11. Wonderland (24)
11. Wonderland (24)
The interior of Cadsun was laid out like a domed stadium.
Hundreds of thousands of buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a great ring.
Their arrangement also mirrored the seating tiers of a stadium. The terraced structure rose higher the farther it got from the center. Where they stood was simultaneously the rooftop of one building and the front yard of another, higher one.
From the outside, it had merely seemed huge, but from within, its sheer scale as an architectural structure was so staggering it was hard to believe it actually stood.
In proportion, they were like three ants somewhere in the stands of a stadium that could hold fifty thousand people.
Ella's eyes went wide as she scanned the surroundings.
The styles and sizes of the buildings were utterly mismatched, and their placement was just as haphazard.
Completely incompatible architectural styles stood side by side, and tiny buildings were wedged between enormous ones.
But there was a rule of sorts: the entrances of adjoining buildings were roughly level with each other.
And so the buildings lined up and encircled Cadsun in a full loop. That chain of construction spiraled uninterrupted from the ground floor all the way to the peak, thousands of meters high.
Ella realized that each building served as its own theater. A glance around showed banners over every entrance announcing a performance, and in front of them, personas were hustling for audiences.
"A chain relay of twenty-two acrobats, each pitted against one another — for one week only! Very few seats left!"
"The legendary play that held a single theater for thirty years straight — 'The Knights of Moranom' begins in thirty minutes!"
"A brawl between Della's crowd and Bendes's crowd! Demons welcome! Tomatoes allowed!"
Everywhere she looked — performance, performance, and more performance.
Her mouth would not close.
Truly, a place worthy of the name 'paradise.'
Scarecrow felt no less wonder than she did.
Rouge or Yeterinpurk were "holy lands" in the game, but they were still spaces that could plausibly exist in the real world. If you set aside fan devotion to the game, they didn't feel so different from visiting a famous tourist destination abroad.
This place, by contrast, was real fantasy territory.
More than that — in the game, the space hadn't been rendered this richly.
The scenery before them now had appeared as background, sure, but with the excuse that buildings had collapsed and roads had been severed by war, the regions players could roam were divided into small chunks, and their size had been limited.
Rumi wasn't quite as overwhelmed as the other two, but she was thoroughly enchanted. For the first time in a long while, she savored the view, calling up childhood memories.
Each of the three was quietly drinking in the landscape in their own way.
It was Ella who broke the silence.
"But has the world really got this many acrobats?"
She scanned the building across the way, more than ten kilometers distant, and then the hundreds of tiers stacked above and below.
By a rough count, there must have been hundreds of thousands of theaters. Even if each held only ten people, that put the number in the millions.
And the buildings visible here weren't all of Cadsun. There were more layers of construction below. While picking their way up through the alleys from the outskirts, they'd seen those lower and middle tiers.
People lived down there as well.
In other words, taken all together, at least tens of millions of people called this place home.
The concept of the modern circus had appeared on the Columbia continent only a few decades ago.
And while jesters, entertainers, musicians, and dancing girls had existed before, even if you combined every last one of them since the beginning, they wouldn't come close to such numbers.
Scarecrow fiddled with the brim of his straw hat at her question.
"Not everyone here is a follower of the Kirkeus Faith. Acrobats summon dead family members, souls drifting through the Abyss sometimes wash up here by chance, and there are fairies and demons who dwell in the realms of the Demon Gods."
Rumi picked up the explanation.
"On top of that, there are worlds other than the one we live in."
"Other worlds?"
Ella shot back.
Scarecrow, who hadn't heard of that before either, turned to look at her.
Rumi laid out the structure of their world for them — framed, of course, not with a beggar's bowl but an elegant flower.
Listening to her, Ella remembered reading a similar account once and nodded.
"Hmm, so the world is a giant tree, and the world we live in is one of hundreds of flowers blossoming on it? A Demon God's domain would be something like a beehive hanging from the tree?"
"Yes. Bees move from flower to flower on the tree. A Demon God exists across many worlds."
"So acrobats from every world all flock here?"
The phrase 'every world' tightened Scarecrow's brow.
Could that mean an acrobat from Earth might be here?
But Rumi shook her head and denied his hopes.
"Not every one. Only those where the Kirkeus Faith exists, and only those who are followers of Kirkeus."
Ella swallowed her admiration and clicked her tongue.
Acrobats from other worlds.
What kind of skills would they have?
Her fingers and toes itched.
She wanted to rush into a nearby theater then and there, grab any show, and devour it.
But they had no time. The scheduled execution was drawing near.
"Is Central Plaza over there?"
Ella pointed to a clearing at Cadsun's exact center, several kilometers away as the crow flies. The space was as large as Tetromino Plaza, but from this distance, it looked no bigger than a coin.
