Chapter 112
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 112
Chapter Title: The Underground Labyrinth
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Princess Lianel activated the air purification artifact and breathed much more easily.
“Ugh… Even just standing still makes me feel sticky.”
“It’s a sewer, after all.”
The imperial capital was a cramped land where millions of people were crammed together.
Even now, with advanced technology running purification facilities, in the past they hadn’t possessed such large-scale water treatment plants.
Above all, since purification itself was done through magic, in the centuries before magic became widespread, they probably hadn’t even thought of purifying water.
As a result, when building the city, they focused more on constructing massive sewers to drain the water rather than purification.
To ensure excrement wouldn’t pool in the city and could be flushed out to distant rivers.
Princess Lianel brushed her hand against the corroded bricks, then quickly pulled it away.
Because it was damp and humid, her hand that had wiped the brick was coated in sticky mucus.
The princess grimaced and wiped her hand with a handkerchief.
“Why on earth is this connected to the imperial palace? There doesn’t seem to be any connection.”
“To explain its origins, we’d have to go back a bit in history.”
“What kind of history, mainly?”
After a brief silence, I pulled out the setting that formed the background of the original story from my mind.
“…In the past, sieges were common, where they surrounded castles and waited for the enemy’s supplies to run out.”
“War history, then.”
“The history of castle evolution is also the history of war. So, think about it. What would be the biggest issue in a siege?”
The princess pondered deeply, then opened her eyes.
“Supplies, I suppose.”
“Correct. Supplies. Those include weapons, of course, but also food and water to last through the siege.”
As she followed me with clacking footsteps, the princess pieced together the answer from the hint I’d given.
“They drew in external waterways through the sewers. To extend the siege period even a little longer.”
“Exactly. In a situation where water sources are controlled, holding drinking water is equivalent to holding power and force. The monarchs of the time secured water from drainage facilities and made them like a labyrinth for escape routes in emergencies.”
“And that’s what the current underground sewers are.”
“A legacy of the past.”
With purification facilities now in place, this massive underground sewer system was no longer necessary.
But demolishing something that had existed since ancient times was difficult, and tampering with the ground risked collapse, so it was easier to leave it be.
“But surely they’ve investigated it thoroughly by now? There’s nothing in the underground sewers.”
“Didn’t I say they made it like a labyrinth? Perfect for hiding something.”
“But…….”
“The underground sewers aren’t just one level.”
“Pardon?”
I crushed the iron bars blocking the way and forced a path through.
The princess glared sharply at my back, as if demanding an answer to my words.
“Not just one level?”
“Exactly as I said. The imperial family isn’t foolish; when they searched this place thoroughly long ago, they would have mobilized mages to create maps.”
“Yes, and nothing came up back then.”
“True. So now it’s related to Elise. One of the documents burned when the imperial family reestablished the primogeniture principle before the 6th century. A duty neglected by the current imperial bloodline.”
At the strange pressure of those words, the princess swallowed her response.
It meant that long-forgotten secrets were being unearthed one by one.
I left her to chew on the unspoken lump she couldn’t hide.
We paused our conversation briefly, and at the entrance to an alley, I stopped the princess.
I pressed a finger to my lips signaling silence, then suppressed my presence.
Men dressed as guards.
Just as the princess was about to say something urgently, I swiftly circled behind them and snapped their necks.
“Guh, guk.”
Even as their companion’s neck broke and he died, the others didn’t panic but widened their eyes and drew their swords first.
“You bastard!”
A single feather protruded from the shadows and pierced the guard’s forehead.
Afterward, without any movement or sound, the guard with a hole between his brows collapsed limply.
Splash. Bubbles rose with a gurgle from where he sank beneath the flowing sewage.
Unaware of the black filth splashing, the princess strode forward.
“Professor! What on earth are you doing!”
“Look.”
I tore open the neck-snapped guard’s uniform and showed it to her.
A black inverted pentagram tattoo beneath the collarbone.
Princess Lilian’s eyes widened for a moment.
“Th-this…….”
“No matter how much the water noise masks sounds, not a single footstep was audible. These are the steps of highly trained assassins.”
I kicked the neck-broken corpse into the deep sewage.
Bubbles rose, then soon blended into the black water flow as if nothing had happened.
“B-back then, it was all over…….”
“That’s true for those in the palace. But the ones in the capital would remain for cleanup at least. However…….”
The guards’ uniforms.
“Considering Count Roger’s family, I suspected they’d dug deeper than expected, but this makes the guard leadership suspicious too.”
“What… what’s going on exactly?”
The guard uniforms looked like the real thing, not fakes.
That meant someone had smuggled them or supplied them to the devil worshippers, which struck me as some kind of collusion.
‘But should I tell her that?’
No need to make the already trembling princess more anxious.
“…Back to the original topic. They said they used magic to search the entire underground sewers.”
As I deliberately shifted the subject, the princess unwillingly nodded.
“Beneath here is a great devil sealed by Elise. Layers of barriers make it so magic can’t even detect the underground exists. The imperial sanctuary is the same. Magic can’t detect it.”
“Then why are there devil worshippers?”
That was exactly what I wanted to say, so I clicked my tongue irritably.
From their attempt to kidnap the princess, it seemed safe to assume all barriers leading to the altar had been dismantled.
However, the process… that was ambiguous even for me.
‘Ruling out the frontal method, which absolutely requires Elise’s token or imperial blood…….’
I turned my gaze to the branching side paths extending in all directions.
One might think to remove bricks from these old stone structures and dig down, but at some point, the barriers block it—no method can pry out the bricks.
