No Way Out but Forward
Hulan felt it at once. Something was there at the entrance.
To an unfocused eye the way in still looked wide open, but Hulan was a trained knight. He trusted his senses, and they had not lied.
An invisible wall. It's formed.
The warning spread fast. Messi had known something was wrong the instant he saw the approach packed with knights.
Kkyu was the first to put a name to it.
"Young Master, this is the Great Magic Barrier from the Sky Castle's records."
Ramang tapped the wall. His arm was flung straight back, the rebound violent enough to send a jolt of shock through the muscle. Surprise flashed across Ereb's face.
If they had missed it, the knights would have charged in and been hurled backward like cannonballs. For the people behind them, it would have been a catastrophe.
"Well spotted, Hulan."
"Thank you, Young Master!"
"But it didn't react at all before we came in. Why is it activating now?"
"There are three possibilities. Someone inside noticed our entry and raised it. The ruin's automatic defense system triggered. Or we fulfilled some kind of precondition."
"What do you mean, Messi? A precondition?"
"I was taught that installed magic like this only activates once the conditions inscribed in the magic circle are met. It could be any number of things. Headcount, for instance."
The party now inside numbered forty-seven knights and a guide, along with one larva and one ant. Fifty living creatures in all. The barrier might have triggered the moment that count was confirmed.
"The automatic defense theory is worth considering too. If an intruder gets out alive, they might come back later—so the intent would be to make certain they're dead."
"Not a thought I find particularly comforting."
"Even if someone inside raised this, it comes to the same thing. The one thing we can be sure of is that they're ready to welcome us."
The knights' faces darkened as they listened. These were men who had received a higher education in the art of war. They had been taught that charging into a place where the enemy was already prepared was no different from sticking your head into a dragon's jaws.
"Hmph. How dare they."
Ereb, it seemed, had something to fall back on. He opened the pouch he always wore on his sword belt.
Inside were tightly rolled scrolls—not the red kind, but proper scrolls of yellow parchment. He drew one out and planted himself before the Great Magic Barrier with a flourish.
"So you're using that after all."
"What is it, Sir Ramang?"
"A scroll crafted by Grand Mage Frosk himself. Did you think we'd come here without any countermeasures? We prepared this after reading the Sky Castle's files."
Only then did it become clear where the Young Master's groundless confidence had come from—that certainty, before they even entered the Forest of Resentment, that reaching the ruins would be enough.
"Grand Mage Frosk?"
"A mage who has reached the 7th Circle. You use magic yourself. You know what that means."
Ramang clearly expected awe. Messi, however, had no particular fondness for high-ranking mages. A high-ranking mage meant a mage of the Ivory Tower, and his master had always called the Ivory Tower's mages pathetic little men, despising them with a particular intensity.
His master had never gotten along with mages, going all the way back to his Woodcutter days. He had even admitted he had learned magic himself purely because he could not stand asking them for help.
"Mm. Impressive."
There was no need to show how he really felt. A mild show of admiration would do.
"He's an old friend of His Lordship. He's always been especially fond of the Young Master, so it would be worth remembering his name."
Messi nodded. A connection like that was worth keeping in mind.
The instant Ereb tore the scroll, a violent pulse of mana erupted. Space warped, and crimson sparks began to leap.
He shouted the name as if he were the one casting it, flushed with excitement.
"Take this—"
⟨ Demon Lightning Claw ⟩
A flash.
The Young Master's performance was pure adolescent theatrics. The magic, however, was the real thing. A vast pulse of mana beat against their skin like a second heartbeat.
Fierce red lightning burst forth and struck the Great Magic Barrier like the claws of a beast. A thunderous impact slammed into the surface, which rolled and buckled as if some enormous force were trying to shove it aside. It was the most powerful magic Messi had seen yet, and even he was a little startled.
That's strong.
What?
That was as far as it went. In the same breath as Kkyu's cold assessment, the barrier flung the magic straight back.
"What—?!"
The reflected Demon Lightning Claw sprayed out in all directions, and the only people who suffered for it were the knights who had gathered to watch a Grand Mage's work.
"Gyaaah!"
"Aagh! Run!"
"The ceiling's coming down!!"
"Fucking hell!"
Ereb stared in horror at the chaos that had erupted everywhere except in his immediate vicinity. The moment the ceiling over the entrance began to collapse, Ramang—white as a sheet—rushed out, seized the Young Master, and hauled him inside. Rock and earth poured down without end.
The ground groaned on and on, a deep, rolling thunder that seemed to have no end.
"Keep your spirits up, Young Master."
"That's right. You were only trying to do well by us."
