Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 355: Peace, and After (3)

Magna Rain was vast. It sprawled with the size of a great city. Judging by the scale of the cavern alone, thousands could have lived here without pressing shoulder to shoulder. To think such a place existed beneath open ground left Ketal quietly astonished.

However, the astonishment did not last. In that wide space, he sensed no living presence. Silence filled every street and every hall as if it had been poured in and set hard.

Magna Rain was broken.

“We are late,” Ketal said, clicking his tongue as he stepped forward.

Everything that had made the city had been destroyed. Calling it a ruin would not have been a stretch. Yet these were not ordinary marks of ruin.

“What is this?” he whispered.

Something lay before him near the entrance. By position, it had likely been a guard post, the sort of place where tokens were checked and questions asked.

He had to call it a guess, because there was no way to tell what the original shape had been. The thing looked like a rag twisted dry and left in the sun until it turned to a brittle knot. It had been wrung past its limit and abandoned to harden into a contorted remnant.

That guard post was not the only one. The fences that had once stood beside it, the buildings that had once risen farther within—all had met the same fate. Their shapes were twisted and contorted, driven into the earth in spiraling forms that lined the streets like a forest of petrified roots. They resembled ancient trees, dried and warped over a thousand years, then buried upside down by some colossal, merciless hand.

“What is this?” Ketal said again, his expression hardening as the words left him. It wasn’t merely the grotesque sight that provoked his reaction—he recognized what he was seeing.

“What am I seeing?” the Abomination in him murmured, as if it also had a suspicion. “Judging by the form, it is that creature’s authority.”

“It looks like it,” Ketal said. “But they are too busy fighting each other to come here.”

“That is how I understood it. Their war has not ended. How is this possible? Did someone imitate it?”

“If it is an imitation, it is perfect.”

The warped structure had the look of a dead tree twisted into a knot, its surface dry and gnarled in a way no imitation could ever capture. Ketal extended his hand and laid his fingers against it. Within that defiled shell, he sensed a strange layer of power pulsing faintly, something that should not have been there.

“I think it is them,” he said quietly. “But something is different.”

The power felt as if another strain had been woven through the authority. He withdrew his hand and let the sensation settle.

“First, we find out what happened.”

If there were witnesses, he would hear their story. That would be quicker than tracing every mark himself.

He walked down what had once been a street, the path ahead littered with hundreds of twisted figures. They had once been people. Whatever force had swept through the city had caught them in the open, warping their bodies until they were as rigid and contorted as the buildings around them. Most had already fallen still, their lives wrung out along with their shapes.

Thankfully, it was not all of them. Ketal’s senses told him that survivors had hidden themselves inside the warped shells. He walked to the outer skirts of the city and found a hatch in the ground. It led down to a cellar. He took hold of the ring and lifted it. The frame rattled, and a sound rose from below.

“Aaah!”

“D-do not come in!”

A man’s voice rose first, followed by a woman’s. Ketal listened in silence, his tone steady and controlled as he answered.

“Calm yourselves. I am not your enemy.”

“A-aaah!”

“U-urk!”

They didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, they flinched from the light, pressing their bodies against the walls like rats cornered in a trap. Ketal exhaled softly and continued his descent. When his eyes adjusted, recognition struck him—he knew these faces.

“Cassan,” he said. “And Cassandra.”

The man was Cassan Hark, the thief from the Thieves’ Guild who had been Ketal’s first partner in the Barcan Estate. The woman had been the bandit leader Ketal met on his way to the holy land of Kalosia. Both had ties to Magna Rain. He had not expected to find them here.

“You survived!” he said. “That is good news!”

However, they did not answer. It felt less like refusal and more like inability.

“Aaah...”

“U-uh...”

They pressed themselves against the stone and scraped at it with their shoulders, as if that could keep him from approaching. Ketal watched them for a breath and frowned.

“Your minds have broken,” he murmured.

The sight of whatever had done this to the city had shattered them. There would be no recovery if left to time.

“Then we break them once more,” he said softly. He set his hands on their shoulders and spoke. “Look at me.”

He wrapped them in his presence and pressed down.

“Ah...”

“U-uh...”

Their bodies went rigid for a heartbeat before beginning to tremble, moving with the jagged, uneven motions of puppets whose joints had splintered. The minds within them, already fractured beyond repair, could not withstand the weight pressing down and shattered completely.

“Breathe. You are here,” he said.

Ketal held the shattered pieces down and forced them back together under weight. Life returned to their eyes.

“Wha... Is it you, Ketal?” Cassan said.

“You,” whispered Cassandra.

“Your minds are back. Good,” Ketal said with a small smile.

***

“K-Ketal,” Cassan said again, bewildered. He looked as if he could not understand how Ketal had come to be here.

“Your city stopped answering,” Ketal said. “We judged that something had gone wrong, and I came to help. It seems I am late.”

“I... I see.”

“You,” Cassandra said, still unsteady. “You are the one who fought the Demon King.”

