Chapter 3 Screams of the Dead Back when Shinichi was in his second year of elementary school… He was on his way to school with the girl who had been his close friend since kindergarten. “Shinichi, is there a dead cat somewhere?” “What are you talking about?” “I was watching an anime yesterday where a cat died from getting hit by a car. A character on the show buried it, and I thought, What a sweet girl!” “And?” prodded Shinichi. “If I bury a dead cat, then I can be the sweet girl!” she exclaimed, looking all proud. Shinichi just glanced coldly at the dumbass. “You’re the worst for wanting a stray cat to die for your benefit.” “Oh my God, you’re right! I’m terrible!” She immediately accepted his opinion, banging her head on a telephone pole. “I’m so sorry, kitties! I’m sorry!” “Cut it out. You’ll dent the telephone pole.” “I’m so sorry, telephone pole!” she cried, bowing her head in apology to the silent fixture. The other children stared at her in confusion. “You’re so dumb and embarrassing.” “Aww! Hee-hee! You’re making me blush.” “That wasn’t a compliment!” Shinichi snapped. He really didn’t act like a second-year elementary school student. He let out a deep sigh. “How can someone as dumb as you stay alive?” “Hey, I’ve got you to look after me, so I’ll be fine!” “…I’m not allowed to have pets at home.” “Woof! Don’t abandon me!” “Shut up!” shot back Shinichi. Even though she had no brain cells, her humor was top-notch. This was how they spent their days—without anything extraordinary. There were no fierce battles with magic spells, no love stories to make your heart skip a beat, no drama that would ever make it to the screen. Everything was totally normal. Just average. Even so, Shinichi never thought the days were ever monotonous. “…What the…?” Shinichi woke up with a pounding headache. He was confused to see a face with glasses right in front of his. Fey had come down to his couch, snoring next to him. “Hey, wake up,” he said. “Mm-mmm… Ah, good morning.” “Morning. Could you explain what’s going on here?” “Uh. Um…” She rubbed her eyes sleepily, slowly taking in her surroundings. “What?” Fey yelped, jumping back in surprise. “M-master Shinichi, this is wrong! You’re with Arian!” “I’m asking for an explanation because I don’t want anyone to misunderstand!” He accidentally shouted back before clamping a hand over his mouth. If he was too loud and woke up the others, it could signal the beginning of the Great War of Girls. “So did you end up falling asleep here after using the bathroom or something?” “I—I wonder?” She seemed just as confused as him, apparently not remembering anything that had happened. “Like I said last night, I sleep like a rock once I nod off…” “Isn’t that a problem if you have to pee?” “I—I haven’t had that problem since I was ten!” “That’s really late.” Fey turned bright-red and tried to explain. A pained expression flashed across his face. “Wh-what’s wrong?” “Nothing. I just remembered a bad dream.” He forced a smile, avoiding her concerned gaze. He wasn’t about to tell a stranger that the girl in his dream hadn’t stopped wetting the bed when she died. Why did I dream about that now…? Maybe sleeping in a more modern concrete building was making him more nostalgic about his time on Earth. Or maybe the ghosts in the tomb had him wondering if she could’ve become one, too. There’s no way. He immediately shot that thought down. And it wasn’t because he loved science. She was a dumbass and a good person. She wouldn’t have even thought about holding a grudge and haunting anyone. “Shinichi?” asked Fey. “The sun hasn’t even come up yet.” Again, he evaded Fey’s question, peeking out the window into the darkness. “It’s a bit early, but we’re already awake. I’ll go get the others. You make breakfast. You can just get the bread and water in the kitchen.” “O-okay! You’ll love my fish pie!” “…There’s not a single fish in there.” “Oh, man!” Shinichi went upstairs as Fey hung her head and headed toward the kitchen. Once he got upstairs, he poked and prodded himself in examination. It doesn’t look like she stole anything or poisoned me. He did have a headache when he woke up, but he couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Even his headache had already gone away. It would have been a perfect opportunity to do something nefarious since everyone was asleep, but it seemed like she hadn’t done anything. She must have really been walking around half-asleep. Can she actually be a girl who dreams of being an explorer? Thinking about her behavior and words, she didn’t seem like an extremely dangerous person. Maybe he was just being too suspicious. But he couldn’t shake the feeling he was falling for something as he went to wake up the other girls. They went downstairs and ate their fill of the bread and water prepared by Fey and then filed back to the Elven Tomb. “I don’t hear any golems this time,” said Arian. “It’d be great if those were the last ones,” added Shinichi. With Arian in the lead, they cautiously explored the second basement floor. However, they still didn’t find anything of interest. The third basement floor was practically the same. When they reached the fourth basement floor, they were starting to wonder if the trip had been a waste of time. But its layout was different. This time, they found themselves facing a round metal door. “This looks promising,” Shinichi acknowledged. The door made him think of a vault in a bank since it seemed unnecessarily heavy and strong. He walked up to the door, heart thumping in anticipation. “It’s locked. And we need…to crack a combination lock to open it.” He gripped the rusted dial, managing to get it to turn, though he couldn’t see the numbers on it. It wouldn’t serve much use. “Now would be a good time to pry it open.” “I might be able to. It should be fine. There’s no Protection spell on it.” Arian had a crooked smile as she drew her magic sword, but Shinichi put up a hand to stop her. “Before we do that, could you check for any traps, Celes?” “Understood,” replied Celes, casting Clairvoyance and inspecting the door in detail. “There is nothing suspicious, as far as I can see. This appears to be a library.” “Seriously?!” said Shinichi. “Would you like to take a look?” Celes took Shinichi’s hand, using Link to share the information with him. He saw a large room packed full of bookshelves. “Whoa! Most of the books are totally falling apart, but there are some in good condition!” “R-really?!” said Fey in surprise. She grabbed Celes’s other hand, cheeks flushing when she saw all the ancient books. “A-amazing! This is a huge discovery! W-we need to get in there!” “I’ll take care of that.” Arian smiled as she readied her sword. At that moment, Shinichi suddenly felt a question nagging in the back of his mind. Wait. The metal forklift had been rusted away to almost nothing, and the concrete walls are cracked. How would paper books remain relatively untouched? But before the answer came to him, Arian had slashed the giant metal door. “Hi-yah!” In the span of a breath, she cut through the round door four times to make a square opening. Pieces of the door launched out, and a shower of broken paper scraps fluttered around her. “What?!” cried Arian. “Shit!” shouted Shinichi, realizing his mistake a moment too late. “Wh-what was that?!” asked Fey. “Oh no! The books are all in bits and pieces!” said Rino upon frantically looking into the vault with Fey. Tens of thousands of books had been reduced to paper scraps in the air. “I’m incredibly sorry. This is my fault for failing to discover the trap,” said