Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 5 - Chapter 9

9. Unwanted Help

This way. It’s this way. This way. Over here. This way...

Haruhiro just kept giving directions. No one else was saying anything anymore.

“O, o, o, o, o, o...”

“O, o, o, o, o, o, o, o, o...”

“O, o, o, o...”

“O, o, o, o, o, o, o...”

The one-eyed dogs growled. Sometimes, they would howl loudly, too.

How far have we come from that initial hill? How many minutes have passed since we were surrounded by dogs? Is it a time that can be counted in minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? I don’t know.

Did Haruhiro’s eyes look sleepy now? Almost certainly. His eyes must have looked pretty sleepy.

This. This is tough, he thought. My heart feels ready to give out. I can’t breathe well. I’m sweating like crazy. It feels gross. My legs are ready to give out, too. I’m amazed that I can still walk at all. It’s a wonder to me how I’m managing to.

However, the one-eyed dogs would leap at Haruhiro and the others, and then back away, as if keeping a fixed distance—that was what Haruhiro was thinking. It was about two meters. Out of range of the party’s weapons.

It was questionable if Haruhiro and the party could keep moving. True, the one-eyed dogs’ encirclement of them was loose, but it also felt like they were breaking the circle in response to Haruhiro and the others’ moving.

These things are cautious. To an almost cowardly degree. They won’t attack easily, he thought. There’s a depression up ahead. A valley. With lots of pillar rocks. The Tokkis were ambushed by cultists in a valley that was dense with pillar rocks. I don’t want to go into the valley.

Haruhiro took a deep breath. “Ranta, Kuzaku, Kikkawa. You three, work together to kill one of them quickly. Shihoru, use magic. Thunderstorm. Yume, use arrows. Make sure you hit. If we can take out a number of them in an instant, the rest will turn tail and run. We’re gonna do it. Got it? Shihoru’s magic will be the signal to go.”

Will these things turn tail? Do I have any guarantee? No. Am I confident? No. But I have no choice but to state it like a fact here. No, it’s what I should do. That’s why I did it. This is good.

Ranta pointed at the one-eyed dog in front of him with Betrayer.

Yume drew back on her bowstring.

“Jess, yeen, sark...” Shihoru began to chant.

It’s looking good. This is a good flow. We didn’t work out the fine details, but we’re acting in sync. Things work out when we’re like this.

“Kart, fram, dart...!”

There was a flash of light. Then a roaring sound. A bundle of lightning fell. Shihoru caught three of the one-eyed dogs in Thunderstorm’s effective range. The one-eyed dogs were blasted away without so much as a cry.

Yume released her bowstring. Haruhiro leapt forward.

“Okay!” Kuzaku went, too.

He charged in with his shield, knocking over the one-eyed dog Ranta had pointed at. That one-eyed dog immediately tried to get back up, but Ranta and Kikkawa were having none of that.

Ranta bellowed and Kikkawa shouted, “Here goes...!”

Yume’s arrow stabbed into one of the one-eyed dogs’ flanks, but that wasn’t going to be enough to kill it.

That’s fine. It’s not a problem. It’s already accounted for. Haruhiro closed in on the one-eyed dog. This wasn’t a skill he used often, and it had been a while, but he committed to it here.

“Assault!”

He released his internal limiter. That was the image. He stabbed and slashed like crazy with the dagger in his right hand, and bludgeoned it like a mad man with the sap in his left. He didn’t breathe. He had stopped.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Just do it!

Haruhiro wasn’t even viewing the one-eyed dog as a living creature. It was a thing. He wasn’t so much killing it as was smashing it apart. He would crush it to a fine pulp.

Even when the one-eyed dog went down, Haruhiro didn’t let up. Yume put an arrow in another one-eyed dog that tried to leap at Haruhiro. The arrow caused that one-eyed dog to back down.

Haruhiro remained focused on the task of destroying the one-eyed dog in front of him. Kuzaku and Ranta were getting started on their second dog. Kikkawa took a swing at the one that tried to attack Haruhiro—the one Yume had hit with an arrow. Haruhiro was keeping track of the situation out of the corner of his eye and in one corner of his mind, but he had no intent of stopping until his target was completely destroyed.

