Anya’s face burned at Riario’s cheeky words.
“Oh my. Your Highness, did you cry by any chance? Our commander is quite a rough man, after all….”
“Shut it, Riario. We’re getting out of here first.”
“To treat a great mage so coldly at the door after he spent the whole night casting detection magic….”
Sir Riario…!
Anya was so happy at their appearance, which was no different from usual, that he tried to stand up from his spot but flopped over to the side. Because of the repeated rough acts, there was no strength in his legs at all. The only thing he’d eaten was the rabbit meat Evernight had caught, and he had no energy because he’d used magic inside the cave as well. Evernight stood up while holding Anya and gathered the boy’s clothing.
“I’ll hold you, so try standing.”
Thanks to Evernight holding and steadying his waist, he could put strength in his legs and stand, but that wasn’t the problem.
“Uh… I….”
Heavy fluids flowed out from between Anya’s thighs. Anya moved his hands in a fluster to quickly wipe it away, but then stiffened his body in tension because of the three pairs of eyes staring directly at him.
“…Turn away.”
Evernight said in a low voice toward Riario and Karen.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Riario pressed his forehead and sang a song of lamentation. Then, saying he’d seen something he shouldn’t have, he grabbed Karen and went outside the cave. Why exactly are you dragging me along, Mage-nim? Sir Karen, you have quite the unnecessarily strong curiosity. Since the commander is about to cut our throats, let’s survive first. As soon as they went out noisily, Evernight wiped away those things between his legs with Anya’s tattered robe.
“I’m, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Wear my cloak.”
Evernight wrapped his black cloak around Anya’s shoulders. Anya, with his face reddened like a ripe apple, could only bow his head deeply. His lower abdomen had been throbbing for a while now.
* * *
“Thanks to Your Highness’s magic power, we could find you quickly. If not for that, it would have taken several more days.”
Mages who could use detection magic over a wide range were rare. Wide-area magic consumed more magic power the broader the range became. Moreover, in order to use high-level magic, one couldn’t simply stop at knowing how to use magic power. One had to know how to appropriately mix the magic power flowing raw in nature with the mage’s own magic power.
“By the way… Commander, that hand… how did it….”
Because Riario had cast detection magic all night, he seemed to have lost a lot of weight in the meantime, and his eyes were sunken. Evernight didn’t even respond as if Riario’s condition wasn’t even on his mind, and continued moving forward.
Riario seemed unfazed, as if this wasn’t the first or second time he’d dealt with his blunt attitude.
“Hmm… It’s a monster. I can tell at a glance it’s curse-related. Did you happen to hear hallucinations or see visions?”
Riario was muttering to himself when he suddenly gained enlightenment.
“Ah… so that’s why you had intercourse….”
Karen caught the small body that was trudging through the snow in front of him as it nearly toppled to the side. Are you alright? Anya nodded slightly. His small earlobes could be seen burning red, whether from the cold or for some other reason.
Riario barely stopped the corners of his mouth from rising sinisterly and continued speaking toward Evernight.
“Hmm, let’s try to break it as soon as we return. We found a monster’s corpse right near the Wall anyway. Just in case, I collected the creature’s blood, and my foresight is so excellent I could cry. We burned the corpse immediately after, so we need to get out of here quickly before those things swarm.”
He didn’t forget to complain dramatically either.
“By the way, I wonder if I’m going to die from overwork like this. There’s no reward for leaving the fertile South and coming all the way to this barren North.”
Anya silently quickened his steps at Riario’s sigh. Not only was the incident in the cave earlier embarrassing, but it was he himself who had ignored their words and rushed to the Wall, causing this mess.
“When we return to Tildyen Rock, Your Highness absolutely must help me with magic tool crafting. As you can see, if I use any more magic power, I think I’ll die a miserable death from magic depletion.”
He chattered away enthusiastically, seeming excited about gaining new labor to exploit.
Damn it!
Unable to control his body sinking deep into the snow, he spat out a curse. Anya simply answered meekly, accepting his capricious irritation.
“Yes, I’ll definitely, definitely help you.”
The party quickly made their way through the snow they kept sinking into. Everywhere the snowstorm had swept through, massive tree trunks lay pathetically fallen. They carefully avoided the obstacles and moved forward. Stepping on snow piled almost up to their shins and moving forward consumed considerable energy. When they reached the Wall again, they had to catch their exhausted breaths.
