Chapter 90
'...Of course, a mere foot soldier wouldn't know the queen's name.'
They said it was a massive power that ruled the eastern part of the Abyss.
Judging from the way it had gone back earlier, this No. 3 card soldier was, at best, only slightly past the rookie stage. Unless communication was so widespread in this world that even elementary schoolchildren knew the queen's name and face, it was reasonable to assume that it truly didn't know.
"...All right. Then... do you know how to go hunting in another dimension?"
In truth, this was the most important thing.
The Abyssal Ones' "hunting." It was an invasion from our perspective, but to them, it was an act necessary for their survival and prosperity.
We had to learn how in order to return to Earth. Or, at the very least, escape the Abyss into another dimension. We had no idea what might happen in the Abyss or what kind of monster we might encounter, so we had to find an escape route as quickly as possible.
<Hunting... you say? I'm only a No. 3 soldier, so I don't have any information related to hunting. As far as I know, only soldiers of No. 5 or higher have that information.>
Damn it. Was this place the same? Well, perhaps it was only natural that such valuable information wouldn't be known by every low-ranking soldier. It might be called hunting, but if dubious soldiers went out, they would simply be defeated by the mascots and contractors in other dimensions. It made sense that only those with some rank would know about it.
'...These bastards have a more functional society than I expected.'
There was no way I could have known the social structure of the Abyssal Ones.
Abyssal Ones with completely different appearances and personalities emerged from all sorts of places. How was I supposed to know what kind of society they formed? Card soldiers like these had never appeared on Earth before. In one place, an Abyssal One might look like a medieval knight; in another, one might be covered in machinery; and somewhere else, one might resemble a sea creature that belonged in the deepest part of the ocean.
It was reasonable to assume that these card-shaped creatures looked this way because they were Abyssal Ones belonging to the Garden. The countless Abyssal Ones I had seen were probably members of factions or regions different from the Garden. I didn't know whether they had societies of their own, either.
'...But why is this guy answering so obediently? Is its life precious to it?'
I hadn't intended to let it live anyway, but the way it answered so willingly did make me curious.
Why was it answering so readily? Could it have some ability like that? An ability to counterattack by answering an opponent's questions?
While I was pondering something so strange, it began speaking again without even being asked.
<Someone as strong and beautiful as you could quickly receive a knighthood in the Garden, even if you were an outsider. What do you say? Would you like to follow our great Queen as well?>
...Ah. So that's what this was about.
<Before coming to the Garden, I was a rat that didn't even have the strength to maintain its form, so I scraped by nibbling on crumbs. But thanks to Her Majesty's grace, I obtained this magnificent body.>
............Hold on.
"You mean you weren't originally a card?"
<Most of the card soldiers in the Garden are like that. There are residents of all kinds in the Abyss, so some may have looked like cards from the beginning... but even so, there couldn't have been enough of them to maintain the Garden. Those who are given the rank of soldier instead of knight when they enter the Garden receive Her Majesty's grace and are transformed into the shape of cards.>
"..."
Something was becoming increasingly strange.
If what it said was true, then the Garden hadn't simply been maintained by chance. Someone had deliberately created it in that 'form.' Most likely, it was the will of the being called the queen.
<Isn't it a magnificent form? The fact that we flap in the wind is a slight drawback, but we have arms and legs, and, best of all, our equipment is provided free of charge. We don't have to dangerously scrape up crumbs to eat, and if we live by following the words of our seniors and the knights, we can even be promoted and obtain a subordinate position, something we could never have dreamed of outside. What a merciful place this is!>
...There are places like that on Earth, too. Was that really necessary in the Abyss? From the perspective of someone who had lived as a low-ranking Abyssal One in the Abyss, perhaps this really was a good thing.
<The Garden and Her Majesty the Queen of Hearts are kind to capable knights. You wouldn't even need to change into a card like we do. Those with excessively distinctive appearances do undergo correction, but with looks like yours, you should have no trouble at all.>
"If recruiting knights gives Mr. Card a bonus or something, do you get one? An accelerated promotion, perhaps."
<Gasp!>
......Haa. So that's why it had been so friendly.
To think it had been entertaining these thoughts while we were in a life-or-death situation.
Honestly, I wanted to tell it to stop spouting bullshit and put a hole through its head—no, its card—but handling things emotionally wasn't a good idea.
"Thank you for answering so willingly. I'll think it over and let you know if I have any more questions."
I tied the card up again, returned to Momo and Black Rose, and began a strategy meeting.
[We do not know the Abyss's exact size, but assuming the card soldier's statement is true, it must be enormous. Even conservatively, it is expected to be far larger than a middling-sized country on Earth.]
"If we're lucky, this could be the outskirts of the Garden, but it could just as easily be the center. Any attempt to leave the Garden and find information on escaping the Abyss has to take that into account."
"B-but isn't becoming a knight far too risky?"
"I don't intend to become a knight, either. To become one, I'd probably have to..."
I briefly thought about my conversation with the Dullahan, his appearance, and the card soldiers I had encountered in the Garden.
Even setting aside the Dullahan, the soldiers' cards had their upper central portions cut away. Since cards had no heads, it was equivalent to having the head cut off if they were human.
