Ch.81Return to the Beginning (6)

With the sound of the watchtower bell, shouts echoed from the guard barracks.

“Move quickly! South gate! Hurry!”

Soon dozens of torches passed through the barracks entrance, moving hurriedly toward the south gate.

Mirella and I came down from the watchtower to join the guards.

“Adelheid!”

“Jack! What’s happening?”

“Report from the southern road patrol! Someone’s coming up from the south!”

“What?!”

Adelheid was startled by my words.

“Are the guild adventurers returning?”

“I don’t know. Let’s hurry and see!”

The guards at the gate were already turning the pulleys to open it.

We ran through the half-opened gate toward the southern road.

“Waaah! Jack! Is something terrible happening?!”

Brasya stomped her feet anxiously while herding several pigs.

“Shouldn’t we gather the pigs?”

“It’s more dangerous to move them now. Leave the pigs and get inside the gate.”

I pushed Brasya’s back, nudging her inside the gate.

“Over here!”

In the distance, patrol members were waving torches frantically and shouting.

“Come this way!”

“Where is it?”

“Over there! It’s getting closer!”

Except for those holding torches, the rest of the patrol were aiming crossbows from behind wooden barricades.

They were pointing toward the pitch-black darkness of the southern road.

“I don’t see anything,” said Miyumi, narrowing her eyes.

“Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

“No, Deputy! We spotted it further ahead and retreated here.”

“What do you think it might be, Commander?”

When Miyumi turned around, Adelheid looked at me.

“Any ideas?”

“Well, most likely it’s adventurers…”

I quickly considered various possibilities.

The best scenario would be survivors, especially from the Hans Adventure Guild.

King Beona or Blanchard would be perfect.

But what if it’s not?

It could be some monster or evil entity that started moving after we disturbed the previously sealed southern region.

Didn’t the patrol clearly say it was a person?

Using more imagination, it could be corpses of dead adventurers turned into zombies by a necromancer.

“Since we don’t know what it is, shouldn’t we prepare for anything?”

At my suggestion, Adelheid gave orders to the guards.

Dozens of guards drew their weapons and formed a defensive line.

In the quiet autumn night, the tension was so thick you could hear a guard swallowing.

“Hoo…”

The nervous breathing of Mirella standing beside me, clutching her opener, was extremely anxious.

But despite our waiting, nothing emerged from the darkness.

What’s going on? Did they really see something wrong?

I wish we could launch some kind of light source or flare in that direction.

We should have recruited a gnome or similar race as a city craftsman.

“Guardian Angel.”

Just then, Liberone appeared and stood beside me.

“What’s the situation?”

“The patrol spotted something presumed to be human moving north toward the city from the southern road. We’re waiting now. But we don’t know exactly what it is.”

Liberone, gazing into the southern darkness, manifested holy power in her hands.

“May I check?”

“If you have a way, please try.”

Liberone shot the holy power gathered in both hands toward the front.

A brilliant beam of holy light flew along the southern road, tearing through the darkness.

“Oh!” “There it is!”

The guards created a commotion, pointing forward.

Someone was lying collapsed on the southern road illuminated by the holy power.

“It’s a person, right?” “Seems like it.”

“Shouldn’t we check, Commander?”

At Miyumi’s suggestion, Adelheid looked at Liberone.

“Let’s go together, Holy Knight.”

“Understood.”

“I’ll come too. I brought potions.”

Adelheid, Liberone, and I decided to check on the fallen person.

When Miyumi tried to follow, Adelheid shook her head.

“You stay here and control the guards.”

I also pushed Mirella behind the barricade before approaching the fallen person.

As we got closer, Liberone deployed a rectangular holy barrier between us and the person.

Pressing close to the barrier, I examined the fallen person carefully.

A man around my age, and judging by his attire, he belongs to Beona’s expedition!

From the outside, he doesn’t appear to be a zombie or anything similar.

“It seems to be a person. Remove the barrier.”

As the barrier disappeared, I knelt beside the man, taking out a potion from my waist.

