The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 183 – Snake Under the Feet (1)

“This is the document with the information on the hidden underground structure of Torra.”

Juan brought Heretia into the conference room and told her about the document. Heretia had no choice but to rely on one of the Helwin family’s guards because she had not yet gotten used to living without her legs. The guard was the young knight Juan had seen back in Hiveden who worked as her horseman.

Heretia glanced through the documents that she received from Juan and began to organize them one after another on the desk. Soon, the large table was crammed with papers. Heretia glared at the documents with a frown and then opened her mouth.

“This is all?” Heretia asked.

“There were many parts that were either lost or are too difficult to find,” Juan answered.

“More like hidden or damaged. I can see signs showing that someone has been secretly messing with these fragments for a long time. They tried to make all these look like separate tasks, but most of them lead to just one project. It's quite a large-scale one too.”

.

“How large?”

“About… It should have started shortly before or after the assassination of the emperor? So I’d believe the scale is about a quarter the size of Torra. It’s impossible to do this kind of work without being caught. Was the Pope planning to make a dungeon?”

‘A dungeon, huh?’

Juan recalled the huge dungeon that was built back in Durgal. There was a story saying that it was created by the Order of Lindwurm, but the Order of Lindwurm had only added some of their traces to the existing dungeon.

“Are you sure it was done by the Pope?” Juan asked.

“I don’t know if I can be one hundred percent certain, but I can tell that it was paid for out of the Church’s wealth, despite their effort to hide it. Names of the relatives of the nobles from religious faction were borrowed, the merchants under the Church got the constructors to build it, and the organizations sponsored by the Church were charged for the cost. All the pieces fit, don’t you think? Oh, maybe you don’t remember all of them.”

Juan shook his head with a fed-up look on his face.

“It’d be weird if I remembered all that information.”

“Anway, I’m sure that it was built by the Church. I never thought of the Church to be all that extravagant except for the drugs smoked by the Pope, but I always wondered where all their money was going. I guess this was their secret, huh?” Heretia flipped over the pages of the documents one by one with an amused expression. “It seems like they worked on this large-scale project for a while anyway. Did you say you were looking for someone?”

“It seems like the Saintess and the Captain of the Imperial Guards are hiding in there. And my body is assumed to be there as well.”

“A man who searches for his own corpse. It sounds like some kind of a story that I would only see in a novel or in philosophy. It feels weird to see it in real life.”

“Reality is sometimes more strange than fiction. Anyway, it would be hard to find them if the underground dungeon is so big.”

“Well, no… actually, I think there’s a way to find them both. It's strange that I thought of this method first, and not you.”

“What is it?”

Heretia hesitated to answer as she looked up and down at Juan, but soon opened her mouth.

“Didn’t you transfer your spirit to the Saintess’ body before?”

***

Ivy opened her eyes that were closed for a long time.

However, whether she opened or closed her eyes, the pitch darkness in front of her eyes did not change.

Ivy carefully rubbed the pendant around her neck that Lenly had given her. As she rubbed it, the pendant started to emit light, and soon began to shine bright enough to light up the entire surroundings.

However, Lenly was nowhere to be found.

“Lenly?” Ivy whispered in an anxious voice toward the other side of the darkness.

When Ivy stood up, Lenly’s cloak which had been covering her fell off to the ground. Ivy groped the walls to look around for Lenly. While it was Lenly whose eyes were injured, Ivy was the one who felt blinded.

The only thing inside the wall was an old blanket and an extinguished bonfire.

Ivy tried to stay calm despite not being able to find Lenly.

‘He must have gone fishing while I was asleep as always.’

In the huge underground structure beneath Torra was a rough stream of river-like groundwater. Lenly would often catch and bring back fish that appeared to have come from outside the underground structure through the groundwater.

‘I think it might be safe for us to go back above the ground now.’

Ivy missed the sun. The underground structure of Torra was not colder than the outside in winter due to the unknown geothermal heat coming from the ground, but the cramped walls and pitch-black darkness were hard for Ivy to endure for a long time.

However, she suppressed her emotions as she recalled the face of the Pope, who was wielding Telgramm and charging at her and Lenly. But what bothered Ivy the most about this situation was the fact that she couldn’t be any help to Lenly at all. Lenly, who was severely injured by Telgramm, was taking care of Ivy even though he was barely able to see anymore.

‘I wish there was something I could do to help him.’

It would be nice to be able to perform some type of Grace befitting her status as the Saintess, but Ivy didn’t even have a simple healing Grace which was a common type of Grace that most of the past Saintesses could use. All she was able to do was occasionally throw out some predictions that she couldn’t even remember afterward, but even those hadn’t been heard for a while.

‘Come to think of it, His Majesty should have arrived in Torra by now…’

The structure of this underground dungeon was quite complex and vast, with many unidentified things secretly wandering around. Only Lenly was able to grasp the external situation because the room Ivy was currently hiding in was isolated, and thus safe.

‘I should ask Lenly about it when he comes back. Of course, it is possible for the war to last a long time. But…’

At that moment, Ivy could feel something poking her in the back. In an instant, the scenery in front of her blurred and soon became covered in white light.

A little later, Lenly came into the room with two fish on a skewer. He had an eye patch to protect his eye. He couldn’t see in front of him at all, but that wasn’t a big problem for him, someone whose senses were already trained to the extreme.

Rather, he was far better at dealing with this darkness than ordinary people.

