Extras Supremacy Rise Of The Forgotten Background Character Chapter 295

[ … words ]

“So… you are finally here, huh, Young Trickster?”

A voice echoed in my ears.

The world around me was made of abstract shapes and mana and I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

Zuka was pulling me along with her while Arza followed behind me, her hand holding mine but neither of them reacted to the voice.

I looked towards them, waiting for even a slight change in their expressions but Zuka continued as if she didn’t hear anything while Arza’s attention only turned toward me when I opened my mouth.

“Who… are you?”

Both of them looked at me weirdly.

“Who are you talking to?”

I ignored the question and waited for the voice to reply because whoever had spoken did call me Young Trickster, so I doubted those words were meant for anyone else.

But even after waiting for a few minutes, there was no answer or explanation. Just as I was beginning to wonder if I would hear it again or if it was just my hallucination, it echoed in my mind.

“… can’t speak much. Come to the graves of the Kings, as HE has left what cannot be spoken.”

Before I could ask what that was supposed to mean, the world snapped back into place and the three of us were thrown out of the portal into a dense forest.

Zuka released her grip on my hand as soon as we landed. For a moment, my head felt so heavy that I could barely pay attention to where we had arrived. My knees gave way beneath me but Arza caught me before I could fall to the ground.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was as calm as usual. “And who were you speaking to earlier?”

I was about to answer when Zuka spoke from beside me.

“Don’t worry. Those who are weak-willed sometimes experience hallucinations and headaches while travelling through the spatial crack.” She pointed at me as if I had just proved her point. “It seems your friend there has… quite the weak mind.”

Not that Arza understood a word from her because she didn’t have Myths which auto-translated alien language so conveniently.

Normally, I might have replied to her jab but my mind was still stuck on the voice I had heard.

Who was that?

He spoke as if he had been waiting here for me but I didn’t even know where I was supposed to meet him.

The graves of the Kings meant nothing to me and his explanation about something being left there made things only more confusing.

And what did he mean by something HE had left?

Was he talking about Trickster?

That was the first person who came to mind.

After all, who else would leave something for me before I had even arrived here? The voice had also called me Young Trickster, which made it even more difficult to believe that my predecessor had nothing to do with this.

But if that was really the case, then didn’t it mean that me getting stranded on this planet after that skirmish with the pirates was something he had foreseen as well?

I didn’t really board that spaceship with the intention of coming here. As far as I was concerned, ending up on this planet was the result of things going wrong.

But now, someone had spoken to me as if my arrival was something that had been expected all along.

Was coming to this planet already part of my destiny long before I boarded that spaceship?

Countless questions erupted in my mind, with each one leading to another before I could even begin to answer the first.

I wanted to think through them but there was hardly any point when all I had to work with was a voice that had barely spoken a few words and then disappeared.

Besides, I didn’t even know if that voice could be trusted.

Who was to say that it wasn’t some ancient monster who held a grudge against Trickster and wanted to lure me into his dominion? Calling me Young Trickster didn’t necessarily mean he was on my side. For all I knew, it could have been the very reason he took an interest in me.

I mean, from everything I had seen so far, that bastard predecessor of mine had made quite a lot of enemies. It wouldn’t be strange if one of them decided that taking out his anger on me was good enough.

And the voice hadn’t exactly given me much reason to believe him. He had told me where to go, mentioned something left behind and disappeared before I could ask even a single useful question.

In my books, it was typical scammer behaviour to lure an innocent lamb with a treasure as bait.

So yeah, I wasn’t going to run toward some graves just because a stranger had whispered a few mysterious words in my head.

And more importantly, if this really was something Trickster had planned, then I doubted that voice would be the only clue he would have left for me.

He was a smart guy, after all.

If he could anticipate my arrival on this planet, he should have been able to anticipate that I wouldn’t blindly trust someone I couldn’t even see. There should be something else or at least, that was what I hoped.

In any case, I had quite a lot of time to figure it out.

For now, I needed somewhere safe to recover and think about my next move. I could worry about whatever my predecessor might have left once I had a better understanding of my own situation.

“Are you done?”

A voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“What?”

I turned toward Zuka, who was standing with her arms folded.

“Do you think you are some protagonist for whom the world will stop just so they can finish their thoughts?” She asked. “I am not that patient. The next time you decide to stand around daydreaming, I am leaving you behind.”

“…”

Apparently, taking a moment to think was too much to ask for.

Tch, bitch.

“Alright. So, where are we?”

I changed the subject and straightened up while my cloak dusted off my clothes.

Whatever I thought about her attitude, she was still the one who knew this place and asking her seemed more useful than starting an argument while I had no idea where we were.

Zuka looked around the forest for a moment before replying.

“Although the spatial crack is mostly random, I didn’t expect our luck to be this bad. Even calling it bad might be an understatement since it has never happened before.”

“What exactly happened?”

“It seems the crack somehow sent us to the lowest level of Rockwave.”

“The lowest level?”

“Rockwave is divided into different levels, each connected by strange paths. There are seven in total.” She explained. “The top four are suitable for living, so the Spandals use them as residential levels. The fifth is where the capital once stood, along with the transportation hub and where those Murgins have their headquarters now.”

I listened without interrupting as she continued.

“That level is also connected to the only exit out of Rockwave and it is where the Spring of Necrol is found. As for the two levels below it… there isn’t much known about them.”

She said all of this so calmly that, for a moment, I thought our situation couldn’t be that bad. Being sent to the wrong level sounded troublesome but if the levels were connected, there should at least be a way to move between them.

Though her last few words made me hesitate.

There was quite a difference between being somewhere unfamiliar to me and being somewhere unfamiliar even to the person I was relying on.

“So, what is this lowest level like?” I asked. “And how are we supposed to climb out?”

Zuka let out a bitter laugh.

“… That, I don’t know myself. I have never visited this place.”

I stared at her for a moment, trying to fit that answer together with how calmly she had been explaining everything.

“You have never been here?”

“No. Nobody has ever been teleported to this place before.” She paused before adding, “Not to mention, because of how randomly that crack behaves, not many people use it in the first place… except for a few nutcases.”

“So, we took a passage that most people avoid because they don’t know where it will send them and it sent us to a place you have never visited.”

“That is what I just said.”

“…”

This bitch…

I had asked where we were because I thought knowing the answer would help me decide what to do next.

Instead, all I learned was that we were at the bottom of Rockwave, the only exit was somewhere above us and Zuka, the ever so trustworthy guide I had chosen, knew as little about getting there from here as I did.

“But didn’t you brag about knowing all the exits a few moments ago, before we entered through that crack?”

Still, I controlled myself and asked her calmly.

She nodded, seemingly amused.

“That’s what I don’t understand either. If my calculations were correct, we should have been teleported somewhere on the third level… that’s why this feels so strange. It’s as if the world deliberately threw us here.”

Listening to her words… a doubt crept into my mind and in a slightly lowered voice, I asked,

“…By any chance, are there graves of some Kings on these lower floors?”