Ruins of an Ancient Future (1)
The hole was wide enough for two grown men to enter side by side. I glanced back once at the stone lid I had carefully set down on the floor. So that was why it had been so heavy—to completely cover an opening this large.
I first poked my head inside and examined the space below by the faint light. A metal ladder stretched downward. Whether enchanted or forged from some miraculous alloy by the ancients, it had defied the passage of centuries; only a thin layer of dust clung to its surface.
At the base of the ladder, which extended roughly five times my height, the magical flame I had tossed down earlier flickered. Its pale light shimmered across the ladder’s well-preserved, still-glossy metal. A cool breeze rose from the long-buried chamber.
“A little scary…”
A little scary… a little scary… a little scary…
The thin echo spread the moment I murmured with my head inside the hole. There must be plenty of empty space underground.
Still, I can’t just run away after opening the door like this. Besides…
Something about it…
Even though the space was empty, it stirred an oddly intense curiosity, a fluttering excitement like the heart of a girl newly fallen in love. It felt as if the place itself were seducing me.
I clenched both fists once to steel my resolve, then gently levitated my backpack with magic and sent it floating down ahead of me.
If the underground passage turns out to be very long, I’ll need supplies like food.
Then I grabbed the ladder and began my descent. The solid construction seemed to declare it could easily support a body as light as mine; that reassurance came through the cold touch of the rungs. Even though the metal was hollow pipe, there was no sign of rust, decay, or perforation.
How fascinating. Just how advanced was their metalworking technology? I’ve only seen things like this on Earth.
In a sense, it might even surpass Earth’s achievements. After all, Earth had no technique capable of preserving an unsealed metal ladder for thousands of years.
I climbed all the way down and dropped into the dark underground corridor. The corridor’s floor was finished with perfectly square, smooth granite tiles that had endured the ages without losing their polish.
Relying on the light I had thrown to the floor, I tore a page from my spellbook and prepared a proper illumination spell. The corridor looked wide, and its length stretched beyond sight. A tiny, low-mana trick of light was far too weak for a space this vast.
“Brighten!”
I added the meaningless shout to the spell formula, hoping to dispel the creeping fear that came from being alone in the dark.
Brighten, brighten, brighten…!
With the echoing cry, dozens of meters of corridor flooded with bluish-white light centered on me. The scattering darkness shattered my terror along with it.
“Whoa…”
A pure gasp of wonder slipped out on its own.
This is…
A long corridor of plain white walls and smooth floors, completely devoid of ornamentation. On both sides lay the corroded remains of metal doors. It seemed the doors themselves had been made of a rust-resistant metal or never received anti-corrosion enchantments.
Because the doors and frames had rusted away, the entrances to the rooms lining the corridor had partially collapsed—unlike the ladder or the object I assumed was a reflector above. Still, thanks to the stone lid, neither moisture nor living creatures had intruded, so the preservation was remarkably good for its age.
I walked cautiously down the now-illuminated corridor and peered into one of the rooms. It was stark and empty, but inside the perfectly square chamber lay the rotten wreckage of a wooden table, ancient books reduced to powder whose era was impossible to guess, and scattered fragments of unrecognizable metal objects.
It felt less like a ruin, temple, labyrinth, or dungeon and more like…
How should I put it? The layout of offices in an Earth corporate building.
If the thing above really was a telescope, then this might have been a place for analyzing observational data or handling practical work. I approached the pile of what were essentially ancient books. The paper had almost completely disintegrated, but faint handwritten characters and diagrams in an unknown script remained.
Since the paper crumbled at the slightest touch, I couldn’t even attempt to examine the pictures.
Still, one thing was clear. This place held no mystical aura. Or rather, the very fact that such a facility existed before humanity had even settled here was mysterious in itself…
Thud.
At that moment, something rang out again.
It definitely wasn’t the footsteps of an ogre. This vibration had originated from the same level I stood on—at the far end of the long corridor.
The fear I had forgotten surged back. I drew Mervin’s sword without a sound and adjusted the mana radiating from it, pushing the light to maximum brightness. Doing so would reveal my position to anyone watching, but without it I wouldn’t be able to locate them either.
I stepped back into the corridor and stared down the left-hand passage that had no visible end.
…There…!!
Something with small feet—no, several somethings—were slowly walking toward me. The sight of an unidentified group heading straight for me sent a wave of terror through my chest, yet behind that fear bloomed the same strange curiosity I had felt when first peering into the room.
Along with the uncomfortable thought that it was wrong to feel such curiosity right now.
Curiosity is actually calming me down… How strange. Was I always this inquisitive?
But this was no time for such reflections. Something unknown was approaching. Thanks to the small feet scurrying quickly, I soon identified the swarm of tiny, dark creatures.
The moment I recognized them, I took several steps back, put the ladder behind me, and raised my sword in a defensive stance.
D-demons…? Why here of all places?!
The small beings swarming toward me were demons. Depending on the person, they were scornfully called mere objects, or monsters; scholars, insisting they were not inherently evil, preferred the neutral term “demonfolk.”
The swarm before me consisted of a nose with limbs, eyeballs with hands and feet, elven ears with legs, and a mammalian tongue crawling across the floor. Seeing the elven-shaped ears, it seemed the other body parts were also imitating elven forms.