Celes. “No, Celes. This wasn’t a trap,” Shinichi consoled, trying to cheer up the maid as she hung her head dejectedly. He was angry at himself for having let the lure of treasure hurry him to action instead of thinking things through. “I should have realized it when I saw that the books were in decent condition compared to the rusted metal. This vault had been filled with an inert gas.” “A what?” asked Rino. “A gas that prevents things from rotting,” explained Shinichi. Inorganic materials like metal broke down from a chemical reaction to oxygen in the air. If objects were stored in an inert gas with low oxygen levels, they didn’t break down as quickly. “There was a difference in pressure between the vault filled with the inert gas and the atmosphere outside. That caused it to blow out,” he continued. A large volume of the gas must have been pumped into the vault. Before they cut the door, it was almost like a balloon. They could have found a method to slowly release the gas if they had just taken their time, but they’d chosen to force their way. That caused all the gas to burst out at once, and the force destroyed the books. “But based on the way these books exploded, I’m guessing they were already totally decayed on the inside,” observed Shinichi. Even though it was filled with inert gas, that didn’t mean there was no oxygen in the vault. For example, there was no way for them to remove the oxygen trapped between the pages of the books. The pages would’ve decayed slowly over thousands of years to the point where a light touch would make them crumble to dust. “But I really screwed up,” he said, regretting his decision deeply. As long as the books had maintained their shape, there was a chance they could have fixed them with magic. “I-I’m sorry, I rushed you…,” said Fey. “No, there wasn’t another way to get into the vault anyway. There’s nothing we could have done. Let’s just move on,” he said, trying to cheer up Fey who was bowing so low in apology that her head was about to reach her knees. He stepped into the vault, which was covered in a blanket of paper. The party broke up to see if they could find any books that happened to survive. Instead of a book, Shinichi found small boxes displayed near the wall. “Is this plastic?” Shinichi went and picked one up to examine it. It had yellowed and deformed, but the smooth material was a familiar synthetic resin. He wasn’t surprised, since he’d already found a forklift and an elevator in this place. But his eyes opened wide when he opened the box and saw its contents. “Cassette tapes? And is this a floppy disk?” He knew these things existed, but he had never used the old-school media format himself. These had been preserved with the books in the inert gas. “The data…doesn’t seem readable.” The cases of the cassettes and floppy disks were intact but the magnetic tape and disks inside had to be past their life span. Right next to them was a machine that appeared to be a computer to read the disks, but it wouldn’t start. Shinichi assumed its insides were corroded away and gave up, but he did have one question. “Did cassette tapes and floppy disks always look like this?” In the past, there was an industry war for the next new storage medium. That meant the different mediums were not compatible with one another, causing users great heartache. It also meant Shinichi might not be familiar with all their available shapes and sizes. But even when he took that into consideration, these cassettes and disks were stark contrasts to those used on Earth. Shinichi saw there were some very faint characters on the labels, which were in the elven language that he’d seen yesterday. He let out a huge sigh of relief as soon as he realized that. “This isn’t Earth. This really is another world,” he said to himself. “What was that?” Arian had been searching nearby and happened to hear his voice. Shinichi turned a little red in embarrassment but explained his worries. “I’d been considering the terrible possibility that this wasn’t another world but Earth in the future.” “Hmm. Why?” “Well, there was a forklift and elevator, which we’ve made on Earth using science.” Maybe after Shinichi had been summoned, Earth had been destroyed by this calamity, all the scientific advances had been lost, and very few people had survived. The survivors could use a new power—magic—bestowed to them by the calamity. A new world was made, one completely different from the scientific society of the past. That eventually became this world of Obum, and Shinichi hadn’t originally been summoned across the divide between different worlds. He’d really just been transported from the past to the future. At least, that was the possibility that’d been running through his mind. “Logically, it’s impossible, considering the story about how Obum originally was one large continent that split into three, since it’s inconsistent with Earth.” But that was a legend. It could have been a lie, which meant he could get it to fit his theory. However, this physical evidence in the form of preserved storage mediums dissolved his doubts. They were different from Earth in form and in the language on their labels. There was no doubt this was a different world than his own. “On top of that, I can assume this wasn’t Earth in the twenty-first century, since we use flash drives and optical disks. I’m just happy it didn’t turn into a Planet of the Apes type of situation.” “I don’t really understand, but I’m happy you’re happy!” Arian broke into a smile. She didn’t follow his explanation, but it gave her some relief to see him this way. Shinichi smiled back and then looked at the cassette tapes again. “The technical advancements of the ancient civilization are eons ahead of the rest of this world. But it’s not as far along as Earth.” Even if he combined the data from all the cassettes and floppy disks on the shelf, it wouldn’t come close to the amount of data in the smartphone in Shinichi’s pocket. “But some aspects are far past Earth, like the golem security guard.” But that must have only been possible with the use of magic, not science. “It would seem the existence of magic results in slower technological advancements.” Because of the existence of Healing spells, the medical sciences hadn’t made much progress, including pharmacology and surgery. This ancient civilization had magic at its disposal, which was all too convenient. It was safe to assume its technology advanced slower than it could have. While Shinichi was talking, they heard Rino’s voice call for them from farther in the library. “Shinichi, can you come here?” “What is it?” He set down the cassettes, jogging over to her to find Rino and Celes had dug a large case out from under the mountain of scrap paper. “We found something that looks like a treasure chest,” said Rino. “Great, well done.” “Hee-hee, I was just trying to be helpful.” She giggled as he gently patted her head and knelt to examine the silver box. “Your treasure chest is an aluminum case,” he said. It resembled the kind that you might use to transport a camera. Regardless, there had to be something of value hidden in there. “Wh-what do you think is in there?” said Fey, coming over to join them, her eyes curious. “I used Clairvoyance to look inside, but it appears there is another smaller box within this box,” said Celes. “I hope it’s not like those Russian nesting dolls,” replied Shinichi with a wry smile as he continued to examine the box and found a plate attached to the top of it. “‘Here lies proof we lived,’ huh,” said Shinichi. “Huh?” asked Rino. “It’s