The Sacred Land of the North
“Amazing.”
Killian’s words voiced the thoughts of the entire search party. He stared at the gate with what looked almost like a bitter laugh.
Lawrence stepped through the gap first.
In an instant, blinding light poured over him.
Perhaps it was because he had spent nearly a month growing used to the darkness of the mine tunnels. He had to blink several times against the sudden glare.
When he opened his eyes again, a world of white unfurled before him.
A ceiling with no visible end. Whether it was light filtering through some unseen crack or not, silver-white shafts shimmered across towering pillars of ice like spires.
A natural wall wrought of ice and snow.
Within the transparent crystal, structures crowded with light seemed to sleep.
Wherever he looked, the sacred ground had been woven from snow and ice.
An ice bridge stretched beyond the gate and into the palace.
Countless ice flowers bloomed along the railings.
Delicate ice sculptures welcomed the visitors who had come to this land.
It was a scene of lofty solemnity.
The northern holy land truly deserved to be called an ice palace.
“……”
The frozen air tickled his breath.
Words failed him, and admiration just kept turning over and over in his mouth.
He had seen nothing but snow and ice for so long that he had never imagined they could be this beautiful.
As Lawrence entered the holy land, he suddenly glanced back.
For some reason, the search party wasn’t coming in.
Even Killian, with whom he had just been speaking, was lingering at the doorway.
“You can come in,” Lawrence said.
At that, Killian frowned.
“I can’t.”
He couldn’t?
“Look.”
Killian stuck a hand into the gap.
No—Lawrence only thought he did.
The hand he thrust through the opening never made it past whatever barrier stood there, as though something had blocked it.
“Any idea why?”
“...I’ve never seen anything like it. When I came to the holy land with other people, this didn’t happen.”
Yerina and Caelo had been able to enter together.
The holy land in Frang had allowed three of them inside.
But only for a moment.
Lawrence arrived at a thought.
Could it be because this gate wasn’t opened by a miracle?
The gate to the holy land in Frang had been opened by Yerina’s miracle.
This one, however, had been opened by the Key of the Spirit World.
And the Key of the Spirit World had invited only Lawrence.
If it was rejecting everyone else, then it made sense.
“Please wait a moment. I’ll see if I can find a way to solve this.”
“No need. We’ve already achieved more than enough.”
Killian shook his head.
“From here on, do as you please, mage.”
“Is that all right?”
“We can’t get through the gate anyway. If you want to investigate the inside, there’s no way to stop you. Isn’t that right? Then it’s better to part ways cleanly here.”
He turned to the rest of the search party and pulled out a cigarette, placing it between his lips.
“We’ve gotten our own results coming this far. Rather than gambling on a bigger adventure, it’s more important to return safely now.”
Killian was responsible for the lives of the search party.
Unlike Lawrence, who only had to look after himself, he carried a different burden.
“If that is the Watcher’s will, then we should prepare to head back.”
“We also need to pay respects to our brothers’ souls.”
The Watchers of Winter didn’t seem especially startled.
They reacted as if they had expected this choice all along.
“Today isn’t our only chance. The gate will stay open from now on, so we can always search again later with the main force.”
Then again, Killian looked at Lawrence.
“Can you hold out until then?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If this is the holy land I think it is, then I should be able to get out safely.”
“So that confidence of yours means you’ve got a spatial transfer scroll, then. Fair enough—once it activates, getting out shouldn’t be hard, no matter where you wind up.”
A spatial transfer scroll?
Lawrence remembered hearing about such a thing at the magic tower.
One of the scrolls nobles commonly use is the spatial transfer scroll. Once activated, it sends you to a recorded location or to a random one. In a dangerous situation, a single spatial transfer scroll can guarantee your bodily safety. Of course, you know the former is much more expensive.
Wina had definitely said something like that.
But spatial transfer scrolls were notoriously unstable.
If the spell went wrong, you could end up crushed in the seam of space and die.
“As long as I don’t die, that’s enough.”
There was no need to clear up the misunderstanding.
“I hope we meet again someday.”
“Unless you become a Watcher of Winter, I can’t imagine why we’d meet at the wall again. That would be a fool’s errand.”
As though to say this was where their connection ended, Killian turned away.
“We’re leaving.”
Soon after, the search party withdrew from the gate.
