Chapter 37

In the distant past, giants ruled the fertile Enril Plains. Their enormous bodies devoured everything, turning the land into a desert. Needing to drink immense quantities of water each day, the giants could not endure their thirst. They enslaved humans and drained their blood to drink, killing thousands each day. But on a pitch-black, moonless night, the Night Hunter of the Freyans came and shot every last giant dead, delivering humanity from bondage.

The liberated humans offered the three most beautiful maidens in the land as his brides. The three children born to them each inherited a different power: to hide their bodies, to command shadows, and to create poison. After the Night Hunter ascended to heaven, the three brothers disputed who should succeed their father as ruler of the desert.

The eldest, who could hide his body, departed rather than fight his brothers. But the second son, who commanded shadows, and the third, who made poison, fought bitterly, throwing the desert into turmoil and bringing misery to countless people. At last, the eldest returned, defeated his two younger brothers, and claimed dominion over the desert. He was the ancestor of Zahar...

[You]

[Are not]

[The Night Hunter]

The phantom voice echoing from far away reminded Turan of the religious book he had bought in Komad. Why was that god's name suddenly being mentioned?

'Does it have something to do with the Zahar nobles already inside?'

Strictly speaking, Turan, too, would be a distant descendant of the Night Hunter, but given that his bloodline was combined with another, he could hardly be considered a pure Zahar. Several minutes into his advance through the pitch-black space, as he pondered this, he sensed a strange life-form.

From his experience with the Holy Relic, ordinary living creatures had a small flame burning in their hearts, while wizards and monsters felt as though that flame had spread throughout their bodies. And although Armani the merboy was his only example, other races seemed to have flames spreading into the parts of their bodies that differed from those of humans.

But the interior of the being he sensed now resembled none of those. How could he describe it? An empty interior inside a large shell, with fire flowing like water to move its body? It looked as though a blue flame were controlling a puppet from within.

Turan cautiously approached, and the creature hidden in the darkness came into view.

[□□□—]

The first thing he noticed was its mismatched eyes. Two glass marbles, one far too large and the other small, rolled independently as they surveyed their surroundings. Its nose was nothing but a sunken hole. Its mouth gaped in an oval, lined with sawlike teeth, and its long arms and legs each had an extra joint, creaking unsteadily. The slime running over its flayed skin looked so viscous that it would be difficult to wipe off once it stuck to anything.

Something about the creature was warped, its appearance repulsive to behold. Yet the instant Turan stepped closer for a better look, it whipped its head around and screamed as though it had suddenly noticed him.

[■□■□■□!]

That single cry seemed to alert all of them to his presence. Three or four of the creatures approached with unnatural movements, immediately swinging what could be called enormous hands—or forepaws. Their speed and force were enough to overwhelm even a fairly capable noble.

“Ghk!”

As he accelerated his thoughts, he saw five fingers, just like a human's, with hooked claws at their tips. Leaning backward to avoid the now-slowly approaching claws, he rubbed his hands together to kindle a flame, then blasted it forward without shaping it. Perhaps unaccustomed to light and heat from living in darkness, the creatures shrieked and recoiled from the fire.

'How did they notice me?'

He was still maintaining the complete stealth spell unique to the Zahar bloodline. Using stealth in darkness like this was almost as easy as breathing. That meant those creatures possessed the power to see through even Zahar's stealth.

Fortunately, their detection range was not very broad. When he retreated about twenty meters, far enough that he could only sense them rather than see them, the creatures apparently lost him. They glanced around before dispersing.

'Good. At least I can strike first.'

Watching the traces of blue flame flowing through the pitch-black darkness, Turan loaded a stone into his sling. With ample time to prepare, he could spin it around repeatedly and infuse it with plenty of mana. Beyond a certain point, adding more mana brought sharply diminishing returns for the effort, making this less than ideal. Still, it was useful when he needed to silence a single target with one precise blow.

'Take this!'

CRACK!

