When he fiddled with the base of a grimy statue—its original form scoured away into obscurity by the wind and rain—stairs leading underground appeared.
[This is…]
[Come on in, if we go through this road then we can use it as a shortcut to go to the kingdom.]
We follow the stairs and go down the basement while being urged.
It felt as if I was being swallowed within the darkness when the door was closed, but the stairs looked blue when the sunlight disappeared.
We followed after Dy who was going down while floating casually and we soon came out into a wide passage.
The flow of the passage was as if it was illuminated with a black light, the passage itself looked like a transparent underwater aquarium tunnel.
To my surprise, the other side of the tunnel is covered with water.
[Ah, there’re fishes!]
Is it because there’s no light, fishes that look like deep-sea fish which has degenerated eyes are swimming underwater.
[Hm, I don’t remember there having seen any strange fishes such as these. What a truly strange place this is, is here undersea?]
A soft sound echoed when Ragna lightly hit the passage’s wall.
It’s made of a material I’ve never seen before. It a substance that somewhat resembles plastic.
[It’s not undersea, this is a gigantic river. The vicinity of the groundwater source on the border is bountiful, and although it was said on one theory that there’s a waterway along the border, it looks like it’s true.]
Ciel also puts his hand on the wall, he’s looking at the underwater and the tunnel itself.
[Could having living beings here be because there’s also magic power flowing together in it? The material of this wall also, I wonder just what on earth it’s made of. If it wasn’t at this time, I would have liked to study it.]
Ciel lets out a sigh of amazement. During the series of events, Alf has always been suspiciously staring at Dy.
[Demon King, is this passage a demons’ relic?]
[Well it’s something like that.]
[Do all demons know?]
[After all this time, I’m probably the only one who knows.]
Alf throws a sharp look towards Dy who turned towards the river bottom with lowered eyes.
[Then that means that there are no possibilities for others to use this passage for evil aside from you, right?]
[Oh my, to be decided that I will use it for evil, could it be that you’re expecting me to do it? Should I answer your expectation?]
Dy sharply perceives the nuance on Alf’s words and his gaze, a disquieting presence enshrouds and I hurriedly step in and mediate.
[Hey, don’t talk about dangerous things! Alf, too, stop with that belligerent tone.]
[… My apologies, it seems I’ve gotten too worked up. Although the Demon King is suspicious, time is valuable.]
The demon brought up again the conversation extremely light-heartedly to the swordsman who was walking at a fast pace.
[I wonder what is good to do~, as I thought, something like illegal importing/smuggling? Or should I maybe destroy the walls confining the feeble humans here, does such a course of action follow your expectations?]
[DY! What the hell are you saying, saying such irresponsible things even though you’re not will to do so, you’ve been strange since a while ago.]
Upon my query, the demon smiled. The smile that looks too perfect without any gap makes me understand at a glance that it was made up.
[That’s because we won’t even have a chance to relax if a war breaks out, right? We must quickly go and stop it.]
It was unlikely that I could further question Dy who slowly went away after sending me a sidelong glance while hiding his real intentions.