“Excuse me ma’am,” the woman said while giving me a quick look from top to bottom. “Are you sure that you’ll want to go into the Capital Magic Labyrinth like this? We recommend coming with a group of people and at least armed.”
“Yes I think I would be fine like this,” I replied before turning to the long hall, only to be stopped by the woman who softly grasped my shoulder.
“Have you at least signed a waiver before going in?”
“Hm?”
“I uh…” the woman trailed off for a moment, her expression more of a forced smile now. “Can you come with me for a moment?”
She turned and started making her way to a desk, beckoning me with a small move of her head. I wanted to refuse, but at the moment, I thought it would be better to follow her.
“ID number?” she asked while looking at a computer.
I didn’t want to give her my card and end up with another fine, so I just repeated the set of ten numbers that were on the front of the card, hoping that with just that, she wouldn’t have the means to fine me.
“Althea… Sanctus Stultus?”
I was surprised to see that she knew my name from just that, so I just nodded in response, even if that last name wasn’t quite mine.
“A D+ rank… acquired just yesterday… no previous incursions into the Labyrinth…” she said, seemingly talking to herself.
I couldn’t help but feel amazed and much more curious about computers, since somehow she was able to determine a lot of information without me saying anything more than just a set of random numbers.
As I was trying to move to the sides to see what she was doing, the woman suddenly pulled out a sheet of paper, placing it on the table in front of me, while pointing at a few things written on it with a pen.
“This is the Capital’s Magic Labyrinth waiver of responsibility. All people coming here require to sign it, meaning that we take no responsibility for injury, damages, losses, or death for people that willingly go into the Labyrinth. However…” she trailed off while giving me a serious look. “I have to ask: Are you being forced to go into the Labyrinth in any shape or form?”
I was taken aback. At first because I had never heard of anyone needing to state the obvious about a person going into a Holy Place of Power, but now it was because of her question.
Frowning slightly, I shook my head. “No, this is something that I need to do.”
“Are you certain—absolutely sure—that you’re not being forced to go in?”
“Yes, I’m certain—is there a meaning behind these questions?”
The woman paused for a moment with the same forced smile on her face before moving her head as if expressing her doubts. “It’s just that… you’re not armed or armored, and because of that, it looks as if someone is forcing you to come here; either to get you hurt or killed, and we cannot allow anyone to go into the Labyrinth under duress in any way.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at the woman for a moment. I couldn’t understand why she would say all of that. Mostly because even if people were thrown into these zones by force, nobody would care unless they were a noble. And as it stands, I was a nobody in this world.
As I was considering how to answer the woman to assure her that I was doing this by my own free will, I heard a loud, extremely deep-voiced laugh coming from the side. I hesitated to turn to look at who produced it, since those kinds of voices could only belong to one kind of being, but after listening to their hard steps coming closer, I had no doubt.
The being that approached was towering over everyone else—as he was almost twice as tall as me—dressed in the same elegant clothes of that woman, which barely fit his huge frame. His skin was dark-red, on the top of his head there were a couple of large horns that sprouted from the front of his forehead and twisted to go up, and on his face—where a nose should be—a couple of slits were in place; which added to the glowing red eyes, and pointed large teeth in his wide mouth, made it clear that this was a demon—one of Salrak’s creations.
I immediately started circulating as much mana as I could in my body, getting ready to cut down this demon as I had been doing just the day before. But like a slap to the side of the head, when I reached for my Holy Power and found Darkness and Hellfire Power, I remembered Salrak’s words and calmed myself down. Luckily, my reaction was fast enough that the people around me didn’t notice.
“Not every day you see someone dressed like this coming here. Is there a problem?” he asked with his abyss-like deep voice.
“N-no sir,” the woman replied, either taken aback by his sudden appearance, or scared by the fact that he was a demon. “This woman wants to go into the Labyrinth, but… she doesn’t have any gear on her, and her rank is D+, which was ranked only yesterday at the National Institute.”
