Chapter 249 – Under the Sanctuary.
Even after that, Usher, led by Erica, wandered around town, forgetting even the passage of time. I didn’t know if it was because the light shining down instead of the sunlight didn’t change, or if it wasn’t even him, it was because of the girl leading him.
“Is this underground, right?”
Usher looked at the outskirts of the town he had reached before he knew it and asked Erica.
“Why?”
“I can’t believe it a little.”
A large number of people gathered in a place that seemed to be not far from Krikaliev and the place where they had come to this place for the first time. People who cast nets and harpoons to catch fish. The water was deeper than expected, and even went on a boat and caught fish with sparkling scales while illuminating the dark surface with bright lights. They were all dressed in blue. Usher felt that as he and Erica walked around the place, his doubts increased rather than lessened as they traveled.
From what I overheard as I passed by the people, I could tell that this was the best town downstairs, but there was something in their stories that I couldn’t leave out.
“People upstairs have been buying a lot of fish lately.”
“Dachchik said that too?”
“Are there any events?”
Even now, like the fishermen passing by behind them, he just talked about the people upstairs. Beginning with the street vendors, there were especially many such words from the merchants. It was when I was just watching them, wondering why.
“Chii, are you going to keep looking elsewhere?”
“Oh, hey!”
But even that couldn’t continue because of Erica’s act of covering his eyes with both hands for a moment. As she can’t help but look back at her, she sees her girlish figure with puffed cheeks.
“You were just thinking.”
“Heh, because you decided to play with me today. I just want you to look after me.”
“Grunt, okay.”
When Erica’s torch forced Usher to face her greyness, her girl looked at him with a smile as if she had never pouted.
“Hee hee, but it’s the first time I’ve felt so happy here.”
“I’m too used to it for something like that.”
“You usually only come to feed the children?”
“Kek, those lizards?”
Usher trembled at the thought of the giant lizards that were everywhere in every corner of the alley. He hadn’t wandered around the alleys, but he couldn’t have known, because he always saw them fighting over their tails or food when he saw them. People here didn’t even care, as if they were used to it.
“What the hell are they doing, so there are so many of them?”
“It’s just been there since time immemorial.”
Thanks to the clean eating of leftover food and debris that people can’t eat, it seems that it has increased without realizing it.
“You always feed them?”
“Not always, but sometimes?”
“How did you come to give it to me?”
“There’s no particular reason.”
I thought it was a good opportunity, as I could tell her story with Erica and follow her, that she was about to leave her town.
“But there is.”
“Huh? Why?”
Erica took a bite of the steamed bun she bought from the street vendor she had last heard of and looked at him. The bread that Usher also held was full of green sediment that was hard to find in her original appearance.
“Erika, how did she end up living here?”
If there’s one thing she’s learned from wandering around her town with her, she seems to be floating around here, too. She didn’t have any restrictions to stop her from entering the town or what she bought or ate, but she didn’t care either. She just did it because it was her job. And that was also the case with Erica. She often laughed and joked with Usher, but she never cared about or talked to anyone in the town where she would have lived much longer.
It was a very strange sight for Usher to see. What it means to be obliged to do what one has to do without having a proper conversation with anyone, without bumping into or kicking anyone out. The girl stared at him with a dull gray light and opened her mouth.
“Huh, does Usher consider me an outsider?”
“Yeah, maybe that’s what I thought.”
She might be apologetic to Erica, but since she lived here, she couldn’t help thinking that something didn’t suit her. Restless at the thought that perhaps her own words might hurt her, her girl smiled broadly, rather pleased.
“Are you finally paying attention to me?”
“Ugh, that, nothing like that.”
“Oooh, isn’t it?”
As he unconsciously tried to deny it, Usher turned her head to see Erica drooping as if she had lost her energy.
“…Because I’m interested. You’re asking.”
“Aha ♪”
Even though she knows that is her goal, she sighs as she has no choice but to let go. Because I didn’t want to see her in her weeping state though.
“Maybe Usher is right. I’m a strange part here that doesn’t fit here or there.”
“Part?”
“Yeah, it’s a part. Everything here. That’s how you define it.”
Usher didn’t know what to say about him. I didn’t know what it meant, but the girl’s face was calm as if she was telling the truth.
“A part. What is that?”
“Ugh? A piece of the puzzle? This is too hard, and it’s ambiguous to even call it a chess.”
Erica was tilting her head, as if she didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, the sound heard from the sky was out of sync. Because of this, when she raised her head, the cogwheels, which had been spinning without any deviation, creaked and created a dissonant sound. The moment when unknown anxiety grows because of it. In the distance, one of the many gears starts to fall down. As I was looking at it, I heard people groaning in the village.
“The cogs fall!”
“Is it time to replace it already?”
“What do you know? Get ready quickly! You have to go get it before the other villages take it!”
And countless people who came out of the village later than themselves run past them with hammers and chisels. Some of them were wearing blue clothes.
“How about a harpoon?”
