Empty (4)

“It’s too dangerous for the knights to leave when the party has no weapons at all. And isn’t it too soon to go rescue the elders in the underground archive? I believe the odds of success are higher if we wait for the army to arrive and then attempt the rescue.”

The two knights kept glancing at the High Priest.

Their faces said they could not leave the High Priest in a place this dangerous.

“There is no time to argue.”

Reichardt spoke briefly.

“However…”

He looked at the knights who were about to voice their concern, then turned his gaze to Banie.

“Banie, give the order.”

Reichardt demanded it of the High Priest.

His tone was firm.

“If the Grand Duke of Tessen is confident it will be safe for a short while, there is no need to worry. Go and bring back the elders. I will be waiting.”

Banie spread a graceful smile across her radiant face as she spoke.

“…Y-Your Holiness.”

“No matter how safe it is, how can we leave Your Holiness here?”

The knights of the Priest-Knight Order—who had ignored Reichardt’s words earlier—now wore pained expressions.

“Go.”

Banie ordered once more, this time in a strict tone.

“We obey.”

Five knights saluted as one.

“Knights, drop your weapons and make all speed. Follow behind us.”

Reichardt spoke without regard for their moved expressions.

“Be careful, little brother.”

Banie projected her voice, as she had when speaking to the knights.

Reichardt pretended not to hear and wheeled Lusa around.

“We move.”

The rescue party for the Great Temple’s elders numbered seven.

It was Reichardt and Alicia on Lusa, and five utterly exhausted knights of the Priest-Knight Order with neither mounts nor weapons.

The five knights thought they would die following the monster that bore the Grand Duke.

But shortly they understood what Reichardt had meant by “run at maximum speed.”

The two people riding the great beast ran ahead and cut down all the monsters strewn like an army of ants before them.

-Good heavens. How could this be? By all that is holy.

Gasping in amazement, the five knights used every ounce of strength to keep up with Lusa.

The path all the way to the Temple’s underground archive was opened by the strength of only two people.

“All documents owned by the Great Temple are copied and stored at clocktowers across the Empire. If the elders say they will die with the records, knock them out and carry them out. I’ll be waiting.”

Reichardt issued a command with the destructive decisiveness of a royal.

“We obey!”

The five knights answered stoutly and rushed into the underground archive.

They came out as soon as they went in.

Four of the knights each shouldered a white sack.

Led by the remaining knight, four elders walked out wearing frightened faces.

The speed of the return after the rescue was considerable.

Reichardt urged Lusa on mercilessly.

The knights bearing the elders’ sacks followed without complaint, running in silence.

The bewildered elders, too, had the sense to run.

“When evening falls it will be more dangerous than now. Do not make the reckless plan of leaving the Temple’s lands. Troops from Tessen will soon come looking for you. Rejoin your party and move along the sign-linked paths so the army can find you easily.”

Clearing the danger zone, Reichardt and Alicia disbanded the rescue party.

“Will Your Grace and My Lady not come with us?”

A knight asked cautiously.

“We have work to do.”

Alicia answered kindly.

Her violet eyes flicked toward Reichardt.

Reichardt was already looking at Alicia as she spoke.

If it was those two together, there would be no problem.

The knights stowed their regret and offered their respects.

“May you return unharmed. We will never forget this miraculous help.”

“May fortune be with you as well.”

Lusa, bearing Alicia and Reichardt, turned back at the signboard for Archive No. 3.

With the two aboard, Lusa dashed toward the Temple’s depths.

The words “the Great Temple has fallen” were not symbolic.

They described exactly what they saw.

Alicia and Reichardt stood before the tilted Great Temple.

All around them lay fallen monsters.

Some had just fallen; others were already debris.

But it was only a temporary peace.

The Temple’s center teemed with more monsters than they had ever seen.

Alicia and Reichardt looked toward the Dolore Ruins.

All the ground around the ruin’s giant rock had collapsed, and only the stone staircase leading underground stood in austere relief.

Down in the depths of that stair there was nothing but pitch-black darkness.

Alicia took a step toward the ruins.

The Dolore Ruins, where the passage downward had appeared, did not look like a mere ruin.

The giant rock they had thought was “the ruin” was part of a fortress buried underground.

“Alicia.”

At Reichardt’s call, Alicia looked back at him.

“Don’t get hurt.”

Reichardt made the difficult request gently.

Neither Alicia nor Reichardt had suffered a major wound, but fending off the surging monsters had taken a toll.

“You don’t get hurt either, Rei.”

Alicia answered with a smile.

She passed on her plea and started to sprint straight for the stairs leading below.

Reichardt pulled Alicia into an embrace as she moved to run.

Since entering the Temple’s domain, the wounds that had appeared on Reichardt’s body had healed in an instant.

Alicia, however, still bore small nicks from having cut down an enormous number of monsters.

“Promise me you won’t get hurt.”

Reichardt whispered while holding Alicia tightly in his arms.

“You ask a difficult promise of me, Your Grace.”

Leaning into Reichardt’s chest, Alicia replied.

Her gentle hand soothed the back hardened with worry.

Reichardt lowered his head and kissed Alicia.

The ticklish kiss drew a small laugh from Alicia.

“How long did you say it would take if I went in alone?”

“About a month? Perhaps I could finish after suffering wounds that would kill me a thousand times.”

Alicia spread a fresh, bright smile.

His worried lips kissed that smiling face several more times.

“Don’t get hurt.”

At Reichardt’s formal plea, Alicia touched her reddened cheek.

“I’m telling you it’s a hard request.”

With a playful little tap, Alicia rapped the back of Reichardt’s hand with her lightly clenched fist.