Lawrence watched the Watchers of Winter recede into the distance, then turned as well.
The northern holy land was now right in front of him.
* * *
Transparent crystals of snow drifted through the air.
Lawrence crossed the ice bridge while keeping a wary eye on his surroundings.
Based on his experience with holy lands so far, he couldn’t afford to relax.
The Forest Spiders of Spider Forest. The Bugbears of Ulbazar Swamp. On the seaside cliffs, there had been horn boars. The northern holy land could easily be hiding some other danger as well.
Cobolds he had seen until he was sick of them in the mine tunnels?
Or maybe ice trolls?
Or perhaps a wendigo might appear.
But no monster appeared before he finished crossing the bridge.
Instead, a headache set in.
It wasn’t an ordinary headache.
It felt similar to the pain that came when he used magic.
The ache was unfamiliar and impossible to get used to, and he couldn’t help but grimace.
The moment he crossed the frozen gate, he saw a sight that should not have been there.
Collapsed buildings.
Overflowing rubble.
Beyond the traces of destruction lay heaps of remains.
It felt as if his eyes were burning.
Lawrence shut his eyes and slowly caught his breath.
When he opened them again, the mysterious holy land of the north stood before him.
Hallucination?
No. The pain starting in his eyes was still there.
He wiped at the corner of one eye and found red blood on his fingers.
He looked over the holy land again.
The scene that had flashed before his eyes a moment ago was gone now.
But this wasn’t some hallucination.
He knew that.
The eyes that saw could perceive things an ordinary person could not. What made them understandable was the mind connected to them.
If that was the case, then the scene from just now might have been...
Something that had happened in this land long ago.
The truth hidden by ice and snow.
He didn’t know exactly what had happened.
He could only guess that some terrible catastrophe had taken place here.
Lawrence’s hand moved to his bag.
He took out the book he had opened only once since leaving the magic tower.
The Arme Empire was real, and the important thing is that the glorious empire vanished overnight.
Fortunately, there are a few relics and places scattered across the continent that hint at what the empire was like.
Wina’s voice seemed to drift through his ears.
The holy lands, she had said, were traces of the vanished Arme Empire.
There was no table of contents in the book Wina had given him.
It read more like a collection of notes made whenever something came to mind, with stray references to the Arme Empire scattered throughout.
Holy land. Holy land. Holy land...
There was no obvious answer.
There were pages with plausible wording, but they only continued with speculation about the holy lands.
Nothing Lawrence actually wanted to know was written there.
But there was no point obsessing over the question now.
Fortunately, the headache had eased while he browsed through the book.
Lawrence entered the palace proper.
The first-floor hall was vast and circular.
The floor, covered with an old carpet, contrasted with the pure-white doors.
Throughout the palace, delicate sculptures touched by a master craftsman’s hand shimmered beside the ice.
A massive structure forged by ice and snow.
The holy land, which deserved to be called a palace, was breathtakingly beautiful.
Was this what the king’s palace in the stories had been like?
Inside the ice, he could see a sculpture of a knight in armor.
And if he lifted his gaze, he found a pure-white wolf looking down on its visitor from the ceiling.
The White Fang, symbol of the Watchers of Winter, came to mind.
If he had reached the wall, would he also have seen the Watchers of Winter who bore the White Fang?
Following the carpet forward, he found a collapsed staircase and a door.
The staircase was no longer in any condition to be climbed.
Click.
The door was, naturally, locked.
But that wasn’t much of a problem.
“Unlock.”
He was glad he had learned it from Wina.
The unfastened door did not refuse Lawrence’s hand.
What waited beyond it was a vast lake.
This holy land’s only unfrozen water flowed there.
The waterway that slipped between glacier and glacier stretched out as far as the eye could see.
There was no other path besides the lake.
Did he have to go into the water to continue?
And yet there was no boat that should naturally have been there.
Lawrence rested a hand on his chin.
Throwing himself into the water in this weather would be madness.
It wasn’t even a matter of warm magic.
He didn’t know how deep it was, and if he made one wrong move, he would likely freeze to death on the spot.
They had said from the beginning that beneath the glaciers there wasn’t a lake but a sea.
If this was merely the extension of that sea, he couldn’t even guess where it ended.
It might be better to turn back now.