written here.” He pointed to the elven characters engraved into the plate. “Y-you can read ancient languages?!” cried Fey. “I practiced yesterday,” he said, reaching for the clasps as Fey stared at him in admiration. “Is it a good idea to open it?” asked Celes, still thinking of the inert gas incident from earlier. “No idiot would put a trap on something they left behind to be discovered one day,” replied Shinichi with a reassuring smile as he undid the clasps. The lid was almost stuck, and the moment he opened it, the air around them seemed to flow into the box. “Vacuum packed. They were really careful.” He peeked inside. Just as Celes had said, he saw another, smaller box, which he removed and carefully lifted its lid to find eight books and one letter. He first opened and read the letter, confirming that his assumption about the tomb was correct. “I was right. This was an underground shelter built by an ancient civilization.” “A shelter?” asked Rino. “Yeah, a place to hide from the calamity—a massive asteroid.” By the time Rino had read him the legends about the demon world, he had made this guess. He wouldn’t have been too surprised if the Evil God had actually fallen from the sky, since anything was possible in a world with magic and the existence of the Goddess. But when he thought about things that fell from the sky and destroyed worlds, an asteroid was at the top of the list. “Shinichi, what’s a shelter? What’s an asteroid?” asked Rino. “Oh right, let’s start with asteroids.” It wasn’t only her. Everyone was looking at him in confusion. He realized he’d have to explain it using simple terms. “Asteroids are massive rocks that fly through outer space. They’re like the moon, sort of.” “A rock as big as the moon…,” said Rino, her face pale from fear. “The moon is kept in place with gravity and centrifugal force, but that’s not the case with asteroids. In their case, gravity causes the asteroid to speed up. It can crash into the planet at a speed of dozens of miles per second.” At heart, the scheme with the pillars near the elves’ village was the same principle, but the scale and destructive force was a world of difference with an asteroid. “When an asteroid strikes a planet, the area of impact is engulfed by a sea of flames as a result of a large explosion, causing earthquakes and floods throughout the world, destroying every city. On top of that, the shock kicks dirt and debris into the air, blocking out the sun’s light and throwing the world into an extended winter.” “A disaster causing a long winter…,” repeated Celes. She must have been unable to imagine the scale of the devastation as it didn’t seem to click in her mind. If Shinichi hadn’t watched simulations of these disasters on TV or the Internet, he might have had trouble imagining it, too. “Anyway, the entire world would be devastated by the asteroid. The long winter would turn the surface into an environment unsafe for people to live in.” There was a similar time period recorded in the church’s holy book, even though they changed the calamity into the army of the Evil God. “This shelter was built as an underground evacuation center, as a place to hide from the world’s destruction,” finished Shinichi. “An underground evacuation center?” asked Rino. “You know how the demon god brought everyone beneath the surface to escape the calamity? It’s the same thing.” “Oh, I see!” Rino finally got it. This shelter was smaller and more shallow than the demon world, but it could be used to ride out the first stages of the disaster. “But there’s a problem. Even if they survived the earthquakes and tsunamis by staying underground, they had to overcome the long winter. It would have taken hundreds of years before people were able to live on the surface again.” “They had to live here all that time? It must have been hard. I bet they were hungry.” Rino pressed her hands to her stomach, imagining what it must have been like. Shinichi smiled at her before looking back at the letter. “You’re right. There wasn’t enough food for them to live for years in the underground shelter. That’s why they used a certain piece of equipment.” “What?” asked Rino. “I think it’ll be easier to explain if we go downstairs and see it.” He slid the letter into his breast pocket and took out the eight books preserved within the case. Shinichi carefully flipped through a few of the pages, but they were in perfect condition. He saw no yellowing pages or any damage from bugs. “Great, everything is still intact.” Unlike the rest of the books in the vault, these ones must have been made with paper and ink with a particularly long life in mind. He didn’t have time to sit and read through each of them, so he went to put them in his backpack, but Fey hesitantly stopped him. “Th-they look heavy. Would you like me to carry half?” “Maybe…,” he murmured as he thought for a moment. There was a chance they would still need to fend off the elves or more ghosts. That meant Arian and Celes needed to keep themselves unburdened, and he didn’t want to ask Rino to carry the heavy books since she was so small. He could carry them all himself, but if there was an accident or if he were attacked, all the books would be in danger. It would be safer to divide them up. That said, Shinichi still didn’t entirely trust Fey, so he checked the titles of each of the books and gave her the four that seemed of lesser importance. “Sure. Could you take these?” “O-of course! Thank you. I—I get to carry an ancient manuscript!” she said, shaking in excitement as she slid the books into her own bag. All of them were titled A History of the Anticum Empire and seemed to be a detailed history of the civilization that built this shelter. I’m really interested in reading those, but I don’t think they’re related to our objective. With a series of strange events, it would have been easy for them to forget their original mission: They had actually come to the Elven Tomb to find information related to the Goddess Elazonia’s identity. It was unlikely that the Goddess, with a stranglehold on the entire Uropeh continent, would only appear in the history of one country as a minor god. These are our best leads. The four books in Shinichi’s possession had titles like A World History or Myths and Religions of the World, making them much more likely to hold the key to their puzzle. “Right, I think we’ve actually achieved our goal with this room. Let’s go downstairs and take a look anyway.” As the group walked out of the library vault, Shinichi counted his blessings, thankful for the ancient people who took the time to preserve these valuable resources. When they made their way down to the fifth basement floor, they found themselves facing another heavy metal door. Unlike the one in the fourth-floor library, this one was left ajar. “Did someone come here before us?” asked Rino. “No, I think they probably forgot to close it on their way out,” replied Shinichi as she walked through the door. Cool air flowed through the room. It had the same structure as the floors above, forming one massive room with no ornamentation. The only difference was that this room was lined with hundreds of large metal boxes shaped more like beds than bookshelves. “Th-they’re a little creepy. They look like coffins,” stammered Fey. “Exactly right,” said Shinichi. “Wh-what?!” She trembled in fear as Shinichi walked up to the closest box. There was a transparent glass window on the top half. Shinichi wiped away the dust and peered in. “……” He stared silently in for a moment, then closed his eyes and brought his hands together