"Yes. That's it."
"Haah. Just getting there's going to take hours, isn't it?"
Scarecrow smiled and shook his head.
"No. There's no need. We can just call a Ticketer."
"Ticketer?"
"A spirit affiliated with Cadsun, same as the Bouncers. They handle performance reservations."
Rumi called into the air, "I'd like to book some tickets!"
A flash of light, and someone appeared midair: a gaunt middle-aged man in a dress shirt and suspenders with shorts. His body, like the Bouncer they'd seen earlier, was a Spirit Body with semi-transparent skin.
"Greetings, honored guests!"
Despite his irritable features, his voice was warm and unctuous as he welcomed them.
"Unregistered identities! Seems you're either new or back after a very long time. In that case, rather than our algorithm, we'll go straight to personal recommendations. What are you looking to see? New shows this week? This week's bestsellers? Evergreen sellers? Free performances? You can set tags, too! One-person plays! Rated 19+! No singing! Fairy actors! Free drink included! No-fairy zone! Oh, and one among your party is a fairy. My apologies. Let's carry on — three hours or longer! Comedy! Small theater! Taming!"
Ella caught the word she liked before she knew it.
"Taming?"
The Ticketer snapped his fingers and pointed at her, exclaiming,
"Taming! Excellent! We have a few subcategories here. Beasts, demons, personas, native creatures, extraterrestrial creatures. And — ah, a new promotional show just registered. 'Zakanuba Fire Play.' Says two adults can bring one child for free! Fits you perfectly, doesn't it?"
The Ticketer was growing genuinely excited. He had rattled all of that off in under three seconds.
Caught up in his high-pressure salesmanship, Ella found herself momentarily fretting over which show to choose, but Oz, unruffled, stated their request.
"I understand the execution of intruders is to be carried out in Central Plaza. We'd like to watch that."
"Ah, that! Confirmed! It's being held at the Central Judicial Theater, scheduled to begin in three hours. I'll issue the tickets now. Admission is fifty RP per person! You're in luck — a large batch of seats was canceled right before the show, so the price has dropped!"
Scarecrow nodded.
That was indeed cheap. Tickets for theaters in the game started at one hundred at minimum.
The problem was that they didn't have a single RP to their names yet.
"Let's see... you're all flat broke, aren't you? You'll need to earn some RP! Then allow me to guide you to a free performance nearby!"
The Ticketer motioned for them and started walking somewhere.
The three exchanged glances, then followed.
Ella gave her disguise a quick check to make sure her skin was well covered, then whispered into Oz's ear, low enough that the Ticketer wouldn't catch it.
"What's this RP, anyway? And why are we suddenly off to watch a show?"
Scarecrow smiled faintly at her questions.
When it came to performances back outside, the dynamic had often been him asking and her explaining. But here, he was the one with the answers. A refreshing change.
"The entertainers of Wonderland have little interest in material wealth. They want an audience's response and assessment. That, in effect, is currency here. Depending on how well you respond during the show — or how thoughtfully you write in the guestbook after — you're issued RP. Reaction Points."
"Ah-ha. So we're off to do some audience temp work."
Ella, nodding in understanding, sensed something odd and looked between the two of them.
"Hold on. But why are you two flat broke? If you've been running a travel agency, you must've been around quite a while, no?"
Her question got straight to the heart of it, and they exchanged a glance.
What do we say?
A brief silence followed, and then both of them, as though struck by the same idea, blurted out at once —
"We ran out of RP and had to start working! When we have money, we do nothing but laze about, you see!"
"We're fond of gambling! We hit the casino not long ago and lost the lot!"
They each threw out an answer, then stared at each other in mutual disbelief.
'What was that? We're gambling addicts now?'
'And you, Miss Rumi! Now we're broke deadbeats?'
The one saving grace — if you could call it that — was that their two excuses didn't contradict each other.
"Tch."
Ella clicked her tongue, looking at them.
The warmth that had filled her eyes moments before was gone, replaced with the gleam of contempt.
To a workaholic circus fanatic like her, two people idling and gambling in a world this bursting with life and creative passion looked like the most pathetic creatures imaginable.
They hadn't walked long before they reached a district dense with small theaters.
The Ticketer turned to them, gesturing.
"There are a few free performances nearby. Any particular preferences regarding details?"
"Hmm, something short and light?"
The question had been addressed to all three, but Ella answered without pausing to see if the others agreed.
Oz and Rumi exchanged a look and sighed.
Seems the two of them had been irredeemably branded as hopeless layabouts.
At her request, the Ticketer's translucent Spirit Body shimmered briefly before he gave his answer.
"Under one hour, light and bright story — ah, lucky for you, we have one."
He led them to a small nearby theater, where a puppet show was in progress.