Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 718
Chapter 718: Audience (1)
The teleportation magic circle was the only way in or out of the sixth underground floor of the palace prison.
She’s young.
And, if the sound of her voice was anything to go by, a young girl was imprisoned here.
After hearing the voice, I double-checked where the handprint appeared on the box. The protrusion was low on its surface, about where a ten-year-old would be able to reach if they were standing.
No, wait.
A bolt of inspiration struck me, like a certain thinker when he was sitting in the bathtub.
Could it be…?
The Earth Witch. The main villain who had thrown this world into chaos, and the reason the peculiar city of Rafdonia had been created.
It didn’t seem all that absurd of a leap to think the mysterious “girl” trapped in the box could be related to the Witch. We were on the underground floors of the palace, after all. Considering the many secrets of the palace, it wouldn’t be odd if the Witch—or even her grandparents, for that matter—were here too.
“Is the Earth Witch really dead?”
Some time ago, when I posed this question to Auril Gavis, he gave me this answer:
“She is alive.”
The Earth Witch was alive.
While I could have been hallucinating, I had even met a girl several times in the labyrinth who called herself Elise Groundia. Because of that, I’d been under the impression that the Witch was living in the labyrinth, hiding away.
Well, that wasn’t what was important at the moment.
Boom, boom, boom!
I knocked on the wall with watermelon-sized hands and tried to converse with her.
“Who are you in there? Say something. Are you really trapped in there? Huh? Talk! Don’t you want me to save you?”
But for some reason, I didn’t get a reaction.
I tried placing my hand on the wall again, wondering if my voice couldn’t get through from this side, but there was no response. Even the handprint that seemed to have been made from within had disappeared.
“Mr. Yandel, is there someone there?”
“Uh… It’s…” After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to just come clean with my question. “Raven, can you check if there is someone inside here?”
“Hmm… I’d say you probably won’t find anyone.”
“But you haven’t even checked…”
“Why are you asking? From what I can tell by the amount of mana I’m detecting, the size of the portal inside the cube won’t be that different from the size of the cube itself. In other words, there can’t be any living creature physically standing in there! Maybe it could be crouching down in one of the corners, but if not, it would’ve been sucked into the portal already!”
Oh, was that so?
Raven’s logic had me wondering for a moment if I hallucinated the voice, but it didn’t take me long to shake off that doubt.
This wasn’t the modern world, but a fantasy world. A world where mysterious phenomena that could never be explained existed and where magic, abilities, and divine power were real. Those abilities could allow someone to straight up defeat ghosts.
“So, what do you want to do? We can activate the magic circle whenever you want.”
I took a moment to think over her question.
What should I do? Should I stay here and investigate the box a little more?
“There’s this thing you’ve always said to us, Mr. Yandel.”
“Hmm?”
“Set your priorities. Is curiosity your priority here? Or should it be something else?”
The words left me momentarily speechless.
Curiosity…
She wasn’t technically wrong, but this wasn’t mere “curiosity.” The moment I heard the voice come from the box, I felt something akin to the tug of fate. It was as if the “someone” trapped inside had called me here.
“Raven, what are the chances that the ground would just so happen to give way from under us while we were running through the corridor of the fifth underground floor?”
“Extremely low. If Thunder hadn’t fallen twice in quick succession, the underground prison probably wouldn’t have collapsed.”
There was dense sarcasm in her voice. I knew she understood what I was trying to say.
I slowly lifted my head to look up at the ceiling.
Even though the rest of the surface was untouched, there used to be a hole where we had been running and fallen through, and only there. However, even that hole had been mended in a matter of mere minutes.
Since then, I had yet to feel any tremors, let alone see any falling debris. It was as if we were inside an isolation chamber.
“I know what you’re trying to say, and I don’t plan on stopping whatever you’re trying to do. But shouldn’t we decide what to do sooner rather than later?”
At Raven’s urging, I asked her one last time, “So… You said this is a two-way magic circle, right?”
“Yes. I don’t know where we’ll end up after taking it, but I know there will be a magic circle that aligns with this one on the other side. If we want, we’ll probably be able to return here.”
Alright, if that was the case, that made my decision much easier.
“Activate the magic circle.”
I had no doubt this place held some great secret, but now wasn’t the time to investigate. I needed to be satisfied with finding my way here for today so that when the time came to return, I would have taken the necessary steps to prepare for a proper investigation of this place.
Just like Raven said, I needed to get my priorities in order. Escaping this predicament with my allies and my life took precedence.
“Then, shall we begin?” Raven confirmed.
I nodded, and the magic circle quickly activated.
Flash!
My vision instantly went white from the bright light and slowly returned to me as the light faded away.
“This is…”
White walls and a white ceiling. It was another closed-off room with bright light shining on us from above as if we were standing directly underneath a lamp.
Raven glanced around nervously, then pointed toward a wall. “Why is only this wall made of metal…? Huh? Now that I look at it, there’s a tiny seam in between the metal. I think it’s supposed to open to the side… Uh, Mr. Yandel? Yandel? Can you hear me?”
“I’m listening.”
I only zoned out for a bit. My senses were still operating perfectly.
After gathering my wits, I walked toward the metal wall that was presumed to be a door. Raven then began to talk to herself and throw out all sorts of theories about this thing.
“Maybe it needs something magical? But then again, I can’t sense any mana from it…”
Magical this, mana that, and so on.
