The Demon Realm Underground
The Karia tribe lived, at their core, as hunters. Gathering the many varieties of mushrooms that flourished in abundance underground and hunting beast-type monsters — that was their daily work.
Benos taking Kiki out to pick mushrooms had been a perfectly ordinary outing. But according to him, Kiki had been unusually excited that day. And in the brief moment he'd let his attention wander to a particularly lush cluster of mushrooms, she had vanished without a trace.
The instant he realized she was gone, Benos had searched every inch of the surrounding area, calling her name over and over. He never found her. He'd hoped she might have gone back to the village on her own — but she hadn't.
The place where Benos had lost Kiki connected to a location known as the Passage of the Abyss. It was the only route to the surface, the one that led directly to the area near the Demon King's Castle he had told me about. But the path was so tangled, and so infested with dangerous monsters, that even the Karia tribe had long since stopped using it. The near-total absence of contact between the surface demons and the Karia was, in no small part, because traversing the Passage of the Abyss was so extraordinarily difficult.
I was searching the area around the Passage of the Abyss with Benos, looking for Kiki.
"If we go any deeper, we'll have to be careful too. If we lose the way we came, we won't get back out."
Benos, who had barely managed to recover his composure, pointed to a hole in the wall just wide enough for two people to squeeze through. He seemed to have steeled himself to find his little sister, but the anxiety in his eyes was impossible to hide.
When I'd offered to help search for Kiki, Benos had lent me a spare sword. It was a distinctive blade with a faintly yellowish gleam, carved from a hardened mushroom, he said. Not just this sword — every weapon the Karia used was carved from mushrooms as hard as iron. A mushroom sword. Something about it just wouldn't sit right, but having a blade in my hand again gave me the confidence to face monsters.
Having latched onto the Karia village like a parasite, Yunoa set out to find Benos's little sister, Kiki, in order to repay their kindness.
We made our way slowly into the Passage of the Abyss, advancing alongside Benos, when the Narration's voice reached me.
Perfect timing. If the Narration told me where she was, we'd find Kiki in no time.
Yunoa had barely begun the search before he found himself wishing someone would just tell him where Kiki was.
The petty hope that the problem would solve itself without him lifting a finger was truly pathetic.
It was the stupid wish of a man who wanted shoots without sowing seeds — who wanted to arrive at his destination without walking.
Yeah, I'm sorry. But Kiki's a kid — if we don't find her fast in a place this dangerous, who knows what could happen. It's not like I was thinking that because I wanted to coast.
The labyrinthine underground cavern known as the Passage of the Abyss connected not only to the Demon King's Castle of Kutranux, but to any number of other places beneath the earth.
In the deep reaches of the Passage of the Abyss, where even demons had not set foot for ages, there were equally plentiful useful resources.
But just as there is always a reason people stay away from a place, the Passage of the Abyss was home to terrifying monsters.
"Benos, you've never gone in deep here either, have you?"
I asked the question of Benos, who was crushing glowing mushrooms against the cave wall to mark our way back.
"There's no real need to go that deep. You can get everything worth getting just by combing this area. Where the hell did Kiki go...? She's not the kind of kid who just wanders off on her own. I should've kept a better eye on her."
Benos bit down on his lower lip, blaming himself. I scanned our surroundings, turning over how we might actually find her.
The Passage of the Abyss was structured like a vast ant nest. From any given cavern chamber, multiple tunnels branched off to other chambers, which in turn connected to still more — a natural underground labyrinth so complex that if you didn't know the way, you might never find your way out for the rest of your life.
Benos had said you could reach the surface through the Passage of the Abyss, all the way to where the Demon King's Castle of Kutranux stood. But without a path or anything resembling a map, it looked complicated enough that you wouldn't make it to the surface at all — you wouldn't even make it back to where you'd started.
Wandering a cave like this at random, leaving markers as we went, didn't seem like a particularly efficient way to find Kiki either. Other members of the Karia tribe were out searching as well, helping Benos, but finding her still felt like a distant hope.
