In the depths of a labyrinthine dungeon, ten figures crept like prowling beast. Glancing back at the group, Harita said:
"Let's split up here. We have to cover as much ground here as much as possible. The battle with the Special S-class monster is still raging, and I don't think its going to stop any time soon…"
*Rumble!*
As he said that, the ground suddenly shook. The air permeating the labyrinth grew more heavy, and the darkness seemed to come alive.
Harita summoned Silent Reverie and prepared for a fight, but after a minute of waiting, none came. At least, not yet…
He signaled for his team—who were as tense as him, a couple even more so—to lower their weapons and continue their search.
Their investigation continued. But this time, they weren't going in blind anymore.
"There!" The Adorned Council member pointed.
Using Edsin's divination abilities and Sekiro's instinct to sense danger, the group of ten found themselves traversing the dungeon at breakneck speed, hands on their weapons, and eyes casting on every suspicious nook and cranny.
This went on for several minutes, making Harita sweat with trepidation.
'What if the kid's dead?' he thought grimly.
He could still feel their link, the Oath he had made, and the kid's blurry presence through it. But despite that, he couldn't help but feel nervous, the weight on his shoulders ever-present.
Shaking the dark thoughts away, he buried them deep down, intending to ditch the thoughts entirely.
Briefly later, the team found themselves at a fork in the road. Glancing at Edsin, Harita urged for the young man to come forward and divine their path.
"…Hmm? Sir, I think something's there." Squire Owens said, pointing at the left path.
Harita squinted his eyes, igniting Manavision. He frowned
Standing in the shadows, unmoving, was a lithe figure. She had raven-black hair and sunken black eyes. Her complexion was a pale one, as if she hadn't seen the sun in years. She looked to be in her teens, though the intelligence reflected in her eyes suggested a different story.
The girl stared at him and his team with an empty, somewhat hollow gaze. She didn't move a muscle, standing still as a statue. And for a moment, Harita even concluded so… but then her eyes moved past and behind him.
That was when he raised his dagger.
"Show yourself!" he beckoned, inflecting his voice in a grand manner. He purposely made his voice deeper.
But the girl didn't move. The more he looked at her, the more he felt she wasn't there. Swallowed by shadows, it was as though she had become one of them.
And the more Harita embraced the idea, the more he felt like it was the truth.
But his instincts told him otherwise. He glanced at Sekiro.
"Light it up."
"Understood." The Hamahan Mage nodded.
Opening his exaggeratedly large tome, he flipped it to a certain page and muttered, "Oh, illumination, I call upon thee."
*Shing~*
A ball of light manifested in his palm, conjured by his words, and with a flick, it flee off into the distance, towards the left path of the fork.
Haruta kept his eyes on the girl's figure the entire time.
When the small ball of light entered the girl's immediate range, the figure finally came into light.
'Phew~' Harita secretly sighed when he realized that he wasn't mistaken.
Having suffered from a monster's mind tricks very recently, he began to doubt his own eyes every now and then. Luckily, this experience managed to alleviate that somewhat.
The girl remained listless, unmoving. Hollow.
"Name and identity." Harita barked, raising his dagger once again. "Hey! Where are you going?"
Just then, the girl suddenly ran away, the ball of light following her like a loyal pet. The was also part of Sekiro's spell.
"Do we follow her? My spells' range is quite short. If she strays too far, then we might forever lose sight of her," Sekiro expressed his doubts. As the user of the spell, he knew about its limitations the most.
Frowning, Harita glanced at Edsin.
"What di you think? Is the left path safe?" he said. "And if it isn't, then how dangerous would it be?"
"I… I don't know," the young mage stammered. "Something's blocking my powers, I can't sense anything past here…"
The mage's voice turned off, ashamed of his own deficiencies.
"It's fine," Harita smiled a little.
Then, his face grew grim as he glanced back to the fading light. Shaking his head, he looked forward and pumped his chest.
"We'll follow the girl, for now." His green eyes sharpened. "Judging from the fact that she's relatively fine, and that uncanny concealment spell she's flaunting about, I suspect her to be somebody native here.
"Of course, it could also be a trap. But with ten of us here, and only one of her, along with Adorned Edsin and Mage Sekiro's perception abilities, as long as we're careful, we should be relatively fine."
The Council mages and Order knights nodded obediently. In a dangerous and unknown place like this, there was no room for needless internal strife and insubordination. Only order and vigilance. Trust and teamwork.
Straightening his back like an arrow, Harita strolled forward, his eyes sharp as steel, ready to cut down anything in the way.
"Sir, yes, sir!" his team echoed from behind, and they descended into the darkness, lantern in hand and weapons in the other.
…In the very back of the team, a woman with lustrous silver hair and luminous black eyes walked unsteadily, her eyelids drifting down every now and then.
"Are you okay?" a Squire whispered in front of her, worried. "You look sleepy."
"…Fine," Bian whispered back. "In fact, I've never felt more awake."
She cast her gaze on the lean man in front of the team, holding a watersteel dagger in one hand, the other missing from some terrible fight.
