Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 15 - Chapter 10

10. Life and Death

The mountain wasn’t especially steep, and the weather was good. The journey would have been just like a group climb, except for the dragons. When a thousand or so people march in columns, wild beasts tend not to approach. Unless it’s the mightiest of all animals, the dragon, said to have no predators but those of its own kind.

It took until evening to reach the summit, thankfully with no dragon sightings during that time.

Looking to the east, there was a large city visible. Not Alterna. Damuro. In the time when the Kingdom of Arabakia was prospering north of the Tenryu Mountains, Damuro was the central city of their southernmost region. And when Damuro fell, the victory of the Alliance of Kings and the defeat of humanity were set in stone.

After that, Damuro became a den of goblins, divided into the New City in the west, and the Old City in the east. The Old City had been neglected for over 100 years, and was still in ruins. According to Merry, it was inhabited by those goblins who were defeated in the factional struggles of the city, along with other outcasts. The New City that had been rebuilt by the goblins was, in a word, bizarre. It looked more like a massive anthill than a city, high-rise buildings mixed into the middle of it.

The Expeditionary Force headed east, down the mountain, taking breaks along the way. They didn’t want to spend the night on the mountainside, so even if the sun went down along the way, they would just have to keep going and pray there were no dragons.

The soldiers had started out either jumping at their own shadows or messing around, but now moved forward in silence. Even if they started whining, “I’m tired, I can’t take anymore,” nobody was going to carry them on their back, or pull them along by the hand. If they didn’t walk on their own two feet, they would be left on the side of a mountain where there might be dragons.

Once they were over the mountain, the Expeditionary Force started to act a little more like a proper military. Could that have been why General Jin Mogis chose that route? Obviously, if dragons had shown up, there would have been too much chaos for the troops to learn anything, so maybe Haruhiro was overthinking it.

That’s right.

No dragons appeared.

The Expeditionary Force finally finished descending the mountain late at night, and most of the soldiers collapsed wherever they were and slept like rocks.

Haruhiro and his group were exhausted, too, but they didn’t go to sleep immediately. This was the time to prepare bedding, no matter how minimal, and rest themselves properly. If they went to bed hungry, their sleep would be shallow, so they had to eat something first, and if they didn’t quench their thirst, they wouldn’t get quality sleep.

While Haruhiro and the others were preparing to go to sleep, General Mogis was walking calmly between the soldiers. The vast majority of the men were out cold and didn’t stir. It was kind of eerie, the way the general looked like he was walking through a field of the dead.

No, not kind of; it was eerie.

The general hummed as he went.

He was blatantly enjoying himself.

“...You sure that guy’s not nuts?” Kuzaku whispered.

The general had chosen to cross the mountain, betting on no dragons appearing, in order to train his men. Maybe that wasn’t it. He would have been fine with dragons appearing. In fact, he wanted them to. The dragons would attack, and the men would run left and right, panicking, as they were killed one after another. Had Jin Mogis wanted to watch that scene unfold? Smiling and humming as he watched...

That was absurd.

Haruhiro was pretty tired, so he was probably just indulging silly fantasies.

When the sun rose, Haruhiro woke immediately, but it took quite a while before the soldiers of the Expeditionary Force did.

They set out at close to noon, and by the time they had marched four kilometers to the southeast, the sun was already going down.

Alterna was about ten kilometers due east of here.

From this point on, it was mostly groves of trees, open plains, and marshland. If they marched with an army of a thousand men, they would be spotted from a long distance away. If they wanted to launch a surprise attack on Alterna, they had to cut across the land with a forced march at night, and take it in one hard push.

General Mogis ordered the army to stand by, and then called Neal the scout, Anthony, and Haruhiro’s group over.

“I have an important mission for you people to carry out. I want you to make contact with our agents who should be hiding in enemy territory, and to gather information.”

“Hiding?” Haruhiro asked. “...By enemy territory, you mean Alterna, right? Does that mean there’re people in Alterna?”

The general merely stared at Haruhiro, not saying anything.

“If they haven’t been found,” Anthony answered. “In the case that Alterna was occupied by the enemy, a small number of people were to remain inside the town, waiting for support.”

“That assumes they followed the rules,” Neal added.

“Confirming that is part of your mission,” the general said nonchalantly, but it seemed dangerous.

