The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years

A vast space spread out beneath the earth. How was one supposed to describe this place?

To begin with, it had not formed naturally. The structure said as much, and the building debris buried in the sand proved it as well.

Schweiser looked up at the broken staircase he had leapt down from.

”Wow. That’s a dizzying drop......”

He had actually thrown himself off something like that. It was little different from hurling himself down from halfway up a mountain. In other words, this space was not merely wide, it was also tall. No. Should he say deep? Whatever.

”It’s a suspicious place in all sorts of ways. Though I have no idea what it was for.”

”Right. Who’d have thought they’d built something like this under the temple.”

Iris murmured that as she took in the buried building debris, and Kasajin, who had been looking around, answered her.

And then Schweiser, who had been studying the cavern ceiling beyond the staircase, spoke.

”I don’t know about that. Seems a little different to me.”

”What does?”

”Sarman. Do you remember the lay of this town?”

”It sat at the mouth of the Amakan Desert. Head west about ten days and the desert region ends.”

”Not the location, the lay of it. It was built on top of a sand dune, wasn’t it.”

”What about it?”

”What if that wasn’t actually a sand dune?”

Kasajin still wore a baffled expression, but Schweiser felt no particular impatience. He was long since used to spelling things out for this slow-moving fellow.

”Look at the ceiling here. It’s a nice, even curve, isn’t it. Lines that gentle are hard to form naturally. Add the stalactites poking out here and there, and set aside the staircase we jumped down... widen your view. Look at the whole thing.”

Schweiser murmured.

”...Doesn’t it look like the inside of a roof?”

”Hm. I don’t know.”

”Then picture a big building in the dome style. If a structure left abandoned in the middle of the desert were buried in sand over a very long span of years–.”

”Then you’d get what looks like a natural sand dune.”

Quick-witted Iris was the one who said it.

But Kasajin still didn’t appear to fully understand.

”What are you all talking about?”

”It means the order of things is wrong. They did not go to the trouble of carving out this space beneath the temple; rather, the town was built atop a building already buried in sand.”

”And what does that signify?”

”Well......”

Lucid was prudent enough, but as always he was weak at anything that required using his head. He glanced toward where Lukas and Schweiser stood.

Schweiser thought for a moment, then spoke.

”...There are two odd things. First, the scale of the building makes no sense. Judging by the design of the roof, everything we’re looking at is the interior of a single building, and isn’t that far too big?”

”And the other?”

”I don’t understand how a town got built on top of this. You’ve all seen it, Sarman is by no means a small town. It’s big enough to be called a city without embarrassment. The population has to be at least thirty thousand, and there are plenty of buildings. No matter how sturdily a roof was made, that’s a weight it couldn’t possibly bear......”

”Then we’ll have to investigate.”

Lukas reached his conclusion quickly.

”It’s a wide space, but even so I think we’re better off staying together. Schweiser. Which way do you think we should go?”

”Ugh. I have to be the one to decide......”

Schweiser grumbled even as he looked around.

He didn’t know the ancient architectural styles of Sarman in any detail, but the pillars standing on every side looked oddly familiar.

Schweiser puzzled over it, and then his eyes blinked.

’This is the spitting image of the Rock-Nox Central Temple up on the surface.’

The sheer scale had hidden it, but it wasn’t only the pillar design that resembled it. The overall structure too was the spitting image of the Rock-Nox Central Temple. As though the temple standing on the surface were a miniature of this place.

Then had the Central Temple been built in imitation of this place? That much he couldn’t say. And it didn’t seem like the time to be thinking about it, either.

Schweiser pointed ahead.

”Did you notice something?”

”...I can’t be certain, but I think this is the original of the Rock-Nox Temple.”

”The original?”

And then, tracing his finger through the air as though sketching a picture, he explained.

”Where we’re standing now is the chapel. Keep going and there’ll be corridors branching left and right. The left was the path that went through the gallery to the obelisk, and the right had the lavatories and......”

”Oesst’s office.”

Schweiser nodded at Lukas’s words.

