Chapter 27
THEY’D FINALLY FREED the babies’ souls from Resurrected’s Dying Cry. Having successfully restored those spirits to the world without violence, Mira thanked and dismissed Fenrir, then checked on Soul Howl.
Despite the previous fuss, his work was going well. His obsession and concentration were equally terrifying. His spell had proven effective; the traces of the gray woman’s fiend transformation were all but gone. She’d returned to her original form, and beauty had taken the place of her horror-movie-monster visage.
That made the current situation look more concerning. Since the gray woman was still bound to the floor, this appeared even more criminal than before. Fortunately, no normal people were around to be scarred by the sight.
“Well, isn’t she a beauty?” Mira grinned lasciviously at the gray woman.
“Yeah. I don’t know what you can call this other than fate.” Now acting completely depraved, Soul Howl pulled out a bunch of women’s clothes, excitedly picking out garments for the gray woman to wear.
Martel misunderstood once again. “Poor man… This is how he copes with being unable to save his true love.”
The Spirit King alone calmly tried to analyze things. “Becoming fiends… I wonder what manner of beings those unworthy gods truly were.” Unfortunately, nobody was listening.
***
After Soul Howl had obtained a new wife, things proceeded without incident. They left the cultivation room, went to the elevator bay, rode to the top floor, and headed all the way to the facility’s entrance.
“This place seems to hold a lot more secrets, but we should leave such things to the experts.”
“Yeah. I already got what really matters—let them do what they want.”
When they turned around on the stairs leading up, they saw the expansive facility behind them through the glass. It seemed certain that this place was related to modern Japan, but that didn’t mean they would learn anything by investigating on their own.
Thus, Mira and Soul Howl were in full agreement: they would just need to pass this on to the Hinomoto Committee. Of course, part of their reasoning was that they didn’t want to put in any more effort.
When they reached the exit, having left no regrets behind, Mira gazed at the location where the security terminal was hidden.
“The security… Is it okay just to leave it?” she asked.
“Seems fine to me, but…I don’t know. Want to set it up again?”
Since all the security was currently disabled, anybody could trash the facility as completely as they wanted. Then again, it was deep below a dungeon that already took ages to clear. And you needed at least a security-level-five authentication key to enter; to get that, you had to enter the Machina Guardian’s boss chamber. Reaching it wasn’t exactly easy, so it made sense that leaving things as they were would be fine.
Mira and Soul Howl didn’t know whether the key card was reusable either. If it had limited uses, then reactivating the facility’s security might temporarily keep the Hinomoto Committee from investigating. That would require the committee to fall back on the authentication-key update process Soul Howl had found, which would take a week at minimum.
Since they knew an investigation team would come soon, this was a dilemma. But despite all appearances, Soul Howl was prudent; he suggested setting up the security again.
His main reason was the absence of the Machina Guardian. In a way, that raid boss had created even more robust security than the facility system’s former settings. Now that the Machina Guardian would be gone for a while, anyone could easily obtain an authentication key of a high-enough level to enter.
“Hrmm… Well, it’s not as if we’ll have to wait. Besides, I’m curious whether it will work.” Mira agreed, ran over to the security terminal, and fed it the key card. It again displayed this text:
All room locks disengaged.
Please reestablish settings.
She pressed the Settings button, followed by the Reset option.
Even when the monitor displayed Resetting…, they could do little but wait and watch.
After a while, the words Lock Complete appeared. With that, things returned to the state they’d been in before Mira and Soul Howl arrived.
Mira tried feeding the terminal the key card again as a test. It displayed No permission. Please issue new key card. “Hrmm… The key card was limited.”
“Then I’ll have to tell the committee how to update it too,” Soul Howl replied.
In other words, when the Hinomoto Committee inevitably visited someday, waiting for a new authentication key would delay them by a week.
Soul Howl would report to them; he’d have to stop by anyway, since—thanks to the Machina Guardian’s loot—he could now upgrade Irina’s grave goods.
***
“Finally! We’re back!”
“Back on the seventh level, sure.”
Mira and Soul Howl left the room with the hidden terminal behind and, after a long trudge up even longer-seeming stairs, headed to the boss-chamber door. It had no handle—no protrusions at all, in fact, save for one single slit near the edge.
Soul Howl took his authentication key out of his Item Box and pushed it into the slit. Rays of light spread over the door, and after a moment, it opened without a sound. When Soul Howl went through, it quickly shut again. This door was designed so that only one person could go through at a time.
“You know, I guess it’s very sci-fi in that regard.” More intrigued, Mira gazed at the door and inserted her own authentication key.
Beyond the door was a small room enclosed by metal walls. Various devices lined the chamber. In the center, a tube went through the ceiling, continuing all the way to the surface. Inside, a capsule stood by as if waiting for a passenger; it could fit one person.
Soul Howl entered the capsule. “All right, see you in five minutes,” he said sarcastically.
The capsule in the tube was essentially an escape pod. When its lid closed, it shot through the tube as if being sucked upward. Since the facility was so deep underground, it took a full five minutes to exit.
Another capsule quickly appeared in the tube. Mira likewise entered, joking, “Well, I suppose this counts as high-tech…”
The lid closed, and the capsule moved. It looked awfully fast from the outside, but the environment inside was surprisingly peaceful. One would expect serious g-force, but the user felt nothing. Assuming that was the result of sci-fi technology, Mira calmly waited the five minutes the capsule took to reach the surface.
