Gray Judgment was a game that blended several genres together. It combined adventure-style exploration with simulation elements, such as strengthening stronghold areas and developing them through various activities.
It was what one might call a ‘hodgepodge’ of a game.
That was why I knew I could not accomplish everything alone. Even with the authority of ‘The Absolved,’ a person ultimately had only one body.
In other words, only an omnipotent being could afford the foolish belief that they could handle everything by themselves.
“Whew.”
I cut through the thoughts cluttering my mind as I swung my sword at the group of the Guilty blocking our path.
“Old woman, let me ask you something. Suppose you were a Cursilng.”
“A Cursilng? Little Fox, have you lost your mind?”
……Ravenwood’s reaction was anything but mild. In truth, Cursilngs were a race regarded with something close to outright hatred, so her response was understandable.
“No, I am only asking you to imagine it. Why is a woman with a university education reacting like this?”
“Hmm…… The ecology of Cursilngs.”
At my question, Ravenwood stood with a hand against her chin and sank into thought for a moment before opening her mouth.
“They have a talent for digging through the earth. Naturally, they would seek somewhere deep underground or a crevice hidden from the eyes of others. Why? Do you have some idea where the child you are seeking might be?”
“She would not have stopped at merely hiding. Not that girl.”
“What? Is she a secret child of yours?”
Ravenwood gave a quiet laugh and sneered. Naturally, I did not bother answering that.
“Well, damn. No wonder you sounded so terribly protective of her…….”
“Enough of that ridiculous misunderstanding, old woman. She is simply someone I know personally.”
Ravenwood snorted at my indifferent reply, but she did not press the matter any further.
Perhaps she had concluded that finding useful talent for the slums, which could collapse at any moment, mattered more than questioning ‘me,’ the Executor.
“A personal acquaintance…… A plausible enough explanation. Very well. Then we should hurry and find where this precious connection of yours has buried herself.”
“You are not going to ask anything else, old woman?”
“I have no intention of doing so, Little Fox. If you say she is necessary, then you must have a reason, do you not? I was astonished while watching you as well. By all the bizarre things you did, I mean.”
Ravenwood laughed so hard that she sounded as though she might choke at any moment.
From her perspective, I supposed my actions might truly have appeared extraordinary.
After all, I had encountered powerful enemies and accomplished the remarkable feat of slaughtering them without any proper weapon.
“The other things were certainly interesting, but remember this as well. The reason I am helping you on your journey is that you accurately understood what troubled me.”
“Haha…… Could you see what I was thinking, old woman?”
“Little Fox, somehow, I knew that was what you would say.”
As Ravenwood and I exchanged idle conversation, we eventually arrived at our destination.
“This place……? Surely you are not about to tell me that this is where we are going, Little Fox?”
Standing beside me, Ravenwood shook her head and questioned me again.
We had come to the furthest outskirts of the slums, where an abandoned water tower and a waste treatment facility converged.
‘The Leaden Waterway…….’
If she was hiding, this had to be the place. Especially if she had remained near the slums.
No, there had never been another option to begin with.
“I am sorry to say it, but I believe this is probably the place.”
“Do you have a reason for thinking so? Were I a Cursilng, I doubt I could endure even a minute in such a nauseating place.”
Under normal circumstances, Ravenwood’s observation would have been reasonable. As befitted beastkin, Cursilngs possessed exceptionally keen senses.
She must have concluded that those heightened senses would make it impossible for a Cursilng to live here.
‘Information I might have overlooked if I had been possessed without ever playing the game.’
From an ordinary perspective, the habits of Cursilngs closely resembled those of animals.
I would normally have agreed that they could never willingly crawl into a place that smelled this foul.
‘But what if she had a reason to enter despite all of that?’
Let us consider an example.
I had to deduce the truth perfectly.
Why had Rin, who should have been living with the people of the slums, avoided them?
I had awakened at the very beginning of the game, around the point of the opening and the tutorial.
As the ink flowing through the bodies of Salus’s citizens gradually began to dominate their minds, why had Paulo Rin abandoned the others and fled……?
