Chapter 29: Volume 2 - CH 12

“So someone got the jump on us…” Kicking through the remains of the burned-down house, Kyle muttered with a strained expression.

Right after they received reports of the fire, Kyle and his group rushed to the mayor’s residence, but the fire had spread too much that it harmed the surrounding houses, so they were forced to wait for the fire to burn out. Once they had all taken a rest, they returned to the scene, but the residence had fully burned down by then.

“It burned down to the last bit, to the point it almost feels unnatural.” Urza’s facial expression stiffened because of the burning scent.

As it was a house built with stone, it shouldn’t have burned down so easily, but only a mountain of debris remained.

“A fire at such a timing, it can’t be a coincidence.”

“So it was meant as a distraction and means of destroying proof and escaping?”

Urza nodded, and continued.

“If the demon disappeared, that would be the best outcome…”

“I doubt it’ll work that way,” Kyle scratched his cheek.

City guards of Callan searched through the debris, but the mayor was yet to be found. In a way, this situation was a godsend for Kyle’s group. Now they could push all the blame onto the mayor.

“The only problem left is the official clarification, and that basically nothing was resolved, huh.”

The location of the mayor, the safety of the people who had been abducted, and that demon…there are many other problems left to worry about.

“Hmmm…I bet on the one in a million chance that we might find something, but nothing over here, huh.” Seran turned around some of the debris, looking for anything worthwhile.

Of course, that anything worthwhile could only be the Holy Sword Rand.

“I don’t enjoy the feeling of being a thief at such a place, but, well, I also haven’t found what I’d rather not find here.”

He didn’t put it into clear words, but this ‘What he’d rather not find here’ was actually referring to Gazas. According to eyewitnesses, presumably because he was called over, Gazas had entered the mayor’s residence yesterday at noon, and he now completely vanished as well. Surely, Miranda was in turbulence on the inside, but she didn’t show any signs of that, simply returning to the embassy.

“Also, there seemed to be a lot of people working here at this residence, yet we haven’t found a single corpse anywhere.” Seran continued. “Not to mention that we don’t even know where they are.”

“If this was some plot to escape from the eyes of the world, they would have prepared fake corpses, so I guess this was just another way of earning time. However, even if it was, the fact that it even came to this showed that the mayor’s side was dealing with miscalculations in their plan…” Kyle started thinking, when he tried to remember as much from the previous world’s Miranda and her words.

When Miranda was drunk that one time, she said something about ‘If only I had found that secret passage sooner’…In other words, Gazas died underground, past that secret passage?

What if, instead of faking his death, this entire fire was simply meant as a way of hiding the entrance to the secret passage? Kyle stood up, and looked around the area, filled with debris.

Assuming there is a secret passage leading underground, how do I go about finding it…

He couldn’t waste much time. He came up with one possibility, but that required Urza’s strength.

“Ummmm, Urza. Can I have a moment?”

“…What do you want? You’re acting creepy.” Urza took a step back, evidently having a bad feeling about this.

“Well, if my assumption is correct, then there should be a secret passage leading underground from here. However, finding it amongst all this debris would take far too long…so, I want you to use your Earth Spirit to dig a hole, and look for that passage directly.”

“Hold on…You don’t even know where it is, let alone if it really exists, right?”

“Yeah. But, it should be somewhere in these remains.” Kyle looked at the ruins of the residence, to which Urza’s expression tightened up.

“…Listen, compared to simply changing the consistency of the rocks like back at Shildonia’s labyrinth, directly digging a hole takes up much more mana. And even if I had that, if you tell me to just dig around randomly, I’ll run out of mana before I get anywhere!”

“I know that…That’s why I have this mana recovery medicine here.”

The second Urza saw that small bottle, her mouth opened ready to throw a complaint at Kyle.

“I know that all too well. I also know that it works quite well…and tastes awful.”

“Yup, it’ll also weigh on your stomach.”

That magic medicine was expensive, worked wonders, but it was literal hell to consume, which is why not many people really liked using it.

“One would be fine, but how many do you think I’d have to drink!?”

“Please! We don’t have much time! While we’re talking, the mayor might be running away, and Gazas could be in danger!”

“Urk…Alright! I just have to do it, right!?” Urza screamed in resignation.

“I’m sorry, but I’m counting on you…” Kyle apologetically handed her the bottles with ominous violet liquid.

