The Temple of Sorrow (2)
Lawrence studied the key with close attention.
He checked for any opening between the soldiers, any way to seize it by force.
If there was no route out above, then the key was his last resort.
Even if the door did not lead outside, there was no other option.
Finding a way out came first.
The spears in the hands of the two soldiers did not move.
Even when he sent them curious glances. Even when he entertained violent thoughts.
Did they only react when someone openly showed hostility?
They were unlike Arwen’s golems.
Those things had attacked the moment they laid eyes on the boy who had arrived at the rocky mountain.
These two soldiers, by contrast, did nothing more than watch in silence.
At least until he took action, he could probably consider himself safe.
With the key’s location memorized, Lawrence turned away.
He had no intention of moving on it just yet.
The key was still only a last resort.
It would not hurt to search everywhere else first and think it through.
The boy left the corridor packed with stone coffins and headed upstairs.
He climbed for quite a while, but the stairs gave no sign of ending.
At last, after at least ten minutes of climbing and climbing again, he reached a door.
The iron had rusted, as though no human hand had touched it in a long time.
Creak.
The sound of worn hinges echoed out.
Beyond the door, after a struggle, a fierce wind was raging.
Cool air.
A cold gust that cut through his vestment.
Lawrence pulled his collar closed and looked around.
The top of the tower.
All around him stretched pure white clouds and a blue sky.
Still, being outside meant he at least had more room to move than in a solitary cell.
The tower, built in a circular shape, could not even be called large, not honestly.
No. That was beside the point.
The problem was that he could not see any road leading away from it.
There was only cloud and sky.
It was too soon to give up.
He put a hand on the wall and looked down beneath the tower.
There, instead of land, a road made of sky stretched on and on into the distance.
...
He had been wrong.
This was not a building perched on a high place.
This strange structure was, quite literally, flying through the sky.
* * *
Lawrence did not come down from the tower until darkness had fallen.
The men who had gathered in the entrance hall had all dispersed to their rooms by then.
And the solitary cell, if anything, only whispered of a more sinister kind of silence.
With his hands folded together, the boy organized his thoughts.
Coldly put, he was stranded in a tower floating in the sky.
The men who might be called the tower’s residents were neither friendly nor, strictly speaking, hostile.
To be exact, apathetic might have been the better word.
Their routine, as he had observed it over the course of the day, was plain and sparse.
It was probably a restrained life spent going only between their rooms and the upper floor.
What would change just because Lawrence had come to such a place?
Tossing a pebble into a vast lake did not change the water.
It only sent out a ripple no one noticed before it disappeared.
Like petals opening and falling in total silence.
Lawrence could have no effect on their lives.
The choices naturally narrowed to one.
The key cradled in the remains of the stone coffin.
He had to recover it, open the shut black door, and get out.
The reason to hurry was simple.
Lawrence recalled Acheron’s teachings.
“Even a beloved child can remain in the Spirit World with a physical body from the realm of the living for only about three months at most. The longer one stays, the more the soul begins to conform to the laws of the Spirit World, and in time that influence extends even to the body from the realm of the living.”
The time limit was three months.
He had only just entered the Spirit World, but within that span he had to find a way back to the realm of the living.
The problem was the soldiers.
There was no way the ones guarding the key would fail to respond to violence.
He wanted to solve it peacefully if possible, but they were not the sort of opponents who could be reasoned with.
No matter how he looked at it, a fight was inevitable.
Still, that was fine.
Nothing would change if he did not move.
He would defeat the two soldiers and recover the key.
Then he would open the black door standing like an iron fortress and go outside.
That was the only choice that could break the current deadlock.
It was just as Lawrence nodded to himself, as though lending his own plan to his resolve.
The door he had left slightly ajar closed.
Then came a click as the latch engaged.
What?
Someone was there.
“Wait!”
Lawrence shouted on reflex.
The presence moving away beyond the door stopped.
Without warning, someone appeared on the far side of the iron bars.
It was a man whose face had been wrapped in white cloth so thoroughly that he looked almost like a pair of red eyes peering out from a shroud.
His build was so slight his head looked rather small.
The hands gripping the bars were tiny, almost childlike.
He was clearly different from the residents Lawrence had seen so far.
The black eyes visible through the cloth fixed on Lawrence.
