Chương 107: The World Is Listening

To reach the storage room with the medicine ingredients, they had to pass the twenty-third fork. There was no lock on the door. Instead, forty human-shaped shadows were fixed to the floor. Even when they moved the torch, the shadows did not move.

"It is a guardian device." Riphiel said.

"What is it guarding?"

"Stolen goods, I suppose."

"Do thieves make devices to stop thieves too?"

"A thief gets angry if you steal his belongings." Kichan stepped on the first shadow. A shadow hand shot out of the floor and grabbed his ankle. Black letters stamped themselves over his shoe. Stolen goods. One pair of leather boots.

"They're mine." The shadow did not listen. As the letters climbed up to his knee, Kichan's leg began to harden like black leather. Instead of catching intruders, the guardian device was trying to put them into the storage list. Riphiel cut the letters with her sword. The severed letters flowed onto the floor and stuck to another shadow. This time a sentence appeared on Riphiel's coat. One piece of elven fabric.

"This is mine."

"You say the same thing too."

"Please be quiet." All the shadows stood up. Batu pinned one down with a forepaw. A pile of golden armor flew out of the storage room next door and stuck to his body. The shoulder plates and leg armor fastened backward, leaving Batu unable to walk. Valkyrie swallowed the black letters clinging to Riphiel. Inside its body, the letters spread in gold. Valkyrie's whole body began to shine like a lamp. Dust discovered a crack in the jewel storage room door and disappeared.

"Catch that one first." Kichan said.

"Who is supposed to catch whom right now?" Riphiel tugged at Batu, trapped in the armor. Argaon pulled a bronze box carved with a draconic pattern from a shadow hand.

"You should not take that."

"Why?" Kichan asked.

"The owner may still be alive."

"How old is this place?" This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

"Dragons live a long time."

"Do you know the owner?"

"I am telling you not to touch it because I don't." The guardian device attached letters to Argaon too. One dragon creature, owner unknown. Argaon's face hardened.

"One creature?" He kicked the floor of shadows. The cave shook.

"If you break it, the medicine will get buried too!" Kichan shouted. He unfolded the material board on the floor between the shadows and the storage room door. The letters on the floor climbed the edge of the material board and split against a thin line of light. Then the overlapping ledger entries inside the shadows appeared on the floor one line at a time. Kichan tapped an empty space in the guardian device's ledger with the wake-up rod.

"Separate the things with owners from the things without owners."

"The material board did not make these letters." Riphiel pushed the ink-darkness caught on the board's edge with her fingertip.

"It is the ledger that was inside the shadows. The board separated the overlapping letters." The four lines buried in the floor emerged in full. Owner identifiable. Owner deceased. Designated for distribution. Sealed as dangerous. The guardian device hesitated. Kichan wrote his own name first in the blank under the four lines. Han Kichan. Owner confirmed. Riphiel. Ownership claimed.

"Why am I the only one whose ownership is merely claimed?"

"You have someone else's thing in your bag."

"I am going to return it." Argaon. Unclassifiable. Batu. Companion. Valkyrie. Companion. Dust. Currently stealing. An excited cry came from inside the jewel storage room. All forty shadows looked toward Dust at once. Dust sprang out with jewels stuck all over its body.

"Kyu?" All forty shadows chased Dust.

"Run now." The party passed through the twenty-third storage room. Dust followed, spitting jewels out one by one. The shadows slowed as they returned the fallen jewels to the list. The shadows could not enter the deepest, fortieth storage room. There were more medicine ingredients there than gold coins. Sealed molly seeds, salt that preserved mandragora roots without drying them, black minerals that kept winter medicine from freezing, and old alchemical catalysts remained in jar after jar.

Kichan passed the boxes of gold coins and opened the catalyst jars first.

"It is real." Riphiel touched the powder with her fingertip and smelled it.

"We can make three preservation boxes."

"Then take plenty."

"What about the gold coins?"

"Heavy." Dust covered a pile of gold coins with its body.

"It says it's taking those." Batu sat down, still unable to remove the golden armor. Valkyrie kept sparkling because of the jewels it had swallowed. Whenever Riphiel found an elven item, she cursed the thieves and put it in her own bag, declaring it an item to be returned. Argaon set the bronze box apart, saying its owner might still be alive. Kichan unfolded the material board in the middle of the treasure cave and grilled meat.

"We came all this way, and you're cooking meat again?"

"We have to eat before we leave." Argaon sat down first. The sealed box in the magic bag began to ring when the meat was almost cooked. The black minerals inside the storage room trembled at the same pitch. The low, steady vibrations overlapped and drowned out conversation.

"Noisy." Kichan let the sound he had used to open the mountain slip out again. Stop. The sound came out before he even thought of the meaning. The cave's vibration vanished all at once. For a moment, even the sound of oil popping over the fire and Dust scraping jewels could not be heard. The distant wall bent very slightly toward Kichan. Argaon covered Kichan's mouth with his hand.

"Mmph."

"Do not say it again." There was no playfulness on Argaon's face.

"Why?"

"The more you command another world, the more the world learns that you are an outsider." The Fragment of God's Word inside the sealed box rang once more.

"What happens if it learns that?"

"It may try to push you out." Kichan shut his mouth. After a little while, the cave's ordinary sounds returned. The wall returned to its original shape. Even so, the catalyst was real. For the first time in a long while, Kichan turned the meat without counting portions.

"When we go back, the medicine can be preserved for a long time." Argaon took the cooked meat first. The party wrapped the catalyst jars in three layers of cloth. Riphiel packed the elven items into her bag, insisting she would return them, and Dust spat out the jewels stuck to it one by one. It hid one last small gem until the end, but Batu found it by licking Dust. Kichan put the herbs and black minerals into the material bag before the gold coins. Outside the mountain, snow was falling.