“How’s the village?”
While Riario infused magic power into a certain point on the Wall, Evernight asked. It was also a part Anya had been worried about just then. He had memories of the snowstorm arriving the moment they fell at this Wall.
“Fortunately, this one was small. Thanks to setting up a defensive formation in advance, there was no major damage or casualties.”
At the same time as Karen’s honest answer, several rock masses forming the Wall began to vibrate with a rattling sound. The Wall’s gate was invisible to ordinary people and almost never opened, but during the height of the war, Tildyen and the Dark Lions came and went through the hidden door to the land of death.
“But it’ll come again. Around this time, we’re always suffering because of snowstorms.”
Rumble. Finally, several giant rock masses popped out, gathered, and gathered more, forming the shape of a giant holding a sword. Of course, it wasn’t an actual giant, but it certainly looked that way. When two giant figures revealed themselves before them, Anya shuddered slightly. On the giants’ foreheads were carved certain patterns that resembled the sun, moon, and stars.
“Just in case, let me inform you….”
Of course, such a thing shouldn’t happen, but. You never know what might happen in this world.
Riario took out a small mirror shard from his sleeve. Then he held the mirror toward the sun rising in the east. The brilliant morning light reflected and pierced into the giants’ foreheads.
“These stone giants are the Wall’s guardian deities, ancient magic already forgotten. We could barely manage to move them here from the existing ancient Wall, but to open the gate, we still must adhere to the old ways.”
The sacred energy of the sun filled the gaps between the rocks, creating shining thin lines. The lines descended from the giants’ foreheads and soon instantly gathered at the giants’ chests.
“Wh-what do those letters mean?”
When Anya asked, this time Karen answered.
“Those are presumed to be spirit letters from the ancient North of long ago, but they’re a forgotten language and now no one knows them.”
Then Riario supplemented.
“They say the god of all things first sent down light, then followed it with darkness. Monsters are beings born in darkness, and what they fear most is light. Those giants respond to sunlight during the day, and to moonlight or starlight at night.”
Anya was slightly impressed by their knowledge. Curiosity rippled and overflowed in Anya’s two eyes.
“B-but monsters clearly are ac-active during the day too. Like the monster that in-infiltrated Northernmost… They’re not fools, so even if it’s painful, couldn’t they fully use the li-light to en-enter?”
“That’s a good question, Your Highness.”
When he was Prince Anya Claicer, he was by no means a talkative child. Every time he asked a question, sarcasm or the scholars’ sighing complaints inevitably followed. But how could one not be curious seeing this magnificent, heart-pounding spectacle?
Thanks to the question that came out without him knowing it, Anya was able to hear praise he’d never heard even from the scholars during his days as a prince.
“The ancients weren’t that stupid. This door absolutely will not open on that frozen land beyond the Wall. It only opens from inside Northernmost. To open the door from beyond the Wall, a password is needed.”
“A pa-password?”
“That’s right. Look up there.”
The light that had gathered at the giants’ chests scattered and once again broke apart, some combining to form a certain sentence. It was neither runic script nor, even less so, the current imperial language.
“Wh-what does that mean?”
Anya asked Riario in surprise.
“I don’t know either.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“What…?”
“The tribe said to have made this Wall all disappeared from the earth. It’s only been passed down through generations among the Northerners.”
No matter how close they approached, they could barely reach the plump ankles of these giant cliff statues showing how massive they were.
“Rukso, Nokso, Konpudo.”
The mage closed both eyes and quietly recited the password. His magic power flowed into the giants, and finally the two statues rose from their spots and returned to being rocks, the Wall’s constituent elements. Instead, in the rock face where no gap could be found at all, a neat rectangular shape silently revealed its outline. And it slowly split from the center, gradually opening bit by bit, and finally opened wide on both sides.
“Memorize the password.”
Riario took the lead first and passed through the Wall. Behind him Karen, Evernight, and Anya entered in order. But at that moment, Anya felt a strange sensation. It was the eerie feeling that someone beyond that white barrier was watching them.
“Don’t lose focus.”
Evernight, who was entering the Wall, turned around and grabbed Anya’s nape, half-lifting him. Anya startled awake from his reverie and trembled.
It seemed he’d become sensitive from using too much magic power.
“Y-yes. I’m sorry.”
Anya finally passed through the Wall’s gate and returned to Northernmost. It had been a journey that was short if you called it short, long if you called it long.
