WE WENT TO THE UNDERGROUND CITY OF NIGHTMARES
That day, the sky was ominous from the moment we woke up.
Thunder rumbled in the clouds.
“Halkara, I’m not letting you fly to work today. We might get struck by lightning,” Flatorte said while looking out the window during breakfast.
Dragons were a big target, after all.
“I could go through the clouds and fly above them, but Nascúte is way too close for that. And the clouds themselves would be dangerous.”
“Ahhh, you’re right. Even a creature as huge as you wouldn’t be able to survive a lightning strike,” Halkara mused.
“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea, Halkara. I, the great Flatorte, am not so weak that I’d fall to one measly little lightning strike. I’ve been struck five times in one day before, and I walked it off.”
Laika was staring dully at Flatorte—I had a feeling not even dragons typically flew on days with weather like this…
“But if lightning did strike me, you’d probably die on my back, Halkara. And I don’t think I’d like that.”
“Eep… I think I’ll walk to work…”
Good choice. If anything, she should probably stay home until the storm clouds go.
I gazed out the window.
“The weather here in the highlands is usually calm, but there sure is a lot of thunder out there today…”
Sometimes, I could even see a flash of lightning in the distance.
“It is unusual to see stormy weather at this time of year in Nanterre. I do not think I ever experienced such awful weather at Mount Rokko, either.”
“I thought you might agree, Laika. It gets cold sometimes, but it’s easy living besides that.”
Goodly Godly Godness had chosen this place for me when I reincarnated as a witch, after all, so it couldn’t be an awful place to live.
“Mmm. Big Sis? I sense something.”
Rosalie was floating near the ceiling, and—
—part of her hair was sticking straight up, like she’d just gotten out of bed!
“I think this is a bad sign,” she said.
“Rosalie, was your hair able to detect weird magic before…?”
The longer I looked at it, the more it reminded me of an antenna.
“I think it means that something major is going to happen. This might be a first; I don’t remember it ever happening before.”
“Huh. Are you sure it isn’t some kind of retcon…?” I asked. “This didn’t happen when we first visited Muu, remember?”
Muu had incredible spirit power. And while I’d never seen it for myself, I was sure Nahna Nahna’s strength was impressive, too.
“And we know the demon king and multiple gods. There really isn’t much left that can outclass them.”
“You are right. But if we put them all together, it would mean that whatever we are facing is even more dangerous—”
“Nah. That’s way too far-fetched!”
But Rosalie’s intuition was right. The dark and stormy clouds passed, and the sky grew light again. There, out the window, I spotted something flying toward us.
It was a wyvern. And it seemed to be headed straight for the house in the highlands.
Not much later, Fatla came through the door.
“Sorry for stopping by so early, but Miss Azusa is needed immediately.” Fatla was calm, as she usually was, but there was a hint of panic in her voice. “We will reward your services with a lecturer’s fee afterward.”
“Hold your horses. Can’t you at least tell me why I have to go first?”
“The reasons are yet unclear. I am hoping it is a false alarm, however…”
Fatla paused and took a breath. I’d never seen her so upset before.
I put some tea on to boil. Whatever was the matter, it couldn’t be too urgent for tea.
The whole family naturally sharpened their ears to listen. Even Sandra, who had been in the garden, came inside to hear.
“Not long ago, the dryad sage Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco came to visit the Smart Slime, and they have been conducting research together ever since.”
“Oh, Miyu, the world’s third-hardest sage to meet.”
Miyu the dryad sage lived on Outofreach Island, which, as the name suggested, was very hard to reach due to ocean currents. Though Miyu was something of a valley girl, she was very smart.
“It’s easy to leave the island, though. All you have to do is get caught in a current, and you’re automatically sent straight to the shore.”
“It is as you say. I hear it is very easy to reach the harbor cities on the mainland. She arrived on a small boat, and I then took her to Vanzeld Castle via wyvern.”
An image of Smarsly and Miyu debating endlessly crossed my mind.
“I’m really glad Smarsly has a friend it can better itself with.”