“Is that so…?” the demon said as he looked at the computer. He paused for a moment while looking at it before slowly turning his gaze over to me.
I didn’t back down from his glowing red eyes as I returned the gaze with a strong glare of my own. I had killed many of his kinds and I wasn’t going to back away from one right now, regardless of how powerful he was. He noticed my glare, and instead of being afraid like most monsters and demons would when I was the Hero, he leaned closer to me, narrowing his glowing red eyes. I didn’t flinch nor cowered at his gaze as that only caused me to glare even harder at him.
After a couple more seconds, his eyes suddenly widened and he straightened in one quick motion. “It can’t be…”
“What?” asked the woman.
But the demon didn’t answer as he threw his head back in a loud laughter that surprised the woman and called the attention of the people that were coming and going in the hall. Once he was done laughing, he pointed a clawy finger at me.
“I would recognize that face anywhere!” the demon exclaimed before his face changed to that of a smile—or smirk. “What are you doing here?”
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I remained silent as I simply glared back at the demon, but the woman on the side seemed confused as she looked up and down between him and me. “Do you know each other, director?”
The demon shook his head while keeping the same smile on his face. “She probably doesn’t know me, but I do know her—oh I do.”
“I do not fear you,” I said, my glare not lessening in one bit.
The demon laughed once again, which confused the woman even more but not me, since I had never even bothered talking to one of his kind beyond the few curses they would throw at me.
“That I don’t doubt, even if you’re not quite the same one as you were back then,” he calmly said, “However, I can tell that something’s changed with you… since you’re not shredding me to pieces. Do tell, why are you here?”
I tightened my lips and thought about what to answer. It was true that I wasn’t the same, from both my Holy Power being gone and the new information I had about his kind and our world, but… as for why I was here…
I looked away into the long hall. “I… need to… explore… because…”
The demon followed my sight into the hall that I was sure led to the Holy Place of Power before looking at me again. He then looked me up and down. “Don’t tell me…”
He bursted into laughter once more and I could feel my cheeks flush at his reaction, since it was obvious that he figured out I was in need for coin. “Will I not be able to?”
Once he regained his composure he started nodding his head with a smile. “I would not dare deny it to you. You can go ahead and do as you please inside the Tainted Land.”
“Tainted Land…? Wait, you’re going to let her in? Just like that?”
“Yes, she’s more than capable of dealing with it, and even more,” he replied to the woman while looking down on me with a smirk. “Come, I’ll lead you to it and make things easier.”
He started making his way to the turnstile, awkwardly pressing an ID card on it before simply walking over it without turning it. The woman that had been confused walked after him, her expression that of concern.
“What about the waiver?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it, she agrees to it,” the demon replied while dismissively waving his hand.
I also started making my way behind the demon, but just as I was about to pass the turnstyle, the woman hastily placed the sheet of paper on top of the place where I was going to press my ID card.
“P-please sign it,” she quickly said while presenting a pen to me.
I didn’t think much of it, and simply wrote my name on it—just my name, without the ‘Sanctus Stultus’. “Is that all?”
“Yes, please be careful in there, and I hope you have success,” the woman replied with a nod, taking the sheet of paper back to her desk as she sighed in relief.
With the same demonic smile that the demon had been carrying this whole time, he stood at the end of the hallway, calling out to me. “Come on, I’m eager to share a few words with you.”
* * *
I quietly walked behind the demon, keeping my mana circulating all over my body as I kept a close watch at the being’s large back. There were some adventurers, mages, and mercenaries that would walk past us, only giving a glance at both me and the demon, but none of them would stop to say anything, and most of their reactions were just of slight surprise.
After a while of walking, I could finally see the place where the Holy Place of Power was supposed to be—or Tainted Land, as the demon called it. Usually, these places would have a thin, mostly transparent barrier of power that would represent the kind of place it was. If it was a Tainted Land, the barrier would look blood-red with a mix of darkness in it, and if it was a Holy Place of Power, then it would have different colors depending on which Holy God created it.
