Chapter 464 Questionable Alliance



The rays of an early-morning sun touched upon a nearly-born clearing wherein lay the biggest tree in the forest, its brittle, outstretched branches crumbling into the passing breeze, blowing into bushes where the forest critters had fearfully scurried into. They watched from the foliage, wondering if it was safe to return to their former home, when a white light suddenly bloomed, a magic circle with countless intricate designs rotating on top of one another with clock-work precision. They watched in wonder for a few moments before turning tail and running.

The magic circle faded to reveal three beaten figures. Merlin sat, clamping gauze around the thumb-sized hole in his left leg. Wilhelm had kindly left it behind before rushing after Ver Dilen.

Sindre lay unconscious a few feet to Merlin's right.

Last but not least, Dag stood to Sindre's right with a hand fixed to the hilt of his dagger. A thin layer of copper life essence gathered around his head, shifting his broken scalp back into place as blood rolled down past his narrow-eyed gaze. He scanned the quiet, lonely clearing without turning his neck before his gaze landed on Merlin. "Where have you taken us?" he asked.

Merlin huffed, struggling to stay conscious after using an exorbitant amount of mana to find and subsequently teleport the three out of the ruin: "Just out of the ruin before it crumbled apart."

Merlin's long, pointed ears twitched to the faint sound of Dag's blade sliding back into its sheath. The two exchanged a narrow-eyed glance before Dag pointed at their feet. "This is the same tree on top of the ruin?" he asked with a raised brow.

Merlin confusedly looked down at the corroded trunk, his expression mirroring Dag's as he noticed a white, cubic structure buried within the tree's roots.

Dotted with natural-looking cavern entrances like a block of swiss cheese, nothing about the monolith seemed natural from the outside. It was almost as if someone had constructed the ruin to look like its present state, then buried it within the tree.

'How is this even possible? I didn't sense it at all. Why would anyone do this?' Merlin thought.

"So that's where it was," Dag muttered under his breath.

"Sindre was right," Merlin accidentally narrated his thoughts, and he cursed at himself for indulging in his bad habit.

Dag raised a brow at Merlin. "You recognize this structure?" he asked curiously.

Merlin shook his head. "No, but Sindre theorized that the ruin was extremely important, and it probably is by the looks of it. She had faith the War Monk wouldn't abandon Wilhelm just because he failed to beat the Demon King, but we didn't believe her. You only met Wilhelm after the Fracture, but he hasn't been himself ever since. The War Monks kept treating him like dirt whenever they talked to him. It's like everything he ever fought for was a lie. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

Dag visibly flinched as he glanced away like peering off into a distant memory. "I wish I didn't," he said.

"Oh," Merlin said. He only knew a handful of humans, but Dag, through a few short, awkward interactions, proved himself to be a curious outlier, the way he always stood near exits, or randomly stared out into nothingness while gripping his dagger, or the way he encouraged Wilhelm to go against War Monk teachings in private, calling them a method of control.

As much as Merlin wished to teleport away however, he hesitated, wondering if his view of other people was why Wilhelm was his only friend. He sat re-evaluating the purpose behind venturing out of his cave to see the world.

Dag sighed. "If the War Monks had a second purpose sending us all the way out here, I don't see it. Besides, who would have known that the ruin wasn't a naturally-formed cave if the tree hadn't died all of a sudden?"

Merlin nodded. "You're right. That does poke a hole in her theory. Poor Wilhelm."

Dag gestured to the decayed tree. "This doesn't look like the handiwork of a War Monk either."

Merlin fell deep into thought for a few moments. "It almost looks like something Wilhelm would do with his hero ability," he said.

Dag rolled his eyes. "What the hell? Isn't that a bit too strong?"

Merlin shook his head. "This is on a much larger scale than I've ever seen before. I don't think it was him, but that would mean someone else has-" He winced as a sudden wave of pain and nausea washed through him. His hand instinctively grabbed at the source: his left leg. Blood slowly seeped through the gauze.

"Can't you heal yourself?" Dag asked. "You better hurry before you pass out from blood loss."

Merlin hesitated, but with the amount of blood that he was losing, he couldn't afford not to trust Dag, as much as he didn't want to. "I can't," he huffed. "I am not blessed by the goddess."

A flicker shot through Dag's eyes so fast that Merlin thought he'd imagined it. Dag suddenly knelt down, making Merlin unconsciously flinch back. "You're really an atheist? In this day and age? You don't even have to pray to her." he said.

Merlin swallowed his saliva. "I-I just find it hard to believe in something unseen and unproven." He braced himself for the usual yelling that ensued, but contrast to his expectations Dag broke out into a broad smile.

"Who can blame you when the War Monks toss out a lecture about faith in response to valid questions? It's hard for me to have faith when it's demanded of me," Dag said.

Merlin waited a second before nodding. "It's annoying," he said. "I keep asking and it's almost like they don't want to give answers to us sometimes. Like who made the prophecy and why is Doevm bad when he sealed the Demon King? Whenever I push my questions I get yelled at. By the way, do you have something for the bleeding? Wilhelm seems to be taking a while."

Dad nodded and pulled out an array of different vials: "If we ask, we'll get yelled at. If we find the answers ourselves without them knowing however, there wouldn't be a problem, right?"

"Isn't that wrong?" Merlin asked.

Dag held a vial to the light and flicked it, carefully watched the viscous, green liquid slosh back and forth. "Why would it be wrong? We're helping them aren't we? And what if they're trying to manipulate Wilhelm by holding information back from him?"

Merlin creased his brows. "That sounds awfully specific."

Dag shrugged. "I'm just saying it's plausible," he said, holding the vial just out of Merlin's reach.

Merlin stared at himself in the vial's reflection. "Is that going to help my wound?" he asked.

Dag nodded, but he didn't hand it over yet. "What do you say? Want to partner with me and find the answers ourselves?"

Merlin's gut warned him that there was something more to Dag's words, a part of human behavior that his naïve brain couldn't quite understand yet, but he didn't have any reason to disagree. "Sure," he said, then glanced at Sindre, who still lay unconscious. He let out a sigh of relief. "I think Sindre and Wilhelm would yell at us if they knew what we were thinking."

Dag smiled, and it seemed to be the first genuine smile Merlin had ever seen on him. "Your secret is safe with me. Wait a moment," he said. He carefully dripped a single drop of the viscous liquid into a waterskin, sloshed the contents around, ripped off Merlin's gauze, then dumped the contents of the waterskin on the open wound.

Merlin let out a high-pitched screech as a sharp pain shot through his leg, but a sudden numbness quickly drowned it out. The blood gushing out of the hole in his leg slowed to a stop. "What was the point of the water?" he asked.

"Diluting the poison," Dag said.

"Poison!?" Merlin instinctively tried to get up, but Dag pushed him right back down.

"It was poison, however many poisons act as medicines in smaller quantities just as many medicines act as poisons in greater quantities. It's all a matter of how you use them," Dag explained. He glanced off to the side and muttered. "Much like how the monastery only thinks questions are poison."

"I still feel woozy," Merlin said, clutching his numbed leg. "Are you sure you diluted the poison enough?"

Dag slapped Merlin's hands away. "Don't touch it. The thing about blood loss is it's not something your body directly tells you is happening. Left untreated, you just get nauseous, then you pass out, never to wake up."

A sharp clang echoed from the distant ruin, reminding them of Wilhelm's fight against Ver Dilen. "I don't think Wilhelm can win," Merlin said. "His head isn't in it."

"Yeah, well it doesn't matter if he wins or loses. I just hope we can find the truth of this all before they bleed him dry," Dag said. "It's all up to him now."