Physical access can’t reach the underground.
That means they broke through the barriers……
“Devils.”
“……!?”
“Devils, then. That’s it. Devils.”
If devils were involved, they could unravel Elise’s barriers through unnatural means.
And doing so brought one devil to mind.
A high-ranking devil with goat horns who had hidden its presence and vanished early on.
I muttered ominously.
“…Bielle.”
So that’s where you went.
At the end of the tunnel, when the Hellgate she’d summoned was about to shatter, Bielle had hastily cast a pre-calculated long-distance teleport.
Her whereabouts had been unknown since, but who’d have thought she was right under our noses.
“Ha.”
At the same time, it explained why Bielle, unseen in the original story, was at the academy.
“You were at the academy, monitoring my actions. The imperial family tracks movements through hidden devil worshippers, and the sole variable—you—directly surveils to eliminate variables.”
It was a question I couldn’t answer back then.
Originally, Bielle shouldn’t have appeared in the tunnel.
Like in the original, she was meant to smack the protagonists over the head by half-destroying the capital a bit later.
Even now, with things diverged from the original, or if it followed the original plot, the question remained: why?
Whether in the twisted current timeline or the original, I couldn’t grasp the purpose of her backstabbing role.
“The delayed backstab was to reap incidental gains after achieving her main goal.”
After the tunnel, when the protagonists left the academy for the field trip, I wondered why she terrorized the capital then—it wasn’t exploiting their absence, but completing the great devil’s revival.
Reviving a great devil requires countless lives to restore its body.
With her goal achieved, no reason to hide, so she brazenly harvested blood.
However, because I blocked the tunnel and warped space endlessly, Bielle targeted me, betting I’d be exhausted.
She wagered on my fatigue from blocking the tunnel, but it failed.
Thus, she quickly moved to the underground sewers to unseal it.
This explanation made everything fit perfectly.
The princess looked at me with disturbed eyes.
“Who is this Bielle?”
“A devil that was at the academy. Probably here too.”
“A devil…?”
Seeing her strong unease, I reassured her there was no need to worry and took the lead.
“I didn’t expect the professor to comfort me.”
“If you, who must touch the seal, are anxious, nothing will work. Reassuring you is part of my job.”
“Job? No one will acknowledge it, will they?”
No one acknowledges it……
“The academy raid surfaced, but these things don’t seem like one-offs, and most of the professor’s actions beneath the surface…….”
I realized she meant selfless devotion without reward, so I let out a chuckle.
“Are you mocking me?”
“Of course not.”
“There were just so many rumors. While the professor acted in the shadows, wasn’t it reasonable for people to doubt your skills?”
“Didn’t you yourself snap at me just recently over the missing rapier?”
“Ah, Professor! I’m not joking. Really.”
Princess Lilian grumbled as she latched onto it.
Ignoring the muttering behind me, I coldly scanned ahead.
“I’m not after rewards. More importantly, the underground labyrinth extends to five levels.”
As I spoke gravely, the princess realized it wasn’t time for banter and hardened her expression.
“The first level is, as anyone can see, an ordinary sewer, but from the second level down, the atmosphere changes completely. From there, it’s a dungeon Elise created to repel the unauthorized. Naturally, all sorts of dangers lurk.”
Before the princess could speak, I kicked off.
Devil worshippers hidden in the shadows drew blades in unison from the dim light.
Without even drawing my rapier, I extracted a strand of mana and coldly glared at them as they turned into chunks of meat.
It was Aiden’s weapon from the main house.
In the original, it was the weapon he used, rejecting the masterpiece from the imperial family.
“Eek.”
“There are probably even more devil worshippers below. Elise’s blessing hides your appearance and presence, but still, better to keep conversations cautious.”
A plop sounded from the black sewage as the headless man mixed with the water.
The princess swallowed hard at the red blood foaming murkily upward.
“But you need worry about nothing. Just like before, I’ll protect you with all my power. I won’t let them breach my barrier to target you.”
While silently dispatching them one by one, one devil worshipper drew out a tiny wisp of demonic energy.
My brows furrowed instinctively.
‘Not a demonkin?’
A mere human, not even demonkin, drawing demonic energy?
A murky black current, like smoke not mixing with the air, rose and scattered an enraged aura.
It formed the shape of a sharp awl and shot forth.
“Die!”
Pathetic as it was, I brushed it off effortlessly and seized his throat.
“No matter how you look at it, this ‘grace’ is far too suspicious.”
Feeling the heavy sensation through my black glove, I crushed it with raw grip strength.
“Gurk, guk.”
I tossed the foaming, convulsing man aside, dropping him into the sewer depths like the rest.
The sewage seemed to greedily devour people like him, gulping them down. Those who fell wouldn’t easily resurface and sank to the bottom.
The only way up was flailing with their own legs, but by then, my hands had already turned them into corpses or the near-dead.
In the end, they could only black out amid the flowing water, exhaling their last bubbles.
“Let’s go down.”
The princess glanced once at those swallowed and followed.
Rumble rumble rumble.
A device leading underground that the mages exploring the sewers long ago had failed to find.
As if the underground sewer recognized Elise’s seal, it glowed green and opened the entrance for the visitor.
Princess Lilian’s eyes widened at her glowing handback.
“This…….”
“Welcome to the underground labyrinth, Princess.”
Amid the swirling dust, what I thought was a wall was a device concealing stairs leading down.
The stairs, unlit for ages and blackened, stretched endlessly into the hazy distance.