in prayer. “What’s in there?” asked Rino, running over in curiosity and peeking inside. She locked a stare with a pair of empty eye sockets. “Ack! Th-there’s a person in there!” She was so surprised, her legs almost gave out from under her, but Celes supported her and saw it for herself. “The ears are long. This is an elf, not a human,” she observed. “A-are they alive…?” asked Fey timidly. “No. It looks saponified,” answered Shinichi, moving on to the next box and observing what was inside. That one appeared dried and mummified. There were differences in the preservation of their bodies, but almost all the approximately six hundred boxes housed an elven body. “It is called a tomb. I’m not surprised there are dead bodies, but why are they so well-preserved?” asked Arian. In their culture, they buried their dead without any alterations to the body. Some places practiced cremation or burials at sea. She’d never heard of anyone bothering to preserve the body. She found the culture of the ancient elves very hard to understand, but Shinichi explained the situation to her, expression serious. “This place wasn’t originally a tomb. It was an artificial hibernation facility.” “Artificial…hibernation?” “Well, you know what hibernation is, right? It’s when bears sleep through long winters.” “Yeah.” “These people tried to recreate that to sleep through the long winter caused by the asteroid. That’s what this was for,” explained Shinichi, indicating one of the boxes that contained the elves. A common setup in science fiction stories involved people using low temperatures to prevent the body’s decay while they took a one-way journey to a far-off destination. It seemed this ancient civilization had created the means to do that. “However, it appears their long nap turned into an eternal rest,” said Celes. “Yeah, about that…” Shinichi grimaced, taking out the letter from his breast pocket. It essentially detailed the fact they had constructed an underground shelter and would enter hibernation. In the letter, they were leaving proof of their existence in case it didn’t go to plan, hoping people in the future or even intelligent life visiting from outer space might find it. “They hurried to finish the equipment because the asteroid was coming, but there was a chance the equipment would fail. However, we can’t discount the possibility that it succeeded,” he said, looking in another one. The elf inside was completely dead. “Arian, could you cut the bottom for me?” “I could, but are you sure it’s okay?” “Yeah. The elf and the equipment are both completely dead.” “All right. Hi-yah!” she yelled, slicing the bottom of the box while trying to avoid the body inside. Shinichi investigated the equipment, seeing a number of cables and circuit boards. In the very center, he saw a few familiar crystals. “Magic conductors. So it did use magic.” There’s no way a society that relied on floppy disks would be able to accomplish artificial hibernation through science alone, since it was something they still hadn’t been able to accomplish on Earth. Just like the golem’s gun, this piece of equipment was a combination of magic and science. “People always quote Arthur C. Clarke when they say ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’ but I wonder what he’d have to say about this equipment, where sufficiently advanced technology and magic came together.’” Shinichi was unable to sort out his complicated emotions, but he was able to confirm his theory was correct. “It actually didn’t matter if they were hibernating or if they were preserving dead bodies. This equipment would resurrect them.” Magic conductors weren’t just something you could store magic in. If you repeatedly cast the same spell onto a magic conductor, you could create an “imprint” of that spell, which would activate simply by adding magic into the conductor at a later time. In other words, they prepared separate magic conductors, ones to supply magic and ones to cast Resurrection. Attach some sort of timer, even a mechanical one, and the person inside could be woken up at a predetermined time in the future. “But the magic conductor can’t retain a magical charge for that long. They must have improved it somehow,” he continued. When he looked closely, the color of the magic conductors in the chamber was different from the natural ones he’d seen so far. The ancient elven society must have used its advanced magic and technology to develop a new type of magic conductor. Like grounding preventing electrical discharge, it prevented magical discharge. “But there’s no magic left…” None of the crystals in the equipment had any of the glitter indicating they were full of magic. They were all empty. The elf is still dead. Why has it run out of magic? The new magic conductor must not have been the best at storing magic, huh… He stared inside, wondering, and motioned for Arian to come and join him. “What’s up?” she asked. “Can you cut out one of these magic conductors for me?” he asked. “I dunno… I’m starting to feel like a grave robber…” “Huh. We’re not like grave robbers. We are.” “That’s nothing to brag about!” snapped Arian in frustration as Shinichi puffed out his chest. Fey also voiced her objections. “M-master Shinichi. An explorer shouldn’t stoop to being a grave robber!” “Fine. Gimme those books in your bag.” “…I—I guess exploration comes with its own sacrifices.” “Heh-heh-heh. You get it,” he replied. “Yet another person poisoned by Shinichi.” Arian sighed as she watched Fey give in to her desire to explore, even if she had to sacrifice her morals. The hero slid her sword into the artificial hibernation chamber to cut out a fist-size magic conductor. Shinichi wrapped the crystal in a handkerchief and placed it in his backpack before pointing at the body inside the chamber. “Celes, can you resurrect them?” She thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No. I think I would be able to return the body to its original state, but it would be a soulless doll.” “I thought as much,” replied Shinichi, hanging his head. “I imagined you might be able to bring back the physical body with their DNA. But the mind? Their brain? It won’t be so simple.” Even though this was a magical world, Shinichi hadn’t seen any evidence of souls. That would just be all too convenient for his mission. A soul was nothing more than activity between the person’s neurons. The elven body in front of them might be well-preserved on the outside, but the brain inside must have looked like melted wax. All its memories were lost. Even if they were to resurrect the body, it would be nothing more than a living doll. Celes was right. “But they would have had a way to resurrect the mind along with the body…,” he insisted. After all, they were talking about an ancient civilization advanced enough to create this complex of a magical machine. This should have been an issue they brought up earlier. They wouldn’t have put six hundred elves into artificial hibernation if they didn’t have some solution for it. “Besides, it had to have worked for some people,” he continued, glancing around again at all the hibernation chambers. The vast majority were closed and gathering dust. Only ten of them were opened with no bodies inside. “If they’re empty, does that mean some elves resurrected?” asked Arian. “Yeah. Clarissa’s ancestors. The ones who founded the elves’ village,” answered Shinichi. “What?!” It was the most obvious answer. “The elves in the village are very knowledgeable because they’re from an ancient civilization. Well, their knowledge has deteriorated