Adelheid placed her sword against the man’s neck as a precaution, while Liberone gripped her greatsword hilt and stood a bit further south.

“Hey. Can you hear me?”

I tapped the man’s shoulder, but there was no response.

Checking his pulse and breathing, fortunately he wasn’t dead, just seemed to have collapsed from exhaustion.

I laid the man straight, raised his upper body slightly, and poured the potion between his lips.

After swallowing a few sips, the man suddenly opened his eyes with a cough.

“Aaaaaaaaahhh!!”

Then he started screaming and struggling.

“No! Don’t kill him!”

I reached out to stop Adelheid, who was startled and about to strike the man’s neck, while pressing down firmly on his shoulder with my other hand.

“Calm down! You’re safe now!”

“Let me handle this.”

Liberone rushed over and covered the man’s forehead with her hand infused with holy power.

The man stopped convulsing and blinked his eyes wide.

“Huff, huff… Where am I… Huh?!”

The man gasped in shock when his eyes met mine.

“Y-y-you?! But you definitely died!”

Died…?

Oh no… The doppelganger must have died.

“That was a fake.”

“A fake…?”

“It’s complicated to explain here. This is the southern gate road of the Starting Village.”

“Starting Village…?”

The man looked around with trembling eyes.

Adelheid and Liberone, me, and dozens of guards standing behind the barricade.

Seeing the city palisade stretching long on both sides and the torches, the man finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“My God… My God…”

“Let’s get into the city first. We’ll check your health and then talk.”

The guards brought a stretcher and carried the man to the shop.

I gave him more healing potion and had him bask in Liberone’s holy power.

Meanwhile, the town doctor and administrator Bellamy arrived at the shop.

“What’s going on, Jack… A survivor, you say…”

“I don’t know. Let’s check his condition first.”

The doctor thoroughly examined the adventurer lying in bed and concluded there were no serious issues.

“Good. Now I’d like to hear what happened.”

“Yes, of course…”

The man nodded after gulping down the cold water Mirella brought him.

Then he looked at me with suspicious eyes.

“But… I clearly saw you die right before my eyes…”

“The one who went with you was a doppelganger. In other words, a monster with the same appearance as me.”

“What…?”

“That person had a tattoo on his neck, right? It was deliberately made to distinguish him from the real me.”

The man sighed when he saw my neck, which had nothing on it.

“Damn it all… A doppelganger…”

“First of all, what about Beona, I mean, His Majesty?”

“I don’t know…”

The man shook his head with a face full of despair.

“Then please tell us everything you know. From when you headed south until now.”

“Haah…”

The man sighed once more and slowly began his story.

* * * * *

“Hmm…”

After hearing the entire story, I quietly folded my arms.

Bellamy covered her mouth, and Mirella stood frozen stiff.

Adelheid looked out the window while caressing her sword hilt, and I couldn’t tell what Liberone was thinking.

The man’s story went like this:

As they advanced southward, they suddenly found themselves circling the same place repeatedly.

In the worst situation, with food running out and magic failing to cast, they accidentally discovered a passage leading underground.

To escape the daytime heat and nighttime cold, the expedition went down there and encountered a certain “man,” where half of them died.

The doppelganger was also killed there, cut in half at the waist.

During that massacre, there was a sudden roar, ground-shaking vibrations, and a blinding light that engulfed them.

The light swallowed the expedition, and the man’s memory isn’t completely intact after that.

It’s not that he lost his memory, but the situation was so chaotic and confusing that he couldn’t properly comprehend what was happening.

After being violently shaken, he lost his balance and was “thrown outside,” he said.

After rolling hard on the ground and regaining consciousness, he saw the distant city lights and headed north, eventually meeting us.

What could this be?

The first thing that came to mind after hearing the man’s description was “subway.”

A deep passage leading underground and tunnels extending left and right.

Rails laid horizontally on the low-level ground.

Regular vibrations, noise, and light.

This sounds exactly like a subway!

Who would have thought another subway station would be hidden in the south…