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Chapter 255: From Moving Forward to Omens

There were no sights of the group of people who had entered the sewers before them, and they had no other clues.

The sewer itself extended straight from the stairway where Loren’s group entered to both left and right, but whether they looked to the left or to the right, there was only a continuous passageway, and there were no signs pointing them in which direction to go.

“Should we throw some sticks?”

“We don’t have any sticks.”

“Loren’s greatsword then.”

“I don’t want to throw it to the floor…”

The passageway was right next to the stream of sewage water. There was no telling what might splash over and stick to the floor, and Loren had no desire to throw the greatsword he would hold in his hands down there.

Moreover, the greatsword was originally the weapon of a Demon King, Lapis’ mother. He wondered if it would be all right for Lapis to suggest using it in place of a stick, but she didn’t seem to have any particular feelings about it.

“Somehow, I think it’s this way.”

As Loren pondered what to do, Ivy pointed to one side of the passage and said. She did it so naturally and without hesitation that Loren wondered if she had some reason to think so, but it seemed that there was none at all, thus she started her sentence with ‘somehow’.

“Just curious, but why that way?”

“Don’t you think this sewer is unnatural?”

‘Don’t answer a question with a question’, Loren thought to himself. He looked around as prompted by Ivy’s question, then titled his head, not knowing what was so unnatural.

“Why don’t we talk as we walk? If we stay here, there will be no progress, aside from the effect of the pill that Lapis just threw in wearing off.”

At Ivy’s urging, Loren’s group started walking in the direction she had pointed to.

The path was not a difficult one, but they proceeded very slowly. The reason was that, the pills Lapis threw into the sewage had a limited range. Once that range was passed, the air would be filled with that unbearable stench again. To avoid being hit by the stench, Lapis would throw the pills into the sewage at certain intervals, but it would take some time for the gas emitted by the medicine to work.

If an emergency arose, there wouldn’t be time to worry about it and the only thing to do would be to run, but other than that it wasn’t a stench they liked to smell. So they would repeat the process of advancing some distance, throwing a pill, waiting a little, and advancing again.

“Location-wise, the city of Suest is in a remote area. It’s quite big, but that’s all there is to it.”

Ivy, who was walking in the front of the group, looked over her shoulder as she spoke.

“It’s unnatural for such a town to have a large sewer system, the kind you’d have to go to a royal capital to see.”

“I guess you’re right.”

The sewer Loren and his team were moving through was very large. Its ceiling was so high that even if Loren were to swing his greatsword while walking, he would not be able to reach the ceiling. A sewer system of this size would consume a considerable amount of money, and there should have been a good reason to build such a structure in a city in the middle of nowhere.

“Can you guess what caused this oddity?”

“How could we possibly know?”

Lapis answered to Loren as she threw another pill into the sewage. Residents of Suest may know the reason, but there was no way that Loren and Lapis, who were strangers to the city, would understand such a thing without having done any research in advance.

“The answer is simple. This sewer was here before the city of Suest was built. In short, it has been here since the very beginning.”

Ivy looked somewhat proud of herself, as if she was revealing the answer to a riddle. But Loren just looked at her proud face, not understanding what she was trying to say.

“Are you saying that originally there was only the sewer system here?”

Lapis asked as they walked on, and Loren found that idea to be strange.

Sewer systems served their functions only when they were located in a city where people lived, and it made no sense to go to the trouble of building only a sewer system underground. Even if you did build one, if there were no residents above ground to pour sewage into it, it would be a facility that was never used. Loren could not believe that anyone would have the time and money to go to the trouble of building an unused facility on such a large scale.

“It’s a little different. The truth is that what we had here, was originally an underground canal, and it wasn’t clear if it was a sewer or not.”

Ivy said that it was discovered by accident while doing a site survey when they decided to build a town at the border. The survey team had discovered an underground canal that was well constructed and seemed to be connected to some distant place. They thought that the canal could be used as a sewer, so they built a city on top of it and drained the sewage from the city into the canal.

“That was the beginning of the city of Suest.”

Ivy spoke as if she had witnessed it, even though it was unclear how many years ago this all happened. If she was just a normal person, that could be considered a figure of speech, but in Ivy’s case, it wouldn’t be strange if she really had witnessed it.

“Why does it matter?”

However, Loren couldn’t understand her intention when she talked about history in the middle of a sewer exploration.

Just as he thought that this wasn’t the place or time for a history lesson, he felt Nig, who was clinging to his shoulder, move its legs and tap his shoulder.

Loren wondered what was the matter, and immediately remembered that the pills Lapis was throwing into the sewage to manage the stench also had insecticide effects. Maybe the scent produced by pills had the same effects on Nig as the original sewer stench had on them? This made Loren feel like they were doing something bad to the spider, but he couldn’t bring it back above ground now.

