kscans

Chapter 198 - The Sunken Church and the Church of Light (Part 2)

The church doors swung open on their own.

After exchanging a look with Marmi, I stepped inside.

It was an open space. The interior didn't feel like it was made of light particles; it seemed as solid as any normal building.

There was no sign of monsters.

A creak echoed as I stepped onto the wooden floor, kicking up a cloud of settled dust. It seemed no one had been here for a long time.

Though the exterior of the sunken church had been stone, the interior used wood for its beams, pillars, and many other parts.

A massive stained-glass window was set into the front wall, through which light poured onto a plaster statue of a goddess on the altar below. The statue looked like a replica of Laciel, but it was missing its head, which sent an unpleasant feeling through me.

Light also streamed in from smaller windows on either side.

It was the same light as the swarming fireflies I had seen outside.

As we surveyed the room, the doors shut on their own. There was no need to check if they would open again. Whatever had lured us here had no intention of letting us return to the shore.

"Do you think this is a dungeon?"

If it was a dungeon, I could think of it as a kind of haunted house. It would try to startle explorers and have monsters attack in the confusion. In that case, we just needed to find the area guardian's room and escape.

But if this was a supernatural phenomenon, we'd have to search without any clues, with no guarantee of results. It was possible the sole purpose of this church was to trap and curse us to death.

The only clue we had was the ghost story Marmi had told. This church was supposed to have a secret room.

"...I don't know. But..."

She pointed at the floor. There were fresh footprints leading toward the goddess statue on the altar.

She began to follow them. As I watched her go, she stopped and turned back.

"...W-Why aren't you coming with me?"

"Ah, right..."

I nodded and followed after her.

The footprints ended at the altar.

On the altar was a wooden lectern, and behind it, the goddess statue.

As we circled it, I found drag marks on the floor around the base. The owner of the footprints had probably moved the altar.

And then, the person who made the tracks had vanished. Since the altar was back in its original position, it was possible someone else had moved it back afterwards.

That someone was almost certainly the source of all this, but we had no way of knowing their identity. Our only option was to retrace the steps of the first person.

I pushed against the base of the altar. It didn't budge.

"..."

Marmi just stared at me in silence.

Her gaze made it painfully clear she was doubting my strength.

"Just wait,"

I said, taking a deep breath and pushing with all my might.

Still, the altar didn't even twitch.

""...""

No words were exchanged, but I felt like I heard the sound of our trust shattering.

"...Let's move the things on top,"

Marmi said and climbed onto the altar. She pushed the lectern, sending it crashing to the floor.

Then, before I could say a word, she shoved the goddess statue.

"Ah...!"

The statue teetered precariously before toppling over. It shattered with a loud crash.

"You're going to get cursed for that!"

It was just a stone statue, but because it resembled Laciel, my heart felt uneasy. I rushed to put it back together, but only the torso was intact; the rest was broken beyond repair.

"...It's fine. That statue is of Laciel-sama, so if you apologize to her directly, she'll forgive you."

"I'm the one who has to apologize?"

Marmi nodded emphatically and jumped down from the altar.

I sighed in resignation, took another deep breath, and pushed the base again.

This time, it moved with a grating screech across the floor.

A door was revealed in the floor where the base had been.

Was it a storage cellar? Or the hidden room where the villagers who shared the town's fate were said to have hidden?

Did it lead underground? No, the church we were in was an illusion on the water's surface. Should I call it the floor below?

All sorts of questions popped into my head, but the only way to find answers was to open this door.

The door had a recessed handle for lifting and a keyhole next to it.

Could it be trapped? As I was considering how to check, Marmi casually put her hand on the handle.

"...Hnngh!"

"W-Wait!"

Before I could stop her, she yanked the door with all her strength, but it didn't move an inch.

"...It's locked."

It seemed she was the type to not think too deeply about anything other than magic. From now on, when exploring with her, I'd have to make sure I walked in front.

She scowled and pulled on the handle again and again, but the door refused to open.

"This should open it."

I took out the magic key I had used to break into Mizuki's room from my storage. It was a gift from Laciel, said to be able to open any door.

The real key was probably in a side room or a drawer in the lectern if we searched thoroughly enough, but that was too much trouble.

She took the key and looked at it quizzically. Then, she hesitantly inserted it into the keyhole and turned.

Click.

The door opened to reveal a staircase, along with a dusty smell.

It seemed to go down quite a way, but the darkness was too thick to see the bottom.

"Do you think it leads to the sunken church?"

Marmi raised her wand, and a small light ignited at its tip.

"...Light Magic, Illuminare."

It looked like the firefly light from outside, but it was much brighter. I could see a storage-like room at the bottom of the stairs.

However, I couldn't see any further than that.