“Ah.”
Only after letting out that quiet sound did I remember a detail from her setting.
Paulo Rin had a blood relative.
The citizens had broken down in this ruined world, turning it into a place shaped by repeated slaughter, plunder, and madness.
In other words, the slums had collapsed in reality and could no longer protect her younger sibling.
‘The one absolute choice that would allow her to protect her sibling…….’
It was to take refuge within a labyrinthine underground waterway where no one could find them.
The route between the slums and the Lower Court was extremely long.
However, if two bosses were prowling throughout the area, she would naturally have realized that her home was no longer safe. Moving elsewhere would have been the reasonable choice.
‘Right, that was it…… This event existed in the game as well.’
Above certain difficulty levels, NPCs and companion characters did not always appear in the ‘same place.’
It was a difficulty setting where Variable Generation occurred in the truest sense. That was why the player needed a thorough understanding of almost every possible event.
‘And I was the one who had seen it through to the very end.’
That was why I could be certain.
Paulo Rin would be inside this underground waterway.
I did not even consider the possibility that she might not be there. It had been a random event in the game, but the underground waterway was the only place where she could live in hiding with her frail young sibling.
More importantly, it was also connected to Paulo Rin’s profession.
One might say that she was exceptionally deft with her hands. Well, she would need at least that much skill to survive within this foul-smelling labyrinth.
“Well, I believe I can guess the rest without hearing it. So, is this why you made me your companion?”
“There are few people as versatile as an Alchemist.”
“That cannot be the only reason. You already knew all of my personal information…… Hmm.”
Ravenwood muttered as she looked at me.
Perhaps because I could not read the expression behind her mask, questions like this were rather unsettling.
Had I been able to see her face and read her expression, I might at least have understood a little of what she was thinking.
“There are many things I do not understand, Little Fox. Many things caught me completely off guard as well. It is almost as though you are not a resident of this place…….”
“Oh, you have struck at the very heart of the matter! ……Did you think I would say that, old woman?”
I answered with an idle joke, but in truth, her words had made my heart skip a beat.
Perhaps she was simply perceptive because she was a scholar who had spent time at a university.
“That is not what matters, old woman.”
“Then what does matter, Little Fox?”
Ravenwood listened to me rather than insisting upon her own opinion.
“What matters is that we met in this miserable neighborhood. It seems that we will be traveling together for quite some time, so why do we not discuss the rest while we enter?”
“You truly intend to go inside? Into a place that even vagrants refuse to enter?”
I could hear the discomfort in her voice behind the mask.
She clearly did not want to enter, but honestly, I did not believe I could conquer this damned waterway alone.
Ravenwood was not benevolent enough to enter merely because someone needed to be rescued. If I wished to persuade her, I would be better served by making an offer that appealed to her interests.
“It will take quite some time to return to the University from here, and we need to collect ritual materials along the way. I would appreciate it if you considered entering this waterway part of that process.”
“How cowardly. How is that any different from saying you intend to exploit a person of my talents without paying her?”
“I will not deny it.”
In my words, Ravenwood lowered her head for a moment. Only after releasing a deep sigh did she continue.
“The reason I do not wish to enter that place is simple. It is not because of instinctive disgust or concerns about hygiene. When conducting experiments at the University, who has time to concern themselves with hygiene?”
“Hmm?”
This was the first I had heard of it.
I had never encountered flavor text like this in the game.
“This particular place, the Leaden Waterway, was used by the University to discard failed test subjects. It is rather close to the University, after all.”
“What?”
……This truly was something I had never heard before.
Despite playing Gray Judgment for so long, I had never once heard Ravenwood give such an explanation.
‘So the grotesque creatures that appeared in the waterway in the game were actually the University’s test subjects.’
As I considered that, Ravenwood added something else.
“Those test subjects certainly deserved to be disposed of, so that much is understandable. However, do you know what the problem is, Little Fox?”
“Go on.”
