Chapter 46
The streets late at night were filled with the dry smell of sand, the terrible odor of something burning, the stink of rotting corpses mixed between them, and the smell of preservatives.
Anyone walking through the area would have no choice but to cover their nose.
The bandits, who had practically been kicked out of the tavern, looked back at the sign glowing softly with Glowing Stones.
Serden spat on the ground.
“Damn, talk about rotten luck. What an annoying night.”
One of his subordinates rolled his shoulders and approached him.
“We could’ve just smashed everything. Why did we back off?”
“Exactly. We wrecked the place just fine last time.”
Serden glanced at the other subordinates agreeing with him.
Then he grabbed his hair and admitted it.
“Fine! I admit it! I got scared. I felt pressure from someone there.”
“Huh?”
“You mean the man who was arguing with you earlier? He didn’t look like much.”
“Not him. The guy behind him.”
The scene remained clear in Serden’s mind.
Yohan had been standing behind Danforth, quietly watching the argument.
Those cold eyes.
That faint, unpleasant smile covering his lips.
“The others didn’t feel dangerous at all… but I thought I should be careful around that one. I don’t have any real reason. I just felt it.”
“Hmm…”
“Well… if the Boss says so.”
“Anyway, let’s stop here for tonight. Those guys won’t stay here long. Expeditions from outside are full of lunatics. They’ll probably try heading down to the next floor soon.”
“…That’s probably true.”
Serden gave one last glance toward the softly lit tavern entrance.
Then he changed the subject.
“Come to think of it, we still have a corpse we haven’t handed over yet.”
“Right.”
“Let’s deal with that first. Better before the priests find something to complain about. Which clinic is it at?”
One subordinate pulled a note from inside his clothes and blinked at it.
“Uh… Kaldon Clinic, Number 6 in the Northern District. It’s the closest clinic to the temple.”
“Good. We’ll deliver the corpse to the temple first, then see how things look tomorrow. Come on, move.”
There were countless shops in Zul-Bha-Sair.
But only three types stayed open throughout the night.
Inns.
Taverns.
And clinics.
Zul-Bha-Sair possessed the most advanced medicine on the twelfth floor.
It also served as something similar to a funeral hall and crematorium.
Because of that, clinics remained crowded with everyone from ordinary patients to people on the verge of death.
Serden’s group moved into the Northern District, one of the city’s four main areas.
They stopped at Kaldon Clinic, collected a corpse inside a sack, and headed toward the temple.
The corpse being carried by his subordinates belonged to an innocent visitor they had hunted near the city entrance the previous day.
The temple always released an ominous, faint green glow.
Because of that, it could be found from anywhere at any time.
It stood directly uphill from the center of the city, so even Serden, who had a poor sense of direction, reached the area without much trouble.
“Hmm?”
That was when it happened.
“Those are…”
“Looks like there are others like us.”
They made eye contact with three people approaching from the opposite direction.
It was the group of dark mages who had planned to steal a corpse.
Abnontha, Nargai, and Vembachis.
The eyes of both leaders quickly moved across one another.
The three dark mages suddenly increased their pace.
“…Hah.”
Serden stopped for a moment and watched their backs.
Then he simply sighed.
“Strange bastards. Instead of bringing a corpse in, they’re taking one away.”
“Yeah.”
“The mana coming from their bodies feels incredibly ominous too… Think they pulled some kind of trick?”
“Leave them alone. Let’s finish our own business.”
After walking up the gentle slope for over thirty minutes, the full temple finally came into view.
More than a dozen arched windows were completely swallowed by darkness.
Enormous entrances existed on all four sides, north, south, east, and west.
None of them even had doors.
At the top of the spire, something darker than the night itself slowly rotated as if looking down over the entire city.
And at the temple entrance,
someone was waiting.
“You must be tired, working this late at night.”
The figure’s body and voice made it difficult to determine their sex.
A secretive purple mourning robe concealed almost everything else.
But Serden knew perfectly well what that being was.
Among the ghoul priests who managed the temple,
this was the strongest.
Mordiggian’s Apostle, Pickman.
Among all the ghoul priests, he was the only one capable of speaking the language of intelligent beings.
“Whose death created this corpse?”
“……”
“Serden?”
“Ah, right. Sorry. I mistook you for one of the other priests. I got a little surprised and wondered if there was another priest besides you who could speak.”
Serden casually raised one hand.
“We brought it from Kaldon Clinic. You know the place.”
“I did not ask where you brought it from.”
“…Where the corpse was created shouldn’t matter. Your god isn’t the type to care about every little detail like that.”
Cold sweat clearly ran down the back of his neck.
Serden pretended not to notice.
Instead, he made himself look even more confident.
Whether Pickman noticed or not, the priest released a breath from the darkness beneath his robe.
It was impossible to tell whether it was amusement or caution.
“…He does not care. Mordiggian never refuses the dead, no matter what kind of dead they are.”
“Then take it. A nice fresh corpse, just the way He likes it.”
Despite the disrespectful wording, the priest silently accepted the corpse.
When he placed it near the temple entrance, a strange mist and dust emerged from inside.
They lifted the body and carried it deeper into the temple.
The moment Serden confirmed that the delivery was complete, he and his men turned around to leave.
Then,
“Someone stole a corpse from this place a short while ago.”
Pickman’s words stopped them completely.
