Chapter 120

Smooth Sailing.

The phrase that fit this expedition best of all.

A crisis was nowhere to be found, even if you searched high and low, and leisure flowed so freely that it overflowed, filling everything around them.

Of course, such smooth sailing came with a price…

“That’s 1200 gold right there!”

Well.

That’s a problem for later.

We passed through the sprawling graveyard and plunged once more into the mists.

The crawling maggots, mid-bite into corpses, retreated to their places, and the fog walkers still posed no threat.

Sion didn’t seem too interested in dealing with them. Probably because they weren’t a direct ‘threat’ to me.

Then, abruptly, she vanished beyond the fog and returned, presenting me with the severed heads of bandits.

In her other hand, she held a lantern. Likely pilfered from those same brigands.

“How blatant.”

I sighed, watching Sion wave the lantern high, back and forth.

Wasting light recklessly in the Archipelago Fog is never a good idea.

It invites the attention of a gaping maw.

Whoosh!

A fierce wind sliced across my left cheek. My hair whipped across my vision, and the air filled with the sound of my robes snapping.

Sion, a sly grin on her face, stared in the direction the wind had come from, then carefully placed the lantern on the ground.

Once more, Sion disappeared from my sight.

The halved corpse of a maw monster whizzed past us, front and back. Blood and viscera halted by ‘Grace of the Spirit.’

“Good reaction, wouldn’t you say?”

“……”

I said nothing to her, as she returned to my side with a bright smile.

There was no need to broadcast the fact that the grace of the spirits automatically manifested as a shield.

“If we walk for about thirty more minutes, we’ll reach the Golden Sea.”

“Once we’re out of the fog, the escort duty will be finished, I presume.”

“Ah, but even outside the fog, danger abounds all around, you know? How will you endure in that perilous Golden Sea with your delicate mage’s physique!”

Sion clenched her fist tightly as she continued.

“The escort duty… it continues until Lady Bean arrives at the Imperial Palace!”

“Hmm.”

At this point, Sion almost felt pitiable.

She was guarding with such zeal, and yet a future where she wouldn’t earn a single copper was crystal clear.

…Well, what can I do? Blame your own greed.

I stepped forward again, treading on the entrails of the fiends spread beneath my feet. Soon, Sion also raised her lantern high and led the way.

After that, the fiend attacks continued four more times. Twice from the left, once from the front, and once from behind.

The fiends, with bodies as huge as buses, were cleaved in half each time Sion flicked her dagger.

“…Ugh.”

Rir openly expressed her disgust at the intestines scattered on the ground, but Sion showed no sign of stopping this work.

“Come on, come on~ gather quickly.”

Sion swung the whale oil lantern filled to the brim from side to side, doing her best to attract the monsters’ attention.

“If you don’t gather quickly…”

Then suddenly, she stopped spinning the lantern and turned around.

“Oh.”

“What is it?”

Lir, with a worried glint in her eyes, asked Sion if something was amiss.

I paid Sion no mind.

It wasn’t as if that one behaving strangely was anything new.

“…Bin-nim?”

“What.”

“What did you do at that church?”

“Do? I did nothing.”

The only thing I’d done was take the Holy Bible that had been resting on the platform.

“Touched something you shouldn’t have, or cast some unnecessary magic… Really, you did nothing?”

Those are the kinds of things a side character about to die first in a horror film would do.

“You saw everything right in front of you, what are you even saying.”

There’s no way I would have done something so careless. Rather, I steadfastly refused Dajin’s request to touch the core…

“Ah.”

Sion approached me with quick steps.

“What is it.”

She wrapped her slender arms around my waist, and then, as if hoisting a sack of rice, slung me over her shoulder.

…This is something Rex used to do to me often.

“W-what, what’s going on?”

“I’m running.”

Raising the lantern, Zion lured another maw into striking, then promptly flung it far away.

The sound of shattering glass echoed, followed by the acrid stench of burning oil filling the air.

And woven within it all…

A vast, colossal.

Chill.

A chill?

With the oil-soaked lantern shattered, flames spreading in every direction, he felt a chill?

What in the…

*Clang!*

Before the question could fully blossom, the sound of breaking glass rang out again, this time close to his ear.

…What is happening?

*Clang!*

His mind flooded with bewilderment and doubt.

*Clang!*

The sound repeated itself, again and again, with no variation, no tremor.

*Clang!*

An eternally repeating, identical sound.

He’d experienced a phenomenon like this once before.

“…Run!”

Immediately, the floor began to tear. A wind thick with frost grazed his cheek, and rime began to form on his robes.

Before me stretched a vast pool of blood. Zion and Lirr, without hesitation, splashed through it, sprinting towards the outer edges of the fog.

