CHAPTER 1: The Ruined Capital

01

Daigis is an ivy-like plant that grows in the Fell Forest by absorbing magical energy drifting from the air. Bromominthra is well-known for its use as a monster repellent; it emits an odor that is undetectable to humans but unbearable for monsters.

Since monsters react to human magic, a warding potion made with these two ingredients would effectively conceal its user’s presence. The only thing monsters would pick up would be the unpleasant smell.

Mariela’s master had taught her that if she covered her roof and fence with daigis and planted bromominthra around her fence, she could even live within the Fell Forest itself. The cottage she’d inherited from her master was set up this way, and until the Stampede, she was able to live a peaceful life without trouble from monsters. When the Stampede occurred, however, the creatures were worked up into such a frenzy that they paid no mind to things like the stench of bromominthra. Since Mariela’s cottage stood between the forest and the Citadel City, where the monsters could sense a human presence, the whole building had been razed to the ground.

Mariela sprinkled the newly created monster-warding potion over herself and headed out.

With this potion alone, monsters would avoid her, although the effectiveness varied depending on the species. That meant she could travel through the sparse parts of the Fell Forest without encountering any such beasts as long as she didn’t make much noise. She guessed it was around noontime, as the sun was still high in the sky, but she wanted to reach town as quickly as possible. Judging from the ripened fruit on the trees and the state of flowering plants in the forest, it was probably around the end of summer. She didn’t sense a high chance of rain from the bits of sky she could see through the gaps in the trees, but currently, she had no house to protect her from the elements, and what little savings she’d had were lost with her old home. The only valuables she had on hand were the low-grade potion she’d just created and the herbs at her waist. How much of a living could she expect to make with these?

After just a short while in the forest, she emerged onto a road used for carriage travel. The forest had changed; the animal trails she’d always used were gone, and the rows of trees were different. Even so, she had made it this far from memory.

Because the Kingdom of Endalsia was surrounded by steep mountains and the Fell Forest, the only way in or out was to pass through the mountain range or use the roads that wove through a gap between the foothills and the woods.

This was one of those roads, and it should have led to an expansive, abundant grain-producing region on the other side of the Fell Forest.

“The forest has taken over…”

However, there was no such area ahead; instead, the same gloomy woods continued onward.

What had happened to the Kingdom of Endalsia?

Though the region had vanished, the road still remained. It was narrower than Mariela remembered but appeared to see periodic human traffic; wagon tracks in the road told her it was still in use. If there were carriages, then human dwellings probably hadn’t disappeared, either.

At any rate, Mariela was about to continue along the road toward the Citadel City when she heard animal cries, possibly wolves, as well as sounds of fighting.

Mariela couldn’t fight. She had no combat skills, and she’d always been clumsy.

Normally, she would have run away at once, but she’d been on her feet since she woke up, and her senses were dulled. There was too much going on that she didn’t understand; curiosity born from the desire to comprehend the situation before her led Mariela to turn toward the direction of the noise. She hid herself in the trees along the edge of the road as she crept forward, keeping an eye on things from the shadows.

Forest wolves and… Are those carriages?

The drivers of three ironclad carriages were under attack.

Each vehicle was covered with crude iron plates and had only a small window at the front for visibility and holes for shooting bow guns. Upon further inspection, she saw that the iron plates had been pieced back together many times; scars from monsters’ claws and teeth remained along the exterior. She could tell this crowd had frequent brushes with death.

Two bipedal carnivores called raptors were tied to the armored carriages. These ferocious creatures had tough skin, and they shrugged off the likes of low-grade monsters, but they were difficult to train and rarely seen within the Citadel City. Mariela had never seen any carriages this heavily armored, period.

But more than anything, it was the sheer number of forest wolves swarming the carriages that made Mariela gasp. They had surrounded the armored vehicles from the rear as they made for the Citadel City. There must have been around a hundred of them.

