19 1

The dread knight had gone off somewhere, and wasn’t coming back yet, but when he did he was probably going to be pissed.
Shouldn’t I stop her?
But Haruhiro only thought those words. He couldn’t say anything. He was in no position to talk.
Honestly, the thief was grateful. Yume was doing so much to help him.
Haruhiro was touching Yume’s thighs. Or rather, he was rubbing his face against them. More precisely, he was burying his face in them.
Through his contact with Yume, he had a concrete sense he was connected to something. That was a feeling Haruhiro desperately needed right now.
Maybe it didn’t have to be Yume. But she was the one next to Haruhiro right now. Only her.
He was glad it was Yume.
Haruhiro had no confidence that he could accurately describe what Yume was to him. She was a comrade and also a friend. But not just a comrade, and not only a friend. Friend, comrade. Those words weren’t nearly enough.
“Ugh! I couldn’t see a damn thing! It’s too dark!” Ranta was shouting somewhere in the distance.
“Of course he can’t. It’s the dead of night, y’know?” Yume said as she stroked Haruhiro’s head like he was a child, laughing a little. Despite that laugh, her voice was tearful.
Their loss was so incredibly great.
They had all had so many things taken from them.
It felt like they’d lost everything, and were on the verge of breaking. But at least things were quiet tonight.
Too quiet, really.
At some point, Haruhiro’s eyelids had closed. He’d probably shut them. He thought Itsukushima had been making a fire. But he couldn’t see any light from it.
He heard Yume breathing. Or maybe that was Haruhiro’s own breath. It almost seemed to be melting into the night. He vaguely recalled thinking that. The night that had enveloped the Bordo Plains was turning Haruhiro into goo.
He opened his eyes. It was still dark. Not pitch dark. The sky now had some slight color to it. Dawn was approaching. Haruhiro was still lying face-up with his head in Yume’s lap. She was lying down with her legs extended. Her hands were clasped together, resting over her solar plexus.
Haruhiro tried to feel his hands. Well, they weren’t not there. As he lifted his arms, he felt pain. Strength flowed through his wrists. He could even move his fingers.
He was in a better state now than before he’d passed out, at least.
He’d been able to get some sleep, even if he wasn’t sure how much. That might be why.
 
 

He tried to get up, but his head was all foggy, and he wasn’t sure he should. He didn’t feel well. No, he felt bad, but he’d survived worse.
The campfire had burned out. Poochie the wolf-dog was lying next to it. Itsukushima was sitting on the ground, resting his back against his animal companion. Was he awake? No, it looked like he was asleep.
Poochie raised his head to look at Haruhiro. Their eyes met. Then the wolf-dog immediately lay back down.
“Ranta...?” Haruhiro called the dread knight’s name in a small voice. Ranta was nowhere to be seen.
The thief hesitated for a while, then rested his head in Yume’s lap again. He had an excuse all thought up for it. This might not be the worst he’d ever felt, but he was still in bad shape. He was in no shape to move, so he had to rest. He didn’t want to do anything, and he couldn’t. He just wanted someone to tell him clearly that he didn’t have to. Haruhiro was indulging in Yume’s kindness. She’d let him do that unconditionally.
Haruhiro went back to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, it was a good bit brighter than the last time. Just before the sun came up, he guessed.
Yume was breathing softly in her sleep. Itsukushima and Poochie had gone off somewhere. To scout or something, maybe?
“You’re awake now, huh?” Ranta crouched and looked down at Haruhiro.
“Yeah...”
His throat felt tight, and it was hard to speak. Haruhiro took a long breath. He might have had a fever. His wounds were probably festering.
Ranta clicked his tongue. The dread knight wasn’t wearing that tasteless mask that he seemed so fond of. In its place—though they weren’t a replacement for it—he had bandages wrapped around the upper right portion of his head and his left ear. They weren’t just for show. They were covering the katana wounds he had taken.
Ranta had taken a slash from Takasagi. The cut—which started above the right side of his forehead, went diagonally between his eyebrows and continued to below his left ear—might have scarred him for life.
“That looks pretty badass,” Haruhiro said in a hoarse voice.
With a snort and a shrug, Ranta replied, “I was always badass.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Bet you slept well. You’ve got a damn fine pillow there.”
“Yeah... I guess I do, huh?”
“You’d better be grateful, you piece of shit.”
I am, Haruhiro was about to say when, suddenly, Yume let out a strange mumble.