“How unfortunate, changeling. Once you’ve come here, you too are destined to repent forever.”
It was the first human voice Lawrence had heard since arriving at the tower.
He was happy, for a moment, simply to know conversation was possible.
But he quickly corrected the man’s misunderstanding.
“I’m not a changeling.”
“Everyone who comes here says the same thing. But denying reality changes nothing. You’re trapped in the temple now, and you can’t leave. That is the immutable truth that governs this place.”
There was no disguising the mockery in that voice.
Before the snickering laughter could fade, Lawrence continued the exchange.
“I’m not lying. If you look at me, you’ll understand what I mean.”
“Don’t get so flustered. My eyes will stay on you until you’ve been reduced to another captive neighbor.”
The black eyes seemed to deepen with a strange gleam, and then confusion entered the man’s gaze as he looked back at Lawrence.
“Odd. What is this feeling? You’re not a changeling. It’s like my chest is churning… No. Is that a heartbeat?”
The muttering did not last long.
In a dubious tone, the man asked, “It can’t be, but just in case I’ll ask. You’re not, by any chance, a beloved child, are you?”
“Yes. My name is Lawrence. This is my first time speaking like this with one of the Spirit World’s neighbors.”
“How surprising. It’s been how long since I last saw a beloved child…? And yet, how lamentable. To think a beloved child still exists in this age of declining dusk…”
With an undisguised click of his tongue, the man added, “May I ask your name?”
“Your name? Does a name really matter that much?”
The reply came back as if he could not comprehend the question.
“If I don’t know your name, I can’t call you by it.”
“Beloved children cling to meaningless things. A name is not important at all. If you need something to call me, then call me the temple’s gravedigger. That’s enough to identify me.”
“The temple’s gravedigger. Then this building must have been a temple, not a tower.”
“That is right. This is the Temple of Sorrow, where the Silent Penitents atone.”
Silent Penitents.
The Temple of Sorrow.
Lawrence focused on the words spilling from the gravedigger’s mouth.
“Are the Silent Penitents the others?”
“You haven’t seen them yet? There’s no rush. You can look slowly. In any case, it’s only me and them here. Watching fools who repent for an eternity in order to atone is rather amusing, you know.”
“So they all committed grave sins.”
“They committed sins that can’t be washed away. Deeds marked with a stain of evil that does not vanish even when they repeat their penance until their very existence is forgotten. They are fools who keep eternal silence and repeat unending repentance for the rest of their lives in order to cleanse those sins.”
...
So that was it.
Now he understood why the tower’s residents had raised their hands in silence.
Now he understood why they never so much as exchanged idle chatter.
They were not unable to speak.
As their name implied, the Silent Penitents had bound their own tongues and forbidden themselves from speaking.
“That sounds like hard work. It can’t be easy managing this entire place by yourself.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re here, managing the solitary cells and opening and closing them, aren’t you? And unlike the Silent Penitents you mentioned, you’re speaking with me too.”
“It is not management. I’m waiting for every last one of them to be reduced to captive neighbors. I’m only here to watch them become witless husks with no reason or will left in them.”
He did not know exactly what captive neighbor meant.
Still, he could sense the meaning well enough.
A captive neighbor was...
The destination at the end of a road one would someday reach.
* * *
It had been a week since he began living in the Temple of Sorrow.
The routines that repeated with clockwork regularity had seeped into Lawrence’s body under the names of rest and training.
Even calling it a routine was generous.
In the Spirit World, where meals were unnecessary, there were no bodily functions to worry about either.
In other words, all of his time could be invested entirely in himself.
And no one bothered him or got in his way.
The gravedigger was only accessible in the evening.
Lawrence made full use of that time, absorbing the knowledge he needed one piece at a time.
“The Silent Penitents don’t normally make contact with others. They simply move between the narthex and their solitary cells, repeating their endless repentance. Even within the temple, the narthex is the only place where unqualified people are allowed to stay.”
The place he had thought of as the entrance hall was called the narthex.
It seemed the many works of art were symbols of the glory the Silent Penitents had once enjoyed.
“This is the reliquary chamber. You could call it the temple’s catacomb. A sacred place for those who entered rest long ago. And don’t even dream of making a racket in there.”
The reliquary chamber. The temple’s catacomb.
The place where the stone coffins gathered was, as he had guessed, a tomb.
