Greatest Alchemist? Chapter 221

 

At Divine Empire Sydnia once more

The Dragon Horse-pulled carriage traversed the highway at breakneck speeds.
This was close to the border of Lomaria Kingdom and Triaria Kingdom. We departed from Volton and were heading to Divine Empire Sydnia by way of Lomaria Kingdom.
We would have teleported if it was just us, but we were with with Heath-san’s party, so we decided to forgo travel by teleportation and moved by land.

「……hey Heath.」
「……what is it, Lyle?」
「……a Dragon Horse runs this fast?」
「……no way, that’s impossible.」

Inside the speeding carriage, Heath-san’s party were escaping reality.

「No, Heath. This carriage is flying. That ain’t the only thing that’s weird.」
「I’m trying not to think about it so don’t make me remember.」

Heath-san and Lyle-san froze when they first entered the carriage. It looked like they were taken aback by the space-expanded interior of the carriage.[1]

 

「So Takumi, how will we cross Sydnia’s border?」
「I found an area loosely monitored away from the highway.」

I checked our entry route while answering Heath-san’s question.
I had also considered entering the country through the formal procedure, but the heart of Divine Empire Sydnia is currently undergoing an Otherworldification and the country is in mayhem, so I judged that it would be best to not get involved so directly.

 

◇

Under the moonlight, I placed my hand against the wall that surrounded the Imperial Capital and made a stone door that people could pass through single file.
Once everyone else passed through, I went through last and returned the wall to its former state.

「Let’s hurry.」
「……so anything goes.」

As we listened to Heath-san’s shock, we headed into the heart of the town.

「There’s so few people nya.」
「It’s like it’s a ghost town.」

As Akane and Lulu-chan who knew what the Imperial Capital was like in the past had said, there were few people compared to when we last came. With no lights shining through people’s houses, the town would have been in complete darkness if not for the streetlights.
As it could be expected of the Imperial Capital of the Divine Empire Sydnia, its main street was lined with streetlights. It looked like they were using magic devices to light it though.

「Looks like there are soldiers.」
「It seems there are still soldiers surrounding the dungeon and patrolling the town. Perhaps the general public had taken refuge elsewhere, or they had been driven out.」

When I checked for presences with Magic Perception, I sensed a sizeable number of people around the dungeon. This was supplemented with information that Sophia heard from the Spirits.
As small as it was, the number of people living in the Imperial Capital should still have been in the ten thousands, but aside from a few church officials and people authorized by the military, there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.
After that, Sophia investigated the surroundings of the Imperial Capital using her spirits and confirmed that there were multiple refugee camps elsewhere.

「Ain’t it impossible cuz there are soldiers at the entrance of the dungeon?」
「It’s fine, Lyle-san. The Great Dark Spirit Nyx helped me prepare a magic device.」
「……Great Spirit, you say. Takumi, you’ve gotten so far.」

I pressed Lyle-san, who was looking in the distance, to hurry to the dungeon.
Now, because the heart of the town underwent an Otherworldification and turned into a dungeon, a means to enter it was necessary. As such, I created a magic device with the combined effect of Dark attribute Inhibit Perception and Illusion with Nyx’s cooperation.

 

We arrived at a place where we could see the entrance of the luxurious building that looked like a cathedral and checked it out from the shadows.

「It looks like the entrance of the church turned into the entrance of the dungeon.」
「Sydnia’s soldiers are lurking at the dungeon too.」
「Gotta be careful to not encounter them inside.」

Heath-san said soldiers were teamed up in platoons and going around the dungeon. Lyle-san checked his equipment, anxious of battles to come inside the dungeon.

「As expected, we can’t tell anything from out here…… so this is what Otherworldification is like.」

In my eyes, I understood that the cathedral-like building standing in front of us changed in its structure. The dense mana was palpable.

「Well obviously. Takumi, you’re probably clueless about it so I’ll tell you. That church you see is just the entrance. How many floors it has inside or how large it is, we won’t know unless we dive in.」
「It’s just as Lyle said. Normally, a newly formed dungeon has small, shallow floors, but even I can’t make a guess for this one.」

Unable to tell him that I’ve dived into a dungeon once, I listened to what Heath-san had to say, while thinking about this dungeon.
Originally, this was the place where the magic circle that summoned Akane and her friends was installed in. A thick ley line ran underneath this land and mana was abundant here so there were favorable conditions. If amassed magic power and the energy from the ley lines were used to create a dungeon, capturing this dungeon might not go so smoothly.

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Footnotes:
1. Inconsistency: Lion’s Fang and the Crimson Rose rode in Tsubaki’s carriage when Wedgefort was about to be attacked by the monster flood in Ch95. [↩]