Luckily, after the fourth bottle, Urza managed to find the entrance to the secret passage.

“Alright, we can do with this…You okay?”

Thanks to Lieze’s shoulder, Urza somehow managed to stand.

“Urk, gross…” She held her mouth with a pale face.

“Seriously, great work out there.” Kyle thanked her from the bottom of his heart. “Now then, there’s a good chance we might have to fight those demons again…Seran, let me just confirm one last time, the male demon that attacked you had blue sheep horns on his head, right?”

“Yeah, our eyes met even from a distance, so there’s no doubting it. It annoyed me because he was pretty handsome.” Seran wished misfortune to all men who were more handsome than him.

“I see…”

Amongst demons, not many had sheep horns. Aware of this, a certain demon’s face Kyle encountered popped up in his head.

“On top of that, he seemed awfully arrogant. You ran into a female demon, and a beauty, right? I’d rather have fought her.”

“…Just to let you know, but that kind of naive thought process won’t work with demons, okay.”

“I know that.” Seran saw how serious Kyle was, and nodded. “It’s fine, I’ll imagine that I’m fighting my old hag when she’s serious.”

“Yeah, that’s perfectly fine.” Kyle nodded himself.

“Just what kind of image do you two guys have of Layla-san…” Lieze vowed to snitch on those two once they returned to Rimarze.

“Well, if you’re that determined, then I can rest easy…” Kyle said, and then looked at the two girls.

“You’re not going to tell us to stay behind this late into the game, right?” Lieze glared at Kyle.

“I-I won’t stay behind after coming this far, you hear me?”

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“Well, I personally would feel a lot better if you stayed behind considering your condition right now…but I get it. Just promise me to stay on your guard at all times.”

If the enemy was any average monster or someone from the human folk, Kyle wouldn’t be this worried, but one could never be too careful when dealing with demons. In all honesty, he’d rather run off and leave the two girls behind, but now that he didn’t know the motive and goals of the demons, it would be safer to keep them around where he could see them.

Maybe I just want to have them close to me so that I feel reassurance…

Even for a moment, the deaths of those two popped up in the back of Kyle’s head, but he brushed that away, and set foot underground.

As the mining city that Callan was, there were many abandoned tunnels, and one of them was used as this underground passage. There were small lamps imbued with [Light] here and there, so it was still easy to walk through. After walking for a long time, they reached a large open area that signaled the ending of this passage. Setting foot inside there, Kyle felt a deja-vu. The ceiling of this space was quite high up, connected to several other underground passages. A magic circle was glowing on the ground, a simple altar in the middle, with shadows that resembled humans lying on top.

Kyle remembered seeing that scenery. The scale was quite a way smaller than before, but it was similar to the scenery Kyle had seen when entering the Demon Lord’s throne room.

“The forbidden ritual, huh…” Shildonia muttered while looking at the magic circle.

“Wazzat?” Seran asked. “It is a forbidden technique that turns life force into mana itself…basically, it’s a grotesque way of turning sacrifices into raw mana.”

Approaching it, they saw withered bodies scattered in front of the altar, probably sucked dry of their mana.

“I remember these clothes…” Kyle spotted a body with luxurious clothes, and tilted his head. “I remember, he’s the vice-mayor that greeted us two days ago.”

It was a somewhat puffy and overweight vice-mayor, but now he looked like a mummy so thin.

“Then…that as well?”

Amidst the darkness, Lieze spotted a small mountain of…mass, looking like withered tree branches. That just shows how large their numbers were.

“Over there…these are probably the Callan people who were abducted.” Kyle closed his eyes, and went with silence.

“Basically, they want to use some strong magic, and need a lot of mana, so they’re using the people they kidnapped as sacrifices…?”

“That’s what it boils down to, yeah.” Kyle reaffirmed Lieze’s suspicions, who still couldn’t believe it.

At the same time, Shildonia looked at the magic circle, thinking.

“It seems to be prioritizing quality over quantity…Which sounds awful, granted, but since a sacrifice takes time as you can only use one at a time, this is set up so it can squeeze the most out of every individual. Means they’ll suffer longer as well.” She scratched her head as she looked over at the deceased vice-mayor.

“However, as for the catalysator in the center of it all, this gemstone will soon be at its capacity, and probably grow rampant soon after.” Shildonia was talking about the dim-green colored emerald on the altar.

The way it glowed made it obvious that a lot of mana was inside of it.

