Season 2 Chapter 710
Translator: Alpha0210
It happened so suddenly that there was no time to confer about it.
The door had swung open without warning, revealing a man of solid, powerful build. Kasajin ran his eyes over that trained body and found himself nodding.
'Strong.'
Since coming to the desert he had not seen a physique this hardened. Countless scars were carved into flesh honed without a single weak point, and taking them in made his own joints ache in sympathy.
Kasajin caught himself smiling faintly, and the man, perhaps noticing, turned his gaze on him in turn.
Their eyes tangled in midair for a moment, and it was the man who looked away first.
He turned to Lukas and spoke.
"It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Forum, Warrior Chief of Rock-Nox."
"Lukas."
"Yes."
Forum gave a dry nod.
Depending on how one chose to read it, the gesture might have come across as rude, but the man carried himself with such weight that it didn't grate. He simply acted the way he was built, and that was that.
"I will guide you through the temple. Is that acceptable?"
"Hm. One of our party hasn't arrived yet."
"Your party?"
Then he glanced sidelong at each of them in turn, faintly puzzled. Publicly, Lukas's party was known to number five.
Lukas answered on their behalf.
"Circumstances being what they are, my... older brother has joined us."
"Is that so."
The fact that Lukas had a brother was not known to anyone at all, but Forum, apparently without the slightest interest, only nodded in that barren manner of his.
"I will look into it."
Then, having said it in that dry voice, he left the room.
Stillness settled over the room again, and it was Lukas who broke it first.
"There are three possibilities."
"Three?"
"One is that the Barrier surrounding the temple is limiting Iris's abilities. If it's a temple raised to honor a god, then everything from the basic frame of the building to the materials and the location will carry some hidden meaning. Things that mean nothing on their own mesh together and form a special Barrier. And since it's a sacred place to begin with, a demon might not be able to use its power properly."
"Hm. I understand what you're saying, but the odds of that are low."
Iris continued in a composed voice.
"If the connection had been severed by the intervention of a holy power like that, there would have been warning signs. I would have been able to notice it first, from my end. But until I checked directly, I didn't even know the connection to the demon had been cut."
"Is such a thing generally impossible?"
Lucid asked.
"I mean a case where the connection is severed so secretly that you would not notice it."
"...I had a Benu on him."
Kasajin and Lucid both wore the faces of men hearing this for the first time, so Iris went on to explain.
"The Amakan Desert is one of the most suitable places on the continent for a demon to live. Ordinarily, a demon operating on the continent has to return to its own world once its time is up, but this place is the exception."
A barren environment, swarming monsters, limited resources.
Such conditions made the place unfit for intelligent beings to live in, but they posed no problem whatsoever to its being chosen as a home for demons.
"Benu is the name of a demon race that has dwelled in the Amakan Desert for a very long time. Demons of the sun and flame."
"They're famous demons. Some tribes even venerate them as gods."
At Schweiser's addition, Kasajin cocked his head.
"They treat a demon as a god?"
"They look nothing like your typical demon. Enough that if you didn't know better, you'd mistake one for a Divine Beast. On top of that, they're beings that symbolize the sun, which is about as far as you can get from the gloomy demon races...... And as long as the contract is drawn up properly, they'll do you no harm."
Iris nodded.
"Benu are High-ranking Demons. It was only a hatchling, but I attached one of their kin to Residue. Normally they can only act while the sun is up, but the desert is Benu territory. There it can keep watch day or night. Right now, though, it seems to have perished completely."
"In what circumstances does a Benu perish?"
"Let me think...... The Benu are also a branch of the Phoenix. They split apart through their surroundings and the course of evolution, but in racial terms you might call them distant relatives. Naturally, they possess an enormously tenacious life force. In the Amakan Desert especially, they're more stubborn than a Phoenix. If something could kill one in an instant with overwhelming power, then even I wouldn't notice... but only a Demigod could manage that."
Iris had brought up the Demigod purely as a figure of speech, but the moment the words were out she winced. The mood around them turned cold. In truth, everyone there, Iris herself included, suspected that the man was a Demigod, or else one of its hangers-on.
Iris stole a glance at Lukas's expression and went on.
"...Beyond that, there's the fact that they're a little weak to cold, I suppose?"
"The desert nights get quite cold, don't they? Couldn't that be what killed it?"
At Kasajin's question, Iris pressed her temple and let out a sigh.
"Don't say stupid things. I just told you the Amakan Desert is Benu territory. Do you think they'd claim it as their own if they couldn't even endure the nights here?"
"...Hm."
"A Benu isn't going to freeze to death. Not unless it went all the way out to that Northernmost Snowfield at the edge of the continent."
At the words 'northernmost point of the continent', a voice flitted through Schweiser's mind.
─I stopped by beyond the sky, and I beheld the depths of the sea. After climbing to the tip of the highest mountain range, I took in the snowfields, then came back. As I suspected, this great one likes the desert least of all.
...No.
That was nonsense, obviously.
Still, would it be better to say something anyway?
While Schweiser was mulling it over, Lukas spoke again.
"What Iris just said is the second possibility. If Residue is a Demigod, or one of its underlings, there's no reason for him to keep traveling with us."
