Chapter 324

"Of course," Grid said bitterly. "Of course this happens."

The spear points pressed a little harder against his neck. He didn't move.

"Ten seconds," he muttered through his teeth. "I had Good Luck for ten seconds. Ten! And the first thing it gives me is a spear in the neck!" His voice rose. "What kind of luck is this?! Is it broken?! Did the system give me broken luck?!"

The white-haired figures shouted at him again in that strange language. It sounded sharp and old and full of hard sounds, and he didn't understand a single word of it.

"I don't know what you're saying!" Grid shouted back. "I don't speak... whatever that is!"

More shouting. One of them jabbed a spear toward Noe, who had puffed himself up on Grid's shoulder with his fur standing straight out.

And then something odd happened. The figure closest to Grid leaned in, as if sniffing him, and his red eyes went wide. He stepped back fast and said something to the others in a low, urgent voice. The word passed along the ledges, from one to the next, and every one of them looked at Grid differently after they heard it. Some backed away. Some gripped their spears tighter. A few stared at Noe and went completely still.

Grid had no idea what they had just figured out about him. He only knew that it didn't look good.

Okay, he thought. Okay. Think.

He counted them. Thirty. Forty. More moving in the shadows. He looked at the ones closest to him, at the way they held their spears, and his stomach dropped. They held their weapons like people who had been fighting monsters every day of their lives. Like people who had been fighting the same lizards he had been fighting, for a lot longer than a few days.

If they all came at once, he was going to die.

He thought about the death penalty. The level he'd lose. Level 300, gone, after everything. The items he might drop. His hand tightened on Failure.

If I'm going to die, he decided, I'm taking as many of them with me as I can.

"Randy," he said quietly. "Get ready."

Randy's little face went serious. She blurred and stood up beside him as a second Grid, sword raised.

The white-haired figures shouted in alarm at the sudden copy, and the spears all shifted at once.

Then a voice cut through the noise. Low, flat and heavy, it carried across the whole chamber without being raised at all.

Every single one of them went quiet.

The figures on the nearest ledge stepped aside, and someone walked through the gap. He was taller than the rest. His white hair was tied back from a face that might have been carved out of the same black stone as the city, scarred along one cheek. He carried a spear too, a long, plain one, and the way he walked with it told Grid immediately that this man was more dangerous than everyone else in the room put together.

He stopped a few paces from Grid and looked at him for a long time. At his face. At Failure. At Noe. At the two identical Grids standing side by side.

Then he knelt, laid his palm flat on the stone floor, and pressed down.

A carved line under his hand lit up. It spread outward in a circle across the floor, glowing violet, curling into a shape like a word written in a language that had never needed letters. The light rose up and washed over Grid like warm water.

[A rune of interpretation has been activated.]

[You can now understand the speech of the Dark Elves.]

The tall man stood up again.

"Outsider," he said.

Grid blinked. He understood it perfectly.

"I am Luvian, chief of the Dark Elves of this city, and the spear that guards it. You have broken the gate our foremother sealed with her own hands. No living being has passed through that gate in a thousand years." His face didn't move. "Explain yourself."

Grid stared at him.

Then, because he was cornered and angry and convinced he was about to die anyway, his mouth ran ahead of his brain.

"Explain myself? Fine. I fell down a hole. A really, really deep hole. Then I spent days fighting your ugly lizards, and then your door wouldn't open, so I broke it." He jabbed Failure toward the spears around him. "And if you think forty guys with poking sticks are going to scare me, think again. I just killed that giant drake out there. Just me, my cat and my kid. So you lot?" He sneered. "You're nothing compared to that thing. Come on, then! Who's first?!"

Nobody moved.

The chamber had gone completely, utterly silent.

Luvian's face did not change. But something behind his eyes went very still.

"The drake," he said slowly. "In the Hollow beyond the gate. Black stone over burning flesh. The Demonic Energy infused Earth Drake, the Wicked Gorvathul ."

"Yeah, that one." Grid scowled. "Groovy thul or whatever. Big. Ugly. Breathes rocks."

"You are saying that you slew it."

"I just said that."

"That is not possible," Luvian said, with complete seriousness. "Gorvathul has guarded the Hollow since before my grandfather's grandfather was born. Our greatest warriors have fallen before it for a thousand years. It cannot be slain by one man."

"Well, it was," Grid snapped. "By me. And a cat and a little girl. You want me to draw you a picture?"

Luvian considered this. "I do not require a picture."

Grid opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at him.

He yanked open his inventory, grabbed the first thing he could think of, and held it up in his free hand.

Gorvathul's Molten Heart glowed in his palm. Even here, so far from the Hollow, it burned with its slow, endless red light, and the heat coming off it made the air ripple. Every Dark Elf in the chamber could feel it.

A murmur went through the crowd, then a gasp, then a sound like dozens of people forgetting to breathe at the same time.

Luvian stared at the heart for a long time.

Then he spoke, quietly, like he was reciting something he had learned as a child.

"When the beast of the Hollow falls by a hand that comes from above, the one who descends shall open the sealed gate, and lead the children of the deep back beneath the sky."

He lowered his spear.

Then Luvian, chief of the Dark Elves, the spear that guarded the city, went down on one knee on the black stone floor in front of Grid and bowed his head.

Around him, one by one, every Dark Elf in the chamber did the same. The spears came away from Grid's neck. Forty, fifty, then more, as figures across the city below heard what was happening and knelt too, on rooftops and bridges and streets. The whole glowing city went down on its knees in silence.

Grid stood alone in the middle of it with a sword in one hand and a burning heart in the other.

He looked down at all the bowed white heads.

His brain worked as fast as it could. They knelt the moment I said I killed it, he thought. They looked at the heart like it was a holy relic. Their chief said a whole speech about it. Which means...

The answer hit him, and his face went pale.

That drake was their god.

I killed their god.

And this is a prayer before they execute the guy who did it.

"W-wait," Grid said quickly. He shoved the heart back into his inventory and held his empty hand out in front of him. "Wait, wait, wait. Let's all calm down. I didn't know, okay? Nobody told me it was yours! It attacked me first! If you'd just put up a sign or something—"

Luvian lifted his head and looked at him with grave, unblinking eyes.

"You need not explain, Hero."

"...Hero?"

"For a thousand years we have waited for you." Luvian bowed his head again. "The prophecy has been fulfilled. Our people's long night is over."

Grid looked at him. He looked at the city full of kneeling people. He looked at Noe, who shrugged with both wings. He looked at Randy, who had turned back into a little girl at some point and was copying the Dark Elves by kneeling on the floor next to him, very pleased with herself.

Grid had no idea what was going on.

But he understood two things clearly. Nobody was trying to kill him anymore. And somebody had just called him a hero.

He straightened his back. He lifted his chin. He tried very hard to look like someone who had known this would happen all along.

"...Right," Grid said. "Yes. Of course. The prophecy."

Noe stared at him. "Master doesn't know what that means, Nyang."

"Shh!"