”That’s right. And we weren’t allowed in there. They only told us where it was and made sure we couldn’t get a look inside the room.”

”...We may have to search all of it anyway, so I think we should start with the most suspicious place.”

Lukas raised his head as he spoke.

”Let’s go right.”

*

The place was enormously wide, and since they couldn’t split up to gather information they had to move as fast as possible. Even so, if they went whipping past everything they might miss the clues altogether, so the pace needed managing– and in the end the party decided to move using Lukas’s magic.

They advanced as though gliding over the sand, taking in their surroundings.

The one observing most closely was, naturally, Schweiser, and he murmured in a low voice.

”The Giant Tribe.”

”Hm?”

”There’s a paper arguing that the origins of the Giant Tribe began in the desert. There’s almost no supporting literature, so academia treated it as an entertaining bit of guesswork.”

”You’re saying giants built this temple?”

”I wouldn’t go as far as built. They kept a lot of slaves. Still, they might have lived here.”

But even as he said it, Schweiser’s expression was far from easy.

Because he knew of beings far more threatening, far more fearsome, than the giants of legend.

Was the reason he hadn’t mentioned Demigods just now that he secretly hoped they weren’t here, or simply that the clues were too thin? Schweiser turned it over amid his dizziness, and before he could put a period to the question, they arrived before an enormous door.

”Is this it? The place they said was Oesst’s room.”

”...By position, yes.”

It was a door so vast that one had to crane one’s head straight up to see the top of it.

Taking in that spectacle, even the mighty Kasajin could only murmur in a dull voice.

”At this size, yeah, nobody but a giant could open it.”

”Can you open it? Kasajin.”

”Ha.”

Kasajin knocked his fists together and grinned.

”I could do it even if it were twice this big.”

And so Kasajin stood boldly before the Giant Gate.

Only then did the true size of the door sink in for Schweiser.

How was one supposed to put this sight into words?

An ant trying to shoulder an elephant? A minnow bracing to swim up a waterfall? A weed setting itself against thunder and lightning......

”......”

While Schweiser was reeling off one useless comparison after another, Kasajin set both palms flat against the door.

And then he closes his eyes and steadies his breathing.

The sand on the ground began to tremble faintly. Heat rose off Kasajin’s body, and the muscles that had already been huge and hard swelled further still. Veins rose up in mottled red and purple, and his skin flushed until it looked ready to cook– and a moment later, Kasajin’s bulk had inflated to twice its usual size.

”Kaaaaah–!”

A monstrous cry burst from his gaping mouth. He himself insisted it was a battle shout, but to anyone listening it was a roar no different from the howl of a beast.

His lungs are so powerful that the cry shows no sign of breaking off.

Grrrrk......

And then the seam between the doors widened, and sand and dust came showering down.

How long had this door gone unopened? It was like a waterfall made of sand. Kasajin took that avalanche head-on and his momentum did not flag in the slightest. There were shards of stone mixed in with the sand, but they couldn’t put so much as a scratch on his iron body.

Just before his voice gave out.

Kasajin poured every last ounce of strength into his thighs and his feet.

Krrunch-.

The instant cracks spread across the ground like a spiderweb, the door finally swung wide with a thunderous crash. In truth it looked less like it had opened than like something enormous had slammed into it. The panel had been torn clean off its frame.

Thoooom......!

As the Giant Gate went down, the shock seemed to shake not just the interior of the room but the entire temple.

Schweiser watched it and was left dumbfounded.

”Well, that’s certainly one way to advertise that we’re here. Lukas, wouldn’t it have been better for you to just blow through it with magic?”

”Who knows. If this is a trap anyway, they’d surely already know we’ve come.”

”Now that you mention it.”

”Let’s look around the room. There’s still a chance this is nothing more than an ordinary forbidden area.”

Schweiser nodded and turned his eyes to the inside of the room.

And for a moment he found himself at a loss for words.

”......”

It was a majestic scene.

Many stone statues were arranged within the wide room, running down both sides in neat rows as though put on exhibit. Naturally these statues too were enormous, like everything else they had seen so far.

