Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 13 - Chapter 9

9. Is This Any Time to be Laughing?!

Peeking hesitantly into the tent, the only one there was Kejiman.

That was right. Kejiman had apparently been too impatient for Haruhiro and the rest to arrive, so he’d gone in ahead of them.

It wasn’t wide. Three meters in each direction, maybe. It was divided not by walls, but lustrous, deep purple curtains. There was a red carpet laid out on the floor. Its fibers were pretty long. There was a side table standing in the corner, and atop it was a rather expensive-looking lamp. Considering the size of the tent, there had to be another room or something if they pulled back those curtains.

There was nothing like a musical instrument that could have been making the sounds they’d heard here.

Haruhiro had his comrades wait outside, setting foot inside the tent himself.

Kuzaku held the entrance open from the outside.

“This is truly... truly it,” Kejiman said. Then he started to laugh. “Heh heh heh heh!”

“Listen, um... could you be quiet?” Haruhiro asked.

“What for?!”

“Do I really have to explain?”

“We’re dealing with the Ainrand Leslie, you know! If he wanted to do something to us, he could have done anything, anything, anything by now!”

“You don’t know what kind of person he is either, do you, Kejiman-san? Not even if he’s human or not...”

“Buuuuut! I am confident that when it comes to rumors, gossip, hearsay, and more about Ainrand Leslie, my knowledge is second to none! Maybe second to none is a little excessive, but I’m decently knowledgeable about the subject! I know some things!”

“Isn’t the level of knowledge you have gradually decreasing there...?”

“This roooom!” Kejiman stood bowlegged, pointing up diagonally with the index fingers of both his hands.

“Is there some meaning to that pose?” Haruhiro sighed. Haruhiro lamented his need to point these things out.

“This room iiiis...!” Kejiman cried.

Haruhiro was being ignored. Depressing.

“...the Violet Roooom!” Kejiman exclaimed, finishing his sentence. “From what I’ve heard, the inside of the Leslie Camp is viiiioleeeet! In other words! In other worururds! This labyrinth of deep purple curtains! The labyrinth really exists!”

“I’m already exhausted...” Haruhiro muttered.

“Okay, okay, let’s calm down now.”

Kejiman thumped himself on the chest twice, breathed out, and then cleared his throat.

Oh, man. This is bad news.

Haruhiro felt he was used to guys like this. That was why he had a way to control them to some degree. Or so he’d thought, but he had been pulled totally off his pace. There was always someone better than you. Who knew he’d been up against such a tough opponent?

“Now, come in, people.” Kejiman gestured with his arm.

Kuzaku followed them inside the Violet Room.

Haruhiro pressed his hand against his forehead. “What’re you coming in here for, man?”

“Ah! Sorry, I didn’t mean to...”

“They have no choice but to come in, anyway.” Kejiman pressed on the bridge of his glasses with his middle finger, letting out a low laugh.

“Why is that?” Setora flipped back the curtain to ask.

Kejiman lowered his voice and said, as if unveiling some special secret, “The thing is... there is a legend about Leslie Camp, saying, ‘You cannot leave through the door you enter.’”

“Nonsense.”

Setora passed through the curtain, boldly entering the Violet Room. The curtain at the entrance closed behind her. Then Setora made an about-face, attempting to leave the way she’d come in.

“Wha...?”

Setora was heading for the exit. There was no doubt about that. If she reached out, she could reach the curtain. If she moved a little forward and pushed the curtain aside, she should have been able to leave. And yet...

“How strange,” Setora murmured.

“What is it?” Kuzaku asked.

Setora shook her head as if she couldn’t understand it. “I don’t know.”

“Ho-hoh! Well, well!” Kejiman attempted to run to the exit, but on the way he froze in place, and his entire body started twitching. “Nnnnngh...! Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What is thiiiiiiis...?!”

“Huh? You can’t get out? You’re pulling our leg.” Kuzaku laughed and headed for the exit. The first and second step went fine, but he came to a dead stop right in front of the exit. “What is this? All I can say is, it feels weird...”

Kejiman was one thing, but it was hard to imagine Kuzaku or Setora were messing with him. Haruhiro didn’t need to try it himself; he could assume something abnormal was going on.

Shihoru, Merry, and Kiichi were still outside.

There were two options. He could have the Shihoru and the others outside escape, and those inside would figure a way out themselves, or...

No. Haruhiro shook his head. Splitting up the party was no good.

“Shihoru!” he called. “Merry and Kiichi, too... come in.”

Two people and one nyaa came through the curtain into the tent. Merry seemed pensive, or had a slightly grim look on her face, but she looked like she might be pale, too.

Perhaps Kiichi sensed something, because he jumped up and had Setora hold him. Shihoru seemed uneasy, too.

“What’s... going on?” Shihoru asked.

