The Maid
89.
Blue sky, blue forest, brown earth.
That was my first impression of the Eternal Gate.
Not much different from a Keeper’s Gate.
“Looks the same, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“I told you it would.”
Elena and I were first-timers. Kayla had already stepped into an Eternal Gate in her previous world.
The other Keepers reacted just as lightly as Elena and I had.
“Whoa… so this is… a Gate?”
“It’s really another world…”
The civilians entering a Gate for the first time, on the other hand, were far more dramatic. They kept whipping their heads around like tourists at a theme park. I actually started worrying that I’d looked just as ridiculous the first time I came through one.
“So this is what it’s like inside. I’ve confirmed it, so I’ll be heading back out. Looking forward to working with you.”
The armored-unit colonel who had wanted a look inside the Gate gave us a polite nod and walked back out. The ten soldiers who’d won the lottery to gawk at the Gate left with him.
That left my party, William Park, and the six Keepers from the big-corp crews.
The two S-class Keepers stayed outside just in case. So all six of the ones who came in were A-class.
“Lady Kayla, shall we begin the search?”
None of the six had tracking or scouting skills. Everyone had agreed on that beforehand. If someone with those skills had come along, they would have moved solely for their own crew’s benefit—that much was obvious.
The first recon was pure undead extermination. The second would be the same.
Kayla closed her eyes and raised her mana. At the same time I closed mine.
No one questioned it anymore. A summoner lending power to their summons was only natural, and they had all seen exactly how strong that power was in yesterday’s battle. The same people who had been mocking me just the day before yesterday were now thanking me. Elena said I should have seen the looks on their faces when she used the undead she’d turned. She claimed it would have been pure satisfaction.
Anyway, I focused on the energy leaking from my left shoulder—the power the Necromancer had used. One of the forms of Demonic Power that amplified emotion or desire the way lust did. Life, death, or maybe both.
Normally the energy just seemed to scatter near my shoulder. But when I met the Maid yesterday, I had clearly felt it flowing toward her. It wasn’t as dense as it had been with the Necromancer, so I couldn’t attack through the flow or anything, but it was obvious the problem was connected to the Maid.
It was the same now. The energy was heading somewhere.
Direction… left.
[Left.]
I sent the message with the cut-down version of Archenian traditional magic (B) that Kayla had lent me beforehand.
“Left. Let’s move.”
Kayla spoke exactly as my message directed.
[Why are you smiling?]
William Park took the lead as we headed left. Kayla’s message came through. My mouth must have been curling up.
[It’s just weird. Back then you used to scout for me. Now it’s the other way around.]
[It is weird.]
[Right? I’m actually useful now.]
[You’ve always been useful.]
Honestly, the useless moments came to mind first—like the time Kayla got hit by that sniper rifle. Still, hearing her say it made me feel like I really had been useful. I needed to keep getting more useful from here on out.
[Hold up. We need to change direction.]
“Hold on. We need to change direction.”
The party moved exactly as I said. The only reason I wasn’t doing this myself was to weaken the “demon” frame hanging over me. The press conference had helped a little, but if I casually started finding Demonic Power here, people would jump straight to the obvious conclusion and push the demon narrative even harder.
I’d felt a twinge of guilt after promising at the press conference to reveal everything transparently. But transparency didn’t put food on the table. I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old middle-schooler anymore.
“This should be the place.”
Sometimes walking, sometimes running, sometimes climbing mountains and crossing ice fields, we spent half a day reaching one particular spot.
Even among the constantly shifting terrain and weather inside the Gate, this place was overwhelmingly strange.
Death’s Land.
Not a single blade of grass grew. Twisted trees stood like decorations. The soil itself had lost all life and turned black. Water didn’t flow—it just sat and rotted. The stench and toxic gas numbed the nose and eyes.
It was dozens of times worse than the Death’s Land outside the Eternal Gate.
“Everyone holding up?”
“Of course.”
“Jungmin?”
“I’m fine.”
My nose and eyes stung, but pain had always been familiar. Someone once said that pain that doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Whoever it was, they weren’t wrong.
“Lady Kayla? What do we do?”
Kayla was already casting, surveying the situation in Death’s Land. In the blue waves of her magic I could see a massive magic circle and the skeletons rising from it.
“We have to break through there. About three kilometers in there’s a magic circle. Erase that and those skeletons won’t rise again.”
“Haa… of course it is.”
William Park let out a deep sigh. The reason was simple. Death’s Land was packed with the dead. Even a rough count put them in the tens of thousands. And according to the screen Kayla was showing, more were still being born.
“Lady Kayla, didn’t you say the respawn was once a week?”
“That was only for the Maid, apparently.”
Kayla delivered the fact flatly. Small mercies, I supposed. On top of that, none of the skeletons currently showing hostility toward us were high-tier. Deeper in might be a different story, but for now…
“Good. I’ll take point. Lady Elena, cover the rear. Keeper Kim Seonghan, support Lady Kayla and Jungmin.”
