The White Hair Tribe (1)
Clatter, clatter.
Inside the rocking carriage, I stared out the window and sank into thought.
...
The Space Rune.
Among the ten runes scattered across the continent, it was one of the most highly regarded—alongside the Time Rune—when it came to sheer performance.
The authority of a rune was not quite the same thing as the skills you usually saw in games. Skills simply spat out fixed abilities like macros, but runes were more like sources of power that touched something far more essential.
That was why rune names were usually so straightforward that you could tell what they did just from hearing them. The Time Rune I had obtained first was like that, and so were the Element Rune, the Blaze Rune… all of them were pleasingly easy to understand.
Of all of them, the Space Rune was the one I needed most right now.
The Time Rune was certainly broken enough to call overpowered, but it would be far from enough when I had to deal with the outer gods in the future.
If I had to put it another way, the Time Rune was more suited to defense than offense.
Of course, depending on how it was used, it could kill a human or a magical beast in an instant—but even that only applied when the opponent was mortal to begin with.
For beings that lived forever, like the outer gods, the passage of time hardly meant anything at all.
But if I had the Space Rune, the story would change.
There was no existence unaffected by space.
Granted, beings born with divinity could transcend space itself, but the outer gods who descended into the material world by violating causality were vulnerable to the Space Rune.
It was one of the few authorities that could actually inflict damage on them, which was why the original story treated it as an essential route.
Besides, when combined with the Time Rune, its synergy more than doubled the original effect.
I casually asked Arkan, who was sitting beside me, “So where exactly is it?”
She smiled with a look that said she had been expecting the question.
“Kalmash. Beyond the boundary.”
“…What?”
I had no idea at all.
At the point where the original story began, the Space Rune was already in the Sanctuary’s hands.
The Sanctuary had desperately hidden the source of the Space Rune, so I had never known exactly where it came from—but hearing her explanation, I thought I could roughly guess the reason now.
So they must have found it by chance while following Elfride’s trail.
In that case, things were easier. Blackmore was under my jurisdiction, and there was still plenty of time before the original story really got moving.
“Beyond the boundary, huh… Is that all?”
“There’s a labyrinth deep beyond it, you know? What was it called again? Arcasia’s Spire, maybe? Apparently it’s buried deep in the underground research lab there.”
...
There had been countless labyrinths and ruins in the original novel.
Some of them never even appeared in the main plot at all—places that existed only in the author’s little setting games.
Arcasia’s Spire.
A forgotten magic tower said to be the ruins of a great necromancer once praised as the Lord of Darkness in the age of beginnings.
It never once appeared in the main story, but I remembered it had shown up in the setting compendium in tiny print.
The only thing I enjoyed in my previous life, when I had been little more than a slave, was web novels. So whenever I found a novel I liked—especially one with absurdly deep or complicated lore—I would organize every scrap of setting from beginning to end and memorize it.
Of course, I kept getting banned by authors because I’d dart into the comment section every chance I got to point out their setting errors, but it was one of the few small hobbies I had in a life that was otherwise exhausted to the bone.
Was there any special information about it?
The problem was that even I didn’t know much about Arcasia’s Spire.
In the compendium, it had been reduced to only a few fragmentary lines, so even if I wanted to know more, there was no way to dig any deeper.
All I knew was that it was a very, very dangerous labyrinth hidden in a disgustingly deep place.
Is this really okay?
Kalmash was, quite literally, a cradle of aberrations.
It was a demonic wasteland stuffed with nothing but evil and chaos, a place where the world’s malice had been concentrated into one blighted hellscape.
When I went looking for Elfride, I had known the location, and she had been near the entrance, so I’d found her quickly enough. But once I went deeper inside, I had no idea what sort of monsters I’d be facing.
There was no way I could do this alone.
Even if I brought Rudine, Adina, and Elfride with me, I still couldn’t guarantee our safety.
Keeping my expression under control, I asked Arkan, “…Are you coming with me too?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
The only good thing was that Arkan would be accompanying me.
At the very least, if she was beside me, I wouldn’t die some absurd, pointless death.
“How far have you been beyond the boundary?”
“Let’s see. I’ve gone in once or twice whenever I was bored, but you know how it is, don’t you? It’s not the sort of place where you can really tell how far you’ve gone.”
“Fair enough.”
Arkan tilted her head and asked me with a hint of curiosity, “Then how far have you been, Sixth Lord?”