compared to way back when.” There was no way ten survivors could have possessed all the knowledge of the ancient civilization, even with their brains intact. Plus, they must have had their hands too full from cultivating the forest and creating the infrastructure for their new lives to hand all of it down to their children. But that brought him to a question: Why didn’t the elves come back and open the vault to the library? Instead of accessing the most important information from the past, they sealed it up tightly enough that even they couldn’t enter, let alone some other enemy. The rate of success is too low if only ten out of six hundred people came back from the artificial hibernation. Even if this rushed development was their only hope, it was too big of a risk if the chance of success was 1.7 percent. The living spaces above indicated they didn’t need to go into hibernation as soon as the asteroid hit. It would have taken a few months for them to run out of food, time they could have used to improve this piece of equipment. And why didn’t the resurrected try to save the others? This whole thing meant there was a way to revive the brain. If the resurrected had utilized that method on their sleeping brethren, they would have been able to save more elves. But that didn’t seem to be the case. They just left the bodies there and sealed the shelter closed. Does that mean it wasn’t an accident, like a defect in the machines? Shinichi felt a chill run down his spine, scanning the room. This floor held nothing other than the quiet rows of coffins that one would expect to find in a tomb. There had to be something else hiding below. “Let’s keep going,” said Shinichi. “Are we going to leave the elves here?” asked Rino. “I’d like to bury them, but we don’t have time.” “…Okay.” Shinichi nudged her from behind, and they went to leave the room, heading to the final basement floor. At the bottom of the long stairway was a space about as big as a school gym. On the left side of the room was a pile of rusted metal that looked like an electrical generator. On the right was a fifty-foot-tall magic conductor, towering over them with a blue-white light. “Looks like a power room,” said Shinichi. The electricity and magic necessary for keeping the shelter operating were all in its confines. “And there’s still magic left—,” he started to say, but before he could finish, the light started to seep out from the magic conductor. It formed into the shape of a person’s arm, blasting faster than an arrow toward the person with the largest amount of magic in the room: Rino. “Ack?!” she yelped, frozen in place. “W-watch out!” cried Fey, immediately jumping forward to wrap her arms around Rino. Fey was left defenseless as the arm threatened to pierce through her to get to Rino, but Arian sliced it off with her magic sword. “Are you okay?!” asked Arian. “I’m fine. Are you all right, Fey?” replied Rino. “I-I’m okay, b-but…,” stammered Fey, pointing a shaking finger at the magic conductor. The sliced arm pulled back as if giving up, but in its place grew hundreds of blue-white appendages, crawling out of the magic conductor. “It’s like the Thousand-Armed Kannon…,” murmured Shinichi. But Kannon was a merciful bodhisattva who saved people. This was the exact opposite. It was an amalgamation of dead spirits, aiming to steal magic by killing the living. It feared fading from existence; it would do anything to continue existing, even without any purpose or will. As proof, hundreds of faces appeared from the magic conductor, faces twisted and terrifying. “““AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!””” The faces let out a collective shriek that froze the hearts of the living. Their cries embodied jealousy and fear of eternal destruction. “A legion of souls…,” muttered Shinichi, looking at the terrifying mass of the dead. A shiver ran up his spine, but he understood now. “This is what killed the elves, and it is also the dead elves themselves.” During the artificial hibernation, an elf must have turned into a ghost. Even though the elf knew they had been promised resurrection, it didn’t change the fact that they were dead. The magic in their body must have started to move on its own, fearing complete annihilation. To keep itself alive, it fed on the closest sources of magic: the elves sleeping in artificial hibernation and the magic conductors holding magic for Resurrection someday. The companions turned into ghosts themselves, joining the first elf to perish before eventually turning into this legion. “That explains why only a few elves were resurrected and why they didn’t have time to open the library vault,” Shinichi guessed. The few elves lucky enough to wake from the hibernation must have fled for their lives, running from the giant mass of magic that had devoured the rest of their kind. They sealed the underground shelter to prevent the monster from escaping and then built the village nearby to monitor the shelter while they waited for its magic to run out and for it to succumb to weakness. But there was one problem: The legion had possessed the towering magic conductor in the power room and the security golems—all in an attempt to avoid its demise. And it stayed there for all this time until their new prey arrived. Now. “““AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!””” A group of hands stretched toward them, toward the food it had been denied for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, Shinichi’s team wasn’t a helpless prize for it to pick off. “Hah!” cried Arian, jumping with her sword. “Slice it to pieces. Edge Whip,” Celes chanted. Their collective efforts severed many of the encroaching hands. The legion didn’t have the intelligence to make skilled attacks. It rushed directly at them. Hacking off its arms was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. However, no matter how many arms they severed and sliced, they just kept coming without slowing down. “Tsk. This should be working…,” said Celes. “But this will never end!” cried Arian. Arian and Celes would run out of strength before the legion could deplete its magical power. When Shinichi came to that conclusion, he picked up Rino who was frozen in fear and shouted to the others. “Okay! Let’s run away!” “What?!” cried Arian in surprise. “Hold back our enemies. Fortress,” said Celes, creating a wall of light that stretched across the entire room. They all hurried up the stairs while the legion was held back. “Shinichi, should we really run away?!” Arian asked hesitantly. It was around when they had made it back up to the fifth basement floor. “Well, there’s no real need to fight it.” “…Oh,” said Arian in a pathetic tone. That hadn’t even occurred to her. She had let herself get swept away by the feeling of being in a boss battle against an amalgamation of evil spirits at the bottom of a huge dungeon, but she really didn’t need to fight against it. They had no obligation to defeat it. “We have what we came for, and I’m happy that I figured out the mystery of the tomb. Let’s leave,” Shinichi insisted. “You are so selfish.” Celes looked exasperated, but she began reciting the incantation for Teleport. But Rino stopped her. “Wait, please. Won’t people be in danger if we leave the evil ghost here?” “Ack…” Shinichi was lost for words when Rino hit the nail on the head. The legion housed the magic of the overpowered elves—hundreds of them, at that. If it ever escaped the tomb, it could result in the deaths of countless humans and animals in the area. What it had in power, it didn’t have in