How grotesque. They don’t seem hostile, but they’re still creepy…
During the journey north to assassinate the Demon King, I had encountered many demons wandering the forests. Anyone near a demon instinctively knew what they were facing. It was a visceral revulsion no one needed to teach you. It simply washed over you—an discomfort utterly unlike anything felt toward ordinary living beings.
I had learned that this was because demons were not simply beasts or humans corrupted by demonic energy; they were unnatural entities that should not exist in this world.
They perceived the world as if alive, mimicked the movements of living things, and made their own calculations as though they thought, yet demons were not living beings. Nor were they dead.
Magic was the act of tearing open a wound in reality using a tiny amount of internal mana to connect to the other side and steal energy from that realm to manifest it here.
A demon was the very stolen energy given independent will and a physical body, manifesting in our world. The term referred more to a phenomenon than to a creature or being.
And when a demon was created, manifested, or summoned, it was heavily influenced by the magical core at its heart. Those cores were abstract concepts—desire, love, obsession, arrogance, sense of justice, competitive spirit, conviction, holiness, and every good or evil notion imaginable. Demons formed by bundling such things together.
Or so the textbooks said. That was why each demon differed wildly in size, power, ability, and even in values or behavior.
For example, a novice mage who botched a summoning might create a tiny prankster born from embarrassment or sympathy, while a demon born from the failure of a massive destructive spell fueled by murderous intent would manifest with a body of flame or lightning and immediately attempt to slaughter everything around it. Such cases were recorded in the books.
Yet every demon I had seen in person looked similar, fought similarly, and behaved with similar malice. That was inevitable. They had all been born from the Demon King’s destructive will. Black shadows mimicking the shapes of wolves, dogs, or sometimes humans, wielding crude imitations of human weapons—those were the demons I had fought.
Because they were shadows projected by magic from the other side, physical attacks had little effect. They could only be defeated by wielding power infused with the will of this world’s gods—who rejected invaders from neighboring realms—or by striking the very essence of the magic’s origin beyond the world of its birth.
That was likely why Azalea could reduce five or six demons to ash with a single gesture, and why Kadros’s axe, forged with the wishes of his ancestors, had no trouble slicing them apart. Neither gods nor ancestors would ever be friendly toward invaders from outside.
Mervin and I had enchanted our weapons with simple spells so they could harm demons—sharpening the blades or making them glow. The sharpness or light itself meant nothing; the point was to imbue the metal with mana. Simply carrying magic was enough.
Not that we usually needed them, since we fought with magic most of the time anyway.
…Though since they were projected into this world, physical force wasn’t completely useless. Glazalus had crushed demons with his fists. Apparently if you had enough intent to pulverize them, even punches worked.
But… there are too many of them. And since I climbed down the ladder, I can’t run away…
I muttered under my breath. I needed to cast Veltara’s Transparent Shield on my left arm and on Mervin’s sword. I layered the “shield” along the blade, far sharper than the edge itself. I had only ever thought about trying it on a sword; now was the perfect chance to test it.
I quietly observed the swarm of demons that had nearly surrounded me. Yes, not all demons were like those of the Demon King’s army. These were nothing like the ones optimized to bite and devour humans, born from the Demon King’s twisted imagination.
Still, their appearance is nauseating.
The way they had been shaped to walk by crudely grafting sensory organs together was both revolting and bizarre, yet strangely I still sensed no hostility.
The presence of demons in these ruins likely meant something thickly permeating the site had created or summoned them. This might once have been an astronomical observatory. It was unlikely a battle-crazed demon would have been born here. After all, a demon was merely a walking spell, strongly influenced by the moment it was summoned or created.
Still, I kept my guard up and pointed my sword at several of them.
There are too many. If I attack recklessly, I might get counterattacked.
I brandished the blade to threaten the small demons, but they did not retreat. Nor did they attack. Instead…
They’re crowding around the blade…?
Exactly. The nose demon sniffed at the sword, the ear demon tilted its ear toward the edge. A wriggling tongue leaped from the floor, clung to the blade, and licked it. It felt as if common sense itself was breaking down.
W-what the hell are these things…?
Then I suddenly realized. A crowd of “nose demons” had gathered near my slightly exposed calf above the boot, at the back of my knee, and under the hem of my skirt, sniffing intently. Some were even tugging at my boots and shoving their noses into the gap between shoe and calf.
“W-wait!! Don’t sniff there of all places!”
Even though they weren’t human—creatures whose intelligence was uncertain and who were definitely not alive—I muttered with a face flushed bright red.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but… it’s just because I’m the daughter of a bakery… you perverted demons!!”
The moment I unconsciously muttered my usual excuse, all the “ear demons” swiveled their ears toward me at once. It was a little chilling. Still, they didn’t seem to have any intent to attack or harm me…
Then, once again, a heavy thud echoed. It was clearly coming from the far side of the corridor. Something at the end of the passage was calling to me.
The first time I heard it from above, before discovering this passage, I had wondered whether I had really heard a thud at all. When I was examining the room earlier, the sudden sound had filled me with fear. But now, hearing the noise clearly from whatever lay at the end of the corridor…
An irresistible scholarly curiosity pulled my feet forward, as if I had been enchanted.
And so, stepping carefully, my attention fixed on the scene that would soon unfold ahead, a pitch-black mass of mana given form trailed behind me—the grotesque demons imitating human sensory organs.