No, it was unquestionably going to be really dangerous.

Honestly, he didn’t like it. But if those were the general’s orders, he couldn’t refuse.

Haruhiro thought for a moment before opening his mouth.

“Maybe we should keep our numbers to an absolute minimum?”

The general was silent. He was looking at Haruhiro.

“I’m well-suited to the task, but if I bring people who aren’t along with me, they’ll only get in the way.”

“I’m a priest,” said Merry. “If anyone gets injured, I’ll be useful. I think I should go, too.”

Merry was probably no specialist at undercover operations, but there was the matter of their memories, too. Ultimately, he was going to need her to come along.

“I...” Kuzaku started to say, then groaned. “I’d love to go, but I might cause trouble for you...”

There was no reason that they desperately needed Setora and Kiichi to come with them, either.

“Okay, so me, Merry... Anthony-san, and Neal-san.” Haruhiro looked at the general. “How’s that?”

When Haruhiro looked into General Mogis’s rusty eyes, he was struck with unease for some reason. The man’s expression was hard to read. Was he plotting something horrible? Haruhiro couldn’t help but suspect it.

The general nodded.

“Very well. Set out at once.”

Just as they were heading out, Kuzaku complained.

“We’re getting left behind, huh? I wanted to go, too.”

“You yourself said that you might cause trouble.”

“Well, yeah. I might cause trouble for you, but I still want to be there. I know that’s contradictory. But that’s valid, right?”

“It’s not.” Setora didn’t mince words. “Kiichi and I might be one thing, but you and Shihoru could end up weighing them down. Haruhiro made the right decision.”

“But Setora-san, I don’t think that’s why Haruhiro did it. It’s less that we’d be a hindrance, and more that, deep down, he’s worried about us. It’s that fatherly urge to keep us out of danger, you know? Oh, I guess he’s not our dad, huh? It’s just normal concern, then.”

“No, man,” Haruhiro told him. “It’s that you’d just be in the way. You’re huge.”

“Oh, come on. ...Huh? Are you serious? I mean, I know I’m way too big, but still!”

Shihoru tugged on Haruhiro’s sleeve.

“...Take care.”

Haruhiro felt a little embarrassed, and looked away from Shihoru.

“...Yeah.”

“You, too, Merry,” Shihoru added.

“I will,” Merry said, her lips twitching to give her a slight smile. “...Thanks.”

The group of four set off soon after that.

There were farms and pastures dotted around south of Alterna, as well as farmhouses here and there, though not enough to amount to villages. Now that Alterna had been taken, the fields had been torn up, and there was no livestock to be seen. The farmers had fled or been killed. Obviously, the houses were all empty. There was no sign of goblins lurking around them, either.

After the sun went down, Haruhiro and the others set foot inside one of the farmhouses. It was a solid wooden house with a thatch roof, but it looked no different from any of the others. The inside had been torn apart. That was the doing of orcs or goblins, no doubt.

“Where is it?” Haruhiro asked Anthony.

Anthony said, “Over here,” and led Haruhiro to the kitchen. It wasn’t separated from the rest of the house in any way, though. There was just an oven and a counter for preparing food in one corner of the room.

Anthony helped Haruhiro to move the kitchen counter aside. There was a secret door hidden on the wall behind where it had sat.

When they opened the hidden door, there was a cramped little room that stank of dust and mold. Barrels, boxes, and old tools were left inside, but those had to be decoys.

Anthony and Haruhiro pulled the barrels and other stuff out of the room, and peeled all the stone tiles off of the floor.

Eventually, an entrance that resembled a well appeared.

“It’s 50 years old, from what I’ve heard,” Anthony said as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “There are supposed to be others, too, but this is the only one that I know of.”

“Feels like something’s going to come out of it.” Neal gestured to the passage with his chin. “You go first.”

Anthony, Haruhiro, Merry, and then Neal was the group’s marching order as they went down.

There were metal fixtures on the walls to hook their hands and feet on, but they had to proceed straight down for a while. It really was just like a well, and only big enough for a single person to fit through at a time.

“The fixtures have started to come loose in some places. Be careful.” No sooner had Anthony said that than, “Wah!” he cried out in surprise. “...That was dangerous. One of the fittings fell out.”