“There is no way out of the temple. An exit is unnecessary in a prison where repentance is repeated forever. Give up. Once you’ve arrived here, even a beloved child cannot escape. It would be best to spend your time quietly waiting for the final end that will one day come.”
The gravedigger stated flatly that there was no way out of the temple.
And yet he never once mentioned the black door in the narthex.
Why was that?
What was visible was not everything.
He needed information, but there was no need to show his own hand.
Question it, and question it again.
No one knew what the Spirit World’s neighbors were thinking on the inside.
Lawrence avoided mentioning the stone coffin and the key at the far end of the reliquary chamber.
There was no reason to stir the gravedigger’s suspicions for no good reason.
Nothing was more dangerous than a situation he could not control.
He wanted to avoid anything that might create variables as much as possible.
The boy adapted quickly to the ascetic routine of the temple.
Was it because of the time he had spent in the monastery?
Or because he had recently been under Ignatius’s instruction as a pilgrim?
Whatever the reason, by the time ten days had passed he had recovered his body’s original condition.
He drew in the Shadow twirling above his hand.
Silently, he focused on the mana in his chest.
There was no longer any unpleasant feeling.
The uneasy stirring had completely ceased for now.
At last, his condition had returned to normal.
It was a shame there was no Spirit World neighbor he could ask for help.
Still, in his current state, he should be able to bring down the two soldiers without trouble.
Lawrence had not been idling in the meantime.
His experiences in the swamp had helped his magic grow, and the reinforced Shadow Spear had become powerful enough to kill a bugbear in a single blow.
Compared to a bugbear or an eligator, he had no reason to lose against soldiers less than half their strength.
More than anything, the fact that he could strike first was huge.
After observing the soldiers over the past several days as he moved between the reliquary chamber and the narthex, he was certain of one thing.
They did not move until they were struck.
That meant he only had to launch Shadow Spear from the proper distance.
The power of the reinforced Shadow Spear needed no further explanation.
If he landed a direct hit, it would be more than enough to bring a soldier down.
The best outcome would be for both soldiers to be neutralized by the attack’s spread. But things rarely went that smoothly.
The real problem was how to deal with the remaining one.
For now, he would think in terms of creating distance.
If he could just buy enough time to cast a second Shadow Spear, then he could probably finish them without too much danger.
If he was forced to give ground, he would answer with Fire Tail.
He only needed a little time. He did not even have to use the reinforced Shadow Spear; he felt sure a solid hit would be enough to inflict serious damage.
Not two.
Only one.
Even that alone would let him carry the battle in his favor.
Lawrence made his move on the fifteenth day after arriving at the temple.
After confirming that it was daytime in the tower, he went down to the reliquary chamber.
The gravedigger usually cleaned the solitary cells during the day.
That was because this was the time when the Silent Penitents gathered in the narthex, leaving him free to sweep the place at leisure without interruption.
The time limit lasted until sunset, when the Silent Penitents returned to their rooms.
When that hour approached, the gravedigger would finish cleaning and begin securing the doors.
Roughly four to five hours.
He was certain he would have time to spare even after everything was done.
With Shadow Light hovering above him, Lawrence fixed his gaze on the two soldiers.
The distance was neither too far nor too close.
About the length of three stone coffins. If he stood too far away in the name of safety, the power of Shadow Spear would be weakened in return.
He would pour as much mana into enhancement as possible, but keep it under control before chest pain or a headache set in.
He could do this.
He had trained his magic day and night for this very moment.
“Shadow Spear.”
He cast Shadow Spear.
Carefully, he watched the soldiers’ movements.
Even after seeing the ominous force of the shadow spear, they did not react.
The first hurdle was cleared.
He had safely put the most important first step in place.
Next came the enhancement of Shadow Spear.
The shape of the shadow spear blazed.
Maintaining and enhancing it at the same time placed a heavy burden on his body.
Lawrence stopped the enhancement before it triggered chest pain or a headache, then took hold of Shadow Spear.
He did not shape it into a rope.
That might draw the soldiers’ attention, and he judged the risk too high.
It was fine. He could hit them.
He trusted himself. Effort did not lie.
He took aim at the two soldiers and drew his arm back behind his shoulder.
Here goes.
Responding to the mage’s will, the shadow spear flew from the boy’s hand.