Raven ran down the list of everything a wizard would first think of when looking at this “door” without a handle. Most of the time, one of these wizard theories would wind up being correct.
“Move for a second.”
“Pardon…?” Raven trailed off, startled. “Oh, if you’re trying to force it open with brute strength—”
“Don’t worry, I’m not doing that.”
Now standing in front of it, I slowly reached my hand out.
I had no idea what this thing was doing in this world, but I knew how to use it.
Clack.
And so, I reached out with my Frankfurt-sausage-sized index finger and pressed the button.
Ding!
Not long after, a chime that didn’t suit this world rang out.
Slide.
And the elevator doors opened.
***
Raven didn’t think much about the nature of this “mechanical device.” She was just surprised about two things—one being the flimsy security which allowed it to open with just the touch of a button, and the second that she couldn’t sense any mana from it. She didn’t react much to anything else.
“Ah, so it’s like the mana lift. We have something like this in our magic tower as well.”
With those words, my suspicion crystallized into certainty. This mechanical device didn’t use mana at all.
Well, Raven seemed to believe there was a very faint circuit that she just couldn’t sense.
No way.
It might not have been at the magic tower, but I had ridden mana lifts a few times. What we were on was completely different. Those lifts were unsafe, comparable to just a metal cage, and the pulley was moved by mana.
So what about this one?
“Mr. Yandel?”
I couldn’t tell if it was powered by electricity or mana just by looking at it. No, I guess I actually could.
Fuck, why is this thing here…?
It was the distinctive design that gave it away. It was very refined, the sort of elevator that wouldn’t look out of place in an expensive hotel, and very modern. The lights installed in the ceiling, the buttons attached next to the door, and even the mirrors on the sides of the elevator…
The mirrors reflected a barbarian and a wizard standing in full gear but I nearly forgot that we weren’t supposed to be in the modern world for a split second.
“So how can we activate this lift? We usually send a message to an operator to activate ours…”
At Raven’s curious wondering, I pressed a button like it was second nature to me. It was the only button other than the ones that opened and closed the doors.
“Ah! I-it’s moving!”
With the floor button pressed, the elevator came to life. From what I could tell, we weren’t moving down but up.
“Hey, Mr. Yandel. At least say something. It’s scary when you keep doing all that silently… Something might appear after the lift stops and the doors open…”
Well… That was something I was afraid of too.
What would be beyond these doors? I couldn’t even imagine it in my current stage.
Vwoong…
And so, I waited patiently.
Although I was prepared to swing my weapon at any moment, I didn’t let myself get too tense.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
I counted the seconds and controlled my breathing.
Fifty seconds.
Around fifty seconds later, I could feel the elevator decelerate before smoothly coming to a stop.
Vwoong…
The door then slowly opened to reveal the scene we had been curious about laid out before us.
The first thing to note, it was something like a hotel lobby. There was a chandelier and a small fountain in the center. The floor was made from smooth marble.
Step.
And a single knight was standing in front of the now-open doors.
The knight didn’t seem surprised to see us. It was as if he already knew we were coming.
He was standing at attention like a proper royal guard and merely looking at us without saying a word.
Are we starting with a mid-boss right away?
In game terms, it was like we were facing off against a mid-boss as soon as we entered the dungeon. I could tell in an instant that this guy wasn’t some small fry.
Well, I guess it’s to be expected, considering he protects this place.
That didn’t mean I would cower in fright, though.
I mean, who was I? I was the superpowered barbarian who knew for a fact he would never lose to anyone in a battle of aura. That was me.
The one problem was if I could protect Raven from where she stood behind me while I was at it.
I took a step back, trying to take on a more defensive posture so I could better protect Raven. Then, the knight smoothly drew his sword and pointed it at me.
…Huh?
That was all that happened.
Slash!
When I noticed it, a line was drawn on my palm.
Drip.
Followed by a stinging pain as drops of blood ran down my hand.
I got cut…?
It was unbelievable.
I couldn’t believe that this knight was some amazing master who could cut me so quickly that I couldn’t even see it. I could even accept that in this world, it didn’t matter that he was more than twenty steps away from me when he laid a scratch on me.
“Interesting…”
However, it was a whole different story to accept that he cut through my physical defense with just a single strike, and did so well enough to make me bleed. This bastard didn’t even use aura in that attack.
If it isn’t aura…
I didn’t even bother looking at my injury and, as calmly as I could, I fixed my gaze on the knight—or more precisely, on the sword he was wielding.
Is it the sword…?
The secret to that attack almost certainly lay within that sword.
It was, without a doubt, a sword I had never seen before. I searched through the database of my mind, but I couldn’t recall a single numbered item that looked like that. And yet, there was no other possible explanation.
Either I need to somehow take the sword from him, or turn the tide of battle so that he can’t use it—
Yet as soon as I jumped to strategizing how I could fight the knight, he sheathed his sword and turned around, as if to say he only did all that just to humble me.
“Follow me.”
With a clang of armor against the marble floor, he walked away with his back to me.
Raven was the one who peered from behind my back and asked in my stead, “Wh-where are we going…?”
She sounded like a frightened herbivore.
The knight kept walking away, leaving his back wide open to us as he responded, “The audience hall.”
“Come again?”
It was a turn of events I could never have predicted.
“The King of the New World has allowed you an audience.”
I never thought this would be how I met the king.
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