Chapter 91 — Decision (2)
Chapter 91 — Decision (2)
A forest so dense that not even sunlight could penetrate.
The temperature had grown even more frigid.
It had been a long time since mere running had made him sweat. He had to sprint at full force to keep pace with the forest elf.
He had run quite a distance.
The mist of his breath was already mingling with sweat, abruptly chilling and clinging to his face like frost, then melting from his body heat and trickling down again like perspiration.
Roan located Rauka.
"...Rauka."
He had chased her with desperate effort, straining to keep her within the range of Detection.
At the long-unfamiliar sensation of oxygen deprivation, Roan clenched his teeth and drew breath through them.
Roan glanced at the long-term quest clock in the upper right. It was a clock that would hover there for an entire year until completion—looking at it unsettled him, but it had its uses.
Unlike the clocks of this world, which only displayed the hour, that quest clock showed time down to the millisecond.
So it had been about ten minutes of all-out sprinting since he parted ways with the Lord of the West Blood Territory.
The Rauka he found stood there blankly.
"Aina."
To avoid startling Rauka, who had not yet heard his voice, Roan slowly approached her and called her name once more.
The red-haired forest elf turned toward the Demon King with a pained expression.
Her long ponytail fluttered in the winter wind.
Without exchanging a word, the two drew closer.
"Aina, did you..."
Roan grasped her shoulder.
He had not meant to grip it tightly.
But his hand involuntarily tensed, afraid she might flee again. Roan made a conscious effort to ease that strength as he spoke.
"...want to go into the forest?"
Rauka seemed to hesitate.
Seeing Rauka gaze beyond the forest with an unreadable look in her eyes, Roan grew anxious.
The feeling of realizing a tamed animal was about to run far away.
If she truly meant to escape from here, what should he do?
Roan wavered for a moment but soon made his decision.
Rauka's Affection was already positive. She would no longer conspire with the Hero to kill the Demon King.
The intended objective of preventing her from joining the Hero's allies had already been achieved. So even if Rauka fled into the forest, it would not matter.
But his emotions did not permit it.
"Aina."
As if urging an answer,
Roan spoke her name again,
without releasing Rauka's shoulder.
At last, after a long pause, Rauka seemed to have reached a decision. She shook her head.
"No... ...I have nowhere to return to."
As if those words had granted permission,
Roan put strength into both hands.
And Rauka's light body moved like a fluttering thing, following wherever Roan's hands led.
Roan held Rauka in a deep embrace.
"......Your Majesty."
Rauka, whose eyes had widened slightly in surprise, let out a soft sigh. Whether it was anxiety or relief was unclear.
They lingered a moment, feeling each other's warmth. Then it was Rauka who pulled away first.
Freeing herself from Roan's embrace, Rauka sheepishly fidgeted with her long ears a few times.
"No matter how little fondness I have for my own kind... hearing that still stung a little. It was childish of me. Really."
"Mm."
Rauka shot Roan a brief glare, as if to say, "You're agreeing with that?" and then continued.
"Setting me aside, there's also my family. Being lumped together and called selfish still feels lousy. Even though I haven't seen that family once since leaving home."
"When did you leave home?"
"A hundred and fifty years ago."
Roan's eyes went round.
Rauka's age was just over two hundred.
Wasn't that practically the rest of her life?
"You haven't seen them in a long time, then."
"Some never see each other at all."
Rauka studied Roan's expression as he stared at her and laughed.
"Yeah, that's how forest elves normally are. Once you leave, you're a separate entity. We don't do things like seeking out family the way humans do."
Rauka wore a faintly wistful smile.
"That's why I was told I was different from other forest elves. Hearing something like this, my kinsfolk would definitely laugh at me or call me strange."
"Hm."
"Except for one. Just one."
The feelings carried through Attentive Hearing were—
Longing and sorrow. An affection destined never to be fulfilled.
And a faint anger.
Only then did Roan realize why Rauka had flown into a rage and massacred the demon village.
After a lengthy hesitation, Roan asked.
"Is it about that kinsman—the one who taught you to hunt?"
Rauka looked at Roan as if caught off guard.