“Human rights and similar concerns are not the issue. We conduct experiments for the sake of progress. The problem is that we have no idea what creatures are living inside that waterway now.”
Ravenwood finished with a bitter smile.
“In other words, because it is where the University discarded the byproducts of its failures, you have no idea what dangers might be lurking inside, and you would rather turn back. Is that what you mean?”
“……Yes. I will be honest with you. If you intend to use the Leaden Waterway to enter the University, you should abandon the idea. Every exit leading anywhere else has probably been sealed.”
“What?”
This was a serious problem.
My shortcut had been blocked.
It was true that I had come to the Leaden Waterway to find Rin, but I had also intended to gain an enormous advantage in time by using it to travel to another region.
‘This is making my head spin.’
Senior protagonists of regression, possession, and reincarnation web novels, are you watching?
I tried to do as well as all of you, but I am already stuck.
……Still, now that I had come this far, I could not turn back. Nor did I intend to waste time and leave empty-handed.
I stepped toward the staircase descending into the underground waterway and spoke.
“We are going in. We cannot simply turn back now, old woman.”
“Little Fox, I admit that your knowledge is impressive. However, the enemies in the waterway may be different from what you expect.”
Ravenwood spoke as though pleading with me.
She seemed to be warning me not to shoulder unnecessary risk. However, given my current circumstances, I wanted to secure at least one more companion before moving on.
More importantly, unlike in the game, there did not seem to be any limit on the number of companions I could have.
Therefore, this choice was a kind of test.
In a game without saving or loading, I had no choice but to discover the truth by confronting it personally.
“You already know how this works. In the end, we have no choice but to accept the risks. There is no such thing as a completely safe method, regardless of the task.”
“That is true. I merely wished to say that there was no need to risk ourselves over something uncertain.”
“Is there anything in this broken city that can be accomplished without accepting some risk?”
As I descended the stairs into the underground waterway, I spoke to Ravenwood again.
“Ravenwood, this will not end unless we eliminate this phenomenon.”
“Little Fox, you speak as though you know how all of this will unfold…… As though you can eliminate this distorted phenomenon.”
“There is no need to make it sound so grand. I only know what I know.”
“Of course, Lord Executor. I am not usually fond of gambling, you understand? Yet now that we find ourselves in a situation like this, I believe a little wager might be worthwhile.”
We nodded and exchanged words as we descended the stairs. Before long, we had entered the waterway itself.
The damp air, thick with the briny scent of iron, forced its way deep into my lungs.
Every breath made me feel as though I had entered a landfill.
Unidentifiable slime and moss intertwined across the walls, forming a hideous texture. The irregular dripping of water repeatedly echoed around us, creating an unpleasant resonance.
“Light.”
“You speak as though you had left it in my keeping.”
For all our arguing, we could not proceed through the dark waterway without a source of light.
Knowing that, Ravenwood quietly lit the lantern and asked me a question.
“I sometimes find myself thinking that fire is truly beautiful…… What do you think when you look at a flame, Little Fox?”
“Fire?”
It was a rather philosophical question.
“Light that illuminates the darkness. Something that provides warmth. Perhaps something like that?”
“A remarkably straightforward answer.”
Ravenwood replied in a rather dissatisfied tone as she raised the lantern and examined our surroundings.
Everywhere the light reached, I felt as though I could see grotesque shapes. It was enough to make me wonder whether I had developed some form of madness.
“People cannot survive without fire. When someone remains alone in the darkness for too long, they often lose their mind.”
As she spoke, Ravenwood removed something from inside her clothes and handed it to me.
“This is…….”
“Well, it will be better to have it. It is a sedative that will help you retain your sanity. I brought several, just in case.”
CLINK.
The moment I accepted the glass syringe from Ravenwood, I could not help furrowing my brow.
The moisture in the air was growing steadily thicker, and it was not merely steam rising from sewage.
《Grrrr― Grrrgh, Krrh……!》
A beastly growl sounded from somewhere nearby. A vile stench assaulted my nose, and red eyes gleamed toward us from within the darkness.