The three dark mages they had passed earlier immediately appeared in their minds.
Of course, confessing everything here would practically be suicide.
The subordinates hesitated and watched their leader.
Serden remained silent for a long time.
Then he tilted his head and pretended to know nothing.
“…Really?”
“Yes.”
“Hah. Whoever did that must be insane. Why would anyone do something like that? They’ll obviously be caught soon.”
“The thief will be caught quickly. We have already sent dozens of priests after them. It should not take longer than a day.”
“…Naturally. The physical abilities of your priests are beyond ordinary imagination.”
“But are you aware of something else?”
Pickman crossed the distance in a single step and stopped directly in front of Serden.
A jackal mask still concealed his face.
But the smell of decay and the scent of a wild animal could not be hidden.
“Those who witness the theft of a corpse and take no action receive punishment nearly as severe as the thief.”
Gulp.
“…That makes sense. Those are the laws of Zul-Bha-Sair.”
“…Then I suppose I may interpret those words as meaning that you did not see the thieves.”
“Of course.”
Serden continued pretending ignorance until the very end.
Pickman stared at them for a long time.
Then he slowly turned away.
“…Very well. You may return. Please take care of yourselves, bandits.”
“Haa, haa, haa…”
“Haa… haa…!”
Only after crossing more than ten kilometers of the city at night did they finally return to their lodging.
The bandits entered their room.
Only then did they release relieved breaths.
“…There was no pursuit or anyone following us, right?”
“I was too panicked to check…”
“There couldn’t have been! If someone followed us, they would’ve caught us already and we’d be dead!”
They spent more than ten minutes catching their breath.
Only after that did the five begin talking about what had happened.
“But why did you lie? Those mages were obviously the ones who stole the corpse!”
“We could’ve just said we saw them. The priests might’ve accepted that and moved on.”
“…Didn’t you hear the administrator? Even people who see it happen and do nothing are punished.”
“Then we could’ve said we didn’t have time to stop them. Say they escaped so quickly that we couldn’t even understand what was happening.”
Serden nearly exploded into curses.
He barely held himself back and explained.
“You really think they’d believe that? You think they don’t know how strong we are? They’d treat everything we said as excuses. They’d decide we could have stopped them but chose not to. Then we’d be the ones blamed for everything. And you wanted me to confess honestly? Am I insane?”
“……”
“Hmm… now that you say it like that, I guess you have a point.”
Serden waved his hand, saying the discussion was over.
Then he looked out the window.
“I didn’t expect things to end up like this… but I think it’s time for us to leave, boys.”
“What? Already?”
“Idiot, you still don’t realize that administrator figured everything out?”
“Ah… did he?”
“Staying here would be suicide. Pack everything. We leave the moment the sun rises tomorrow.”
With no other choice, the group began organizing all their luggage.
Meanwhile,
someone was watching the bandits from the opposite side.
Sitting casually on the edge of a rooftop across the street, Yohan looked down at the foolish scene and sighed inwardly.
[They look rather busy… They’re planning to leave the city, aren’t they?]
“Probably.”
[Hmm… At least they understand their situation quickly.]
“But they probably won’t leave quietly. They’ve got pride.”
[…Pride? What kind of pride? Are you talking about what happened at the tavern?]
Yohan lightly nodded.
“He suppressed his anger and backed away because he was conscious of me… but if I hadn’t been there, he would have tried to recover his wounded pride. Without fail.”
[Even so, those people don’t stand a chance, do they? Even against the other expedition members instead of you.]
“Not necessarily.”
[…Huh? Really? Are they that strong?]
“Probably.”
They hid near the city and attacked only travelers exhausted from long journeys across the desert.
It was the kind of petty behavior usually associated with small fry.
But that alone was not enough to judge their true ability.
Yohan remembered the moment they had passed the group of dark mages earlier.
Then he added,
“Even if they had fought Abnontha earlier, they wouldn’t have been completely overwhelmed.”
[Oh… That’s fairly impressive. You’re saying they could compete with a dark mage capable of necromancy strong enough to perfectly revive a corpse?]
“Which makes them even better opponents. Especially for mediocre people like Danforth.”
After finishing his observation, Yohan stood in a single motion.
Then he headed directly toward the temple.
There was a discussion he needed to finish before sunrise.
Yohan moved smoothly between buildings.
His movements were as difficult to follow as smoke.
Tap…
It took only around twenty minutes to cross the city and reach the temple entrance.
Yohan landed lightly on one foot and first examined his surroundings.
The southern entrance of Mordiggian’s temple was filled only with foul smells.
There were no visitors.
No priests either.
Yohan walked confidently through the empty entrance.
A dark interior twisted like a maze welcomed him.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of staircases curved and crossed one another.
At least fifty black rooms were scattered throughout the structure like chambers inside an ant nest.
The room directly beside Yohan served as a waiting room for temple visitors.
Long benches made from old, hard wood lined the walls.
Yohan glanced at them.
He was about to descend using a staircase when a voice echoed from above.
“I would prefer that you go no farther, Apostle of the Aberrant.”
It was Mordiggian’s Apostle, Pickman.
He descended from the stairs above.
Instead of greeting Yohan, he pulled out a blunt weapon and pointed it toward him.
“I have not yet received His permission to allow you farther inside.”
The canine head that had been completely hidden behind a jackal mask earlier was now fully exposed.
