Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey Volume 19 E-Book

Yoshinobu Akita

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Thirteen days remain. Caught between the dragons of the Sanctuary and the Apostles of the capital, Orphen finds only one hope remaining: Leki, who gained a sense of self when he joined with Claiomh. But can they forestall the goddess’s arrival?

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Color Illustrations

Prologue

Chapter I: Despair and What Is Not Despair

Chapter II: Friendship and What Is Not Friendship

Chapter III: Nostalgia and What Is Not Nostalgia

Chapter IV: Rest and What Is Not Rest

Chapter V: Sanctuary and What Is Not Sanctuary

Chapter VI: Victory and What Is Not Victory

Afterword

About J-Novel Club

Copyright

Landmarks

Color Illustrations

Table of Contents

Prologue

The Spirit Hall was said to be the closest entrance to the Misty Falls. That being said, flesh-and-blood humans couldn’t use it, so in that sense it was nothing but the product of a haphazard addition to the royal castle—a worthless dead end. Still, the things that should have been sealed away in the Misty Falls could be heard whispering here. It was a sort of gathering place for those whispers, and the whispers were worth something.

How had it become that sort of place?

He didn’t know the reason for it. In both relative and absolute terms, he had no idea where the Misty Falls was located. It might have been pointless to even think about it. When he’d been bestowed his current position, the people who had given him his authority told him about this, the Spirit Hall. They’d told him that this hall was the one clue to borrowing the power of the Misty Falls. He’d listened gratefully—listened, and obtained what he needed. By the time they realized their error, it was already too late. He’d obtained too much power.

He scowled, feeling cynical. There was no need for him to hide his emotions. He could do whatever he pleased here in the capital and no one would complain. He felt he had done the work to deserve that. Pluto the Demon rolled his thick shoulders. Each time he came to the Spirit Hall, he felt like something heavy settled upon them.

He was getting close to forty, his body transitioning from peak condition to something more mature. For fun, sometimes he went down to the School and kicked around the young sorcerers there with a smile on his face—he enjoyed seeing the hardworking students steal his techniques and grow stronger by the day.

Those students were full of talent. They were the youths who would inherit the future.

Do I have to let them die again? He sighed bitterly, still scowling.

Of course, this continent might not even have a future. It wasn’t something anyone could count on.

The still darkness of the Spirit Hall was endlessly deep—it seemed to consume any attempt at illumination within it. The hall was underground. Beyond a door no one knew about in Essenschulbeitz Castle, down a long flight of stairs, and past a gauntlet of guards. Whether there was a point in coming here or not was another question. The residents of this hall operated on pure whim.

It stood to reason. It didn’t make sense to expect people without meat or bones or brains or nerves to operate on the same logic humans did.

“However,” he said, his voice low. “You were the ones who summoned me here tonight. I deserve more than silence, do I not?” Waves of air spread into the deserted hall.

The sorcerous light he’d produced succeeded in pushing back at least a bit of the overwhelming darkness of the hall. The hall wasn’t that big, but because of the darkness, it seemed like space was compounding endlessly on itself.

Eventually, from the endless expanse...

“...The Imminent Domain...has been destroyed...”

...there came a soundless voice.

No, it wasn’t from the endless expanse. The demon of the capital shook off that illusion. He couldn’t allow himself to succumb to superstition. The being he was speaking with wasn’t some demonic monster with limitless power; it was something much more concrete: a spirit. A white sorcerer who had discarded their body, transcending.

If he didn’t have a clear understanding of who he was talking to, he wouldn’t be able to make the right decisions. He reminded himself of that as he addressed the spirit once more.

“Of course. Seek Marrisk is my most talented fighter. It was a gamble in the end, but I always intended to win.”

“It wasn’t...Seek Marrisk...who won.”

“Kakorkist Isthan, then? Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

“It wasn’t...either of them.”

“Hmm?” Pluto asked simply, not understanding.

The voices of the spirits in the hall echoed from farther away. “The fearful spirit...of the Imminent Domain...Damian Rue...was destroyed...by the Chaos Witch...”

“What? You were the ones who told me she wasn’t coming back. That she was destroyed fighting the goddess.” Pluto raised his voice. “You told me that none of Childman Powderfield’s pawns were left. That’s why I had to send one of my subordinates to assassinate the lord of the Imminent Domain. You were the ones who rushed me. You can’t claim to have made a simple mistake! You made me sacrifice one of my brethren!”