Forest wolves were twice the size of a normal wolf. They were a comparatively weak type of monster within the Fell Forest, closer to regular beasts, but they moved in packs and followed a designated leader. Once they’d chosen something as their prey, they would chase it down for miles upon miles, even teaming up with other packs of forest wolves if they were unable to take down their target alone.

Perhaps the situation here was the same. How long had these carriages been traveling along while enduring these forest wolves’ attacks? Their iron exterior showed numerous scratches, and some of the plates had fallen off.

The raptors’ riders were fighting back—one with a black spear and one with a sword—but their heavy armor impeded their movement. Though protected from the fangs of the beasts, they seemed to be having a difficult time against the rapid succession of incoming attacks.

The wind began spiraling into a vortex around the spear (a spear technique, perhaps?), and a moment later, a sharp blow to one of the frontline forest wolves turned it into a piece of meat. However, it was all for nothing as another of the beasts rushed in to fill the gap.

Crossbow arrows flew out of the holes in the armored carriages at the forest wolves trying to tear off the wheels. The arrows struck them in the head and sent them tumbling to the ground. Just before their fangs and claws could strike the rear carriage, the beasts appeared to crash into an invisible wall. Any skilled combatant would have recognized this as an extremely safe and reliable extermination tactic. The group of armored carriages had rushed through the Fell Forest while avoiding monsters, and now the forest wolves that had followed them this close to town were being herded for collective slaughter.

However, Mariela, who’d never witnessed a battle before, didn’t know this. All she saw was a massive pack of forest wolves attacking the armored carriages on all sides, depleting their defenses.

They’re completely surrounded! And those things are forest wolves, right?

Such a horribly large group of them surrounding the carriages and attacking in waves with sharp fangs and lightning-quick movement!

This looks bad! I’ve gotta help. After all, they’re in just as much trouble as I am.

Mariella opened the monster-warding potion and tossed it toward the center of the pack with a “Hiii-ya!” Due to her poor control, the throw sent the bottle hurtling through the air and scattered the contents of the potion all over the place.

“GRARARRR!”

All at once, every single forest wolf turned and fled.

These were wolves, after all. They had a sharp sense of smell, sharp enough to be repelled by the stench of this particular potion.

That’s why sprinkling one of those potions on yourself would ensure you’d never encounter the beasts—or at the very least, you could easily drive them away.

Mariela’s monster-warding potion must have been strong. To a human, it was nothing more than plain, odorless water, but it would be an especially pungent stench to a forest wolf. That foul-smelling concoction had fallen from the sky and landed on the pack. Their tight formation ended up backfiring as every last drop of potion spilled onto them. Those it landed on desperately chased after their pack mates, who in turn fled from the stench. All par for the course for close-knit monsters like forest wolves. This was a perfect demonstration of their preference for traveling in packs as well as their energy to chase enemies to the ends of the earth, and now they’d begun a fierce game of tag with one another.

It used to be customary to purchase monster-warding potions when preparing to travel along the main road, and you could do so cheaply even at the border between the kingdom and the forest. Just five coppers could allow you to travel through the sparse areas of the forest—let alone the main road—without encountering any monsters.

I mean, even a little kid would know that, right? Maybe they forgot to buy one. Or maybe they lost it along the way? There’s no way they don’t know, right?

Once she’d confirmed that the forest wolves had dispersed, Mariela approached the main road. The two iron-carriage cavalrymen who’d been fighting the wolves appeared dumbfounded as their eyes traveled from the direction in which the wolves had disappeared to the potion bottle on the ground. One of them turned and addressed Mariela.

“Was that a monster-warding potion just now?”

Aha, they do know.

She felt a bit awkward, but in any case, these were the first humans she’d run into since waking up. Surely they’d be able to give her some information.

It’d be real nice if I got a reward for saving their necks…

With not even a single copper coin in her purse, Mariela summoned her friendliest smile as she answered.

“Yes. I wasn’t sure if you needed it, but I wanted to help however I could.”

The taller cavalryman dismounted his raptor, removed his helmet, and took several steps in her direction. As he got closer, he was so overwhelmingly large that he seemed to tower over her.

