The Underworld's Treasure
(Bagan, where are you going?)
Sally asked as Bagan hurried along toward some unknown destination. He had left Gion’s office, descended to the first floor, and walked out of the adventurers’ guild without once looking back. Now he was moving swiftly toward the underworld of De Meca.
The city was built in the classic style, with all the important structures clustered in the center. Once you left the bustling main streets, you immediately entered a district of rusty buildings that felt more like a slum. Every alley here belonged to some enterprise controlled by the underworld. The assassination and extortion job Flang had taken on was just one of those operations. Bagan had only eliminated the boss; he hadn’t yet torn out the remaining roots.
That meant the still-active branches were out there somewhere, even now, robbing people of their money and spitting curses.
“Time to clean house.”
Bagan was on his way to deal with every last one of those leftover operations.
But then—
Clank! Clank! Clank!
“Support requested on the western outskirts!”
“Move, move!”
There were far more soldiers rushing about than usual.
“Maybe I don’t even need to bother?”
(Now that the boss is gone, the rest should be easy to mop up.)
“In that case, I’ll head there first.”
(There?)
“Yeah. Call it a warehouse, I guess?”
Bagan, who had been planning to dismantle the remaining criminal enterprises, changed direction the moment he saw the frantically moving soldiers. The route was similar, yet the destination was an especially unremarkable corner of the slums.
“This the place?”
Bagan stopped in front of a dilapidated building that reeked of poverty. It was so plain it had no features whatsoever to distinguish it from any other structure nearby.
(I don’t sense a single presence.)
“Exactly.”
The complete absence of people made the place even more suspicious. The height of the weeds growing around it and the aggressive parasitic vines devouring the walls only confirmed his hunch.
This is definitely it.
With a confident stride, Bagan approached. The building was sealed by a pair of massive iron doors. The handle was so corroded it looked as though no one had touched it in years. When he pulled it open, the screech of metal grinding on metal sent a shiver down his spine.
Screeeech—!
“Cough! Cough!”
The rush of outside air stirred up a cloud of dust the moment the door opened. Unable to stop coughing, Bagan waved away the bitter particles and cast the basic elemental spell Light to illuminate the interior.
The space looked utterly empty.
“It really is just a warehouse.”
That was the extent of his impression. It was a warehouse and nothing more. The only noteworthy detail was that it contained no stored goods whatsoever.
(There’s nothing here.)
Yet Bagan knew Caliban and Drake had hidden something in this place.
“That’s exactly why it’s suspicious.”
He stepped inside and carefully scanned the floor until he spotted the oddity.
“This is it.”
A deliberately carved groove—so small it would be easy to miss unless you were looking for it. He slipped a single finger into the narrow slot.
“Won’t be easy to force open.”
A thick iron plate covered the basement. Some kind of mechanism had been built into it; without knowing the proper method, it would never open.
“They went to all this trouble to hide it under a collapsing warehouse. Impressive.”
Fortunately, Bagan had also learned the opening method from them. He decided to test whether the information was accurate.
The first step was to burn every suspicious bundle of straw piled inside the seemingly empty building. The moment the flames caught, acrid smoke filled the air, but the influx of outside wind quickly carried it away. Once the smoke cleared, a rock rose from the ashes. A waist-high boulder sitting in the middle of a warehouse was unnatural enough to stand out immediately.
“Pour mana in here and…”
The rock absorbed the mana and began to glow. It traveled along the walls, brightening the entire warehouse until the Light spell was no longer necessary.
Clunk!
Bagan could have simply used Unlock, but he preferred solving the puzzle step by step, following the original creator’s intent. It suited his tastes better.
“I don’t mind getting dirty, but I hate stuffy underground air.”
He had once preferred enclosed spaces. They felt more familiar. But after who knew how long, he had discovered how refreshing and clear the outside air could be. The scent of grass and the cool breeze were far more pleasant than a dusty, rundown room.
“Better finish this quickly.”
Resolved not to breathe the stale underground air any longer than necessary, Bagan descended. After climbing down a ladder for a full twenty meters, his foot finally touched solid ground. The moment it did, the floor sank slightly and the ropes installed along the wall began to glow. The mechanism was designed to trigger lights by weight. For a split second he wondered if it was a trap, but he sensed no real danger and relaxed.
Once he was fully off the ladder, Bagan faced a tunnel that stretched in only one direction. As he walked, the ropes on the wall lit up in sequence, following his movement. At first glance it resembled a mine shaft, but what he sought lay at the end—a large cavern. The place where Caliban and Drake had hidden their accumulated wealth. Every piece of information had matched so far, so a cavern should appear if he kept going.
With that thought, he continued down the passage.
(It’s a trap.)
“Yeah, I see it.”
Bagan had spotted the classic villainous trap—arrows coated in poison, ready to fire.
“Cut this rope and you’d die from the toxin before you ever reached the treasure?”
The dungeon-like atmosphere of the underground fascinated him.
(A little farther and there’s a door. The moment you open it, lava will pour from the ceiling.)
