episode_0137

Let’s summarize the current situation… Thanks to the disappearance of the Heavenly Light Sphere, Aria was able to use her full detection abilities, and she found an entrance in the central wall at the junction straight ahead from the secret passage entrance. And thanks to Tiavel, we found the device to open this entrance, but it’s not working, probably because its power has been cut off.

*Sigh… What should I do about this? Since Launcher-nim isn’t here, I don’t even know how to connect this small generator to the device…*

I took out the small generator from my pocket, the one that would reactivate the device, and pondered how to proceed. We pooled our strength to get this far… and now we can’t go inside because there’s no power… This is truly the worst…!!

“What’s that, Zeke?”

“Ah… It’s a small generator… Dio V Runner-nim explained that if you put fire inside it, it can power various machines.”

“Then can’t you just activate the device with it?”

“Right… But I don’t know how to connect this generator to the device… *Sigh*… I wish Launcher-nim were here right now…”

Unable to figure out how to connect the device and the generator, I just sighed, wishing Dio V Runner were beside me. Then Aria placed a hand on my frustrated shoulder, clung to my side, and pointed at the device with her finger.

“Don’t despair, Zeke-nim. You said it yourself earlier, didn’t you? That it’s better to solve things together. So how about we solve this, just the two of us?”

“….Aria…”

When Aria smiled brightly and suggested we solve it together, I remembered what I had just said and chuckled. Right… I had told Aria that, but now nothing will be solved if I just hold my head and worry like this. To forget my own words… How embarrassing…

“Alright. As you said, it seems better to solve it together. Good… Let’s give it a try, Aria!”

“Yes, Zeke-nim!!”

“My, my… Those two….”

As I, comforted by Aria, cheered up and began examining the device with her, Yuria, watching us, smiled brightly. Then Tiavel tugged at her skirt and showed her a piece of paper with something written on it.

*They look like lovers.*

“Indeed…. Should we just wait behind them then?”

When Tiavel said they looked like lovers, Yuria agreed, watched them with a satisfied expression, and then temporarily left with Tiavel. That left only Aria and me. As I examined the device, I unconsciously looked at Aria’s smiling face.

*….Aria looks really happy. Before, she often wore a gloomy smile, which felt a bit unsettling… But seeing her smile so joyfully like this… Hmm… I feel a strange sensation… It’s not a bad feeling, though…*

“Ah! Zeke-nim! Here!! I think we can connect it here!”

The moment I felt that strange sensation while looking at Aria’s smiling face, Aria opened the device’s cover, grabbed a wire, and showed it to me. I immediately connected that wire to the generator. Just as Aria had predicted, the device powered on, and seeing the button light up, I felt a weight had been lifted from my chest and shouted.

“Good…!! Now, if we just input the numbers…!!”

“Huh, what? Did it work?”

Seeing my excited state, Yuria realized we had finally activated the device and began approaching with Tiavel. Meanwhile, Aria and I held the paper with the password written on it and slowly pressed the numbers in order. 4… 2… 8… 4… 7… 5…? Huh…? Strangely, even after pressing the buttons with the numbers corresponding to the password, there was no reaction. I muttered in confusion.

“Huh…? Why is nothing happening? Could this not be the password here?”

“Zeke-nim. Shouldn’t we press that arrow-shaped button for it to work?”

When Aria pointed at the arrow-shaped button with her finger and asked if that’s what we needed to press, I recalled that Dio V Runner had always activated similar devices by pressing such a button, so I carefully pressed it. Then the wall right next to the device began to split vertically, and we cheered, having finally solved the mystery.

“Yes!!! We can finally uncover the secrets of this place….. *Gag*….!!”

“Ugh…!!”

Our joy at finally opening the secret door was short-lived, as a terrible stench began to seep out from between the doors. Smelling that foul odor, our faces immediately hardened, and Yuria quickly covered Tiavel’s nose, then her own, and asked.

“Ugh… What on earth is this smell….?”

“I… I don’t know either… What is this smell…? Could it be that it’s been sealed off, so the smell couldn’t escape and kept rotting inside, causing such a strong stench?”

Just as I was thinking that since it was a secret door, it was designed to prevent any connection between this place and the outside, and thus the stench had remained and festered for a long time, Aria kept sniffing the smell as if it were nothing. I urgently covered Aria’s nose and said.