“Childman Powderfield...that great sorcerer...” Was it just one voice? Was it a combination of many? Pluto didn’t even know. It was a strange scream that seemed to echo off the walls even though it wasn’t produced by sound. It went on, “He made...no plan... He was just...preparing...”

“What do you mean? What’s the difference?”

“He raised...people who could stand against it...when danger arrived... That is all... He did not ready pawns...”

“Hmph. You just want to sing his praises, then. I see how it is. He’s one of you, after all, in that he’s nothing more than a remnant of ancient times.” He snorted. “Why don’t you revive him and make him one of you while you’re at it? Then he would come in handy. He was not in the sort of position to get killed meaninglessly by his student—”

“He couldn’t discard the Chaos Witch. That’s all there is to it.”

Pluto turned around at the voice he’d heard.

It was a woman’s voice, and one he was used to hearing—so much so that his ears were ringing. A harsh voice that made him want to instinctively draw back.

Footsteps slowly followed him into the hall. He turned and asked, “How did you get here, Maria Huwon?”

“I was summoned too. There’s no other way to get past the guards, is there?” she quickly replied. The young witch walked toward him with a boldness that didn’t match her age (or her position). With the symbol of the Tower of Fangs displayed proudly on her body, Maria Huwon’s appearance naturally brought someone else’s name to mind.

Someone else. And a different organization.

She was one of the black sorcerers who represented the Tower of Fangs.

Bitterly, Pluto asked her, “So? What were you called for?”

“I was told Irgitte was dead.” She stopped walking when her student’s name passed her lips. It wasn’t sentimentality; rather, it seemed she just felt she had no need to proceed any further. In the sorcerous light, her face was pale, but it displayed no hint of emotion.

The Steel Cat... She makes me sick, Pluto thought to himself. “Seek and Kakorkist—they’re dead too. I didn’t think there was anyone on the continent who could best them.”

“You can’t be serious. You knew Yuis was in the Imminent Domain. He surpasses any other black sorcerer.”

“Why would black sorcerers kill each other?!” he shouted, clenching his fists in anger. “Is Yuis—if you really want to call him that, then go ahead— Is Yuis Colgon insane? The Continental Sorcerers’ Association is supposed to stand for friendship and unity between sorcerers!”

“They were too closed off, though. You should understand that there are sorcerers who would oppose that.”

Pluto ignored Maria’s swift response and asked, “Why is he obeying some random lord? I don’t understand it...” He turned to empty space (or at least what appeared to be empty space). “And the Chaos Witch. Does that mean the people from the Childman Class are interfering? Do they have something to do with these three deaths?”

“Everything...is...in the hands of...the sanctuary...”

Pluto glanced at Maria to make sure she was hearing the voice too before he raised his voice. “If you want us to do something, give us the full picture! Whose fault do you think it was that I had to send my people into certain death without even knowing it?!”

“There is much...even we...do not know... We can surpass time...so we often overlook it...”

“I don’t need your excuses! Haven’t you directed me, directed the Thirteen Apostles, and directed the nobles too? That’s right. The one directing the Imminent Domain is that monster who represents you, Damian Rue, isn’t it?”

“Damian Rue...was destroyed... We are losing...talented casters...one by one.”

Pluto ground his teeth and groaned. “What are you trying to say?”

“They’re saying change is coming... Am I right?” It wasn’t the spirits who replied to him but Maria. Her voice sounded much more like a spirit of the dead to him, though.

She finally stepped past him. Maria Huwon’s voice reverberated through the hall. “We’re entering a new age. But if you think sacrifices are necessary, then...” She stopped there, as if she didn’t want to make her emotions known. Slowly, like she was swallowing something bitter, she went on, “Even if it’s right... For all the people who have died... I’ll remain angry about it. I don’t intend to just accept this.”

“Everyone feels...grief... These one thousand years...were built on the fodder...of countless wails of lamentation...”

“Can you say that that fodder, that fodder that you conveniently call progress, isn’t a carrot dangled in front of the noses of idiots? Can you say that it’s not all just simple destruction, that you’ll actually get something if you chase after it?”

“I admit that sacrifices are necessary. But we cannot overlook beings who needlessly consume lives! If we can’t protect our own lives or that of our comrades, then what were we even given power for?!”

“Thirteen days from now...the sanctuary will leave all behind.” The voice ignored Pluto’s and Maria’s shouts alike. It ignored them and went on, “This is not a prediction... If all continues as it has been...in thirteen days...all will be eliminated, leaving only the sanctuary behind... That is the current plan...”

“Whose plan?!” Pluto demanded. If he could see who he was speaking to, he would have grabbed them by the lapel, but the spirits never left their dark abyss.