But when Sally spoiled the trap instead of letting him experience clearing it himself, Bagan narrowed his eyes at her.
“Sally, you’re ruining the fun.”
Her highest priority had always been his safety.
“Still, it’s sweet of you, so I’ll let it slide.”
He wasn’t truly upset. It had been a long time since anything truly interested him, and this was a rare spark of curiosity, but he understood her heart. He dismantled the poison-arrow trap so it could never activate again, then moved on.
As Sally had warned, a door soon appeared. Unlike the warehouse entrance, this one was a wooden door on the verge of rotting apart. After disabling the trap exactly as described, Bagan stepped into the cavern and finally understood the kind of men Caliban and Drake had truly been.
Twinkle, twinkle!
“Whoa…”
He wasn’t especially greedy, yet even he felt his eyes spin at the sheer quantity of treasure radiating light.
“They really went all out.”
The cavern was enormous, and the fortune inside was far too vast for any single person to carry. There was even a three-meter-tall solid-gold statue of Priya that they apparently hadn’t found a buyer for.
“The Priya Church would be thrilled if I brought this to them. Wait—didn’t they steal it from the church in the first place? I might end up being labeled the thief if I step forward.”
Bagan worried he would be mistaken for the culprit who had stolen the holy relic.
At that moment Sally spoke.
(The Goddess Priya does not look like that. Taking it to the church might actually make them think you’re worshiping a delusion.)
Bagan had to agree. The Priya he remembered from Fantasy of Pangea possessed an aura far removed from this statue.
“I think so too. Unless Bin himself carved it, it couldn’t even capture the tip of her toe.”
Yet as he spoke, Sally stared at him with a steady gaze. The look made him uncomfortable.
“What?”
(What~?)
Finding her stare burdensome, Bagan gave her a look that urged her to speak if she had something to say. Sally pressed him as if to say, Then tell me already.
“So where exactly did all that knowledge come from? You know lies don’t work on me, right?”
She had even materialized to demand a serious answer. Only then did Bagan realize why she was reacting this way.
“Aww, and here I thought it was something big.”
At his indifferent response, Sally spoke with patient resolve.
“You’re not going to dodge the question again, are you?”
“I’ve never dodged before.”
Spirits were beings of truth. On top of that, as the Spirit King of Condemnation, Sally possessed the ability to discern the sin of falsehood. She had never used it on him, but Bagan knew full well that lies would not work.
“It’s nothing special. I’m simply not a person from this world.”
His words didn’t seem to shock Sally much.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
Strictly speaking, Sally herself had come from a different realm. There was a difference between realms and dimensions, but the context was similar.
“It’s not a lie. But that doesn’t explain everything.”
Just as she said, that wasn’t the answer she truly wanted.
“I figured as much. The answer you’re looking for is probably this.”
Bagan tapped his temple lightly with a finger.
“The reason I know these things is because I experienced them beforehand.”
Experience. The data from Fantasy of Pangea, the game he had played obsessively before becoming Bagan. If that counted as experience, then he had repeated it countless times and therefore knew the information.
“Hmm, ‘experienced.’ That isn’t a lie either.”
It couldn’t be. After all, the fact that Bagan had played the game remained unchanged.
“That’s right. Dozens of times. Hundreds, even.”
He had seen dozens of endings and created and deleted characters hundreds of times. That was how many times Bagan had lived through this world.
But Sally interpreted his words differently.
“How is that possible? Life is finite.”
“You’re right. It’s definitely not infinite. That’s why it felt so desperate.”
Opening up like this felt surprisingly refreshing. Because it was more liberating than he expected, Bagan kept talking. Maybe he had always wanted someone who would simply listen.
“This world was my only sanctuary. It still is, but back then the feeling was even stronger. I don’t know why. No matter how many times I repeated it, I never grew tired.”
“I see.”
“What do you think? Now that you’ve heard it, it’s not that impressive, right?”
Though it had felt good to speak, the more he talked the more he realized this wasn’t the kind of story you told just anyone. At that moment Sally pulled him into a tight embrace.
“No… This has only made it clearer. To me, Bagan, you are an endlessly remarkable existence. You are my contractor and my friend.”
Sally was moved by his story. She respected him. Through an embrace that seemed it would never end, she expressed that will. As both contractor and friend, Bagan was an incomparably great being. The fact that he had maintained a sound mind after enduring what sounded like an eternal cycle was something truly worthy of admiration.
“Our friendship will continue like this forever.”
“Yeah.”
Bagan answered, and the hug finally ended.
She understood, right?
He wasn’t entirely sure, but he decided that if it felt good, it was good enough.
“That was refreshing, but now I feel a little depressed. Maybe it’s the underground air. Shall we leave?”
(Yes. I don’t like this atmosphere either.)
At some point Sally had shed her serious demeanor and returned to her spirit form. Following her words, Bagan used Absorption to store every piece of treasure in the cavern into his subspace.
“Is it a sin to take items with no owner?”
(Taking spoils of war is not a sin.)
Had she been influenced by Bagan? It wasn’t something the Spirit King of Condemnation should be saying.