Chapter 114: The Graveyard of War Memorials (1)


    Some time after they entered the dark tunnel, they noticed a blue light ahead of them. Thinking someone might be there, Mira instantly erased her Concept Magic light and walked more carefully. When they got closer, they noticed it was just a bluemp. It was much dimmer than the spiritmp from earlier, looking just as bright as the signs of emergency exits, giving it an unreliable and somewhat creepy glow. There were more lights like that one ahead, but they were ced randomly without consistency in their spacing, making it look even more eerie.


    Then again, there was little reason to have lights like that in unimportant ces, so they decided to follow them to see where they led. There were entrances to the sides of the corridor with rooms in them, which they searched for any type of clue, but surprisingly enough there were no bones or burial ornaments one would expect in a graveyard. But maybe thanks to that there were no guards down there and the two girls were free to search as much as they wanted while they went deeper.


    Twenty minutes after they entered, they found stairs leading further down into the Graveyard of War Memorials. The staircase was around a hundred meters long, and the height between steps was uneven making it tricky to properly walk down. To top it all off, there were more of those blue lights on the wall.


    「This looks like a path straight to hell.」


    「Please Mira, don’t say stuff like that…」


    Mira voiced her honest thoughts of it, to which Sasori reacted by covering her ears and looking distressed as she stepped closer to Mira. Sasori was good at doing things in the darkness and at night, but in a bit of a contradiction she was really bad with dark and gruesome topics. Having carefully descended those stairs, they reached arge space that opened to all sides.


    「Well, it seems we’ve finally reached the main hub of this ce.」


    Mira muttered as she looked at thatrge space. The ce looked like arge amphitheater. In front of them there were more staircases leading down, and to the sides were corridors that spiraled up the walls, and along those stairs, many small entrances were visible. That was the graveyard itself.


    「So are all those holes graves then?」


    Looking around, Mira muttered that with a deep breath seeing how many there were. She could barely imagine the number of bodies it would take to fill all of them. There was arge structure like a tower in the center of the room, which emitted a red light to the surrounding areas.


    「That ce looks different than the rest.」


    Sasori said as she looked at that tower that reached all the way up to the ceiling. Its walls were carved with bizarre inscriptions and shapes, making the tower look different from the other walls.


    「True, we should check it to see if we find any clues inside.」


    There was an opening resembling an entrance on the base of the tower. Given this was the very heart of the Graveyard of War Memorials, there was a high likelihood an important clue could be hiding there, so the two began walking towards it. They approached the entrance until Mira stopped a few steps away from it.


    「There’s someone inside.」


    Since they had lost Complete Suppression’s protection, Mira was already watching her surroundings with Life Sensing. Depending on theyers of cover of a specific location, Life Sensing had a decreased radius of detection, so until then Mira had only felt Sasori’s presence, but now that they were so close to the tower she noticed someone inside. The entity barely moved from its spot, many floors up in the tower.


    「Ah, they’re above.」


    Sasori perked her ears and paid close attention until she noticed that presence as well. It was sote at night that the patrolling guards outside could not be felt anymore either. The two wondered who it could be, one of their theories being of guards digging without permission. Either way, if there was someone there, then the tower could not be empty of other items.


    「It should be worth checking out then.」


    「Yeah, I agree.」


    Thinking they could find a valuable clue inside, the two entered in high spirits while being watchful of their surroundings. The inside of the tower was bright, with a spiral staircase continuing high up around the outer wall, while the center space of the tower served as a room on each floor, with an opening to enter them from the staircase. Given the curvature of the staircase, it would be very easy to bump into a guard without noticing, but the two girls kept their senses sharp so it was almost impossible that could happen.


    Walking with silent steps, they passed by the second floor, then the third, and eventually they reached the fourth. The presence they had felt was inside there, so they cling onto the wall and carefully peeked inside the room. There they saw a person wearing a suspicious mask.


    There were also threerge coffins on the fourth floor. Two of them were open, and the third one was closed. The wall had multiple horizontal holes where the coffins were presumably stored normally, and from what they could tell, the suspicious masked person was pulling out the coffins to check their contents.


    (Hm? That’s a spirit arm. Fire element, and its effect seems to be reflecting attacks. It’s a Shadow too.)


    Looking at the coat the person was wearing, Mira instinctively knew everything about it. Unconsciously, Mira realized that being able to tell the properties of a spirit arm just by looking at it was another effect of receiving the Spirit King’s Divine Protection.


    「To think! They would tell me! To take it out! In the middle of the night!!」


    Between breaths, the masked personined while opening the third coffin. It was a delicate soprano voice, which meant the masked person was a woman. Once the coffin was opened, the woman with short purple hair mumbled moreints as she searched through the contents. The two girls watched that for a while, then Mira took a step back and signaled Sasori to go back down one floor. They entered the third floor and began discussing in a low voice.


    「She didn’t look like a guard.」


    「Yes, and the coat she was wearing is a rather powerful Shadow spirit arm. It might even be as powerful as the stuff the other Head I fought wore.」


    At first nce, the woman in the fourth floor did not look particrly strong, but her equipment could not be taken lightly. Her coat had a simr aura to the armor the Head that Mira fought in the Ancient Circr Gate wore.


    「I don’t think she’s a mere underling if she’s wearing something like that then.」


    「And given she’s inside here, I doubt she’s unrted to Chimera.」


    Chimera uzen already had a strange connection to the Graveyard of War Memorials. The woman was inside there, looking for something specific, and was wearing simr equipment to one of Chimera uzen’s Heads. Condensing all that information produced only one possibility.


    「…Is she another Head? Is this our chance to capture her?」


    As she voiced that possibility, Sasori’s eyes narrowed as she nced upwards like a predator focusing on its prey. The woman was still there, looking through the coffin’s contents.


    「We might never get another chance like this.」


    Mira was on board with the n. It was her chance to fulfill her previous failed mission, that of capturing one of Chimera uzen’s heads. Deciding they would proceed that way, they grinned at each other. The two girls climbed the stairs up again, paying more attention to the woman’s movements.