WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈

Chapter 61: Each One's Shadow (2)

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I grasped the book's cover. Just as I unconsciously tried to open it, an intuition struck me.

The moment I open this, they might claim I accepted the advance payment.

I'd experienced something similar back on Earth during a secondhand sale. After receiving an item, I found scratches that hadn't been in the photos and tried to return it, only to be told, "The damage occurred while you were opening it, so returns aren't accepted."

It had been a hassle to resolve. I couldn't make the same mistake twice.

Besides, this wasn't the modern world, where at least some degree of order existed. Making a mistake rarely got you killed there, but in the martial world, mistakes usually put your life on the line.

"What is the price for viewing this booklet?"

"You are cautious, young hero. You feel quite different from Captain Jaksu."

Jaksu frowned as if asking, "What?" In contrast, the corners of the Green Rain Secret Keeper's lips remained raised.

"But rest assured, young hero. It must have taken considerable effort to complete that rulebook, but it contains nothing of value as merchandise."

"Nothing of value? What do you mean by that...?"

The Green Rain Secret Keeper ran her hand over the title's calligraphy, over the word "underground" in Martial Alliance Underground Survival Rules.

"The underground referred to here isn't an ordinary place. When people hear of the Martial Alliance's underground, most picture stone chambers built to store weapons and the like. Plenty dream of stealing a divine weapon, selling it, and changing their fate overnight."

Hmm.

I had never dreamed of that. The Martial Alliance underground I knew was a lived-in place, thick with the smell of ink used to write rulebooks, the scent of blood used to make that ink, and the occasional smell of food.

"But the underground described in this rulebook is closer to a labyrinth that devours people."

I pretended to know nothing as I spoke.

"Is it some kind of bizarre formation array?"

"As an analogy, yes. But, well... formation arrays have rules and order of their own. That underground is simply a strange place."

The Green Rain Secret Keeper slowly described the underground.

It was neither a secret archive storing the Martial Alliance's meeting records nor a treasury containing rare weapons. No grand secret waited there, nor any peerless divine art capable of shaking the martial world.

Only dreadful terror and eternal disappearance.

"Our Hao Clan often sends night visitors into the Martial Alliance."

Anyone familiar with the martial world would have guessed as much.

There were secrets in this world that never became rumors. The Hao Clan often collected even secrets too concealed to spread as rumors.

That required spies who infiltrated the Alliance itself and stole information.

"Our night visitors have been welcomed even in great cities such as Luoyang and Chang'an. They were all gentlemen, after all."

She was putting it politely, but she meant they acted as gentlemen of the rafters, thieves.

"But the Martial Alliance's main headquarters in Wuhan, Hubei, is different. Countless gentlemen visited it and vanished without a trace."

At first, they had assumed the Martial Alliance's main headquarters simply had exceptionally tight security, so their people had been caught. What made them uneasy was the matter of executions.

When prisoners confined in the Martial Alliance's prison were killed, traces remained. Skilled specialists had to be sent to carry out harsh torture, and written judgments explaining why a prisoner was being punished would be recorded.

Some of the gentlemen sent by the Hao Clan had been captured through such procedures, and their paths to death could be traced. They had even recovered a few by bribing guards or making deals with the Alliance.

Yet far more gentlemen had vanished without leaving even such traces.

Believing that the Martial Alliance was concealing them, the Hao Clan had tried negotiating openly. All they received from the Alliance was the answer that it had no idea what had happened.

Then, one day.

Half-mad, the greatest among the Hao Clan's gentlemen burst in.

Claiming that hell lay beneath the Martial Alliance.

"The rules written here are all about survival and escape."

They were records of the terrible place where the Martial Alliance's night visitors were dragged.

"That is why this rulebook cannot become merchandise."

It contained no methods for infiltration or weaknesses in the Martial Alliance's security. Its contents only held value for those who might drift into the underground.

Even so, the rulebook itself looked like quite a valuable item to me. For example, if someone were to...

"It seems you are thinking that sending someone underground and placing a false rulebook in their hands would make for an exceedingly reliable assassination method."

I flinched, then nodded. Honestly, wasn't it the perfect assassination method?

"It fails as an assassination method. We haven't even determined exactly what causes people to go to that 'underground.'"

That was why, within the Hao Clan, the booklet was treated as something like a handover document passed between gentlemen.

'It's a kind of work manual.'

It certainly wasn't suited to being sold outside.

