The road to the Lower Court was desolation itself.
It was difficult to find a single intact building, and the air reeked with the mustiness of a deep sewer and the nauseating stench of spoiled food scraps.
“Hey, clever boy. Do you like it?”
Ravenwood asked as she walked beside me, sounding smug.
“Well, it will do.”
I could not keep carrying around a Broken Wooden Chair Leg forever, so I asked Ravenwood to make me a reasonably serviceable weapon.
[Old Knight William’s Longsword]
[Grade: Rare]
[Attack Power: 65]
[Durability: 30/30]
[This sword contains the lingering regret of an old knight who tried to protect Salus, the City of Law, until the very end, even as he succumbed to corruption.]
[You can use the Unique Skill - Challenge to a Duel.]
[You can use the Unique Skill - Will to Protect.]
The options themselves were good. I had never seen this equipment in the game, but the skills attached to it were real.
I had commissioned it with the remaining bell fragments, and true to her reputation as an Alchemist, Ravenwood had used the materials as an offering in a transmutation and shaped them into this weapon.
‘That works out well for me, but…….’
Ravenwood had demanded information from me under the Law of Equivalent Exchange, so I gave her some of what she needed.
There was one more thing. Since the first day had been categorized as the tutorial, I had only been able to check my special privileges today, on the second day.
[Judgment Front tutorial complete.]
[The user’s name has been confirmed. Locked functions have been unlocked.]
[Unlocked Functions]
[Inventory] [Status]
[History] [Equipment]
[Journal]
[A new journal entry has been added!]
There were five tabs in total. They were all familiar, so none posed a problem.
Most of the information was already known to me. It was obvious that I had become the protagonist, but there were still quite a few things I did not know.
For example, I had not known that the Toller of Execution was an enemy named Old Knight William, and the protagonist’s Turnabout Trial Domain was not something I had ever seen in the game.
More than anything, that phrase, ‘Judgment Front,’ bothered me.
‘Hmm…….’
But there was no way to learn more about it at the moment. I would probably have to reach the truth behind Salus’s corruption before that information became available.
‘Still, this is manageable.’
Ever since we entered the slums, the Guilty had blocked our path often enough to become annoying.
Of course, I had told Ravenwood not to interfere in any fight I could handle until I said otherwise, then gripped my sword.
‘I have to learn this properly.’
The trial system only existed in the form of a ‘Domain.’ In other words, it turned an unfavorable battle into one fought on favorable terms.
Yet I suddenly recalled a saying that law could not be enforced without physical force…… or something along those lines.
Not every problem could be resolved through peaceful conversation.
That meant I needed to develop sufficient practical combat instincts.
“I will watch, and if I think you are in danger, I will step in. Keep that in mind, clever boy.”
“Do as you please, old hag.”
Apparently dissatisfied with my lukewarm reply, Ravenwood clicked her tongue.
《A sin… ner?》
《Catch… him…》
《Catch him and hang him… alive…!》
The Guilty approached while uttering terrifying things as if they were perfectly ordinary. From the slums onward, creatures like these were everywhere.
The game’s early tutorial had begun with a warning along the lines of, ‘Beware the Guilty wandering outside.’ I remembered that much clearly.
But all of that belonged to the past now. What stood before me was undeniably real.
I could not go on forever thinking of this place as nothing more than a game.
‘That is why I practiced so much last night.’
They were monsters in human form. They deserved not even a shred of emotion.
Hesitation meant death. After facing that situation twice, I could no longer summon even pity.
It felt as though accepting that this was reality had not taken me very long.
‘Half a step forward.’
[Knight’s Swordsmanship]. It was the reason I, who had never once set foot in a kendo dojo in my life, could assume a proper stance so naturally.
Before they could even charge, I closed the distance first and cut cleanly and swiftly through the wrist of the Guilty at the front.
‘I can do this!’
A single real battle was ultimately more important than a hundred days of practicing against empty air.
Anyone could stand on the sidelines and offer advice.
‘Actually pulling it off is another matter.’
After severing its wrist, I kicked it away and neatly reset the distance between us.
It was as though Old Knight William’s experience had seeped into my body.
Was it because my movements were so different from yesterday?
“Clever boy, you are suddenly moving like a seasoned soldier.”
Ravenwood taunted me in a tone that almost sounded like praise.