Studying the statues as if entranced, Schweiser realized that every single one of them was distinct. There were not only humans but elves and beastfolk, and some shaped like demons and angels. Some wore armor but the thing inside was a monster–.

”What are these things?”

”They’re statues.”

”That’s not what I was asking.”

”...Something about this makes me uneasy. In a novel I read ages ago, these things always ended up moving.”

”Hey. Don’t jinx us.”

For now the party walked deeper in. They didn’t move at the speed they had used crossing the chapel corridor. They held their tension as though they were already standing in the middle of a battlefield. The statues ringing them were suspicious enough, but more than that, the atmosphere inside the room was markedly different from the corridor.

”Is it a little cold in here?”

”Feels the same to me.”

”Hm. Then I suppose I’m imagining it.”

”No.”

Lukas slowly let out a breath.

The breath turned to white vapor and crumbled apart in the air.

”Even accounting for it being night, the temperature has definitely dropped. Schweiser’s robe made me slow to notice it.”

”Isn’t that just because we’re underground?”

”Who knows. That’s probably not entirely unrelated either......”

At that moment a clear, ringing laugh drifted from somewhere.

[Ahaha......]

At the sudden laughter the party readied themselves fully and scanned their surroundings. And they threw all five senses into finding the source of the sound.

[There is no need to tense up. Dull-witted things......]

”Who’s babbling at us?”

”The odds are that it is one of the statues. But the voice echoes through the whole room, which makes it hard to pin down.”

It was just as Lucid said.

The laughter seemed to come from every direction, and at the same time it sounded like a whisper right against their ears.

[Your eyes are whole and yet your gaze sits so low that you cannot see properly. I am here......]

At that moment the party all turned to look the same way at once.

At the end of the statues ranged along both walls– at the far edge of the room, there stood one more statue.

No. That was not a statue.

It was as enormous as the statues they had seen before, and its shape was so grotesque it could hardly be taken for a living creature– but it clearly carried a vitality that set it apart from the rest.

Because it was so vast, they inevitably had to take it in from the bottom up, and the lower body was that of a beautiful woman. As though beauty carried to its utmost extreme had been delicately sculpted by the finest of artisans, there was not one place from the tips of the toes to the hips that failed to draw admiration.

But that beauty vanished precisely at the waist. Skin like white jade began to discolor into deep green, then was buried under rough, knotted scales. Even so, the flowing curves particular to a woman remained, yet they raised goosebumps instead of admiration.

Above the shoulders sat a grotesquely long neck and a flat face. Bright yellow eyes, pupils slit in vertical lines, and a forked tongue flicking in and out with a mean, sly rhythm.

–And so, taken as a whole, it was a monster with the upper body of a snake and the lower body of a woman.

[So then... vermin. What business brings you to my house?]

At the monster’s words, Lukas ground his teeth.

This power, this crushing presence.

There was no need to doubt it, no reason to ask.

Who stood before them was already self-evident.

”...Everyone get ready. It’s a Demigod.”

[Hoh.]

It wore the sly, repulsive face of a snake, yet the thing knew how to shape an expression. It narrowed its eyes and lifted the corners of its mouth just slightly into a sneer.

[You know my nature well. Which means your coming down here was no accident. Ahaha....... And here I thought that if you looked upon me and did not go mad, I might grant you a blessing.]

”A blessing? What the hell kind of crap is that?”

[Do you humans not go wild for such things? Being blessed by a god.]

The smirking voice went on.

[So I am telling you that I will bestow a blessing on you with my own hands.]

”Arrogant. Do you take yourself for a god?”

[I have merely granted what you desired. It has been so since long, long ago. Back when you humans were far more inferior than you are now, back in the days when you did not dare conceive of banding together into groups... I listened in on your wishes. At first there was one, and after that there were two. Four, eight....... Those who sought me swarmed and multiplied like insects, and at some point the lowly things exalted me as a god. And from around then you began to call me–.]

