Asumpfre Sunken Ruins (8)
I swallowed hard and wiped away the collapsed earth half-blocking the passage with a Wall of Space. The moment I did, the hum rising from the cross-spear deepened, its red light flared brighter, and the prickling against the Mana Sieve wrapped around my body grew a little sharper.
Even so, it was nothing beside my sister's dark-attribute black mist. If her darkness felt like needles jabbing the Mana Sieve, this was no more than being tickled with down.
Wooong~! Wooong-woong!
"Kh..."
Hwayeon, who had been following me, couldn't withstand the spear's swelling pressure and hastily fell back. To my ear, that humming sounded an awful lot like Oh, don't come any closer! I said don't! As if the thing were afraid.
"Tell me not to come, and I'll only come closer."
Woong?!
Huh? That one sounded different.
Anyway, I looked down at the spear lying on the floor, shedding red light, and opened my mouth because the humming was getting on my nerves.
"Shut up, or I'll snap the shaft."
Woooong-woo...
What? Did it actually understand me? An ego weapon? Half convinced and half doubtful, I tried again.
"And put that aura away. You saw the ghost burst apart earlier, didn't you? Ignore me, and you'll end up the same."
...Huh. It really did understand. The ominous energy vanished without a trace. Just in case, I concentrated every scrap of Mana Sieve I had, pushed Mana Vision in my eyes to the limit, and reached for the spear.
"Seoha! Don't!!"
The instant Hwayeon's horrified cry struck my back, my fingertips touched the shaft—and my consciousness was sucked away somewhere else.
Ah. This again.
What footage were they planning to show me this time... wait. Again? Again?
A strange sense of déjà vu turned over in my head, and then I fixed my attention on the scene before me.
The place was... a cathedral? Gray stone. A wooden chandelier hung from the ceiling, and dozens of candelabra lined the walls, their candles wavering yellow light through the dark interior.
On the rear wall sat the statue of an enormous serpent, coiled upon itself. Why did that look familiar?
...Ah! It resembled, somehow, the serpent from the temple on the Floating Sky Islands.
Come to think of it, the inside of this cathedral was oddly similar to the one I had erased with a Wall of Space.
Before the altar at the front of the nave, a middle-aged man in a pitch-black robe—his hair shaved into a stiff barcode crop—shook his head with a dark expression at the person standing before him, someone dressed like a Roman legionary.
The legionary in the red cloak held a cross-spear in the left hand and, in the right, the shield they call a scutum. Dull blond hair spilled long from beneath the helmet. A woman? More than that, the spear looked like the one that had been planted back there.
The soldier set the scutum down, yanked off the Gallic Type-G helmet, hurled it to the floor, and protested furiously. There was no sound.
The face revealed beneath the helmet belonged to a woman—pretty, and yet somehow rough-edged. Wavy hair like a Roman goddess framed a face twisted hard with anger. Whatever had set her off, she flushed scarlet and stamped the cathedral floor again and again with the butt of the cross-spear.
The man in the black robe—a priest, surely. At the shake of his head, her rage finally broke. She lifted a greaved leg and drove it down into the stone. The impact set the wooden chandelier swaying, and a few candles fell. The woman in legionary dress didn't so much as glance at them. She swung the spear and struck only the flames at the tips of the candlesticks, snuffing them with perfect precision, then launched straight back into her furious protest.
...Huh? Nuhodi? When the priest's lips moved, I could have sworn he said Nuhodi.
Nuhodi was the name on that vision-plate. The one said to have prophesied the city's doom. So the priest was the man who had recorded the plate, and the woman with the spear was Nuhodi?
Whatever persuasion had been attempted, it failed. Nuhodi ground her teeth, thrust the spear—for a second I thought she meant to run the priest through—and flicked the fallen helmet up off the floor. She caught it as it bounced, jammed it back onto her head, snatched up the scutum, and stormed out of the cathedral in a rough turn.
She passed streets lined with square stone buildings and returned to what looked like her house, where she immediately flung spear and shield aside and stripped off every piece of armor. Not a gram of spare flesh on her. Under moonlight tinged red, she bared a perfectly muscled body, took a towel, and went out to the rear yard to wash herself by the well in the moonlight. Just looking at that body, neither Hwayeon nor Yeongeun would have stood a chance against her.
After wiping herself down with the wet towel, Nuhodi went back inside, wrapped a large, thin, light cloth around herself, lay on her side upon a stone bed, and sank into worried thought, her face full of care.
