Episode 44
“…A warehouse?”
Places with this many medicinal herbs usually had a separate warehouse for storing them.
Saelreot glanced at Loki with a curious expression. He was holding his forehead, lost in thought.
‘…He looks busy.’
What should I do? Should I open it?
Saelreot’s hesitation did not last long.
A fragrant herbal scent wafted up from the basement.
‘He said I could look around, right?’
The ever-curious girl grunted softly as she opened the door. To her surprise, it was so well-maintained that it opened easily, revealing a pitch-black space.
The sight filled her with revulsion.
Even with her dark elf vision, she could barely see inside. But a strangely nostalgic herbal scent stimulated her nose.
The fragrant yet sweet smell evoked the perfume of the royal palace where she once lived.
‘…The dispensary where I studied smelled just like this.’
“What are you doing?”
At Loki’s voice, Saelreot covered the entrance with her hand.
“Huh? There’s… a basement. It looks like a place for storing herbs.”
Loki blinked.
Come to think of it, Alex had mentioned there was an herb storage warehouse.
“Is it all right if I take a look?”
Loki looked at Saelreot and pondered.
‘Was she bored standing around doing nothing?’
He had already received Alex’s permission.
Then it should be fine.
“Don’t go too far. Be careful.”
Saelreot nodded.
As Loki turned back to his book, Saelreot carefully opened the door leading underground and stepped inside.
Leaning against the wall beside her, she followed the herbal fragrance.
It was a nostalgic scent, but the darkness and heavy atmosphere inevitably filled her with dread.
She could not see a thing. Without a single light, it was terrifying.
‘Why does it feel like keeping my eyes closed would be better?’
She carefully descended the long, long stairs.
Relying on her hearing and sense of smell, she went down for a moment before the small sound of water reached her ears.
Her vision improved to the point where she could barely make out nearby objects.
There was a well dug into the ground, and a pump to draw it up. The walls looked like an underground space carved from bedrock, and marveling at the precious herbs hanging on those walls, Saelreot gasped.
‘Amazing! These are so rare and hard to find…! How could a mere human gather this many? Ah, back in the kingdom, I used to study late into the night in a room filled with herbs like this….’
As she inhaled the herbal scent, the depressed heart she had carried until just moments ago seemed to fade little by little.
To her, the sweet yet bitter scent of herbs was something that comforted her soul.
Then, a faint stench of rot drifted out, mixed within.
“…What? Is there a spoiled herb?”
She sniffed the air.
Mixed with the herbal scent, it was hard to tell what it was. But it was a smell she thought she had encountered somewhere before.
‘Where is it coming from?’
She tracked the smell and arrived before a large iron door.
‘It smells of herbs too. But…’
There was also the stench of decay that accompanied rotting life.
“What in the world? What are these precious ingredients being used for!”
For some reason, she felt furious, as though her memories had been defiled.
And so she sprang into action.
She reached toward the closed door.
Turning the circular handle, the closed door slowly opened.
In that instant, she covered her nose.
She felt her stomach twist at the horribly spreading stench of decay. But more than the smell, what shocked her were the *things* inside the iron door.
She trembled as she stepped backward.
Her face turned deathly pale, and the corners of her eyes grew wet.
She hurried back up the underground stairs.
***
“……?”
Loki, who had been reading, turned his head at the feeling of his hem being tugged.
It was Saelreot.
She was trying her hardest to maintain an expressionless face, but her eyes looked ready to burst into tears at any moment, and her hand gripping his clothes was trembling with force.
“What is it?”
“The basement.”
“……?”
“In there.”
Saelreot’s voice trembled.
“There are… children.”
Loki turned his head.
He saw the small entrance leading down to the basement.
***
—Father! Father! Play with us!
He heard the clear voices of children.
Their excited, lively voices rang in his ears, and Alex found his own spirits lifting along with them.
—Aaaah…?! Bell peppers again? Please, can’t you make something else?
The children’s discontented voices.
Their whining tones, as if they hated it, as if they were angry, as if they were annoyed, made Alex feel hurt.
And then….
—Fath…er… sa…ve… us!
Voices filled with despair.
Children crying and pleading, screaming for their lives. Reaching out their hands, shedding tears of blood.
Watching those children, Alex could do nothing. He simply stared at them and left them there, unable to touch them.
‘Ahh….’
Alex sobbed as he watched them. He wanted to help them. He wanted to reach out his hand. He wanted to grasp the hands that yearned for salvation.
—Fa…ther!
At that voice, Alex’s peace vanished.
Children gradually being devoured by monsters.
Watching that sight, Alex clutched his hair. Strands of hair jutted roughly between his fingers, and his eyes grew hollow and sunken.
—…….
Now there were not even voices.
The children’s lively voices, their complaining voices, their crying and pleading voices—everything had disappeared.
Only emptiness remained by his side.
That emptiness was so vast.
He wanted to fill it.
He wanted to return things to how they once were.
He wanted to bring back the happy times he had spent with the children.
He wanted to share love with them, accepting their joy and complaints.
And so…!
To bring back those who had been devoured by monsters, he forcibly carried out experiments.
But the children could no longer remain children. They became new life forms.
They became disgusting, rotting corpses that spread death—not the pure children they once were.
***
“…….”
Alex opened his eyes and stared blankly ahead.
Rubbing his dried-out eyes with the back of his hand, he felt discomfort and pain in his eyeballs.
Alex had no strength left to weep at the state of his body, which had even run out of tears. Instead, laughter escaped him unwittingly, his shoulders trembling.
