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The damp, sticky sensation against my skin jolted me awake.

As I blinked blearily, trying to adjust to my surroundings, I found myself shrouded in darkness.

*Splash.* The moment my hand touched the ground, a squishy, wet sound echoed in my ears. It felt like an unpleasant odor was wafting through the air, and before I knew it, my hands were grimy.

Mysterious, squishy clumps—mud or something else—squeezed between my fingers as I cautiously pulled myself up from the ground. At that moment, I caught hold of something soft and warm with one hand.

What exactly was this…?

“……”

Beneath my palm, the oddly squishy and resilient texture triggered a certain body part to pop into my mind, but surprisingly, I wasn’t flustered.

That wasn’t what mattered right now.

Pulling my hand away as if burned, I quickly rummaged through my pockets, finding a crumpled lighter beside a battered cigarette pack, which I used to pierce through the surrounding darkness.

*Ssssh!*

As the darkness retreated, my sight began to clear.

The first thing that caught my eye was Lucia, collapsed beside me, unconscious on the floor.

I found myself in a small tunnel that reeked of something nasty and moldy.

Holding the lighter, I scanned the surroundings and muttered in a panic, “What’s going on?”

Where am I…?

—

Episode 12 – The Greatest Magician

A long-forgotten story from my days at the Information Command crossed my mind.

“Hey, do you know when an Information Officer is at their most dangerous moment?”

“I have no idea.”

“When you wake up tied up with your hands and feet and there’s a plastic sheet around you. You know, the kind they use for greenhouses? If you fainted and woke up in a room wrapped in that stuff, it means things have gone seriously wrong.”

Kill Room Deco.

One of the methods used by Information Officers to avoid leaving traces of murder. Whether it’s a spy or a terrorist, it’s mostly employed to easily clean up the ‘evidence’ generated during a torture and murder process.

My senior expressed it like this: “It’s like putting foil on a grill when you’re cooking meat. Just like you would use foil to cut down on dirty dishes, wrapping up bodies with plastic and tossing them away solves the problem.”

“Is that so? Then what should you do if you wake up and find plastic sheets around?”

“What can you do? You’re screwed. Either break out of there with everything you’ve got or just die right where you are. No other options.”

Honestly, that advice wasn’t particularly helpful, but there was definitely something fascinating about my senior’s story. It was a strategy I’d not forgotten and continued to use both then and now.

Is it merely a coincidence that such an old story resurfaced in my mind?

I had never been to this place before. I had felt the ground give way beneath me before blacking out, and now I woke up in this dimly lit area.

Even though I couldn’t grasp the situation properly, the thought that I needed to get out of here filled my mind.

“…Wake up, Saint.”

“…….”

“Lucia…!”

I shook the unconscious Lucia, trying to rouse her.

Having rolled on the floor, remnants of filth were smeared across her priestly garments. It was on her legs, thighs, and arms. Even mud-like stuff clung to her face and hair.

Suddenly, I spotted a handprint of grime around her chest. A jolt of shock hit me like a hammer, but I shook off the daze and quickly wiped the marks away with my sleeve.

If she had been wearing her usual pristine white Pasha, washing it wouldn’t suffice; it would have to be tossed straight into the trash. Fortunately, the Pasha she wore now was black.

“Lucia, open your eyes. Lucia!”

“Ugh….”

After shaking her shoulder for a long while and lightly tapping her cheeks, a low groan escaped Lucia’s lips.

“Wh-where is this…?”

“Are you coming to? Try to get up. Quickly.”

“My head feels like it’s ringing… can you speak quietly…?”

Though she regained consciousness, her condition wasn’t good.

Taking the unsteady Lucia under my wing, I helped her sit on the ground, leaning against the wall.

“I know this might be overwhelming, but listen, Saint. We need to get out of here right now.”

“Where are we…? An underground location, perhaps…?”

I couldn’t answer. No, I couldn’t because I had no idea.

“What on earth happened…?”