Despite that, they all managed to make their way down the vertical portion, and after that there was a tunnel that was less than a meter across, and low enough that even Haruhiro, who was not particularly tall, had to duck his head. He was forced to crouch as he walked, so it was pretty rough.

Anthony, who was at the front of the group, was carrying a small lantern. That was their only light.

“They go into hiding, and wait for reinforcements they can’t even be sure will come, huh?” Neal snorted. “That’s a losing role if I ever heard one. I wouldn’t do it, myself. Let’s hope the people of the frontier have a little more backbone.”

“The people of the frontier,” Anthony said with a strong tone, “have steadier nerves than you mainlanders. That much is certain.”

Neal laughed a little.

“You could be right.”

“I am,” Anthony responded.

The tunnel must have been avoiding places where the rock was too hard to dig through. It twisted and turned. There was no telling when it would end.

Haruhiro occasionally checked how Merry was doing. Every time, she would nod to him, as if to say she was fine.

“Where does this connect to?” Haruhiro asked Anthony.

“The dread knights’ guild in West Town.”

“The dread knights. West Town...” Haruhiro repeated pensively.

As he recalled, Merry had told them that a former comrade of theirs, Ranta, had been a dread knight. West Town. He wasn’t sure, but it was probably the western side of Alterna. Maybe that was obvious.

“Judging by how far we’ve walked, we should be under Alterna by now,” said Anthony.

They walked a good distance farther after that. When they came to a rock wall, Anthony stopped.

Neal let out a bitter laugh.

“Oh, come on...”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.” Anthony stopped crouching and stretched out his back.

Wouldn’t he hit his head? It looked like the ceiling was higher there.

Anthony hooked the lantern to his waist.

“Okay, we’ll have to climb. Follow me.”

Unlike at the entrance, there were no metal fittings here, so they had to push their hands and feet against the walls and slowly work their way up.

After going up about two meters, it connected to a hole that went sideways. If they crawled, they were just able to fit into it. It was even tighter than the tunnel they had come through before, but it was reinforced with stone.

“This is the exit,” Anthony said, then began to bang on something.

Was it blocked with just a thin barrier of stone? Anthony knocked it out with brute force.

When they came out, they were in a large, open room made from stone.

Anthony took the lantern from his waist and held it in his hand, shining it around.

Were those statues lining the wall? There were figures that were not quite human or beast standing on top of pedestals. They came in a variety of sizes. Some were the size of a person, while others were half that.

Then there was this creepy thing that he couldn’t identify at first; he thought it was the dead body of some kind of creature, but it was a candle. Countless candles had melted and then hardened together, assuming this frightful form that now dominated the floor of this room.

“Skullhell worship, huh?” Neal looked at one of the statues and shrugged. “It’s distasteful. Humans, worshiping the god of death.”

Anthony looked like he was about to say something.

“Is...” Haruhiro tensed. He’d drawn his dagger without noticing it. “...Someone there?”

Way in the back of the room. Was that a statue, too?

No. That was no statue.

It moved.

Stood up.

“O-O-O-O Darkness, O-O-O-O L-Lord of V-V-Vice.”

It spoke.

That was a human voice.

“...A survivor?!” Neal drew his dagger and prepared himself.

“No...” Anthony lowered his lantern to the ground and pulled out his sword.

“It’s not!” Merry shouted.

“D-D-Demon C-C-Call,” someone said in an incredibly hoarse voice.

A purple cloud-like thing began to form a vortex in the darkness.

That whorling mass soon took on a specific form.

It had a head like a pure-white deer, and an emaciated human body covered in a dark cloak. What was that thing?

“A demon!” Merry said. “A dread knight’s familiar!”

“What’s going on?!” Neal shouted.

Merry didn’t answer him.

“Stop the demon! I’ll purify it!”

Purify it.

A zombie, huh?

The No-Life King’s curse had transformed that dread knight into a moving corpse. It wasn’t a survivor. They were already dead.

“Ueahhehhhhhhhhahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

The demon let out a terrifying cry as it charged. The white, bone-like arms that had been hidden by its cloak came into view. The hands were practically scythes.

“Hahh!” Anthony let out a battle cry as he knocked the demon back with his sword.

Haruhiro and Merry looked at one another. What was Merry trying to do, and what did she want from Haruhiro? He understood in an instant.

