The Giant's Desert
The Giant's Desert
A week since they had arrived in Kardi.
Aslan had hit a wall.
The nature of that wall was plain in the conversation drifting toward him even now.
Two middle-aged men were talking in the tavern. Aslan listened, ears pricked, as he sipped beer whose only remaining virtue was a faint, sharp texture on the tip of his tongue.
"Still no crossing, eh?"
"So I hear. What're poor bastards like us supposed to do, scraping by on a day's wage, and all they keep saying is the crossing's closed and no one gets through."
"Purse strings are pulling tight and tighter, and what's the damned problem that they can't open it up...."
"What about Randy Gorge instead?"
One of them, a man in a thick leather jerkin, tossed out the suggestion. His companion recoiled and shook his head.
"That way's a sorry sight these days. Better to slip out on the sly and cross the Giant's Desert instead. I hear monsters crawling out of Henna's Isolated Wasteland are swarming over there."
"Monsters, you say. You'd think Wearbead Fortress could handle them well enough. It's Baron Werbid's territory, after all."
Aslan listened with narrowing eyes. The middle-aged man leaned toward his companion, flecks of spit flying as he answered.
"It's not so simple. Word is there are all sorts of peculiar monsters this time, giving the subjugation force no end of trouble. On top of that, the fortress commander—the baron—has died, and the succession's gone to hell."
"Damn. So what then, we just wait around till we shrivel up and starve?"
The balding man ran a hand over his scalp in despair. The one doing the explaining grimaced, knocked back his beer, and grumbled.
"Why snap at me? I wasn't the one who closed the crossing."
At that, both men fell silent and drank in gloom. Aslan suppressed the sigh rising from his chest and lowered his eyes.
This was the reason he'd been stuck in Kardi for a full week.
If his destination had been Kardi in the Duchy of Hilsinger rather than the Kingdom of Bida, the matter would have been simpler. But Aslan's goal lay much farther ahead.
Kardi, in a manner of speaking, was not a place Aslan could afford to linger in.
And not because of public order.
Kardi was, unmistakably, one of the wealthiest cities on the Northern Continent.
Nestled against the sea at the southernmost edge of the Duchy of Hilsinger, Kardi grew rich on broad trade spanning both maritime and overland routes, and on the enormous food yields of its wide lands.
That wealth supported plenty of mercenaries and well-equipped soldiers. Mages traveled here by sea from the City of Mages, so there was no cause to worry about the quality or quantity of troops.
The problem lay in a direction entirely unrelated to those things.
Namely, that this was the backdrop for the next main quest.
Aslan pulled his hood down low and caught Angie's eye. She, too, wore her hood low, busy at the moment slicing a steaming potato and popping pieces into her mouth.
Angie cocked her head, failing to read the glance, then held out the potato. When Aslan shook his head, she shrugged and went back to eating.
The next main quest began the moment the "protagonist" met the Duke of Hilsinger, who resided in Kardi.
Not that progressing the main quest was itself a problem, nor was Aslan trying to avoid it.
The main quest was what Aslan had yearned for across twelve years. It was, for all intents and purposes, what he had to do to go home—to survive.
The problem was that once the main quest was underway, there would be no path left to seek out the Master of the Sword.
Northwest of Kardi, farther north even than Olpasbet—where Aslan had broken Angie out of prison—lay Belus Alpen.
That was the next objective of the main quest originating in Kardi, and it came with a time limit.
Once that quest was in motion, Aslan would lose any route to the Barony of Honningal, where the Master of the Sword stood waiting.
Aslan had calculated that securing the Master of the Sword early, before gathering the other Masters, would drastically shift the probability of success for his longer-term plans.
That was why he sat here now with his hood up, concealing his identity. It was also why the current crossing ban vexed him so greatly.
Randy Gorge was dangerous, and as for the desert, the reason behind the prohibition remained murky.
If he sought out the duke to ask, he would learn the answer at once—but in the process, the main quest would trigger, and after that there would be no escape from it.
In the end, the only options were to ferret out information through reconnaissance or to slip away unseen. But at the very least, he needed to understand why the crossing had been banned. For a survivor, weighing risk against reward was essential intelligence.
Yet that was only true while the option remained open. Aslan could not decide whether to take the monster-infested Randy Gorge or to cross the stretch of land they called the Giant's Desert.
There was too little known to make a judgment.
The sole consolation was that matters were not entirely at a standstill.
Aslan exhaled. Angie, who had been engrossed in her food with one cheek puffed out, asked him,
"What's wrong? You okay?"
"Fine."
"...Want me to solve this with my strength, somehow?"
Aslan gave a small shake of his head.
"That wouldn't end well. We'd get exposed."
Being discovered—whether by a priest or by the duke—would inevitably lead to complications. The duke would come to issue the main quest, and the priest would come to attack.
Angie, who could not know any of that, asked,
"Mm... if you say so. But I don't get it. Why do we have to hide when we haven't done anything wrong?"
"Things just work that way."
"You won't tell me?"
"It's hard to explain. Complicated."
"Ugh, I hate complicated."
Explaining to Angie in a way she could grasp that the quest would trigger the moment they met someone—because of what Aslan had experienced in the game and in Geladrion—was an exceedingly complicated task.
Fortunately, Angie had never been fond of using her head and habitually left difficult or convoluted matters to Aslan. Thanks to that, Aslan could let this pass without explanation.
He was still turning over whether the Randy Gorge route, with its available intelligence, might be the more convenient choice, when Angie asked him again.
"So where's the crazy woman?"
The crazy woman.
Angie had witnessed Ereta's nature and aggression firsthand from their very first meeting. Even now, when Ereta had grown somewhat subdued and less belligerent, Angie insisted on calling her the crazy woman.