...
“No, wait. When I saw you last time, it didn’t seem like it was your first visit. You were acting like you knew the area beyond the boundary pretty well.”
“...I do know it well.”
I told her the truth.
Lies didn’t work in front of her Eyes of Insight anyway.
“That’s what’s strange. How on earth do you know the things from the forgotten age so well? Ah, of course, if you don’t want to talk about it in detail, I’m not going to pry…”
“I saw it.”
“…Huh?”
Arkan, who had been sitting there with her arms crossed, snapped her head around.
“You saw it? Where?”
“Exactly as I said. Anything beyond that, you can imagine however you like.”
“Tch. You’re so cold.”
Arkan gave a soft laugh and turned her body away.
“So what now? Do we go straight to Kalmash?”
She held a scroll between her thumb and forefinger and shook it in front of my face.
“If you don’t really need to prepare anything, we can leave right now. Honestly, if we’re crossing through the headquarters network, there’s no need to travel by carriage at all.”
“No, I’ll stop by the office first.”
“What do you need to go there for?”
“I have companions.”
“Ah, those kids…”
Arkan nodded as if she understood at last.
“Well, fine. That’s your call as Sixth Lord.”
...
“Oh! I heard you met the Third Lord before leaving the imperial palace?”
“By chance.”
“I heard she tried to put you in your place and got completely shut down. The Third Lord must really like you.”
“I’m not particularly interested.”
“Still, it can’t hurt to get along with the other Lords, so remember their faces at least. There’s going to be a Lords’ meeting soon, after all.”
It was irritating enough that I’d been dumped into the position of a lifelong civil servant, and now I was apparently expected to attend meetings as a Lord too.
Part of me wanted to smack her upside the head, but I held back.
The carriage rolled along the well-paved road for a while longer before, at some point, it started bumping violently again.
That meant we had passed through the city and were now entering increasingly remote, sparsely populated territory.
Before long, Blackmore’s outskirts came into view.
The carriage, which had been rattling along for quite some time, gradually slowed and began easing down a narrow path.
A faint, nauseating stench hit my nose.
Dead, withered trees stood packed so tightly together that there was hardly room between them.
It was as gloomy and desolate as my future.
Then it happened.
SCREEECH—!
The carriage lurched so hard it felt like my body was thrown forward, then came to a sudden stop.
I hurriedly turned my head and looked out the window.
What was going on?
I could see the office in the distance, but there was no reason to get out here instead of going all the way there.
A strange unease crawled up the back of my neck.
And then the carriage door opened with a creak.
“P-please, come out for a moment!”
The driver, pale as a ghost, urgently asked me to step outside.
I moved toward the open door and got out of the carriage.
“…What is that?”
Far ahead, a group that looked to be at least several dozen strong was blocking the road in front of the office.
I took my time studying them.
Swishing silver tails, perked triangular ears, and a strangely familiar aura besides.
They were all too familiar.
“The White Hair Tribe?”
Why was the White Hair Tribe, who should have been gathered somewhere in the eastern territories, here in Blackmore of all places?
What’s more, every last one of them was radiating an ominous, hostile presence.
Even Arkan, sitting beside me, was looking on with visible interest.
That was when—
“Luke Richter!”
Adina, who had been facing them off, came running toward me with her tail whipping wildly behind her.
Her eyes were rimmed red, as if she had been frightened out of her wits.
As soon as she ran toward me, the gaze of the White Hair Tribe members opposite her also shifted to me all at once.
???
I stood there for a long moment, silently trading looks with them.
After a while, one fox woman who seemed to be their leader strode toward me with heavy steps.
She was so fierce that every footstep seemed to make the ground tremble under a strange, invisible pressure.
“Adina.”
The woman, having raised her mana, approached while exuding a vicious killing intent.
“Hiding won’t solve this.”
Judging by her manner of speech, appearance, and the way she carried herself, she was probably the leader of the White Hair Tribe.
And the reason she had come here was likely…
“The tribal treasure you stole.”
There was only one thing the White Hair Tribe would dare call a tribal treasure.
It was the Time Rune.
Though they hadn’t known how to use it and had kept it buried and preserved for thousands of years, honoring the will of their ancestors, they had safeguarded it throughout the ages.
And the whereabouts of that object now were…
“If you value your life, hand it over. Now.”
...That thing? I already swallowed it whole.