Bian smiled amicably. For a second, it even looked like she was smirking.
"I was just a little lost, is all. Now, I feel more awake and powerful than ever. As if I had just woken from a very, very long dream."
The Squire pursed his lips.
"If you say so, Miss… just don't hold me back."
Her smile brightened.
"Oh, believe me, I won't."
In the cold, turbid air of the underground dungeon, Bian broke free from her imprisonment.
On this chaotic night, a Vow had been broken.
◇◆◇◆◇
In an alleyway located in the slums, a lean figure prowled the streets like a predator, sticking close to the earth, figure shadowed by the darkness of the night.
Zolovat Mocny. Having sent an appropriate response through his newly appointed butler to the Exousia family, he set off quickly, donning a particularly sturdy piece of clothing woven from a beast's hide with an added bonus of being able to resist conventional elemental magic to a certain degree.
'…It's too bad my other suit was damaged beyond repair. That damn bastard,' he ridiculed.
He never could have expected that his opponent at that time would have the ability to distort space with a thought. Though he had his suspicions, at that point, they were merely to the point of basic and baseless conjectures, with the supplementary details lacking. Sadly, his former suit had neither the ability to resist spatial magic—as well as gravitational—and thus fell helpless to his opponent's attack at the most unfortunate moment.
Because of this, he had to preorder a new set of clothing at a premium, with an express delivery speed. All of it combined cost no less than 25, 000 shells. He had to ask his own father and some relatives to borrow some money, but it had all been worth it.
'Besides, even if I see that Aries bastard, I won't have to fight him. I just need to show the letter and talk my way out. Considering how he chose to stay passive until I provoked him back at Eavesdrop, then negotiation should be on the table.'
'And if I do find him and help him, then I could use that as merit to regain my pendant.'
Sticking close to the shadows, Zolovat peeked over a building's side and narrowed his eyes, activating Manavision. Using this, he was able to gleam a few details.
'The Special S-class monster is currently embroiled with a B-rank, maybe even A or S-rank itself, and seems to be losing. Though, at this stage, the fight can go either way.
'There also seems to be a powerful Manipulation spell cast over this part of the slums. Oh gods, even the Order knights has been affected… aren't they supposed to be super tenacious?'
'Hmm… this is bad. Unfortunate. At this rate, I may have to abandon my initial mission and focus finding Aries instead. That way, I'll still get my just reward with the minimal amount of risk…'
'Though, I do suspect him to have been kidnapped by The Hatter. He won't be an easy foe to beat… his Accomplice powers are more powerful than mine.'
Thoughts flew past Scorpio's head as the situation gradually unfolded before him. Luckily, the range of the suspected B to A-class monster did not seem to reach him, instead swallowing only the fighter originally embroiled in battle with the titanic avian creature.
'For now, I should—'
"Well, this is a surprise. I didn't to see a Mocny loser around these parts. Though, I should as much that you'll be in a place such as this.
"Garbage is more suited with other piles of garbage."
Frowning, Scorpio whipped his head around… only to find nobody there. It was as if the voice had come from nowhere, muttered by nobody.
"Tch. What a pain." With a dissatisfied face, Zolovat held up a finger, then Emitted a single pulse of brown mana from it.
The pulse spread rapidly, then topped when it hit something invisible.
On cue, a chuckled resounded from the void.
"Cheeky scorpion… You're quite the clever one, aren't we?"
As the voice spread, so did the illusory film covering the owner's body.
A blue-haired man stood with a mocking smile on his face, his glassy, empty eyes devoid of any luster or life. He stood over five feet tall, and was in his later teens. He wore a suit and long coat that reached down to his knees, with various pockets stitched on the inside of the coat for convenient access at a critical situation.
'Naruse Silata," Zolovat recalled the man's name. 'Second candidate of the Silata, their supposed dark shadow.'
Feeling for the stone beneath his feet, Zolovat narrowed his eyes and slowly backed away, covering himself deeper with shadows.
"What do you want, Silata? As you might know by now, I don't have a proof of participation right now, and thus I'm not a candidate anymore. You have no need for me."
"Quite contrary, actually," Naruse mused, widening his smile. "I think you'll find me quite in need of you specifically. Don't worry, even garbage like you can be of some use with the right processes.'
With a wide, beaming smile, Naruse revealed a beaded bracelet. The beads were cold and lifeless, almost like stone.
'…What was that?'
For a second, a dangerous premonition descended upon Zolovat like an anvil to the head, almost causing him to buckle over.
A cold, rushing feeling overcame his body, and he instinctively circulated mana throughout his body.
"Huh, so you can at least do that, huh…" Naruse muttered, his voice oddly low.
He put one hand on his hip and curled the corner of his lips.
Zolovat cast a burning gaze at him, the dangerous premonition slowly dissipating. The feeling lingered, like the bitter aftertaste of bad tea.
'Dammit, I—I messed up!' he cursed inwardly.
Not far from them, horrifying sounds echoed like an approaching doom.
The wind moved with erratic fervor, slipping in between their clothes and casting a permeating cold throughout their bodies.
And then, something flashed.