“Saintess, I brought you something to eat. I know that you’re tired of it, but this is…”

Lenly suddenly stopped talking. His keenly trained senses were on edge as he headed forward. He could tell that the person in front of him had taken the form of the Saintess, but was certainly not the Saintess.

Lenly quietly dropped the fish to the ground and raised the skewer.

“Who is it?” Lenly asked.

“Huh? Wait. You’re the Captain of the Imperial Guards?”

It was the voice of the Saintess, but the opponent was a completely different person.

Lenly immediately dropped the skewer to the ground and knelt down upon realizing who the person was right away.

“It’s the second time I am seeing you since the last time I saw you at the Imperial Palace. You seem to have carried out your duty quite well.”

“Your Majesty.”

The emperor who borrowed the body of the Saintess stood before Lenly.

***

Juan could tell that the Saintess was in surprisingly good health for someone who had been living in the cold and humid underground for nearly a week. Of course, the Saintess was able to be in good health only because Lenly helped her.

Even now, Lenly was feeding Juan some grilled fish saying that it needs to be eaten while it was still fresh. Juan was slightly surprised at the taste of the grilled fish—not only was it well cooked to the point where it was full of savory juices, but it was seasoned wonderfully.

Juan had no choice but to naturally compare him to Haild.

‘The difference in the quality of food they can cook when they are both put in a similarly dire condition is just…’

“Please forgive me, Your Majesty. It’s worth eating only when it’s fresh, since we are in a situation where it’s hard to get any other nutrients.”

“There’s no need to apologize. It’s actually pretty well-cooked. Do you always carry some salt with you?” Juan asked.

“I usually only eat bread and salt for meals. Honorable poverty is the virtue of a knight,” Lenly answered in a quiet voice.

“...Oh, I see.”

Juan recalled Winoa Weaver and the knights who served under him. They were not greedy, but they were far from being poor. Winoa Weaver in particular was quite fond of meat. The virtue of a knight that was just mentioned by Lenly seemed to be a custom created by being treated as sinners after the assassination of the emperor.

Then, Lenly added as if he was just making an excuse.

“There are many other uses of salt as well. There may be situations where you need to perform an exorcism, and it’s good to rub things with salt when cleaning.”

“Okay, enough about salt. Seeing that I am already feeling full, the Saintess must eat only a little bit. Where are we anyway?”

Juan looked around at his surroundings. At first glance, the underground structure felt quite similar to the one in Durgal, but it was definitely not as old as the dungeon in Durgal. It was also made in a completely different style. Juan was able to find various motifs of the sun, the symbol of the emperor, among the patterns carved on the walls here and there.

“We are in the underground structure created by the Church. In my understanding, this is like a shelter or a secret passage,” Lenly answered.

“You don’t know too much about it either? How do you even know of this place?”

“There was no way that I wouldn’t know of it when it extends all the way below the Imperial Palace. In fact, a few other Imperial Guards and I were the ones who dug the ground to check the situation after receiving reports saying that there were vibrations that were bothering people. Then, I was able to confirm the entrance inside the Vatican.”

“Hm, so he used it as a shelter instead, huh? I guess it could be rather safe, since the Vatican has collapsed. It’s safe out there now because the empire is under my reign. You can come up now, you know,”

Hearing that, Lenly hesitated when answering Juan for the first time. He looked carefully at Juan—no. To be precise, he was looking at Ivy.

“Please forgive me, Your Majesty. But it’s hard to go above the ground now. To tell you the truth, I am looking for the whereabouts of the holy body, that is Your Majesty’s original body.”

“My body?” Juan asked back in a surprised voice.

Lenly nodded his head.

“Yes. As a member of the Imperial Guards, I value the mission of protecting the holy body more than anything else in the world. But at the same time, the order given by His Majesty to protect the Saintess is just as important. The former has already ended in failure, but I am trying my best to regain the holy body while also ensuring to fulfill the latter.”

“So you know where my body is right now?”

“I’m still tracking it, but I’m sure that it’s outside of Torra. So I was looking for the way they used to be able to leave Torra. If we can figure out General Dismas Dilver and the Pope’s intentions, we might be able to use them.”

Juan nodded upon hearing Lenly’s words. He too had been thinking that the underground structure of Torra was related to the disappearance of his body, since the existence of an underground structure below the Imperial Palace would be suspicious in anyone’s eyes.

“All the Imperial Guards other than myself are also participating in the search for the holy body. However, we are all out of touch with each other at the moment… I think that it might be because they have already died. This underground structure is much more dangerous than it looks. I’ve been keeping quiet because I didn’t want to make Your Majesty worry for no reason, especially when my eyes are in such a poor condition.”

“Hmm, I see,” Juan nodded and thought over Lenly’s words.

“But the Saintess doesn’t need to be here with me. If Your Majesty does not mind, I would like to ask you to send someone down here to take her somewhere safe.”

Juan nodded and answered Lenly.

“Alright, then. I’ll send someone here if you tell me the location.”

***

“Of course, the answer is no,” Heretia gave a sharp reaction as if she was annoyed.

After the spirit transfer, Juan gathered enough people to search the underground structure of Torra.

The people chosen by Juan were Sina and Haild. Nienna and Hela were excluded because they were in charge of other important duties, and the others were excluded because they had their own problems.

The problem was that Juan was also included in the important duty.

Heretia opened her mouth again.

“It has only been a few days since the emperor returned to Torra and occupied it, but he is going to leave his seat already? Especially to go to a mysterious underground dungeon? Are you planning to announce to the people, who only recently found out that the walls protecting them are alive and moving, that even the ground under their feet is full of suspicious things?”