The Demigod spread both arms wide like an actor performing a dramatic scene.

[”O great and beautiful goddess of night, Noxstantin, creator goddess of the desert!”]

”......!”

Lukas’s eyes went wide and his fists clenched tight.

The idol of Noxstantin they had seen up on the surface– a being with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a snake. But the truth was the exact reverse.

A being that deserved to be called a demon rather than a god sat coiled beneath the holy ground, with the face of a snake and the legs of a human.

Could the humans up on the surface even begin to imagine anything so ghastly and so shocking?

”The supreme god of the Four Major Religions was a Demigod?”

”...Ha.”

Schweiser was stunned senseless, and Iris let out a long breath. Right. So the ones who treated me like a witch were actually worshipping something worse than a demon. She wanted to sneer at it, but strangely the corners of her mouth wouldn’t lift.

[Humans. For you, who have laid eyes on me in this place, I shall have to prepare a special hell.]

Crrrrack......

A sound like something splitting apart ran through the room.

The outer shells of the statues around them crumbled away. They were like monsters cracking their way out of eggs. Lukas understood at once that there wasn’t a single one among those statues he could afford to take lightly.

”...Damn it. I knew it.”

The instant Schweiser spat out the curse, Noxstantin burst into laughter.

[Be my amusement. Ahaha......]

*

–Before Lukas encountered Noxstantin beneath the temple.

Residue, who had been making his way to the lavatory, nodded once he reached his destination. Sure enough, the whole temple gave off the feeling of having had pointless money slathered all over it, and this place was no less lavish than any other.

He couldn’t grasp why a lavatory used simply for relieving oneself and not for bathing would need a fountain, but perhaps because he wasn’t the sort to dislike useless things, it didn’t strike him as entirely bad.

A fountain in a desert lavatory. Couldn’t this be considered the absolute limit of extravagance?

After nodding once more he stepped up to the privy. Thinking, as always, that a body of blood and flesh was an inconvenient thing, he pulled down his trousers.

A body that had to expel waste at regular intervals was truly inefficient, and nothing but a nuisance. And to think this business of excretion had to be repeated several times a day......

...It was then that someone came into the lavatory.

It was a man who, heedless of the desert heat, had his whole body bound up tightly in thick cloth, and Residue knew who this was. It was the very man who had told him where the lavatory was only moments ago.

”......”

Oesst Jore stood rooted at the entrance, watching Residue.

If one came to a lavatory there could be only a single purpose, and yet from this fellow there was no sign of any will to carry that single purpose out. Instead he stared this way hard enough to be a burden.

Residue looked at Jore and let out a short laugh.

”It suits you.”

”......”

”How long have you been keeping up that ridiculous act?”

At that, with a bright smile.

”So you knew all along.”

Not Oesst Jore but the White Knight, Agolet, pulled back the hood covering his face.

”......”

Residue took his eyes off Agolet and looked up at the ceiling.

The Blue Knight had said there was something about this area that didn’t sit right with her. Was that because she had instinctively felt Agolet’s presence? If so, then the chance that the Lightning God and the Black Thorn Demon King were nearby couldn’t be ruled out either.

An astonishing thing.

That six Absolutes might be present in a cramped little town like this.

In the meantime Agolet slowly lowered himself onto one knee.

”I am truly relieved that you are unharmed, Your Majesty.”

”Hm......”

The White Knight, the Black Thorn Demon King, and the Lightning God are enemies.

Pale’s words came back to him one after another. Even without having heard them, Residue has no way of knowing what thoughts this one harbors. Which is why he would have doubted him regardless. He knew perfectly well that even while striking a posture like the very model of a knight, the man’s insides were full of scheming.

But even so, Residue had always been going to meet Agolet sooner or later, and in the end they had met.

And Agolet expressed his submission as though insisting that this was simply how things ought to be. Outwardly, at least, he was performing the gestures of loyalty.

Not that it left any particularly bad taste.

”Hm......”

It wasn’t the sort of matter to be settled while doing one’s business in a lavatory, so Residue kept his silence.

*****

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