The Shadow of Winchester
“Welcome to the Adventurer’s Guild. What sort of commission are you after?”
The clerk at the request counter tried his best to sound bright and welcoming, but the exhaustion he couldn’t quite hide still bled through every word.
“Well, it’s less a commission and more that I’d like some information about the area.”
“Understood. Just a moment, please.”
I held out the adventurer’s identification card I’d prepared ahead of time in Karep. The clerk took it with practiced ease and smoothly laid a map across the counter.
Then, without warning, he started jabbing his finger at various spots on the map.
“The ones closest to the village are here, here, and here.”
“……?”
“……?”
I stared at him with a look that clearly asked what exactly he expected me to do with that. He seemed to sense something was off.
No, seriously—so what?
“Uh… huh……?”
In the end I couldn’t stand watching the flustered clerk any longer and spoke first.
“So what exactly am I supposed to do with that?”
“D-did you not come here because of the dungeons……?”
The moment the words left his mouth, the clerk’s pupils began to tremble as if an earthquake had struck them.
“I only stopped by the north on other business. I came to the guild simply to gather information.”
The guild clerk’s face drained of all color. He burst out from behind the counter and slammed his forehead to the floor in a full prostration.
“I-I’m truly sorry!”
His damp, desperate voice rang through the entire building, and for a moment the guild fell into absolute silence.
I could feel every adventurer’s gaze snap toward us in an instant.
“I’m sorry! Lately dungeons have been appearing all over the north at an insane rate, so I just assumed—! P-please, anything but a complaint……!”
Even someone as used to stares as I am didn’t want to endure the pitying looks that screamed what’s wrong with that guy? So I hauled the clerk back to his feet and even soothed him that it was fine.
This is driving me completely insane.
After the whole mess settled down a little, the guild clerk explained that working for the guild was an incredibly high-paying job for a commoner. But a low-ranking employee like him could get fired over a single complaint, so he had to be careful—or something like that.
“Please! If I get fired here, my whole family will end up on the streets…….”
“Then pull yourself together and focus on your work properly!”
Enri, a fallen noble who had lived no differently from a commoner, clearly empathized. She urged him to wake up and get his act together.
“A small village like this never had many people to begin with. But starting about a week ago the dungeons suddenly exploded in number, and we’ve been so swamped I haven’t had a single proper rest……. Once again, I’m truly sorry.”
He muttered the excuse as if he felt a little wronged, then circled right back to another apology.
Watching him, I felt a sticky unease crawl up from inside that excuse.
Of all things, “a week ago.”
It lined up far too neatly with the exact time I’d left the academy for the north. Surely not……?
After getting dragged into one incident after another lately, a small seed of anxiety had begun to sprout in my chest.
There’s no way. It’s just my imagination.
Embarrassing as it was, the string of recent misfortunes had me overthinking everything.
I was about to brush it off when a certain someone just had to pour oil on the fire.
“Heh heh…… Are you truly certain it’s only your imagination?”
Beatrix, cut it out. I’m sensitive these days.
My luck had been so rotten lately I was half-tempted to go dunk myself in holy water at a church.
I forcibly ignored Beatrix and her ridiculous conspiracy theories and restated my purpose to the clerk.
“Even rumors or scraps of information are fine. I want to know about any unusual incidents or events that have cropped up recently.”
“If that’s all, it’s simple. As I’ve been saying, the sudden surge of dungeons is by far the biggest topic in the entire north.”
The clerk continued with a look of pure dread.
“It must have been about a week ago. Dungeons started appearing at a terrifying rate across the whole northern region, so we rushed every adventurer we could find up here. But how are we supposed to suddenly house that many people?”
According to him, nearly every adventurer’s guild in the north was in the same sorry state.
This is more serious than I thought.
I had no idea whether something like this had happened in the original story. The game naturally progressed from the protagonist’s point of view, and right now the protagonist was still at the academy, so of course I wouldn’t know the current situation up north.
“We should finish our business quickly and return to the academy.”
Staying in the north any longer didn’t seem like a good idea.
“Yes, that would probably be best.”
The girls had sensed the same ominous undercurrent in the clerk’s words; every one of them nodded in agreement.
“Thank you for the information. I’ll pretend your earlier rudeness never happened.”
Honestly, filing a complaint had never even crossed my mind.
Mostly because it sounded like a pain.
There’s no way I’d go out of my way to do something that bothersome.
It no longer felt like a time to rest easy, so I turned to head straight back to the carriage—only for the guild clerk to call me to a stop.
“This may be completely unsolicited advice, but…… in the north, it would be best if you didn’t keep the black hair.”