“Well, you see—” Kuzaku started to explain, but he was cut off by someone’s voice.

“Helloooo. How are you feeeeling? Weeeelcome to the Leslie Camp.”

“Nihah?!” Kejiman let out a weird cry and looked left and right.

“Just now... did that voice say Leslie Camp?” Shihoru asked.

Yes, Haruhiro had clearly heard the voice say that, too. Was this really, really the Leslie Camp? What did that mean for them? Whatever it meant, that voice...

That voice was a woman’s voice.

He might have been imagining it, but it sounded familiar, or maybe not...?

“You are humans, yes? That means you understand this language, yes? Are you all—”

“There!” Kejiman turned to the left curtain, pulling it violently. When the curtain was pulled back, there was a similar room surrounded in curtains, and no sign of any person inside. “...Urgh! The voice was coming from here, so whyyyy?!”

“Oh, my, my, my, my,” the voice said. “We have some lively guests here. Too lively, in fact. If you get too carried away, you won’t live long, I’m afraid.”

“Wh-Where are you?! Come out! No, please come out! You, the one with the voice of a beautiful young girl!”

“Kyapii,” the voice said. “How’d you know I was a beautiful young girl, I wonder? From just my voice? Do I give off such a high level of beautiful young girl-ness that it can’t possibly be hidden? But I can’t.”

“Why kyapii?!”

“O travelers.” The self-proclaimed voice of a beautiful young girl suddenly took on a more august tone. “Seek and wander. If you do, your path will lead you somewhere. I welcome you once more, travelers, to the wandering warehouse of relics that my master, Ainrand Leslie has gathered.”

The voice cut out.

Haruhiro and Kuzaku quickly traded glances. Haruhiro took the front, Kuzaku the right. They both pulled back the curtains in unison.

The room in front of them was no different from this one. But the room to the right was different. It had a wooden door.

Taking a glance at it, Haruhiro couldn’t help but find it bizarre. Normally, doors were built into walls. However, that door stood with a curtain behind it.

From the look of it, if they opened the door, there would be a curtain behind it.

“Ohhhhh!” Suddenly, Kejiman rushed over in front of the door, and reached for the knob. If Haruhiro had reacted a moment slower, Kejiman would no doubt have opened it.

Spider.

No, he wasn’t going to go as far as killing him. Haruhiro just pinned Kejiman’s arms behind him before he could do it.

“H-Hold on!” Haruhiro exclaimed as he struggled.

“Argh, let go! I’m your employer! What do you think you’re doing to your employer?!”

“We don’t know what will happen!”

“Whether it’s a demon lord or a dark god that’s going to come out, we won’t know until we try!”

“Somehow, I don’t really want either of those coming out!”

“Let go! Let go, let go, let go! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

“What are you, a petulant child...?”

Haruhiro handed Kejiman, who was flailing around and making a scene, over to Kuzaku. He felt safer for now, but what to do next?

“We can’t go out that exit,” Haruhiro pondered aloud. “If we can find another way out...”

“There is still no guarantee we will be able to leave.” Setora was thoroughly stroking Kiichi’s throat. Perhaps she was trying to calm him. “That woman’s voice, it said this was a warehouse of relics. It was a relic that made creating artificial souls and manufacturing golems possible, too. Though this may not be true for all of them, a certain percentage of relics hold the power to upend the laws of this world. They are priceless.”

“Theyyyy’re! Iiiin! Heeeere! Lots of them! Even that door, as ordinary as it looks, muuuust be a relic!” Kejiman screamed.

Kejiman was being held firmly by Kuzaku. He wasn’t gagged, though, so he could still shout.

Setora gave Kejiman a side-eyed glare. “What a noisy man. Should I silence him?”

“Y-Y-You’re going to kill me?! If so, I’ll shut up for a bit...”

“Close your mouth until I say otherwise. You are insufferable.”

Kejiman nodded in silence.

“That’s a relic...” Shihoru was hugging her staff, looking nervously at the door, but not approaching it.

Merry was quiet. She looked down, her brow furrowed. Was she okay?

No, it wasn’t just Merry; none of them were okay.

“Could we just open it, open it and see what happens...?” Kuzaku asked.

His suggestion was worth considering. They could try opening it, and if anything weird happened, they could immediately close it again.

“No,” Haruhiro said. “But, hmm, I’m not sure...”

Like Kejiman had said before, they had no idea what might come out, so honestly, he was scared. Still, Haruhiro deliberately swallowed his fear, and decided not to use the word “scared” anymore, if possible.

It was good to have a sense of fear. It made him cautious. But wailing about how scared he was could only hurt him.

Even if it was baseless, he had to, at the very least, reassure his comrades that they could handle this somehow.

“For now, why don’t we check out the rest? Obviously, we’ll do it as cautiously as we can, though,” Haruhiro suggested with feigned calm.

No one objected.