intelligence. If the elves gathered the whole village together, they might be able to defeat it, but they wouldn’t make it out of the battle without casualties. “And the ghost’s faces looked really glum,” continued Rino, shifting her eyes to her feet as she remembered the twisted expressions on the legion. Without any form of intelligence, the legion had lost its sense of self, but its faces showed that it continued to fear death, continued to feel pain forever. “Shinichi,” she pleaded, “you said it’s an act of kindness to help them move on to the next world.” “…I guess we have no choice,” said Shinichi, holding his hands up in a show of surrender to her tearful entreaty. “If we succeed, the elves will owe us big time. I guess we’re going ghost hunting.” “Thank you so much!” cried Rino happily as she wrapped her arms around him. He stroked her head gently, but his mind was turning at full speed. “But it’s going to be dangerous to fight it,” he said. Only Arian and Celes were capable of fighting against it. They would need the Demon King’s assistance if they even wanted a chance at winning. But that posed another problem: They were on the far easternmost point of the continent and the Demon King’s castle was in the far west. Even if Rino supplied Celes with magic, they could only Teleport that distance once per day. If they came back with the Demon King, they’d need at least a day to recover their magic. The legion could cause a lot of damage in that time. “If we have to fight it with what we have on hand, then there’s only one way…,” he said. There was an obvious way to defeat the legion, but it required a huge sacrifice. As Shinichi mulled it over, his gaze naturally shifted over to Fey. “Wh-what are you—? Oh.” She finally realized what Shinichi’s plans were. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and her face went pale, but she nodded, a pained grimace on her face. “I-it is hard to abandon my dream of being an explorer, but I can’t trade it for people’s lives.” “…Okay. Let’s do it,” said Shinichi. He felt like his heart would break, but he readied himself and started up the stairs again to the fourth basement floor, which housed the library vault. “What exactly are you going to do?” asked Arian. “Just going to reuse an old strategy.” Shinichi placed a hand on one of the large pillars supporting the ceiling. “I’m going to destroy the shelter and make it cave in on top of the legion. You showed me that physical attacks work on ghosts.” “That’s like…,” started Arian. He’d used the same method when he destroyed the Cathedral of Boar Kingdom and saved her from Hube. “It really sucks. This is a precious piece of history and a collection of advanced technology. But Fey’s right. I can’t trade people’s lives for it,” he said. “That’s not what I would expect from the person telling us to run away,” Celes added. “Ha-ha-ha, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” replied Shinichi, playing dumb and taking Rino’s hand. “I’m not strong enough on my own. Will you lend me some magic?” “Yes!” she replied with an energetic nod. After all, she was the one who had said they should defeat the legion. She closed her eyes and concentrated, supplying energy to Shinichi. His veins felt like they were on fire. He did his best to withstand the heat and started to use magic to create the chemical composition. “C7H5N3O6. Explode into a whirlwind of destruction! Element Conversion!” He used Rino’s magic to turn the entire giant pillar into TNT, the explosive that had practically become the poster child of all explosives. “Just two more pillars—” “Shinichi!” called Arian as he wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked back and saw a mass of flailing blue-white arms and faces rushing up the stairs and into the vault. “It’s here already?!” he shouted. He had hoped that it wouldn’t want to leave the magic conductor and would wait downstairs while they worked, but apparently, that was wishful thinking. “You keep working! I’ll hold it back!” yelled Arian, leaping forward to buy them some time, but they probably only had a few minutes. He needed to hurry up and finish this. “Celes, set a timer on this pillar so it explodes in three minutes—in exactly one hundred eighty seconds.” “Understood.” “Fey, just to be safe, start counting to one hundred eighty. Don’t stop, no matter what,” he continued. “O-okay!” she replied. Everyone jumped into action to follow his orders. “Set alight after one hundred eighty seconds. Delay Fire,” Celes chanted. “One, two, three…,” counted Fey, starting as soon as Celes cast her spell on the pillar of dynamite. Shinichi grabbed Rino’s hand and left the others behind to run to the next pillar. “Let’s go!” “Count on me!” chirped Rino, happy that she could help him out. But there was a part of her that was nervous as she lent Shinichi magic to turn the second pillar into an explosive. “Argh…!” cried Shinichi, feeling like he was being stabbed with hot needles. He wasn’t used to handling such large amounts of magic. He glanced back and saw Arian somehow managing to hold back the legion by taking advantage of the narrow entrance to the vault. “Last one!” he yelled and ran to the third pillar, gathering the last of his energy and casting the final spell. Behind him was Celes, who had finished casting Delay Fire on the second pillar, and Fey, who had continued to count, as instructed. “Okay, Arian, come here!” he shouted. “All right!” she called back. She put the last of her strength into seven final attacks, cutting off a number of the legion’s arms before turning her back to run as fast as she could back to Shinichi. She had intended to stop in front of them, but her feet slid on the scattered papers on the floor, and she crashed into Shinichi’s chest. “Aaah!” “You seem in a bit of a rush.” Shinichi managed to catch her and remain standing while Celes finished casting her spell on the final pillar. She completed her last incantation as the legion rushed at them, scraps of paper whirling around it. “Carry our bodies into the far corners of sky. Teleport.” The party felt a faint sensation of vertigo as their bodies disappeared from the library. The legion’s arms in front of their eyes were replaced with the blue sky. They appeared high in the air above the ruins. Gravity started to pull them back down to the ground. “Aaah?!” “Fly.” Celes quickly cast a spell to stop them from falling. All the while, Fey kept counting as instructed. She was just finishing. “One hundred seventy-eight, one hundred seventy-nine, one hundred eighty.” At that moment, the legion was standing in the library, having just lost its prey, and the three pillars that held up the roof detonated in a massive explosion. It might have stayed intact if it were right after the shelter had been constructed, but as it was, it had been weakened by age over the millennia until it was close to collapsing on its own. It couldn’t withstand the explosion. The pillars on the fourth basement floor exploded, destroying the floor of the third. The second and first basement floors followed in an avalanche of concrete and dirt. Already weakened by the explosion, the legion was crushed without even an inch of space to move. The avalanche continued down, crushing the elves’ bodies on the fifth basement floor before swallowing up the magic conductor on the lowest floor. Obviously, Shinichi couldn’t see all that from the sky, but they did see a huge crater form in the forest floor. A cloud of dust blew up, almost reaching them. They could assume the dead had finally been put to rest