Gateway City (1)
The place where the girl was born was a dark cavern where not a single ray of light could reach.
"..."
The lives of those trapped behind iron bars were not those of people, but beasts.
However, she was far too young to even understand that something about it was wrong.
Kwaaang—!
But from that day onward, everything changed.
"Now! Everyone, run!"
The adults with hopeless, empty eyes gathered together.
People whose skin clung to their bones just like hers.
The father who had once wailed while clutching his dead wife was gone now.
"The prisoners are escaping! Catch them!"
"S-something is coming out from underground! Deal with that first...!"
Countless prisoners trying to climb upward, and the Kripel Inquisitors trying to stop them.
Crunch!
Despite the iron maces swung at them, the people did not stop trying to escape outside.
The beatings from the inquisitors they had always feared so much.
Yet now, no trace of that fear remained in their eyes.
Because if not now, there would never be another chance.
Because if not now, they were doomed to die here as test subjects.
"You filthy heretics, how dare you try to escape—!"
"Heretics my ass."
A voice rang out toward the inquisitors blocking the entrance leading upward.
"Move, bastards. We don't have time."
A boy who looked only around the girl's age.
Even buried beneath dust, his distinctive silver hair had lost none of its shine.
"What nonsense!"
"Return to your cells! You are— Uwaaaagh?!"
The inquisitor shouting at the boy suddenly fell silent.
Gurok. Gurok.
"W-what is that...?"
"Dear God...!"
A shadow was following behind the boy.
A shadow filled with tentacles and teeth.
The moment they saw it slowly approaching, all fighting spirit vanished from the inquisitors.
"H-hiiiik?!"
"A monster! It's a monster—!"
The inquisitors were not the only ones fleeing in terror.
"Kyaak?!"
Pushed aside by the panicked prisoners stampeding away, the girl's frail body rolled across the floor.
"What do you mean monster? You'll hurt the kid's feelings."
Watching the prisoners fleeing into the distance, the boy muttered bluntly before speaking to the shadow.
"Protect them as much as possible. Don't eat them. Got it?"
As if it understood, the shadow shot past the boy and rushed toward the upper floors.
"There's a priest bastard up there, so the upper levels should be cleared out soon enough..."
Muttering to himself, the boy approached her.
"Come on, get up too."
A small hand reached out to her.
After hesitating for a long while, the girl finally grabbed it.
"When you get outside, there'll be people there."
Even after hearing that, the girl showed little reaction.
"We don't have time for this. If you don't follow now—"
"If I follow... what changes?"
She cut off the boy's words.
"Mom and Dad are gone... and I don't even know what's above..."
To her, this place was the entirety of the world.
A dark and damp cavern.
That was why leaving this place felt even more terrifying than the cruel beatings of the inquisitors.
But still.
"Then things will change!"
The boy answered brightly, as though making a grand declaration.
"That's just how people's lives are. As long as you're alive somehow, things work out!"
A seven-year-old brat like himself talking about life and all that.
Thinking back on it now, it sounded ridiculous, but at the time, the girl found a sliver of hope in those words.
"So hurry up and go."
At the end of the empty staircase, a faint light was leaking through.
"If you keep struggling and living on after you climb up there, good days will come eventually."
The boy pulled the girl's hand and walked toward the light.
It was the first light she had ever felt.
"Kuukkuuk—!"
"Hehe! Over here, over here!"
Arin and Aul were bouncing around excitedly while leading the way ahead.
And seeing the money pouch stuffed full in my pocket naturally warmed my heart.
"How did you do it?"
"...."
But only for a moment.
At that question constantly being thrown at me nonstop, my pleasant mood completely disappeared.
"I mean, how do you roll the dice three times in a row and—"
"Be quiet."
Until we finally got onto the road leading northeast out of the Church State's Central Diocese, she kept pestering me every time she opened her mouth to teach her gambling tricks. There was no way my patience wouldn't twist itself into knots.
"I told you already. I just responded to cheating with cheating."
I said that while recalling the dice game in the plaza.
"That's exactly what I mean. How do you change the result of the dice however you want?"
To Stella, who kept demanding the method, I replied sarcastically.
"What, you planning to scam people with it if I teach you?"
And the answer I got back was—
"Of course."
"...."
No matter what, I'm never teaching her.
If I do, I'll brand my own hands!
While wetting my throat with water from my waterskin, I silently swore to myself.
"Still, this..."
At the same time, I looked at the map in my right hand.
"They really planned this route like idiots."
The pilgrimage map issued by the church.
Looking over the route marked on it, I let out a dry scoff.
"Is there a problem?"
Noticing my reaction, Stella suddenly walked right up beside me and asked.
'Why is she acting so familiar with someone she just met?'
I honestly couldn't get a read on her sense of personal distance.
Thinking that, I waved the map around.
"The person who made this map has definitely never stepped foot in the eastern continent."
When I said that, Stella tilted her head.
"You can tell that just from the route?"
"Of course."
I raised a finger and pointed at part of the map.
"Looking here, to reach the Filician border, you have to pass straight through the center of the eastern desert, right?"
Stella nodded.
"And that's exactly why this map is garbage."
I pointed toward the very center of the desert.
"The royal tombs of the Aishingior Empire are there."
The Aishingior Empire.
Hearing that name, Stella tilted her head again.
"...Wait, didn't they teach this in history class?"
"Yes."
Seeing her reaction, I could only sigh.
'Yeah, that history professor the duke's family hired wasn't much different.'
The Aishingior Empire.
A great empire born from the eastern grasslands of the continent, a region that had now become desert.