That target soon fell silent.

“O, o, o, o, o...!”

The remaining one-eyed dogs ran away. Of the three dogs that had been struck by Shihoru’s Thunderstorm, one of them got up and chased after its pack.

Haruhiro was winded. He had no strength left. He felt incredibly exhausted. He wanted to sit down and rest. Or rather, to sleep. He wanted to take a nap, maybe two naps. Of course, that wasn’t going to be an option.

“We’re getting out of here!” he shouted.

They’d managed to drive off the one-eyed dogs. From the looks of things, no one had been injured. Even Haruhiro, tired as he was, was unharmed.

They had accomplished their goal. Though it had only been a minor goal. The major goal was rescuing the Tokkis. They had to go. Now was the time to move forward.

“Uh, let’s see...” Kikkawa was looking around restlessly.

Damn it, Haruhiro thought. He must have lost track of where we were while we were moving around surrounded by the one-eyed dogs.

Haruhiro wiped the sweat from his face with his hand. Wh-What now?

We’ve got to do something. But how?

It doesn’t matter. Pick a direction, any direction—No, bad idea, that won’t work, but what do we do?

“Ah!” Kikkawa shouted, pointing off in some direction. “There! There it is! The remains of the buildings... that ruin-like place! That’s it!”

Haruhiro looked over in that direction. Yeah. There it is. It’s true.

“L-Let’s go!” he called.

I stuttered. But what of it? It’s no big deal. Don’t sweat it.

It was entirely possible that the one-eyed dogs would come back with friends. Just to be safe, Haruhiro kept some of his attention focused on the direction the one-eyed dogs had fled as the party made their way towards the ruins.

Things were a bit of a mess at first, but they were able to recover while walking at a fast pace. Haruhiro wasn’t in great condition himself, but he wasn’t in bad shape, either. At the very least, he wasn’t breathing raggedly anymore.

If he were to describe the ruins with one word, it would be “white.” From a distance, they looked like a white hill, but it was bumpy, and from that it was possible to tell there were buildings lined up there.

As Kikkawa had told them, it was a large area. Like a town made up of nothing but white buildings.

A white town.

If the Tokkis are still there, can we find them? Will we be able to meet up? As they drew closer, Haruhiro became more and more uncertain. I can see why Kikkawa called this white town a ruin. True, that’s not a building. Probably, there was an unimaginably large white building here at one point—how long ago is unclear. That building, whether due to the passage of time, or because something happened, collapsed. The roof and walls fell in, were demolished, the pieces scattered, and the support pillars broken. The majority of the furniture has rotted away, leaving some small traces, and there are shards of statues and tableware scattered around. They’re all incredibly large.

This was likely a building for giants to live in.

Because the building materials were pure white, and because of the unique scale of the building, the word “temple” came to mind.

A giants’ temple—was what this place was.

If so, I guess we should call it the Giants’ Temple Ruins.

Well, all of that was only Haruhiro’s imaginings. He might be completely off base, but that was the impression he had.

Haruhiro and the others looked up to the now-slanted pillars, as well as the ones supporting them, though both types would have more accurately been described as broken pillars. The space between them was something like a gate. It was more than ten meters high, and about as wide.

The scale was impressive. It made him feel incredibly tiny, and Haruhiro stood there for a few seconds staring vacantly at it. He really was tiny.

“Do we... go in...?” Shihoru asked timidly.

“W-We came all this way.” Ranta, despite being Ranta, was hesitant. “Not going in would be, well, y’know. Right? That sort of you-know-what stuff is you-know-what. You know what I mean. What’s the word? Awkward, right? Basically. Don’t you think so?”

“All you keep sayin’ is you-know-what.” Yume seemed relatively fine with the situation. “Still, sure is big, huh. Yume may never’ve seen anythin’ so big before.”

“If we were here for sightseeing...” Kuzaku lifted his visor and squinted his eyes, “...it’d be a fun place to check out.”

