The Fallen Prophet
"……."
Forme could find nothing to say as he stared at the world around them, frozen pure white.
Not only the Sphinx — even the air itself had turned to ice.
"Oh…… the oasis is still fine."
"We're taking that with us."
Do-ha shrugged at Forme's question.
He had to eat, after all — and he had friends and a grandfather to feed as well. What would happen if each of them drank a full cup of the elixir waiting out there?
"Even a single drop of Gong-cheong-seok-yu grants more than several decades of internal energy……."
He was curious what kind of change a whole cup would bring.
Of course, even elixirs became poison when taken in excess.
In the distant past, a thief had once broken into Shaolin Temple and stolen five Great Return Pills. His martial skill itself had not been especially high, but his stealth arts were so refined that even the abbot of Shaolin had momentarily lost track of his presence.
And that thief had swallowed every last one of the Great Return Pills he had stolen.
The result was that his body exploded on the spot and he died.
Until then, the martial world had only ever spoken of the danger of overconsuming elixirs. There had never been an actual case of someone taking too many. And how could there have been? Where would anyone find enough of such precious elixirs to overindulge? A single drop of Gong-cheong-seok-yu on the black market would cost several cartloads of gold bars.
But after the Great Return Pill incident, people finally learned what truly happened when elixirs were taken in excess.
"Is…… is the Sphinx dead?"
"Yeah. It's dead this time."
Do-ha let out a sigh.
He hadn't particularly wanted to stir up trouble in the Underworld, but there had been no choice. The Sphinx's power had been stronger than expected — if he had held back and fought it casually, the shockwaves of the battle would have obliterated the oasis. So he had simply overwhelmed the Sphinx in a single stroke.
"Let's go."
"Lord Do-ha."
"What?"
Do-ha, already starting to move, looked back at Forme. He was busy enough to die, so why did this guy keep calling him?
"You said you needed iron, didn't you?"
"More precisely, I need processed metal."
Forme pointed up at the Sphinx frozen in the sky.
"The Sphinx's tail is made of metal."
"Oh?!"
At those words, Do-ha whipped his head around to look at the Sphinx's tail. On the surface it looked like ordinary stone.
"Well done, Forme."
With a soft tap, Do-ha smiled and drew Un-jeop-bi-jang with a clean ring of steel.
"Hmm-hmm~"
"In a good mood, are you?"
Forme smirked as he watched Do-ha humming to himself.
At first he hadn't known who this man was or how to measure him. But after sticking close for a while, the man's personality was starting to show.
"I just secured an elixir like this. Of course I'm in a good mood."
He had cut off the Sphinx's tail and used the metal inside to forge a single enormous bottle. He had hammered it thin and welded the seams so nothing would leak. The shape was ugly, but that hardly mattered.
With the leftover metal he had even made a giant ladle and transferred every last drop of the oasis water. Moving more than three hundred tons of liquid had seemed like a problem — but with the giant ladle and his Heavenly Diamond, he had finished the job quickly.
"So where are we headed now?"
"I'm going to look into that gate you were so curious about, Lord Do-ha."
Forme himself had no idea what the so-called gate even meant, or where it was. So he intended to seek out a prophet who resided in the Underworld.
"There is a prophet — a being who originally held the office of Scribe."
"A post that high? Wouldn't there be a lot of troops around him?"
"No."
Forme shook his head. As he had just said, the man had been a Scribe. He was no longer one.
"About a thousand years ago, he fell out of Anubis's favor and was demoted."
"You, and this prophet too…… is demotion just a common thing around here?"
"Compared to the prophet, I'm doing quite well."
"Why? Is his life worse than death?"
"Yes."
The prophet had originally been a being who foresaw the future of the Underworld and advised its god on the proper path forward. Then, two thousand years ago, he had suddenly come before Anubis and declared that the Underworld would break free of its cycle because of Anubis's own greed — and that he might as well hand his seat over to someone else early.
"Enraged, Anubis extinguished every last scrap of the Scribe's power and stripped him of his office on the spot. They call it a demotion, but the truth is he's living in agony."
"Hmm."
Do-ha narrowed his eyes at Forme's words.
That prophet. He was rather capable, wasn't he?
He had foreseen the future with perfect accuracy. Anubis truly had joined hands with the Demon God Cult out of greed, clashed with Do-ha as a result, and ultimately dragged the conflict all the way into the Underworld itself.
But he didn't foresee that I would show up in the Underworld?
If he had, he would have warned Anubis that an enemy he could not handle was coming. Or perhaps it had been a leak of heavenly secrets, and he simply hadn't been able to speak the whole truth.
"I want to meet him as soon as possible."
"If it's him, he should know what the gate is."
"But with all his power extinguished, wouldn't he not know anything?"
"He can no longer foresee the future. His knowledge, however, remains intact."
"Fair enough. That makes sense."
Do-ha nodded at Forme's explanation.