“Even from behind, does it look that way to you, old hag?”
“Clever boy, I have seen enough in my time. If I could not tell even that much, I would have to give up being a Scholar.”
Ravenwood had not actually lived through all seventy of her years firsthand, so I did not know why she insisted on maintaining such an intellectual image. I assumed she had some reason to hide the truth from the outside world.
‘Hmm.’
Only a day ago, fighting these creatures had been difficult. That made sense. Back then, I had felt like an ordinary modern man with no concept of a game character’s ‘stats.’
《 Status 》
【Name: Ash Gray】
【Level: 1】
【Class: The Absolved】
【Alignment: Good / Neutral】
【Stats】
【Strength ― 15】【Dexterity ― 11】
【Agility ― 17】【Endurance ― 9】
【Intelligence ― 12】【Magic Power ― 6】
【Charisma ― 14】【Sanity ― 100】
Those were my approximate stats. They were not especially high, but…….
‘This is enough.’
I took another half step forward and brought my sword down.
The Guilty split in two without resistance. Meanwhile, Ravenwood was already rifling through the corpse I had cut down as though conducting an autopsy.
“This…… could serve as an ingredient for a Stabilizer. Hey, clever boy. I am asking just in case, but you are not experiencing any mental fog or signs of rising madness, are you?”
I thought about her question for a moment while swinging my sword.
It was true that fighting creatures designated as monsters in Gray Judgment would steadily drain the Sanity stat.
‘From what I saw in the Status window earlier, though, my Sanity does not seem to be dropping.’
It was probably thanks to the authority of The Absolved.
Was it because I was exempt from the law that ‘one’s sanity becomes disturbed’?
The Class called The Absolved was providing me with far more conveniences than I had expected.
I kept eliminating the Guilty around us while Ravenwood drew blood from their corpses and harvested materials.
‘……Looking at it this way, Ravenwood feels like one of those magnetic pets made for auto-hunting.’
In one online game, pets could be given a magnetic function that automatically looted items dropped by slain monsters.
Of course, Ravenwood was doing everything by hand.
As she brushed the dust from herself, she spoke to me in a complaining tone.
“My bag is quite full now. Hey, clever boy. Could you carry the remaining materials as well, if you do not mind?”
“How much could you possibly have gathered……? Collect them and hand them over, old hag. We have more or less cleared this area.”
With that, I accepted all the materials from Ravenwood. There was certainly far too much to fit into her small crossbody bag.
“By the way, the slums are quiet…… Is it because of the Guilty after all? What do you think, clever boy?”
“Even I do not know everything.”
I answered her casually, but the truth was that I did not know why the slums were so quiet. We had advanced while disposing of the Guilty along the way, but for the entire district to remain this silent…….
‘A few possibilities do come to mind.’
The more information one possessed, the more possible outcomes one had to consider.
Since we had defeated the Toller and it could no longer come this far, I could narrow down the assumptions considerably.
‘Either the companion I was supposed to encounter in the slums cleared the area, or…….’
Something had happened that forced every resident of the slums to evacuate at once.
Aside from that, I could not think of any likely explanation. Of course, that was still thinking in terms of a game.
From a realistic perspective, I had to remember that any number of variables could arise.
“What about you, old raven? What do you think?”
“Hmm…… You are right, clever boy. We dealt with the Guilty, yet there are no townspeople in sight. It appears they were taken away.”
“Taken away? An interesting hypothesis. Then where were they taken?”
“To the Lower Court, of course.”
Ravenwood folded her arms as she answered.
So she had reached the same conclusion. She was probably right. If the goal was to mass-produce the Guilty, that was the obvious place.
The remaining two bosses guarding the Lower Court must also have realized by now that the Toller had been defeated.
‘I hope I can find that person here…….’
The Lower Court was not far from the slums. I wanted to search if possible before moving on, but…….
What if the person I was looking for had been dragged to the Lower Court?
Had this still been a game, I would never have entertained such worries.
A gamer possessed the privilege of save―load. I could simply turn back time.
‘Tsk…….’
My throat felt strangely dry. Time continued to pass even while I stood there worrying. I could not afford to remain lost in thought.
Still, judging by the behavior of the Guilty I had cut down, they had not simply charged at everything in sight.
They had rushed me only because I had entered their detection range.
