Chapter 140: Trouble!
On the northern side of the central square, a bustling stone path in Stag Town was filled with an unending stream of passersby. Lights illuminated the sides of the road, where countless little stalls popped up like mushrooms, the vendors shouting their wares in a chorus that blended with the chatter of the crowd, all suffused with the tantalizing aroma of delicious food.
In addition to vendors selling various pickled, roasted, and stewed meats, there were plenty of stalls offering quirky items like pinwheels, shell strings, knight carvings, wooden masks, and even stranger knick-knacks.
These items were generally exquisitely crafted, often adorned with colorful patterns that made them look stunning at first glance. For the whimsical women and children full of childlike wonder, such items had a fatal charm. Young ladies from Emerald City, donning flower crowns, squatted at the stalls picking through the trinkets, hoping to snag beautiful, inexpensive accessories, while kids in masks zipped past them one after another.
The children frolicked through the crowd, chased by a few mothers sporting dramatic makeup, occasionally shouting, “Slow down, don’t fall!” But as the kids darted farther away, an irritable aunt couldn’t hold back anymore; she sprinted up and grabbed her runaway child, delivering a sound smack on the backside. The kid wailed like a banshee, the mask going “clang!” as it fell to the ground and got trampled.
At the chaotic end of the road, near a sweet pancake stall, a slightly taller girl in a white cloth dress, with her hair tied up and a lace-brimmed hat shielding her face, wore a wooden cat mask. She gazed up with big eyes, fixated on the deliciously sizzling pancakes on the grill.
The middle-aged uncle flipping the pancakes stole a glance her way, flipped a few more, then chuckled, “Hey there, little miss! Want to try one? If it’s not good, you don’t have to pay me.”
“Uncle, I want twenty!”
The girl replied in a sweet, slightly squeaky voice, pulling out a little coin pouch and proffering a shiny silver coin. The uncle grinned broadly as he accepted it and added, “But where are your parents? It’s a busy night—be careful wandering around alone.”
Seeing the shiny coins in her pouch surprised him, prompting his little warning. He figured she was quite young and it wasn’t safe for her to carry so much money alone. “Twenty pancakes will take some time to bake, so if you don’t mind, why not sit behind the grill for a bit while you wait for your guardians to arrive?”
He finished flipping the last pancake and suddenly frowned, “Are you from Alectine City? Your father’s nearby, right?”
“I’m not a little girl anymore!”
She replied, her sweet voice sounding almost disgruntled from beneath the mask.
Before long, the pancakes were ready. The uncle counted out twenty into a leather bag alongside a handful of copper coins and handed them over, still worried and reminding her again to wait for her parents. The girl shook her head slightly, chatted for a moment before saying, “My mother is waiting for me at the square,” and trotted off with her bag of pancakes.
“Ah, who knows where that noble girl came from, completely oblivious to the harshness of the world…”
“May the deity bless her with a safe night…”
I could still hear the uncle mumbling as I walked a little further away.
…What a worrywart.
The sweet pancakes were still warm in my bag. I reached in, pulled one out, and was ready to devour it whole. Just as I opened my mouth, I remembered I still had the mask on and elbowed it up off my forehead. Unfortunately, that knocked my hat off as well, revealing a wild mane of black hair.
I hurriedly bent down to pick it up, brushing off the dust, and shoved it back on my head, adjusting the mask beneath it. It felt a bit uncomfortable, so I repositioned it to the right cheek, finally balancing it out just right. Biting into the pancake, I squinted my eyes in bliss as the rich flavor exploded in my mouth.
…Delicious.
I hadn’t had anything this good in ages.
Since I arrived in Silgaya, I had been trekking alongside the Knights Order, eating nothing but bland, rough army rations day in and day out, struggling to find even a bowl of hot water when times got tough. After getting to Alectine City, I was stuck munching on leftovers, and the dinner at the Silent Fortress had been the only substantial meal, but even then, I couldn’t really taste it.
Now, back in the southern realm, savoring these expertly grilled sweet pancakes among the festive crowd, I was free from the mountains of corpses and rivers of bl**d. Everywhere I looked, there were bright lights. For a moment, it felt like a dream—the memory of the charred, desolate south, the chaotic battles filled with black smoke and strewn bodies, faded like a distant nightmare under the sun.
For a second, I even got the illusion of returning to the royal city.
“Top-quality deer meat! Seasoned with secret methods, come give it a try—”
As I walked through the throngs of people, the vendors’ voices filled the air, and the scent of food wafted everywhere. Off in the distance, the central square glowed with flames, already packed to the brim. Occasionally, figures of patrolling knights zipped by, but they were few and far between, their shiny armor blending into the firelight and the crowd.
After swallowing another bite of pancake and grabbing another piece, I started trudging toward the square.
Of course, waiting for me there wouldn’t be my mother—I was meant to stay at the place Daniel arranged for me tonight, to watch what everyone claimed was the last performance of the artist troupe.
The previous night’s discussion among the four of them didn’t last long; in fact, they had all made up their minds long before I got there. While I devoured a fair number of pancakes, they had shared details about the church’s activities in the northern territories. Before it got too late, they reminded me to rest well and then left.
