NOVEL NEXT chapter 9
9 – Girl from the Ruins
“Wow… this is quite…”
I’d entered the underground ruins through a secret door.
As I went further down the long hallway, murals painted on every wall were visible.
Though they seemed quite old, they remained vivid and flawlessly preserved.
“Hero, do not touch. They may crumble due to corrosion if struck.”
“…is that so?”
“Yes, it seems to be over a thousand years old.”
Such ancient ruins seemed to have something that made one’s heart flutter.
As I walked further down the passage, I looked at the murals.
Due to the symbolic and abstract style typical of old murals, interpretation was difficult.
What I could discern was a luminous silhouette of a woman and nine warriors—or so they seemed in their armor—surrounding her.
There were wings attached. It reminded me of angels from subcultures.
…I feel like I’ve seen a similar story somewhere before.
“Reinforce, have you figured anything out?”
“Well… I do feel some sense of nostalgia, but… I don’t know anything for sure.”
Damn those Kingdom folk.
How did they manage the holy sword to the point of erasing her memories?
Sword management is their job, but at this point, isn’t it sheer negligence?
It seems like they’ve done a good job, making it easy for the Demon King to wing it.
“But Master…”
“What?”
“…Don’t you think it’s too much to use me as a torch? I am a holy sword, you know?”
“Reinforce, I think there’s nothing in this world brighter or more beautiful than the light you emit.”
“…Compliments aside, I still think that it doesn’t change the fact that I’m being used as a substitute for a torch.”
“Ah, I can see a light over there.”
“You’re just trying to change the subject.”
Sharp as always.
It was true that I intended to divert the conversation, but I also did see a light.
At the end of a long hallway that we were descending into was a ruin.
Various rusted remnants of iron, pieces of wood and glass.
A faint light illuminating the dimly lit room.
And a giant steel door that took up an entire wall.
Yes, a steel door, it was.
Not one that looked outdated like those of the big cities, but a steel door with a modern design.
It felt strange, as if we had suddenly time-slipped into the future, and I stared blankly around the room.
I knew it.
This place showed traces of human life.
The destroyed pieces of iron that appeared to be a metal bed, and the electric light; there were traces everwhere that made me wonder why these things were here.
And above all, that steel door.
As if it were still operational, a red beam of light was lit on one corner of the door.
“For over a millennium…?”
“Hmm, what could this be?”
Mutely mumbling to himself, Reinforce seemed to be surveying the surroundings.
“Despite not having any memory of it… I have a strange feeling as if I’m being drawn to it.”
It didn’t matter what kind of junk lay around.
Everything was broken or damaged beyond repair, and there was only one thing in this room that was still functioning properly.
The steel door that was still emitting light.
Slowly I walked towards that door.
“Oh…oh…??”
And just as she had reacted to the statue of the goddess, Reinforce immediately responded.
“W-what…what is this feeling? I feel a strange sensation as if my lower abdomen is heating up!”
“You don’t have a lower abdomen, you know.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!!”
I picked up Reinforce and approached the door.
From the cross guard of Reinforce, precisely, I could see a faint light leaking out.
But that was it.
There was absolutely no sign of the door moving.
I looked at the door again in detail.
The red light was on, and I couldn’t see anything like a handle on the door.
“…Why not just break the door? As a hero, you should be able to do it.”
“If I touch it wrong and ruin everything, it’s no use.”
And although it wasn’t explicitly stated, this place was a deep underground ruin.
If I swung my power wrongly in such a place, there was a high possibility that the ruins would collapse and be buried on the spot.
Even if I don’t die from the power of the hero, isn’t it certain that I would be buried alive?
I wanted to avoid that at all costs.
“But this door, there’s no handle, you know? How are you going to open it?”
“Let’s see.”
Surely the suspicious part was where this red light was on.
This place that still seemed to be working and was emitting light as if to announce it.
…A door with no handle, lit by a red light.
And Reinforce, reacting to that door.
To verify if the hypothesis was correct, I held the cross guard of Reinforce and pointed it towards where the red light was.
Squeak-
Immediately, the red light changed into a green light and reacted.