After thinking for a moment, Loren opened the chest of the jacket he wore as an armor. The generously-sized jacket has quite a bit of space inside. A normal spider might be crushed inside it by mistake, but for Nig, whose body was covered by a hard outer shell, might be okay.

When Nig saw that Loren had opened his jacket, it easily slipped inside, and when Loren closed the jacket, it positioned itself just around Loren’s heart and stayed on there.

The inside of the jacket was made of thick cloth, and although it felt a little uncomfortable, it did not prickle or anything. As Loren thought this would be a little easier for Nig, his eyes met with Lapis’, who was looking at the area where Nig had gone into with an envious look on her face.

“Is it because Nig is a male?”

“Can you tell…? But what about it?”

Loren tilted his head at Lapis, who looked displeased with slightly-puffed cheeks.

“Can we continue our conversation?”

Loren nodded as Ivy, who had been watching their interaction, shyly called out to them.

“That is how this town of Suest came to be, but what is not clear is the origin of the waterway used as the sewage system.”

“You know about that, don’t you?”

As Loren thought that Ivy would not say that she did not know anything after having brought the conversation to this point, Ivy nodded her head and continued.

“A long time ago, there was a research facility.”

Lapis threw another pill into the sewage. After a while, countless bubbles began to rise to the surface, and the emitted gas slowly altered the stench.

“What it actually studied was the technologies to construct lost bodies and manufacture replacement for aging bodies.”

“Could that be…”

Loren thought that he had heard this story somewhere, but Ivy did not answer and just continued.

“The reason I know this is that one of the researchers at the facility was chosen to be the subject of another experiment and was transformed into something other than a human being at another research facility, but that story has already been told, so there is no need to mention it now.”

Ivy suddenly stopped, stared at the bubbling surface of the sewage, and proceeded to talk in a somber tone.

“Originally, there were various sections, both above and below ground. But over the years, the above-ground sections must have been destroyed, leaving only the underground ones, which survived the destruction. The waterways then channeled the wastewater from all of these sections to the distant river.”

“If it was just some research facility, would there be a need for such a waterway system?”

If that had been the only purpose, a single waterway would have been sufficient. However, the one that Loren and his team are currently going through had several branches, and considering that it was currently being used as a sewage system, it must have extended its branches through the entire city of Suest to some extent. This did not give an explanation to why such a system was built.

“There were living quarters for the staff near the facilities, so that’s why.”

“That is to say, this body-construction ruin you were talking about…”

“Yes, they are at the end of this waterway.”

In other words, the waterway that Loren and his team were currently on was part of a ruin of the Ancient Kingdom.

Loren thought that the place should have been properly investigated before being put to use, but regardless of the research facilities, the waterway was not equipped with any kind of mechanisms. Even if people entered to investigate, it would look like a mere waterway. It was old, but not all ruins were always from the Ancient Kingdom. People might have thought it was the end of a waterway that someone had built.

“I don’t know where the cause of all this commotion lies, but since we’ve come to explore the sewers, I thought I’d take you there first.”

Since becoming an adventurer, Loren had come to believe that when there was some sort of unexplained anomaly, the cause could usually be traced to a ruin of the Ancient Kingdom or tools excavated from there. He thought it was a real nuisance that they kept on causing trouble even after their demise. If such a thing was connected to this waterway, he also thought that the shortest way to solve this problem was to check there first.

“The underground facilities were still in good working order when I used them, so I’m sure it’s still fine.”

“It would be like paying for the commission in the middle of the job. Is that okay?”

As a reward for accepting Ivy’s commission, Loren was to receive information about the ruin. He was concerned that asking her to take him to the ruin while the trouble was still unresolved might be like asking her to pay him a reward in advance, but Ivy smiled.

“I don’t think you’re the kind of person who would just run away afterwards.”

“It’s nice to hear that you trust me.”

Loren wondered what it was like to be a human adventurer trusted by an Evil God, but then he noticed that the other Evil God, Gula, was staring at a certain point in the waterway and not moving. It was the surface of the sewage, the place where Lapis had just thrown a pill into, and where bubbles continued rising.

“Gula, what’s wrong?”

“The amount of bubbles seems strange.”

Loren looked at the surface of the sewage again.

The pill that Lapis had thrown into the water was not very large, and even if it had spread out a little, the range of the bubbles discharging from it should have remained small. However, the amount of bubbles that Gula was looking at seemed to be strangely wide.

“Lapis, you threw in only one pill, didn’t you?”

Lapis nodded and then said:

“I have a bad feeling about this already.”

In the meantime, the rate of rising bubbles to the surface of the sewage began to drastically increase, and suddenly black shadows peeked out from below.