“I don’t know either.”

I assessed the situation while keeping an eye on Lucia’s condition. For some reason, she had fainted, so she might have gotten injured in the process.

Relying on the lighter’s glow, I confirmed that thankfully, Lucia’s body seemed to be alright. No broken bones and no visible wounds.

Given the suddenly intimate situation of checking her body without saying a word, it wouldn’t be unexpected for her to raise her voice, yet Lucia didn’t protest at all. Instead, she calmly pinpointed the situation she found herself in.

“It seems we both lost consciousness and fell somewhere. Are you injured?”

“No. I can’t pinpoint our location right now.”

“Probably underground. Perhaps… this place is far from Novo Nikolayevsk.”

Recovering her strength, Lucia tried to shake off the dirt and stand, but she wobbled unsteadily.

I caught her from collapsing with my body.

“Are you alright?”

“…Yes. I’m just a little dizzy.”

Despite the unusual closeness of having her in my arms, nobody among us paid it any mind. Lucia held onto my shoulder as she slowly rose, and I helped steady her while illuminating our surroundings with the lighter.

As Lucia leaned her weight onto me, she spoke.

“It seems we’ve either fallen into a trap or had an accident.”

“……”

“I’m sorry. For dragging you into this…”

“Don’t say such things. You did follow me knowing everything, right?”

Lucia smiled faintly at my attempt to dissuade her self-blame. When the modest light flickered, revealing her face partially in the glow, I caught a glimpse of her smile.

I patiently waited until Lucia could regain her composure.

Leaning against me, Lucia, who had been limping, thanked me and positioned herself firmly on her feet.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. Thank you for your concern.”

“I’m relieved.”

Once Lucia’s condition appeared to have improved, I questioned her.

“What’s the plan, Saint?”

“For now, I need to relay the news to the Priests coming to support us. We must find a way out of here…”

At that very moment.

*Clack.*

The noise reverberating through the air interrupted our conversation.

A sound akin to something heavy tapping the hard floor.

Lucia, who had stopped talking, lifted her head to look in the direction the sound had come from.

*Clack.*

She didn’t show any sign of panic. She merely stared straight ahead, her expression neutral.

Lucia’s small lips parted slightly.

“…It’s coming from the front.”

“It doesn’t seem too far from us.”

I glanced back at Lucia, who seemed focused on the darkness. I then asked her.

“What shall we do?”

Instead of answering, Lucia demonstrated through her actions. She searched the ground where the lighter’s light barely illuminated and retrieved her cloth bag, a Saint’s bone, and a wooden box.

With her prepared items in hand, Lucia spoke, her face expressionless.

“…Let’s head that way.”

—

“I’ll go first.”

“Is that alright?”

Lucia moved forward, holding the items she found on the ground. She draped a purple silk belt around her neck and wore an olive wood rosary and a solid gold Roman cross on her wrist.

I stayed close behind her.

“I caused this trouble because of my request, so it’s only right I deal with it. Please stay behind me and leave the front to me.”

“Are you going to protect me?”

“More precisely, I’ll be covering the rear. As much as I wish I had eyes on the back of my head, I don’t.”

Lucia stepped carefully through the dark tunnel, tapping the ground gently.

While turning on the lighter would at least let us see ahead, illuminating the surrounding darkness could very well be a death wish. Thankfully, she seemed to have a plan and suggested I conserve the lighter.

She extended her hand toward me.

“Hold it.”

“What? Is that okay? If we hold hands, it might…”

“Please, hold my hand. It’ll be more dangerous if we get separated.”

Before I could protest, Lucia took my hand firmly.

Suddenly holding hands was a bit startling, but strangely enough, it brought a sense of calm. In the pitch-black darkness, Lucia tightly held my hand to ensure that I wouldn’t lose my way, and I grasped her outstretched hand back with determination.

And so, we began to slowly move forward.

