Wizard of the Abyss – Ch. 190

Wizard of the Abyss

[Extra Novels]

Chapter 190 - Oblivion (15)

As I was at a loss for words, Dercia, who had pulled her hood down to hide her face, spoke first from behind me.

"It’s less cold.”

"Huh?"

"This area seems to be disconnected from the outside, separated by the castle walls.”

...Now that she mentioned it.

I hadn’t noticed at first, but when I moved my hands, it really did feel warmer than outside.

It wasn't just the temperature. The burdens themselves felt like they had been reduced.

"Focus on what we came here to do. Have you found Decay?”

"No."

"Then our objective hasn’t changed.”

"..."

Listening to her calm, unwavering tone somehow made me calm down as well.

She was right. Nothing had been resolved yet, so this wasn’t the time to be alarmed.

"Hmm…”

I regained my composure and quickly slipped into an alley. The guards had started casting us suspicious looks.

As we entered the alley, Dercia quietly whispered,

"How long do you think it’ll take to grasp the city’s situation?"

"I just finished.”

"?"

"It’s dinnertime, so people are talking quite a bit.”

Even now, the sound of people laughing, chatting, and joking over meals was reverberating in my head.

At first, I had quite the headache. But after living in the capital, I had gotten used to it. Especially helpful was a group of Knights, who looked like officers, speaking with unusually serious expressions.

[When is Lord Virem coming back?]

[It’s already been three months. Even if he told us not to search for half a year, shouldn’t we be sending a rescue party by now…?]

It wasn’t too difficult to filter out only the valuable bits from their discussions.

After focusing for a moment, I summarized what I’d learned for Dercia.

"This place seems to have been the northernmost frontier, the so-called Shield of the Empire. Decay apparently was the lord of this city. Someone called Virem. He vanished three months ago and hasn't returned. The soldiers’ trust in him is extremely high. Even in this extreme environment, they’re holding on, waiting for his safe return. It looks like he ruled this place well.”

"Jern. We entered the city exactly two minutes ago.”

"From my perspective, it feels like every person in the city spent two minutes dumping their life story into my head about ten thousand times over. I’d say that’s plenty of time to get familiar with the city.”

"..."

Ignoring Dercia’s disapproving look, I extended my Tide Sense a little further.

[Lady Roan. I may be a crude commoner and lack proper manners, but staying shut inside will ruin your health. And if that happens, we’ll all be dead once Lord Virem returns. Your, erm, royal blood? Is that right? Anyway, you should take care of yourself.]

[...Thank you for worrying, but …]

[If you pity this old soldier, please at least get some fresh air. Today’s actually quite warm.]

Inside a lavish chamber in the inner castle. Listening to the conversation between a slightly overweight middle-aged woman and a one-eyed soldier, I tilted my head, then frowned.

"Wait, he was even married? He had a wife named Roan.”

"..."

"And in 30 minutes, she plans to step out onto the terrace for a short walk. Conveniently, there’s a vine that reaches that terrace. Since the roses are thick enough to create blind spots, we can use that opening to abduct her.”

"If I were a lord, I would’ve made sure you could never enter my domain.”

"Try stopping someone from climbing the castle walls at night. Let’s move.”

I took Dercia with me and ran through the alleys without stopping even once, carefully making our way to the backside of the terrace.

Even as we moved, my Tide Sense kept picking up fragments of conversation from the city’s residents.

[The potatoes, they grew…]

[Haah, this…this is nothing short of a miracle.]

[Didn’t every wizard in the world give up on this as impossible? I don’t know how we could ever repay Lord Virem in this lifetime.]

[General! The capital has sent us unrusted swords, massive amounts of whetstones, and oil!]

[It’s been more than 10 years since our last supply delivery. At last, we can give the recruits proper weapons.]

[What about us?]

[Tsk, sharpen what you’ve got with the whetstones.]

Praise, praise, and more praise for the ruler named Virem.

If all of this was truly a dream, then Decay was reliving an embarrassingly flattering memory.

'Was this really something that happened?'

Of course, it didn’t seem likely that one’s life flashing before their eyes would be mixed with falsehood, but Decay being such a trusted and beloved lord still seemed quite bizarre to me.

Well, there was probably some kind of story behind it.

And unless that story helped me kill him, I wasn’t interested in the slightest.

"...”

