Chapter 160 - The Great Snail Empire (3)

One by one, Viper, the Black Dragon leader, and the others frowned as they stared into empty space. They must have received missions too.

It wasn't hard to guess what those missions were.

'They'll be told to get the races under their care out of here.'

Around then, the Inquisitor smiled.

"Oh?"

He had probably received a [Quest] as well. Its contents weren't hard to guess either.

"A mission has appeared. Aha! My quest is to prevent your escape and firmly defend the empire!"

The exact opposite of ours.

Hold the empire at all costs.

"I imagine you've been assigned missions to rescue your races from the Slime Empire. Hmm, how interesting. Our quest objectives conflict with one another."

"..."

A strange silence settled between us.

WOOOO... WOO!

The cheers from the underground city's colosseum ate away at our silence.

The Inquisitor stroked his chin.

"I understand. Everyone, surrender to me."

"... What?"

The Black Dragon leader knitted her brows as if to ask what on earth he meant. But his expression didn't change. Smiling, he spoke as though laying out an eminently logical argument.

"I know you're all in a state of great emotional turmoil! Even if it was only a fortnight or so, you grew fond of your respective races. It's only natural that you can't accept seeing them reduced to slaves. But this is the fastest way!"

Fast.

"Had I not intervened, the peoples of this world would have wandered for thousands of years! But thanks to my timely intervention, they entered antiquity in just two hundred years. Fast, isn't it!"

"Inquisitor. Even if you're right, using religion and slaves like this..."

"I'm not saying my methods are perfect, Black Dragon leader! Imagine the lives that might have been sacrificed over thousands of years of history. Even if my civilization works hundreds of thousands of slaves to the bone, it will be for 'only' a few hundred years!"

"..."

"I will accelerate history even further," the Inquisitor said.

Torches burned here and there throughout the underground world. Behind him, the enormous puppy statue cast its shadow.

"From antiquity to the Middle Ages. From the Middle Ages to the early modern age. From the early modern age to the modern age. And finally, from the modern age to the present! I will bring all the mistakes, misunderstandings, and massacres humanity must go through to an end as quickly as possible!"

Conviction filled his voice. His warm, open gaze conveyed a message.

'I can do it.'

"Everyone. Please surrender to me! I will remain in this world and guide them. Four hundred years. No, within three hundred and sixty years, I will bring them up to the level our civilization has reached!"

"You're going to endure another three hundred and sixty years here...?"

"Yes!"

Beneath a pillar inscribed with the history of a civilization, the Inquisitor beamed.

"Trust me, and all of you leave!"

4

We discussed it but reached no conclusion. Some of our companions wanted to leave the stage to the Inquisitor, while others vehemently opposed the idea.

In the end, more than two hours passed without a consensus.

"Let's first go and see how our races are living. Everyone's starting to get worked up," I said.

"At this rate, we'll only end up in an emotional argument. ... Let's see how the children live with our own eyes. Then we'll naturally know what we want to do. Let's meet here again tomorrow. Okay?"

The others nodded. Groaning or holding back sighs, we scattered to find the districts where our respective races lived.

Naturally, I went to the goblins.

Most of them lived in the salt mines.

"Today's day shift is over! Raim! Everyone back to your quarters!"

"No mold is allowed outside except the pit chiefs!"

"Single file! In orderly fashion!"

The Mountain Snailfolk lashed their tentacles. The goblins flinched, their shoulders trembling, and entered pits dug right beside the salt mine.

Those 'pits' were the quarters allotted to the Earth Spiritfolk.

"..."

I was at a loss for words. My voice failed me, and something like a groan escaped between my lips.

"This is impossible... Pits? These children love mud so much. How can they live here, with nothing but the smell of salt? They should at least be somewhere damp."

"Yeah," the attendant spirit muttered.

"Look. They're looking for water themselves."

One or two goblins crawled out of each of the hundreds of pits. They wore red cords around their necks and held water jars against their waists.

Pit chiefs.

The leaders elected in each pit were going to fetch water themselves.

"Kerrr."

Most of the pit chiefs were mothers.