That couldn't have been the only reason. Wouldn't a field worker's log normally be treated as confidential?

Even if it couldn't be sold outside, no manager would casually reveal confidential material. Seeing the look the Green Rain Secret Keeper gave Jaksu, I understood why.

There was something like affection in her eyes.

'Are they siblings...?'

If her younger brother was doing dangerous work in the Martial Alliance, and he had a companion who could share that danger, giving this much away would be worth it.

I turned the first page of Martial Alliance Underground Survival Rules.

* * *

『First, the purpose of these rules is not to strike it rich overnight. If you are recalling the contents of this rulebook, it means your night operation has gone completely wrong.

You must return alive somehow. Even if you end up half-crippled, isn't surviving better?』

The first thing I noticed upon reading the rulebook was the difference in tone.

The Anomaly Records Office's rulebooks used somewhat restrained language because they were written for an unspecified audience. The Hao Clan's Calamity-Averting and Disaster-Escaping Office rulebook had an extremely clear target readership.

Junior colleagues in the same line of work. It made sense that it used such informal language.

『What you need to find are people. Not all of them will appear human, but among the beings in that underground, only three are people.

The first is the Multicolored Venerable.

That is not their real epithet. We have never properly learned the epithets of any of those strange old monsters dwelling underground.

They were given the name Multicolored Venerable because their color changes depending on where you are.

The Martial Alliance's underground has different visible colors in each area. I will explain that separately later.

If you see a human-shaped figure, colored similarly to the place you are in, moving about, immediately stab any part of your body with a blade and draw blood.

Then repeatedly shout, "The patient is here!" If it approaches you, you have succeeded. You may close your eyes without concern.

However, this can only be used in the Color Layer. In the Colorless Layer, where your field of vision is filled with darkness, never ask for help just because you sense something moving...』

Oh.

I rubbed my chin with a quiet click of my tongue. I immediately realized who the strange person called the Multicolored Venerable in this rulebook was.

'No matter how I look at it, that's the Eccentric Physician.'

Though the epithet was shortened to special physician, his full epithet was White-Robed Miracle Physician. A physician dressed in white.

Since he wore white robes, he could easily seem to change color under different lighting in the dark. The instruction to bleed, call oneself a patient, and ask for help naturally brought a physician to mind.

The next page discussed an entity called the Blood-Scaled Fishman. It said that although this being carried the scent of blood, they too were a person who could provide a way out.

There were several taboos, though. It advised that if you committed one of them, you should give up on escaping through the fishman.

Those taboos differed from room to room, so the explanation continued, saying that detailed methods of escape would be described alongside the Color Layer rules.

'That's Jade Scale.'

I wondered who would be on the next page. Surely it wouldn't be me. Was it Peng Juhyeok?

Unexpectedly, though, instead of the third person's epithet, it contained rules about the underground levels.

There was an area where you had to close your eyes and crawl, an area where hunger suddenly struck but you must not eat anything, with the added note that if you absolutely had to eat, the only safe food was your own flesh, and even rules that evoked the afterlife, warning you never to turn around no matter what sound you heard.

Each area's taboos were listed with the area's color. Things like the red area.

On the final page I eventually reached, that name appeared.

『Colorless Layer.

Ordinarily, this is a place you should have no reason to reach, even if you have drifted into the underground. It is confirmed to be the deepest place beneath the Martial Alliance, and there are only two reasons you would arrive here.

Either the Anomalies occupying the Color Layer have bewitched you into walking into hell, or your luck is so catastrophically bad that you were thrown into the Formless Realm from the start.

There is only one thing you can do.

Chant any Buddhist scripture. Close your eyes, cover your ears, ignore whatever presence you sense around you, and chant Buddhist scripture.

If you know no scriptures, then babble "Namu Amitabha Buddha" for all you're worth.

Only that can save you.

Only that sound can call forth Samadhi.』

The deepest floor beneath the Martial Alliance.

The only path to survival waiting there.

I remembered Jade Scale's warning not to carelessly enter the underground depths. They were so dangerous that, among the Records Officers, only the Director of the Records Office could stay there.

Samadhi...

Was it the Director of the Records Office?

Author's Note

The joke behind White-Robed Miracle Physician becoming the Multicolored Venerable comes from The Lord of the Rings, where Saruman the White becomes Saruman of Many Colors.

Footnotes:

Colorless Layer and Formless Realm are distinct source terms; the latter is a Buddhist cosmological realm.

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