The north section of the camp, now the royal palace, was a sheer stone wall. Near its center was a fairly sizable arch-shaped aperture.
It looked old and sported noticeable wear. Something had been carved into it, but almost none of the markings were discernible.
“Mizuho, can you read this?” Troach asked, pointing at the arch.
Mizuho squinted and got close to it, but shook her head. “Fire…? Temple…? Hmm. I can’t read it like this. Not when it’s this worn down.”
“Maybe it denotes what sort of place this is,” I remarked. “There’s remains of fires all over, and the pillars are tightly packed, similar to a temple.”
“Similar to a temple…?” Mizuho repeated, shaking her head again. “But there’s no elevator.”
“…What?”
“Elevators. Used for ferrying offerings to the heavenfloors or deepfloors… Oh, but there’s a chance this pillar was modeled after one…”
Mizuho fell into thought. She’d told me that storytellers did their jobs out of a love of song and entertaining, but in her case, she seemed to have taken to the work out of academic curiosity. The young woman clearly preferred discovering knowledge firsthand rather than hearing it from someone else.
The “elevators” of this world had to be different than the ones I knew about, but popping that question would just delay things even more. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “Shouldn’t we get moving?”
“Oh! Right!”
Snapping back to reality, Mizuho looked around at the assembled group. The three of the Court plus six young men and women as subordinates, and the twenty-one others, who had come to see them off.
“Everyone ended up following us anyway! Not that I don’t understand, of course,” Troach observed with a laugh. “Taiga, you do the honors.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the first expedition of our Great Camp Bravo Kingdom. You have to really give them a good show!”
“That’s right. Though you may not be the King, you are still our foundation. Please give them a few words.”
That wasn’t an easy thing they were asking. With twenty-nine pairs of anticipation-filled eyes on me, anxiety settled in. What was I going to do?
“I suppose… Ahem. We’re about to be heading off to a dangerous dungeon in search of food and resources. I ask that you all please stay wary of injury and move with care… Errr.”
Realizing my speech was pretty crappy, I stopped. While I hadn’t asked for this position of responsibility, those counting on me still deserved more inspiring words.
I brought my head up and looked to everyone again.
“To be honest… I don’t know how much use I’ll be to you all. I’m an ignorant outsider, and there is probably far more you could teach me than the other way around. I’m used to taking on missions with other soldiers who have the same training I do, but I have no experience living alongside folk like you who aren’t warriors. Everything is as new to me as it is to you, if not more so. However…”
I watched for their reactions and then let myself pause for a moment. Everyone was staring at me, silently waiting.
“…we had a motto in the unit I was trained in. Who Dares Wins. When you’re face-to-face with fear, and you feel like your legs might give out, the ones who can stand their ground and stay on their feet will survive and emerge victoriously. That was our ironclad rule. I swear to stand for you, the people of the Great Camp Bravo Kingdom, no matter what dangers arise. Not only have you gladly accepted an outsider as one of your own, but you’ve also gone so far as to make him your King. This is my way of thanking you.”
The words were awkwardly spoken and came off the top of my head, but they seemed to make a more profound impression than I’d expected. No sooner had I finished than everyone present broke into cheers.
“Long live the King! Glory to Taiga!” came several significantly more excited cheers than the rest. They were coming from Troach.
I raised a hand to calm the applause; the crowd looked back at me with anticipation in their eyes, wondering what I’d say next.
“Thank you. We had another motto in my unit. This one is actually more important than the first. It goes: Check test, check test, check test. Those with only courage die quickly. Without the training to take the proper action in every situation, you will die. Therefore, I’m starting your training now.”
The cheers this time were a little more confused than last time.
Admittedly, calling it training was a bit much.
We had no complex gear that needed to be inspected to ensure its operation, and I couldn’t afford to expect an actual combat force out of these people. Instead, I had them do one thing—get down.
After lining up the six we’d be bringing as subordinates, I would shout “Get down!” and they would immediately drop on the spot. That was all.
I had them practice this while they were standing in a line, while we were walking, while we were carrying things, while one person was helping another, while our eyes were closed, while dizzy, and so on. The floor was stone, so if one panicked and dropped ungracefully, it was no different from tripping. This training was to make sure they would go prone safely. If they broke a bone while falling, the whole thing would be a waste. I demonstrated a few examples, using my limbs to cushion my fall and teaching them the proper way to do it, but none of them had experience with this kind of motion, so everyone had a pretty hard time. As they gradually started getting used to it, I had them place stones along the ground to rehearse the motion on less even terrain.
At first, everyone was fascinated by this and watched over the six chosen assistants, with many offering sarcastic encouragement. After realizing nothing interesting was going to happen other than them dropping prone, people dispersed. As practice continued, the enthusiasm rapidly faded from our subordinates’ eyes.
“…All right, that should be enough,” I stated, checking my wristwatch as the six got to their feet, breathing heavily. We couldn’t afford to stay here forever, and we’d only spent an hour at most on training, but even that was probably a pretty severe experience for them all.
“Drink some water and take a rest. Once you’ve caught your breath, we’ll set out.”
“Oh, it’s over?” Troach asked, looking up from organizing our equipment.
Perhaps I should’ve anticipated as much, but Troach took quickly to the maneuver. She’d bragged about being a “moneygrubbing burglar,” but she was good. I recalled her title: Troach of the Complicated Past. I found myself slightly interested in what exactly that meant.
Mizuho, on the other hand, was a lost cause. She was too worried about her glasses to even lower herself onto the ground. And with them off, she couldn’t really see her footing, either.
She moaned. “I told you this wasn’t my area of expertise…”
Troach put a hand on her shoulder as she squatted down despondently. “It’s fine. I’ll watch your back, Mizuho.”
“That only makes me more worried…”
“Wait, why?!”
I’d have to place Mizuho in the middle of our formation so that either Troach or I could guard her if and when danger approached.
The three of us borrowed the three best daggers in the nation as equipment. For illumination, we had our lanterns with star fragments inside. I’d refrain from using my SureFire as much as possible. I wanted to conserve its battery, and its illumination was far more potent than these stars were, so it also ran the risk of blinding my allies.
Mizuho carried several other small items, but they were all little tools she used when telling stories. By her own admission, none of them would be helpful. I wondered where her Babel bird feathers were. One had given me a pretty nasty shock the other day. However, when I thought about it more carefully, I realized they were useless quills unless there was another Visitor.
All six subordinates were given bags to carry whatever we could harvest. We’d fashioned them from bits of cloth around camp, so their sizes and shapes were all over the place.
The simple backpack Troach wore contained only the barest essentials: rope, waterskins, and the absolute last of what little preserved food we had (like dried meat scraps that tasted like tree roots when you bit into them).
I looked around at our party. Some were more nervous than others, and their initial excitement was gone.
“All right… Let’s get moving, then.”
Wordless nods were the only response.
At last, we took our first steps into the northern passage.