Kiki was a demon, yes, but she was still a child. If she'd wandered into the Passage of the Abyss for some reason and lost her way, she couldn't have gone all that far. Give it more time, though, and she would only wander farther in — and the distance would only make her harder to find.
"Shari."
Shari, who had been clinging to my head, answered the call and drifted around to float in front of my eyes.
"Could you search for Kiki in a spiral, starting from me and going farther and farther out — as wide a range as you can? Do you understand what I mean?"
I made the request of Shari. For the two of us, who had no choice but to physically follow the tunnels of the underground cavern, it would be far faster to let her do the looking. Besides, Shari had already shown herself to Kiki and the rest of the Karia. If she found Kiki, she could even ask her to stay put and wait for rescue.
Shari tilted her head and looked at me.
Did I make that too complicated?
"Watch. Pretend this is me right now. And this finger is you, Shari. So you go around and around like this, like this, circling out from me as you search. Got it now?"
Once I explained it with my fingers, Shari finally nodded.
"And if you find Kiki, tell her not to move — stay hidden and wait right there. If she keeps moving around, she'll be even harder to find."
Nod, nod.
"Alright. I'll wait here. I'm counting on you."
The moment I finished speaking, Shari picked up speed and slipped straight through the cave wall. I called out to Benos, who was about to head for the next tunnel.
"Benos, let's wait here a minute."
There was no point in us continuing to search on foot. It couldn't compare to Shari flying through the walls on her own. Better to wait until she came back.
You've got this, Shari.
Benos and I left the search to Shari and sat back against the cave wall for a while, talking and resting. At first he had insisted on keeping up the hunt even if he had to do it alone, but after hearing my explanation, he'd come around.
I decided to use the opportunity to ask him about something that had been nagging at me.
"Come to think of it, when you saw Shari, you said she was a Pureblood Demon — the same as the Demon King. What does that mean?"
It had been when Shari revealed herself on purpose to protect me. Benos had looked at her in clear shock and called her a Pureblood Demon, the same as the Demon King. I'd been wondering ever since whether that meant Shari was related to the Demon King somehow.
"Pureblood demons are exactly what they sound like — the original demons."
"The original demons?"
"There are a huge number of demon races now, including us. If you trace any of those races back far enough, they all became demons by receiving another demon's blood. But a Pureblood Demon didn't become a demon through a transfusion — they were a true demon from the start."
"So does that mean Shari is family to the Demon King you all talk about?"
Benos shook his head at the question.
"Are all humans family just because they're the same species?"
"Well, no."
"Yeah. Like that. If you go back far enough, they might be distant relatives, I guess."
A short while later, Shari came gliding back through the cave wall. Her eyes were round and her arms were flailing, her whole expression screaming that she had a great deal to say.
"Well? Did you find Kiki?"
Shari nodded so fast her head was a blur, and immediately scenes began to play through my mind.
Kiki was crouched behind a massive stalagmite in a large cavern chamber, hiding.
But the problem was the other thing in that chamber.
A long, sleek neck like a lamprey's, ending in a circular mouth packed to a nauseating degree with razor-sharp teeth. A hairless, plump white body, shaped like a small bipedal dinosaur.
It was so grotesque that even seeing it secondhand through Shari sent a chill crawling straight up my spine.
"I... I found Kiki. I found her, but—"
"What? Where? Which way do we go?!"
"She's... hiding from some weird-looking monster. I don't think she can even move because of it."
I described to a thoroughly agitated Benos what I had seen through Shari. His expression went rigid. His face, which already carried a faint blue tint, seemed to go a shade paler.
"It's a Worm Dragon. They wander the Passage of the Abyss sometimes. This is bad! If we don't save her fast, Kiki's in danger! Where is she? Which way? Hurry!"
Shari spun in circles in the air, gesturing for us to follow. We hurried after her toward where Kiki was.