His lean features gave the impression of a seasoned adventurer, and he looked to be around thirty years old. His watchful eyes, common for skilled adventurers, gazed down from under thick dark-brown eyebrows. This man appeared to be the leader of the iron carriages. Along with his strong build, he carried an air of dignity about him.

“No, you really did us a service there. Bringing those forest wolves all the way to town would have put the people in danger, and we weren’t having an easy time of things. My name is Dick, captain of the Black Iron Freight Corps. Might you be a forest spirit?”

His speech was very courteous, but he was bizarrely mistaken about her.

“F-forest spirit?”

Mariela tilted her head to the side ever so slightly, her most practiced smile still plastered across her face. Certainly, there were spirits who took on the form of humans, but she was an actual, physical person, and she didn’t glow like a spirit, either. How strange it would be if she did.

“Th-these are just to keep monsters away!” she hastened to explain, thinking he’d gotten that impression from her grass skirt. It was bad enough to be mistaken for a forest spirit, but she had no intention of having this guy think she was part of some tribe of grass skirt–wearing natives.

“Oh, no, that’s not it. It’s just, forest spirits don’t attack people like monsters do; in fact, I hear they actually help. There are stories of spirits giving herbs to a child gathering them for her sick mother and then showing her the way out, or leading an injured hunter to a spring. You often hear those kinds of tales about the Fell Forest, too. I was just speaking hypothetically.”

The giant of a man introducing himself as Dick scratched his cheek, somewhat embarrassed. Forest spirits, unlike those of fire or water or the other Four Great Elementals, didn’t lend their powers to people who performed certain skills or magic spells, nor was there any known way to summon these beings. They were inherently friendly toward people and considered to be symbols of good fortune, so perhaps he was hoping to meet one.

“Aw c’mooon, Captain. Obviously, she’s not a forest spirit. She’s clearly a girl no matter how ya look at her.”

Just when Mariela had been wondering how to respond, a calm voice interjected.

A young man with hair the color of straw stepped down from one of the hunks of iron. He appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen years old, roughly Mariela’s age. The young man’s sharp eyes almost disappeared into a broad, affable smile.

“No, it’s just, she looks different.”

“This is a monster-warding skirt.” Mariela tried to draw attention to her herb dress’s functionality as opposed to its appearance.

“Anyway, are you from the Labyrinth City?” Captain Dick quickly brushed aside her attempt at an explanation. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him what the grass skirt was. Perhaps because he now knew he was speaking to a human, he immediately dropped into a more blunt manner of speech.

He was just a short distance away from Mariela now. This large, stern man clad in heavy armor over his muscular frame was rather daunting, and Mariela instinctively took a step back.

“Hey, hey, that was a monster-warding potion you used just now, yeah? Got any more of ’em?” The smiley youth cut in on Captain Dick before Mariela could reply.

Whoa, this guy is way too chummy! Interrupting his captain like that, really? And what’s this Labyrinth City?

When she glanced at Dick, she noticed he was examining her closely.

Between this and the smiley youth’s overly friendly attitude, Mariela felt rather uncomfortable. The heck was with the reaction to her cheap potion? This transportation crew had been traveling in armored carriages through the main road of the Fell Forest without any monster repellant. And then there was a place called the Labyrinth City she’d never even heard of. What had happened while she was asleep?

“I only have these potions left. I need money, so I was on my way to sell them,” she answered cautiously. She felt a slight twinge of regret at having rushed into things out of sheer loneliness, but she nevertheless opened her pouch and showed them its contents. It wasn’t a lie, nor was she telling them any more than they needed to know.

“Whoa, three monster-warding potions and five low-grade heal potions? That really was a hot commodity you used there.”

Although the young man was still some distance from her, he recognized the contents of the pouch.

He’s gotta be more than ten steps away from me…but his eyes widened in an instant. Seriously, they’re practically glowing!