Ketal nodded. “It is good to see you again, Cassandra. How have you been?”

“Uh... I...”

“There is no answer that suits this place,” he said gently.

The city itself was the answer. Cassandra’s face closed with grief.

“You came to help us. Are there other survivors?” she asked him.

“No,” Ketal said. “The only ones I sensed were the two of you.”

“No... My father...,” Cassandra whispered, and sat down as if her legs had been stolen.

“What happened?” Ketal asked Cassan.

“Uh...” Cassan shivered as if the question itself had teeth. Ketal had broken and reset their minds. They would not fall apart again. Even so, remembering made their bodies fear. Cassan fought that fear and spoke. “About three days ago. Something came into Magna Rain.”

“An enemy?” Ketal asked him.

“No, not at first,” Cassan said. “He had the right to enter. It had been a long time since anyone from outside set foot in the city, so we all noticed.”

Ketal recalled the state of the gate—it hadn’t been broken or forced. That meant whoever had entered had done so through the proper path, with the right to pass.

“Who was it?” Ketal asked him.

“I do not know. The master of Magna Rain prepared a reception. That meant he was someone of rank. We all went to the entrance to see who it was.”

The disaster began there.

“What came through wasn’t a person,” Cassan went on, his voice rough as though each word scraped his throat raw. “He attacked the moment he arrived. We threw everything we had at him, but it made no difference. Nothing made any difference.”

All their strength—everything they possessed—had twisted and broken beyond recognition.

“It felt like our strength meant nothing.”

It was like many bright paints being swallowed by a single pot of black. People became useless, dried shapes.

“The master understood what was happening,” Cassan said. “He went himself to face him, but even then, he couldn’t stop him.”

The mage who had created Magna Rain had stood in the enemy’s path and failed. The collateral force alone was enough to ruin the city.

“In the end, our master dragged that being deep into the heart of Magna Rain,” he said quietly. “Whether he triumphed or fell... I do not know.”

“He did not win,” Ketal said.

He turned his eyes toward the deep heart of Magna Rain. He did not need to see as he already knew what the silence at the end of that tunnel meant.

“I do not feel a living presence. Your master must have used himself to seal him for a time.”

“No...,” Cassandra breathed. Cassan’s face fell beside hers.

“You were lucky to live,” Ketal said.

“The seniors in the Thieves’ Guild threw themselves at him to cover me,” Cassan said. “They forced me into a bolthole and barred the way.”

“My father did the same,” Cassandra said. “He locked me in and used his life to buy the seconds it took. I should have just died with him...”

All their ties and allegiances had been severed. Yet they had survived, and those who lived carried duties they could not abandon.

“We go up,” Ketal said. “Now.”

Magna Rain had already fallen. There was no reason to remain underground. As the only survivors, they would need to tell the surface what had happened here.

“Ah...”

“U-uh.”

Even with their minds bound back into shape, they could not make themselves leave the cellar. Fear held the stair like a trap. Ketal wrapped them both in his presence again and fixed that fear by force. Only then did they move, halting and pale.

The two followed him as far as the broken tunnel that led to the entrance. Cassan looked back and saw that Ketal was not climbing.

“Are you not coming with us?” he asked Ketal.

“You go first.” Ketal kept his gaze on the city. “I need to clean this place.”

“What?”

Before Cassan could finish speaking, the ground beneath Magna Rain began to tremble. A deep wave rippled through the stone, and the color drained from their faces all at once.

“Stay back,” Ketal said. “I do not know what will happen.”

He shut the shattered door and stepped inside. Something broke free beyond the next corner and came out laughing.

“Hahahaha! You were amusing, mage.”

A middle-aged man stepped into view. At a glance, he looked like a normal human. However, Ketal knew better. The essence inside that skin was twisted and broken past the point where one could call it a life. Ketal studied it and spoke softly.

“Something that was once human, now tainted and remade—an apostle,” Ketal murmured.

The man cut his laughter and bared his teeth. “Who are you?”

“I am Ketal.”

“Ketal. I do not care. Why is a barbarian here?”

“You do not know me.”

Ketal’s name had spread across the Mortal Realm. Even Cassandra, who had been born and raised in a den of criminals, had recognized him at a glance and said he was the one who fought the Demon King. There was hardly anyone who had not heard.

Yet this one had not. That left only two possibilities: either this being did not belong to the Mortal Realm, or he had been sealed away during the war that had torn the world apart.

“You can speak, so I will ask. Whether you choose to answer or not doesn’t matter—I can make you answer,” Ketal said evenly. “You. What is your relation to the Primarchs?”

The middle-aged man blinked. Ketal could feel the residue of a Primarch’s authority on him.

“Primarchs...,” the man murmured, frowning.

“Perhaps that isn’t the name you go by,” Ketal said, letting the thought drift before shaking his head. “No—it’s fine. You won’t answer, and that’s fine.”

He could break the body and take what he wanted from the pieces. He smiled a little and set his hand on the axe. Killing intent hardened in the air around him until the narrow street felt like the inside of a blade.