As we walked, something unidentified would occasionally bump against our feet, with creatures—perhaps some kind of roach—scampering over my feet, but both Lucia and I remained silent. We only tightened our grips on each other’s hands, relying on one another as we navigated through the oppressive darkness.

“……”

“……”

In the silence, our aimless steps continued.

Lucia, one hand holding Saint Balthazar’s remains, gripped my hand tightly as we cleared the path. The rattling sound of the vial of Holy Water dangling from her waist pierced through the stillness.

Eventually, as the narrow passageway we crouched through came to an end…

“…Wait a second.”

Suddenly, Lucia’s voice, previously calm, took on a frantic tone.

He shouted.

“What’s going on…?”

“Please wait a moment. There’s something ahead.”

“…….”

I paused for a moment as Lucia suggested.

We confirmed each other’s presence with our clasped hands, shrouded in the surrounding darkness, and waited for several minutes. My nose was numbed by the foul stench, and an unsure liquid—whether sweat or something else—soaked my palm, but none of us complained.

In the midst of this seemingly endless wait, I suddenly sensed something odd.

“…Saint, is this breeze… perhaps a wind?”

A breeze was blowing.

It was faint, but I could feel the air flowing.

“That’s correct. It’s wind.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“It’s coming from the front. To be precise….”

Above.

The wind was blowing from above.

I did not let go of Lucia’s hand and took a step forward. My sight had adapted to the darkness, allowing me to distinguish the shapes of objects, albeit vaguely, if they were close enough.

After feeling the breeze and moving forward little by little, I finally managed to ascertain our location.

“……”

An underground facility with an open ceiling.

A vast cavern unveiled itself before us.

As I looked up while sensing the weak breeze, I spotted faint starlight cascading down from the ceiling. The stars, bright under the influence of light control, were transmitting light across vast distances into the deep darkness.

“…Look over there.”

Lucia whispered in a small voice.

“Where?”

“Over there. Down below.”

I followed the direction Lucia pointed and lowered my head.

Amidst the dim starlight illuminating the cavern, a mound of dirt—unsure if it was excrement or something else—was filling the depths of the cavern.

Standing tall above that muck was an Inquisitor,

– Tap.

He was tapping the ground with his staff.

“…That guy.”

“Yes.”

The grip on my hand instinctively tightened. As Lucia and I looked down, she continued.

“That’s Inquisitor Agato.”

Her voice was filled with certainty.

*

Real name: Romain Cher.

Baptism name: Agato.

A former combat priest and monk of the Inquisition, he went missing while on a mission in the Mauritania Continent twenty years ago.

He had received a request from a district leader secretly active in a country where religious persecution was rampant in Mauritania. He departed with an exorcist to meet the possessed person, and vanished without a trace.

Now, nearly twenty years later, Inquisitor Agato had emerged in the northern regions of the Kien Empire, far from the Mauritania Continent.

He stood before us now.

– Tap!

The sound of the staff colliding with stones echoed.

The inquisitor tapped the floor with his staff for quite some time as if knocking on a stone bridge.

“…What could he be doing?”

“I wonder….”

The inquisitor wandered through the underground cavern. He would tap the ground lightly with his staff, take a few steps, and then tap again.

An inscrutable act. I couldn’t comprehend what he was doing, but he seemed to be repeating the same motion like a broken doll.

As we observed him, Lucia lowered her posture and let out a quiet sigh.

“At least we’ve confirmed Inquisitor Agato’s position. We’ve also verified that there’s something wrong with him.”

Lucia looked down at the holy relic she held.

The remains of Saint Balthazar, which reacts to those with unclean energy.

Just like when searching for traces down an alley, the saint’s bones were pointing downward with her finger held upright. Precisely towards the inquisitor below.

Lucia said, “Whether he’s a possessed person or a necromancer, we need to prepare for the exorcism first.”

The only way to escape from here was upward. However, the moment we moved to go up, the inquisitor standing below would likely detect our presence.

Finding another route was out of the question. The path we had come so far was dreadfully long and perilous—how could we, who didn’t know our way, find another passage here? If we got lost, this could become our tomb.