At the words hot commodity, Captain Dick glanced at the young man and then took a step toward Mariela while continuing the conversation. Yet again, she felt uncomfortable as the gap she’d created between them closed once more. The captain’s armor and their proximity to town didn’t suggest him to be a thief, but if she was mistaken, he could be about to demand she hand over all her potions. Mariela clamped her mouth shut and steeled herself for what he might say next.

“Hrm. We could have managed, but the fact is that you helped us. What do you say we purchase those potions from you, including the one you used?”

“Huh? You’ll buy my potions?”

Why had he been acting all intimidating just moments before? If he wanted to buy them, he should’ve come out and said it. Mariela cocked her head once more.

Score one customer! And I didn’t even have to haggle with the guy.

When Mariela agreed to sell her potions, the captain responded with “I see; thank you,” followed by a small sigh of relief.

Huh? Was Captain Dick relieved just now? I wonder if there’s an herb shortage that’s making potions hard to get. If that’s the case, maybe he’d buy them at a good price. I’d love a hot meal and a bed to sleep in, even at a cheap inn. And since I’m fuzzy on a lot of things, maybe they could tell me what happened after the Stampede, too.

The sudden business negotiation had Mariela daydreaming about dinner.

“As for the payment… Let’s see.”

The other cavalryman, who’d been watching in silence this whole time, walked over to Captain Dick and whispered something in his ear.

Cut it out; this is bad for my heart. I don’t need it stopping again.

What could they be talking about? Were they going to confiscate her potions after all? It wasn’t as if they were terribly expensive, but she was trying as much as possible to avoid having Fell Forest mushrooms for dinner and then curling up to sleep under the eaves of some person’s house. She’d be fine with foregoing meat as long as she had some warm soup. As Mariela’s stress grew, Captain Dick finally named a price.

“How about five large silver coins for the nine potions?”

“……Huh?”

Mariela froze in shock.

Okay, calm down, Mariela. I swear I felt like my heart was gonna stop. But I’m fine; that’s not going to happen. It still works. In fact, it’s pounding like mad.

Back in the Citadel City, the market price of both monster-warding and low-grade heal potions was around five copper coins. In the forest, ten copper coins would be considered a good price, though it was a rip-off for the buyer.

Even as a reward, just a single silver coin—worth one hundred copper ones—for nine potions would have been a lucky sale.

He said large silver coins, right? And five of them to boot. A large one equals ten regular silver coins, so that’s…a fiftyfold increase? Has hyperinflation driven up the cost of goods? Like, does a loaf of bread cost fifty copper coins now?

Mariela didn’t know how Captain Dick would take her shocked reaction, but he looked a little flustered and corrected himself.

“Well, actually, we already saw the effects on the forest wolves earlier. The potion seemed freshly made. Hrm, how about one gold coin?”

Her shock had made the price go even higher.

Suddenly offering double? Which is two hundred times the normal price? Ummm, what’s going on here?!

She had no idea why she’d ended up with an offer two hundred times what her potions were worth, but if prices in general hadn’t gone up as much as potions had, she just might be able to enjoy a little meat in her soup that evening. Maybe she could even stay in a decent inn and have a bath.

In the end, Mariela sold Captain Dick the nine potions, including the one used on the forest wolves, for one gold coin. After she handed over the three monster-warding potions and five low-grade heal potions, he placed them in a special box inscribed with a magic circle for long-term storage and securely closed it.

Oh, that’s one of those things you use to store high-grade potions. It’s a magical apparatus that preserves Drops of Life’s effects. I’m an alchemist, and I don’t even have one. They’re expensive and use magical gems for preservation.

If you took a potion too far away from the region it was created in or, more precisely, out of range of the ley line the Drops of Life was drawn from, the power would escape in an instant and render the potion into ordinary medicinal water. Putting the potion in a special storage box curbed degradation no matter where you took it, so it wouldn’t be strange for a group that passed through multiple regions like the Black Iron Freight Corps to have one. Mariela had also heard of wealthy families who stored mid- and high-grade potions in this way as a substitute for household medicine.