Their words alone continued. “No single being’s... The sanctuary...the gods...and you... All wished it...”

“Who would wish for destruction?!”

“Is it destruction...? It may be rebirth...”

“If you lose your life, then it’s destruction! Idiots may spout sophistry, but science has proved it! Life must fight to protect itself!”

Even as he spoke, Pluto knew how pointless his insistence was. He shook his head as he remembered that he was speaking to spirits who were without life—and people who had become such spirits willingly. This was ridiculous. These spirits were fools who had abandoned science and had fled into the world of delusion and sophistry...and he was trying to rely on their words...

Pluto cleared his throat and began anew, “If you are in support of this destruction, then why do you resist the sanctuary, even going so far as to use me?”

“We do not...support it... If the destruction...is rebirth...then we do not want...the rebirth of the world...”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Quo Vadis Pater?”

Pluto snorted. “‘Where is God’? When they manifested here, the gods revealed themselves as monsters! The worst kind of monsters, who wield their power to destroy the world—”

“So where...are the real...gods? Where is...peace...?”

A shrill sound rang out, distinct from the voices—it was like a sharp scream that chilled Pluto’s spine. This too was not actual sound. It was the bellow of the spirits’ resentment.

“Excluding those like Damian who only sought power...we only sought that...that answer... We ascended...to this existence... It was our escape...from the continent... But where...is peace...? Where...can we go...? Until we know...we cannot let the world end...”

“Where is God...” This was the voice of a human, real vibrations in the air.

Pluto turned with a shiver, expecting to see the spirits made flesh, revived. Instead, it was just the whisper of Maria Huwon, who had been silent all this time. Her head was hung as she stared at a single point on the ground.

Noticing his gaze, she looked up at him. “Are we expected to become priests, then?” she asked with a mocking grin.

Pluto ignored her and asked, “Spirits, you didn’t call me here merely to scare me, did you? If we have thirteen days left, then you must be prepared to send me where I need to go within the next thirteen days.”

“Of course... Now that Damian has been destroyed...we are free... Damian...the new ruler...who has become the king of demons...the Chaos Witch...they will not interfere with us...”

“You’re sure about that?” Pluto pressed them.

“Send you?” Maria asked him.

Pluto responded without looking her way. “I’m going personally this time. I’ll use my position as the head of the Thirteen Apostles.”

“You can’t do that, can you? The Union of Lords has known about this for a long time. They’re just waiting for an opportunity to interfere.”

“If I had just gone to begin with, we wouldn’t have had to sacrifice anyone!” he shouted.

Maria Huwon just responded curtly. “We can’t eliminate sacrifice,” she said pointlessly. “Sacrifices will happen no matter what we do. It’s just a matter of whether they’re our sacrifices or theirs. We may not be using the military, but this is still a war.”

“You don’t care? Your student is likely dead too. And you don’t care?!” He finally turned to her and shouted.

When he looked straight at her, he noticed for the first time—Maria had bitten through her lip. The blood painted her lips a vibrant shade of red.

“Who doesn’t care?” she asked him, still biting her lip. Her eyes were wild. “When the out-of-control Imminent Domain and the dragons’ sanctuary are about to destroy the entire continent, we need to become either gods or demons ourselves, don’t we?!”

“You’re not supposed to be this kind of woman.”

“You have no right to say that to me.”

Pluto shut his mouth so that they didn’t get into an argument. Instead, he decided to tell her, “If the Imminent Domain is over...then we have to destroy the sanctuary next. This is something we’ve had to do for a long time. We’ll do it, even if it takes every single one of the Thirteen Apostles. And if we succeed, this continent will belong to humanity.”

“No. It won’t belong to anyone. Still...it can’t belong to the gods who want to destroy it all.”

All the way to the end, Maria Huwon argued with him. Pluto didn’t like that.

Chapter I: Despair and What Is Not Despair

The sounds of a flickering flame and of dust falling from the walls. Vague sounds that were hard to pick out even when you strained your ears. Orphen waited, surrounded only by those sorts of sounds. The room, lit only by a single candle, felt small and cramped, like it was host to a great crowd of shadowy residents. In reality, there was plenty of empty space. It was more than large enough for him to sit on a chair and wait until the man on the floor woke up.

He concentrated on anything that could mark the passing of time—there was no clock in the room—and dozed as he listened. He ruminated as he straddled the boundary of sleep and wakefulness. Had time ever stopped since the world began? Even if it had, no one would have noticed, so he couldn’t deny the possibility that it had occurred more than once before.

No...