‘So this is my limit. There’s no way I can make a cure for this disease on my own.’
He needed help. For that, he needed the help of the ‘Holy Order.’
There was no place on the continent that had researched this plague as long as they had, nor that had made a cure.
‘If it is them… they would know.’
Alex rose from his bed.
Though emaciated, he moved his body, built with trained muscle, and put on the robe hanging from the coat rack.
He sat at the desk, prepared a quill and paper, dipped it in ink, and began to write.
‘The Holy King must not see this letter. Only His Holiness the Pope can grant salvation.’
After finishing the letter, he placed it in an envelope, dripped candle wax, and firmly pressed his seal bearing his name into it.
‘In the morning, I should ask Yuan to mail this for me.’
He extinguished the candle and was heading back to his bed when he stopped.
He had just remembered that, not long ago, he had not locked the entrance leading to his underground training room.
‘Could it be… no, it can’t be. It’s fine. Even if someone found the entrance, they couldn’t go deep without a lantern….’
But he could not help his anxiety. It might be good to check.
Besides, he was bored, so it would be nice to chat and share a bell pepper dish or two.
“Hoo… What are those travelers doing right now?”
Holding a lantern, Alex walked to the research lab in the cemetery. He opened the door and spoke with a smile.
“What do you think? Is there anything that catches your inte—?”
But finding no one there and seeing the entrance that had been hidden by the carpet now exposed, Alex froze.
‘Good heavens…?!’
Could those travelers have gone inside…?!
“Damn it!”
A curse one would hardly expect from a cleric in service to God escaped his lips.
He tried to go get the bird-beak mask from the monastery, but he hesitated.
If they were heading there even as he took the time to worry…?
‘…No!’
He was in no position to hesitate.
Even in the very moment he was wavering, they would be heading deeper underground, toward *that place*.
“I have holy water. Besides, it doesn’t spread through the air.”
Alex took a deep breath. Then he quickly walked down to the basement.
His gait was far too fast and forceful for an old man.
Relying on the light of his lantern, he composed his trembling heart and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Amid the thick herbal fragrance, the stench of decay stimulated Alex’s nose.
The door to *that place* was already open.
‘If something goes wrong, there will be victims!’
After descending the last of the stairs, Alex walked forward. He did not think to disinfect with the well water, nor to use herbs to mask the stench.
He hurried toward the underground ‘prison.’ And there, he saw.
“…What do you think you are doing?!”
The traveler girl was hiding behind the man in the crow mask, gripping his pant leg and trembling. But in contrast, the man in the crow mask had drawn a sword from who-knows-where.
The traveler was pointing his sword at the ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in the basement prison who were hostile toward him.
In that moment, Alex lost his reason.
“I asked what you are doing!”
Alex’s voice echoed in the underground cavern, and only then did Loki react.
Turning his head to look at Alex, he furrowed his brow.
“…You have done a terrible thing. To think you were raising monsters here.”
“I am not raising them! I am trying to cure them!”
“Cure them?”
Loki looked inside the prison.
It was a place surrounded entirely by rock walls.
In that place where not a single light shone, wights in the forms of boys and girls, with chains wrapped around their necks, arms, and legs, were trying to lunge at the living prey before them.
Their eyes were already gone. What filled those hollow sockets were maggot-like Worm Pests, and their skin was already stained black and dried out.
Their limbs were bent and broken by the taut chains. When their skin tore, rotten blood and Worm Pests flowed out from the gaps.
They were forms that could no longer be called human.
‘They are completely deranged monsters.’
“Close the door! The children will get hurt!”
“…Children? You see children in these?”
“Move!”
Alex quickly approached and grabbed the iron door. It was Loki who seized Alex’s hand.
“I do not care what you are doing here. But have you no thought for the owners of those bodies ruined by those disgusting parasites?”
“That is why I am trying to cure them!”
“You… truly believe that is curable?”
A voice of disbelief escaped Loki.
The children inside the prison were already ‘dead.’
They were not living beings called children, but masses of ‘Worm Pest.’
In their current state, even using Loki’s purification and recovery potions would be futile.
“Let go of my hand.”
“What are those children?”
“I told you to let go.”
Alex’s eyes glared sharply at Loki.
At the murderous gaze, Loki pressed his hand to his forehead. His head throbbed.
Though he had improved considerably, he was a half-human, half-divine existence in this world.
Without realizing it, he unleashed killing intent at a mere human directing murderous intent toward him.
“……?!”
Alex flinched in surprise and trembled.
Not only Alex, but Saelreot also jumped in shock and backed away from him.
Loki took a deep breath and released Alex’s hand. He pressed hard on his temples, suppressing his temper as much as possible.
‘…So this was the reason for his obsession?’
An ordinary old man from a monastery would not have studied Worm Pest so obsessively, nor would he have conducted experiments displaying that terrifying plague behind glass.
There was a very high possibility that the children before him were the cause of this obsession.
‘Family… perhaps?’
Family. But they were already infected.
He must have tried his utmost to reverse it.
Of course, the results must have been disastrous.
“Do you truly… believe they can be cured?”
When asked again calmly, using honorifics, Alex opened his tightly shut mouth.
He nodded again and again.
“…Of course! I can do it! Of course I can! They can be cured! It is possible! It is possible! It is poss—!”
He repeated himself over and over, as though trying to force himself to believe something he knew was impossible.
Loki cut Alex off.
“That is impossible.”