"Your Majesty remembers surprisingly small things, doesn't he? Yes. That's right. That's how it was..."
And so the demon village had devoured the forest elf who might have been Rauka's lover—or perhaps her unrequited love.
And as a result, the village had met its own destruction.
The forest elf sighed, reflecting on everything that had happened.
"If we start tracing the root cause, there's no real answer, but still—I can't help thinking that if Evirgio had been a slightly more prosperous place, something might have turned out differently. It leaves a bitter taste. For me. And for my dead teacher too."
"The regrets of the past cannot be helped. But there is still room to change the future, isn't there?"
Roan answered carefully.
If Rauka remained stuck dwelling on the past, it felt as though no further progress would be possible.
"This survey is meant to change that. Shall we get moving soon, Aina?"
"Yeah. And the Dark Forest monolith isn't far from here anyway. Let's check whether something like what we saw last time exists here too."
Roan grinned and followed behind Rauka.
As Rauka had said, the monolith was truly not far. A distance of about three minutes at a slow walk.
A clearing wider than the Basel Waypoint they had discovered before stretched around a solitary monolith.
In the game, the waypoints had already been visible, so he had taken them for granted—but seeing it like this, the sight was genuinely alien.
As they drew near the monolith, he felt his mana slowly draining away.
"Hm. As you said, the inscription is indeed different."
"Right?"
After months of special tutoring from Helen, Roan could finally read ancient script in its entirety—haltingly, but completely.
He still could not read it fluently, since proficiency could not be raised quickly, but given enough time, there was not a single character he could not read.
"Is the mana drain manageable?"
"This much mana leaking out is fine. As long as I don't stay too long..."
Rauka was looking around with a nostalgic expression.
Roan glanced once at the monolith, once at Rauka, then walked toward the spot where a waypoint should have been.
Standing in the soft, needle-strewn clearing deep within the coniferous forest, Roan activated a new spell he had learned through practice.
It was Warming Magic.
As the warm breeze enveloped Roan's and Rauka's bodies, Rauka burst out laughing.
"Ahaha, Your Majesty, all of a sudden?"
And from his other hand, a tiny light appeared.
Starlight.
And at the sight that followed, Roan doubted his eyes. Rauka's laughter vanished.
The small glimmering light dissolved into the balmy breeze like scattering sand, and began to cloak Roan's body.
Then the light illuminated the ground beneath Roan's feet.
The characteristic pattern of a waypoint began to emerge in concentric circles, centered on where Roan stood.
At last, the waypoint fully revealed itself. A massive stone slab floor engraved with patterns. Its size was far larger than the one Roan and Rauka had seen in Spros.
The warm breeze carrying Starlight still swirled around Roan and Rauka.
"This is tremendous... Three or four four-horse carriages could fit in here."
"Mm."
Roan moved his feet.
He had already surveyed the direction in which the moon rose, and now he meant to walk toward the mine.
Yet this was not all.
"...Hm?"
The Starlight that still trembled upon the wind—when Roan took a step, it drifted forward in that direction as though carried by it.
Moving across a radius far larger than what ordinary Warming Magic could cover, the Starlight reached the clearing beyond the waypoint.
And then, a pillar appeared.
"...Huh?"
Rauka, who had been staring blankly, let out a dumbfounded sound.
He had not opened his mouth, but Roan too watched the Starlight's movement with a look of utter disbelief.
It was a round pillar of a size that would take several grown men straining together merely to encircle it with their arms.
Its height was a full ten-some meters.
A structure that had not existed in the game.
Gazing up at the pillar, Roan abruptly seemed to realize something else and moved his feet again.
The wind carrying Starlight shifted direction relative to Roan's body. And what appeared where his gaze fell was another pillar—and a collapsed roof.
"Unbelievable..."
Rauka involuntarily denied the sight before her eyes.
The end result: a majestic stone structure, centered on the waypoint's circular clearing, revealed itself to the Starlight.
Some of the pillars had crumbled, and the roof that must have rested upon them had collapsed as well. Even so, roughly half of the structure remained intact enough to keep out rain and snow.