The staircase leading upward had been broken off midway, but if he used the tools around him, he might be able to climb up somehow.
Or he could use Bind.
Maybe he could grab the vines and climb.
While Lawrence was still thinking, a black shadow fell across the waterway.
Water rippled.
What emerged from the water was a gigantic fish.
No—a fish?
He wasn’t even sure calling it a fish was right.
A body dozens of times larger than a seal’s.
Scales with a strange sheen blended seamlessly with the lake’s scenery.
A long horn grew from the top of its head, which was patterned in black and white.
Was this what the horn of a unicorn in old stories looked like?
Then Lawrence realized what he was seeing.
The being before him was the narwhal he had only heard about in stories.
But it was not just any narwhal.
The presence radiating from this colossal creature was...
A neighbor of the Spirit World.
More than that, a divine being like Bodanoy.
A beloved child, is it?
A mighty voice shook his mind.
He felt terribly small before that unfathomable presence.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, divine being. My name is Lawrence.”
How surprising. It has been a long time since I saw a beloved child who had awakened the concept of cognition.
He sensed no hostility.
The gentle light in the voice made it feel as if he were speaking with an old man.
Yes. Have you come in search of the Key of the Spirit World?
As though it already knew everything, the divine being asked:
“Do you have a Key of the Spirit World?”
What a foolish question. The thing binding me here is the Key of the Spirit World.
Black distortions formed over the lake.
It was as if the air itself were screaming.
What manifested while warping mana was a book with a mouth.
“Al Azif...”
There it was—the third key.
Lawrence’s eyes lit up as he found the last Key of the Spirit World.
“Could you give it to me?”
No need to ask. The Key of the Spirit World chooses its own master. I have no reason not to give this key to the beloved child chosen by the other two keys.
But then the divine being continued.
And yet it is the beloved child who most often becomes the most terrible changeling. Since you may yet be transformed, I cannot help but test whether you truly have the right to possess the Key of the Spirit World.
The divine being’s form vanished into the lake.
A huge shadow was cast.
The swim lasted only an instant.
As the divine being leapt, the lake water spilled outward.
There was no time to marvel at how beautiful it was.
Just as Shadow could shape itself into forms, the water took the shape of an ox.
An ox. No—a musk ox, like the one he had seen in the snowfields.
Beloved child. Prove your strength.
The moment the divine being’s words fell, the musk ox moved.
The situation was simple enough.
A musk ox showing hostility.
The divine being watching.
Having judged the situation in an instant, Lawrence recited the activation word.
“Bind.”
Moss around the lake surged up into vines.
Heavy.
The binding only lasted a heartbeat.
He couldn’t hold it completely.
First he needed to create distance.
As Lawrence leapt away from the lake, he felt Bind break apart.
The musk ox charged on all fours.
“Water Ball.”
Water collided with water.
Would it do anything?
The musk ox struck by Water Ball didn’t even flinch.
“Bind. Bind.”
His mouth and hands became frantic.
He slowed the beast’s advance as much as he could.
At best, Bind only bought him a brief pause.
It didn’t have the power to stop such a crude charge.
Still, the fact that it bought him time was what mattered.
Lawrence’s mind spun quickly.
Water. Water Ball won’t work.
Unless Water Ball had time to freeze over, maybe, but in a situation like this—where he had to react instantly—it was useless.
The red Water Ball taught to him by Bodanoy was no different.
There was no time to boost its power leisurely.
Fire. The output was too weak.
Wind. It wouldn’t scatter something like this.
His options naturally narrowed.
Fire Tail. Shadow Spear. Shadow Trap.
The three choices he had come back to made him smile.
Even with an enemy in front of him, he still had room to think.
Compared to an ice troll, this musk ox was almost cute.
Just being able to use Bind had already expanded his options.
It was no different from driving a charging bull.
He lured the musk ox, still bound by vines, toward the wall.
“Fire Tail.”
The flames ran along its back.
Smoke surged up, but only for a moment. The musk ox did not disappear.
It was clearly weaker near the lake.
In the end, water and fire were opposed to each other.
Don’t cling to it.
He let Fire Tail go without hesitation.
“Shadow Spear.”
Beside Lawrence, a spear of shadow manifested.
A void technique, is it.
The Shadow Spear pierced the musk ox.