beneath the soil. “Will the ghosts sleep peacefully now?” asked Rino. “Thanks to you,” said Shinichi, trying to let her know that it was all right to be proud as she glanced down sadly. He didn’t believe in heaven or an afterlife, but he did hope they would rest in peace. He put his hands together in a silent prayer, and the others joined him. They landed on the edge of the crater once the dust had settled to make sure the plan had worked, but they didn’t see any sign of the legion. Even though there was no other way to get out of this mess, everything ended up going according to the Goddess’s plan… Shinichi was painfully lost in thought. Ironically, they had succeeded in destroying the Elven Tomb, a longtime goal of the church. But they were still an enemy of the church. They must have wanted to destroy it to erase any clues about the ancient civilization and the Goddess Elazonia. At first glance, the pieces of technology in the underground shelter might not have appeared to have any connection to the Goddess, but there did seem to be one thing in common. Those artificial hibernation chambers… What if they really were able to preserve a person’s memories? Then, once the body had been resurrected, saved memories and information could be installed into the new brain. Ignoring any moral qualms, that would totally re-create the person who lived before. Shinichi knew of a similar system. The undying heroes can be resurrected, even if their bodies are completely destroyed. If that system is taking backups of the person’s mind and body, it means the elves who made the artificial hibernation chambers possessed the same skills as the Goddess Elazonia. He’d considered it before: What if there was a method to upload your mind and download it back into a clone of your body? But neuroscience hadn’t advanced that far yet. The ancient civilization hadn’t caught up to scientists of the twenty-first century, although they had to the twentieth century. That would have given them enough background knowledge to come up with the same method. And as long as you can imagine something, you can make it real in this world. This world of Obum was different from Earth. It had a way of allowing people to alter reality to match their imaginations. That was the power of magic. Even if science couldn’t save backups and administer installations of memories, that wasn’t out of the realm of possibility with the use of magic. In other words, if you had the knowledge from the ancient civilization and the power akin to the Demon King, you would be able to create a system of “undying heroes.” Which means the Goddess Elazonia— “Shinichi, look!” Arian was tapping him on the shoulder. Shinichi glanced up as his thoughts were interrupted. He saw some familiar faces. “Wh-wh-what did you people do?!” screeched Clarissa as she and her two friends appeared from the forest. “We heard a horrible noise coming from the village, prepared ourselves for dioxin poisoning, and came back, and…” Her face was a complicated mixture of shock, fear, and anger. Even her friends looked confused. “The dioxin thing was a lie,” Shinichi told them calmly. “Wh-what are you—? Pff! I already figured that out!” retorted Clarissa. “You deserve an Ig-Nobel Prize for saving face,” he said, beyond annoyed at the elf to the point where he started to feel sorry for her. “Anyway, what is going on? This is where the tomb should be!” “Heh. Well, since you asked…,” he replied, looking at the gaggle of elves before overdramatically announcing, “we turned the Elven Tomb and its ghost into dust!” “Really?!” cried Clarissa, her face lighting up. It seemed the elves had continued to protect the tomb for fear of the legion and as a cultural heritage site. “As you can see, the ghost has been destroyed. There’s no longer anything tying you to this forest!” continued Shinichi. “In other words…,” started Clarissa hesitantly. “You can go wherever you want and love whoever you want!” ““Oh, thank you!”” cried Clarissa’s two elf friends as they fell to their knees in gratitude. For so long, they had been charged with watching over the tomb, which meant they were unable to leave the village. They were each going to be forced to bear the children of some despicable man, simply because he was a distant relation. Obviously, they would appreciate the person who rescued them from that cruel fate, even if he happened to be a lowly human. “You are all free. You could leave the continent of Uropeh to search for other elves, or I can set you up with one of the dark elves,” offered Shinichi. “I can’t believe you keep being so generous, even after we bullied you… Are you a god or something?” asked one of the elves. “Well, he has called himself an apostle of a certain ‘god,’” said Celes as she looked pityingly at the elves who had been played. With that, they had settled one issue, but Clarissa seemed determined to ruin the moment. “Hold up a second. You’re making it sound all well and good, but you’re the criminal who destroyed a monument left behind by our ancestors!” “You really don’t know when to quit,” grumbled Shinichi with a sigh, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. Her friends shot her annoyed expressions. “Clarissa, you’re right; but he was able to defeat a ghost that we had no hope of handling. He finally laid our ancestors to rest.” “Yeah. Besides, you’re the one always complaining about how you’ll die all alone in this tiny village.” “Um… Well, yeah! But it’s impudent for a lowly human to come in and finish the task given to the glorious elves!” tearfully retorted Clarissa. “Are you a child?” said Shinichi, making up his mind as he watched Clarissa yell like a kid throwing a tantrum. “I could ignore you and leave, but it would be annoying if you tailed us to enact your revenge. Well, I guess I’ll just have to break your spirit and turn you into my slave. That way, you won’t get in my way a second time.” “Ha! You’ve finally shown your true face, creep!” Clarissa was actually looking happy as if to tell him to show her what he’s got. “Wait, Shinichi?!” cried Arian, grabbing Shinichi’s arm to stop him, but the Demon King’s advisor just flashed her his usual evil smile. “It’s all right. I wouldn’t be violent to a girl.” “…Which means you’re going to do something else?” asked Arian. “You know me so well.” “We’re together all day every day.” She smiled back before letting go of his arm. He used his hand to pull the notebook out from under his jacket. He’d stored it there just in case. They were the pages he’d found under the mattress in the child’s room, the one in the house they’d stayed in last night. Clarissa froze, color draining from her cheeks. “Wh-wh-why do you have that?!” “So it’s yours, Clara,” he replied. “—?!” Clarissa let out a silent shriek when he called her that. “Is that your nickname for her?” asked Rino, sulking in misdirected jealousy. But Shinichi grinned and tapped the notebook. “Not quite. Clara is the name of the main character in Clarissa’s novel.” “Stopppp—!” shouted Clarissa, trying to drown out Shinichi’s explanation, but she was too late. “Huh. Clarissa, you wrote a novel?!” asked one of her friends. “Well, she is a bookworm. I mean, she even reads erotic novels,” said the other. “Kill meeeeee!” she shrieked, her face burning as she fell to ground. Her little hobby had been discovered by her friends. “She’s overreacting. All she did was write a novel for fun,” said Celes. “And it’s a real work of art. It’s—,” started Shinichi, about to reveal the plot. Clarissa pressed her forehead and hands to the ground