The Labyrinth City of Asmos (1)
Exeria’s merciless winter was a fine season for a fugitive like Raul.
The blizzards that swept down almost every day blocked the trackers’ path, while Raul himself no longer had to suffer under their bite.
It was largely thanks to those storms that he had been able to meet Celia alone in Feital.
“Huuuu.”
Raul exhaled a long, steaming breath and felt genuine emotion at the plains that finally appeared before him.
At last, he had completely left the domain of the spiritual mountain Tetra.
It had taken three days to get here from Feital.
Of course, that was only possible because Raul no longer needed sleep and, with the Guardian’s power, did not feel the cold.
Nyah-
The moment Raul came to a stop, Horus poked his head out of the pocket over Raul’s chest.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
Raul scratched Horus’s head with two fingers, then looked down at the back of his hand.
As he focused his divinity, a thin, long beam of light stretched out from his Stigma.
The light pointing to the whereabouts of the holy sword was aimed precisely north-northeast.
Because the ascent of Tetra Mountain had been so deep and treacherous, he had not been sure before, but now, with this vast plain spread out before him, he understood.
It’s the same direction.
The direction of the holy sword, Or, was exactly the same as the direction of the labyrinth city Asmos.
Is this a coincidence?
If it had been the old Raul, he would have brushed it off as one, but now his thoughts had changed somewhat.
Along the way, in Koyad Village, he had run into an executive of Exceed.
And in Feital, where he had gone to find a locksmith, Raul had encountered a demonic summoning circle.
Of course, it wasn’t logical to connect those things, but Raul felt this incident would not be a simple coincidence either.
There’s definitely something in Asmos, too.
And that something was either tied to Exceed again,
or to some scheme by the Abyss Archdemon, The Void, which had learned Raul’s existence and location from the last incident.
Only now did Raul fully realize this was what it meant to be a saint.
No wonder the carriage he rode in kept getting attacked by demon contractors.
“What am I, some detective who lives in a shoe box?”
Nyah-
As Raul muttered to himself, feeling something simmering up inside him, Horus sprang from his pocket onto his shoulder and rubbed his head against Raul’s cheek.
Was it because they were connected emotionally as well?
Raul felt as if Horus were comforting him.
“Thanks.”
With even a faint smile restored, Raul walked back into the blizzard.
It was only after another two days of walking without rest that he finally reached Asmos, the labyrinth city.
***
“What?! You came through that blizzard? All the way from Feital?”
Raul lightly nodded at the bearded guard who was goggling at him with wide eyes.
“The storm’s keeping word from getting out. Things are a mess over there.”
“A mess?”
“Demon contractors teamed up with frost-steel orcs and hit the fortress from both sides.”
“Whaaat?!”
Perhaps because the bearded guard reacted so dramatically, the rest of the checkpoint guards all gathered around and became an audience for Raul’s story.
“S-so? Did the Snowfield Bastion fall?”
“My older sister lives there...”
“Shut up, I’m telling you, my parents had gone to Feital to travel.”
“So, what happened?”
Four pairs of eyes fixed on Raul.
One of them looked like the head of the guard unit, but even he seemed unable to resist such an interesting piece of news.
After letting the silence stretch just enough, Raul opened his mouth with a slight smile.
“Well. They held it. A white-haired holy warrior who’d been hiding in the city joined forces with the border marquis and wiped out both the demon contractors and the demons.”
“What? There was a holy warrior there?!”
“As expected of the Feital border marquis.”
“Demons showed up? W-were people hurt? Was the eastern side hit hard?”
The guards reacted in a dozen different ways, and Raul gave a small snort at their intensity before holding out his hand.
“This is hot off the press. I’ve gone a whole week without a proper meal and fought my way through a blizzard to bring it here. You’re not expecting to hear it all for free, are you?”
At that, the guards all reached into their inner pockets and produced silver coins one after another.
There really was nothing more effective for pocket money than hot, fresh information.
He answered their questions with utmost sincerity, taking payment for every word.
“So, your purpose in visiting the labyrinth city, and your identity?”
Only at the very end, after he had nearly forgotten his duty in the excitement, did the guard captain finally ask a formal question.
Raul gave a faint laugh.
“What other purpose would there be for visiting the labyrinth city? And my identity? Silver Plate. Adventurer.”
“And your identity plate?”
“I got swept up in the blizzard, fell over, and lost it.”
Unable to use the name Silver Bullet anymore, Raul came up with an acceptable excuse. The captain lifted an eyebrow for a moment, then nodded.
Apparently, all that effort to approach them warmly while also sharing useful information had not been wasted.