The stone, charged with what felt like a tenth of his mana, instantly caved in the creature's head. After making sure the other creatures nearby had not reacted to the attack, Turan approached.

'Good. It's dead.'

The stone had pierced the exact center of its slime-covered face and exited through the back of its head. After retrieving it from behind the creature, Turan returned to the corpse and tried absorbing its mana. Before long, he felt power seeping into him.

'Well, it's definitely a magical life-form...'

Like ordinary humans and animals, other races had no mana, so killing them yielded no power to absorb. The same was true even of the likes of Dark Elf wraith sorcerers. These things, then, belonged in the same category as monsters or wizards.

Strangely, he had not absorbed much mana from the bizarre creature. His experience killing monsters and absorbing their power told him that a being with this much speed and resilience should yield more. And for some reason he could not fathom, the Holy Relic had not absorbed any of its mana this time either.

'What exactly are these things?'

If they were monsters, he could not tell what they had originally been. More importantly, far too many of them looked identical. Expanding his senses revealed fifty or sixty or more within just a few hundred meters.

[You are not the Night Hunter—]

That tiresome phantom voice again. Mid-sigh, Turan sensed movement behind him and swiftly moved away. The nobles he had seen earlier were approaching.

* * *

“Halt.”

Perga Zahar frowned at the sight before him as he gave the order. He and the dozen or so nobles accompanying him had come across the corpse of one of the bizarre creatures inhabiting this place.

“What? Have we been this way too?”

“Who knows? We lost our sense of direction ages ago.”

Letting his friends' muttering wash over him, Perga unhesitatingly touched the creature's quivering, slimy skin and examined its wound. The injury was between its eyes, and the weapon had been something about the size of an egg... He suspected this was the source of the faint earthy smell that had led him here.

“Everyone, show me your weapons.”

After inspecting each person's armaments, Perga's expression grew grave. Chakrams, bows, daggers, axes. None of their weapons could have made a wound like this. Nor did it seem to be a bite or claw mark, ruling out the possibility that the creatures had attacked one another.

“What's wrong, Perga?”

“There's someone else in here besides us.”

“Hm? A rescue party, perhaps?”

“If it were, we'd have noticed already. Moving around noisily attracts far too much attention here.”

Ignorance of that fact had made their first day of confinement a terrible ordeal. They had drifted apart in the darkness and called out to one another, only to come under attack from over a hundred of the creatures.

“First, let's start moving in a wide circle.”

“Why?”

“If someone nearby is listening to us, moving like that will make it harder for them to keep their distance.”

At Perga's instruction, they immediately began circling widely, keeping the dead creature to their right. As they moved, he called to the slightly built man beside him.

“Galthen?”

“Yes, Lord Perga. Your command?”

Galthen Rosmun, head of House Rosmun, which ruled Banipel, promptly bowed his head at Perga's call. Ordinarily, the head of a vassal house had no need to be so deferential to anyone except his liege—the head of the main house. But things were different between Galthen and Perga. Despite his relatively poor abilities, Galthen had inherited his position by marrying Perga's sister.

“I'll need you to set traps nearby. So we can catch the rat in here.”

“The rat, my lord?”

“Obviously someone sent by either Rahman or Alma. They intend to take this opportunity to bury me here.”

“But my siblings should be guarding the entrance outside...”

“There's no way they could stop a Zahar noble without being prepared, is there?”

Fittingly for a house whose founder had seized power by eliminating all his brothers, Zahar's power struggles reeked of blood. Things might be different in the main house, where its near-divine House Head saw everything, but here, away from prying eyes, there was ample opportunity to try to eliminate a rival.

“Understood. Please give me a moment.”

House Rosmun possessed the Barrier-user bloodline, skilled at planting magic in space. Its powers could do something as simple as trigger a noise when someone passed through a particular area, or cause flames to erupt and the ground to collapse. Of course, the labyrinth itself had been created through the gods' power, so its ground could not be manipulated. But sudden bursts of flame would be enough to keep an enemy at bay.