I immediately understood why the mothers had been elected.

"Why are two of you coming out of your quarters?"

"Kerk, my child won't stop crying if I leave. Please let it slide, kerr..."

"Tsk!"

The Mountain Snailfolk overseers had ordered, ["No goblins except the pit chiefs may wander outside."]. But they didn't go so far as to stop mothers from taking their children with them. If a mother was elected pit chief, two could go out, counting the child, and they could bring back two jars of water.

"Gorrk!"

"Water! Ke, water!"

Young goblins jumped into the cave spring.

SPLASH! SPLASH!

While the children swam, their mothers fetched water.

The jars were unglazed, bisque-fired pottery that would break easily if dropped. Even these were precious possessions to goblins living as mine slaves, so the mothers took care not to break them.

"..."

I grew increasingly quiet.

Fetching spring water was the only free time the Earth Spiritfolk were allowed. During that precious respite, the goblin mothers worked water into sand, trying somehow to imitate the feel of mud. With that gritty imitation mud, they slowly painted tattoos on their children's skin.

"Gorrr!"

"Gork, gork!"

The children, oblivious, were delighted.

One child wriggled a hand like a webfoot octopus's tentacle and smeared earth on its mother's body. It was closer to scribbling than a tattoo.

The mother didn't wipe away her child's scribbles.

"Time for the night shift! Raim!"

The day's labor continued.

"Stop dawdling, you mold!"

A snail administrator hurried them along. The Mountain Snailfolk called goblins [Mold]. It was a slur. In their language, mold was [Org], and they had given goblins that nickname because they were always crying gork, gork.

"Get out of your quarters!"

"Stop dragging your feet! You lazy orgs."

The cruelty of lumping an entire race under a name simply because 'it sounds funny' left me speechless.

The goblins weren't the only ones called slurs.

The Demonfolk were [Rat-Horns]. The Bloodsucking Race were [Bloodsuckers]. As for the Gillfin Folk, they were simply [Fish]. Under Mountain Snailfolk rule, the distinctive traits of each race had been reduced to objects of ridicule.

"Begin work!"

"Start the night shift!"

CLANG!

The goblins lifted stone hammers and struck the rock salt. The salt extracted from the mine was extremely hard and came in large chunks. The goblins' night work was to break it into pieces small enough to eat.

"Kerrr..."

"Kerrk. Kerrr."

The rock salt gave off a stench as it broke—the smell of rotten egg yolks.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

With the smell of salt clinging to the tips of their long noses, the goblins broke the rock salt for one hour, two hours, three hours.

"Kerrrr..."

From a distance, the goblins looked as though they were swinging laundry beaters. Up close, however, their nails were worn down to nothing.

As the salt broke, so did their nails.

Blood flowed over their wrinkled fingers, and the salt bit into their bleeding wounds. The goblins groaned from time to time, but continued working as though accustomed to it.

"Raim."

The snail administrator looked up.

In the very center of the underground world, a single opening pierced the cave ceiling. Sunlight poured through the little hole by day, and moonlight settled through it by night. Now, stars were visible in the night sky.

"Work is over!"

"Today's night shift is over, Raim!"

"All mine slaves back to your quarters! Put every hammer back in its place. Any mold who takes a hammer back gets fifty lashes! Raime! Don't forget! Any mold who takes a hammer back gets fifty lashes!"

Heads lowered, the goblins returned to their pits.

"Kerrr... gor."

Waiting for the Earth Spiritfolk in their pits were two jars of water and a few carp-like fish tossed to them by the administrators making their rounds.

Those fish, too, had been caught by Gillfin Folk fishing slaves.

Slaves living in the water caught fish to feed slaves living on land.

"..."

Smoke from roasting fish rose from each pit. One, two, three, four, then hundreds...

Young goblins kept reaching for fish that weren't cooked yet. Exhausted from mining rock salt all day, a mother weakly slapped the back of her child's hand as though shooing away a fly.

Still, the children watched for every chance to snatch food. In the end, the first fish to finish cooking went to them. They tore into it ravenously.