I was assigned a room prepared for clerics in the underground prison; the bed was hard but I managed to get a good night’s sleep. Upon waking up this morning, I changed into a plain dress typical of commoners and hurried to Stag Town with the guiding cleric, ready to find something to munch on while we awaited the night.
The underground prison was to the west of Woodward Forest, only a few hours’ journey from Stag Town. Last night, my mind was all over the place and I hadn’t asked Daniel for more details. When morning came, I found out they had already set off at night and arrived here ahead of me. So, I casually chatted with the cleric guiding me.
From him, I learned that the underground prison we came out of had been built by the church over two hundred years ago—just as Daniel said—specifically to hold powerful villains, including some pesky members of the second phase of the Gate of Truth. In those two hundred years, gossip said that many heretics had bitten the dust there, but that was all ancient history.
The Western Continent hadn’t seen a large-scale war over faith in a long, long time. Ever since the Sword Saint took down the “Great Demon” with his blade on the Eastern Continent twenty-one years ago, the remaining notorious miscreants—like the Jester—had scattered like a deck of cards. In the following six-month purge, one after another, they disappeared without a trace.
The cleric was nearly sixty, an old-timer in the church. He participated in that extermination campaign on the Eastern Continent, claiming he’d sent at least eight or nine heretics to their final rest. Back then, heretics ran wild in the east, causing chaos and terror, and the mere mention of the Gate of Truth was enough to make the common folks shudder.
At that time, the members of the Gate of Truth were ruthless and powerful, with the Great Demon leading them. They had nearly ruled over Eborista until the Sword Saint, like a true hero, personally took them down. In the prolonged hunt that followed—lasting half a year—nearly none of those members survived. Just not long ago, the old cleric had even thought the Jester was also among the dead.
In the twenty years since, both the Eastern and Western Continents had enjoyed peace, with hardly a trace of heretic activity. The people—especially the young ones like us from the Western Continent—barely remembered anything about the Gate of Truth. While the church certainly played a role in prompting that forgetfulness, life had indeed grown a lot more stable since the disappearance of heretics.
The only enemy remaining for humanity was the monsters from the abyss.
The old cleric talked about the monster that appeared here a year ago—how close it was to the underground prison. He claimed that to get a look at the corrupted wasteland, all one had to do was climb over the southern mountains, and there lay the wasteland, just behind the hills—naturally, heading towards Stag Town, we were moving farther away from it.
I planned to go check it out after all the dust settled.
Because since last night, one question had been swirling in my mind.
That is…
If this underground prison was so close to the chasm, it meant that the “clinic” Angel spoke of, the place left behind after the truth gate abandoned it following the abyss’s emergence—the place where I once suffered…
It had been operating right under the church’s nose.
Nobody discovered it.
Nobody saved me.
“…Hah—”
I swallowed the last of the pancake and let out a long sigh.
My head was starting to ache again…
No, I shouldn’t be thinking about these things right now…
As I rubbed my temples one-handed, I looked up to the night sky in the north… over that way was Grandma Claire’s direction, the direction of the little village that first took me in.
Grandma must still be waiting for Barry, waiting for me to come back…
…If things go down tonight, I absolutely must let the Jester and all the threats d*e right here.
Not a single one can slip away.
“Hey! Watch where you’re walking! Have you got eyes?!”
Suddenly, a shout rang out from the crowd ahead. It sounded like someone was drunkenly yelling, followed by a sharp cry. I frowned and turned my gaze towards the noise, noticing that the crowd on the eastern road seemed to part in chaos, with sounds of a scuffle coming from that direction…
Who’s causing a ruckus?
I glanced around, temporarily unable to spot any patrolling knights. Tilting my head in thought, I clutched my bag of pancakes tightly and squeezed through the crowd toward the source of the commotion.
“d*mn it, a bunch of little punks daring to block my path…”
“Let go of me!”
“Apologize, and I’ll let you go…”
“Ha ha ha—”
“What on earth are you doing? Is that armor from the Silgaya soldiers? Drinking here like a drunken fool, bullying a bunch of half-grown kids…”
“Shut up! Stay out of this…”
“The soldier’s hitting people!”
“Who’s going to get the knights here…”
“Make way!”
A small head popped through the crowd. I clutched my bag tightly to prevent the pancakes from spilling as I finally emerged and straightened my hat, glancing toward the gathering crowd—just in time to see a few red-faced soldiers circling a group of young men, one soldier yanking a guy’s hair and gleefully slapping his face.
“Now, apologize—louder!”
“Sir Knight, they’re still kids, they don’t understand…”
A few spectators attempted to intervene but were stopped by other soldiers. The young man on the receiving end looked flushed, his eyes blazing. Though he didn’t dare fight back, he refused to back down. A couple of friends on the sidelines wanted to help but were threatened by the soldiers, “Stand still! Try to move, I dare you… d*mn it, I’ve been rescuing the disaster victims day and night; finally getting some time to rest, and here I am dealing with troublemakers—bunch of kids who haven’t even grown hair yet—ever seen a corpse?”
Ugh…
I really detest drunken men reeking of booze… Huh?
Suddenly, I spotted a familiar face among the youths, and I paused for a bit.
Isn’t that guy a bit familiar…