Kim Seonghan was a wind-type ability user, the third strongest in this party after Elena and William Park. Having him support the weakest member—me—was only natural. The important word was “support.” He wasn’t protecting me.
“Moving!”
The clattering skeletons surged toward us. William Park stomped and drove his fist forward.
Oong.
If space itself could make a sound when it was shoved aside, that would be it. The air in front of him warped. From the distortion a massive dragon shape writhed into existence, then stretched forward in a long surge and blasted the skeleton horde away.
Kwa-ga-ga-gang!
Exactly twice the destruction the tank had left behind—that was the aftermath of the Rising Dragon Wave.
“So that’s… the Rising Dragon Wave…”
William Park’s eyes had widened just a fraction. It was his signature technique. Watching an S-class Keeper’s full-power skill up close made my heart pound. It felt like I’d gone back to the days when I was a kid who loved Keepers enough to be a full-blown fan. Standing on the same battlefield as the Keeper I’d once respected suddenly felt real. At the same time the thought of that bastard Han Seongmin made me irritated all over again.
We advanced along the path William Park had cleared. Surrounded by tens of thousands of skeletons, we still moved as fast as if we were crossing open ground—thanks to the S-class Keepers front and rear.
“Watch out! Prince!”
A Skeleton Prince. Only a monster ranked around A-class could block even one of William Park’s straight punches. That brief opening let the other skeletons crash into our formation, and only then did I finally get a chance to swing my sword—except I didn’t.
Kang! Ka-kang!
Six A-class Keepers. None of them were the type anyone would ever call weak. They were among the hundred strongest combatants in Korea. There was no room for me to show off my clumsy swordsmanship.
Puh-buh-bung!
Skeleton wizards hurled spears of fire and skeleton archers loosed arrows, but nothing reached me. The Keepers cut every attack down with their own skills before it got close.
In a little over ten minutes we covered the three kilometers like we were running a track.
At the heart of Death’s Land sat a huge magic circle roughly thirty meters across. Skeletons were rising from inside it.
“A magic circle. Can we just destroy it?”
“Wait a moment.”
Kayla examined the circle while the Keepers casually cleaned up the skeletons that kept rushing us. With no high-tier undead in the center, the fighting was actually easier.
A short while later Kayla stood.
“I’m going to destroy the magic circle now. Cover me.”
She brought her hands together and kindled a blue flame. Her eyes glowed with a mysterious light. When she stretched out her hand the flame drifted slowly toward the ground—toward the magic circle.
Ji-ji-jik.
Purple sparks crackled between the circle and the flame. The flame didn’t stop. Feeding on the sparks, it grew little by little, erasing the runes of the circle as it burrowed into the earth.
Pa-ji-ji-jik.
In that instant purple lightning raced around the circle. The skeletons that had been rising from the ground crumbled into dust along with it.
Ka-deu-deuk.
Kayla moved her hands and the blue flame tore through the ground. Every remaining rune it passed over vanished into the fire, and the flame grew larger still. By the time it completed a full circuit and returned in front of Kayla, it towered higher than she did.
“Haa… haa…”
Kayla panted hard. Controlling that much mana couldn’t be easy. The mana the flame had swallowed was almost on the level of the White Flower.
Everyone held their breath watching her. Instinctively they all felt the power of that flame. If it went wrong, everyone here would be wiped out.
Would Kayla send the flame into the sky the way I had? My best option had been to launch the White Flower upward and turn it into light. Kayla did something different.
She hurled the flame in the opposite direction from the way we had come.
Hwa-reu-reu-reuk.
The remaining skeletons flung themselves at the blue flame like moths. The flame erased them like an eraser as it advanced, drawing even more skeletons toward it. Even so its size never shrank; it simply kept moving forward.
One hundred meters. Two hundred. Three hundred…
“…Elena.”
Kayla called her name softly. Elena stepped in front of the party.
“Everyone… haa… careful…”
She barely managed to speak, then clapped her hands together and thrust them forward.
The flame shrank to a point—then exploded ahead of us.
Paaaaaat!
Light hit my eyes first, hard. Next the vibration shook my core. Then the wind shoved me backward. I nearly fell. Black soil and withered trees flew past on either side of me. White bone fragments whipped by as well.
Kwa-ga-ga-gang.
If Elena’s shield hadn’t been planted in front of us, all of us would have been the ones flying. Only the fan-shaped stretch of ground with her shield at its apex remained intact. Everything else had been overturned.
If the aftershock was this bad, the area in front of it needed no description.
Goooo.
From the leftmost edge of my vision to the rightmost, everything visible had simply vanished. All that remained was black soil mixed with brown earth. Not a single trace of a skeleton could be found.
I caught Kayla as she swayed and started to collapse. Her whole body was soaked in sweat.
“You did great. Rest a bit.”
“…Did I… do well?”
“Yeah. Really well.”
I brushed the sweat-stuck hair from her face and smiled down at her so the trembling girl could feel safe.