“Indeed. The Smart Slime and Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco have been having plenty of delightful conversations. However…”
Fatla paused to loudly sip at her tea. Her expression was dark, even for someone as stern as she was.
“They were studying an ancient clay tablet discovered underground in demon territory when they learned that something rather terrible was written on it…”
Now, there’s something I haven’t heard of yet, I thought just as Shalsha opened a book and began to explain.
“Ancient clay tablets are historic records hidden underground in the demon lands and written in a strange language. Even the demons do not know what exactly they are.”
I’d never heard of anything like that before.
“Is that true?” I asked. “I was under the impression that demon civilization has continued unbroken for ages. I didn’t think there were other cultures in your territory…”
“As you say,” continued Shalsha, “there are some demons who insist the tablets were simply left by ancient demons who spoke a different language. But they have yet to be decoded, so it has long remained a mystery.”
How long ago were we talking about here? My three hundred years of life was probably a blip compared to demon history.
“Miss Fatla? What was written on the tablet?”
Falfa was curious, too. I guess if someone told me they’d learned the secrets of an ancient civilization, I’d be pretty interested.
“I am not entirely sure of the details myself,” she said. “But…apparently, if a certain seal is broken, very bad things will happen. Very, very bad things.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that—just that it was very bad.
“So you want me to go with you to make sure the seal stays shut? Is that what you mean?”
I tried to interpret the reason for Fatla’s visit in my own words.
“No. There will not be a problem if the seal remains intact. We need you in case the seal is broken and something emerges.”
“And you’re paying me a lecturer’s fee for that?!”
That had to be illegal… Could she at least be a little less cryptic…?
“I am sorry. We don’t have a budget allocated for the reawakening of ancient horrors… Once we have a grasp on the full picture, we will compensate you accordingly.”
I felt like I was seeing Fatla act like a bureaucrat for the first time in a while.
I shot up from my chair.
“I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
I didn’t particularly want to go, but this didn’t sound like something I could ignore. And I couldn’t just sit around relaxing in the house in the highlands after hearing all that… Besides, if things got out of hand, there was a very good chance they’d come and ask for my help again…
“Thank you so much.” Fatla smiled at last. “I hope the seal remains unbroken. However…”
“Careful, don’t jinx it!”
Now it was definitely going to break.
I sincerely hoped Fatla was just being a worrywart…
The only family members headed to Vanzeld Castle were Laika, Flatorte, and I.
We shot up straight through a break in the clouds and flew over them.
I rode on Laika’s back, and Fatla rode on Flatorte. It was a lot quicker than going back on the wyvern.
This was considerably shadier than anything else we’d done so far, so I didn’t want to bring the girls and Halkara along. Since I didn’t know what we would be up against, either, I had Rosalie stay at home, too.
“Still, I am surprised there are civilizations so old that even the demons don’t know about them.”
Laika’s loud voice was audible despite how fast we were moving.
“Not that weird,” said Flatorte. “The demons didn’t know about the country of ghosts, remember? There’s bound to be a few more they missed.”
As she said, the demons hadn’t been involved with the Thursa Thursa Kingdom.
“Miss Muu’s civilization lies far beyond the demon lands’ borders,” Laika pointed out. “But the tablet was buried in demon territory. I find it surprising that demons do not know about the civilization right beneath their noses.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I thought the demons had always lived there, like you, Laika. But…if you think about it logically, I guess that isn’t so. There had to be a beginning, huh?”
I’d never studied demon history thoroughly, but even the demons must have had their own version of a Paleolithic era and “Unga bunga” ancestors.
Unless they’d all suddenly arrived from another world, they couldn’t have built a great structure like Vanzeld Castle on day one.
“We don’t know how far back that was, and their history goes much deeper than that of the human kingdom, but the demons must have had a primitive age, too. So does that mean the tablet is from a civilization even older than that, and something from that previous era is going to reawaken?” I asked, turning to Fatla where she sat on Flatorte’s back.
“I believe so,” she replied. “To be honest, I thought it mere myth.”
Ancient history probably had nothing to do with her day-to-day life, so it made sense she didn’t know much. The only people who would know this kind of info would be those specifically interested in the subject.