Then the black-robed priest came to her house—and suddenly they started in on an R-rated scene.
What? Why show me this? Worse, watching a man in his fifties take a woman in her twenties was painful just to look at. They were still biting and sucking at each other, right on the verge of the act itself, when Nuhodi dropped a hand to cover herself and stopped the black priest's member from entering her. Her mouth moved, saying something. The priest's face went red and pale by turns, then thunderous, and he slapped her across the cheek with everything he had.
He didn't spare a glance for Nuhodi, a thread of blood at the corner of her mouth. As if his mood were ruined, he rose from the stone bed spread with thick cloth and pulled his robe back on. Nuhodi scrambled after him and seized the hem. He shook her arm off hard, kicked her away, and walked straight out of the room.
The blow threw her into the wall, and she collapsed to the floor. Her face held neither pain nor anger—only loss, and a hollow emptiness.
Time passed before I knew it. Noon. Nuhodi had wound a long, wide length of white cloth around herself into something like a dress, and sat on the second-floor railing, looking down over the vast city spread before her.
Bright sun fell on stone buildings and timber ones, blue trees grown thick between them. It was a harmony utterly unlike the forest of high-rises I knew. Seeing that cityscape, I understood just how hideous power lines and streetlamps really are.
Did she love the city? In Nuhodi's eyes, watching a developed city stretch all the way to the horizon, there was tenderness—and pain, and regret as well. According to that black mist's monologue, Nuhodi had prophesied the city's destruction. That must have been why. Ah. Had trying to persuade the black priest been about the city's doom?
After a long while of looking down, she lowered her gaze, climbed off the railing, and approached the door on the first floor. When she opened it, several soldiers in gear much like the armor she had worn poured in, shoved her down roughly, and forced her to her knees like a criminal.
A sudden plot twist. What was this?
Among them, an officer in a centurion's helmet—a red crest like a rooster's comb—stepped forward, unrolled a parchment, and began to read. Hemmed in by six stone-faced soldiers, Nuhodi only stared at the floor, dazed. When the parchment was finished, the man in the centurion's helmet left the house, and the soldiers seized Nuhodi and dragged her outside.
On the way, the cloth wrapped around her caught under their feet and came undone, so she was hauled naked down the avenue in broad daylight. Not one of the soldiers cared. Onlookers pelted her with filthy jeers, but Nuhodi's face held nothing but sorrow.
The viewpoint shifted.
It was still day, but the cathedral—few windows—remained dim. The black-robed priest knelt behind the altar, before the serpent statue, deep in prayer. The officer and six soldiers who had dragged Nuhodi in shoved her down and left. Nuhodi slowly pushed herself up from the floor and looked at the praying priest. When the prayer ended, he rose as well and looked down at her with eyes empty of feeling.
And then time raced.
Whether she had been framed or had a crime forced onto her, I couldn't tell, but Nuhodi received something like a summary judgment and was confined, as a combat slave, to the colosseum I had found. There she fought battle after battle. She was not unharmed. Armor that had shone like new through dozens of fights was shattered, and the blood-red cloak hung in rags, no more than a short scrap at her shoulder. Only a shabby cloth covered her chest and groin. The skin left bare was torn and cut to ruin. The only things still intact were her cross-spear and her blazing eyes.
Even in that wretched state, Nuhodi displayed dazzling spear-work, hacking apart the joints of a thief-crab aberrant that looked Mid-High Grade. In the end she climbed onto the shell of the crab, reduced to a body alone, punched the spear through the carapace, raised it high, and roared—red irises burning with rage. Thousands of spectators in every kind of dress screamed their approval and hurled flowers and handkerchiefs at her in a frenzy.
Memory flowed like a river, and the battles raced past. Among them were people who looked human, like Nuhodi; pointed-eared ones; squat dwarves; pig-headed ones and dog-headed ones. Plenty of humanoids. Nuhodi claimed victory by splitting a werewolf aberrant clean down the middle.
She must have taken lives into the triple digits, stringing victories into the hundreds—until the fatigue piled up by so many fights finally caught her. Against a dual-sword fighter with hair like a deep green forest and long, pointed ears, she recorded a single defeat.