"Whatever shit they eat, they always burn it first. Raim."

The snails on night watch snickered.

"It's because their digestive organs are less developed than ours."

"Real savages. How can they burn their food?"

"Anyway, the candidates for the next colosseum match..."

Night settled in.

The goblins fell asleep. On the watchtowers, overseers played jacks or nodded off. Apart from drunken revelers making a racket in the distance, the underground world sank into quiet stillness.

"Hmm."

By this point, I had already made up my mind.

"I think I'm going to have to apologize to Raviel," I said.

The attendant spirit folded his arms as though he'd known this was coming.

"Going to regress?"

"Yes. If I go back and talk to the Inquisitor, I can make a different future."

"What if he won't listen?"

"Then I'll have to talk to him some more. We have about two hundred years, after all."

The attendant spirit twitched his nose.

"I'm against it."

"Why? Did you secretly agree with what the Inquisitor said?"

"No, it's not that... Tch. How do I explain this so this bastard gets it?"

He scratched his head.

"Hey. Suppose I'm your kid."

"Whaaat?"

"Suppose, I said! Stop looking at me like I'm crazy. Anyway, I'm your kid, and I go to school and come home after getting the shit beaten out of me. Are you going to regress a day and erase the fact that I got beaten up?"

"... What are you talking about?"

"Think about it from my perspective."

He looked me straight in the eye.

"Say I get into an accident. Bad luck, and I die. Then of course you'd regress. No, in that case, regress without a second thought. Die once and save me, no matter what. Got it?"

"What are you even talking about...?"

"But if you go back a day just because I got beaten up, and none of it ever happened, don't you think I'd feel pretty fucking awful? I'd definitely think, 'I'm the one who got beaten up, so why the fuck are you regressing? Aren't you even going to give me a chance?'"

"A chance to do what?"

"A chance to beat the shit out of those bastards myself. You already know this, actually. Just a few months ago, the person who raised you gave you a good dressing-down over it."

The story of Wu Zixu.

"But..."

"Have a little faith."

"In whom?"

"Yourself."

The attendant spirit answered immediately, matter-of-factly.

"And the people around you."

I thought it over.

The rats living in the cave squeaked.

After a long while had passed...

"Huh?"

The attendant spirit suddenly spoke.

"Hey, Zombie. Look at that."

"What?"

"Them. The goblins."

I turned in the direction he pointed.

"They're moving around instead of sleeping. What are they up to?"

He was right.

Goblins were secretly crawling out of the pits. Perhaps one or two from each. After checking that the overseers were nodding off in the watchtowers, they headed somewhere on silent feet.

"Huh. They're going into the cave?"

The goblins entered the salt mine.

Inside the mine, passages tangled together like an ant nest. The Mountain Snailfolk overseers, relatively vulnerable to salt, mainly directed the slaves from outside. They didn't venture this deep.

"Kerrr..."

"Kerk, ker."

The goblins walked with their voices lowered to a whisper. The deeper they went, the narrower the passages became and the lower the ceilings dropped. It was like a maze. Yet they found their way with practiced ease, as though they had taken this route many times before.

"Oh?"

The corners of the attendant spirit's mouth lifted in amusement.

"Well, look at these guys."

"..."

"They say it's darkest beneath the lamp. They've built secret passages right under their masters' feet."

Two levels underground. Three. Four.

The goblins descended into unfathomable depths. They had already passed hundreds of forks. Anyone who ventured in without knowing the way would probably struggle to get out for the rest of their life.

Finally, after more than an hour of descending...

"Ker."

A wide-open cavern spread before us.

"Kerrk, ker."

"Kerrrr..."

Small torch flames flickered in the dark cavern. Whenever their faint light shone, the goblins' outlines wavered.

There wasn't just one passage leading here. There were several. Besides the goblins I had followed, other groups had gathered from elsewhere.

"Wow," the attendant spirit said admiringly.

"See? I was right, wasn't I? They're all people too. They don't just sit around waiting for someone to help them!"

Was it responding to his words?

The Tower whispered to me.

[The Earth Spiritfolk begin a secret gathering.]