“You might be right.” Merry smiled slightly.

“When it comes to the inside, guys,” Kikkawa said apologetically, “honestly, I don’t remember it so well. Sorry. I had bigger concerns at the time. But I don’t think we went in too deep. Like, when I came out of here, it didn’t take me that long.”

“Cultists and white giants, huh.” Haruhiro took a deep breath. “No, we’d better assume there could be more than that. There were the one-eyed dogs, after all.”

“Actually, it looks like there is more than just them.” Ranta gestured up and to the left with his chin.

When Haruhiro looked, there was something on top of one of the broken pillars.

White. Of course it’s white—An ape? Is that what it is? At a glance, it looks like a little white hairless ape, but with only one eye.

“Meow...” Yume readied her bow. “What do you want to do? At this distance, Yume thinks she can probably hit it.”

“No.” Haruhiro quickly shook his head. “Don’t. Not for now...”

There’s more than one of the one-eyed apes, he thought. There’s one on top of that broken pillar, too, and another one on top of that mountain of rubble. If I can spot three this quickly, there must be more around. What’s more, they’re up high enough only arrows or magic can hit them.

“Kikkawa, have you seen those apes before?” Haruhiro asked.

“Nope,” Kikkawa said. “Oh, but maybe we just didn’t notice them. We don’t really focus on that stuff much, see. How should I put it? If something’s not coming at us, we tend to ignore it.”

“These temple ruins—that’s what I’ll be calling them, by the way—when you fought the cultists and white giants in here, were there any other creatures?”

“All I saw were the cultists and the white giants,” said Kikkawa. “I dunno what happened after I broke off from the group, though, so I can’t say if it’s still that way.”

“Got it.”

It’s one decision after another. I think I’ll have to get used to it. Getting used to it can lead to lowering my guard. But if I don’t get used to it, I can’t keep this up.

“We’ll ignore the one-eyed apes,” said Haruhiro. “Let’s go inside.”

We’re walking side-by-side with danger here, thought Haruhiro as he moved forward. It’s life or death.

What Kuzaku had said about this being a fun place to go sightseeing crossed Haruhiro’s mind. He totally agreed. He had never seen anything like this place before. It was beyond anything he had imagined. If he were a tourist, he would be in awe of the sights.

Haruhiro went ahead of the group to confirm it was safe, then the other six followed after him.

To confirm it was safe.

Is that even possible? he wondered.

He was doing the best he could, as far as he was concerned, but he still wasn’t confident. The truth was, he wanted to be one hundred percent certain it was safe before leading his comrades in there. However, realistically, that wasn’t something he could do. It was impossible.

He stepped on the grass, over the white fragments, between the broken pillars. There wasn’t anything hiding in the shadows of the broken pillars.

I don’t think there is, he added to himself. But, deeper in, I can’t be so sure.

He couldn’t circle a full three hundred and sixty degrees around every single obstacle. It would take forever.

Is eighty percent good enough? Is seventy percent? Or fifty? he wondered. It’s not something you can represent with a number. But, well, I think it’s fine. Even though, with that degree of certainty, that’s far from certain.

He passed through the gate of broken pillars and beyond there, on both sides, there were large fragments piled up into walls. In some ways, it was like they were forming a path. However, while he might have called them walls, they were full of gaps. If something was hiding in them, it would be hard to notice.

It makes me want to cry. But I’m not going to. Haruhiro let out a long breath. For now, I’ll do the best that I can do. I can’t do what I can’t do, after all. There’s no helping that.

Haruhiro used Sneaking to progress along the right-hand side. Weapons drawn. Checking the gaps as best he could. Carefully. But not too carefully. It was fine to be cautious, but excessive timidity was no good.

Don’t stop, he told himself. Even if it’s scary, don’t be afraid. The one-eyed apes aren’t attacking. There’s no sign of them following me, either.

Any sounds? He felt like he could hear something, but he wasn’t sure.

The wall ended—or rather, it opened up, forming something like a four-way junction. He gathered everyone there.

“Haruhiro-kun, are you okay?” Shihoru asked.