‘Spatial magic has begun to run wild. But why?’

My first instinct was to suspect the scripture held within my arms.

Could this very scripture be some kind of trigger, shattering the spatial magic that maintained the island fog?

‘No. The likelihood is extremely low.’

Such an event had never once occurred within the game. Furthermore, the ‘core’ of the island fog seemed remarkably stable. There was no reason, no reason at all, for it to suddenly run amok like this…

“Huh?”

Wait a moment.

…Where did that b*stard Dajeen go?

“Hey. Deer.”

I spoke, clinging to Zion’s back and glaring at my dangling right hand.

“…Why do you summon me?”

Immediately, a faint lightning flickered before my eyes. The small deer wore a sinister smile upon its face.

“What have you done?”

“Don’t look at me with such fearful eyes. If I overcome this adversity, I shall bestow upon you yet another grand reward.”

The sudden declaration left me speechless.

This insane b*stard had dumped a bucketful of ash onto our smooth expedition, and now wore a satisfied grin.

“There’s no need to rush so much! Although the rate at which the space is collapsing is quite rapid, we are far ahead, so there is no chance of being caught…!”

Zion shouted loudly, attempting to calm me, as I glared at Dajeen with a murderous expression.

“……”

Though heat prickled my skin, escaping this crumbling fog was the immediate priority.

“It’s nothing, we’re already at the edge…! Barely even qualifies as a problem!”

True to her word, the fog’s limit bloomed before us. Zion’s enormous pool of blood lingered there, abandoned blades and clubs scattered around it.

*Splatch!*

The crimson puddle erupted as it met my sole, splashing high. Viscous globs of blood hung suspended in the air, then propelled themselves skyward.

It seemed gravity reversed itself only near that pool. Blood that had pooled on the ground scattered high above, soon revealing a floor stained bare.

“See?! It’s nothing!”

The difficulty of the problem wasn’t the point. The point was that Dajin had *deliberately* inflicted hardship on our expedition.

This was undeniable, pure trolling.

“Damn deer b*stard…!”

Even as I was sucked into the bubble, I hurled curses at the deer flaunting itself before me.

“Don’t look at me like that. When all this is over, I’ll give you a hint about how to unlock [Lock].”

…What?

* * *

A comforting warmth enveloped my skin. A faint melody brushed past my ears.

Stiff muscles loosened, and the irritation that had filled my mind vanished.

Soon the stark white world faded, and I saw dirt and rotting tree roots.

Tree roots.

There are no trees in the golden sea.

No dirt either.

There, it was naught but greed and gold dust.

Then where are we?

“hhhkk…!”

Once more, a cough burst from my lips. Pure white foam mingled with spit, trickling down.

Painful. My abdomen bubbled as if it would explode at any moment.

“…Rise!”

Lir tugged at my left arm. Trembling legs found purchase on the ground, barely supporting me.

Even in my confusion, I turned my gaze left and right, trying to assess our surroundings.

Rotten timber as far as the eye could see.

Just where did Dajin send us?

“The Vanguard…”

Through the ringing in my ears, someone’s voice reached me. Devoid of all emotion, like a machine, the voice sent a chill down my spine.

I followed the sound, lifting my head.

There, stood a demon, his skin a sickly green.

That’s right.

Demons.

Minions of evil, said to be concentrating all their forces in the north of the continent, solely focused on defense.

‘Rotten timber, a demon, a pitch-black sky.’

Fragments of information, pieced together, formed a single conclusion in my mind.

We are in the northern reaches of the continent.

It was into the very heart of the demon camp that he’d fallen.

“We found the special forces team, aaah!”

“Dajin, that crazy b*stard.”

‘Did you think I would reveal a secret so deeply connected to this world’s core so easily?’

A mocking voice tickled his mind. If he could, he would split his skull open right now, tear that voice crawling around inside into pieces.

‘Think of it as a quest, it will be more comforting. When you first met me, you considered my request a quest. It was an unfamiliar word, so I searched for it in your mind… a rather interesting concept, indeed.’

That perverted deer son-of-a-b*tch.

Not only has he taken up residence in my head, he’s sifting through my memories at will.

A quest?

This b*stard seems to think everything is a game.

While over here, I’m risking my life day by day.

“…If I get out of here alive, the first thing I’ll do is burn down the forest you live in.”

He spoke those words to the voice floating in his head, in a cold and collected tone.

Then, a faint lightning flickered on his right hand, and that loathsome deer’s face appeared before his eyes.

“Magnificent! Magician!”

Dajin, seemingly excited by his declaration, shook the rotting wood with his booming voice.