“Imelda, keep our surroundings lit.”

“Even with my bloodline ability, that will take quite a bit of mana, you know?”

“We'll have to accept that. Better than having our throats slit in our sleep.”

“Well, yes, but...”

Imelda, a noble of the light-manipulating Illusion bloodline, cast a brilliant glow at Perga's instruction. The labyrinth's peculiar darkness prevented even that light from reaching beyond twenty-odd meters, but the unidentified assassin would be unable to detect them from beyond that range anyway. And if the assassin came within range, maintaining stealth amid that overwhelming white light for long would be impossible.

“Remember. If any one of us is attacked, create light and send it toward the area around them.”

Everyone nodded at Perga's instruction. Only one person shook his head instead: Turan, standing behind them.

'They're certainly putting a lot of effort into protecting themselves.'

While Perga issued his instructions with fervor, Turan remained concealed just over twenty meters away, listening to every word. The Holy Relic allowed him to observe their movements clearly and maintain his distance.

Turan gauged their strength by the size of their flames. Whether friends or vassals, the other nine had mana comparable to his or far less, but Perga alone possessed more than twice his power. That was probably the kind of strength found only among the upper ranks of a great house.

'For now, I'll keep a reasonable distance and look for a way out.'

Leaving them to set traps and search while scattering light in every direction, Turan walked into the darkness.

* * *

For the next three days, Turan and Perga's party shared a strange existence within the dark labyrinth.

Fortunately, the traps set by the Barrier-user noble proved little hindrance. The Holy Relic could detect even mana that had been used to cast spells, making the traps clearly visible.

If anything, the traps caused trouble for the nobles themselves. Unable to tell exactly where they had gone in the pitch darkness, they sometimes blundered into their own snares. And with the Illusion noble effectively removed from combat by the need to maintain constant illumination, Turan had unintentionally weakened their fighting strength.

The one inconvenience was that he could not sleep comfortably. Unlike Perga's party, whose members could take turns keeping watch, he was alone. If a creature or another noble found him while he slept soundly, he would be dead. Fortunately, he was accustomed to sleeping lightly outdoors, so he could manage.

While Perga's party could not even get its bearings in the darkness, Turan used the Holy Relic to establish several landmarks and gradually expand his search. Sometimes a direction was blocked by too many creatures for him to fight through one at a time. On those occasions, he borrowed Perga's party's strength.

“Here they come again!”

“Damn it, they're attacking more often now.”

“It must be because we're keeping the light on.”

It was easy enough to lure them: throw a fireball to get their attention, drop his stealth, and run as fast as he could, then swerve aside at the last moment just before reaching Perga's party. He did lose the creatures' mana to the nobles, but they yielded so little power that he felt no regret.

He explored the newly opened areas, returned to a suitable spot to rest, and watched Perga's party. As he repeated this routine, more vagrants arrived from beyond the ruins carrying food and water. The nobles tracked these newcomers by scent, killed them as a matter of course, and took their supplies.

“They keep sending more. We're starting to have a surplus of this stuff too.”

“They're probably assuming the knights are still alive.”

“If we'd known, perhaps we should have tried to save them instead of letting them die. It's inconvenient having no one to wait on us.”

“As if you mean that.”

Judging by their conversation, they had abandoned all the knights who had entered with them to the creatures. Turan recalled the nobles of House Valtas using their knights as shields.

These people, snickering over the dead knights before his eyes, were even more contemptible than those two nobles had been. Perhaps he ought to be grateful that they spared him any guilt over driving the creatures toward them.

After another two days or so of exploration amid this uneasy coexistence, Turan came upon a massive door. About four meters wide and seven high, it seemed better suited to giants...

As he approached, a large eye appeared in the center of the door and spoke, looking down at him.

[You, Hunter, Pursuer.]

[Requirements not met.]

Then its gaze shifted down a little from Turan's face.

[Waverider, Mimic.]

[Requirements met.]

[Will you enter?]