Chapter 7: Ysvale

It was about midday when the carriage arrived. It was, well, exactly what Owen would have expected from something built in the 1700’s. It was an unfinished wood frame with large wagon wheels, drawn by a single horse with a coachman at the head. The carriage itself was enclosed, with open windows giving view of its interior.

Owen sat patiently on a barrel in front of the guard barracks. There was a small training field to the side of the building, where most of the guards had gone for what looked like basic calisthenics. The poor fat guard who had first discovered them, however, had been assigned as Owen and Azure’s escort, and now helped Owen to his feet while Azure opened the coach door and entered.

The inside of the carriage was rather cramped, feeling smaller on the inside than it looked on the outside, forcing Owen and Azure to squish in next to one another. Owen wasn’t sure if this was standard fare, or if the Bastard Captain (as he was now calling him in his mind) had simply hired the cheapest carriage he could find. But once the pair of them were settled in, Azure waved the fat guard goodbye, leaned over Owen, and closed the carriage door with a click. With a word from the fat guard, the coach began to pull forward with a slow, steady clop.

“Guess the Bastard Captain isn’t seeing us off?” said Owen.

Azure snorted. “No. He’s probably curled up in a ball, praying to the gods that I don’t report him to the Guild.”

“Speaking of,” said Owen as they pulled onto the main road and began climbing the hill, “you’ve mentioned the Guild three times, now. What exactly are they a Guild of?”

Azure gave him a look like he was stupid, but it only lasted a fraction of a moment before she shook her head and chuckled, the scales on her cheeks glowing softly as she did. “I keep forgetting that you know literally nothing. You’re as clueless as a child.”

“Don’t need to lay it on so thick,” said Owen, scratching his head. He let his arm rest on the carriage’s window frame so that it wouldn’t get stuck between him and the door. There really was no spare room in here. He was acutely aware of the fact that he and Azure were stuck so close together.

After their confrontation with the Bastard Captain, he and Azure had been treated to separate baths at a bathhouse, which had been conveniently located at one of those buildings which branched off the main road. Surprisingly, they’d had running hot water, and Owen had allowed himself to soak in the water for a solid hour before finally getting out.

His clothes had been ruined, so he’d been given linen undergarments, a tunic, and a pair of trousers with a rope belt. It felt… strange to wear, to say the least. The tunic almost felt like he was wearing a dress, but there was nothing for it. He hoped tunics weren’t the only thing to wear in this strange new world.

But the point was, Azure smelled very strongly of some kind of flower now, and Owen was reminded once more just how pretty she was. Her ice-blue eyes were almost luminant in the shadow of the carriage, contrasting vibrantly with the crimson scales which brushed her cheeks. And she must have had a change of clothes in her satchel, because she wore the same clothing as yesterday, but clean.

“It can’t be helped,” said Azure with a grin. “But to answer your question, the Guild rules over Ysvale. They are responsible for maintaining order and safety in the city. And most importantly, they keep the demonic armies at bay within Ysvale’s Dungeon.”

Owen frowned. “A… dungeon?” Something about that seemed familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Had he seen an anime with something similar? He’d been more a gamer than an anime fan, but he thought he remembered Joe’s kid watching something like that on the shop TV.

“It’s easier to show you than to tell you,” said Azure. “It should actually be visible now. Take a look ahead of the carriage.”

His curiosity piqued, Owen leaned out of the carriage window, pulling himself up to greater height by gripping the carriage roof. And what he saw made him gasp. They crested over the hill to see a great, golden-white tower looming into the sky, taller than any skyscraper, or even any mountain. It rose up into a great, spire-like peak, obscured by the sky itself. Its base was a great, pearly white fortress, with stripes of gold varnishing the walls and parapets.

It was glorious, unlike anything Owen had ever seen or even imagined in his life. Surrounding the castle was a large, sprawling city, with the tightly packed buildings rising up in height like a hill around the castle, but not even reaching half of the castle wall’s height. Eight wide roads cut rigid, straight lines from the castle center like a star, with bands of smaller roads between them forming a sort of spider-web. Circumnavigating the castle itself was the widest road of all, visible even from here and preventing the rest of the city from encroaching on the grand building’s walls.

To call it breathtaking was an understatement. It was moving in ways that Owen didn’t know architecture could be. He traced his eyes up to the spire’s point, and he realized that despite increasing its narrowness, he saw no end to its heights.

Azure moved over to his window, sliding between him and the front window frame to get a look at the city herself. “Welcome to Ysvale,” she said.

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“This is unreal,” said Owen, not taking his eyes from the view. He noticed that, despite the city’s size, there was still a sizeable portion of rolling plains and forest surrounding it, and far in the distance, partially hidden by the tower’s impressive size, he could see the ridge of the Ysvale Wall as it completed its circuit on the other side of all this.

“I grew up here,” said Azure, “and I still get chills when I see the Tower of Esthelenean, gleaming white like a spear of gold and silver. It is the crowning jewel of Ysvale, older than the city itself, a gift from the gods. But beneath it, burrowing deep into the bowels of the world itself, is the Dungeon Ordimus.”