“Fwuhhh! It’s mornin’, huh?” she said, sitting up using just her abdominal muscles. “Mmmeww. G’mornin’, Haru-kun.”
When he saw the beaming smile on her face, Haruhiro couldn’t help but grin and respond with a “good morning” of his own.
“Sheesh... That’s some divine grace you got there...” Ranta was mumbling to himself.
“Whuh?!” Yume’s eyes were wide. “You’re here too, Ranta? Huh?”
“Don’t say it like I’m an afterthought! I’m not just another person. I’m the goddamn protagonist!”
“Muh? You’re a proto-mist?”
“No, that’s not what I said, and what the hell is a proto-mist?”
“How’s Yume supposed to know. You’re the one who was callin’ yourself a proto-mist, Ranta.”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t try to put your crimes on me!”
“Yume’s not tryin’ to give you any limes either?”
“Yeah, there aren’t any limes out here. This isn’t exactly the kind of place you’d find them, y’know?”
“Yume’s been thinkin’ for awhile, sometimes it feels like talkin’ to you makes no rootin’ sense.”
“You’re the one who makes no rootin’ sense! And what’s rooting supposed to be?!”
“Rootin’s like a close relative of tootin’ or flootin’, and a more distant relative of mootin’ and lootin’.”
“You’re messing with my head!”
“Yeesh. Is your hair all flat like that ’cause your brain got fried?”
“I was born like this! And wait...no one’s called my hair flat before?!”
“It sure is lively over here,” Itsukushima said as he returned with Poochie. The hunter had a number of large field rats hanging from his waist. He might have set traps for them.
Haruhiro tried to sit up and Yume helped him.
“Try not to push yourself,” she said.
“Can’t you even get up on your own?” Ranta said, smirking a little.
Haruhiro managed to get on his feet somehow, setting them firmly on the ground and taking a deep breath. He bent his waist, stretching, then turned his arms in circles, which made his wounds ache. That made him let out an involuntary groan.
Itsukushima smiled a little.
“You’re so young.”
His tone didn’t suggest he was being sarcastic.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Feeling well enough to take a look at something awful?”
“Am I...? Uh, well, maybe not. But I have a feeling this is something I have to see, right?”
“Maybe.” Itsukushima started walking. “Everyone, follow me.”
Poochie tailed behind Itsukushima. Haruhiro, Ranta, and Yume looked at one another for a moment. Then they went after the hunter and his wolf-dog.
Itsukushima hadn’t gone far. Not more than a hundred meters or so from where they’d made camp. Once they’d pushed through about ten meters of chest-high bushes, Poochie came to a stop. It seemed the wolf-dog didn’t want to go any farther. His snout wrinkled a little, a look of displeasure on his face. Or perhaps it was unease. Itsukushima, along with Haruhiro and the rest, continued for a few more meters.
There was a ravine on the other side of the shrubs. It was less than four meters across, and several meters long—Haruhiro eyeballed it as being about five or six meters. It was probably more than five meters deep too.
Ranta leaned out over the edge of the ravine and looked down.
“It’s swarming with them...”
Haruhiro dropped to one knee and brought his head down low to get a better look. The sun was already rising, but he still had to squint to see the bottom of the ravine.
Yume crouched next to Haruhiro and hugged her knees.
“Nwuhohh...”
The skeletons and desiccated remains in the bottom of the ravine were piled on top of one another. There were too many to count. Some of the bodies were naked, while others wore helmets or chain mail. Scraps of decayed clothing clung to some of them. Many, though, were missing not just their clothes, but most of their flesh as well. War axes, spears, swords, and shields, or what was left of them, caught Haruhiro’s eye. Based on their stocky bodies and beards, most of the dead here were dwarves.
“I wouldn’t say ‘swarming’s’ the right word,” Itsukushima corrected Ranta in a dry tone of voice. “The dead aren’t moving at all. When I came through the Bordo Plains before, they squirmed even during the day.”
The dead had been swarming in the shadows of the ravines, where the sun’s light couldn’t reach, even when it wasn’t night. That was how it had been before.
Yume clapped her hands together. She’d lowered her head and closed her eyes. Probably praying for the departed.
“The curse...” Ranta murmured. “It’s vanished, huh? The No-Life King’s curse...”
“Look,” Itsukushima said, pointing. “Over there.”
It wasn’t the bottom of the ravine. He was pointing to the steep incline on the other side. It didn’t have much grass or moss on it, just the gray and brown of exposed dirt and rock.
Is that a snake?
That was Haruhiro’s first thought. There was a snake-like creature climbing the slope.