“I do not know enough to give you any details. You will have to listen to what the Smart Slime and the dryad Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco have to say. I hope it turns out we were all worried for nothing…”
“I, the great Flatorte, want to fight with some crazy-big thing I’ve never heard of before!”
Not the time, Flatorte!
But if her goal was to test her strength, then a situation as exciting as this would be hard to pass up. That said, there was no guarantee the “bad” thing in question was a powerful enemy. All we had at this point was conjecture.
So much of this was yet to be determined, and that made me even more nervous as we hurried toward Vanzeld Castle.
As I was pelted by wind—less a comfortable cool and more a chilling cold—an idea hit me.
Now that I thought about it, Godly Godness or Nintan might know something. They were deities, after all. They had to know what had come before the demons.
But I had no way of reaching them at the moment.
I tried thinking out loud in my mind, Goddess, can you hear me? But there was no response. Of course.
They, on the other hand, could appear out of the blue in my dreams. I found this a little unfair, but it was disrespectful of me as a mortal to want to stand on equal ground with gods, so I let it go.
…But thinking about it another way—if the situation was way worse than we thought, maybe the gods were already trying to stop it…
I shook my head.
What did I mean, trying? Nothing could defeat a god. Only another entity of equal power would stand a chance.
“I wanna fight a god!” Flatorte shouted.
I wished I could take things as easily as she did!
We arrived safely and were brought into a room deep in Vanzeld Castle where classified information was handled.
Inside stood Miyu and Smarsly engaged in a heated back-and-forth.
To be more precise, Smarsly couldn’t talk, so it was hopping around furiously on its cloth keyboard to form words. Still, I could tell they were having some kind of discussion.
“Omigooosh! Is that Azusa and the gang?! Omigosh, things are like, super, suuuper crazy right now! The craziest craziness I’ve ever seen!”
Hearing her use the word crazy so many times made the situation sound a lot less serious than it probably was.
“Miyu, you have to be more specific,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“It’s sooo crazy underground in the demon territory right now. Like, it actually cracks me up.”
“You have to be specific! And this isn’t funny! There is nothing to laugh about!”
I knew, logically, that she was a sage, but she was so smart that it was difficult to communicate with her.
Smarsly hopped over its keyboard cloth, spelling out a word: “Danger.”
This, too, was frustratingly vague. But—
“…Right. Smarsly would get tired explaining everything to us, so I guess we’ll have to ask Miyu…”
But just then, the door opened, and two familiar faces walked in—Beelzebub and Pecora.
“Things are getting rather out of hand, Elder Sister~”
The look on Pecora’s face said she wasn’t worried in the slightest, however. It’d be nice if that meant there really was no cause for worry, but Beelzebub was scowling.
“What do we know right now?” I asked. “I don’t care who it is. Just—one of you—tell me what’s happening.”
“Of course,” Beelzebub replied. “When Miyu arrived, she wished to amuse herself and began examining an ancient clay tablet we have been unable to decipher as idle amusement.”
“She was doing it for fun…?”
“Both Smarsly and Miyu are sages, yes? I thought they might be able to read these clay tablets we’ve had lying around undeciphered for years, so I brought them out for fun. I thought it’d be worth it if they even managed one word.”
The situation didn’t call for mincing words, but wasn’t she being a little too honest?
“But they learned something—if I may borrow Miyu’s wording—crazy.”
“Please don’t.”
We were getting nowhere. I just wanted someone to tell me what the problem was.
“The following was written on the tablet: Should our god be freed, we will rule these lands far and wide.”
“A god?!” I exclaimed. “And it’s been sealed away all this time, I bet…”
That might indeed cause something truly terrible to happen.
“For the time being,” Pecora began, “we have decided to call this sealed entity an elder god—something entirely different from the sort of god we demons worship. Additionally, the clay tablets seem to have been made by unknown intelligent beings. Whoever created them is unlike modern demons, the humans’ ancestors, and of course the elves’ and dwarves’ ancestors, too~”
There was a bundle of paper in Pecora’s hands—probably a report on the investigation.