“Huh? What? Why?” he stammered.

“Your face’s color...”

“It’s not looking good?” he asked.

“Ohh!” Ranta looked at Haruhiro’s face and sneered. “Man, you’re really something. Was your skin always that white? You’re looking pale. Ehehehe.”

“Haru-kun,” Yume said with a serious expression, and suddenly squeezed Haruhiro’s hand. “Yume knows it must be hard, but you’re doin’ your best.”

“...S-Sure,” Haruhiro said.

“Man, I’ve gotta bow my head to you, seriously...” Kuzaku said, and then did exactly that. “It’s scary, man. Going ahead by yourself, in a place like this. I couldn’t do it.”

“R-Really? You think...?” Haruhiro asked.

“Haru. If you get tired, tell me,” Merry said, practically glaring at him. “Please.”

“...If I get tired, sure.”

“Then the great Ranta-sama will take your place!” Ranta announced.

“That, I’m gonna say no to.”

“An immediate refusal?! Why?!” Ranta shouted.

“Well...” Kikkawa patted Ranta on the shoulder. “That goes without saying, man. Doesn’t it?”

It was only for a little while, but everyone laughed. That was enough to let Haruhiro recover, at least mentally.

I’m so simple, he thought. Not just simple, but an embarrassing guy who’s easily swept along. I’m close to getting giddy just from this. I won’t, though. That wouldn’t be good. If I get complacent, I feel like I’ll fail.

While at the four-way junction, considering which way to go—

I think I may love them, Haruhiro thought. I think I may love this party of mine. Not Ranta, though. But, well, he’s like a little spice thrown into the mix. Probably. Ranta is Ranta, and in his own way, we’d be in trouble without him.

Still, thinking about how he liked his comrades... Haruhiro really was an embarrassing guy. It wasn’t a bad thing, mind you, but it sure was embarrassing. Also, Haruhiro thought it didn’t suit him. Thinking I love my comrades. It’s not who I am, you know? I’m more of a, well, non-committal sort of guy, in all sorts of ways, right...?

“We’ll start by going right,” he said.

It wasn’t intuition. Haruhiro didn’t have a natural intuition, like, say, Tokimune did. Haruhiro and the party had come this far following the right-hand wall. If they turned right at the junction, they could continue following the right-hand wall. That was his only reason. If they found nothing, they could just turn back and take another route.

He wanted to hurry as much as possible, but they had no real leads, so they had to search the slow and steady way. And, while Tokimune may not have been the type to do it that way, Haruhiro was.

They moved forward again with Haruhiro leading the way and the rest of the party following behind him. Up until a few moments ago, honestly, he had been pretty worn out, but he was fine now.

I’ll probably stay fine for a while. I can’t get overconfident, though. Haruhiro didn’t have the skill necessary to get away with being overconfident.

The gaps in the wall... there were more now than before, and they were bigger. More than just hide—a person could go inside them. If the Tokkis were all right, it might be because they had fled through one such gap.

When Haruhiro progressed another two, three meters, the path turned to the left. Past here, there were a lot of broken pillars and other rubble, and while it was possible to keep going, visibility ahead was not good. It was clearly dangerous.

But he heard a sound.

Haruhiro lowered his eyes and listened closely. He heard the sound of his comrades’ footsteps. Then, some other sound.

“...A voice,” he murmured.

It was a human voice, probably. Haruhiro raised his face. He turned back. His eyes met with his comrades’. It seemed they hadn’t noticed yet.

“Someone’s here,” he said.

“I’ll take point!” Kikkawa rushed forward, getting ahead of Haruhiro.

Haruhiro looked into his comrades’ eyes. They had come this far. Having gone to all this trouble, he wanted to rescue the Tokkis. Everyone else should have felt the same.

They followed after Kikkawa in the order of Haruhiro, Kuzaku, Ranta, Merry, Shihoru, and Yume. Kikkawa was fast. He was in too much of a rush. But it was hard to blame him. All they could do now was run, weaving between the obstacles that obstructed their line of sight.

