I'm Not a Knight-Errant. I'm Not a Knight, Either (8)
Rrrumble.
"What was that?"
"An earthquake?"
"...Doesn't sound like a big one."
The soldiers, and the manor servants with them, flinched at the faint groan of the earth, then thought little more of it. Even if it was an earthquake, the tremor was feeble. What trouble could something like that cause?
Crack. Crrrrack—!
Had they seen the scene below, they would have known that an enormous problem was already underway — a problem long past the point of being undone.
"..."
"...Hey. Youngest merchant of a fallen house."
"What is it, debt-hound Corin?"
"Just... who is that man?"
"...I'm even more curious than you are."
Crash—thud, thud!
A tunnel burst through a wall some four meters thick. It was the sort of passage ten grown men would have had to chip at for the better part of two days, and a single punch had opened it. They were looking straight at the thing, and still they could not believe it. Harder to believe than the hole itself was the man who had made it.
H-he said he was holding back, didn't he?
...Is it even possible to open a path without bringing the ground down?
After working a miracle like that, he did not look tired in the slightest. If anything, he seemed to have gone at it only halfway. And they were right.
"Can't go all out. There's still something I need to find."
What use would it be if he brought the foundation down as well? The mutter was low, yet it crawled straight into their ears, and a strange hollowness settled over them — a hollowness that was, somehow, almost pleasant.
Lee Han drove tunnels like that four times in all.
It was tedious, repetitive work, but he trusted his instinct.
Something's in there. I can feel it...
The prison walls were thick to the point of absurdity, and that excess had stirred his suspicion. Each time he punched through another stretch of stone, the prison shuddered. Whether by fortune or by simple negligence, no wardens were stationed in the underground itself, so he could move with relative freedom; and because he drove his strength in a straight line, careful not to collapse the surface, the earth never caved in. It was not a trick just anyone could manage. Only a master who could wield Gyeong — force itself — as freely as Lee Han could call such a thing an art.
"...Found it."
At last the effort paid off. He had found the hollow hidden inside the wall: a secret space that had no business existing beneath a prison.
Whoosh!
The moment the chamber opened, a horrific stench surged up. It was worse than the rot already festering in the cells — a reek that stirred an instinctive revulsion.
"This is..."
A priest was a priest, it seemed. The instant Corin understood the stench, his face twisted without mercy.
"Demonic qi... hell-qi? Why...?"
Hell-qi. It was kin to the turbid qi that hung in the Underworld, a grade above the demonic qi carried by monsters. Devils, black mages, and those who worked wicked sorcery sometimes bore a trace of it, which was precisely why, under ordinary circumstances, one simply did not see the stuff. In the space Lee Han had opened, that hell-qi did more than seethe. It breathed out a thick, clinging pressure, as if it had been left to ripen. To a human being it was no different from poison-qi. Mere contact could cost a life.
"You stay here. I'll go in alone."
"...Understood."
They did not argue. None of them wanted to be a hindrance. Even so—
"But will you be all right, my lord? That energy looks dangerous..."
"Mm. Probably fine."
"...Yes?"
"That Taechang kid said I can digest just about any poison."
"...?"
"Did he say I could digest hydrochloric acid, too?"
"???"
...Was that a joke?
Lee Han walked into the space overflowing with hell-qi without a moment's hesitation. There were even stairs, which meant the place had been built with clear intent. Darkness black as pitch swallowed his sight, but it was not a darkness that troubled him much. His steps never faltered. The descent itself was easy. The deeper he went, the more thickly the hell-qi closed over him, until the air was no longer a place in which a person could live.
Hsssss...
As if boasting of its venom, the hell-qi began to melt his clothes. The poison-qi and death-qi bound up in it were vicious indeed. His clothes were dissolving. His skin was not.
I can take this.
It stung a little, but he felt he could endure inside the hell-qi for as long as he needed.
Thock.
"?"
Something caught the toe of his boot. He looked down, and his face hardened.
"...Human bone."
It was a person's skeleton, holding its shape by the barest margin, ready to melt and vanish at any moment. He swept his gaze around, just in case.
How many people were down here?
Traces beyond counting, and every one of them looked like the remains of a person. He was wearing an expression he could not have named when a voice came out of the dark.
"They've sent another one down... Vicious. Just how much sin are they planning to commit?"
"..."
"Well then. What crime did you commit, to be brought all the way here? Heh heh."
"..."
"...Hah. Yes, I suppose you're too stunned for words. Fair enough. This is an execution ground in all but name — a live burial. I'd react the same way. I understand you."
A middle-aged man lay still in a corner, letting out a cynical little laugh. He was starved down to the bone, so wasted he might almost have been mistaken for an old man. Surviving in a place like this ought to have been a miracle, but Lee Han saw at once that luck had nothing to do with it. A faint sacred energy was keeping the man alive even in that pitch-black dark.
"Holy Law."