Considering the cost of the magical gems required for storage, it wasn’t worth it for low-grade potions that were originally inexpensive. But then, it was a different story for ones worth a large silver coin each.

The man who’d whispered to Captain Dick during the price negotiation provided the payment.

In contrast to the stern captain, he was slender and elegant. He had wavy, dusty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and emerald-green eyes. From his refined manners, he seemed like something of an aristocrat.

“Thank you for your help earlier, miss. I’m Malraux, lieutenant of the Black Iron Freight Corps.”

“My name is Mariela. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner.”

Having forgotten to introduce herself, Mariela took the opportunity to formally do so as she accepted Lieutenant Malraux’s payment.

“Oh, nice! Gee, that’s a great name. Really suits your style. I’m Lynx, nice to meetcha.”

The smiley youth introduced himself in turn. It embarrassed Mariela a little to be praised to her face like this. Lieutenant Malraux resumed their conversation.

“Mariela, is it? Incidentally, do you have plans to sell other potions?”

Naturally, there was no smile in his eyes. He seemed to be saying that if she did have such plans, she should sell the potions to his group. Mariela wasn’t great at conversations where the participants were feeling each other out.

“If there’s anything you need, by all means ask” was her ambiguous reply. She was grateful they’d bought the potions at such a high price, but without being able to get a read on the situation, her sense of caution prevented her from giving an easy answer. Man, that was rough, she thought.

With the transaction completed, the Black Iron Freight Corps offered Mariela a ride to the Labyrinth City.

They recommended she sit in the coach box, but the inside of the nearly windowless iron carriage was terrifying, and she wanted to see how the outside world had changed after the Stampede. She’d reasoned that it wouldn’t be long until they got to town, so they seated her in the back of the carriage on the ramp used for boarding and disembarking. She removed her grass skirt and hung it on the carriage so she wouldn’t sit on it and crush it.

“Then I’ll sit with ya,” said Lynx as he settled beside her. Though the ramp was wide, two people were a tight fit.

Not that she didn’t feel trapped, but the nonchalant way in which Lynx sidled up to her somehow didn’t make her uncomfortable. Maybe because his body heat warmed her just a little after she’d been chilled to the bone on the stone cellar floor. At last, the reality sank in: She’d survived the Stampede.

02

The ironclad carriage continued along the main road. It wasn’t moving very fast, and yet, it clattered and shook quite a bit. This was Mariela’s first time in a carriage, and her backside had started to hurt from the long ride.

“Carriages really shake, huh? If it’s this bad when we’re going slowly, any faster and I’d get dizzy and fall right off the ramp.”

“For sure. If we went full speed, your ass would break into four pieces.”

“Liar.”

“No lie. I’m tellin’ you, it’d tear your belly into six pieces.”

“! Carriages are nuts.”

“Uh, I was just kiddin’.”

This was the sort of conversation the two of them had. They were unlikely to encounter monsters this close to town, and the sun was still high in the sky. Lynx laughed as he told her she’d be fine, since they were continuing at this leisurely pace. Forest wolves didn’t show up in this area at all—in fact, they even seemed to have run off deeper into the woods, so they weren’t going to follow anyone into town.

“Anyway, where do you live, Mariela?”

“Well, I was living in the forest, but I guess I can’t really do that anymore…”

Lynx seemed to be probing into her personal history, and she dodged the question with a flustered answer as she surveyed their surroundings.

The Citadel City should be very close. She wondered what on earth it was like now.

As they got closer, Mariela began to noticeably fidget, so Lynx spoke up.

“I toldja—we’ll be fine. It’s still daytime, and you won’t see any zombies or wraiths in these parts. Heh, I never get used to it no matter how many times I come here, though. I mean, it’s not exactly the kinda place that’ll give you the warm fuzzies.”

Right as Lynx said “warm fuzzies,” the iron carriage entered the area where the Citadel City used to be.

She thought it might be like this. After all, Captain Dick had called it the “Labyrinth City.”