Time had always moved forward. Never changing speeds. Never stopping. Never reversing.

The past, the present, the future. Time moved along, never letting the three mix. The three would never meet. If they ever did, it would be when time’s speed changed, when time stopped, or when time reversed.

And that would be the moment the world came to an end.

Orphen raised his head, a question suddenly on his mind.

Why am I wondering about this? Why did I suddenly start thinking about this? There should be plenty of other things I have to think about...

Maybe someone had whispered the thought into his ear.

He lowered his eyelids with a wry smile. His vision went black, but he was still aware of the presence of the one other person in the room. The man still lying on the floor, unmoving.

The lord of the Imminent Domain.

Orphen sighed and continued to wait for the man to wake up.

◆◇◆◇◆

“I demand to know why you’re treating me like this, girl.”

“What are you talking about? You’re a minion of the assassin who sneaked in here, aren’t you?” Claiomh swiftly responded to the dwarf’s demand.

One of the two bound dwarf brothers raised his voice to reply, “Who’s an assassin’s minion?! I, the Bulldog of Masmaturia, the Great Vulcano Volkan, staunchly oppose being treated as a criminal in this way! The rope, specifically!”

“And what are you gonna do if I untie you?”

“Make a strategic retreat.”

Claiomh crossed her arms and told him flatly, “The whole reason I have you tied up is because it would piss me off if you got away.”

“I don’t need your excuses! Just do something about this, dammit!”

“That’s the reason...?”

Claiomh ignored the dwarves’ complaints and looked around.

They were in the kitchen—she got the feeling they were just sort of using it as a base because all the food they’d gathered was there.

The night was long. That being said, it hadn’t been that many hours since they’d returned to the mansion. Time was ticking by frustratingly slowly. Claiomh frowned, glaring at the small sorcerous light source in the room. She was angry for no real reason.

“What’s Orphen doing? He seemed kind of weird.”

“Maybe you should calm down, Claiomh,” replied the boy sitting in the corner of the kitchen.

He had a face Claiomh was very familiar with—they’d known each other since their school days, after all. Those too seemed like a distant memory, but it was really only half a year ago.

Claiomh gave him a somewhat harsh look and asked him, “Calm down? I have no idea what’s happening, but there was a scream, and the lord collapsed, and after Leki now Lottecia’s missing. How exactly am I supposed to calm down?”

“It’s better than panicking, isn’t it? Mas— Orphen said he’d explain everything later, didn’t he?”

“He always says that, and has he ever actually explained anything?” Claiomh grumbled before raising her head as if she’d come to a realization. “So Orphen is waiting for the lord to wake up, right? But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be the one looking after him? Especially after that big show of yours.”

Majic looked down to escape her gaze and muttered, “I just wanted to be independent. I didn’t want to join the lord or anything.”

“Then do something you can do by yourself. I’ll think of something I can do too.”

“What I can do—” He stopped. Claiomh looked at him expectantly and Majic hesitated a bit before continuing, “What I can do is protect you, Claiomh. It’s just like you said. People are disappearing for some reason. We’re under some kind of attack. If there’s no one to protect you, Orphen won’t be able to act.”

Instinctively, Claiomh wanted to argue with him, but she couldn’t actually find anything objectionable about what he’d said, so she just exhaled soundlessly instead.

With their conversation paused, the kitchen was quiet. The whole lord’s mansion was deathly silent. That was only natural, of course, since it was practically deserted. The dwarves were struggling to break free of their binds, but even that sound wasn’t doing a very good job of breaking the silence.

There wasn’t much that could break it. Uncomfortable, Claiomh piped up with, “Just what is going on anyway?”

“You remember what the lord said, right?” There was something melancholic about Majic’s voice too. “The Imminent Domain is the base for the people fighting against the dragons’ sanctuary. That’s why they were attacked...and basically lost, I think.”

“I get that, but...” Claiomh crossed her arms again, frustrated. “What’s gonna happen to this place, then?”

“I don’t know. But now that that white sorcerer named Damian is gone, there’s no one left here who can fight.”

“So will they be attacked again?”

“Well, the lord’s still here... I think Orphen’s waiting because he wants to ask about that. Besides, even if we ran away, there’s nothing out there, and it’s nighttime too... It’s too dangerous.”

“I wanted to go look for Leki, but...” Claiomh said exactly what she was feeling, then lowered her voice. “But if that’s what the dragons are like, I might just hurt Leki more...”

“The lord asked Leki to do something though, didn’t he? He said that if it went well, their power balance with the sanctuary would be flipped.”