As expected, it seemed to be a sense of touching a card key to a place like a touch panel.
“What? How did you do that?”
“I…I’ve seen something similar before.”
A door left closed for more than a thousand years.
As such, with a sound of metal scraping that tingle my ears, the door slowly moved to the side.
And what I found beyond that door was…
“…a girl?”
“…It’s a girl.”
A beautiful girl with silvery hair, solemnly sealed naked against a wall.
Reinforce and I were contemplating, beyond the open steel door.
No wonder, this girl was cold without a trace of warmth in her body, and she wasn’t breathing.
No, on reflection, that’s obvious.
Being sealed here for over a thousand years, there was no way she could still be alive.
It would be more credible to say she became a mummy in this place over a thousand years.
However, her appearance looked very much alive, making it hard to say she has been mummified.
“Is it not rude to scrutinize a naked girl like that?”
“Shut up.”
Ignoring the comment of Reinforce on the side, I examined the girl sealed to the wall.
The girl, devoid of vitality or movement, sealed solemnly to a wall.
While her unrobed figure would certainly be attractive, it’s unsettling to have such thoughts when looking at a corpse.
Despite thorough examination, there seemed to be nothing peculiar. Just a corpse, it seems.
“Why was a corpse preserved in a place such as this?”
“Well…perhaps it was a tomb? Seems like an unfortunate thing to do.”
If this place was indeed the girl’s tomb, it felt like a sacrilege.
Just like archaeologists who excavated the tombs of Pharaohs, the thought of being cursed gave me chills.
At that moment,
I discovered some writing beneath the sealed girl on the wall.
…I couldn’t decipher it. It was a script I had never seen before.
Neither in the common language of the continent that I’d been rigorously studying for months nor in the Korean or English that I originally knew.
I remembered seeing a similar script in a book when I was researching relics, but this was not completely the same.
As I stared at the characters carefully, Reinforce quietly spoke.
“Ortrinde.”
“What?”
“It relates to the writing here. I read the top part as such.”
“You can read this?”
“…Now that you mention it, why can I read this?”
How would I know!
I berated Reinforce silently and stood back to look at the girl sealed in the wall.
Ortrinde.
Could this be the girl’s name? Perhaps this was the name of the tomb’s inhabitant.
“So, what does the rest of it say?”
“Look closer. Hm… It reads…. Ortrinde…the brave and strong third child…”
“Third child, Ortrinde…”
I muttered the name that Reinforce had read aloud.
Who could this girl have been that she was preserved so immaculately, almost as if alive, here in this place?
Just when I was in deep thought.
“Hero!! Hero!!”
“Huh…?”
“Something is strange! Get away from this place quickly!!”
“What…what?!”
Upon hearing Reinforce’s urgent voice, I woke from my stupor.
Looking around, I saw a faint light seeping from the wall where the girl was sealed.
Did I trigger something? With vague unease, I tried to step back.
Sudden Stop!
Something clung tightly to my arm.
A soft, yet cold sensation.
Turning my head in surprise, I saw a slender white arm grasping my own.
And following this arm to its owner…
“……”
A moment ago, she was just a girl with silvery-grey hair, hanging on the wall as if dead.
She was staring straight at me, her eyes a grey color similar to her hair.
“……”
I could not feel any warmth, vitality, nor movement from her.
The sheer surprise left me unable to even think about pulling my caught arm away, just looking back at her.
“…Identity confirmed…”
The girl staring straight at me mumbled something.
I was still unable to grasp the situation, so most of what she said did not register.
“Hero!! Hero!!”
Reinforce’s voice and my confusion collided in my head, and as I was locked in the gaze of the pretty-eyed girl before me, I felt her hand release my arm.
And then she reached out both hands to hold my face tightly.
“……”
A tremendous strength it was.
Unbelievably powerful coming from such a slender arm, the girl held my face tight.
As the girl’s face gradually closed in…
“?!?!?!?”
Her lips covered mine, which had been slightly parted.
Duri
She looked at me with a clear resolve in her grey eyes, unlike before.
“Until the day both you and my life end, my sword is yours alone.”