“Or… Di… Mus…” Owen didn’t even bother trying to say the name she’d called the tower. But Ordimus. That, he could say. He frowned, returning to his seat in the carriage. “If I understand what you mean by Dungeon, you mean more along the lines of Theseus and the Minotaur than a place for prisoners.”

Azure gave him a confused look as she settled back into her seat. “I don’t know much about anybody named Theseus, but I think you got the idea. I’m surprised you even knew what a minotaur was, given your ignorance of just about everything else.”

Owen gave her a wry smile. “I guess I’m full of surprises.”

“You baffle me. But in any case, yeah, you’re right. Ordimus is not the kind of place you keep prisoners. It’s laughably dangerous and filled with powerful demons and monsters. But its entrance is at the bottom of Castle Esthelenean and is sealed by powerful magic. Divers go through that entrance to kill demons and prevent them from breaking the seal.”

“That sounds intense,” said Owen, remembering their scuffle with demons at the Ysvale Gate. “What we fought last night--”

“Were lesser demons, all of them. Even the Sentinels are weaklings compared to what you can find in Ordimus,” said Azure, her face darkening.

Owen swallowed. “Not exactly what I was going to ask, though that’s good to know. What I meant to ask was if those demons from last night had somehow escaped Ordimus?”

Azure shook her head. “Ordimus is just one dungeon. It’s the largest one for a thousand miles or more, perhaps the largest of them all, but there are countless smaller dungeons scattered throughout the world. The demons from last night came from one of those dungeons. I’m assuming you don’t know this because you don’t seem to know anything, but the main difference between monsters and demons is that monsters can travel during the day. That, and demons seem to be naturally more malicious and violent than monsters.”

“That explains why you were fighting the Wyvern during the day,” said Owen quietly. “I hadn’t really thought about that distinction, but now that you mention it, it makes sense.”

“Well, you might be ignorant, but you pick up quickly,” said Azure. “Anyway, the smaller the dungeon, the smaller the demons you’ll find. Occasionally, a larger dungeon will pop up in the world, and the Guild will send a taskforce to seal it. But really, there are just too many dungeons to seal them all, which is why it’s dangerous to be outside of Ysvale’s walls at night.”

“That all makes sense,” said Owen.

Azure let out a sigh. “I’m glad. Because I’ve never had to explain all this before. It’s just something you usually know.”

“So, what now?” said Owen.

“Now, we go get healed,” said Azure. “And we report to the Guild what happened. While Divers usually, well, dive into dungeons, we also get called to deal with errant monsters that have been wreaking havoc on farmlands or smaller outposts.”

“So, you’re one of those Divers? One of the people who goes into those hellholes?”

Azure nodded, seeming a little self-satisfied as she sank a bit into her seat to relax.

“And that seems to make you pretty important.”

“Well, not that important,” she shrugged. “I’m just a Copper Rank Diver.”

Owen furrowed his brow. Something didn’t seem to be adding up. “I’m not entirely sure how this works, but if you’re a ‘Copper Rank Diver’ wouldn’t you have a Copper Crest? Yours looked… not copper.”

“Oh, that,” said Azure. “Well, you’re right. We had a light mage in our party yesterday who was a Silver Rank Diver. He was qualified to lead raids on medium-sized dungeons and to seal small dungeons by himself. Hell, he could even join as a junior party member into Ordimus. But that damn Wyvern got him in the ambush. Even ‘weaker’ monsters can get you by surprise.”

“So, the Silver Crest you used to browbeat the Bastard Captain?”

“Yeah, I don’t rate that,” said Azure, eyeing him as if to see how he’d react. “I pulled it off of the light mage’s body yesterday.”

Owen pursed his lips, nodding. “Makes sense. I assume that Copper rankings don’t quite merit the same reaction as Silver?”

Azure snorted. “I’m one step above an initiate. He probably couldn’t have gotten me hanged, but I would’ve been fined pretty steep for what we pulled at the gate barracks. But as a Silver Rank Diver? I really could have had him hanged for locking us out like that. Of course, it’s good that he didn’t think too hard about it, since a Silver Rank Diver wouldn’t have had a problem handling a few Sentinels and their Slugs.”

“Are you worried that he might figure out your lie?”

“No,” said Azure, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t want to risk actually pissing off a Silver. He likely hopes that this is the last he hears from us, and if he’s smart, this will be the last we hear from him.”

With a grin, Owen said, “And hopefully, if this ever does come back to bite you, you’ll be closer to that Silver rank than not.”

“Yep. Oh, speaking of growing, you should probably look at your stats now. You might not have another chance for a while when we disembark.”

That made sense. After getting cleaned up, Owen and Azure had been treated to a mix of seared pork, curry, and rice in the barracks common hall. If Owen was being honest, it was some of the best damn curry he’d ever had. But more to the point, he’d tried opening his stat menu while they’d eaten, only for Azure to slap his hand down at the time.

“You don’t want to just let people see your stats,” she’d said.

But now that it was just her, and given that she’d seen his updated stat menu even before he had, there probably wasn’t a better time. To a point, he even figured it might just be better to have her there anyway, so she could explain some of the craziness inside the menus.

So, he pulled up his left forearm and tapped the Mana Stone. Time to see what he could do.