Ereb said nothing. The incident had left him thoroughly dejected, and Ramang and Messi had not stuck to his side with comforting words for no reason.
"It's always like this with me."
"Don't talk like that."
"No. I've always been measured against my older brother and found wanting. That's because nothing I do ever works out. Just like this. I don't help. I've got a rotten temper. All I do is cause damage. I feel sorry for them."
Stay quiet, Kkyu.
The truth was, Kkyu had a point—there was something almost funny about watching Ereb take himself to task. But it was not a moment to laugh off. Ereb was not a man who readily showed anyone what he actually felt, and least of all to Messi, whom he had known for so short a time.
Ereb seemed to realize it himself. His face hardened at once.
"No. Forget you heard that."
Messi felt he understood, a little, where Ereb's harsh streak came from. A defense built on top of inferiority, perhaps.
Correcting that temperament was something that needed doing anyway. Messi decided not to let the chance slip.
"Young Master, I liked the honesty. I don't see any need to pretend I didn't hear it. If you feel sorry, then apologize to them. All of them."
"An apology? From me?"
"Didn't I tell you to think of them as companions, not subordinates? Speak what's in your heart. If the apology is genuine, they will understand."
"What's in my heart."
Ereb hesitated for several minutes. Then he went and stood before the knights with their light wounds.
If the incident had yielded one useful discovery, it was this: bleeding inside the ruins did not draw a reaction from the monsters of the Forest of Resentment.
What they had lost, however, was obvious. The knights' morale had taken a heavy blow. Having a way out and having none were not the same thing. Once it became clear they were trapped, every face in the party had gone grim.
"I'm sorry. All of you. I made the wrong call, and I put you in danger."
The Young Master's words made the weary knights' eyes go wide. First they had received a request from him. Now they were receiving an apology. In all the time they had served him, it was a sight they had never once seen. One of the startled knights recovered first and spoke up.
"N-no, Young Master! Keep your spirits up!"
That was all it took. The others followed.
"That's right. You look best when you're going 'Kahaha!' like always!"
"If anything, this worked out. We came all this way—it'd have been a shame to turn back from the ruins now."
"Thank you. All of you."
The mood was better than expected. This was why trained elites were a force to be reckoned with. Loyalty and belonging ran so deep that a single bow of their lord's head was enough to recover the morale they had lost. Messi felt, anew, the true strength of a renowned noble house.
The apology done, Ereb asked the question with a restless edge.
"What do we do now?"
"The way back is sealed."
"I'm sorry. This is on me."
"It isn't. It was a reasonable thing to try. What I mean is that the only option left is to go forward."
"Will we be all right?"
"If we wouldn't be, were you planning not to go?"
"Of course not. Heh. Insolent brat."
Only then did a little color return to the Young Master's face, and a laugh with it. Since they had come this far, Messi decided to give him a little more hope.
"And it isn't as if there's no path at all."
"You mean there's an exit?"
"As I understand it, forty-five Woodcutters died and seven escaped alive. They would have been trapped by the Great Magic Barrier the same as we are. The fact that those seven made it back means there is another way."
"Didn't they just take the barrier down?"
"The Sky Castle's records are clear on this. Since that day, the magic barrier has never once disappeared. There is definitely another path."
"That's good news. You reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It'll help the knights find their feet again."
A little hope was enough to put the color back in Ereb's face. He raised his voice, bright and carrying, to pass that hope along.
"We advance! The other path the Woodcutters used to get out is still here—we only have to find it! We don't know what's waiting inside, so the knights will hold a diamond defensive formation, and the sharp-eyed among you will take the perimeter! Watch for traps!"
The order fell, and the knights moved as one.
Messi took the very front of the line. None of the knights tried to stop him. It meant that every one of them had accepted that his eyes were the sharpest among them.
That Messi's eyesight was abnormal had been obvious since they entered the Forest of Resentment. Ereb had wanted to pull him back on the grounds that it was too dangerous, but one look at General Ant standing at Messi's side left him without an argument.
In truth, Messi's vision had grown even sharper since he began practicing mana cultivation. When he consciously gathered mana and focused it into his eyes, he could see farther, and cleaner. It felt as if the small, offhand things his master had taught him were revealing their worth, one by one.
With Messi at the point, the knights set out. Their posture put shields ahead of swords, as if the single thought driving them was to keep Ereb, at the center, alive.
The gray corridors of the ruin only grew larger the deeper they went. Wrapped in vines from the outside, the structure had never looked this vast. Inside, the sense of scale kept expanding.
From a certain point on, the pillars holding up the ruin and the ceiling itself began to climb. It was like walking into a palace. Even knights who had seen their share of opulence looked stunned.
