Chapter 92: When the Flower of Sin Blooms (Part Five)
Walking through the garden and arriving behind the church, a massive round archway came into view.
The arch was made of marble, standing about five or six meters tall, adorned with intricate and finicky carvings that vaguely resembled the patterns on the Archbishop’s clerical robes. At the top hung a slightly crooked golden cross that looked like it could drop at any moment.
We didn’t stop our steps, going straight through the arch and into the dimness beyond, where our vision was instantly swallowed by darkness. The last rays of the fading sunset barely penetrated this place, leaving only the flickering light of two torches, which illuminated the rocky floor within a radius of a few meters but revealed nothing further away.
This space is really big…
Bigger than the little church’s entryway, even more so than the courtyard garden, was my first thought.
Then, I caught a whiff of something strange in the air… a medicinal smell.
And then there was the stench.
“This place…” I heard Sword Demon Miss murmur behind me, her tone growing more serious, “…smells like the inside of a tower.”
“A tower?”
I held the torch as I advanced, slowing down as I rolled my eyes when she finished speaking. “Have you seen anything like that from the outside?”
“No.”
“So this isn’t a tower.”
“…Oh.”
“We’ve arrived at the domed chamber.”
I continued, lowering my voice: “You know, that big round red-brick dome that looks circular from the outside, opposite the main entrance. It’s the final place in the whole church, connected to another path leading into it; those knights come in from a side door that seems to lead right this way… but it seems like there’s no one here, except for the corpse.”
As I said that, I came to a halt.
I pushed the torch slightly ahead and saw, within the firelight, about five or six meters away, a charred, shriveled corpse covered in cobwebs, curled up and kneeling there.
…It looked like it was praying.
In front of the corpse, further out where the light could barely reach, I caught a shadowy figure, massive and towering, resembling a stone statue or something else, standing completely still, shrouded in gloom—like a sacred object at the very center of the dome, silently worshipped by that long-deceased, charred body.
I noticed that there were other corpses around that thing.
Not just one corpse…
Twisted, shadowy figures, also curling into a kneeling and praying posture; they were scattered just beyond the outer edges of the torchlight, barely revealing their oddly grotesque silhouettes as they surrounded that large, statue-like object in the darkness.
This was not a scene that evoked a sense of the sacred and untouchable, oh no.
It was the opposite, radiating an uncanny chill that made the hairs on my arms stand on end; I instinctively took a step back.
“Hey…”
Almost as a reflex, I didn’t turn my head and immediately called out to Sword Demon Miss, eager to bring her back. I could hear her footsteps moving away from me: “Come here and take a look at this.”
“……”
Sword Demon Miss didn’t respond.
But the sound of her retreating steps suddenly stopped.
She must have intended to explore elsewhere—maybe she found something else—but upon hearing my voice, she quietly returned, brushing past me. I caught a whiff of her scent, which came from her hair. It didn’t smell special or foul, just a hint of oil, as if she hadn’t washed it in over two days—yeah, mine probably smelled the same way.
That smell mingled in the air with the odors of d*ath and decay, somehow making me feel slightly better.
“…The corpse.”
Sword Demon Miss stepped in front of me, holding the torch in her left hand and gripping her old sword tightly with her right. She first gave the corpse a long stare, then glanced around before looking up at the statue-like thing. After a moment of silence, she confidently strode forward, kneeling down to get a closer look at the corpse…
But I suspected she was planning to sniff it first.
Ew…
I shivered.
After waiting a moment and seeing Sword Demon check the corpse, she seemed to notice the thing that the corpse was worshiping and approached it—everything appeared to be normal; the corpse didn’t suddenly jump up to attack, nor did she experience any delusions of that sort.
“Phew…”
Only then did I exhale, feeling relieved enough to follow her.
…There’s a benefit to traveling with someone like Sword Demon.
I had just realized this.
She was clearly a very alert person, with a keen instinct akin to an animal’s… even due to her past experiences, she retained some traits typical of beasts, like sharp senses that relied more on hearing and smell rather than sight, uncanny but accurate intuition, remarkable insight, and so on. This allowed her to perceive danger before anyone else, a crucial survival skill.
She could even instinctively determine if someone was dangerous… I thought there might be a reason she was willing to stay by me like this.
As I stepped forward to join Sword Demon Miss at her side, raising my head to gaze at the enormous object, I felt much more relaxed compared to when I first entered.
Because being with someone like her, especially in a place where you never knew if something would suddenly jump out at your face, gave me a surprising sense of security.
I didn’t really need to worry about the dark, unseen areas anymore; I didn’t have to be on high alert every second, anxious about whether something frightening or dangerous would suddenly appear. If there was any threat, Sword Demon Miss would detect it first and react.
So, I didn’t have to keep my senses on full blast, hyper-aware of every flicker, just needed to watch her reactions.
If something did happen, she would warn me first with her actions, and if she didn’t, that meant—at least for now—the vicinity was safe. I’d come to realize this long ago; otherwise, there’s no way I would dare to sit on a bench surrounded by corpses in a pitch-black hall and immerse myself in a journal.
While reading the journal, I hadn’t even paid attention to the sounds around me, just occasionally noting Sword Demon Miss’s reactions.
But I hadn’t given it much thought until now; it suddenly dawned on me.
It was a strange feeling…
But a familiar one.
Long ago, in a hazy memory, I had raised a sheepdog.
Back then, under the pressure of a busy workload, I rarely had time to spend with family; instead, I often spent more time with that sheepdog living with me in the company.
That sheepdog couldn’t talk either, didn’t like barking, always silent, staying in my office, lying in a spot where it could see me, then closing its eyes to sleep.
Sometimes late at night when I was working overtime alone and stepped out to use the restroom, the whole building was dark and eerie.
Yet, in my memory, no matter how deeply that sheepdog slept, the moment it heard the slightest movement from me, it would wake up, following me wherever I went, standing silently in a spot where it could see me as soon as I turned around…
Alright.
I admit I find many similarities between Sword Demon Miss and that sheepdog from my memory.
It seems like they serve a similar purpose…
Of course, I’m not insulting her, ha-ha.
I just suddenly thought of this.
Perhaps… that sheepdog was also what the current me needed desperately…
“…So, what is this thing for?”
A flood of thoughts rose in my mind, but I quickly tossed them aside; now was not the time for random musings.
I stared at that enormous, oddly shaped sculpture that I couldn’t even tell what material it was made of, speaking to Sword Demon Miss in what sounded almost like a monologue, “An altar? A podium? Have you seen anything like it before?”