Haruhiro ran past Anthony, who was trading blows with the demon.

The dread knight zombie noticed Haruhiro.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah.”

The zombie had a weapon. A curved sword, a scimitar. Not just one, but two. A dual-wielder, huh?

When the zombie stepped forward, he got chills.

He’d been assuming that, because it was a zombie, it would be slow and stupid, or at least not as quick as it was in life. Maybe it was even faster when it was still alive, but it was still pretty fast despite being dead.

In the time it took him to say, “Whoa,” it had closed the gap.

His body reacted instinctively. He blocked the two scimitars with his dagger and turned them aside, but he had no idea how he managed it.

The zombie kept coming.

Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, craaaap.

Haruhiro drew the other dagger, the one with a wavy blade that looked like flames. He deflected the zombie’s scimitar. Just barely. He deflected it even as he was thinking in surprise, Wow, I can actually do this, huh?

However, the zombie suddenly vanished before his eyes.

“Huh...?”

The left.

He didn’t know if it was instinct, or what, but Haruhiro looked to his left.

There it was.

The zombie.

Did it teleport? No way, that’s absurd. Uh, oh. The scimitar. I can’t avoid it, and I can’t deflect it, either. I’m not gonna make it.

“O Light, may Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you.”

Merry came at the zombie like she was going to tackle it.

This was actually just what they’d been after. No, he hadn’t signaled her, and he’d been in danger, but it was their intent all along that Haruhiro would act as a decoy and catch the zombie’s attention, then Merry would purify it with magic.

“Dispel...!”

There was a burst of light, and it engulfed the zombie.

When the zombie fell, the demon vanished, too.

“Haru!” Merry rushed over to him, a terrible look on her face. “Are you hurt?!”

“Oh... Yeah.” The way she grabbed his arm tight and touched his face surprised him a little. “...I’m fine. Thanks.”

Merry let out a sigh.

“Thank goodness.”

“So this is one of those zombies I’ve been hearing about?” Neal kicked the fallen zombie, trying to turn it over.

“Don’t,” Anthony stopped Neal. “He was being manipulated by a curse.”

“Hah,” Neal laughed derisively. “‘He’? The curse, or whatever it was, is broken now. It’s just a dead body.”

“Do you mainlanders have no respect for the dead?”

“I don’t know how it is in the frontier, but Skullhell worshipers deserve nothing but contempt, even once they’re dead. These guys are vile, okay?”

“From what I can tell, he was a lord of the dread knight guild. He stayed in Alterna and fought to the last. What’s vile about that?”

Neal waved his hand to cut off the conversation, acting as if it was too much bother.

Merry knelt next to the body and offered a prayer. Anthony offered a silent prayer of his own, too.

Haruhiro tried to emulate the two of them, but was there any point in keeping up appearances like this when he didn’t really mourn the man?

“You’re the same as me, huh?” Neal gave him a friendly slap on the back.

I don’t know about that, thought Haruhiro, but he said nothing. He had a feeling he was never going to like Neal. Yeah, he might hate the guy pretty badly.

“Let’s go.” Anthony picked up the lantern he had placed on the ground. “We have business at the thieves’ guild. It’s in West Town, too, so it’s not far.”

The dread knights’ guild was under an abandoned house that looked like it could collapse at any moment.

The above-ground portion looked run-down at a glance, but the structure was solid, the halls were intricate, and there were many small rooms. It had many hidden rooms, too, and one of them contained a passage leading to the underground.

That lord had likely been wounded in battle, and fled into the dread knights’ guild, but died there.

However, even after occupying the city, the enemy had not found the guild. They’d searched above and below ground, just to be sure, but there were no survivors, obviously, and no other zombies or even dead bodies to be found.

That lord was the only one to die underground and then be turned into one of the moving dead by the No-Life King’s curse, resulting in him being there, waiting, when Haruhiro and the others arrived.

“Looks like we did a good deed, as followers of Lumiaris, the God of Light,” Neal said brazenly. “That Skullhell-worshiping heretic had turned into an abomination against the laws of life. It was a vile being that needed to be destroyed. I’m sure Lumiaris must be quite pleased.”

“Would you please shut up?” Anthony glared at Neal. “I don’t sense any now, but we can’t be sure there are no enemies about.”