“Grow rampant…So, is it going to explode?” As Callan itself might be under the danger of being blown into the sky, Seran carefully stepped backwards.

“Rest assured, with this amount of mana, it won’t be enough to blow up the city…half of it would be the max.”

“That still is one hell of a calamity…So, what kind of magic are they trying to use?”

“Since they’re simply at the stage of gathering mana, it’s hard to say, but because they built this deep underground…” Shildonia spoke that far, and turned around like she realized something.

At the same time, Kyle looked in the same direction. He felt the presence of someone approaching from a path that continued further past this area.

“Everyone, hide!” Kyle gave a sharp order with a quiet voice, and hid behind a rock at the entrance of this cave.

Although some demons have sharper senses than humans, the majority is about equal to humanfolk. Since that female demon only reacted after Kyle stormed inside the room, her senses should not be that sharp. As for the male demon, if his assumptions were correct, Kyle judged that hiding should be enough.

“Don’t speak, and don’t move a muscle.” Kyle entered a stance that would allow for a quick chance into battle, as he and his group became silent.

And then, sounds of footsteps belonging to two individuals slowly approached the open area.

“Hm, it seems like it’s complete.”

A male and female demon appeared. The moment he heard the male demon’s voice, Kyle’s cheek twitched.

“It appears as if we’ve gathered enough mana…Though if I may ask, what are you so angry about?” The male demon showed a bitter smile, as he spoke to the female demon. “Maybe you don’t like this situation? Gathering a human ally and quietly gathering information, did you not agree to this?”

“Yes, I’d like to remind you of the word ‘quietly’ here.” The female demon clearly was annoyed.

“Are you talking about this trash here? I didn’t decide on this, it was all that human. Even sacrificing those who were close to him, humans really are…barbarous.”

“Not about that. I was talking about what happened at that…embassy place! The Demon Lord-sama told us to ‘Leave as many of them alive as possible’, and I won’t let you tell me that you forgot.”

It seemed like the male demon was above the other in ranking, but she clearly wasn’t blindly listening to every command.

“It happened at the request of our supporter, so I had no other choice. And, all of this is us keeping as many of them alive as we can afford to.”

“We were also ordered to not stand out too much.”

“That was also caused by our supporter. An abduction is happening at another location, so go about it in a flashy way, I was told…That however ended up in a failure, so I simply moved there to clean up after them.” The man flashed a devious smile, and continued talking before the female demon could say anything. “Also, are you sure that you haven’t forgotten? Our number one priority was that, yes?”

Being told that, the female demon went silent.

“That should be our Demon Lord-sama’s number one priority…and acquiring that is only possible through the contract with that human. Naturally, I do not enjoy being ordered by a mere human, but I can bear it because of my deep respect for our lord, yes? Even if it’s something so foolish as this,” the male demon faintly waved his hand, which created a sudden blast of wind that flung the body of the vice-mayor against the wall, exploding into many smaller parts.

“Now then, we cleaned up the trash. This cave is going to be the end of me, so I will step outside for some fresh air. How about you join me?” The male demon asked with a smile, and started walking down another path different from the one Kyle and his group came from.

The female demon stayed there for a bit longer, but eventually headed down the same path.

Nobody knew how much time had passed since the two demons left, but after confirming that the air was clear, Kyle signaled everyone that they were free to move again. Immediately after, relieved sighs came from everybody.

“That was one situation I’d rather never go through again…” Urza commented, breathing heavily.

“I started sweating just standing there.” Lieze wiped the sweat from her forehead.

Rather than feeling someone else close to her, she directly felt the pressure from the demons conveyed on her skin.

“What a creepy way of talking that guy had…He’s bound to be the nasty type. Doesn’t fit his looks at all.” Seran was feeling hostility towards the demon for a different reason.

“Still…trying to keep as many humans alive as possible…I heard that the current Demon Lord was trying to keep things peaceful, but that’s a weird thing to hear. Back during my days in Zaales, something like that was unthinkable.” Shildonia exclaimed with a complicated expression.

“But at least he was quite talkative, so we got some valuable intel from that.”

Namely, that their main goal was to gather information, and that they wanted to acquire a certain object. For that, they worked with the mayor.

“Also, the location of the mayor and Gazas.”

As a blessing in disguise, neither of their bodies were in this giant mountain of corpses. Conveniently, now that the demons had disappeared, Kyle’s group walked down the passage the two demons came from.

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