At its height, it boasted territory spanning nearly seventy percent of the continent.
And it was the empire that fell after being crushed by the Merdir Empire—then still a rising divine nation—and the Continental Alliance that sided with it.
'So now there's no one left who even remembers that name.'
Either nobody remembered it anymore, or history was being intentionally erased.
Personally, I thought the latter was far more likely.
"But why are those royal tombs a problem?"
"Well, obviously..."
Trailing off, I looked Stella in the face and answered.
"It's a haunted place."
"...."
After a brief silence, Stella glared at me sharply.
"Don't ever try making jokes like that elsewhere. I'm only tolerating it because it's you."
"Say that after you actually tolerate it."
As I shot back at Stella, my voice lowered.
"And I'm not joking."
" ...? ""
"Well, that's how most people react when they hear it.
Especially if they were born and raised in the Holy Church."
"So you're saying all those merchants go around the desert just because ghosts appear there?"
"Exactly."
As we spoke, smoke could be seen rising beyond the hill.
"Young Master! It's a city!"
"Yeah, I can see it."
Waving at Arin, who was bouncing excitedly ahead, I spoke.
"The people here probably know better than I do."
A small city standing far in the distance.
It was 'Terchin,' the gateway city leading into the Great Eastern Desert.
***
"A pilgrimage? Since when did the Church even do things like that?"
Most people crossing the desert were criminals trying to illegally enter Filician.
That was why the guards inspecting us looked deeply suspicious.
"We'll report this to the lord first. You there!"
At those words, a couple of guards approached me.
"It's the rule that outsiders are detained until their identities are confirmed."
"Wait."
Hearing that, Stella held up the Church's insignia.
"I don't know about him, but I'm a nun of the Church. That proves my identity, doesn't it?"
"Well, would you look at that?"
Seeing her trying to save only herself, the corners of my eyes twitched upward.
"Usually in situations like this, wouldn't you vouch for the other person as well?"
"Father Garrison never gave me instructions like that."
I glared at Stella as she answered shamelessly.
"What's the real reason?"
"I'm sulking because you wouldn't teach me the dice trick."
Ugh, seriously petty.
As we bickered back and forth, one of the guards scratched the back of his head.
"Well, the nun is one thing, but you are—"
"This should be enough, right?"
I interrupted bluntly and immediately held out the ducal family insignia.
"Leinrant...?"
The guard alternated between the insignia and my face, and his complexion instantly turned pale.
"M-my apologies!"
If he had obstructed a member of a ducal family, there was no telling what consequences he could face.
Startled out of his mind, the guard immediately shouted for the gates to be opened.
Boom—!
By the time we finished the inspection and entered the city, it was already past noon.
"A fine display of the tyranny of the powerful."
"Please shut up. Seriously..."
Responding to Stella's nonsense, I looked around at the cityscape.
"This city is really..."
"Run-down."
For a place called a gateway city connecting nations, Terchin's streets felt incredibly empty.
"Thanks to the Great Eastern Desert, most goods headed toward Filician travel by sea instead."
Just like we saw at the checkpoint, most people passing through here were illegal immigrants.
Perhaps because of that, the city residents did not seem particularly welcoming toward outsiders.
"And compared to that, the place up there is awfully extravagant."
As she said that, Stella pointed somewhere.
A lavish castle and luxurious mansions completely at odds with the dreary atmosphere of the city below.
It was the castle of the local lord, Marquis Terein Talik.
"Strange, isn't it?"
When I casually asked Stella that, she tilted her head.
"What's strange about it?"
"That such a flashy castle is being maintained out in this eastern backwater where there shouldn't be any money."
"Well, the answer's obvious."
Stella shrugged.
"Either they're running some shady business behind the scenes, or they're squeezing the people dry."
"Probably both."
I nodded in agreement.
'Still, judging by the people here, they at least seem competent at their jobs.'
People had enough to eat and survive.
The knights and soldiers provided protection as well.
But beyond that, nothing.
Just like most imperial nobles, he was both greedy and clever.
"R-really?"
"It's true. My younger brother trades around the outer desert, and this time that tribe...!"
"Those Talik bastards are still digging around those ruins even after things got this bad?!"
"How many people has this made already...?!"
Hearing the people whispering among themselves, I narrowed my eyes.
'The lord is after the royal tombs?'
That thought crossed my mind while listening to the voices filled with anxiety.
"T-the search party has returned!"
At the shout coming from the gate leading toward the desert, the townspeople all rushed in that direction at once.
"A search party?"
"Don't ask me. I don't know either."
I'm not some travel guide.
Thinking that, I answered Stella—who kept looking at me anytime something happened—and walked toward the crowd.
Kururururu...
Beyond the gates stretched the Great Eastern Desert.
The soldiers returning from there had armor completely coated in sand as they dragged wagons behind them.
"T-this is insane...!"
"What is that...?"
But what horrified the people was not the soldiers' appearance.
Around twenty shriveled mummies, dried up like husks, were being hauled into the city like pieces of cargo.
"A curse...! The curse of the desert!"
"Dear God...!"
Seeing the agonized expressions frozen on the corpses, the townspeople trembled in fear.
"That's..."
"Undead. And corpses consumed by a high-ranking undead at that."
I nodded while looking at the mummies being carried into the city.
Bodies left behind as empty shells, without even the slightest trace of a soul remaining.
As far as I remembered, there was only one type of undead that attacked humans in that manner.
Dullahan.
The twisted forms of knights' souls warped over countless years by resentment.
Revenants.