Long, thin, and jet black.
“Hrm...?” Yume opened her eyes wide and stared at the slope. Ranta cocked his head and took a long, hard look at the area.
It was awfully long for a snake. Too long, in fact. Tracing it with his eyes, Haruhiro saw that the thing went from the bottom of the ravine, which was thick with the bodies of the dead, all the way up the firm rock-and-dirt slope and over the ledge at the other side.
It wasn’t the only one either.
There were several of the snake-like creatures.
“Wha...”
Haruhiro shuddered and looked down at his feet. Were they only on that side? He’d suddenly suspected that might not be the case.
For better or for worse, there were none near the group. But there was a black snake about ten meters to the right of them. “Sh...”
“Whoa?!” Ranta cried out as he noticed it.
Itsukushima seemed unfazed, since he seemed to have known about them in advance, but Yume went “Gwuhwhuh?!” and jumped up into the air.
“Wha—Wha-wha-wha-wha...?!” Ranta was clearly panicking, but he had enough presence of mind to have one hand on the hilt of his katana.
There was something different about those creatures. They weren’t snakes. They might not even have been creatures at all.
Haruhiro stood up. He walked along the edge of the ravine to the right.
“Haru-kun?!” Yume hurried after him.
Ranta hesitantly followed, babbling, “Whoa, man, hey! Don’t be stupid!”
Haruhiro came to a stop sixty or seventy centimeters from the long, black thing. It had crawled up from the depths of the ravine and was headed off in some other direction.
Haruhiro looked at the sky, calculating the general direction based on the position of the sun.
“East—and maybe a little north, I guess?”
Was the long, thin black thing on the move, heading out of the ravine and toward the east-northeast? He wasn’t sure if it actually was moving, though.
Haruhiro bent over. It looked completely still, but also like it was moving ever so slightly. He couldn’t be sure which.
“How’s it look?” Ranta asked, poking his head over Haruhiro’s right shoulder.
What if he were to push Ranta out in front of him and make the dread knight step on the long, thin black thing? Haruhiro considered it for a moment, but unfortunately, his hands were out of commission. Besides, before he could do anything, Yume walked up to it and cried, “Take that!” as she gave it a firm kick.
“Why?!” Ranta jumped on Yume, his face a mask of panic. He pinioned her and pulled her back and away. “Wh-Wh-Wh-What do you think you’re doing, Yume?! That’s dangerous! What am I supposed to do if something happens to you?!”
Haruhiro was sweating bullets too. Though Yume could be overly bold at times, she wasn’t reckless. She had her own way of judging these things. Something had made her decide she could get away with it.
Haruhiro moved up closer, poking the black thing with the tip of his boot. The stimulation didn’t cause it to move at all. He pressed down on it lightly with his foot and felt some sort of subtle vibration. He didn’t think he was imagining it. The thing really was moving.
Had it come up out of the ravine to go somewhere? That wasn’t clear, but he could see that it continued off until it was out of sight.
Haruhiro moved his foot off of it. It was less than five centimeters in diameter. Maybe three or so. Was its cross-section round? It didn’t seem like it would be flat.
There were several similar-looking—actually, they looked exactly the same—things stretching out of the ravine—dozens, possibly, although maybe “growing” was the right word instead. That didn’t feel quite right to Haruhiro either, but he couldn’t think of any other way to describe them. He did, however, know what these things were. Haruhiro was confident of that.
“Sekaishu...”


0107A660. Involuntary Unease
“Shinohara-san.”
He’d been awake before Hayashi called his name, so he didn’t bother to ask, “What is it?” Shinohara sat up, then ordered Hayashi, who was standing by his bedside, holding a lantern, to go rouse the others.
By the time Shinohara had finished quickly freshening up and headed out of the room, Tenboro Tower was in an uproar. He and Hayashi headed upstairs to find Jin Mogis. The commander was not in the master bedroom on the third floor, but in the room with the fireplace on the second. One of the black cloaks was out front.
“It’s Sir Shinohara!” the black cloak called out to the man inside the room before opening the door. Shinohara and Hayashi entered and gave a salute. Mogis, wearing a fur nightgown, was in front of the fire with his arms crossed.
“Your Excellency,” Shinohara addressed him, which Mogis acknowledged with a grunt. “We have reports from the south gate and the east wall,” Shinohara continued. “Strange creatures have been sighted in the area, though we don’t know if they’re enemies or not.”
“Strange creatures, you say?”
