Chapter 8:
Quagmire vs. Dragon God
TWO DAYS NORTH by northeast from the city of Sharia, there was an abandoned village that had been swallowed by the forest.
Some forty years ago, a magical catastrophe had caused the local woods to expand rapidly. The village had been quickly overrun, forcing its inhabitants to relocate. In the decades since, the only visitors to this place had been the monsters that roamed the forest, and the occasional adventurer who came to hunt them.
Today, however, a man was making his way toward this village—a man with silver hair and golden eyes, who wore a white leather coat. The man monitored his surroundings alertly as he approached his destination. He wasn’t on horseback or riding in a carriage; he was simply walking along, striding calmly through the forest. Sometimes his sharp, intense eyes would glance down at a compass-like object in his left hand.
No monsters ventured to attack him. Many glittering eyes peered out at him from the depths of the woods, but when he drew close, even the fiercest creatures fled like frightened squirrels.
“…Is this it?”
As he reached the outskirts of the abandoned village that his compass was pointing toward, the man paused and studied it in silence for a moment.
“Why would she call me to a place like this…?”
Slowly, cautiously, he set foot into the ruined town. Its once-neat streets were covered in weeds, and its fields were now thickets. Great trees rose through the roofs of empty houses; others were so overgrown with vines that they resembled great green mounds of vegetation.
Soon, the man came to a halt once more. He’d reached the center of the town, where a well had once presumably been located. A conspicuous structure stood there: a tall yellow cylinder of a building, and it was the only thing in the entire town that had no trace of vegetation on it. From the condition of its stone walls and its front door, it had clearly been constructed recently.
The man looked down at the compass in his left hand and confirmed that its needle was pointing directly at this tower. He reached for its doorknob somewhat warily.
“…Nanahoshi, are you there?”
The interior of the tower was extremely plain. There were no windows or hallways. The floor was oddly slick, as if coated in some sort of oil. Someone had left a number of bulging burlap sacks and something like an incense burner up against the wall. The strange scent in the air seemed to indicate the burner was in active use.
“…What is this place?”
Glancing around the room, the man spotted another door in the wall straight across from him. Cautiously, but without hesitation, he strode up to it and reached for the doorknob. As he did so, he felt a small prick of pain. When he examined the palm of his hand, however, there wasn’t so much as a speck of blood.
“Hm…? Am I imagining things?”
He stepped through the door and found himself in a room with a layout identical to the first. Given that it was sitting on a slope, it appeared that a part of this building was actually underground.
The man was growing increasingly suspicious, but nonetheless proceeded forward. Signs bearing messages such as ‘Please remove your footwear here’ and ‘All guests, please put on this hat’ were posted on the walls; naturally, he ignored their instructions, and continued more warily than before.
Some of the doors were rigged with traps so small they might have been intended for mice. Carefully avoiding these, he pressed on, passing through one room after another.
Eventually, he arrived at a very strange room. It was tall, and circular, and had no ceiling whatsoever. When looked up, he could see a slice of the sky above him. It felt as if he was standing at the bottom of a chimney.
“…What’s going on here?”
Dubious, the man furrowed his brow, but the needle of his compass was pointing toward the center of the room. A small box sat there, a single sheet of paper underneath it. He approached it warily and looked at the paper. There were two words written on it:
Man-God
He quickly snatching up the little box and flipped it open.
“Hrm?!”
Great clouds of smoke immediately burst out of it.
As he dropped it and assumed a defensive stance, the man heard a small metallic clink. A silver ring had fallen to the ground next to the little box, which was somehow still discharging smoke with remarkable intensity.
The ring had presumably popped out of the box when it hit the ground. For some reason, it blinked with a faint red light—and the needle of his compass pointed directly at it.
“…Nanahoshi?”
The man reached down to pick up the ring.
A split-second later, there was a great flash in the sky.
“Guh!”
The man instantly kicked at the ground, trying to jump aside. But the oil-slick floor refused to cooperate. The soles of his boots lost their grip entirely.
A huge bolt of lightning slammed down on the Dragon God Orsted.
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