“If that’s true,” I said, “then we need to make sure the seal stays intact.”
“Yeeeaaah! Time to fight an elder god!” shouted Flatorte.
But that was risky… Even I couldn’t handle something like that.
“Aye, that was the intention. However…”
Beelzebub and Pecora exchanged glances.
“We need to hurry. Otherwise, the seal might undo itself! ” Pecora said shyly, then gripped my hands. “That’s why I’d like to ask you to take a look at the seal, Elder Sister. This may be the greatest danger demonkind—no, the world itself has ever experienced~ Oh gosh, look at me! Taking advantage of the situation to hold your hand!”
“You don’t sound too upset, but…we’re in trouble, correct?”
It wasn’t possible the problem had already been solved, right? Pecora loved pulling stunts like that…
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s a serious matter to face a god~”
“Yeah, totally!” Miyu piped up. “It’s the craziest craziness I’ve ever seen!”
“Things are crazy, Azusa,” Beelzebub added. “You must help us.”
“Man,” Flatorte said. “Imagine how fun it’d be if the god or whatever was crazy strong!”
“Okay, none of you are allowed to say ‘crazy’ until—until all this is over!”
I didn’t know what was happening anymore. This had to be the most times I’d heard the word crazy in a day.
“Lady Azusa…,” said Laika. “The word crazy has stopped sounding like a real word anymore… All I can hear is a combination of ‘cuh,’ ‘ray,’ and ‘zee’…”
She was tired of this, too. It appeared she was experiencing semantic satiation.
“You think this is all pretty crazy, too, don’t you, Laika?”
“Oh, Lady Azusa, you just said it yourself…”
“………You’re right.”
I guess my words were being influenced by the people around me, too…
“Okay, Beelzebub,” I said. “Do you know where this seal is? I heard it’s underground, but are we talking right beneath Vanzeld Castle again?”
That was the first thing that came to mind. The area beneath the castle was like a giant maze. In that respect, it was exactly the kind of place a demon king would call home.
“Not the castle, no,” Beelzebub replied. “It’s probably in the area where the tablet was discovered. ’Tis reasonable to believe that the seal would be around there as well.”
“I guess you’re right.”
It was a safe bet to assume the ominous clay tablet about the revival of an elder god had been located near its subject.
“So we just need to go to the place it was found. I can leave right now.”
“…You’re rather motivated today, aren’t you?” Beelzebub noted.
Well, I was! Don’t take the wind out of my sails!
“You’re the ones who dragged me into this… I may not know much about what’s going on, but it sounds like the whole world is dangerous. I can’t exactly look the other way, whether I want to get involved or not…”
“It is as Lady Azusa says,” Laika added. “For what reason have we refined our strength, if not to shine in situations like this?”
Laika was earnest, as always. Her parents must be proud.
Beelzebub nodded slowly. “Very well. Then we shall move before the sun sets.”
After splitting into groups to ride wyverns, we made our way to our destination.
The two dragons were also on wyverns so that they could recover the energy they’d spent getting to the demon lands. Smarsly and Miyu had come along, too. Miyu was holding Smarsly.
She had brought a bag with her, but it was stuffed full of potatoes to help her replenish her mana. Dryads had to stay charged, otherwise things would get “crazy” (and no, I’m not really sure what that means), so whenever they traveled any distance, they needed to bring along what was essentially a mobile battery.
“Are you sure Smarsly and Miyu should be joining us?”
They didn’t seem like fighting types, so I was worried.
“It’s not like we’re in a battle at the moment,” Miyu replied. “And we might find new tablets, which could give us more info. We have to chase the latest trends, otherwise our research will be worthless!”
Was research like fashion? Did it have trends?
But Miyu was right, in a way—research from five hundred years ago was outdated by today’s standards and not very useful.
“When you’re researching a trend, you have to find the source. We know that wherever this tablet came from is absolutely cuh-rayzee, so we gotta go there and find out how crazy it really is!”
“Researching a trend…”
This talk reminded me of going to Harajuku or Daikanyama. When I was in high school, I would go to Harajuku and walk around eating sweets. I didn’t seek out the latest trends, but I did act like a classic high school girl.