There was a muffled shout from Kikkawa, like he had started to call out, then stopped himself. He must have wanted to call his comrades’ names. To tell them he was here, that he’d come to save them. But the situation was still an unknown. It wasn’t even certain that the Tokkis were really here. It was too soon to shout.

“We’re almost there!” Haruhiro called out.

He didn’t know whether Kikkawa could hear him or not. But it was only a little further. He could hear a voice.

“Nghrahhhh...!”

It was a familiar voice.

“Tadacchi!” Kikkawa shouted. “It’s me, Tadacchi! It’s Kikkawa! Everybody’s friend, Kikkawa, is back! And guess what, guess what! Harucchi and his buds are here, too! Tadacchiiiiiiiii!”

“Gwohrahhh! Zwahhhhh! Nuwagrahhhh...!”

Tada’s roaring, Haruhiro thought. He’s probably not in a position to respond. He’s in battle, huh. Fighting enemies. That was what it sounds like.

Kikkawa raced through the rubble and between the broken pillars. Haruhiro raised his speed and caught up to right behind Kikkawa.

Haruhiro saw him.

Tada.

“Wahhrahhh! Fwahhhhhgrah! Zwahhhhhh...!”

Tada was swinging his warhammer around wildly, against humanoids wearing big white sheet-like things over their heads and using spear-like weapons.

Those are the cultists, huh, Haruhiro thought. There are four of them. Four against one.

However, it looked like it hadn’t always been four against one. There were two downed cultists.

Then, there was that ponytail. That leather, jumpsuit-like outfit. Over by the two fallen cultists, that was...

“Inui-san!” Kikkawa cried, taking a swing at one of the cultists. “You’re not getting away with this! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Now it was four against two. Tada was still surrounded by three cultists. Tada’s priest outfit, his face, and even his glasses were covered in blood.

Haruhiro took up position behind one of the cultists. A thief’s job was to stay quiet and use Backstab. He closed in, and his dagger—did not stab into the cultist’s back.

“Huh?!” Haruhiro leapt back.

The cultist turned to face in his direction. What was that white cloth-like stuff the cultists were wearing? What was with the way it had felt?

The cultist thrust a spear at him.

Swat. Would he use his dagger or sap to hit it? No—Haruhiro chose to dodge instead.

That white cloth. It was no simple cloth. That being the case, their spears might not be ordinary, either. He needed to be careful.

“Blades!” Tada roared as he swung his warhammer around wildly, “They don’t go through it well! Mwahhhh! Fugahhhhhhhhh...!”

“Seriously?!” Kuzaku shouted as he slammed into a cultist with his shield.

“Hmm.” Ranta came to a sudden stop. “Guess swords aren’t gonna work against them, huh.”

“You dummy!” Yume planted a spinning kick on Ranta’s back.

“Urgh!” Ranta closed in on Yume threateningly. “What’re you doing?!”

“What’s a Wyoming?!” she shouted. “Stop talkin’ nonsense!”

“You’re the one who never makes sense!”

The idiot was doing as idiots do, but for now, Tada, Kikkawa, Kuzaku, and Haruhiro each took a cultist, turning it into four one-on-one battles.

No, Tada must be just barely holding out, Haruhiro thought. We need to let him rest.

“Ranta!” Haruhiro narrowly avoided a sharp thrust from his cultist. “That’s enough! Switch with Tada! Hurry!”

“Oh, fine, if you insist!” Ranta tried to rush over to Tada.

“You’re a nuisance! Stay away!” Tada declared as he swatted aside the cultist’s spear and went on the attack. He attacked, and attacked, and attacked like crazy.

“You heard the man!” Ranta hollered.

“Fine, then choose Kikkawa, or Kuzaku, or even me, but get in here and help someone!” Haruhiro yelled back. “Can’t you think for yourself, you moron?!”

“Who’re you calling a morooooooooon?!” Ranta leapt at the cultist who was trying to attack Haruhiro with his spear. “Call me a genius! A great genius!”

