Chapter 90

Chapter 0 Formerly a Country Boy “Whoa.” I looked up at the stone walls that stretched out in front of me, letting out a little gasp of awe. I’d left my home village in the countryside a month ago and finally made it to the capital of the Gordeau Empire. It seemed all the more majestic, considering the hoops I’d gone through to get there. The city was said to be home to two hundred thousand people, completely encircled by city walls ten times my own height. I had heard there were actually nine walls in total. My head spun just trying to imagine how much time and money it would have taken to construct them, even if they had used magic. “Well, I guess it makes sense if you’re the greatest ruling country of the continent, the Millennium Empire.” I hadn’t been entirely convinced that a single royal family had ruled for an entire millennium, but I was forced to accept it as the truth when I looked at those incredible walls. “This is the place.” I nodded. The only place where my dreams could come true. What dream, you ask? Well, to build my own home in the best area of the city! I mean, it’s not like I hated my home village out in the boonies. It’s just… I’ve been trying to see how far I could go, as a boy. Let me just say, I didn’t really expect I’d ever turn into some legendary hero. I wasn’t the kind of kid to get swept up by big dreams. That’s why I decided I’d build my own home in the nicest part of the city, since that seemed like a realistic goal. As my teacher always said, “Every man wants his own kingdom.” If I could use my own power to get my own house, I could stand proud as a true man. “All right, here we go!” I walked toward the city gates. I’d heard the gates could get busy in the morning, so I timed my arrival so that I’d get there just after noon. My calculations were correct. I didn’t need to wait in a long line. I walked right up to the gates, but that’s when I was instantly surrounded by a group of guards. “Huh?” I was confused. Wait…were they going to make me pay an entry fee?! Urgh, I didn’t have much saved after my long journey, but I guess there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I quietly reached for my money pouch at my hip, but one of the guards barked at me. “D-don’t move!” What? But if I didn’t move, I couldn’t pay the fee… I was totally motionless, uncertain what to do, when a middle-aged guard wearing expensive-looking armor walked up. He looked like the captain. “Pardon me. Who are you?” asked the captain, expression severe and face slick with sweat. …Was he hot? It was still early spring, but the sun in the imperial capital was beating down. My armor had a temperature-control spell on it, but without it, I probably would have been covered in sweat, too. I wanted to tell him he was doing a great job for working despite the heat, but I just answered his question. “I’m an adventurer.” Well, to be perfectly honest, I was unemployed at present. I was going to become an adventurer after this, but I was hoping they’d let a little white lie slide. The maze was a deep dungeon filled with dangerous monsters and mounds of riches. I’d selected the capital of Gordeau Empire to become an adventurer and dive into that maze. I wasn’t an aristocrat with land to my name, and I wasn’t a successful merchant, skilled at his job. I was a just a simple country boy, and that meant the maze was the only way for me to be able to build a home in the best part of the city. Thankfully, Gramps and my teacher had trained me, so my sword skills were decent. If I tried really hard and worked for a few years, I might be able to build my home… “Where is the maze?” I asked, taking a step forward, growing impatient about getting started. The guards all looked like they were faced with Fenrir himself. …Why was that? Every once in a while, I’ve crossed paths with people who seemed unsure about me. Sometimes, I even felt like they were afraid. I could understand in the small villages that didn’t see any soldiers. They must have been shocked to see a man in full plate carrying a huge sword, but this was a major metropolis with hordes of adventurers. They must see men in armor day in, day out. I couldn’t think of any reason why they’d be afraid… “Where is the maze?” I repeated and advanced another step. The guards immediately pulled back in unison, clearing the path. “It’s on the right after you pass through the gate,” explained the captain, sweat running down his face. Oh, good. I wasn’t sure what I could have done if they’d told me to get lost! I let out a sigh of relief inside my helmet, then finally passed through the gates. Gordeau Empire. I had finally arrived! I was all pumped up, but I didn’t see bustling city streets in front of me. It was a desolate field… Was this a sham? I turned back in shock. “C-Captain, who was that?!” one of the soldiers whispered out of ear’s reach. “He looked just like—” “I know. But he said he was an adventurer looking to try his hand at the maze. We had no right to turn him away.” “B-but!” “The Gordeau Empire owes its prosperity to adventurers. That means anyone is accepted as an adventurer, regardless of their race or birth. That’s the law. Even if it was a demon…” I considered asking the guards for an explanation, but they seemed preoccupied with one another. It didn’t seem the right time to be interrupting. Hmmm. What’s going on? Was this just an area that hadn’t been developed yet? I couldn’t come up with an answer, even when I racked my brains. I gave up and decided to head to the maze. Oh, that’s right! I thought it over and looked at the second wall in sight across the field. Surely, the city streets were beyond that wall. In the distance, I could even see the tips of what looked like a castle. Well, I wanted to check out the nicest plot of land for my future home, so I decided to go see the city before I went into the maze. That was that. I buoyantly walked toward the gate in the second well. The people of Gordeau Empire spoke proudly of the city streets, calling the city the “Millennium Tree.” Centered on the white, shining imperial castle was a series of nine walls of concentric circles. If you looked at the city from the sky, the walls looked like the rings in a tree trunk. In the beginning, the city was actually just a town, so small it couldn’t even be considered a country. Over time, people started to gather as they heard rumors about the maze. The walls were built to protect the homes as they began to spread out, and that’s how the Ring Walls came to be. They stood as a symbol of the Millennium Empire, the pride of the people. They were popular among travelers, and it wasn’t uncommon to see someone trying to carve their name into one of the older inner walls only to be caught by the guards and hit with a hefty fine. Not everything about