***
About five minutes later, the capsule stopped—as it did so, one didn’t even feel the inertia—and reopened. “High-tech indeed…” Mira muttered to herself as she alighted.
“Seriously. But how come only one exit is like that?” Soul Howl said, gazing past the capsule. His tone indicated that he was complaining.
“Feels like hostile design to me,” Mira agreed.
The escape capsule had brought them to a corner of a large stone chamber. Looking toward the center, they could see six small, altar-like objects placed from end to end. Each altar was surrounded by four stone pillars and had a stone tablet engraved with a magic circle embedded in its center.
While Mira and Soul Howl glared at the altars in irritation, the second magic circle from the back glowed. Instantly, five people resembling adventurers appeared.
The five headed to the chamber’s exit, discussing how they’d divide their loot. Along the way, they locked eyes with Mira and Soul Howl in front of the tube.
“Hey, you two there. That’s only an exit. It’s not gonna open, no matter how long you wait,” a balding man laughed before leaving. He was in an awfully good mood—no doubt he’d earned a lot of money. The four following him bowed apologetically to Mira and Soul Howl.
“We know, you fool,” Mira muttered to herself as the adventurers left.
As the balding man said, the tube was only for leaving. This chamber, for its part, contained all the Ancient Underground City’s exits. All except the seventh-level exit used teleportation magic, so there was no need to wait five minutes to exit the other levels. That was why Mira and Soul Howl had complained.
“I guess nobody expects someone to be returning from the seventh level in this day and age,” mused Soul Howl. “I’d say you’ll make a pretty penny off that loot you grabbed.”
To use the escape pod, one needed to reach the seventh level and obtain an authentication key. Given the adventurer’s misunderstanding, Soul Howl was probably right that accomplishing such a thing was extremely rare in this era, which would mean the price of seventh-level loot had risen to match.
Mira smirked broadly at his words.
***
The stone exit chamber was beneath the oldest chapel in Grandrings. Mira and Soul Howl exited the chamber, climbed a long staircase, and entered the chapel through a door at the top.
Though the chapel was old, it was well maintained and had a dignity that outweighed its years. Sculptures and wall murals told the story of its history, and the candlelight gave them an even more enigmatic sheen. All in all, the divinity of this space could give even an atheist pause.
Many worshippers were lined up in the chapel, and a priest wearing vestments that indicated his high rank was preaching something to them. Mira and Soul Howl’s arrival in such a solemn location was rather startling, but nobody paid them any mind.
On the pillar nearest the door they’d entered through was a single large sign labeled To adventurers returning from the Ancient Underground City. It read as follows:
If you reQuire treatment for injury or illness, the first room on the left is an infirmary. You may use it freely; one of our best priests will always await you there.
Weekday prayers are from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Please be Quiet during this period.
On weekends, we deliver sermons on fables of the Trinity from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. If you are interested, feel free to attend. If you’re in a hurry, please exit in a Quiet, orderly manner.
Depending on the day and time, we may hold events such as worship and sermons. If you return during such an event, we apologize for the inconvenience, but ask that you not use the main door. Please follow the arrows on your right and, keeping quiet, exit through the side door.
After skimming the long message, Mira looked around. “Interesting…” she murmured.
Long ago, that sign hadn’t existed. After all, there’d been no such thing as adventurers. This was another symbol that time was passing.
When the Adventurers’ Guild Union formed, it had led to the explosive growth of the adventuring profession. Many more people had visited the Ancient Underground City and, plainly, had to return at some point.
The Ancient Underground City took time to explore, but it contained instant-teleportation magic circles as dedicated exits. Everybody used those, naturally, and the chapel’s sign was a result of that trend. No doubt many adventurers had come through making too much ruckus to ignore.
“That’s politely written. I bet they can’t stand adventurers.” Chuckling at the repeated use of the word “quiet,” Soul Howl peered around the chapel.
Just then, another group of adventurers came into the chapel. They whispered to each other as they scurried along the arrows to the right.
“Oh, they’re mid-sermon.”
“Ack! That’s the iron-fisted priest!”
“Don’t make a peep!”
“I’ll pass on another of his diatribes.”
Hearing their whispers, Mira wondered what had them quaking in their boots. “They’re awfully scared of something.”
She looked toward the priest giving the passionate sermon. He appeared to be in his midfifties, and his expression was calm and peaceful. At a glance, one hardly expected a nickname like “the iron-fisted priest” to refer to him.
Soul Howl also looked at the man, then snickered to himself. “Want to know why? Inspect him. You might learn something fun.”
Mira followed Soul Howl’s example and Inspected the priest. “Aha. This is a rather delightful little development, isn’t it?”
The priest’s physical stats were higher than the average veteran adventurer’s. That wasn’t what she and Soul Howl were focused on, though; it was his name.
“That’s what you get in the city that gathers the best adventurers on the continent,” Soul Howl mused. “Even the priests are jacked.”
“Adventurer” was a mere catchall; the term described people as diverse as could be. There were polite ones, and there were ruffians. In a city like Grandrings, problems involving adventurers popped up daily, so citizens needed the power to overwhelm adventurers when necessary.
The church that served as the underground city’s exit saw the second-most adventurer foot traffic in all Grandrings, after the Adventurers’ Guild Union.
What priest had taken a position at a chapel with such a high rate of adventurer-related problems? That would be Zatzbald Bloodycrimson Kingsblade, the strongest champion in the history of Ozstein’s underground arena, boasting a win-loss record of a thousand-to-zero.
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