“A-Aria, don’t keep sniffing it. It could be dangerous…”

“Thank you for your kindness, Zeke-nim. But this smell… *Hmm*… Snow Woman? Aren’t you familiar with this smell?”

“What?”

When Aria said Yuria might be familiar with this smell, Yuria and I were bewildered. A smell familiar to Yuria? What on earth did that mean? Yuria seemed to have no idea… Had Aria noticed something?

“Ah… You might not know. It’s probably a smell that all of us, except Zeke-nim, have smelled at least once. Tiavel might know it if she remembers what happened back then… Snow Woman, you might not know this smell because you freeze everything. But I’ve smelled it many times, so I know what it is.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Saintess….!!!”

Yuria was at a loss for words when Aria said everyone except me had smelled it, and that Yuria herself might not know it because she freezes everything. Then Yuria noticed something and was dumbfounded, and Tiavel, too, realized something and her face began to turn pale. As I kept thinking about their reactions and the meaning of Aria’s words, only then did I realize the true nature of this smell.

“A living creature…. The smell of a living creature rotting…?!”

“It could even be a person. But this smell… it certainly is unpleasant for Zeke-nim. After all, Zeke-nim dislikes taking lives the most.”

Aria, knowing this was the smell of a decaying corpse and that I disliked it, seemed very displeased. I, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly guess what was happening inside, or what had happened. But we couldn’t not go in just because of the smell…

“Phew… We have to go in for now… Yuria, take Tiavel and stay here. We can’t let Tiavel keep smelling this.”

“….Will you two be okay?… No… Since the Saintess is there, you’ll probably be fine, though… Then I’ll come in once the smell has mostly cleared. Be careful, both of you.”

“Hmph. You just worry about Tiavel first. Whatever’s inside, I’m the only one who can perfectly protect Zeke-nim.”

As I endured the smell and prepared to go inside, Yuria decided to wait for the smell to dissipate so Tiavel wouldn’t recall bad memories from it, and urged us to be careful. Then Aria’s face hardened, telling Yuria to just worry about Tiavel, and as she entered with me, Yuria chuckled and said.

“Honestly… Always stating the obvious… She’s a Saintess with immense jealousy, I tell you… Tiavel, let’s wait behind for a bit.”

As Aria still watched her, intent on protecting me, Yuria giggled and returned to the kitchen with Tiavel. Meanwhile, Aria and I, having entered, were making our way through the dimly lit corridor, relying on the light from Aria’s staff.

“Phew… The smell is one thing, but the atmosphere is no joke. It’s even darker than the first secret passage, and…”

“And it’s humid too, which makes it feel very unpleasant. And these marks on the walls… they’re all bloodstains.”

“I know… I had a bad feeling about it, so I didn’t say anything…”

As soon as I entered, I had noticed long ago that the dark red marks on the walls were all bloodstains. This meant that actual biological experiments might have been conducted here, or it could be the blood shed by the people who died here, like the corpse we found earlier. Regardless, it’s equally unsettling…

“Zeke-nim. Actually, when I looked around the room after shattering the Heavenly Light Sphere earlier… there were more corpses. They were all shriveled up like mummies, just like the first corpse we saw.”

“Right… I had expected there wouldn’t be just one corpse, so it’s not very surprising…. Anyway, the atmosphere here is really intense… The secret passage just now wasn’t scary, but this place is giving me chills…”

Chilled by the deep, dark, and damp atmosphere of this place, I could only rely on the light from Aria’s staff and Aria’s hand, which I was holding. Aria also seemed tense, just like me; the Aria who would normally be overjoyed if I held her hand was now warily surveying her surroundings with a serious expression. This meant the atmosphere here was truly unbelievable…!

“Aria, wait! There’s a room here.”

“…! You’re right.”

As we walked, Aria and I finally found a room door. We looked at each other and nodded. Then I slowly reached for the doorknob and immediately opened the door. Meanwhile, Yuria, who had been waiting outside for the smell to clear, seemed to think waiting idly was a waste of time and was restlessly tapping her foot.

“Ugh… It’s a waste of time just waiting like this…. Is there something… something else we can do…?”

*Why don’t you finish what your mother was doing?*

“What I was doing?”

When Tiavel advised Yuria, who was pondering what to do while waiting, to finish what she had been doing, Yuria began to ponder deeply what she had been doing. Then she recalled finding a paper that seemed related to the Saintesses among the things Aria and I had discovered earlier, and she turned her head toward the secret passage and said.