Cut all over, bleeding, defeated, she was disarmed at once and dragged to some great mansion—a castle, by the look of it—where the torture began. She was moved from place to place and tortured. She endured humiliations a woman could hardly bear, sexual assault, and, before large crowds of spectators, was gang-raped by demi-humans and beasts across a long span of time. Through all of it she showed neither rage, nor pain, nor despair, nor fear. She took the torture in silence, and her eyes held only a deep sorrow.
The last place she arrived was the cathedral cellar where the cross-spear she had wielded stood driven in upside down. The very place where Hwayeon and I had been standing.
Long torture of many kinds had been carved into her body. The flesh that had once been beautiful in its strength was gone. Nuhodi was little more than bone and hide and wounds, bound to the shaft of her own spear, denied even a mouthful of water, and left for a week. Just before death kissed her—just as death drew up before her nose—the earth began to shake, as if the ground itself were furious.
The vibration was strong enough to sift dirt from between the cellar's stone blocks. Nuhodi forced her eyes open, and in her red irises a torrent slamming down the passage was reflected. Black water, filling the narrow corridor in a raging flood. Within that flood, Nuhodi closed her eyes and gave her body and her mind over to the current.
When I came to, I was still on one knee, hand on the spear shaft, in exactly the same posture. I had watched a long, old memory, but Spatial Perception told me less than three seconds had passed since I grabbed the spear.
I stood with the shaft in hand, and Hwayeon rushed in from behind, frantically feeling my face, my body.
"Your head! Is your body all right?! How can you be so reckless...!"
I stared flatly at Hwayeon, who had just smeared my face with mud. She looked from my face to her own hands, then quietly edged back. Annoyed, I poked her low in the belly. She flinched, flushed, and cleared her throat.
"Ahem."
I pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the dirt from my face, and spoke at the spear, letting my displeasure show.
"Hey. Say something."
"I-I'm sorry. I forgot my hands were covered in mud. Forgive me."
"Hm? No, I wasn't talking to you, Hwayeon. I think Nuhodi's soul is in this spear. Hey. You going to talk or not?"
I thumped the shaft against the floor, and a faint hum rose from the blade.
Wooong.
"You're Nuhodi, right? If you are, cry out once. Short."
"Nuhodi? Seoha, what are you saying right now..."
Woong!
At the spear's cry, Hwayeon startled and stared at the cross-spear in my hand. I looked at the weapon that had just answered that it was Nuhodi, and spoke.
"Why did you show me your memories... is what I'd ask, but you probably can't answer. So what do I do with you."
"Is it truly Nuhodi herself?"
"Hard to believe, but it's the truth."
I watched the spear, gone quiet, then let a trickle of TP flow into it. Wooong?! Woo-wooong-woong-wooong!! It wailed violently and spread a red aura. I drew the Cheonchong Ungeom from my waist and set myself to bring it down, and both the crying and the red aura stopped at once.
I stared at the silenced cross-spear and thought. Would it be all right to take this with me? If it had been Nuhodi who tried to bewitch Hwayeon and me while spraying that red energy, had she come to her senses now—or had she only flinched for a moment under the threat? If she could recognize a threat, maybe that meant she was lucid.
Reason said the right answer was simply to smash it. But I had seen what I suspected was Nuhodi's past, the thing dwelling in this spear was Nuhodi, and on top of that Franc's case came to mind. Just destroying it felt off. Reason and feeling, fighting it out. Having watched half her life, I felt something like being moved.
After a moment I asked Hwayeon, who still looked dazed.
"If someone takes a berserker's curse and becomes a berserker, how are you supposed to deal with it?"
"Th-the reason a weapon bearing a berserker's curse is dangerous is that you lose your reason, are controlled by the weapon, and keep fighting without end until your life force is exhausted and you die. The only way to prevent that is to destroy the medium of the curse."
I listened, and decided.
"You hear that? I can break you anytime, anywhere. The way that pale something that was moving you burst apart. Like this."
Meaning for her to pay attention, I flicked my fingers and annihilated the floor where Nuhodi had been planted with a Wall of Space. The spear gave a small woong and vibrated along the shaft.
"So if you bewitch anyone, you're scrap on the spot. If you understand, cry once."
Woong.
Hwayeon, watching a human threaten a spear and a spear accept the threat, looked as if she had no idea what was happening.
"Let's go. The memory I saw the moment I grabbed this spear, and the story about Nuhodi—I'll tell everyone once we're gathered."
"R... right."
I followed Hwayeon out of the cellar. The excavation seemed to be over; the ability users were already gathering toward where I stood. My sister came running and looked at the spear in my left hand.