Neal put on a weak smile and raised his hands in mock surrender.

The area was dimly lit. Sunrise was approaching.

West Town was the slums, and the buildings looked old and dilapidated, broken, or on the verge of collapse, but they had somehow been preserved with maintenance.

The group still hadn’t seen so much as a single goblin since coming up to the surface.

Were there no goblins in West Town? No, they were probably just inside, sleeping. They had to get to where they were going before the goblins woke up.

“...It should be around here.” Anthony looked at Haruhiro. “Why haven’t we gotten there yet?”

Don’t ask me, was how Haruhiro really felt, but he was a thief. He couldn’t reveal that there was no way he could tell them where the thieves’ guild was.

“Because... it’s the thieves’ guild?” Haruhiro tried suggesting.

“Because... it’s morning?” Merry offered, but he wasn’t so sure it helped much.

Haruhiro put on a frown that he hoped looked right.

“It’s kinda... been a long time, you know...?”

Neal looked around the area.

“It is an awfully suspicious place.”

The group had focused their attention on an odd building that was a complex mix of stone and wood construction, and they were trying to circle around it to find an entrance.

The problem was, they couldn’t.

They ran into walls and fences, among other obstacles, and just couldn’t seem to find any way to get around to the side or back of the building.

They tried heading into the nearby alleyways, but were still unable to get through to the other side, and ended up having to turn back.

“Hold on...”

We’re getting lost, aren’t we?

They were on a narrow road that ran next to the building in question, but Haruhiro didn’t know where they were.

If he wanted to get back to, say, the dread knights’ guild from here, he would probably have a surprisingly hard time. It wouldn’t be easy, at least.

Anthony sighed.

“This is bad.”

Even now, time was going by. Haruhiro pulled on his earlobe. He felt no less of a sense of urgency than Anthony, but the more he tried to hurry, the more likely he was to miss things, and the more it dulled his thinking, so he needed to stay calm here.

That was when, suddenly, “Do you people need something?” said a voice from behind him, leaving him flabbergasted.

It was a woman’s voice.

If it was coming from behind them, that meant the woman was in the alley that the group had just been down. When did she get there? Where had she appeared from? He hadn’t noticed her at all. Haruhiro turned around.

It was a woman, like he thought. She looked nothing if not human. Her long hair hid half her face.

Her body, on the other hand, was not hidden. She wasn’t naked, but it would have been appropriate if what she was wearing covered a little more of her. She was showing too much skin.

“Oh...” Neal took a deep breath.

Anthony gulped.

“...!” Merry tried to say something, but the woman spoke first.

“Old Cat,” she said.

The woman’s eyes went wide as she stared at Haruhiro. She seemed surprised.

I’m the one who’s surprised here, okay?

“...Huh?” Haruhiro pointed at himself. “...Ol? Cat...”

The woman brushed her hair back behind her ear and sighed.

“You were still alive?”

“Alive...”

Olcat? No, was it Old Cat?

It wasn’t clear what she was referring to, but she probably knew who Haruhiro was.

Haruhiro, however, didn’t know her. He didn’t remember.

“Alive...” Haruhiro lowered his gaze. “Well...”

For now, it was best not to mention anything he shouldn’t. But on the other hand, it wouldn’t be good if she thought he was hiding or trying not to talk about something.

“I made it somehow, thanks...”

“I’d heard you’d gone missing. I was sure you were dead.”

“...Stuff happened.”

“I am Anthony Justeen, a regimental commander in the 1st Brigade of the Arabakia Kingdom’s Frontier Army,” Anthony introduced himself. “You’re with the thieves’ guild, right? So you made it through all right...”

“All right, huh...? I don’t know about that,” the woman whispered, crossing her arms. “The name’s Barbara. I’m a thief, so that’s just my work name.”

Merry leaned in and whispered in Haruhiro’s ear.

“...That person, she might be a teacher. You called her Sensei. Though, that’s just a guess on my part.”

“Sensei...”

This made less and less sense.

Barbara was looking at Haruhiro again. If he got too flustered or looked away, she might get suspicious, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to look at her directly.

Why did this thief, Barbara, who was supposedly his teacher, not wear proper clothes? What was it that she’d been teaching him?

It was too much of a mystery.