“He said he had a pet cat he hadn’t told anyone about, and he had to go get it, and then he left, and, and…”
“And the monsters are out now…”
“Everything will be fine. Just calm down…okay?”
Chigusa and the other members of Takemikazuchi Familia had originally set out for Daedalus Street because their patron deity asked them to help Bell, but then Guild staff requested their help with the overwhelming number of evacuees, and they hadn’t been able to say no.
Ganesha Familia and other adventurers were guarding the surrounding area as the Guild staff desperately tried to lead the crowd to East Main Street. With the howling of the monsters, everything south of their location had become a battle zone, which meant the only evacuation route left was north toward East Main Street. All the exits in that direction were packed with people, and the situation had devolved into a massive human traffic jam. The townsfolk were terrified of the monsters.
The children standing in front of Chigusa—Lai, the human boy, and Fina, the chienthrope—were no exception.
“I, too, am begging you. Please, somehow, find that boy…!” the elderly nun Mother Maria pleaded, adding her voice to the chorus.
“Try to keep your chin up. I don’t know what I’ll do if even adults like you start crying,” Ouka said. He was too exhausted to muster more than this awkward response to the entreaty of the thin, black-haired woman. With most of Ganesha Familia’s members and other adventurers busy guarding convoys of evacuees, Maria seemed to be grasping at straws. All the more so considering it was just one little boy.
“All right, we’ll look for him. Tell us how to get there…No, never mind, it’s no use. I have no sense of direction around here,” he said.
“Please let me go with you! I’ll show you the way to the church!” Maria said.
“I want to go, too!”
“Me too!”
Lai’s and Fina’s requests surprised Chigusa and Ouka.
“Lai!” Maria shouted, trying to stop the boy. Ignoring her, he and Fina clung to Ouka before she could tell them it was too dangerous.
“We may not be connected by blood…but we’re a family!”
At those words, Ouka understood everything. He furrowed his brow as he tried to decide what to do.
“Orphans…Damn it. I’m a pushover.”
Both Ouka and Chigusa were orphans themselves. So was Mikoto, who had transferred to Hestia Familia. Each had lost their family under different circumstances, but all had grown up at a home run by Takemikazuchi and other benevolent deities.
Lai and the other kids probably went through the same things we did, Ouka thought, bringing his hand to his muscular neck.
“Chigusa…I’m sorry. Can they come?” he said.
Chigusa smiled and shook her head, revealing her right eye, which was ordinarily covered by her bangs.
She liked the awkward, kind Ouka.
He smiled back at her wryly.
“Okay, take us there!”
“This way!”
Leaving the other adventurers behind, Chigusa and Ouka headed off with Maria and the children.
Cassandra Illion was carrying something.
“Whew! This is heavy…!”
Her arms were wrapped as far as they could reach around the huge wooden box as she tottered through the hushed Labyrinth District.
She was in the northeastern section, and fortunately for her, not a monster or an adventurer was to be seen. There was only an eerie, faint light. The Miach Familia emblem, an abstracted human form, shone above the rod she had attached hastily at her hip. Her long hair swaying and her timid, droopy eyes darting about more than usual, she was making her way through the mazelike back alleys—when, suddenly, the box in her arms began to shake and rustle.
“D-don’t move,” she whispered nervously to her cargo.
After a quick scan of her surroundings, she was relieved to see that no one was nearby—or so she thought.
“There you are, Cassandra! What are you sneaking around all by yourself for?”
“Eeek!”
Her friend Daphne Laulos appeared from behind. As the startled Cassandra looked up at her, the box slipped from her hands onto the stone pavement. An instant later, a high whimpering sound came from inside.
“…”
“…”
Daphne froze.
Cassandra turned white.
“Cassandra…really?” Daphne said with quivering lips as she stared at the shaking box.
“D-Daph, you’re wrong! Wait—please wait!”
Cassandra stretched her arms out to block her way, but Daphne pushed her aside and opened the wooden crate.
“Kyuu…”
“Woof…”
Inside sat a hellhound and a teary-eyed al-miraj pressing one paw to its head where it had bumped it in the fall.
“Whaaaaaaaat? What in the world?”
“D-Daph, keep your voice down!”