Before that, however, they had been searching the area for something.
‘Time to deduce.’
Before I properly encountered the Guilty, they had unquestionably been behaving strangely.
They had dug at the ground or pounded apart the doors of empty houses.
It was as though something was controlling them and compelling them to search for a particular target.
One by one, those actions began to fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
“Clever boy, what do you plan to do next? Are you thinking of digging your way underground like those creatures?”
“Of course not. No matter how much I think about it, this situation makes no sense. It feels like the calm before a storm…….”
I had barely finished muttering when Ravenwood shouted.
“Clever boy, beneath your feet!!”
It was a warning. But the ground collapsed faster than her words, and in the next instant, we plunged straight down.
We fell into a trap? Was this some sort of trap card from a dueling card game?!
“Ugh!”
There was no time to complain. The moment we landed, Ravenwood and I regained our footing and surveyed the surroundings.
Pitch-black darkness filled the area.
When I looked up, I saw that the pit was easily over ten meters deep. Ravenwood immediately pulled a Torch from inside her clothes and lit it to dispel the darkness.
“Oof, every bone in my body hurts…….”
As Ravenwood muttered to herself and raised the flame, the situation around us came into view.
The walls were adorned with sinister decorations made from the severed body parts of the Guilty, each piece embedded into the earth.
People who appeared to be residents of the slums were entangled among them as well.
“P-Please save me!! I beg you!”
A skeletal man who was quite literally nothing but skin and bones flailed one hand toward us and begged to be rescued.
‘Damn it.’
I truly did not know what was happening.
This was not even something as simple as a butterfly effect. Events I knew nothing about kept unfolding in a chain, and I had no idea how I was supposed to respond.
“Are these people insane?”
Ravenwood looked back and forth between the Guilty and the civilians wedged into the earthen walls, speaking as though she could not understand what she was seeing.
I could not understand it either, even with the sight directly before my eyes. I clicked my tongue at the deranged scene, nauseating enough to make me retch.
“Tsk.”
“……Clever boy.”
At some point, Ravenwood moved closer and whispered as though she had realized something.
“Is there not something strange about that man?”
At her words, I looked again at the screaming man.
There was a small detail easy to miss from this distance unless I studied him closely.
His emaciated body was all skin and bones, his face was twisted with fear, and his voice sounded desperate.
‘But he was not desperate.’
There was no desperate attachment to life in him. It felt as though he was acting.
If that performance could be called acting, then every stunt performer in a third-rate horror film deserved the Best Actor award.
Even so, I probably would have fallen for it. At least, I would have until the screams of the resident embedded in the wall twisted into a vicious smile.
《Please…… save me…… save me, sa. Sav. Save. Sa-sa-sa-save-save――》
The uneasy repetition gradually grew louder, and soon it was no longer alone.
The corpses embedded in the surrounding walls creaked grotesquely and began to sing in chorus.
Chilling jaws with little more than bone remaining, mutilated limbs patched together like rags, and ruined eyeballs that looked as though they had been dipped in lava filled my vision.
Creatures that still retained the faintest trace of human form crowded all around us, their appearances beyond description.
“Old hag, right now―”
Before I could finish, footsteps echoed through the darkness.
STEP, STEP.
From the cavern ahead, what appeared to be a collective mass of those creatures slowly approached.
‘That thing is……!’
It looked as though it had dressed like an artist, but its form was nothing of the sort.
In its right hand, it carried a dignified staff crowned with a ruby. In its left, it held a conductor’s baton. A silk top hat sat on its head, while its neat suit fell somewhere between a frock coat and a lounge suit stolen from the Belle Époque.
None of the pieces matched, but that incongruity soon became the least disturbing part.
What truly stood out was something else.
Above the simple yet gentlemanly suit, three heads, each wearing a different expression, spun around one another and took turns speaking.
Agh, it was a Flying Triple-Head!
《There is a rough-hewn beauty in sinners……》
《Even so, we shall never be forgiven.》
《No, no. Passing judgment is only natural for a noble.》
[The ‘Conductor of Flesh’ begins its performance!]
“Seeing it in person is enough to drive me insane. Seriously!”
The baton in its left hand moved, and the creatures that had been trapped and bound within the walls tore themselves free.
Its three heads continued spinning as it swung the staff in its right hand and pointed it at Ravenwood and me.