The words he offered were completely unexpected.
“Outsiders like yourself may not know this, but the lord of these lands is Duke Winchester, the Hero. That black hair—his very symbol—can stir up a great deal of resentment among the northern people.”
I remembered the moment we’d first stepped down from the carriage.
I hadn’t paid it much mind at the time, but yes…… there had definitely been a few gazes laced with open hostility mixed in among the rest.
Black hair, huh…….
“……What do you think of Duke Winchester?”
“His Grace is the pride of every northerner.”
When my eyes met his proudly shining ones, an oddly ticklish feeling rose in my chest.
How stupid.
I wasn’t even the real Taylor Winchester. What was I getting worked up about?
“I see. I’ll take your advice to heart.”
I left the clerk with a word of thanks for his hard work and stepped out of the guild building, only to find my heart strangely unsettled.
I shouldn’t have asked something so pointless.
One careless question and now my mind was a mess.
“From what the clerk said, Duke Winchester must be truly incredible.”
“The loyalty of the northern people is really something.”
“Of course. To us northerners, House Winchester is no different from a religion.”
Enri and Angela, neither of them northerners, spoke with open curiosity. Elizabeth, born and raised in the north, answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Only after hearing her words did I finally understand why the original Taylor Winchester, despite his D-rank talent, had never been able to give up.
So this is why he forced his way into the academy.
Compulsory enrollment only started at B-rank talent and above—because those people were draftable and needed training.
A D-rank like Taylor Winchester had absolutely no reason to endure the mockery and enroll.
Of course, the Hero Academy’s reputation was so lofty that people came from foreign kingdoms just to attend. Even royalty from other nations dreamed of studying there; that much was undeniable fact.
But even that only applied to people who actually had talent.
When I first possessed this body, I simply couldn’t understand Taylor Winchester.
With talent this abysmal, why crawl all the way to the academy?
I’d figured he could just coast on the north’s overwhelming power and inherit a title without any trouble.
But coming here myself, the feeling was completely different.
What if the heir of Winchester—a house treated like a faith itself—turned out to be so far beneath his predecessors that comparison was impossible?
Terrifying.
Either throw everything away and run, or know full well it was hopeless and still struggle like a madman.
Without doing one or the other, no one could survive in an environment like this.
Could I have driven myself that hard the way he did?
With a talent whose ceiling was clearly marked D-rank, constantly compared to outstanding parents and a brilliant fiancée, while countless eyes watched and expected…….
Even by the time I reached the carriage, I still couldn’t give myself a firm “yes.”
Inside a dark cave.
Filled with traps and monsters, the place already deserved to be called a dungeon without the slightest exaggeration.
But the guest who had come calling was not someone mere traps could stop.
He cut through every obstacle in an instant and pressed forward, reaching the end before long.
“I pay my respects to the Elder of the Order.”
Dignity flowed from him as naturally as water. The guest, dressed in a formal suit, offered a light greeting to the master of the cave.
“Keh-keh-keh…… Aleister, is it? You arrive far too late. I have no intention of handing over the Child of Prophecy. That child is mine now.”
Hiding at the deepest end of that bottomless cave was a withered old man of skeletal frame.
Yet judging him by appearance alone would have been the height of foolishness.
He was one of the worst individuals in the entire world—including the Empire.
Those who knew him called him by a single title:
the King of Labyrinths.
The old man possessed the production-class talent of Architect, yet Aleister never once looked down on him.
No—it would be more accurate to say he couldn’t.
Even within the Order he belonged to, the old man was acknowledged as an Elder.
Despite that unyielding voice, Aleister was in no position to simply give up.
“If the academy has its ancient vampire, the north has Duke Winchester. It will not be easy. Why not join hands with me?”
Already aware that the old man had begun to move, Aleister laid out his proposal to the King of Labyrinths.
But the words “it will not be easy” seemed to grate on the old man’s nerves. An overwhelming pressure crashed down so hard the entire cave trembled.
“Kh!”
“How amusing.”
A storm of mana far beyond imagination made it impossible even to keep his body upright.
“Do you even know to whom you dared speak those words?”
The old man’s calm voice echoed through the cave. Exposed to that mana, Aleister felt his vision begin to swim.
“Remember this.”
In the blink of an eye his sight twisted into chaos. When he finally managed to make sense of his surroundings again, he realized he was back at the cave entrance he had first seen.
Without even a chance to react, he had been thrown outside.
Though no one stood before him now, the old man’s presence alone still crushed down on him.
Even through his reeling vision, the voice reached him with perfect clarity.
“I am Labyrinthos.”