and begged him to stop. “I will do whatever you want! Just please don’t tell them!” “““…What the—?””” Everyone—human, demon, and even the two elves—were shocked at the sight of Clarissa on the ground, begging. She was usually a big ball of pride. Shinichi was the only one who wasn’t surprised, curling up his lip and looking like he was having fun. “Heh-heh-heh. Well, then. I want you to tell the other elves that you orchestrated all this so they won’t get angry at us.” “…What?” Clarissa was frozen in confusion. Shinichi rolled up the papers and smacked her on the head. “You desperately wanted to leave the village, which was why you recruited some humans to trick the elves to leave. Meanwhile, you destroyed the tomb to kill the ghost in their absence.” “Like anyone would buy that—” “Hmm? These two are the only ones who witnessed our interactions. If they agree to keep their mouths shut, you can easily weave your own truth,” interrupted Shinichi. He guessed someone would use Liar Detector on the girls, but as Shinichi had already demonstrated, there were a number of work-arounds. “Besides, no one wants to believe some lowly humans came and destroyed their precious tomb. They want to believe a fellow elf weaponized their intelligence to kill the ghost. Am I wrong?” “Ugh…” Clarissa knew better than anyone that the elves were full of pride, and she understood what he was saying. In the end, people didn’t care about the actual truth: What mattered was what they wanted to believe. “Even if you’re run out of the village as a criminal, you’ll be free, which isn’t so bad, is it?” asked Shinichi, finishing explaining why they should cooperate with this plan. When he glanced over, the other two elves’ eyes were cold and uncertain. “I’m grateful for what you did in the tomb, but I’m not sure I want to take the fall for something I didn’t do…,” said one. “Our families would hate us…,” added the other. Even though they weren’t the happiest in the village, it was their home and housed their families. They weren’t prepared to throw that all away. Shinichi gave them a gentle offer. “How about I throw in something other than the dark elves? I could introduce you to incubi who are innocent on the streets and beasts in the sheets.” ““We’ll do whatever you want!”” They dropped to their knees. It looked like their hometown and family were immediately forgotten in favor of cute boys. “…This is hard for me to say, but I wish you resisted just a little more,” said Shinichi. “…Have you ever had someone order you to eat something off the floor? Because when I gave a birthday cake to the only young man in the village, that cocky bastard threw it on the floor and demanded that I clean it up with my mouth,” said one. “…Have you ever had someone count down the days until you turned eighteen? Because my husband was decided before I was born, and this old geezer would whisper it in my ear every time I saw him,” added the other. “I’m so sorry!” said Shinichi, throwing himself on the ground, too. The two elves looked at him, foreheads dirty from touching the ground. Being on the edge of destruction had led to grimmer and darker customs than he’d thought. “Anyway, it seems like these two are willing to cooperate. Then, if you label yourself as the criminal, the other elves are sure to believe the story,” said Shinichi as he stood up. He grabbed Clarissa’s head and forced her to lock her eyes with his from where she was prostrated on the ground. “Just imagine it: You deceived everyone for your selfish gains, collaborated with a disgusting human, and destroyed the precious tomb. Everyone would look at you with contempt and spit on you.” “Argh…!” Clarissa’s cheeks tinged pink, perhaps from anger. Shinichi smiled sadistically. “The girls would be happy about the situation. But what about the men?” In this village, men were few and far between. Growing up, they were doted on like princes, and the young women would fight over them. They practically had their very own harems. Before the population declined from basically inbreeding, the dark desires of the male elves must have played a part in sealing away the legion. They could have easily gotten the elves to band together and destroy it. The village was paradise for the men. What would they think when they found out Clarissa was the one who had destroyed their little haven? “None of them would touch you because you are closely related to everyone. But when they’re overcome with rage, they might not be so reasonable.” “Ah…” “They’d verbally abuse you: It’s your fault!, you know. You’ll pay for this! …Heh-heh-heh. It’d be just like your favorite erotic novels, huh?” “Aaaaah—!” Clarissa let out a shriek, face still flushed as she shouted at him. “You are the dirtiest person I’ve ever met!” “High praise,” he said, smiling easily at Celes’s favorite line. Rino pulled on his arm, looking a little upset. “Shinichi, I feel bad for what you’re doing to Clarissa.” “Oh, don’t worry,” he awkwardly assured, leaning down and whispering in her ear. “She likes to be teased. She’s a huge masochist.” “What?!” Rino jumped back in surprise before taking a good look at Clarissa. Her bright-red face made it seem like the elf was brimming with incredible anger. But on closer inspection, Rino could see that her mouth was curved up—very faintly. In fact, she was happy. “…Is she really?” asked Rino. She had a hard time believing it because Rino had seen Clarissa beat back the heroes and look down on humans. For some reason, Shinichi had made the opposite observation. “Why does she hate the masochistic heroes? Because she herself is one,” he explained. It seemed contradictory to hate someone of the same nature, but she wanted a partner who would abuse and humiliate her. She didn’t want to be the one doing it. Like magnets, opposites were attracted when it came to sadism and masochism. “I actually misread it for elven pride in the beginning, too,” admitted Shinichi. Just because someone was aggressive didn’t mean they were automatically a sadist. In fact, her high-and-mighty attitude was basically like someone warning, Don’t push me in! in front of a pool of scorching water. She knew what would make people tick, and she wanted to push their buttons. “If you think back, you’ll find that she’s said things along those lines,” said Shinichi. “Really?” “For example, when I offered to introduce them to dark elf men, she said ‘I don’t need someone like that,’ and refused the offer.” Clarissa didn’t refuse out of her pride. She really didn’t want one of the “nice guys” Shinichi was offering. She wanted a man who would embarrass her. On top of that, when she said, “I—I—I would rather bite off my own tongue and bleed to death than get impregnated by a barbarian!” I realized she stutters when she’s emotional or lying. In other words, that was a lie. She wanted to be disgraced like the characters of her erotic novels, but all those details were too crude for him to explain to Rino. Besides, no one would believe his theories without hard evidence. “That’s the proof there,” he said, poking Celes in the back, because he knew it’d backfire if he pointed it out himself. She immediately understood and stared at Clarissa’s skirt with eyes that were colder than absolute zero. “You’re wet, you smutty pervert,” Celes observed. “I—I—I have no idea what you’re t-talking about!” stammered Clarissa, desperately trying to deny it. But all this shouting just made her more excited, and she yanked down the front of her skirt. Her two friends took one look at her and stepped back.
Chapter 58
53 min read