“Ah… It seems there definitely is more we can do here. Tiavel, Zeke told me there might be corpses in here. So, while I investigate the room, you wait outside. If something approaches, clap urgently. Understood?”

When Yuria, not wanting to show Tiavel the corpses, told her to wait outside the room, Tiavel nodded with a serious expression. While Yuria and Tiavel searched for traces of the Saintesses and priests inside the secret passage, we, having entered the first room… were speechless at what we saw inside.

“….Good heavens… Wh-What is all this…. Bones… and leather…?”

“And look at that chair, Zeke-nim. And judging by the blood on that steel arm, it seems…”

“Uh…”

When Aria pointed to a skeletal corpse that had collapsed and was lying on the chair, and the blood on the steel arm nearby, I instinctively understood. The bones scattered haphazardly on the table, along with leather and rotten… no, shriveled internal organs. I realized this was definitely not a normal facility. Moreover, after checking the contents of the blood-stained documents on the table… I couldn’t help but be even more shocked.

“Fusion experiment results with an unidentified lizard-like creature from another dimension and an unknown bird-like creature… Failure…. This was truly a place where they experimented with creatures from other dimensions, just as we suspected… And what’s more….”

Scanning the contents of the documents, I realized that the experiments here were definitely not ordinary. To think they were conducting such inhumane experiments, dissecting creatures alive and forcibly combining them… Moreover, it seemed this facility had been doing these things even before coming to Crentid World. Considering the documents even mentioned creatures not found in Crentid World…

“Ugh… These are truly cruel people… How could humans do such things….”

“Since the Esrad Kingdom also tried to use people as sacrifices, it makes sense that humans would do such things because they are human. Of course, that doesn’t mean such acts are forgivable to Zeke-nim.”

Aria explained to me that humans would do such things because they are human, referencing the inhumane acts the Esrad Kingdom had committed. Of course, Aria seemed to know that this didn’t mean it was natural or good, or perhaps because I disliked such things, she spoke with distaste. But my thoughts were different.

“There are many creatures that would do such things, even if they aren’t human. The Alraunes did similar things. From my perspective, it seems a certain thought held by living creatures can twist themselves like this.”

“Hehehe… But because Zeke-nim is here, I was able to become so normal! Zeke-nim is truly the most precious existence that I cannot do without~”

Haha… To smile and praise me even in this atmosphere…. Perhaps it made me feel somewhat better to hear such words in this unsettling atmosphere, as I found myself smiling unconsciously. Good…. I can’t be afraid like this.

“Alright. We now know that the people here were bad. Let’s find out what on earth happened here, and why the Heavenly Light Sphere is outside.”

“Ah, Zeke-nim. Come to think of it, there don’t seem to be any Heavenly Light Spheres around here. I didn’t fully scan this passage, but I could continue to detect without getting blocked in the middle.”

“What?”

When Aria said that Heavenly Light Spheres didn’t seem to be placed in this passage, I looked around outside in confusion. Come to think of it, there wasn’t a Heavenly Light Sphere right behind the entrance, was there? If so, did the Saintesses and priests fail to decipher the password and thus couldn’t discover this place? If that’s the case, it might actually be for the best. If they had come in here, all traces of this place would have been erased…

“Alright. Let’s go to the room on the opposite side, Aria.”

“Yes…!! No matter what happens, I will protect Zeke-nim!”

When I reached out my hand and suggested we go to the room on the opposite side, Aria took my hand and, with a serious expression, vowed to protect me as she led me to the door of the opposite room. The moment Aria slowly opened the door, a spacious interior began to appear before our eyes…!!

“Wha-What?! Is the power on in here?!”

The moment we opened the door and stepped inside, all the lights in the room suddenly flickered on, startling us greatly. Just then, a continuous scratching sound reached our ears. Aria and I turned our heads towards it, and from the iron bars in that direction…

“Who are you!! Don’t tell me more scientists have come in?!”

“….Good heavens… What on earth is that creature…”

From the iron bars, a girl… no, a creature, was screaming at us furiously. It was a child with long green hair, a green eye on the left, and a red eye on the right… with dragon wings on their back, elf-like ears, a lizardman’s tail, and beast-like hands and feet. As the child glared at us, baring pointed teeth and screaming, I was speechless at the sight.