"Hm. Not a mute, then. And quite the eye, besides."
The Holy Power was faint to the point of nothing — so faint that recognizing it by sight alone should have been nearly impossible.
If he only had enough Holy Power, he could pass for a high priest.
The power itself was proof of how little he possessed. The control, however, was excellent: proof of a talent for Holy Law. Lee Han stared at him, then spoke with the look of a man testing a long shot.
"...Do you know a man named Corin?"
"He is my disciple. And?"
"..."
"Why do you ask?"
"...Because there's no way my luck is this good, and yet a stroke of it just walked up and found me."
"What?"
"I came here to find you. That's what I'm saying."
"...And who are you?"
He had every reason to be startled, yet he only tilted his head, unruffled. Just as Lee Han had heard, the man was far from ordinary.
Keeping his mind intact in a place like this... he isn't normal.
By Corin's account, his master had been missing for more than a week. Which meant this man had survived, sealed down here, for over a week. Astonishing.
I'm not sure even I could have held out.
The dark was one thing. The air was thick with the stink of corpses, human bones lay everywhere, and bodies could be watched melting and rotting in real time. To stay sane for a week in that — and to do it in a body this gaunt and this wounded — was not a feat of ordinary will. He had no physical strength to speak of, but his mind and his heart were extraordinary. A man like that was very likely to hold the answer Lee Han wanted.
...Well. Even if he didn't, Lee Han would still get him out.
"All you need to know is that I'm a man who needs your help. For the moment, though, it looks like I'm the one who has to get you out of here."
"Did I leave something in your care?"
The reply was cold, almost mocking, and Lee Han could hardly blame him. Who turned cooperative when a stranger he had just met started making demands? But—
"The circus troupe's monsters. Did you figure out what they really are?"
"..."
"Looks like you did. Then is there a way to save them?"
"...You've an amusing talent, young man. Give me your name first. Don't try to read my thoughts before that."
"Lee Han. For now, call me Santa."
"...A young man, living a complicated life."
It was a strange way for a conversation to move. Both of them were deep enough players that talking three moves ahead posed no difficulty, and so the talk ran smooth. A player knows a player. It had been a long time since Lee Han had met someone he could actually speak with.
In a flash, he had the man up.
"First, let's get out of here."
"...Why are you hauling a man like a sack of luggage?"
"You don't look like you can walk. Call it consideration."
"...I'm grateful enough to weep."
It sounded like sarcasm. It was not. He meant the thanks. His manner of speaking was simply like that.
"Mmm. The young man's consideration is appreciated, but it will not be easy. This space — perhaps because of the hell-qi — is simple enough to enter and all but impossible to leave. You might call it a distorted space."
"That so? Hm. Think it'll take a while to get out?"
"Were you even listening to me?"
"We can get out. If it truly proves difficult, I have only to break through to the surface."
"?"
"There is such a thi— hm?"
Mid-answer, he felt something trembling against his chest. Wondering what it was, he drew out the compass, which shivered thinly in his hand.
Ziiing—
The needle shuddered and spilled light.
"...Is this thing broken?"
He was still wondering why it had done that when the man spoke.
"...I ask only on the chance. Is that the Pilgrim's Compass?"
"Oh, you knew it at a glance? Your disciple had to turn it over and over before he figured it out."
"Do not compare me with that fellow. More to the point — it is truly the Pilgrim's Compass? The one said to keep a man from losing his way under any circumstance..."
"?"
Wasn't it just a compass with a demon-finding trick stuck on it?
"...That is nothing but its basic function. The compass's true power is that it always teaches the right road to the one it has acknowledged as master. No matter what labyrinth, hallucination, or illusion comes down upon him, this compass is said to find the answer."
"And here I thought it was a defective piece that just called down bad luck..."
"Heh heh. To an ordinary man, it would look like a defective trinket. But at a glance, you do not seem ordinary."
"Is that praise?"
"Praise, yes. Consider it an honor. I rarely praise anyone."
...And I'm supposed to feel lucky about that?
The man's shameless way of speaking left Lee Han speechless, but as he watched the Sacred Relic pour out light, his eyes had already turned favorable. Recognition by a Sacred Relic, it seemed, was guarantee enough of who a man was.
"...Come to think of it, I never exchanged names with the young man who came to save me."
"What use is exchanging names in a situation like this?"
"There is that. Even so, one ought to know a name, at the least."
He let out a broad, untroubled laugh that had no business in a place like this. For the briefest moment he seemed to hesitate, and then he spoke.
"Diogenes. That is my name. And the surname—"
Flinch.
Lee Han's foot stopped all at once. The surname had struck him with a flicker of dismay, and fearing he had misheard, he asked again.
"What did you say?"
Diogenes seemed to find the reaction amusing. He laughed that same untroubled laugh once more, and still he was kind enough to give his full name of his own accord.
"—Diogenes Hannibal."
"..."
There was no System Window. Even so, Lee Han was certain.