“I don’t want to make him do it.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

Claiomh pursed her lips in response to Majic’s question. “I don’t know.”

“Then you don’t know what you can do either, do you?”

“That’s why I said I would think about it... I’ll apologize for taking out my frustration on you. I’m sorry,” she told him.

“It would be great if you could undo the rope you tied us up with to vent your frustration too...” one of the dwarves piped up.

For the time being, Claiomh ignored them and pulled a chair over. One of the chairs in the kitchen was broken, but she’d cleaned up the mess already. That was likely the chair she’d been sitting in yesterday when Lottecia had made hot milk for her. She felt herself growing even more despondent at the memory. Lottecia was now missing too. From what Majic had told her, when Claiomh had disappeared, she’d gone after the killer and had never come back. It wasn’t very comforting news.

Lottecia’s sword had, of course, disappeared with her, and Claiomh had lost her own sword—the sword she’d gotten from that Death Instructor who acted like an old man in Kimluck—in some fracas or another. Of course, it had been an antique she wasn’t very comfortable using in the first place. She’d wanted to find a better weapon than that, but there weren’t any weapons at all in the lord’s mansion. And the lodgings where the lord’s guards lived had been blown to bits yesterday. She’d considered walking around with a cooking knife from the kitchen, but she wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea, so she gave up on that too. She knew there wasn’t anything she could accomplish by swinging around a bladed object in their current situation anyway.

It’s probably better if I don’t do anything to make the situation worse.

She took an empty breath. No matter the power you possessed, if you didn’t know how to wield it, all you could do was create chaos. What made a sorcerer a sorcerer wasn’t the power they possessed but the ability to control that power properly. She possessed none of the necessary training or resolve for such a thing. She became well aware of that when she borrowed Leki’s body.

I wonder if Leki’s sorcery and swords and weapons and anything else are the same, though...

“In any case,” Claiomh muttered to nowhere—if she had to pick, then to the silence of the night, “I need to decide for myself.”

Her voice was quiet. Maybe no one heard it. No one and nothing responded to her.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Change into these,” Orphen said, entering the kitchen and leaving two pairs of long-sleeved work clothes on the kitchen table. All the eyes in the room gathered on him.

He felt the girl’s blue eyes in particular as she timidly asked him, “And...the lord?”

“He’s not awake yet. We shouldn’t be waiting for him anyway. We’re leaving. We’ll leave him behind here.” Orphen searched for a clock as he spoke, not that he was hoping to find one in the kitchen. He could see outside through the curtainless window, but it wasn’t the right angle to see the moon and the stars. Besides, he had a pretty good idea of the time anyway. Dawn would come in about two hours.

“We’re leaving him?” Claiomh asked, picking up a set of the clothes.

Orphen nodded. “I’ll leave out the detailed explanation, but the lord doesn’t really exist. He’s a demihuman Damian Rue created; a puppet, basically. Now that I think about it, he might never wake up again now that Damian’s gone. More importantly, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” He shuddered in his leather combat gear. “We should get away from here.”

“Get away? How? To where?” She spread out the work clothes and furrowed her brow, evidently not liking what she saw, but pushed the other pair to Majic without making a fuss and asked uneasily, “You’re coming too, right, Orphen?”

“Yeah.” Orphen nodded again and pointed to the still-open trap door in the kitchen’s floor. There was a dried-up waterway beneath them. “We have this underground tunnel. We’ll be able to use that to make an exit. As for where we’ll go from there, well... I don’t know for sure. I just know it’s dangerous here. If we believe what Damian said, it seems like there’ll be some kind of reaction from the sanctuary come morning.”

The man in the priest’s robes came to mind, but that wasn’t all. The dragon sanctuary possessed power that made that one man seem insignificant in comparison. They had any number of weapons that could destroy entire cities. The difference in power between dragons and humans was all too clear.

Which means leaving honestly isn’t even being careful enough. Dammit, Orphen cursed to himself.

“Anyway, it’s nighttime and who knows what’s going to happen next,” he went on. “We should be dressing as warmly as possible. I’ll pack what food we can carry—” He looked into the box of food Claiomh and the rest of them had gathered and picked up the mysterious paper-wrapped object on top. Testing the weight of it, he guessed what was inside. “...Is this butter? You’re gonna eat this?”

“I thought it might keep if we were careful with it.”

“I guess it is true that it’s portable, but...I’m not into this rotten military maniac banquet thing personally.”

“I don’t know what you mean, but I’m not into it either,” Claiomh said before leaving the kitchen, presumably to change clothes.