"We’ve arrived."

After running without pause, we reached the spot right on time.

As I looked for a thick enough vine to support both our weights, Dercia suddenly grabbed my chin, sighed, and wiped my face with her wolf-fur scarf.

"Hey, what are you doing?”

"No matter how urgent things are, you should at least keep track of your own condition.”

"Huh?"

The scarf she pulled away was stained red.

With my nosebleed.

...I thought I’d gotten used to this, but it seemed I still couldn’t keep it up for too long.

"Ah, thank you.”

After wiping off the blood and offering an awkward thanks, I grabbed the vine and called out to her.

"I’ll be more careful from now on. Shall we climb up?”

"Let’s do that."

Dercia, who was far less concerned than I expected, wrapped the scarf back around herself and climbed up the vine into the rose garden.

Once she climbed up, she surveyed the garden and slightly furrowed her brow.

"This garden lacks aesthetic sense.”

A garden filled with roses, roses—and even more roses.

A literal rose garden. Even in rose gardens, people usually mixed in different colors so your eyes wouldn’t end up aching, but this place was filled with nothing but blood-red roses.

They were so densely packed that you could barely see the green stems beneath them. From a distance, it could easily be mistaken for the aftermath of a brutal massacre.

But more than anything else, the strangest part was that roses were growing at all in this frozen wasteland. No matter how much warmer it was inside the walls, plants shouldn’t be able to thrive like this in this place.

"They’re coming."

Accompanied by two guards, the woman called Roan, Decay’s wife, walked through the grotesque rose garden with a tender smile.

Once they had moved a sufficient distance away from the entrance, I immediately strangled the guards.

"Ugh…Urgh!”

"Kgh..."

They didn’t even have time to scream. The short gasps they managed to expel were all.

—Thud. Crash

The sound of two large bodies collapsing to the ground like puppets with their strings cut echoed softly. Roan turned around with a puzzled expression.

"...Sir Guards?”

I was standing there.

After a brief moment of silent confrontation, Roan drew in a breath.

I didn’t bother stopping her.

"Kya–."

The breath she had drawn in never managed to turn into a scream, only a muffled gasp.

With her mouth unable to open, I whispered quietly.

"I’ll give you 5 minutes. I have no intention of harming you, so if you possess any means of self-defense, use them. We’ll talk after that.”

"..."

If people started thinking during a conversation, they tended to look for other tricks to pull.

It was better to give them a fixed amount of time from the start. That way they could understand that from the moment I appeared before them, everything was already over. Only then could one have an honest conversation.

Roan’s eyes met mine and wavered several times. I saw her swallowing hard, and—

"I-I won’t scream.”

"Don’t worry. No matter what methods you use to try to escape me, I will not harm you. I swear it on my honor.”

Technically, it was Dercia’s honor, but I said it firmly enough. Roan shook her head.

"The guards assigned to me were Knights my husband personally selected for my protection. If someone like them can be incapacitated instantly, I don’t think I can do anything at all. If you have something to say, you may say it now.”

"...”

She was trembling slightly, but her gaze was steady.

That would do. I slowly opened my mouth.

"I want information about your husband, Decay—No, Virem.”

"...I thought as much."

Roan nodded faintly, as if she had realized something, then asked with a resolute expression.

"I know this isn’t the time for such a question, but—did you come from the capital?”

"...?”

"I heard supplies arrived from the capital today. And I thought if someone were to come, today would be the day.”

That was just a coincidence. I was about to say that, but seeing the resolve in her expression, I instead took out a key and held it up.

"Jern Aspandil. Along with the mage beside me, I am an emissary carrying out the Empire’s will. Does that explain things?”

"Yes..."

No one dared to impersonate an imperial envoy. There was no faster or more horrifying way to die.

Roan clearly believed me without any doubt. Her eyes filled with tears as she fell to her knees.

"P-please. Show mercy to this territory.”

"Pardon?"

"Viren, my husband… He touched something dangerous in order to protect this small domain…”

"Ah, yes, I understand.”

It was so obvious that I understood it without even hearing details about it.

Decay must have resorted to various dangerous measures in life to save his domain and, in doing so, became a Fallen. That much was easy to guess. I was about to brush it off and simply ask where he was—

"But Virem has already paid the price. With his life.”

"...What?"