But to Mariela, the Stampede felt as if it had happened just the day before, as if the Magic Circle of Suspended Animation had been activated mere hours ago.

Mariela remembered it all: the crowded buildings that stood in the Citadel City, the shops overflowing with goods and the mouthwatering aromas of street food wafting from the carts, the hustle and bustle of cheerful adventurers weaving through the crowds. She even remembered people’s conversations and the expressions on their faces.

And yet.

There were no traces of the rows of buildings that leaned up against one another after being rebuilt and expanded time and again, and only a little stonework remained of the large stores that had once peddled every kind of item imaginable.

The irresistible smell of sweets and foreign cuisine from the street stalls had been replaced by the scent of trees, and she could hear no feverish hubbub.

“It’s crazy how a city more prosperous than the imperial capital vanished in one night. Hey, you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”

The Corps men may have been lacking in social skills, but they still had some kind people in their ranks.

“I wonder if there were any survivors… If they were able to escape…”

Mariela knew her speech was strained, but she couldn’t help it.

“Eh? They’re livin’ in the Labyrinth City, aren’t they? Not the survivors per se but their offspring.”

Thank goodness. I’m glad some of them made it.

Mariela almost breathed a sigh of relief, but she swallowed it instead.

“I mean, this is two hundred years ago we’re talkin’ about. It’s practically like a fairy tale nowadays.”

Two hundred years.

She’d been asleep for that long?

Mariela remained in stunned silence for an extraordinarily long time.

Lynx continued to talk, but Mariela didn’t hear a word he said.

03

She remembered that day.

Although winter had finally passed, clouds still blanketed the sky all day long, and her room was very dark early that morning. The cottage her master had left behind was quite small and had only two rooms: one for sleeping and one for not sleeping. The former, of course, was the bedroom. The incredibly cramped little space had two beds and a small dresser between them.

After she was taken in at the age of eight, Mariela slept in the same bed as her master until she reached ten years old. She stopped only because she had complained that it was too hot that summer and was subsequently given her own bed. Her master took the opportunity to separate the two beds in the already-small room with a dresser, declaring with a laugh, “Now we’ve got private rooms. You need to be independent, too!” The top of the short dresser was constantly overflowing with all sorts of items belonging to her master: clothes tossed to the side, various cups or books that had been brought into bed. Or rather, they were overflowing onto Mariela’s side of the room. Every day, she cleaned and wished her master would recognize the hypocrisy and be more self-sufficient, too.

Mariela had left the bedroom furniture as it was even after she had suddenly found herself alone. She had seen enough by then to know she should expect her master’s return at any time. Mariela felt that way even after three years on her own there, despite enjoying how easy the cleaning had become. The top of the dresser was always tidy now.

The “not sleeping room” had a table and chairs, a washing basin on a kitchen range, and a shelf stacked with sundries. Any activity that wasn’t sleeping happened here, from cooking and eating to potion-making, from reading and writing arithmetic to alchemy and even lessons.

Her master was disastrously bad at housework—cooking, cleaning, laundry—but extremely knowledgeable. In exchange for studying and doing chores, Mariela learned a great many things, some she might find useful, others perfectly pointless. For this reason, the room was always so lively that when she first started living there, she worried the monsters from the Fell Forest might notice them and attack.

Now it was entirely silent and dim. Without even turning on the light, Mariela had washed down yesterday’s stale bread with some unappetizing soup made from mushrooms and herbs gathered in the forest.

A variety of herbs grew in the garden surrounding the house, and she picked the ones she needed, dried them, and tied them in a bundle. As always, she was going to the Citadel City to sell potions.

Among the fifty she’d prepared the day before, she placed twenty in a basket, hid the other thirty in the bundle of dried herbs, and packed them into her wooden rack, which she then hoisted onto her shoulders. With her meager strength, carrying fifty was the most she could manage, but such a small number didn’t earn her a lot of money.

As always, she doused herself in a monster-warding potion and set out for the Citadel City.