“We heard the story directly from the soldiers who witnessed them, but we don’t know what to make of it.”
Mogis gave Shinohara a probing look with his rusty eyes. “You know the frontier well. I’d like you to confirm the presence of these strange creatures and, if possible, identify what they really are. I’m sorry to impose, but could I ask that of you?”
Mogis wasn’t sorry in the slightest, of course, but he made a point of treating Shinohara well, at least on a superficial level. The commander’s main weakness was a lack of reliable pieces to move around the board. For his part, Shinohara wanted to do Mogis a favor so the commander would owe him one. Eventually, he’d use the man as a stepping stone—or a sacrificial pawn. It went without saying that he expected Mogis was planning to do the same to him.
“Very well,” Shinohara agreed and left the room with Hayashi.
“What could they be, I wonder. These strange creatures,” Hayashi said, seeming uneasy.
That’s what we’re going to find out, Shinohara thought, descending the stairs in silence. The members of Orion were assembled at the bottom.
“First, we’ll head to the south gate,” Shinohara said to the group and started walking.
“Um, Shinohara-san,” Horiyui, a mage, called out to stop him.
Shinohara sighed, then began to suspect he was in a bad mood. No, that couldn’t be right. He was the same as always. “Yes. What is it, Horiyui?”
“Won’t you be taking your shield?”
“My shield?”
Only now did Shinohara notice that he wasn’t carrying his shield, Guardian. His sword, Beheader, was hanging at his waist. He also had the ring he’d seized from the Lich King of Mount Grief, which he had named the Ring of Dust. Obviously, he couldn’t wear the relic openly. It was hanging from a sturdy chain around his neck.
“Ah...”
Why didn’t I bring the shield? He didn’t know. Shinohara couldn’t explain it himself.
“I must have forgotten it.”
The smile he was showing at this moment was just a part of his act; he was playing the role of the leader who wasn’t just strict and deserving of respect, but could be friendly at times too.
Horiyui was an okay mage, but she was nothing special. Despite her mediocrity, or perhaps because of it, her feelings for Shinohara went beyond mere respect to a love for him that he found trite. It meant he couldn’t dismiss her coldly, or else she’d get upset, but he also couldn’t be so kind to her that she started to get uppity. If he failed to handle her delicately, she’d become useless in an instant. The woman was a lot of trouble for middling returns.
He was used to it. To Shinohara, other people were just pawns with wills of their own. If they hadn’t had wills, it would’ve made his job much easier. But it was also that free will that let people move on their own. There wasn’t much use for pawns that didn’t move.
Shinohara hesitated a moment but headed back to his room to fetch Guardian. He found his indecision strange. The identity of these odd creatures was still unknown. If he didn’t know what kind of danger he was walking into, it was obvious he’d be better off having the shield relic around.
Hayashi came over to whisper in his ear as they left Tenboro and headed toward the south gate.
“I’ve got an uneasy feeling about all this. I may be out of line, but I’ll just suggest we may want to be cautious.”
“Yes, I know,” Shinohara replied before mockingly thinking, An uneasy feeling, you say? How incredibly vague.
Hayashi was a serious man with a strong sense of loyalty. He was steady too, never doing anything Shinohara couldn’t predict, so he was trustworthy in that way. The drawback was that he wasn’t very bright. He might not have been a total moron, but his ability to analyze things in a rational manner was limited. People like him tended to rely on instinct, premonitions, and the like, ultimately descending into spiritualism most of the time.
Shinohara suddenly realized something he hadn’t expected. Idiots were easy to use. And yet it seemed that he loathed them more than anyone.
If you were to line people up in order of who was dumbest and start killing them one by one, it would be pretty satisfying to watch. If it were possible, Shinohara would want a VIP seat to that show. It would be the finest form of comedy. He might even let out a genuine laugh.
Shinohara had always looked down on stupid people. What reason was there not to belittle fools? He thought he was only doing it because it was natural to. He’d never realized he hated them this much. And yet, mysteriously, Orion was full of nothing but idiots. The only one Shinohara would have recognized as sharp was Kimura, and the man was dead now.
Kimura had been a weirdo, but he’d possessed a good eye for things. He must have known, to some extent, that Shinohara was tricking them. There had been an aspect to their relationship where they each knew the other was tricking them, and they were fine with that. If Shinohara told the others to look right, they looked right. If he told them to die, they might be frightened or hesitate, but, ultimately, they’d do it for him. The men and women of Orion lacked the intellectual capacity to doubt Shinohara.
