All along the way he listened to the creaking sway of the wagon frames, and to the startled shouts and groans of pain that rose now and then from the mercenaries, gradually leaving behind the town where he had not lived for long.
Then he learned exactly what that Young Master Lorigo meant by “not far.”
Reading his book, he glanced at the crystal clock beside his hand. The light at its two ends had turned through nine full cycles, which meant nine days had passed.
He had also seen the so-called Earth Cave Domain by then. It was called a domain not only because it surrounded an Earth Cave City—the terrain here was far broader and more open as well. Unlike the kobolds' country, where all sorts of big caves connected to small ones, an Earth Cave Domain was like a single larger, more stable bubble, or several great bubbles joined and linked to one another, and the flat, open ground was already close to the legendary surface world.
At last it was time to rest, and Luge leapt down from the carriage.
He watched the busy mercenaries nearby and could not help admiring them a little. Some had already started fires, and a careless subterranean beast they had run into on the road became the main dish of the next meal.
“Lord Luge, wizards really are as diligent as the stories say,” the handsome young man Lorigo said, looking at the spell book in Luge's hands. Nearly every meeting between the two of them went like this. Then he added, “That is also the biggest difference between you and the wizards who mix with the large mercenary bands. Most of the ones I have seen spent their time drinking and enjoying themselves.”
After these days of travel, Lorigo looked tired as well, but his eyes were still bright and keen.
They all slept on the carriages, curled up in those small woven cabs, so there was no need to worry about danger from below.
The three of them came over to a campfire that had been set in order and sat down.
The mercenaries had been in high spirits these past days. When they rested at night, it was strangely peaceful, and some even declared that this was a journey under the protection of the gods. In fact, Luge had simply found a chance to let Zhizhi the Clever Bug out. As his companion familiar, it could sense its master's direction and had been traveling underground, following along all this while. Whenever the mercenary party stopped to rest, it hunted nearby, and with Luge's help it even brought a little something back for Aisjin and the others.
“Young Master Lorigo, what is it you hope to get out of these ruins we are going to explore?” Luge saw that his employer was in a talkative mood, so he picked a topic at random.
What he got in return was a long silence from the handsome young master.
“I want to become a wizard. That has been my dream all along...” Lorigo said, lowering his head, and then he laughed.
“I hope you won't laugh at my foolish fantasy, haha.”
In Lorigo's words and laughter, Luge could feel that longing.
The two of them talked and laughed, but Luge did not ask what the ruins actually looked like, and Lorigo never once brought it up himself.
In the blink of an eye, another nine days passed.
At last, at a stretch of flat ground so vast it was absurd, the party slowly came to a halt.
This was the destination of the journey.
The mercenaries began making camp under orders, with the air of men preparing for a long stay.
Luge studied the flat land before him.
“The area that was originally flat and even was much, much larger than this. The passing of time changes the terrain, but every few decades it becomes flat again,” Lorigo said, coming to stand beside him. “It is very interesting—as if someone came here every few decades to tamp it level.”
Luge said nothing and listened quietly.
“Then one time, a mercenary band that traveled back and forth between different Earth Cave Domains saw that tower with their own eyes. A huge tower beyond description, so huge it seemed it could slant through different Earth Cave Domains. It stood for several dozen days, then vanished, leaving behind an enormous stretch of level ground. One of my ancestors happened to be traveling with that mercenary band. He went inside to explore, and became the first apprentice wizard in our family,” Lorigo said, his face full of longing.
“Of course, it was long ago, and I only came across the account by chance while leafing through things. For some reason, no one else in my family seems to know about it at all, so I have only come here to give it a try,” the handsome young master said with a smile. “If it turns out I have only brought us here to look at the scenery, then please don't laugh at me, Lord Luge. Of course, the magic stones will not be short by a single one.”
Luge nodded, and the two of them stood there together looking at the view, the red-haired woman standing behind the young master.
Luge's face was calm, but in his heart he was thinking about his own spells. Though he had been interrupted often along the way, he had made progress on two of his spells: the model for Ear Seed was fully built, and the spell model for the Light spell would be nearly mastered once things settled down tonight. Only one spell was left unlearned now, one called Scribing.
He suddenly missed Kaliu a little, and he also came to understand why some wild wizards, once they had a certain amount of supernatural means, devoted themselves to pleasure alone.
Luge had noticed that while chatting with Lorigo, the other man would let words like “night” or “day” slip into his speech without meaning to, and once he found that Luge could carry on the conversation smoothly, he stopped deliberately holding himself back. Luge remembered what Old Gold Tooth and Kaliu had said: people living in the Earth Cave Cities had night and day too. The nobles controlled the great light source above the city, moving it as the sun and moon turned, making day and night.
In the camp, worn out from a busy day, snores rose on every side.
Luge sat inside his own tent. When the camp was laid out, the bottom of the tent had also been given some simple protection against attacks from below, but he trusted himself more, so Zhizhi was coiled under his tent, letting him build his spell model in peace.
The moment the Light spell's spell model was successfully built, before he had time to be glad about it—
Roars of rage and cries of pain erupted all around the camp.
He pulled the tent flap open and went out. Zhizhi poked up its big head and pressed against his shin.
Nearly two hundred mercenaries in the whole camp, even the ones who had been asleep, were startled awake, and the several captains thrown together for this were shouting themselves hoarse with orders.
“Have the ruins shown themselves?” Luge looked toward Young Master Lorigo, who had just crawled out of his tent nearby.
The red-haired woman had already summoned two pink gemstones and stood in a faint blur between them, keeping the two apart.
One closer look at Young Master Lorigo's expression told Luge that something had happened that this master and servant had not expected.
Once the Light spell's spell model was fully empowered, a huge white orb drifted slowly up into the sky, lighting up the whole camp and everything around it in an instant. This spell had its own peculiarity: empowering its spell model had a floating threshold that could go up or down, rather than the fixed value other spells had. What hung there now was the orb empowered to Luge's full strength; had he empowered it only a little, it would have been a small orb on his fingertip.
By its light he looked all around, and saw that the area outside the camp was already crowded with people, gathered for no reason he could make out.
Every one of these fellows who had appeared from who knew where wore a strange expression, weapons in hand.
And Young Master Lorigo beside him had gone small-faced and pale with fright, while the red-haired woman, a supernatural being, was just as grave.
“Sins!”
Those people began to shout.
Shouting as they charged the camp with the weapons in their hands.
“We are all sinners! We all carry sins!”
Surprise gradually showed on Luge's face as well. These people did not dodge or avoid the mercenaries' blades at all; when they were cut, they cried out in pain, but after the pain a smile of true feeling spread across their faces. At the same time they howled and swung their own weapons at the mercenaries. Apart from those cut down at the first blow, the rest all traded wound for wound, dealing the mercenaries heavy injuries and fear.
“They are Atoners. They firmly believe that the Earth Cave is a giant prison, that all of us are guilty, and that killing us—or killing themselves—is atonement, is salvation...” the red-haired woman said slowly, seeing the doubt on his face.
Chapter 84