After that, we went on descending level after level. Geese had the method of “clearing” each level memorized perfectly—these methods, shown to him by the Man-God, were utterly insane. I spent the entire journey wondering how we’d managed to get through one level, or why we hadn’t encountered any monsters on another. It was incomprehensible. Had Geese ever questioned it…? No, he wouldn’t. This man wouldn’t be alive today if he’d even once doubted the words of the Man-God. His gratitude to the Man-God must have been absolute.
“Fwahahaha! What’s such a grandiose door doing in the depths of a labyrinth?”
“Dunno. I guess even labyrinths have appearances to maintain.”
“Fwahahahahaha! Showing off, is it? That’s a good one! Fwahahaha!”
Before us was an enormous door around ten meters tall. It was about as big as the door that had been fitted on Kishirika’s castle during the Second Human Demon War. From when it was built to when it was lost, that door never opened even once. See, its excessive size made it damn difficult. Even beings larger than I used the side door next to it to make their way inside. That took me back! In those days, I’d go on about why anyone would make such an enormous door that didn’t even open, saying that we ought to melt down the metal and turn it into weapons for the soldiers.
But Kishirika shot me down with some nonsense about how “If a champion shows up and finds a run-down gate it’ll ruin my reputation as the Demon World’s Great Emperor.”
Had it ever been opened, in the end? Perhaps Laplace opened it. Though if he smashed it down, then that meant there was some meaning in its existence… Back then, I thought I was right about everything. Only now, when I stood on the side of the challenger, I wondered about that so-called authority of Kishirika’s… But no, in fact, I didn’t understand it at all! Fwahahaha! This door was clearly far too big! It just looked like a wall! A champion faced with this door wouldn’t try to force it open, they’d just go through the side door!
“They’re behind that.”
“It would seem so.”
I agreed with Geese. Labyrinths had grandiose things like this at their deepest point. The stronger the labyrinth, the stronger the inclination toward grandiosity. Amongst those I’d seen, the deepest point of the Black Steel Labyrinth was particularly magnificent with its golden door. Kishirika would have liked it.
Back to the matter at hand. What lay behind the door in the deepest part of the labyrinth was its guardian, so to speak. When we opened this door, a battle with the most powerful monster in the labyrinth would begin. Of course, the level of the guardian of the Devil Cave would go beyond my wildest imaginings… That was no trouble. Geese would have been told how to beat it. It might’ve been a hard fight, but we would emerge victorious in the end.
I suddenly lost the desire to laugh and closely examined the door.
“What’s up, bud? Haven’t lost yer nerve, have you?”
“Yes,” I said shortly. Geese turned back to stare at me.
“H-hey, now! What’s wrong? I can’t be hearing this from you. Yeah, we’re about to face the guardian of this hellhole labyrinth, I get it, we gotta take that seriously! But you’re an immortal demon king, right?! Like you’ve got anything to fear.” The monkey-faced demon’s tone was wry. Geese always put on a joking voice when he was trying to persuade someone. Then, when the moment came, he’d get serious and stab his words right into his mark’s heart. I suppose that was his brand of charm. No matter.
“…Hm.”
“Don’t tell me you’re actually intimidated?”
I was not, of course. In the first place, as an immortal demon, I had nothing to fear from battle. Whatever happened, I would not die. Fwahahahaha!
Anyway.
“Behold.” I turned. Behind us, death was everywhere. Flames erupting out of nowhere. Never-ending earthquakes. Cracks opened in the ground and swallowed up everything on the surface. Fallen about the space were the undead. Broken bones, ghosts that vanished like mist, and scattered pieces of blackened armor.
“Yeah, well, it’s a hellhole. If you got this far fighting proper-like, that’d be a story to hand down for generations. Only this time, well, I can’t tell anyone, and even if I did, no one’d believe it…”
“This place makes me nostalgic.”
Geese looked at me in shock. “Sorry? You what, now? You mean you’ve been here before?”
“Indeed. But not this place!”
It had been the day the Second Great Human-Demon War ended. In order to rescue Kishirika, I donned the Fighting God Armor and returned to the demon headquarters. That was when I saw it. Because of the incredibly high concentration of mana in front of Kishirika’s new castle, everyone who died there became undead before an hour had passed. I knew the faces of all of them. They were true warriors all, who had pledged their loyalty to Kishirika and had their power recognized by her—Kishirika’s personal guard. I expected they fought prepared to die, but in the end, they’d all fallen to the same sword. I knew, because they’d all been turned into headless Dullahans.
Visible vestiges of them had been left in the Undead I faced. I saw many of the same face; these undead had been generated as copies. I saw it clearly.
Now that I thought about it, the whole of this labyrinth had been familiar. First there was the stone spiral staircase that connected the first level to the second, then the structure like the inside of a fort. The room with a ceiling that shone as though it were full of stars; the weapon held by the man-shaped monster; the fracture in the collapsed exterior wall. The little flowers that no longer grew anywhere but here, where they bloomed at the side of the path; the monsters that were supposed to be extinct… I’d seen all of it before—I had a strong sense of déjà vu.
“Go on.” To quell my anxiety, I sat down. “Come now, sit down.”
Geese didn’t say anything, but he sat down in front of me. Sitting like this across from another man made me want a drink, but alas, we had nothing to imbibe. This wasn’t the sort of conversation to have sober, but oh well.
“Have you heard that the world used to look different to its current form?”
“That’s the thing where Golden Knight Aldebaran’s blow didn’t just take out Kishirika Kishirisu but sundered the continent and created an ocean, yeah?”
“Yes, that.”
That legend was treated as mere fiction these days. It was utterly unbelievable that one man could change the shape of a continent. People know, when they look out on the vastness of the world, that they are small, and nature is bountiful. I counted myself amongst them! The mountains, the ocean, all of nature was always magnificent and beyond our power to challenge.
“I can’t really see it, but you were there, right?”
“I was.”
Geese would be the same. That was why he listened like he did.
“In the days of my birth, there was no Ringus Sea.”
I heard Geese gasp. As well he might! Who wouldn’t make such a face upon learning that the ocean they had crossed only a few days past had once not existed? I suppose he believed it because the words came from my mouth.
“Mount Idatz, the Hills of Ares, the Mimishillan River, the Cabre Lake… Heard of them?”
Geese shook his head.
“They are all names of places that used to exist. Each had its own history. Mount Idatz, for example, was renowned as the mountain where the great elf swordsman Idatzleid perfected his art.”
“Uh, wow…”
He did not know. Idatzleid had died in the First Great Human-Demon War. He was an elf swordsman who had slain many thousands of demons. At last, in the decisive battle against Necross Lacross, one of the Five Great Demon Kings, he died a heroic death. No books containing that episode remained, nor anyone who could tell it. Even the mountain that had symbolized it was gone. It was natural for Geese to be ignorant of it. It felt as though all evidence that the man had ever lived had disappeared…and yet, I tell you, I remembered. The story of the great swordsman Idatzleid was very popular during the Second Great Human-Demon War. Not to the level that everyone knew it, but everyone who swung a blade had heard some version of the tale. No one knew it anymore.