The one that we reached was indeed a Tainted Land. However, it was surrounded by a thick metal gate. At the moment, it was open, but it seemed as if it was regularly moved, judging by the markings on the floor. There were people getting ready to go, but I couldn’t see anyone coming out of it.
“Here we are,” the demon said while looking at the Tainted Land. “Give me a few minutes to get ready and we’ll go in.”
I frowned. “‘We’? What makes you think that I’ll go into a Tainted Land with a demon?”
The demon chuckled while the people that had been getting ready to go into the land turned to give me a strange look that I didn’t quite understand. The demon didn’t seem to pay them any attention as he pointed at my clothes. “You don’t look like your usual heavily armed self, and throwing you into a ‘Labyrinth’ like that could make me lose my job, so I’m going with you to ensure you don’t die.”
“There is no way that I’m going to—”
“I know that someone like you wouldn’t need help, but hey, I used to be a Siege Demon—a pretty powerful one too—so you can count on me,” the demon interrupted.
A Siege Demon… most demons like him were able to transform into something else. It was difficult to know what kind they were just for looking at them, since some of them would shrink in size, but a Siege Demon like him would grow three times as big as he normally was, causing him to tower over most things. Perfect for battering into walls and city gates.
I shook my head while glaring up at his red eyes. “You just want to go in there with me to kill me and say that I died to the monsters, don’t you?”
The smile on the demon’s face faded as he looked back at me, pausing for a moment while he thought about what to say. “I know how many…” he paused again to look at the people who were just standing there while looking at both me and the demon. “Shouldn’t you get going?”
“R-right,” one of them replied, turning to walk into the Tainted Land. “Let's go!”
The small group of people quickly picked up the pace behind the one that was already walking into the Tainted Land, each one of them quickly disappearing behind the veil and deeper into the mountain. I raised my hand in an instinctual desire to send them off with a blessing, but stopped half-way as I again remembered that such a blessing was worthless.
“Huh,” the demon exclaimed as he looked at me with a small smile. “Not giving them a blessing?”
I tightened my lips before answering, “A blessing from the Holy Gods is worthless.”
The demon again chuckled. “You know… our Lord Salrak used to say that we shouldn’t hate you—despite the amount of people you have killed or gotten killed,” he said, causing me to turn to look at him with surprise, and his smile to turn wider. “He used to say that you were nothing more than a fool, being used by Gods that didn’t care for you or anyone else in our world.”
“Hah,” I scoffed. “Does that mean that you pity me?”
He laughed louder this time before shaking his head. “No. There’s some of us that do pity you, and a handful of us that disregard the words of our Lord to hate you. But most of us simply just don’t hate you, which is why I’m willing to come with you and make sure you don’t die.”
I stared at this demon for a moment, not quite sure if I should believe his words or not. “I can’t know if you belong to the ones that just want to kill me, and you’re just acting if you aren’t.”
He smiled back. “Well I guess that’s up to you to see. But if I do, then someone like you shouldn’t have an issue with killing another one of mine,” he paused for a moment, seemingly waiting for my reaction before laughing again. “Then again, I just don’t want to lose my job.”
I glared back up at the demon, still not sure about his intentions. But I had to admit that going into a Tainted Land with just my body and my magic could be dangerous, regardless of how much I needed coin. I looked to the veil of the Tainted Land again, wondering if I should reconsider going in at all.
“Right!” the demon said, clasping his fist over his open palm. “I’m going to get ready, you wait here a moment.” The demon left my side before I could answer him only for him to stop a few steps away to turn and look at me. “Oh! By the way, name’s Bo’guth Azid, but everyone here calls me Bobby, pick what you like.”
Before I could answer him, Bo’guth kept on walking and I just stood for a moment until he turned a corner. Taking the opportunity now that he was gone, I decided that I should just leave him behind, so I went over to the edge of the Tainted Land, stretching a hand to the barrier as I braced myself to walk over.
However, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if going alone without the demon would be foolish or if trusting his words and waiting for him would be foolish. “Either way… I’m a fool…”