the Ring Walls was positive. Originally, the walls were intended to act as shields to protect the people against invaders, but now they were divisions between the affluent and poor. The first section, in the center, was the imperial palace. The second section was for royalty’s mansions, and the third was for the higher-ranked nobles’ villas. Essentially, traveling inward landed you among residences of those with higher status and riches. The farther you went the other way, the poorer the people were. There were clear lines marking the divides. The ninth section, the outermost ring, was in fact called “the Outskirts,” home to the entrance to the maze. Originally, it had been in a sweet spot: separated from the city for safety reasons but not so far that it would be too hard to get to. Over a millennium, the city had continued to expand and eventually the entrance became enclosed in the city walls. While the entrance was technically within the city, there wasn’t anything surrounding it. There was only a stone shrine built a thousand years ago and a guard hut for the soldiers who watched the entrance, both sitting in the expanse. The hut had been built as a safeguard in case the impossible happened, and monsters flooded out of the maze, but that hadn’t happened even once in the Empire’s entire thousand-year history. That’s why the two guards who stood at the maze entrance had time on their hands. Today was no exception. “Okay, so this one is a classic. So this guy, Dick, went into a brothel ’cause he wanted to spend five silver to have a good time with a pretty little lady. But get this, the chick that comes out is his own mother!” “Ha-ha-ha, I don’t even want to joke about that.” The younger, newer guard faked a laugh in response to the middle-aged soldier’s joke. He’d heard the same story three days before, but he wasn’t dumb enough to ruin his work relationships by pointing that out. “It’s no joke. It’s one hundred percent the truth. So then Dick screams, and—Oh.” The middle-aged guard saw some figures approaching from the distance, stopped his story, and straightened his posture. But the second he saw that they were familiar adventurers, he called out to them in a casual manner. “Yo, Brook. Have ya finished paying off that resurrection you had the other day?” “As if. I’m going to make the money for that right now.” “Ha-ha, I’ll bet ya one silver that you go too far and end up more in debt.” “Oh yeah? Well, you better get ready, ’cause I’m coming back in one piece this time.” The swordsman named Brook seemed to be the leader of the group. He led the party of five adventurers down the long stairs into the maze. The new guard watched them go, then said in admiration, “Wow. I can’t believe you actually remember the names of all the adventurers.” “Well, it’s really just the names of the party leaders. Like, you remember that lizardman from before, right? I can’t remember his name no matter what.” “There are some races with names that are hard to pronounce.” The young guard would find out later that the lizardman in question had an incredibly difficult name—Eustreptospondylus. “Anyway, it’s hard enough just to remember the name and face of the leader.” “I guess. There are some who give up the moment I think I’ve got their name down.” Some of those adventurers had retired because they felt like they’d hit their limit, but others had been killed in the maze. Unfortunately, their bodies couldn’t be recovered, which meant they couldn’t be resurrected and remained dead forever. “You know, once you’ve been at this job for as long as me, you’ll be able to tell who’ll quit right away, just by looking at their face.” “Hmm, I’m not surprised you’d be good at that.” The new guard was half honest, half just flattering his senior. That seemed to put the middle-aged guard in a good mood. “All right. Let’s bet on how many days it’ll take the next adventurer we see to quit. Winner gets ten gold.” “Come on. There’s no way. I’m not an adventurer. I can’t bet away ten gold pieces!” Now he was being completely honest. An adventurer could easily make that much money in a day, but it was a month’s wages for a simple guardsman. It wasn’t a sum he could gamble away lightly. “Ha-ha-ha, I kid, I kid. How about we make it one gold?” “That’s still a fortune…” The new guard sighed as the older one grabbed his shoulder, like he was trying to keep him from running. “Fine, one silver.” “I guess…,” he grumbled. It was about the same amount of money he’d spend if he was to treat his coworker to dinner and drinks. It wasn’t insignificant on a guardsman’s salary, but if he needed to spend it to keep his working relationships positive, he had no choice. When the middle-aged guard saw the other one nod reluctantly, he whistled happily. “There ya go! Oh, perfect timing. There’s someone I’ve never seen—” As soon as he looked over, his face went as pale as a sheet. The new guard gazed up to see what exactly was going on, and he saw darkness. “Urgh!” A pathetic little shriek came out of his throat, but the middle-aged guard who was always teasing him didn’t even laugh. He was too stiff for that. The figure was a knight wearing armor so wicked-looking it froze the veteran guard who’d seen thousands of adventurers. A black miasma oozed from the dark armor, and cracks ruptured the earth with every step, kicking dust into the air. The eyes, set in a wicked helm that looked like a copy of the devil’s face, shone maliciously like they craved blood. A single swing of the massive blood-red great sword on his back would be enough to split the guard’s body in half. “Ah, aah…” The new guard stood there trembling, unable to even run in the face of this beast that looked like death itself. The knight in his black armor walked up to the guards, who stood there frozen in their disgraceful fear, and then…bowed slightly in greeting before heading down into the maze. “Huh?” The new guard stood there, eyes wide like saucers from the shock, as he watched the knight descend the stairs. Beside him, the middle-aged guard dramatically let out a heavy breath. “Pheeew… Wh-what was that?! It was almost like those rumors—” “Uhhh, well, he was an adventurer, right?” “Well I’ve never seen anyone like that!” “So a newbie?” asked the new guard, and the middle-aged guard let out a large huff—a little too loud—like he was trying to overcompensate for his pathetic behavior from a moment before. “Hmph, don’t be an idiot. There aren’t even sixth-floor adventurers with an aura like that.” In the thousand years that adventurers had been trying to conquer the maze, no one had ever found the bottom. The farthest people could currently get to was the sixth floor. A sixth-floor adventurer was the greatest hero in all humanity—hands down. Continue the journey in Together with the Dark Knight!