The two monsters jumped up at the sound of Daphne’s screech, sending Cassandra into a panic. Daphne’s almond-shaped eyes revealed a mixture of anger and confusion beneath her short hair, and she drew close to her friend.
“Cassandra. You idiot! What are you doing? Don’t tell me you’re hiding one of those monsters with a bounty on its head?!”
“No, that’s not it at all! I’m, well…It’s because I had a vision!”
A little less than a week earlier, Cassandra had dreamed of being swallowed up in a jet-black wave. Just as she was on the verge of death, she had taken out a rabbit charm she’d gotten and managed to escape. It was an extraordinarily frightening dream and, as usual, totally unexpected.
From the experience she’d gained during her eighteen years of life, the girl knew that this type of precognitive dream was extremely bad. Trusting in the dream’s frightful message, she had made her way to a desolate alleyway five days earlier—on that day, the day that happened, when it really would have been better not to go. There she had found where the charm had been dropped…and there was the white fluff ball. And the black fur ball.
They were wet with blood and completely exhausted. Both were lying prone and unconscious, their limbs splayed. The rabbit charm of her dream, it turned out, was an al-miraj and a hellhound.
Cassandra had nearly fainted with shock—but her obsession with her vision of utter destruction kept her focused. Her face white and her hands and feet shaking, she hid the two monsters in a box she found lying around and brought them back to her own room that same day. It was a miracle that neither Miach nor Nahza nor Daphne nor any of the other adventurers had found her out.
Cassandra was not protecting Xenos—monsters. To the contrary, she was terrified of them even now. But she had to keep the “rabbit charms” with her until the fateful day. She had no choice but to feed them pieces of Jyaga Maru Kun so they didn’t starve to death. It definitely wasn’t because the white monster made a sniffling mewing cry or because the black one made a grunting barking cry. Incidentally, they liked the potato snacks. After that, Cassandra always fed the girls (were they girls?) potatoes. I wonder if I’m meant to be a tamer, she wondered nervously.
In the end, Miach (who still couldn’t bring himself to tell his familia about the Xenos) and Cassandra (too afraid to tell Miach the truth) had rather impressively managed to avoid each other. But Daphne couldn’t care less about Cassandra’s explanations.
“Your stupid dreams again!! Give it a break, will you? And get out of my way!!”
If word got out about this, Miach Familia would be making Bell’s mistake all over again. For the sake of her familia, and more than anything for the sake of her friend, Daphne drew her baton-like dagger from her hip.
“Kyuu?!”
“N-no, Daphne, don’t!”
“Let them go, Cassandra!”
Daphne tried to pull the shrieking al-miraj free from Cassandra, who was gripping it from behind. Her glittering dagger seemed to be shouting that monsters must be killed on the spot, when—
Thump!
“—”
Just as Daphne and Cassandra heard something ferociously pounding the cobblestones, an enormous shadow engulfed them.
When the petrified girls turned their heads, they saw a huge black form looming against the dark night sky.
Its skin was covered in rivers of crimson blood, which for all they knew came from vanquished enemies. Its upraised foreleg held the double-headed ax known as a Labrys. The beast pierced the girls with its terrifying stare and raised the huge weapon like a guillotine.
Daphne’s face lost all trace of color, and Cassandra’s crumpled with fear. Although both were upper-class adventurers, the overwhelming strength of their opponent was obvious. They were certain that in the next instant they would be reduced to lumps of meat.
Just as they had accepted that death was imminent, however, they heard a sound.
“Kyuu!”
The al-miraj and hellhound had jumped out of their box and were standing between them and the beast. As the al-miraj hopped and screeched again and again, the silent jet-black monster gave no answer…then slowly lowered its ax. It passed before the girls, who still stood as unmoving as statues, and disappeared into the night.
The al-miraj looked up at Cassandra, gave a final kyuu, and straddled the hellhound. The two monsters followed the black beast into the darkness.
“…”
“…”
A silence like the quiet after a storm descended on the two girls.
Cassandra collapsed to the ground and wrapped her arms around Daphne’s waist.
Daphne was just barely holding herself together, but her knees were about to give way. She awkwardly made eye contact with Cassandra, who smiled tensely back at her.
“S-s-see? They s-s-s-s-saved us…!”