Once they left the desert behind, they found themselves in a place crowded with buildings of stone. There were tents, and people conducting business.
"So there's a place where people live even here?"
"Not people, exactly — but the Underworld has spaces for the living as well."
As Forme had said before, the Underworld was also a place where life went on. The dead moved on to other destinations, but everyone else lived in homes.
"We even commute to work, you know."
"The world's gotten soft."
"……."
Forme cleared his throat at Do-ha's remark. Hearing a human look at the Underworld and say the world had gotten soft left him with a strange feeling.
"But if the far side of the Hell Gate is like this, are there other living spaces besides here?"
"No. There aren't."
There were spaces for beings who lived in the Underworld, but this was still the Underworld. Only beyond the Hell Gate did such spaces exist. Everywhere else was a place where neither wraiths nor Underworld beings could survive. It would have been possible to make them livable, of course — but there was no need. This was the Underworld, after all.
Forme, walking ahead, pushed open a door into a building thick with moss.
"What's this place?"
Do-ha followed him inside and looked around. Every building he had seen so far had been made of stone, but at least they had been clean and carried some kind of decoration. Even the open interiors had featured carpets and ornate tables. This place, however, had no light at all — it stank, and it was filthy.
"Think of this building as a screen. It was built to hide the entrance leading underground."
"Underground?"
"Yes."
Forme walked over to something that looked like a storeroom, opened the door, and stepped inside. Within, a staircase led downward.
"I need to correct something I said earlier."
"?"
"You asked whether there were other living spaces besides here."
Once they reached the bottom, Forme traced a pattern with his hand. The sealed wall began to grind open with a deep rumble.
"It isn't a living space — but there is a hidden one. Right here."
As the wall opened, the scene beyond came into view. A stench of rot and mold assaulted the nose. A sewer stretched out before them.
"So even the Underworld has places like this."
"You seem rather familiar with this sort of place."
Do-ha glanced around without any particular reaction, and Forme's eyes widened slightly in surprise. Most beings of the Underworld who came here wore startled expressions. Do-ha, however, looked completely unfazed.
"Well, places like this exist in the living world too."
The Central Plains martial world had them. The Western Continent's empire had them. Spaces where criminals, underworld bosses, and fugitives lived in hiding. Do-ha himself had visited them often enough — black-market deals had been common.
"There are souls here too?"
Looking around, Do-ha's expression shifted to surprise at the sight of souls. He had expected only Underworld beings, yet souls were walking about freely.
"Yes. Wraiths who barely managed to escape from Hell are also hiding here."
"And no one comes to recapture them?"
"No. Once they enter this place, no one particularly interferes."
"Oh — so there's some flexibility to the system?"
"It's less about flexibility and more that most of the beings in this underground space are involved in illegal work. They have their own guilty consciences, so they keep quiet."
Forme walked through the labyrinthine sewers without hesitation. It had been a long time since his last visit, but he still knew every path.
"Anubis doesn't know about this place?"
"He knows."
"Huh??"
He knew? Then why leave it alone?
Dimerof and Namgung Je-u also knew about criminal dens and left them alone, of course — but that was the world of living humans, and politics played a large role. Those dens didn't house only criminals and fugitives. People from the slums lived there too. That was why they couldn't simply be wiped out.
But this was the Underworld. If a god made his rounds, a place like this should vanish on the spot.
"The reason Anubis knows about this sewer and still leaves it alone is simple. It has no value."
When humans walk down a road and spot an anthill, do they wipe out every last ant? No. They leave it alone — or never notice it in the first place.
"To Anubis, this sewer isn't even worth paying attention to."
That was why he left it. Leaving the things here alone caused him no harm whatsoever, and in the Underworld they were no different from insects.
"Arrogant bastard."
"Haha……."
Forme laughed awkwardly at Do-ha's words. How many beings in existence could call the god of the Underworld an arrogant bastard to his face?
Forme pushed aside a tattered curtain and headed into a corner. There was nothing that could be called a building — just a tent strung up in the gap between structures.
"Everyone's in pretty rough shape……."
Do-ha narrowed his eyes at the figures lying on the ground, trembling. Near the entrance everyone had looked relatively whole, but the deeper they went, the more grotesque the forms became. Some had no legs. Some had skin that had melted away. Some had no arms at all.
"Even a place like this has a gap between rich and poor."
"That's right."
"Tsk, tsk."
Do-ha shook his head at Forme's confirmation. They had escaped Hell only to end up in Hell all over again. A truly bleak situation.
"We're here."
Forme pushed aside a tent that was falling apart and guided Do-ha deeper into the gap between the buildings.
"Lord Do-ha. This is the Scribe."
As Do-ha stepped inside, Forme pointed to the figure sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. A single thin scrap of leather served as his seat, and the only light was a dying candle stub.
And the Scribe's condition was even worse than expected.
"Oh, Forme."
The Scribe — both eyes gouged out, both arms and both legs gone — smiled at the sound of Forme's voice.