The cultist took a hit to the right shoulder from Ranta’s Betrayer, but, as expected, it wasn’t able to cut through. The cultist stumbled for a moment, but that was all. No, the cultist did turn in Ranta’s direction after that, so maybe he did accomplish a little more than that.

Haruhiro put some distance between himself and the cultist. What is that? he thought. That white cloth. It’s not cloth. It seems thicker. It’s not hard. It’s soft. It felt squishy. Is it some material that doesn’t exist in Grimgar? It just looks like they’re wearing white sheets over their heads, but are those actually proper coats? They could be armor; they even have proper sleeves. They’re long. They go all the way down to their knees. They’re wearing white shoes on their feet, too, of course. Those shoes look like they’re the same material.

There’s a hole where their eyes should be. Are the cultists one-eyed? Well, that doesn’t really matter. Anyway, that may be their weak point.

Yume was nocking an arrow. She looked to Haruhiro. Should she shoot? Shouldn’t she? That was the look on her face. Well... Haruhiro wasn’t sure. It seemed like she’d have a hard time hitting those holes on a moving target.

“Haruhiro-kun!” Shihoru held her staff tight in both hands.

Oh, right.

When Haruhiro nodded, Shihoru began to chant while drawing elemental sigils with the tip of her staff. “Ohm, rel, ect, el, vel, darsh!”

It wasn’t Shadow Beat. With a vwong, vwong, vwong, three shadow elementals that looked like balls of black seaweed appeared instead of just one. It was a higher version of Shadow Beat, Shadow Echo.

The shadow elementals flew forth, coiling around one another as they did. All three slammed into the cultist Kikkawa was fighting. The moment they did, the cultist’s entire body began convulsing violently.

It let out a “Guwah...”

“It worked!” Shihoru cried.

With a shout, Kikkawa quickly slammed the bastard sword he held with both hands into the cultist. He couldn’t cut him, but he didn’t have to. It seemed that coat, or armor, or whatever it was, couldn’t completely absorb the blow, so he just had to keep on bludgeoning the cultist over, and over, and over.

“Get him, Kikkawa!” Haruhiro called.

Before Haruhiro had said anything, Kikkawa had already started slamming his bastard sword into the cultist with pure brute force. “Wah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rahhhh!”

Haruhiro lent what little help he could, primarily using the sap in his left hand to slug the cultist.

“Ohm, rel, ect, el, vel, darsh!”

Vwong, vwong, vwong.

Shihoru hit the cultist Tada was facing with Shadow Echo, too.

“I don’t...!” Tada swung his warhammer, knocking the cultist’s spear from his hands and then kicking him to the ground. Then, he slammed his warhammer down repeatedly. “Want! Your! Help! Dammiiiiiiiiiiit...!”

As for the remaining two, they just had to gang up on them and beat them senseless.

When there were no cultists left moving, Tada sat down. “Dammit. I’m. Tired. Seriously. Dammit. Idiots. Die. Dammit. What. The. Hell...”

He seemed to be muttering something dangerous in short fragments, but it was a mystery how he still had the strength to speak. His arms and legs didn’t seem broken or anything, but Tada was so covered in blood, it was hard to tell where he was injured.

Haruhiro looked down at the cultist corpses and thought, These guys bleed red, too, huh. Those coats of theirs weren’t torn or cut at all. The coats didn’t look damaged at all, but the ground was wet with the red blood that dripped out from underneath them.

Ranta was going around stomping on the heads of the cultists who were presumed dead. He wasn’t doing it to desecrate the corpses, he was doing it to confirm they really were dead—or so Haruhiro wanted to believe.

Shihoru, Yume, and Merry exchanged glances. Each wore a slightly different expression, but all of them were disturbed.

Kuzaku lifted the visor of his close helm and sighed deeply.

“Heh...” Kikkawa gave a half-laughing snort, then walked forward unsteadily to that ponytail and leather jumpsuit.

To Inui, who was collapsed, face down, on the ground.

Kikkawa fell to his knees and hung his head.

“...What the hell, man? You can’t do this to me. I went and got Haruhiro and the others, just like I was supposed to. After that, this just isn’t fair. Inui-san...”