“Ha-ha—and of course it’s all because you brought those things home, right?!” Daphne said, knocking Cassandra on the head with her fist.
“Ouch!” Cassandra yelped, pressing her hand to her head.
The animal girl turned pale.
“Quick, call a healer! Or get a potion—anything you can find!” someone screamed.
“It’s awful…” groaned another.
“How many of us were taken out?!”
Properly speaking, it was Lilly, transformed into an animal person, who was pale—pale from the pandemonium of the adventurers and the sight of the mazelike alleyway dyed red from end to end. Her animal ears quivered as she stared at the bodies of adventurers piled in heaps.
Which of the separated Xenos did this? Or was it all of them? Even if it was all of them, this is…
Lilly and Bell were supposed to join up with the scattered Xenos and, if possible, bring them together with Fels and the other Xenos. If that proved impossible, the last-ditch plan was for them to use the second key—which one of the Xenos had—and find another route to Knossos on their own.
Right now, Lilly was in the eastern section of the Labyrinth District, where a sign on the wall written in Koine read 277TH BLOCK.
The call that Lido sent out at the start of the battle had instructed the separated Xenos to meet up in this district. Thanks to her former career as a spy, Lilly had been able to sneak here, but…
A group of adventurers must have found them…and I guess the Xenos took them all out in self-defense. From the looks of it, the party was quite large, and they probably had no other choice…
Stairways led up and down from the mazelike alley, and a great number of side streets branched off to the left and right. The street and walls were smeared with fresh blood, turning the entire alleyway into a red world. A bloodied Amazon lay slumped against a crumbling wall, her neck broken. A dwarf lay staring blankly up at the sky, his prized hammer and armor pulverized. The bloody calamity had rained down equally on upper- and lower-class adventurers.
“Ugh…?!”
Even for Lilly, with her long experience as a supporter, the brutal picture of deep lacerations, twisted arms and legs, and bones jutting from flesh was a sight terrible enough to drain the blood from her face. Could they really be alive? Lilly pressed her hand to her mouth. She lacked the courage to enter that circle of still-groaning adventurers and find out.
Some of them are members of Loki Familia…I wonder if Sir Finn guessed at the monsters’ hiding place and sent out scouts? After all this uproar, the Xenos probably won’t be coming back here…
Among the unconscious adventurers, Lilly found a few of the fool emblems and gulped. The crushed walls and stone pavers that littered the aftermath of the battle brought to mind the monster that had managed to inflict this much damage. The image was…that jet-black minotaur whose fierce howls she had heard before.
Did a monster capable of this much damage really need help?
Lilly began to search the alleyway for signs that might lead her to the Xenos. Each time she found an adventurer who was still breathing, she felt both tremendous relief and tremendous unease.
Whether with fists or kicks, he struck them.
That was all it took.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh?!”
One of the hunters tossed aside his weapons and tried to run, but he was overtaken right away and received a kick for his efforts. Just like his fellow hunters, he collapsed, vomiting blood.
It wasn’t fair to call this a struggle. He couldn’t even call it hunting.
Tormented by the hunger that grew and grew out of control, he returned to his brethren—the ones who had been separated. Hunters had been attacking them, and he saved them.
His rabbit kin had hopped with joy, saying he was truly someone to count on.
His winged kin had mumbled pitifully, saying perhaps he’d gone too far.
The brethren who witnessed his hunger fell into two categories. Those who praised it and those who feared it.
He realized that even among his own he was a maverick. His dream was fundamentally different from theirs. They had feelings for these places on the surface and for the people who inhabited them. But he had none. He could find meaning only in struggle.
We must part ways here, he thought.
He saw that his dream might destroy the dream of his kin. He would give them the key. The key with the eyeball buried in it. The object he’d been keeping for them until now. When he told them that he didn’t need it, the brother in the red hat asked him a question.
“What will you do now?”
He told them what his intentions were.
To fight. To open a path.
And.
That he sensed the dream he was searching for was here on the surface.
“…I understand. I wish you good fortune in war.”
He turned his back on the brethren, who were mourning their parting.
Perhaps it would be an eternal separation.
He had a premonition that would be the case, but it didn’t matter. Not if he was able to find his dream here on the surface.
Concealing his oversized form and presence in the blackness, he continued his journey of seeking.
To meet again—and to fight again.
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