They seemed driven by an obsession with 'having to cut off the head.' The soldier hadn't said so yet, but if I said I wanted to become a knight, there was a good chance it would only then tell me that my neck had to be cut. Even if that wasn't the case, I had never intended to become an Abyssal One's subordinate in the first place.
"Then...?"
[First, obtain every bit of information about the Garden that we can from that Abyssal One, then deal with it. After that, based on what we learn, we will target an Abyssal One that is likely to know how to return to Earth.]
"That's exactly the plan I was going to suggest."
[That is basic procedure for Momo.]
Whether or not it had personally gone hunting, it was an Abyssal One, which meant it had lived on energy consumed from other dimensions. And even before that, leaving it alive would put our lives at risk.
"Ms. Momo, please help with this interrogation. Alice will think things over as well, but we need to ask about every piece of information we deem necessary. Momo is probably more of an expert on this than Alice is."
[Leave it to Momo. Momo has approximately 382 movie scenes related to interrogation stored in her database.]
...Was that actually going to help? Well... it was probably better than me.
* * *
"Hmm. The Garden really is a dangerous place. It could have been a disaster if we hadn't interrogated it."
[It is a place filled with uncertain dangers.]
"Uh... Can I rest now?"
"Yes. You must be exhausted, so get some rest now, Miss Black Rose. Ms. Momo said she would handle keeping watch over the surroundings."
[Machines do not feel fatigue. In other words, Momo is indefatigable.]
After Momo helped me thoroughly interrogate the card soldier, we had managed to build a fairly extensive database on the Garden.
Toward the end, it seemed to realize that I had no intention of becoming a knight, and its attitude changed. But by then, I had already extracted every piece of useful information. In return for answering so readily, I sent it off peacefully without pain, and prayed that in its next life, it would be born as a normal human in a more decent dimension instead of the Abyss.
The place we were in now was a hideout hastily made outside the card soldiers' patrol routes, based on the information we had gathered. We had decided that leaving the Garden immediately would be difficult.
According to the soldier, the Abyss outside the Garden resembled the sort of world people like me had imagined. Rather than having a society of its own like the Garden, powerful Abyssal Ones commanded weaker ones, while the weaker Abyssal Ones survived by gnawing on dimensional fragments and occasionally throwing themselves into dimensional rifts when they opened.
Apparently, there was a clear distinction in the Abyss between Abyssal Ones of a certain level going out with the explicit purpose of 'hunting' and low-ranking Abyssal Ones throwing themselves into rifts simply to survive. It made sense. On Earth, most Abyssal Ones of C-rank or lower were creatures without intelligence, while those of B-rank or higher were intelligent beings. That was probably where the difference came from.
-Grrr...
"...I don't know if this will really work, but..."
And then there was the important problem: food.
Abyssal Ones apparently ate to survive, too. Which meant there had to be food.
Although the names of the ingredients it listed were bizarre and completely unfamiliar to me, when we searched through the Garden as it had suggested, we found several crops.
Among them, I quietly took a few without being noticed...
"...I can't believe I have to chew raw carrots."
Three carrots as thick as my forearm. I could already guess what they tasted like, but for the moment, these were the only way to replenish our nutrients.
If I kept eating nothing but carrots, I would eventually suffer from nutritional imbalance, but we should be able to find other food before then. According to the card soldier, if we searched the bushes carefully, we would find crops that the soldiers secretly cultivated.
However, I couldn't simply eat crops from the Abyss without any precautions.
"Ms. Momo, analyze them."
[They look like ordinary carrots that are merely somewhat large, but internally...]
"Are they carrots?"
[They are carrots.]
I knew she'd say that.
In the end, after Momo's meticulous analysis, we decided to wash the carrots thoroughly with my magic before eating them. Chewing raw carrots felt awful, but we had no choice if we wanted to survive. We weren't in a position to light a fire right now.
And... before I knew it, the area outside our hideout had grown quite dark.
This was one of the pieces of information I had learned from the card soldier, and it also showed that the Garden wasn't a safe place...
-Thud... thud...
'...How big is it?'
During the nights in the Garden, the Queen of Hearts' pets apparently ran freely through it. That was why even the soldiers didn't go outside.
They were beings the queen had 'collected' from the Abyss, each one powerful enough to conquer a territory of its own and rule over it. But in the Garden, they were merely pets captured by the queen.
Of them, the most dangerous was...
<...All the senior soldiers warned us to beware of the headless dragon. Even the knights.>
Although it was far away, I could feel its vibrations all the way here.
I felt no malice whatsoever. To 'that thing,' this was merely a 'walk.'
The fact that its vibrations alone made other creatures scream did not affect it in the slightest. It had no malice, but it also made no effort to move carefully out of consideration for them.
Apparently, wandering through set places at set times was the duty the queen had assigned to it.
'...Will I be able to go back?'
As someone who had taken part in an S-rank Abyssal One raid, I could say so with certainty.
It was not an opponent we could fight and defeat.
Even though it was also a dragon, it was in an entirely different league from Leviathan... pure violence and death.
-Chirp... chirrup...
As day drew to a close amid the birdsong spreading through the Garden,
It was our first night in the Abyss.