It gave the impression of an enormous circular hall built around the waypoint.
Standing along the curved wall were large, angular structures. Like bus shelters, they had only a roof—open at the front and back, with walls at either side. Like some kind of pedestal.
Despite that plain shape, the surfaces of the walls and the edges of the roof were adorned with delicate stone carvings.
The top surface was higher than a human's height, making it hard to see clearly, but it seemed smooth—the roof edges had no ornamentation.
And the curved wall facing those structures was decorated with a beautiful relief.
Here and there it was crushed and broken, yet the form could be dimly discerned: the shape of a woman. And a vast embossed tableau in which multitudes of beings bowed their heads and waists toward her.
"...Laurecia."
At Rauka's murmur, Roan was at last able to grasp the meaning of the carving.
"It matches the monolith's inscription."
No such structure had existed in the game. There had been only a waypoint in a broad forest clearing.
Roan examined the forms carved into the wall with care.
The carving began at Roan's eye level and encompassed a height so great the two of them had to crane their necks to see it—a staggering scale. Converted, it looked to be the height of a three- or four-story building.
The Goddess tending to plants.
The Goddess tending to animals.
That bony-looking thing over there was probably a human.
The Goddess joyfully receiving what looked like offerings from them.
And then—
"...What... is this?"
Rauka, who had been brushing her hand along the wall, froze.
Roan's gaze, too, fixed on what she was looking at.
A hideous shape.
A form so ominous merely to look upon—something that seemed to oppose the Goddess.
Roan realized what it was.
'...The final boss.'
The true boss of Legend of the Holy Hero. The foe the Hero was meant to face in the mid-to-late game, after defeating the Demon King.
A demon.
The wall bearing that inauspicious content was half-destroyed, making the details difficult to discern. The demon's shape, too, had been mutilated this way and that, as if someone had tried to gouge it out.
Even so, the foreboding aura that shape gave off remained intact.
"...Your Majesty."
But Rauka, who had meant to say something, ultimately could not bring the words out.
It felt as though, were she to open her mouth and give voice to a single word, the sinister quality hidden within that wall's imagery would leap forth into reality.
Damaged as it was,
the traces were that deeply unsettling.
With complicated hearts, the two kept their mouths shut and for a long while circled the round structure.
Aside from that final carving, the space—despite its enormous size—possessed an atmosphere of tranquility. He had never been to one, but perhaps an art museum felt like this.
After finishing his survey of the wall's depictions, stepping carefully around the large pedestals—the bus shelters—Roan spoke, deliberately trying to shake off the lingering unease.
It was a waypoint, after all. They could return anytime.
"Shall we head out soon, Aina?"
"...Yeah."
Rauka began to follow behind Roan.
Both Roan and Rauka walked while tracing their own memories. Roan, memories from the game—Rauka, memories from her youth.
Despite her slowly depleting mana, Rauka's expression seemed lightened.
With hearts somewhat lighter than when they had first set out for the ruins, they walked for about thirty minutes.
And what appeared was the entrance to the mine.
A cave artfully concealed by conifers and rocky hills. At a glance, it did not stand out.
Roan, having found the cave, let out a sigh of relief.
"Haah."
"What is it, Your Majesty?"
"Honestly, I'm relieved."
Rauka laughed brightly.
"Hmm, Your Majesty anxious? That's a first."
"The food supply for a great many people is riding on this, is it not?"
At Roan's words, Rauka smiled and nodded.
"Ah. Yes. That's true."
And Rauka began striding toward the mine.
"Then, let's finish this quickly."
"Aina, wait a moment... Something is inside."
Something caught by Detection.
Not weak.
But Rauka smiled.
"It's probably just a hibernating bear, or a wolf, or a boar. It's fine. I'll handle something like that for you. Rather than standing out here slowly having my mana drained, I want to finish as fast as possible and go back."
Sometimes, when you bring someone to the hometown where you spent your childhood, you gain an uncanny familiarity and confidence that makes your actions bolder.
Perhaps Rauka's boldness was grounded in that sort of feeling.
To dispel a vague unease, Roan fingered the angular ring at the pommel of Fiora and began walking into the mine.