The body of the snake sometimes twitched and other times quivered, emitting an eerie and ominous sound. It was clearly dead when it was above, so why is it alive down here?
“…Was that thing actually not dead when it was above…?”
“Yes… it was definitely dead. But now it’s alive…”
I stared intently at Akashi, but he just shrugged, saying he didn’t know what it was.
“No matter how much I know or how smart I may be, there are still things I don’t understand. This is one of them. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Judging by its magical energy, it’s not undead either. Honestly, how did the gods end up choosing such headache-inducing lizards as their proxies?”
He suddenly complained about the gods while looking at the snake’s body with a look of exasperation. However, one question crossed my mind.
“…What would happen if we touched it?”
A sane person would think that touching it would result in getting crushed by its reactive movement to pain. But since common sense had already been shattered once, I was curious about what might happen.
“What? Are you some kind of weirdo who gets excited watching people get squished? If so, go ahead and touch it. Ah, it’d be meaningless anyway. You’d all be flattened like paper in an instant. Though, who knows with this worm.”
Akashi scolded me as if I were crazy and then extinguished the light he had been shining on the snake’s body. While I thought his comment wasn’t necessary, his point was valid. There was no need to risk our lives just to satisfy curiosity.
“…Alterra. It’s fascinating, but let’s move on. It doesn’t seem hostile toward us, so we can probably ignore it and keep going.”
Alterra, who had been staring wide-eyed at where the snake’s body had been, agreed and started moving forward but glanced back one more time at the spot.
“How could something like this exist? If it were me, I wouldn’t let something like this near my nest…”
She seemed genuinely curious about why such a thing existed in her home. Yuna, though silent, also appeared to share a similar question, evident from her expression.
However, since there was no way to find out, we continued in silence, descending further. Then suddenly, Alterra stopped us.
“…There’s something ahead making a clattering noise. Should we drop it?”
Ah, that’s why. Since dropping it after seeing it wouldn’t make a difference, I asked her to wait a moment as we approached cautiously.
Alterra tightened her grip on her spear with both hands and carefully moved forward. As she did, the identity of the clattering sound became clear.
A skeleton dressed in moth-eaten woolen fabric covered its torso, with a black wooden crown atop its pale skull, periodically clicking its jaw as it turned its neck.
“Skeleton? No. That’s…”
-The ones who dare to descend here, deceiving the eyes of death with living flesh. My name is Neti. According to the laws of the Underworld, you must pay a toll to pass.
Akashi stiffened slightly upon seeing it, recognizing what it was before Neti spoke directly to us with a hollow voice.
“Shall we push it aside? Or do you plan to pay the toll it demands?”
Rather than speaking aloud, it felt as though its words were planted directly into our minds.
Alterra asked me what to do. In the past, she likely wouldn’t have questioned or hesitated and would’ve pushed it aside immediately. But seeing her change made me inwardly pleased, so I suggested hearing what the toll was first.
“…Neti! What is the toll you demand!”
-Death renders one powerless. But life does not. Since you, with your living bodies, seek to descend into the Underworld, offer your arms and legs.
“…Push it aside.”
As soon as Alterra heard my command, she moved the wall next to Neti and shoved him into the abyss below without hesitation. We waited silently for a moment, expecting him to reappear or for something unusual to happen, but nothing did.
“So, what was that? Akashi, you seemed to recognize it. And what’s this talk about the Underworld?”
Akashi, now much more relaxed, responded with something absurd.
“Oh, that? It’s a guardian of the Underworld. And this place is the Underworld.”
Since gods truly exist in this world, it makes sense that the Underworld exists too. However, unlike gods who can be reached through prayer or divine selection, the Underworld isn’t something casually mentioned. The gods of the underworld never respond to the voices of the living, and entering the Underworld means you’re dead.
It’s the ultimate destination for all life—a place from which there is no escape, and no one is permitted to return.
“…If this is the Underworld, aren’t we in deep trouble?”
“That’s right! If this is the Underworld, isn’t there no way out?!”
Even the dead cannot leave the Underworld. Only during a single day each year, when the boundary between the Underworld and the mortal realm blurs, are brief visits allowed.
“Oh, don’t worry. This isn’t the real Underworld. It’s probably a fake created clumsily by the dragon beneath us. If it were the real Underworld, our limbs would’ve been severed the moment we pushed aside that guardian.”
Still, the fact that they prepared a guardian indicates they put some effort into it. Akashi evaluated this false Underworld with the confidence of someone walking into their own living room.
“Can we really leave?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Even I escaped the real Underworld once. A fake like this won’t be difficult.”
He just said something incredibly bold as if it were nothing. If we kept listening, there’d be no end, so I suggested continuing our descent.