And as always, a guard stopped her at the Citadel City checkpoint and demanded 20 percent as an entry fee, to which she pulled out four or five potions. Unlike the entrance to the kingdom, a fee shouldn’t have been necessary for entering an adventurers’ hub like the Citadel City. Though he said 20 percent, he would take away the most expensive potions, so that’s why she put the cheap ones in her basket and hid the higher-priced ones in her bundle of dried herbs. It seemed she had successfully hidden them yet again.

After entering the Citadel City, she visited her most familiar patrons to sell potions and herbs. The very last one was the bordello. Since that area wasn’t particularly safe, she had to be as nimble as possible. There were empty bottles of potions that had been drunk and discarded on the ground nearby, so she placed any she found in her waist pouch. That day, Mariela had collected around ten. Finding this many was nothing to sneeze at. As always, she went to the bordello’s rear entrance and handed potions over to the male caretaker, and in return, she received 30 percent of the sale money. As always, small profits. If she couldn’t grow the materials she needed in her garden for free, she’d make no profit at all and would be forced to haggle. However, this man was the only customer who would buy in bulk, so in Mariela’s eyes, it was a good deal.

Had this day continued just like all the others, she would have visited a bakery called Copper Bread. The bread there was hard and dry, and the owner hardly ever used eggs or butter, but she would buy a large loaf for one copper coin—hence the name. Then, after purchasing a small number of necessary food items and potion bottles, she would have returned to her cottage in the Fell Forest.

But unlike all the other days, the toll of bells signaling a monster invasion reverberated through the Citadel City just as she received her payment from the caretaker.

The man immediately shut the door to his bordello and urged Mariela to go. The large white gate to the Kingdom of Endalsia in the outer wall had already been closed, and people crowded around it crying “Open the gate! Let us in!” Adventurers were gathering in the plaza as they planned their counterattack, and those who couldn’t fight had long since fled or shut themselves in their homes with barred windows and doors.

Mariela dashed toward the entrance to the Citadel City. Countless times she bumped into people and fell down, and in the chaos, she somehow lost both the day’s earnings and her wooden carrying rack with the herbs inside. Not a single soul stopped this girl, now completely empty-handed, from rushing headlong into the Fell Forest all alone, nor did anyone offer to take her into their home.

But Mariela knew—even those who shut themselves in the Citadel City had no hope of being saved. She knew that both the people who took shelter in their homes and the adventurers preparing for battle understood they couldn’t be saved. And Mariela knew that was precisely why none of them had stopped her.

At the entrance to the Citadel City, the guard who always confiscated her potions had said to her, “I’m shutting the gate. Get out of here now!” and tossed something to her before kicking her out. It turned out to be a monster-warding potion. She hadn’t brought any that day, so it was probably something he had been rationing.

Mariela remembered the guard’s trembling hands as he closed the gate. Even though he was afraid of the monsters, he’d given her his own potion.

It really did feel like yesterday.

Two hundred years…

Mariela knew no way to find out what had happened to them.

Even if they’d survived the Stampede, this knowledge would be lost in the centuries since, and she’d never see them again.

Now there was nobody in this “Labyrinth City” who knew Mariela, nor did she know anyone here herself.

Back in the Citadel City, people treated her quite harshly, and she didn’t have an easy life. Yet, although she could only make potions, she’d begun to feel that maybe, just maybe, she did belong there. That had certainly been the case on that day.

But now that she’d survived the Stampede and awoken from her slumber, neither the cottage her master left her nor the tiny niche she’d carved out for herself remained.

04

“Heeey, Mariela!”

The reality of being asleep for two hundred years and the complete transformation of the Citadel City had sent Mariela into a daze. As Lynx shook her shoulder, she finally returned to the present.

“S-sorry. Guess I’m just tired.”

“You were walking all by your lonesome in the Fell Forest, after all. That’s gotta be tiring. But look, it’s the Labyrinth City. We’re here.”