“If I may add to what Dryad Miyu just said,” Beelzebub interjected. She was sitting in front of me on the same wyvern. “The seal is not undone, nor is the locale a war zone. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable for you to treat this as a sightseeing tour to a city out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Right. Even if the seal mentioned on the tablet is real, if nothing is happening, it must still be functioning as intended.”
“Precisely.”
But what would a rural city in the demon lands be like?
The wyverns landed before a massive shrine.
The problem was…there was nothing but the shrine.
The surrounding area was all wasteland. I couldn’t spot anything remotely resembling a house. There weren’t even any trees. It was just a shrine standing in the middle of nowhere.
“What now? You call this a rural city? Something’s not right…”
Flatorte was already wandering around the outside of the shrine, muttering, “They don’t even sell food. This place sucks.”
“Oh, maybe it’s a huge shrine, and the rest is just buried? That can happen to ancient cities in the desert. But that would make it a ruin, so I still don’t think you can call it a rural city.”
“Azusa,” Beelzebub said. “What are you talking about? This is a station at best.”
Clearly, we were not on the same page.
Fatla was the first to enter the shrine. Then Pecora, then Beelzebub. I had no choice but to follow.
Inside, the shrine was rather spacious, with a sudden slope. And that slope was headed down into the earth.
“What is this…?” Laika had never seen anything like it before, and she was staring, wide-eyed.
The ceiling was high, but there was nothing filling the space. It was totally open. The slope was the only thing inside.
“This station takes us to the underground city of Yostos. This is the only way one may enter Yostos,” Beelzebub said, breezing right past the phrase underground city.
“You have cities underground?! I didn’t know about this! You should’ve told me!”
“Oh, ’tis common knowledge among us, so I suppose I forgot…”
The demon world was much deeper than I thought—literally.
“Elder Sister,” Pecora piped up. “There are some demons who do not handle sunlight well. They make their cities underground and live there.”
“Demons are on a whole other level… Wait, does that mean the underground city is in total darkness?”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about that. This city is for people who simply cannot handle sunlight. They are fine with other types of light. I think it might even be brighter than the surface!”
“So we’re not going to be stumbling around blind. But how are we supposed to get undergr—?”
The rest of my sentence was drowned out by the sound of massive footsteps. Huge mole-like demons appeared from what was probably the shrine guardroom. The moles were pulling several linked mine carts behind them.
“We’ll be getting on the King Mole. Even those who can fly have difficulty diving straight down into the earth, so we typically travel on these.”
“Yet another new vehicle, I see…”
We all got on the mine carts.
Flatorte and I took the cart at the very front. The demons all seemed to gather toward the back.
A metal gate then slowly lifted open. Beyond the gate was an abyss of inky blackness. There probably weren’t any lights beyond this point.
“Ooh… I don’t…I don’t know if I like this…” Laika grabbed at my back, probably unconsciously.
“I doubt the city itself is in total darkness, so just hang in there for a bit, okay, Laika?”
“Lady Azusa, please forgive me if I get scared and let some fire out…”
“Please try to keep it in, okay?”
I didn’t want to be made into roasted Azusa.
The mine carts reminded me of amusement park rides. I didn’t think any went straight down like this, though. Hm, now that I thought about it, I did notice some handrails inside the carts. What could those be for?
“Sheesh, you little crybaby, Laika,” said Flatorte. “It’s just dark. If that scares you, you must be scared every night when you go to sleep!”
It seemed Flatorte had some immunity to the horrors of the dark. She was being quite logical about all this. Though in her case, it was probably less that she was hard to scare and more that she was simply not thinking very deeply about it.
“I can’t help it… I do not know where my enemy is in the dark, and it puts me at a disadvantage. It is normal to be afraid of such a prospect…” Meanwhile, Laika was clinging to my back.
“Hah. You always talk a big game, but all it takes is a little dark—”
The mine carts suddenly lurched downward.
“Gah! I just bit my tongue!”
Flatorte’s scream echoed off the earthen walls.