"Hmph. So dragging us here was the bastard's purpose."
"I wonder...... Residue never once mentioned the temple. And he showed no sign of trying to bring us here, either."
It was Lukas who had first raised the idea that they needed to visit the temple in the first place.
"And the last possibility?"
"That this place is the Demigod's dwelling, and that the Demigod killed Residue."
"......"
"The worst case for us, but the likeliest one."
Lukas nodded at Lucid's words, and Kasajin muttered with his arms folded.
"He wasn't a fellow I cared for, but hearing he's dead leaves a strange taste. Fine. Even for a bastard like that, the score ought to be settled."
Kasajin said it as though it were nothing, but Iris and Schweiser both glanced over to read Lukas's face.
Nothing at all had been confirmed yet, but the man had proclaimed himself Lukas's older brother. Lukas himself did not entirely trust that claim, though neither could he flatly deny it. With faces that alike, there was no helping it.
His personality, of course, sat at the exact opposite pole from Lukas's, but that could hardly serve as grounds for saying they weren't brothers.
At this very moment, what was Lukas feeling?
Did some part of him feel he had lost a blood relative? He wasn't a man to be shaken by that much, of course, but even so......
"......"
Yet Lukas, on the receiving end of those looks, was unexpectedly calm. It wasn't that Residue's betrayal, or his death, had stirred nothing in him at all.
Was it because he had never grown the least bit attached to the man?
That could be it.
But... for some reason he couldn't name, it didn't feel as though he had been betrayed. The same went for the thought that Residue was dead.
There was no logic to it, no grounds at all, but he had the sense the man was safe.
Was thinking that way too hopeful?
He felt their gazes. The others were watching him.
The look on their faces as they waited for a decision nearly drew a sigh out of him.
Right. Whenever the moment came, he was the one who had to make the call.
...Leaning on others and depending on them must not be confused. Lukas gave his head the faintest shake and spoke.
"There's a Demigod here, and the temple is its den. Right now we've walked into enemy ground on our own two feet. I think we'd better move on that assumption."
"Hm."
"As always, there's no such thing as a real countermeasure in a fight with them. Just keep two things in mind. First. No matter what happens, we don't scatter. Second. If it looks unwinnable, we run."
"I've got a Teleport stored in my Staff. Give me the signal and I can trigger it at any time."
"You make the call on when to run, Schweiser."
"...Understood."
Kasajin bared his teeth in a fierce grin.
"But running is the last resort, isn't it?"
"Yes. If we run, there's no guaranteeing the lives of the people in this town. So if at all possible, right here."
Lukas said in a low voice.
"We put the Demigod down."
*
A short while later, Forum returned.
Even across that expressionless face, a faint trace of awkwardness passed.
"My apologies. It appears your companion will be somewhat delayed."
Wondering what excuse would follow, Lukas looked steadily into his face.
"On his way back from finishing his business he met a 'Terusan', and since the two of them seemed to get along, he said he would keep the elder company for a little while......"
Kasajin muttered.
"And what's a Terusan now?"
Of course, this time as well, it was Schweiser who answered.
"It's what they call Followers of Noxantine who've served more than thirty years and retired with honor. Hunting in the desert means staking your life every single time, so those who've survived long enough are considered worthy of respect for that alone. There's also the religious view that they survived because Noxantine watched over them personally."
At that, Forum shot Schweiser a glance. He seemed surprised that an outsider should know the faith in such detail.
Schweiser looked at Forum in turn.
Which side was this man on?
Was he a servant of the Demigod? Or an ignorant warrior being used without knowing a thing? And the words he had just offered, were they truth or lie?
The game of moves and countermoves against them had to be considered already underway. For Schweiser, who had almost no combat ability, bringing even one more of their intentions to light was how he could help.
Kasajin, meanwhile, evidently took Forum's story for a transparent lie and snorted openly. Forum's expression stiffened as he registered the derision, but he did not bother to press the matter.
Lukas nodded and rose from his seat.
"I see. Then may we receive the tour ahead of him?"
"Yes. Please follow me."
Forum inclined his head slightly.
The first place he led them to was the enormous Divine Statue set out in front of the temple. They had seen it before entering, and it could be made out from the city's higher tiers as well. That was how vast a structure it was. In sheer height it was probably second only to the temple itself.
"The Divine Statue of Noxantine. The Followers who reside at the temple gather here twice, when the sun rises and when the sun sets, to offer their prayers."
Noxantine's upper body was that of a beautiful woman, and her lower body took the form of a serpent. A half-human, half-beast figure like that might well have been taken for a monster rather than a goddess, but thanks to the profound benevolence of her expression and bearing, she went beyond beauty into something holy.
Even on Forum's blunt face, a light of reverence surfaced.
Though it was not a designated hour for prayer, he brought both hands together respectfully and offered one.
"...This is the first place we stop when introducing the temple."
So saying, Forum lifted his head slightly.
He said nothing further, his manner that of someone waiting for something.
A closer look showed that the temple Followers standing near him were watching with much the same expression.
Unable to bear the pressure, Schweiser was about to at least go through the motions of praying, and Lukas stopped him.
"My apologies."
Then he looked at Forum and said,
"I'm an atheist."
*****
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