"Is this it?"
"This is it."
It wasn't the answer she wanted. She pouted, and when I slipped her a small smile she huffed, then went to Hwayeon and reported that the excavation for Teams 1 through 11 was complete. Hwayeon looked around for a moment, nodded, declared the withdrawal, and began checking the carts loaded with the relics and assorted items of archaeological value the members had recovered.
I set Nuhodi's spear down beside them and went to Franc, who was watching the lakeshore from the sky on guard. She smiled brightly and came into my arms.
"Did your errand go well?"
"For now? When I checked with Spatial Perception it felt like a Soul Reaper, so I went—but something's off."
"This isn't even an undead zone. A weapon like that is a strange case."
"No. The feeling's similar, but I wouldn't call it an undead weapon. I thought it was a spear carrying a berserker's curse, and it turns out that isn't it either. The way I see it, the previous user's soul is dwelling in the spear."
At the words a weapon holding a soul, Franc's eyes went round.
"A case like mine?"
"Maybe? It seems to understand what I'm saying, but I'm not sure it's really the same as you."
I was curious—a weapon with a past—but using or selling a cross-spear this likely to turn on me at any moment didn't sit right. Hearing my thoughts, Franc stroked my head as if to tell me not to overthink it, and said I might as well use it myself.
"Come on. I can't even fight up close. What would I do with that spear?"
I couldn't hand it to Hwayeon or Yeongeun and tell them to use it, couldn't sell it, and smashing it felt wrong because of the memory I'd seen the moment I gripped the shaft. Anyway, I took Franc's hand and launched myself toward Hwayeon and my sister, who were heading for the encampment.
The first thing I did after we arrived was wash off the mud caked all over me. While the members crowded in front of the showers, Hwayeon, Choi Soohan, and I got a simple wash with my sister's help, and the four of us started going through the eighty sacks of goods the eleven teams had recovered from the Asumpfre Sunken Ruins.
My sister formed a mass of water, hundreds of liters, in midair. Hwayeon opened a sack stuffed with junk and dumped it in. Then my sister spun the water like a washing machine, rinsing away silt and mud, and Hwayeon and Soohan fished the contents out and laid them on clean cloth. I watched from behind and spoke.
"We should sort them precious metals and gems first, then coins, then equipment. No art?"
"The artworks are a total loss. Even the metal pieces are so corroded they're practically worthless. Anything we judged to be books was either crushed past recognition, or nothing remained but wooden covers and the like. Most of the rest came from buildings we took for ordinary houses, so..."
"Choi Soohan is right. We recovered whatever was buried, and searched the buildings for anything of value, but I wouldn't expect a profit."
Franc was examining coins thick with moss and rust when she looked up at Hwayeon.
"Then the exploration and excavation of the Asumpfre Sunken Ruins are both finished?"
"Yes. All finished. We had planned for three days and expected about sixty percent coverage. Thanks to Seoha, we reached one hundred percent in less than a day."
Hwayeon glanced back at me where I stood with my arms folded, and smiled faintly. My sister, examining a badly corroded metal statue of a horse, added her own word.
"She's right. Without him, it would have been hard to succeed this far."
"Hey, don't exaggerate. You would've found that wardrobe anyway. The shape's intact, and there isn't a scratch or a break on the outside."
"That's not true. Without you, Seoha, we wouldn't even have attempted the clear. Fighting aquatic Peak-Rank aberrants and High-Rank Variants in a lake while excavating and exploring ruins is the same as announcing you intend to die."
At Hwayeon's words, Choi Soohan looked at me and spoke quietly.
"Master. Underwater combat is the engagement raid teams worldwide want least of all—ranked first among them. If you consider that last year, through a notice on the Certifier community, the Ability User Association named underwater zones the environment it most strongly urged people to abandon, then this result is more than a great success. The word isn't enough."
Everyone nodded at Choi Soohan's account and looked toward the gothic wardrobe, the cross-spear leaning against it, and the iron plate inscribed with a magic circle. Only my sister watched Choi Soohan—who had called me Master—with an uncomfortable expression. Right before we left yesterday, I had told her Choi Soohan had decided to become my butler. Her face then had been so sour you'd doubt she was really a young woman of twenty.
"Then, after dinner, let's make the results of the exploration and excavation public, to raise morale."
My sister and Hwayeon started calling over the people coming out of their washes and threw themselves into sorting the finds.