“Of course I have to bring it. Bring other tools!”
The fishing tackle held in their hands coolly glistens in the light. And the direction it goes is also where the cogs are falling. They could get caught if he didn’t get it, so Usher hugged Erica and waited for them to pass.
“Are you gone now?”
Then I finally felt the sound passing by them diminish and when I looked up, I could see the backs of people who were already far away. I didn’t know what that cogwheel was and why so many people were running to claim it, but the footprints around it as if avoiding them and the steamed buns that were crushed beyond recognition seemed to know its value.
“You’re fine…”
“Ehehe, Usher is warm.”
“It seems fine.”
Usher wondered if Erica had scared her or hurt her, but he sighed as she clung to him, rubbing her face against his chest.
“People are gone too. Get away now.”
“Can I hug you some more?”
“No.”
The soft skin of her girl and the sweet scent that emanated from her were so deadly that she flatly refused Erica’s request. It seemed like if something went wrong, things would swell up and touch the girl. Usher found something else to say before that craving took over his head.
“Rather than that, why are those people running in such a hurry?”
“Chii, the fallen gear doesn’t belong to anyone. If you dismantle it, you can sell it back to the upper floor at a high price.”
Erica spoke kindly of her grumble. Then it wasn’t that their actions were incomprehensible. If Usher had been living here, wouldn’t he have been running desperately to get even a piece of that cog? But the girl’s words did not end there.
“If we’re like cogs, then I’m neither here nor there, and it’ll seem like I’m spinning by myself. That’s why it’s strange to the other cogs.”
Her ensuing words left her speechless, and when he looked down at her, her girl just smiled. She didn’t know what to say to Usher.
“How about Usher?”
“What?”
When she answered Erica’s question, her meaning unknown, her gray light headed to the place where people had disappeared. That’s also where the cogs fell off. The huge cog wheel fell slowly, but it could no longer be seen as if it had already touched the ground.
“Would you like to see what it is like there?”
Usher quietly shut her mouth and shook her head. I don’t know if the place they returned to was where the cogwheel fell, but the direction of the secret base was different from that place. And what I felt in the voices of people passing by them was not just joy and joy. The objects in their hands seemed to still pass before their eyes. There must have been other towns beneath the falling cogs.
“Yeah, that’s right. Then let’s go back now.”
When the girl was also going back together without forcing him. Suddenly, a sound tickled her ears. A grating sound that overlaps like a lot of papers blowing in the wind. Usher tried to look around for the cause, but couldn’t. Erika held his hand before he started running.
“Wait, why all of a sudden!”
But Usher was able to find the source of the sound before he finished speaking. Wings flapping in a row in a corner of the field of view. The wings were thin, like cut out of colored paper, but the sounds the wings made were loud and harsh. They were large butterflies, at least the size of his palm. They were soaring in groups large enough to block the light pouring down from above. But that wasn’t the only thing that bothered me.
-Shoot it
A gigantic clam pouring water and scattering light with a black sheen that appeared in the distance pulled out a huge red tongue from its gap and picked up the floor, and snails the size of houses crawled out from here and there with eye-like tentacles. Because I was looking around.
“I hope that…”
“It’s a monster.”
Usher was astonished at the fact that things that had been completely invisible just before were revealed one by one.
“Are you sure there wasn’t anything?”
“Yeah, because they usually only come out at night.”
“It’s not even night now?!”
Then I realized. Just now, a large cog wheel fell to the ground, making a loud sound that resonated throughout the place. The only cause was that sound.
“But why did people go there?”
People here would have known this would happen.
“Originally, they only come out at night. They say they can’t move properly during the day.”
“However, it is!”
Aside from the butterflies, the giant clams and snails didn’t seem too forgiving. I kept running in case they caught me, but their steps stopped.
“Wow…?!”
“Erika!”
There was something that came out of nowhere and snatched the girl’s feet. And it was a tentacle that dripped sticky ooze that was raised high. Then, the owner of the tentacle that sneaks up from behind the pile of garbage is a snail that continues to shed sap through thin mucous membranes. The moment she thought about how to save her because Usher didn’t even have her weapon. Her tentacles that held Erica’s ankle snapped and dropped her.
-Hey hey!
“Hi-go. You guys, at least talk a little and go around.”
And it was none other than Krikaliev who got her. Soon she handed Usher her girl and beckoned him away.
“You take the kids and go back first. It’ll be safe there.”
“What about you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with these things, so just go back. In the meantime, there are things you need to ask and find out.”
Usher was reassured by his words as if he would go for a walk, and he ran towards the secret base holding Erica in his arms. Fortunately, he was almost there, so he was able to enter the secret base before encountering other monsters.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
Was it because he was captured by a monster? It was the moment when she laid her on her bed, worrying about the sight of her girl shaking her body.
“Whoa, Usher.”
“What, what?!”
Because Erica pulled him, he collapsed on top of her. All that soon reached his ear was a sweet, heated breath.
“I’m hot.”
