God's Nail
High above a thoroughfare thronged with countless people, Schwarz raced in hot pursuit of a fleeing man, closing the gap with every stride.
"Stop right there!!"
"Damn it! Stay away!!"
At the shout from behind, the man he was chasing yelled back and overturned a nearby market stall. Screams erupted as fruit tumbled from the stand, people slipping and sliding across the spilled produce until the whole area dissolved into chaos.
"Tch…!!"
Schwarz clicked his tongue at the sight, then drew up his mana to reinforce his body and leapt onto the adjacent building, vaulting from rooftop to rooftop. Nearby guards spotted the chase and plunged into the crowd after them, only to vanish among the dense throng of people.
How long the pursuit continued after that, he could not have said.
"Hah! Try following me here, then!"
"As if I'd let you get away!!"
Seeing the man round a corner and dive into a nearby alley, Schwarz shouted and dropped from the rooftop. He landed, lifted his head—and in the same instant his eyes found the entrance to a sewer whose iron grate had been removed.
"Ugh…"
I really didn't want to go in there…
The thought drew a low groan from him, yet he had no choice. A sharp premonition told him that if he failed to chase the man down at once, something dangerous would unfold.
"No other way."
After a few seconds of hesitation, Schwarz muttered the words and stepped into the sewer. At once the foul stench rising along the passage made him wrinkle his nose as he walked deeper into the long, stretching tunnel.
"Traces of mana…"
Traces that had been nearly invisible among the crowds now stood out with stark clarity in the deserted sewer. One question lingered, though. When he had subdued the man at the harbor, he had sensed no sign of mana from him at all. Yet the trail before his eyes now was unmistakable.
It led deeper still into the sewer. Following it, Schwarz pressed on through the darkness. Only the splash of his footsteps and the murmur of flowing water filled the passage.
After roughly ten minutes of tracking the vivid trail—
"It's a dead end…?"
Rounding a corner, he found a wall blocking his path and let out a puzzled murmur. A solid brick wall stood before him, and the mana trail simply stopped against it.
"What in the world…"
He stared, at a loss for words. No matter how carefully he searched the surroundings, no other passage revealed itself—only moss-covered walls and the greenish sewage flowing along the channel.
He approached the wall and rapped it lightly; nothing met his knuckles but the hard feel of solid brick.
Then—
Blub.
"…?"
An odd sound rose amid the rush of water. Narrowing his eyes, Schwarz scanned the area, yet still found nothing of note. Did I imagine it? he wondered, turning his head—only for the same sound to reach his ears once more.
He whipped around. In the middle of the green-stained channel, bubbles were rising to the surface.
"…"
Please. Anything but that. Please…
Praying it was not what he feared, Schwarz bent his knees and peered at the water. His hope proved futile; more bubbles broke the surface.
"Haa…"
As the worst possibility became reality, he let out a long sigh. The meaning was all too clear. Do I really have to go this far? The thought crossed his mind, but he shook his head. It was far too late to start complaining.
"I just hope the smell doesn't cling…"
Muttering a wish that was pure fantasy, he rose, drew a deep breath to steady himself—and in the next instant—
"Hup…!!"
Holding his breath, Schwarz flung himself into the greenish sewage flowing along the channel.
I held out longer than I expected…
With that thought, Schwarz swam through the pitch-dark channel. He felt no particular shortness of breath. Have I always been this good a swimmer? The question flickered through his mind, only to be pushed aside by a faint light glimmering ahead.
He swam toward it for a short while—
Wh-what!?
Before he could react, a violent surge of water slammed into him. Helpless against the sudden current, he was swept along, battered against the walls of the channel again and again. The pain should have wrung a scream from him, yet he clenched his teeth and forced it down.
Then, after a few more moments—
"Aaaaaagh!?"
The world ahead brightened without warning, and gravity seized him. Schwarz screamed. His blurred vision cleared in the sudden light, revealing the ground rushing up to meet him.
"I'm falling—!!"
At the sight he cried out and unfurled his wings. With a ripping of cloth, great wings burst from his back. He beat them hard; his descent slowed, yet he was still falling fast. Flapping frantically, he managed to bleed off enough speed to land with only a light jolt.
"Whew… that took ten years off my life."
Muttering the words with a sigh, he lifted his gaze. Far overhead, from a channel at a dizzying height, filthy water poured down like a waterfall. A fall from that height with no preparation would have been hard to survive even for a dragon like him.
But the relief lasted only a moment.
"Ugh…"
The stench rising from his entire body made him grimace. After swimming so long through a channel that carried every kind of sewage, it was only natural.
"Anyway… where exactly is this place?"
He murmured the question as he looked around. A vast circular chamber stretched before him. High above, something shaped like a pillar began at the ceiling and extended far downward. Its body was pure white as marble; at its tip sat an enormous blue-glowing mineral, and the power seeping from that stone sent a faint light along the structure.
Simply looking at it made his mind feel clear and pure.
"…?"
In that instant a blue light shimmered over his body, and the filth and sewage coating him vanished cleanly—or rather, transformed into pure, unblemished water.
"It couldn't be…"
Schwarz could vaguely guess what it was.
—But one day a great nail fell from the heavens, and everything changed.
—The sacred power that flowed from the nail calmed the storms and sealed the demonic beasts that had thronged the seas, sinking them into the deep.
The play he had seen at the Riel Central Museum. The miracle of the gods that had purified a sea filled with storms and monsters and made it possible for people to live.
"God's Nail…"
If his guess was right, this was none other than God's Nail itself—the very foundation upon which the Riel Coalition had been built. And if the structure overhead truly was God's Nail, then he now stood at the absolute center, the very heart, of the Riel Kingdom.
"Ah—this is no time to stand around!"
Startled out of his daze at the majestic sight, Schwarz hurriedly scanned the surroundings. He had come here chasing that man. Yet perhaps because of the mana pouring from God's Nail, he could find no trace of the man's power anywhere.
"Haa…"
So I lost him after all.
With that thought he let out a short sigh.
Then—
A chill raced down his spine. Reflexively he threw himself sideways. In the next instant something crashed down where he had stood. With a thunderous boom, shattered stone fragments sprayed outward. Rising, Schwarz looked at the beings before him and swallowed hard.
[Screeeee—!!]
[Glooork—!! Gloo-glooork!!]
[Crrack—!! Crrrunch!!]
Monsters whose forms were a hideous fusion of every kind of sea creature—squid, crab, anemone, and more—were advancing on him, loosing repulsive cries. Their shapes were so grotesque that merely looking at them filled Schwarz with deep revulsion.
"Don't tell me… demonic beasts?"
From the creatures before him he sensed none of the mana he had felt from the monsters in the Count's territory or in Barenberg. That meant these were completely independent beings, unrelated to the Masked Man.
"But how…!?"
If the play he had watched had accurately recounted the history of the Riel Coalition, then the demonic beasts should have been sealed deep beneath the sea by God's Nail. Yet the reality before his eyes paid no heed to any such seal; the creatures simply waved their pincers and tentacles as they closed in on him.
"…"
Sensing that something had gone terribly wrong, Schwarz shut his mouth, his face hardening. What he needed to do now was clear: wipe these things out as quickly as possible and report everything to Milia.
[Screeeee—!!]
[Gueeeek!!]
[Kak-kak!!]
Staring at the demonic beasts, Schwarz drew up the mana in his body. The creatures reacted at once and charged. At the same moment he lunged toward the foremost of them, swinging a foreleg that had already transformed into that of a dragon.