“…Earlier, you were talking about the Underworld. Does that mean we’re in the land of the dead?”
Alterra asked me cautiously while keeping watch ahead. I summarized Akashi’s explanation and relayed it to her.
“…Yes, it’s the Underworld, but it’s probably a fake one created by the Great Worm beneath us.”
“So, there’s no chance we’ll find my mother here? It’s fake…”
From her tone filled with deep regret, her expression likely mirrored the same sentiment.
“I understand your disappointment, but your mother wouldn’t want her child to enter the Underworld while still alive. The living should remain among the living.”
“I know. It was just a hypothetical question.”
Alterra answered dryly and continued descending steadily. Along the way, whenever we encountered another guardian, we simply shoved them off cliffs and moved on.
Then, Alterra stopped again, and I assumed it was another guardian, but she said something unexpected.
“There’s a snake ahead. Should we knock it off again?”
“Snake? How big is it?”
“…Big enough to swallow a human.”
This was the first non-skeletal creature we’d encounter since coming here, so I suggested we approach and take a look. Yuna seemed bored and was somewhat enthusiastic.
“This doesn’t feel good…”
“I never expected to hear something like that from you.”
Only Akashi seemed uneasy. However, given the majority vote and his karmic baggage, we decided to disregard his opinion and told Alterra to proceed further.
As Alterra described, there was indeed a green snake coiled up blocking the path. Its head was intact, but its condition worsened as we moved along its body until only bones remained at the tail—a strange sight reminiscent of something familiar.
-Hello, strangers whose names I do not know. My name is Musgaraki. Turn back. It’s not too late. If you turn back now, you may preserve your lives.
“We should just shove it off.”
What? Looks aside, it’s just another guardian, right? I told Alterra to knock it off, but Akashi abruptly halted us with great urgency.
“…Shove it? Don’t.”
“Wait a moment. Akashi seems to have something to say.”
“Hey, you over there. Let me ask you one thing. Is the large snake in the center of the pit yours?”
Upon closer inspection, the state of the snake’s body resembled the larger snake in the center of the pit.
-…Yes, that is me. By the hand of the mistress of the underworld, and by the hand of my wife, I have been transformed into this existence of the underworld.
“Underworld existence! So that’s why your body looks like that! I wondered why you were alive. You’ve become a being of the Underworld…! Then the parts of you that are dead must be connected to the mortal realm, right? And what do you mean by ‘wife’? Are you referring to the Great Worm?”
-Are you a magician or a scholar? You seem to know quite a lot. Yes. She is the one with whom I pledged eternal unity. Unfortunately, her obsession with that pledge has led to this.
“…Discussing eternity with a dragon, huh? Well, even if you didn’t realize it, you ended up in quite a predicament.”
-She revealed herself as a dragon midway through and understood the weight of her promise of eternity.
“You were quite the fool yourself.”
“…If she’s your wife, she’s definitely not my father.”
While Akashi and the snake conversed, Alterra, having heard the story, remarked with a mix of relief and resignation.
“That’s true, isn’t it? Then… there’s no need for us to descend further, is there? Shall we not go back up?”
“That… well, I’m still curious to see what the Great Worm looks like. Maybe it’s excessive greed.”
To be honest, I just wanted to run away. Just listening to the story between the snake and Akashi gave me a sense of how insane the entity below us was.
Apparently, it disguised itself as a giant snake and went out for fun, only to fall in love at first sight with another massive snake it encountered. It revealed its true nature and proposed an eternal bond.
The snake accepted, and upon its death, the dragon created a false Underworld, modifying its corpse and binding its soul to remain together eternally.
Just hearing the story made my head spin. Meeting such a creature seemed impossible.
“I can’t accompany you, but I can at least pull you out from afar. Akashi has a spell called reverse summoning…”
“That’s enough. I’m not trying to win.”
“…Win? Hold on, Alterra. Are you planning to fight the dragon?”
“Yeah.”
That’s problematic. It was obvious that Alterra would either die or get injured, and I couldn’t just stand by and let that happen.
“If you know her real name, why don’t you just say it instead of beating around the bush?”
-…Isn’t that a betrayal of trust? She trusted me enough to reveal her name. I cannot betray that trust. All I can do is wait until her madness subsides, and she regains her sanity, correcting her mistakes.
“Ha. Idiot. The longer you hesitate, the greater your lover’s sins grow. Do you wish for her soul to be trapped in the depths of hell, unable to reincarnate?”
-That…
“Enough. You stay quiet. Hey, Hero. We have work to do. Tell this guy to confess his lover’s name using your pen.”
While pondering how to reason with Alterra, Akashi suddenly instructed me to use the pen.
…Why?