The King Mole had begun to rush down the slope, which was probably where the lurch came from.
With that, the mine carts raced straight into the darkness!
I couldn’t see anything.
I could only feel the jostling of the mine carts.
Now I got why there were handrails… Shouldn’t the demons have warned me about this?! It was my first time, after all.
“Eek! I’m so scared! Lady Azusa, this is terrifying!” Laika’s screams were coming from right behind me.
“I know! This is basically a roller coaster!”
It was hard to tell in the dark, but I was sure the moles were running pretty fast. There were even times when it felt like we were falling straight down. Anyone who hates this stuff should steer clear of this mode of transport… It reminded me of those rides where you were blindfolded and then dropped from way up high…
“Hey!” shouted Beelzebub. “You’ll bite your tongue if you speak! Do not open your mouth!”
“You should’ve told me that before! You always wait until after the fact! Like with the shrine-station!”
“…’Tis common knowledge for a demon, so I forgot.”
I’m not a demon, you know. Please, just explain things.
“Gosh, it is nice to take a ride in these every once in a while, isn’t it~?”
“Aaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is sooo fun! It’s sooo funny! Like, super funny! I’m getting sooo hyped right now!”
I could hear Pecora and Miyu laughing… They really were treating this like an amusement park…
At last, it didn’t feel like we were falling anymore.
Finally, we’d made it—
—except an instant later it felt like we were whipping around a tight corner.
“Waaaaaaah! Now whaaaaaat?!” Laika exclaimed.
“It’s moving like a roller coasteeeeeer!” I screamed.
“We call this Hell’s Spiral. Do not let go,” Beelzebub warned. “If you are thrown from the cart, it will be a pain finding and rescuing you in the dark.”
“Don’t tell me that nooooow!”
“Omigosh! This is crazy! This is so crazy! I’m cracking up! Ooomigosh! This is so crazy!”
Miyu had gone full Valley girl…
“Miss Miyu is a genuine sage… She sees everything from a distance and feels no fear… I still have a long way to go…”
Laika, you are giving her way too much credit…
“Whoa! Ha-ha, omigosh, I almost dropped Smarsly!”
“Please, hold on to it tightly!” I shouted. “Keep a death grip on it!”
Smarsly was already black; if it fell into the darkness, who knows how long the search would take…
“Oh! It’s the Spiral-After-Spiral next~ Be careful, everyone~!”
Right after Pecora said that, I felt my body jerk in an uncomfortable direction…
I really wished they’d told us all this before we started, but if I’d asked for too many details, Laika probably would’ve been too scared to get on…
Despite going through full vertical circuit on the way, we eventually arrived at the station for the underground city of Yostos. It was properly lit, so we were able to see all right. The building itself was not too different from the one aboveground.
“Phew… We finally made it… That went on forever…,” I said.
“It did…,” Laika agreed. “It felt as though I was having a nightmare from which I would never awaken…”
We were both mentally exhausted.
“It was so nice and cool. Being underground is really comfortable.”
Flatorte sounded as carefree as ever. I wished I could be as relaxed as her. Was there any reason the route had done a full loop?
“’Tis not a long ride at all. It took scarcely ten minutes. The King Mole goes quite fast, you see.”
“No, Beelzebub, I mean it felt like it would never end. How much time it actually took isn’t the problem…”
All the demons seemed unfazed, as though they were used to such things. Maybe this was just a cultural difference…
“Omigosh, that was the best! I got so craaaazy excited! I totally wanna go again!”
“We’re not here to play, Miyu! You do realize we came all this way for a very serious reason, right?”
However, once we exited the station, I immediately wanted to eat my words.
The underground city was filled to the brim with color and joy.
There were signs in the shape of candy and food, and the walls were painted with murals of cats, dogs, and ducks. The shops were awfully vibrant, and it felt totally different from the town around Vanzeld Castle. Cheerful music poured out from every kind of establishment.
What’s more, the demons walking around were wearing fake bunny ears.
And despite how far underground we were—or rather, because of it—the place was full of light magic.
I knew this atmosphere—
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login