And since no one raised a single objection to the nickname, it had never been corrected. So Ereta remained the crazy woman in Angie's lexicon.
In point of fact, given that Ereta was a genuine mad masochist, there was no real difference worth correcting.
So instead, Aslan answered.
"Gathering information."
"Information? What kind?"
"She'll be here soon. You'll know when she arrives."
Aslan nodded. Angie made an "hmm" sound, snatched up some bread, and chewed. Then she rolled her eyes as if thinking and turned her gaze toward the inn's door.
Just then, the door opened, and a woman in a drab linen cloak stepped inside.
White hair that even the hood could not fully conceal, striking pink eyes that seemed good-natured at a glance—a beautiful woman.
Ereta.
Ereta surveyed the interior with subdued eyes, spotted the table where Aslan and Angie sat, and walked straight over.
Aslan pulled a chair out for her. Ereta smiled faintly and seated herself.
"You haven't been speaking ill of me, have you?"
"We have."
Angie answered sullenly, but Ereta simply looked at her with benevolent eyes and laughed.
"Did you know your eyebrows go up when you lie, Angie?"
Angie started and fumbled for her eyebrows. Ereta's smile turned sly.
"That was a lie."
"...You."
Angie clenched her fist at having been tricked, but Ereta, apparently regarding it as no threat whatsoever, picked up the beer mug Aslan had been drinking from.
Ever since she had heard Aslan's objective a week ago, before they reached Kardi, Ereta had been acting as she used to.
As she had before Aslan defeated her and she ceased to be a priest.
Aslan watched her quietly. Feeling his eyes, Ereta smiled with her eyes as well.
"So, did you find anything?"
Ereta paused mid-sip and answered.
"They say the giants are in an uproar."
"Giants?"
It was Angie who asked. She wore an expression that suggested she had no idea what a giant was. Ereta smiled brightly, and Aslan rolled his eyes, preparing an explanation.
"Demi-humans that live in the desert we were originally planning to cross. They lack the intelligence and humanity of dragon-kin, beastmen, or elves, so they don't get treated as human... but they're not classed as monsters either. True to the name, they're tall and strong. Right now, each of them would be a touch stronger than you."
"...That's insanely strong."
Angie's current Strength was seven. Considering a giant's Strength ranged from eight to ten, that was considerable.
It was power no bare-handed human could contend with. Yet for all that strength, their intelligence was low.
Clever enough to craft and use simple tools, but nowhere near capable of devising anything ingenious.
Which was why they had never defeated an army.
Beaten by well-trained forces, they lived and died in the desert under human rule, trading with humans.
"If giants are rampaging, the crossing ban makes sense... but did you find out why they're rampaging?"
What Aslan had tasked Ereta with was gathering information—specifically, gathering it from the guardsmen.
With Ereta's looks, she could collect rumors from the guards while drawing less attention than either Aslan or Angie would.
Though it had only been a week, Ereta had fulfilled her role faithfully.
She joined local monster-and-beast subjugation efforts, earning modest pay while assisting the guards and striking up conversations.
Her wholesome face only helped. Ereta had been able to procure intelligence with ease.
"Mm, it's not confirmed—just a rumor—but they say the giants have been under attack?"
"Under attack? The giants?"
"Yes."
Giants were not the sort of beings one associated with being attacked. For all their low intelligence, they could form groups, and the Giant's Desert even contained self-governing districts, chief among them the Giant's Fortress.
If something was attacking such giants, one possibility came to mind.
"A priest, then."
Why a priest would attack giants, he couldn't say, but priests did not always act according to logic or cause and effect.
Ereta, chin resting on her hand, beamed at Aslan's declaration. It was a teasing smile.
"Wrong."
"...What?"
"I heard it's a wraith. That's why the giants are running wild, demanding humans help them because it's the result of wicked human magic."
"What?"
"Just a rumor, but if it's a wraith... that's plausible, isn't it?"
A wraith was a being against which physical force was almost useless. Unlike a banshee, magic did work on it, making it a monster that could only be dealt with through spells, rare weapons carrying an elemental property, or an overwhelming torrent of physical attacks.
"Or it could be a trick by the giants?"
"No. It's likely real."
Ereta might say that, but Aslan knew giants were not given to such ruses. So he denied it simply.
Moreover, if a wraith really had appeared, it explained why the physically outmatched giants were rampaging and screaming for help. They were not a cerebral species.
But.
"There's a problem."
"Hmm?"
"...A wraith shouldn't appear in the Giant's Desert. It can't."
Wraiths were entities born from human death. Human resentment was essential to their formation, so they could not possibly exist in Baron Werbid's territory, where villages were sparse.
Yet dismissing it as a baseless rumor wasn't right either. Giants lacked the intellect to craft a scheme to lure humans with such talk.
They could be deceived, but not the reverse.
Aslan judged it highly likely to be a real wraith, even as he remained suspicious of the very fact of its appearance.
There had to be a reason. After a moment's thought, Aslan shook his head.
"Anyway, if it's a wraith, this actually works in our favor."
"Why?"
A wraith was a monster created when a human soul, consumed by resentment, refused to pass into the underworld. It came into being because the ancient god who would have exerted compulsory force from the underworld was dead.
In essence, the monster was itself a soul.
And when the opponent was a soul, Aslan had a simple answer.
[Heart of Sorrow - Enables the cutting of divinity and spirit bodies.]
Reading the description of Purity that clung to the system window like a grafted branch, Aslan smiled faintly.
"Because I'm a hard counter."
Not a single one of them understood those words, but Aslan's expression was filled with certainty.
Seeing that look, neither the woman nor the girl thought to ask further.