“Lastly, well, I nearly forgot to ask this. Your name?”
“Raul.”
“Good. Raul. Welcome to Asmos. Our city has adventurer branches all over, so you can reissue your identity plate anywhere...”
The captain paused.
“Wait.”
Then the guard captain’s brow suddenly furrowed.
“Is something wrong?”
When Raul asked at the unexpected reaction, the captain abruptly widened his eyes.
“The wandering holy warrior Raul who, together with the knight Lergal of Zern, wiped out the demon contractors and bandit horde on Tetra Mountain in a single night?”
“...Excuse me?”
This, too, was not the reaction Raul had expected.
***
Knight Lergal.
It was a name Raul hadn’t heard in a very long time.
He had rescued him from the slave traders on Tetra Mountain, and from that encounter Raul had first learned of the Devil’s Egg.
The knight he had traveled with then was a rare thing in this age: a knight who truly deserved the name.
I’ll make sure to spread your greatness to the world!
That young knight had said those words to Raul back then.
And it seemed he had truly kept that vow.
Thanks to him, the name Raul had spread all the way to Asmos, a small city at the far northern edge of the kingdom of Therion.
“Oh, for the love of—”
To prove to the guard captain that he was not a holy warrior, Raul had ended up summoning Horus on the spot and even demonstrating rune magic.
He really was a remarkable young man, though...
He’d just been too good at his job.
Who would have thought his name would be known this far out?
How much had Lergal been running his mouth for this to happen?
In truth, it was not bad for Raul to become known.
Once a reputation took root, there were more ways to use it, and he would be less likely to get tangled up with random street trash.
But not here.
Raul had come to Asmos to find an astrologer.
And astrologers had long suffered brutal persecution from the Three Great Churches.
Shamans walked a similar line, but the one who had it worse by far was the astrologer.
And now a rumor would spread that a holy warrior had visited Asmos?
Ha.
The astrologer he was looking for would pack up and run away before Raul ever found them.
Then Raul would never locate them, no matter how hard he searched.
“Haa.”
He seemed to be sighing a great deal today.
Raul had no choice but to step into the inn before him, partly to escape the growing wind and snow.
Creak-
The oiled latch gave off a clean sound.
At least the inn didn’t seem to be in bad shape.
The man who looked like the innkeeper gave Raul a sideways glance and said, “You see all kinds of things in a long life, but a traveler in this weather, eh? All right. Lodging and a meal?”
“Both.”
“Then I’ll give you a room on the third floor. Leave your bags first, then come back down. Laney! Dinner!”
At his shout, a girl who appeared to be his daughter poked her head out from the corner.
“What’s the menu?”
After exchanging a look with his daughter, the innkeeper turned to Raul.
Raul pulled out the two silver coins he had just earned from his pocket and said, “Something filling. And alcohol, if you’ve got it.”
“Looking for something specific? The place next door is a brewery. I could have them bring some over. Of course, there might be a little extra charge. Heh heh.”
Raul was about to say White Louis, as he usually would, but then thought of her for no reason and swallowed the words.
He chose instead another liquor whose name had stayed in his recent memory.
“Beast Blood, forty-eight years old.”
For some reason, the innkeeper and his daughter both went wide-eyed at once.
“Is there a problem?”
“Ah, it’s just...”
“Sir. Of course there’s no issue, and I’m only asking in case, but...”
The innkeeper’s eyes shifted toward the dining area on the first floor.
Following his gaze, Raul saw, in a corner seat of the dining hall, a small woman slumped over a table, snoring.
Her hair was blood-red.
“Do you perhaps know her?”
That, no matter how one looked at it, was that.
The Ember assassin he had met in the World Tree realm.
But why was she here?
Hadn’t she failed her mission, meaning she should have returned to the Empire?
“Uh...”
Not knowing how to answer, Raul dragged it out, and the innkeeper’s eyes flashed with realization.
“I knew it! Anyone who orders that liquor must know her! You do know her, don’t you, sir? Right?!”
“Well. I’m not sure, honestly.”
He denied it at first, seeing the strange atmosphere, but the innkeeper was already looking convinced.
“Please, I’m begging you. Please get that woman out of my inn. I’ll even pay you if you’ll just take her away. Please.”
What on earth had she done to warrant this reaction?
Raul’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Can’t you just throw her out yourself? She’s tiny, barely bigger than a sack of grain. Looks like you could just haul her up and kick her out.”
“No, no! Don’t even joke about it. She may look like that, but she’s a brat who handled an A-rank request by herself.”