Before she’d even realized it, the iron carriage had stopped. It looked like Lieutenant Malraux was requesting the gate be opened.

When she got down from the ramp and looked around, she saw the same outer wall she remembered so well.

There was no doubt that the place known as the Labyrinth City used to be the Kingdom of Endalsia.

This familiar white exterior had once surrounded the kingdom’s capital.

It must have been breached by the Stampede.

The wall had retained its white facade, but it showed signs of previous devastation and subsequent repairs. Wrapped around its surface was the ivy daigis, which concealed the presence of humans from monsters by absorbing the magical energy escaping into the atmosphere.

A large portion of the forest near the outer wall had been cleared away, and the monster-repelling plant bromominthra now grew there in its place.

Both plants had also grown in Mariela’s hut in the Fell Forest; they were necessary for people to live near monsters. But the daigis that twisted and turned resembled blood vessels eating away at the white wall, while the purplish-red bromominthra covering the ground was somewhat unsettling, and neither one flattered the Kingdom of Endalsia’s beautiful alabaster facade.

In the past two hundred years, the glory of Endalsia had become a mere fairy tale.

The large front gate of Endalsia’s outer wall, which used to remain open except during emergencies, was now firmly shut, and it looked as if a guard was stationed at the back door where only one person at a time could go through. Captain Dick seemed to be acquainted with the guard, and a short while after they exchanged salutations, the gate opened with a colossal noise. The iron carriage Mariela rode on passed through it and into the Labyrinth City.

The interior had completely changed, too.

Unlike in the Citadel City, a town of refugees, all the buildings in the capital of Endalsia were made of sturdy stone. More structures remained there than in the Citadel City, which had transformed from a vacant plot of land into a forest.

Even so, over half the elegant dwellings had collapsed, and the remaining structures appeared to have been patched up with purely functional wood and dark stones. Compared with Endalsia’s ornate architecture, the bland stone and wood of the repaired sections simply looked distorted. It was upsetting, as if someone had smeared mud across a priceless work of art.

The main street was once uniformly paved with stones and flanked by rows of flowers bursting into bloom. Now, it had been stripped of most of the stones, perhaps used for repairs in other places, and the earth underneath was exposed. Fine cracks had developed in the few stones that remained. The occasional tents hawking goods on the street occupied the sections where flowers used to be—they looked as if they were clinging to the buildings.

The people coming and going were all guards or experienced adventurers. Laborers squatted on the ground, perhaps because they had failed to find work in the narrow alleyways or because they were injured.

Witnessing the fall of the beautiful city that had once been at the height of glory would probably bring tears to the average onlooker’s eyes, but Mariela didn’t feel as shaken as when she’d seen the Citadel City. This place was meant for the citizens of Endalsia, so Mariela and the refugees who lived in the Citadel City didn’t belong here.

The front gate had stayed open to show off the city’s splendor, not as a welcome to Mariela and the Citadel City residents. She had been inside the gate only once, when her master brought her there for the alchemist certification ceremony.

To Mariela, the changes inside the gate weren’t her concern, and she regained her composure.

“Say, Mariela. You haven’t decided where you’re gonna stay tonight, yeah? In that case, come to our usual lodging. It’s pretty sketchy around here; there’s all kindsa stuff in the City. We have to unload our cargo first, but it won’t take long, so come with us.”

Come with us. Lynx’s words were what Mariela had wanted to hear since seeing the effects of the Stampede on the Citadel City. The fact that they hadn’t sent her on her way even after reaching town meant they were probably after more potions. Understandable that they’d be worried whether they’d be able to readily do business with her again.

But he seems genuinely concerned about me…

They had paid for the potions, and although she’d spent a short while with them in the middle of the forest with no one else around, they had neither threatened nor restrained her. She didn’t yet know them well enough to trust them, but going with them was probably much safer than being tossed onto the unfamiliar streets.

“Thank you. That would be a big help.”

When she replied with her honest thanks, Lynx grinned widely.

The warmth of his expression soothed Mariela’s raw and wounded heart.