Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 19 - Chapter 3

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. Relics had a special energy inside them, one that the monster called “Elixir.” This was something Shinohara had heard from the monster’s own mouth.

The monster had abducted Haruhiro’s comrade Shihoru, enticing her to join him after stealing her memories once more. The honeyed words he’d spoken to her had included the suggestion that he could return her to her own world if she obeyed him. Shinohara had heard this too.

“If our goal is reached,” the monster had told her, “you will be able to return home to your world. The world you came from. The place you ought to be.”

If their goal was reached.

Whose goal was it, though? The monster’s, no doubt. But what was his goal? Was the monster’s scheme a means to achieve it?

No, he didn’t expect the monster to reveal his intentions so easily. They were just sweet words said to convince her, that was all.

But on the other hand, Shinohara had another thought. It might be that Sir Unchain, also known as Ainrand Leslie, wasn’t rounding up otherworlders who’d come to Grimgar, but calling people here from other worlds himself.

If that was the case, might he not be able to do the opposite?

It could be that one of the monster’s relics could return Shinohara and the others to their original world.

Shinohara began to climb the hill. The Forbidden Tower loomed high above them.

The master of the Forbidden Tower.

Sir Unchain.

One of five princes said to have been created by the No-Life King.

Ainrand Leslie.

Shinohara needed to draw closer to that monster, that fiend. He needed to learn more. The monster rated Shinohara as a valued comrade, one of a very small number. He might not be able to take that at face value, but it likely meant that the monster at least saw enough worth in Shinohara to string him along by calling him such. If it was possible, he wouldn’t have minded becoming friends with the monster. Indeed, Shinohara wouldn’t have hesitated to become the best friend of such a loathsome creature. Yet there was no point in asking for that. If the monster didn’t desire it, they would never be friends.

“Hold on, Shinohara-san!” Hayashi shouted, catching up with his leader. The lantern’s light was shaking. Hayashi sounded incredibly agitated too.

Shinohara slowed his pace. There was no need to run. It seemed he’d lost his usually level head. “Oh, sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. There’s something wrong, though. It’s weird. The entire hill is...”

Hayashi wasn’t angry, he was frightened. Shinohara came to a stop.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s like an earthquake... I’ll take a look...”

Hayashi cautiously continued along the path up the hill.

There were white gravestones lining the hillside. Unless it was a new moon or the sky was cloudy, the clusters of graves stood out and were visible even at night. There were those who likened the meager white glow to the souls of the departed. Idiots liked to believe in the existence of a spirit inside the flesh, a soul that controlled it. What drivel. People were just objects—physical matter that functioned like any other living creature. If you broke them, those functions ceased. That was what death was. Why didn’t people understand that?

The hill was awfully dark tonight. The red moon was out, and the sky was studded with stardust. Yet despite that, the hill seemed to be dark wherever you looked. Too dark.

Shinohara couldn’t spot a single gravestone. It was as if the dark of night had massed together, covering up the white stones and hiding them.

The lantern Hayashi held in front of him cast its light over something odd.

“Wh-What’s that?!”

No.

To be more precise, the lantern’s light should have been cast over whatever the thing was, but the bizarre object wasn’t being illuminated at all.

Without the gravestones and the Forbidden Tower, this hill was no more than a slight knoll rising above the field. Therefore, the lantern’s light should have shown them thick grass all over the place.

There was definitely grass growing at Hayashi’s feet.

However, within the lantern’s light, there was one spot that, for whatever reason, remained totally black.

“The shape of the tower...” someone said.

Shinohara looked at the Forbidden Tower atop the hill. There stood the monster’s familiar abode.

But had it always looked like that?

It seemed larger than usual.

Not in terms of height. Nor had it gotten wider. But it seemed swollen. The outline of the tower, its shape, was different.

It looked less like a building and more like a giant finger.

A pitch-black finger rising up from the top of the hill.

What was more, the surface of the finger was constantly writhing. It almost looked as if it were growing and growing by the second.

“That’s absurd...” Shinohara said, gulping.

On the hill, the darkness that had enveloped it—some sort of mass of black things—pressed toward them.

This is simply absurd, he thought.

Was it even possible? No. It was an illusion.

“Ahhh!” Hayashi twisted about violently, like he was trying to shake free of something that had grabbed his foot. That was the kind of movement he was making. In fact, that was exactly what Hayashi was doing. There was something wrapping itself around him. Something black. Hayashi turned to look behind him.

“Run—” was all Hayashi managed to get out before the black thing pulled him to the ground. No, it was more like it kept moving over Hayashi as it advanced. Shinohara looked behind him for just a moment.

This is no good, he thought. There’s more coming. From the rear too.

It wasn’t that he could see them. They were like the darkness, perhaps even blacker. But he could sense them clearly now. The black things were closing in from all directions.

“Orion!” Shinohara shouted, readying himself with Guardian and Beheader. The black things filled his field of vision in an instant, but with a grunt of exertion he knocked them away with Guardian, then he swung Beheader and felt the sword connect. It wasn’t a dull impact. He felt the thing he hit break. It was probably more accurate to say that the end had snapped off rather than that he’d cut through it.

We can fight back, Shinohara sensed.

Black. Dark and moving. Were these things alive? That he didn’t know, but Shinohara was able to knock them away with Guardian, and he could slash through them with Beheader.

But no matter how many he took down with his sword and shield, the black things seemed endless. How was the rest of Orion holding up? He wasn’t doing so well that he could afford to check. Before he knew it, the black things were wrapping around Shinohara’s right leg. Then, as he tried to pull free, they got his left leg too. The black things appeared to have a will of their own, a purpose, something like a goal. That was all Shinohara could think.

These things are coming for me.