“An A-rank request?”
“Yes! She only just registered with the Adventurer Guild recently, so her rank is still Bronze Plate, but she went in alone, brought back the commission certificate, and what do you know? It seems she really did complete it. And it doesn’t seem like a scam either...”
The innkeeper trailed off, but Raul could roughly tell what was going on.
Reluctantly, he pulled out the inner pocket with the silver coins and asked, “How much is it, all told, for the trouble she caused this place?”
Since they had met like this, he wondered if it might be worth letting her owe him something and using that to get help with exploring the labyrinth.
But the answer made Raul freeze.
“Six bottles of Beast Blood, forty-eight years old, plus snacks and lodging... it comes to more than four gold coins!”
“Gol...?”
Raul put the money pouch back into his breast pocket.
“Sorry, but I’ll look for another inn. I don’t know that person.”
“Mister? No, sir! You know her, don’t you? You absolutely know that short drunk!”
Then the innkeeper’s daughter came over too, grabbing at Raul’s robe hem and whining.
Raul gently peeled the child away and tried to leave the inn, but a problem arose.
At the commotion, the red-haired assassin woke up.
“Hah. Who’s calling who short? What the hell is wrong with this guy?”
With her eyes half-lidded, the Ember assassin looked this way, then when she spotted Raul, her drunken eyes snapped fully open.
“Huh? Inspector old man?”
“So you do know each other!”
Raul slapped a hand to his forehead.
***
“...So?”
A single candle flickered, tinting the inn room with a vermilion glow.
Raul asked again at the Ember assassin, Aila, who stood awkwardly near the doorway.
“So why were you lying there like that, Ember?”
“Well, I mean... yeah.”
Having shaken off the alcohol haze, Aila explained her situation in a voice so small it was almost embarrassing to hear.
“After you let me go, I somehow made it back to Exeria. But who could’ve known I’d end up dropping in on a labyrinth at the far northern edge of Therion...?”
“So?”
“I killed the magic beasts I saw in front of me and came back out, but then it turned out I didn’t have any money. Yeah.”
“Just speak casually. So?”
“I registered as an adventurer like I learned in the Empire, then picked up a simple request to earn travel money to get back to the Empire.”
That much matched what Raul had heard.
Right after registering as an adventurer, she had supposedly gone and completed an A-rank request.
“But then they said, what kind of Bronze Plate adventurer takes on a big request? They weren’t paying me until my identity was properly verified.”
“...Right. So?”
“So I holed up here, where the innkeeper looked the kindest, and lived on credit. The commission certificate came from the labyrinth administration office anyway. I showed them that.”
For some reason, Ember Aila looked almost as if she were boasting about her life story.
Raul flicked her forehead.
He put some divinity into it for good measure.
Smack-!
Hit in the forehead by the unexpected attack, Aila collapsed in place and clutched her head with both hands.
“Ow?! That really hurt! It hurts, old man! Why’d you hit me? What did I even do wrong?”
“You seriously don’t know?”
“...No, if I’m being honest, I kind of do.”
Even so, she grinned and joked around after Raul’s scolding.
Looking at Aila like that, Raul felt a headache coming on.
...Was she always this kind of person?
Where had that terrifying assassin gone?
Raul felt strangely deflated.
“Yeah. Why? Am I charming?”
“No... thanks to you, my entire fantasy about the legendary assassin of Ember has been shattered.”
“Glad I could help.”
“...For the record, that wasn’t a compliment.”
“It wasn’t? If it helped, doesn’t that mean thanks?”
Aila stared at him with her wide, red eyes and asked.
Then Raul suddenly remembered the voice he had heard in the World Tree realm.
Yeah. I really don’t know. I’m dumber than I look.
He’d never imagined those words were anything less than the truth.
Still, thanks to that, Raul finally had a sense of how to deal with the unstable element standing before him.
“Anyway, you’re coming with me to the labyrinth starting tomorrow.”
“What? Why? No. I like it here. Free booze, free food, and free lodging.”
The instant Raul heard her so calm and unconcerned, he strode over to the seated Aila and pressed his fingers into her small cheek.
“The booze, food, and room aren’t free. I paid your tab, didn’t I?”
“Whoa, you paid it for me? Wow, an inspector really does think big. Thanks, old man!”
Shing-
Raul looked down at Aila, who had no shame and was rude to the very end, and rested his hand on the hilt of the Sun King’s sword.
“Joke! Just kidding! I’ll work. Let’s talk this out without the sword! Please, let’s talk!”
Aila immediately folded.
This one, he had picked up something absurd in the most unexpected place.