Obviously, not all of humanity was like that, so why was Orion full of such low-grade dullards?
Shinohara found himself followed by a gaggle of fools who were not completely useless.
It wasn’t anyone else who had rounded them up.
It was Shinohara himself.
He hadn’t planned it out this way. Nor had he been aware it was happening. However, without realizing it, he’d gathered nothing but idiots he could easily control, wrapping them in white capes.
That was why they made him sick.
Shinohara detested Orion.
The south gate was closed. The soldiers opened it.
“Watch yourselves out there!” one of the soldiers yelled out to them. The man had an unpleasantly ruddy bearded face.
The gate opened wide enough for them to pass through two at a time, and Orion proceeded through it. Hayashi took the lead, while Shinohara was in the fourth position. Five or six of them were carrying lanterns, including Hayashi.
“I see something!” Hayashi shouted, raising his lantern.
Shinohara stared out into the darkness. A well-trodden path stretched out beyond the south gate.
Hayashi was correct. The darkness itself seemed to be moving. But that couldn’t be right. Predawn gloom was not a thing that moved. There had to be something out there in it. If it was moving, it had to be alive, but he couldn’t hear anything like footsteps. The sounds were heavier than that.
Shinohara crouched and put a hand on the ground. It was shaking.
Tsuguta the thief and Uragawa the hunter had died taking Mount Grief. They’d been key to the clan’s ability to detect enemies. They might not have been smart, but they’d had skills. Shinohara was annoyed. They weren’t around when he needed them. They’d gone and died. Utterly useless bastards.
“They said they noticed something amiss at the eastern walls too, didn’t they?” Shinohara murmured.
Hayashi turned to him, asking, “What should we do? Head east?”
“This road leads...” Shinohara began, looking toward the southern sky. The Tenryu Mountains towered over Alterna in that direction. However, the road leading out of the south gate didn’t head due south.
“To the Forbidden Tower, huh?” he concluded. There was a small hill southeast of Alterna. Pretty much right next to the walled city. The people of Alterna and the volunteer soldiers who lived there had long used its slopes as a graveyard.
“Let’s go,” Shinohara said, continuing down the road.
“Huh...? Yes, sir!” Hayashi rushed after him.
Sir Unchain.
Had that man made his move? If so, there was no knowing what it might be. The Forbidden Tower was filled to the brim with relics he had gathered. So many that it’d become hard to tell what was a relic and what wasn’t. It wasn’t even clear what the man himself could do.
Ever since Shinohara had first been taken to meet the man by a woman named Hiyomu, he’d actively tried to curry favor. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d gained Sir Unchain’s trust. He’d been trying, but the way Shinohara saw it, the man was not the type to trust or rely on others.
Sir Unchain understood human language and took a form that you might be able to call human, but he wasn’t one, not in the broader sense of the word. He’d maintained a longtime secret relationship with the margraves who’d ruled Alterna across generations. It seemed he’d even come to Tenboro Tower himself on occasion. He’d present them with unusual items or provide information on faraway places to earn their favor, while hinting that he lived inside the Forbidden Tower. As he was the only one able to open the door to that tower, they’d come to call him Sir Unchain.
Hiyomu wasn’t as young as she looked. She had far more years behind her than Shinohara. During his investigation, he’d learned that a volunteer soldier matching Hiyomu’s description had been active more than two decades ago. That would have made her part of a generation before Akira’s, and he was a living legend.
How had Hiyomu come to be connected to the master of the Forbidden Tower? There was no way to know, but Shinohara expected she served him out of a desire for relics. She might have received one that restored her lost youth. Relics made the impossible possible. No, more than that, they transcended the laws of this world. Because they were not of this world. And neither were Shinohara or the others like him. They’d come to Grimgar from some other place.
In Shinohara’s estimation, they had been residents of another world, and some event—perhaps they were caught in an accident or a disaster; he didn’t know—but something had happened that had caused them to appear in Grimgar.
What he did know was that otherworlders first awoke in the basement of the Forbidden Tower. At that point, they had already lost their memories. They were then chased out of the tower and led to Alterna. Most became volunteer soldiers in order to survive.
Could Sir Unchain have been using the power of relics to round up otherworlders? That was what Shinohara thought. It couldn’t be far off the mark. And he was stealing their memories, then sending them off to Alterna.
What was that eccentric relic collector, that inhuman monster, plotting?
He wanted relics. Relics of each and every variety. No doubt about that.
He didn’t just search for them, he also investigated and researched them.

Chapter end