Reichardt bumped her knuckles back with his own loosely clenched fist.

“I can die a thousand times and be fine.”

Reichardt spoke as he walked toward the ruins.

Alicia moved her legs faster and went ahead of him.

“I wouldn’t be fine.”

Barking the words with a grim face, Alicia picked up her pace and broke into a run.

Reichardt stayed close, covering her from behind.

Unlike Alicia, who carried only a spear, Reichardt had several spears and axes slung across his back.

The stone stairs leading downward went on for a long time.

It seemed all the monsters inside had poured out; few remained within.

Alicia deftly shouldered monsters aside as she ran, increasing her speed.

Reichardt chopped apart only those of a troublesome size, keeping the gap to Alicia.

At the end of the stairs—an apparent straight line into the deep—there was a broad hall.

The hall was utterly empty.

There was no high seat, no stairs leading to a high seat.

Instead, a gigantic door stood in one wall of the hall.

“A dragon.”

Alicia murmured, searching her memory.

A splendid yet empty hall.

A massive door on the hall’s wall.

Open that door, and the lord of the underground labyrinth would be sleeping, body coiled in on itself.

Reichardt watched Alicia’s face as she whispered.

Alicia gave him a look of warning, then sprang toward the massive door.

KWA-gwang!

The colossal door—one that seemed it could never be opened—met Alicia’s spear and slowly parted.

“…”

There, as expected, a dragon slept.

Black as night, the dragon radiated neither the malice of a beast nor the sacredness of legend.

The black dragon exuded nothing but overwhelming presence.

Its black scales, too beautiful to belong to a beast said to control monsters, caught the stray light and blazed.

What had seemed a sleeping dragon slowly opened its eyes.

Its black eyelids lifted, and then a translucent nictitating membrane slid back.

At the unique, layered motion, neither Alicia nor Reichardt could look away.

The black dragon’s irises were a mysterious violet.

Alicia did not attempt her usual ambush.

She paused and waited for the awakened dragon to notice her and Reichardt.

“Visitors. Was it you who woke me?”

The dragon’s voice shook the entire underground labyrinth.

“O Dragon, your prey is ravaging our lands.”

At Alicia’s protest, the dragon burst into laughter.

“An amusing visitor. Why did you devour my prey without leave? No… not so. You felled the masters of the East, the West, and the North.”

Amazed, the dragon laughed louder.

“Visitor, they had not yet reached complete transformation. Do you grow arrogant for felling such unripe things?”

“O Dragon, they called me an ‘apostle.’ What is an apostle?”

Alicia asked the speaking dragon the question she had been pondering of late.

“The name ‘apostle’ is, strictly speaking, wrong. When my kind first showed ourselves upon a new land, we met resistance. Annoyances to me, nothing more. To come here knowing you would die… Yet among the countless visitors, there were some who, even when killed, did not die; when cast down, they rose again. Their ordeal looked to us like ascetic training—suhaeng.”

The dragon was a proud being.

Thus he answered generously the questions of one who sought his life.

“Apostle, will you challenge me today?”

The dragon slowly uncoiled his crouched body.

“Rei!”

Alicia did not answer.

Instead, she shouted the agreed-upon signal and sprinted in.

With the mere step of a foreclaw, the dragon unleashed thunderbolts.

Blue-white light poured from the ceiling and spread in all directions.

Alicia swung her spear while evading the dragon’s falling lightning.

The dragon flicked aside the paltry spear a human thrust with contemptuous ease.

At the same time, dozens of forks of lightning rained down in succession.

BOOM!

While the dragon’s gaze was stolen by Alicia, Reichardt sprinted to its flank and drove a stake into the softly sagging wing.

A soot-black spear pinned the black-membraned wing to the floor.

“You wretch!”

By the time the dragon realized the first stake, Reichardt had fixed one wing to the floor and withdrawn.

SWEK!

Alicia’s spear darted for the raging dragon’s jaw.

THUD!

Violence the dragon had not suffered in millennia left a dull shock and slid off.

As Alicia slipped the following violet gaze—

CLATTER!

The rattle of chains split the air.

“How dare you…!”

A thick, hooked chain cinched around the dragon’s neck.

Reichardt seized the chain’s end and hauled in the direction opposite the pinned wing.

“Will you not let go!”

The dragon’s roar of fury rang through the labyrinth.

Alicia clambered up the staked wing and sprinted along the heaving, solid body.

Reaching the dragon’s brow—her target—Alicia slammed her spear down.

The black point stabbed into the violet eye, whose nictitating membrane had been withdrawn in disdain for a human.

The dragon shook its whole body.

“Graaah!”

A cry full of pain followed.

Alicia braced herself, gripping the spear buried in the dragon’s body.

As its movements slackened for a beat, she wrenched the spear free and went for the other eye.

Ignoring his own pain, the dragon slashed in search of Alicia with a savage foreclaw.

Each time the foreclaw missed Alicia and struck itself instead, the whole labyrinth boomed as if in an earthquake.

“Alicia!”

While Alicia wrenched the dragon’s gaze away by brutal means,

Reichardt fixed both of the dragon’s wings.

Rattle, rattle.

Each time the dragon writhed, the chain hooked about its neck blared a harsh clamor.

Alicia seized the chain, slid down along it, and dropped to the floor.

The instant her feet touched down, she gripped the chain’s end and hauled until it went taut.

“You insects!”

With each of the dragon’s howls, vicious tremors and lightning crashed.

Alicia nimbly dodged the falling ceiling stones shattered by the flashing bolts and the shock of the quakes.