There was no retreat.

At that moment, Lucia suggested facing him instead of fleeing.

“If he’s a necromancer, he must have contracted with a demon, so the exorcism will definitely be effective. If he’s a possessed person, it goes without saying.”

I crouched behind the wall and asked her, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Lucia set her bag down on the floor and began rummaging through her belongings.

“If we perform the exorcism, the demon will fight back fiercely. Considering the demon resides within a strong adult male, its power will be unimaginable. To counter that resistance, we need to bind him with a spirit belt.”

“You mean I should bind the inquisitor?”

“Yes.”

Lucia handed over a belt embroidered with religious patterns in golden thread. It was the same item she wore around her neck.

Lucia, offering the belt, gazed at me with concern.

“I know it’s a difficult request. Still, I ask you to help me just this once.”

“…Sure, why not.”

I snatched the spirit belt Lucia offered. There weren’t any instructions on how to bind him, but having tied people up before, this shouldn’t be too hard.

Lucia hurriedly pulled out her equipment and explained her plan. She also communicated some important points to me.

“I advise against using a pistol unless absolutely necessary. Unless in exceptional circumstances, it won’t be effective.”

“So, what should I do when a fight breaks out?”

“Leave the battle to me. I can protect you.”

I, still crouching behind the wall, listened carefully to Lucia’s advice.

“When the exorcism begins, you must stay in the designated spot I’ll specify. Stepping outside of it could put you in danger.”

“How can it be dangerous?”

“You might end up with a lifelong affliction or might need to be hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. In the worst case, the demon could steal your body.”

Lucia dipped her finger in holy water and made the sign of the cross, then drew a small cross on my hand before pressing her palms together and speaking softly.

“The priests will notice my position. You just need to hold on until they arrive.”

“Understood. Are there any other precautions?”

“For now, just keep this in mind.”

Quickly finishing the preparations for the exorcism, Lucia knelt and offered a quiet prayer. I listened silently to her prayer while observing the inquisitor still lurking below.

After completing her prayer, Lucia released her clasped hands and spoke softly.

“Please take care of the holy relic during the exorcism. The navigator’s map and Saint Balthazar’s remains aren’t items for the ritual.”

“Hand them over.”

“Here….”

Lucia offered me the neatly folded parchment map and the saint’s bones. However, her expression changed at that moment.

There was nothing wrong until she handed me the map, but her expression shifted when it came to the remains. I couldn’t tell why, but it was a very serious expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“…The remains. Why is this—”

“What?”

“Why are the remains reacting?”

I looked at the remains of Saint Balthazar held by Lucia. The bony index finger was fully extended and clearly pointing to a specific point.

And at the very tip of that finger was none other than me.

Lucia’s voice trembled with confusion as she continued.

“This shouldn’t be reacting right now. Why….”

“Saint? What does this mean…?”

“…The pendant.”

Lucia, glancing down at the remains, suddenly looked up.

“Where is the pendant? The object that conceals the energy.”

“Of course, I have it….”

I felt around my neck but did not feel the pendant’s touch.

The pendant meant to hide the malicious energy seeping from the wound inflicted by the inquisitor was missing. Did I lose it when I fell? Did the cord break?

In that instant, countless thoughts raced through my mind, but nothing else registered.

“It was definitely there….”

At that moment, I suddenly sensed something strange.

The regular sound of the staff tapping had ceased abruptly.

I locked eyes with Lucia, and at the same time, we slowly turned our heads to look down.

“……”

“……”

In the vast cavern illuminated faintly by starlight.

The inquisitor, lurking in the deep darkness below.

He was looking up at us.

“……”

Lucia, who was gazing at the same spot, suddenly grabbed my hand tightly.

And Lucia’s voice rang out.

“…Run!”

Spurred on by her words, we sprang to our feet.

It was a signal marking the beginning of a long battle in the deep darkness.

 

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