"You have a useful spell like that?"

"...It's not that useful. It consumes mana, and I can't use other spells while I'm using it."

"Does that mean I have to fight alone while you're using this spell?"

I couldn't imagine fighting without her magic. I took a torch from my storage and lit it with fire magic.

"Should we go down...?"

She nodded. Then she gripped my torch-bearing hand tightly. It seemed she didn't have the courage to go down first.

We cautiously descended the stairs.

The room below was like a stone chamber.

There were no skeletons of the villagers who had remained, but it had been about a thousand years since that incident. Even if there had been, they would have decayed and turned to dust by now.

Dust filled the air, thick with the musty, stale smell of mold.

At the far end of the room, I saw an old stone sarcophagus. The sight reminded me of Akitsuki Uta's tomb in the church in Nieren. I recalled her disturbingly lifelike face, dead for a hundred years yet looking as if she were still alive.

Come to think of it, the miracles performed by the church were powered by a Crystal Core. Where had the Crystal Core that was supposed to be in this church gone?

"...Mash, the lid of the sarcophagus is shifted."

Marmi tugged on my arm. The torch flickered, and the shadow of the sarcophagus wavered with it. It looked unnervingly alive.

"You want to check inside?"

She nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I wanted to tell her to do it herself, but of course I couldn't say that out loud. I handed her the torch and placed my hands on the sarcophagus lid.

It was a stone lid carved from a single slab of rock.

It was too heavy to lift. I put my strength into sliding it sideways.

But the lid refused to move. I pushed with even more force, and it finally began to shift. I meant to stop when there was just enough of an opening to see inside, but I had too much momentum and couldn't stop it. The lid slid off completely, crashed to the floor with a deafening noise, and broke.

Dust instantly billowed up, filling the entire room and obscuring our vision for a moment.

I inhaled some of it and started coughing. I could hear Marmi coughing as well.

"You okay?"

"...I'm fine... cough."

As we waited for the dust to settle, Marmi came to stand beside me.

Together, we peered into the sarcophagus and held our breath.

Three young men were laid inside, crammed together as if they had been shoved in.

"Hih!"

I instinctively recoiled, stumbling backward. But Marmi didn't move.

"...The knight's armor of the Star Union Family. The missing garrison soldiers."

"A-Are they alive?"

They hadn't gone missing today, and they were crammed into a stone coffin like this. I knew the chances of survival were nil, but I had to ask.

"...They have a pulse."

"Really?"

Hearing her words, I touched the wrist of another knight and confirmed he had a pulse as well. They were unconscious, but there were no visible injuries. We lifted the three of them out of the sarcophagus and laid them on the floor. I tried pouring a healing potion down their throats, but they didn't respond.

"I need to wake them up... If only Myra were here..."

We really shouldn't have come here alone. I couldn't even carry them out by myself. I wanted them to walk back on their own two feet, safe and sound.

"...I know a way to wake them up,"

she murmured as I wracked my brain.

"You do?"

She nodded in response to my question, then abruptly raised her wand. I watched, thinking she had some kind of spell for it, but she just swung it down toward one of the soldiers. A dry smack echoed through the room.

"...Didn't work. I'll try again."

"Wait, stop with the physical violence!"

I hurriedly stopped her as she was about to strike the soldier again.

"...But we can't stay here forever."

"You're right, but give me a minute. Let me think of a better idea."

As I was trying to calm her down, I heard a groan. One of the soldiers seemed to be coming to.

"Are you alright?"

I helped the soldier sit up. He grimaced and shook his head several times.

"Where... am I?"

He clutched his head, looking around with a bewildered expression. But when he noticed Marmi, he scrambled to his feet, stumbled, and fell.

"L-Lady Mo!"

He managed to get up again and saluted her.

There was no mistake. He was one of the missing soldiers. As I was calming him down, the other two soon woke up as well.

"My body is fine, my lady. But my face hurts."

I looked at the soldier's face and saw the clear, red welt left by her wand.

"It might be the curse of those who stayed behind and died in the village..."

I couldn't tell him the truth, so I just made something up. I wonder if he bought it.

According to his memory, he had been on watch when he noticed the lake glowing. He should have called the other soldiers to investigate, but he skipped that step and headed to the lake alone. He had no memory of what happened after that.

It was the same for the other two. I briefly explained to them how we had ended up here.

"To think you came all this way for us..."

They stared at Marmi with shining eyes. I decided it was best not to mention she had tried to wake them up by hitting them.

Now that we'd confirmed their safety, we had no more business in this church. We decided to return to the fort. If we had to find and solve the cause of this strange phenomenon ourselves, we could always call Famu and the others tomorrow and investigate properly.

And with that, we left the stone chamber and climbed the stairs.