"He tried methods the Empire did not permit, and after leaving the mountain range, he returned a week later as a cold corpse. But…we couldn't tell anyone. This castle was held together by Virem alone. If people learned of his death, everything would collapse…”

"Wait, what did you just say?”

I frowned sharply.

Dead. Decay was dead.

Which meant—this revolving lantern should have ended.

A dying person’s final dream shouldn’t persist after death. And yet, we were still trapped in this world.

"At some point, I thought it strange that no reports were coming from the capital. I knew someone would eventually find it suspicious and come here. B-but everything Virem went against the Empire’s laws was never motivated by treason. It was truly to protect this land…”

"We need to confirm it.”

"...What?"

"Please guide us to Virem’s grave.”

"Ah, yes…”

Roan led us away from the garden, along a path without any guards, to a small burial site.

It was a modest grave without a headstone or other marker.

"This is his grave. B-but…please, at least spare him an autopsy…”

"...That won’t be necessary.”

My Tide Sense was already examining the coffin beneath the soil.

I closely examined the face.

There were several similarities to Decay. The clothes as well.

At the very least, it appeared to be the same man the statue depicted.

"Umm…”

"...Please return for now. We’ll speak again after this is settled.”

Exchanging a glance with Dercia, I sent Roan away.

For a moment, silence settled between us at the grave.

"Hmm, Master.”

"Yes."

I was the first to speak up. Scratching my head, I casually raised the topic.

"This revolving lantern we’re in. It’s all memories, right?”

"You’re thinking too extremely.”

Dercia sighed. To an outsider, the exchange might have seemed disjointed, but it wasn’t.

She had instantly grasped the intent of my question.

"Decay isn't in this city. If he were, you would have noticed. Even if you slaughtered every citizen here, all you’d gain is the certainty that this couldn't be defined as murder.”

"It doesn’t look like we have many options right now.”

"Why wouldn't we? Do you truly believe the corpse beneath us is really Decay?”

"...”

Certainly, simply sharing a few similarities and wearing the same clothes wasn’t enough to definitively declare that this man was Decay.

If it were anyone else, it might be possible. But Decay was a man with a deep, calculating mind. He was capable of anything.

"The likelihood that Decay hid his true intentions somewhere in those mountains and deliberately left behind a fake corpse is far higher. In that case, it would be unwise to alert him through indiscriminate slaughter and give him the chance to flee. It won’t be too late to do it after you establish a rational justification for it and survey everything first.”

"A rational justification, huh?"

I could understand what she was saying. There wasn’t a single flaw in her logic.

"But we’re nearing our limit.”

"You exaggerate too much. You do look a bit worn out, but the you I know could endure for months without issue.”

"—The one who won’t be able to endure much longer isn’t me.”

I met Dercia’s gaze directly.

"Master. Please remove your gloves.”

"...Hmm, I should have learned acting.”

She sighed with a troubled expression, yet still didn’t remove them.

That, however, confirmed it. The reason she wore the coat wasn’t merely to endure the cold.

"You checked with your Tide Sense?”

"I didn’t need to. I’m not an idiot, you know?”

No matter how strangely resistant elves were to the cold, Decay’s burdens went far beyond something that could be dismissed as mere low temperature.

And she had endured it not for a month or two—but for three years.

Enduring that without magic…was an ordeal beyond imagination.

"We need immediate results—or proof of the situation itself.”

"Jern.”

That was the source of my impatience.

Dercia shook her head lightly, as if to reassure me.

"I can regenerate hands or feet to an extent. To be perfectly honest, if I were willing to sacrifice parts of my body, I believe I could endure another six years. And with that much time, I might even find a way out without needing to locate Decay.”

"I don’t want to see you like that.”

"..."

I needed to find a solution.

A way for Dercia to return whole.

"...Still, I’d rather you didn't get too worked up. I didn’t say this because it’s overly optimistic, but if Decay is still alive, he’s likely grown quite old. There’s a chance he could simply die of old age, allowing us to return.”

"No, even if he ages, that bastard…”

I was about to refute her when a possibility surfaced in my mind.

"Ah."

"...Jern?"

"M-master. Just a moment.”

"??”

I turned my Tide Sense toward the inner castle, slowly sweeping through it—

Then frowned deeply and muttered,

"...That’s the worst possible answer. But it’s also the right one.”

Decay…

was inside this castle at this very moment.

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