"To think they could raise a building like this five or six thousand years ago."
"Doesn't that mean there's something in here to match it?"
"Didn't you hear Messi earlier? There might be a Guardian. The more impressive this place is, the worse it is for us right now."
For that reason, the knights grew tenser still.
Raising a place this grand more than five thousand years ago would have cost far more labor and far more gold. That they had built it anyway implied there had been a reason large enough to justify it.
In combat they were specialists beyond compare. In the exploration of a place like this—a dungeon in all but name—their experience was thin. The tension that kept their bodies coiled soon had them soaked in sweat, and the more it did, the more slowly and carefully they pressed into the ruin. Kkyu seemed to have read the gravity of the atmosphere; she kept silent, offering no thoughts at all.
Even here, Messi would periodically halt the party, check something, and come back. Sometimes he picked through collapsed heaps of stone. Sometimes he studied the cracks in the floor with a taut, careful look.
Ramang's curiosity got the better of him.
"What have you been doing all this time?"
"There are traps."
"Traps? Nothing happened when we came through."
"Disarmed traps, to be precise. I keep checking them anyway. Just in case."
The things Messi had been examining were traps that looked to have been disarmed some time ago. Up close there were hidden iron firing mechanisms, and ancient magic circles whose purpose was unmistakably murder. The cords on the devices had been cut. Someone had wrecked the formulas on the circles.
"Hm. Traps the Woodcutters disarmed when they came through before?"
"That would be it. They're the only ones who were here ahead of us."
"That's a good thing, isn't it? At this rate there might be nothing left at all!"
"We still can't let our guard down. They may have missed some."
He said it, but Messi trusted the Woodcutters when it came to traps. No one was more practiced at finding them and taking them apart. It was an essential skill for men who pioneered the forest and, along the way, had to explore the ruins, dungeons, and natural mazes they found scattered through it. Messi knew that better than most. He had learned from one of them.
What troubled him was something else. They were walking the same path the dead Woodcutters had walked. It was a one-way route; there was no other choice. Even so, it sat wrong in his chest.
And then the omens began to turn.
"Is that blood?"
One of the sharp-eyed knights on the left had found a red stain and pointed it out. It was smeared across the wall. Following it down with their eyes, they found a human corpse at the foot of it.
"There's—there's a body?"
"What?"
The Woodcutters had died thirty years ago. By now a corpse should have been nothing but bone, cobwebs, and dust. This one did not look that old.
Who is this man? Master would know the face.
"I think it's preservation magic laid over the interior of the ruin."
Messi examined the body and delivered his conclusion. There was no need to twist himself into some more complicated theory. That was the only explanation that fit.
"Judging by the traces, something hurled this man into the wall. He died from the impact, then slid down the blood and came to rest at the foot of it. The damage to the back of the skull is severe. He would have been dead instantly."
"Threw him? How do you know that?"
"Look at the height of the dent in the wall. It's too high to be a ricochet from some collision. And there's no point of origin nearby that could have produced a force strong enough to bounce a man that far. A throw is the most natural reading."
He did not stop there.
"When we throw something, we tend to throw at eye level. A monster's no different. That impact point on the wall is about as high as this thing's eyes."
"Damn it all. Why is everything in this forest enormous?!"
Size, though, was not entirely a curse. A large opponent was easier to spot early, and it was hard for something that big to move without making a sound. Messi told himself they would have to be more careful still.
The formation started forward again. Corpses appeared, one after another, and with each one the party's expressions grew worse.
What kind of being had driven them this completely into a corner? Even the Woodcutters. Those men.
The knights' steps grew heavy. Ereb and Ramang could read it, and they tried to rally everyone. It did not improve easily. This was what it felt like to walk, one foot at a time, into a terror you could not name.
Messi, too, was beginning to think it would be better to find the other exit quickly and run.
That was when the end of the corridor came into view.
"Like the great gates into a royal audience hall."
It was as Ramang said. A massive iron door of enormous height stood shut fast, and an unnameable unease breathed from the other side of it.
But they had no way out. They would find no answers without opening it. Ereb gave the order to the knights, who had fallen into a heavy silence before the door.
Even if it was a path they would have no choice but to regret, they had to take it.
Knights stepped forward, set their hands against the door, and pushed.
Metal groaned on metal, a long, grinding complaint. The door, which had not been opened in a very long time, resisted at first—then, past a certain point, swung wide with sudden ease.
The sound of it crashing open climbed the high ceiling, struck the walls, and rolled back over them.
And every eye that looked inside went still.
Even Messi's.
In the center of the vast hall, a single being was standing.
One of the knights, in a voice like a groan forced through clenched teeth, spoke the name.