Chapter 125: Chapter 125
"I hope my Lord doesn't mind, but I've taken you by a somewhat longer route, we're close to the chasm now, there's a secret route that leads toward the Dwarf Kingdom's capital and lets us avoid the usual paths that the dwarves guard. I thought you'd like to avoid the usual fuss." Hejinmal explained and kept his head lowered as he spoke.
"The dwarves don't guard a route to their capital?!" Ainz half exclaimed, the notion was as absurd as an unguarded guildbase.
"They seem to have forgotten it exists, I found a reference to it in one of their old books, but the quagoa don't know about it, so they and the dwarves have been slugging things out elsewhere as a result."
"You never informed your father?" Ainz asked, his dark eyebrow raised behind the mask.
Ainz could not read the faces of dragons yet, but the voice of the dragon sounded much like a dejected child, and the dragon would not meet his face, though Hejinmal curled his long neck around to look backward at his rider. "The dwarves make books. I never wanted them destroyed." Hejinmal replied with a morose air. "All I want to do is read… my father thinks it's stupid to be obsessed with anything but strength…"
"Being strong is important." Ainz responded tacitly.
"I know, My Lord." Hejinmal said as he trotted onward, his pace slowed as they spoke, though Ainz still rocked about atop the beast in a slow and steady rhythm. "But life is terrible as it is and books helped me get away from that… I can't help but want to be inside those pages instead…"
Ainz felt his affection meter shoot up several times over as Hejinmal unknowingly described the reason Ainz himself began playing Yggdrasil.
"That probably sounds foolish…" Hejinmal mumbled, but Ainz laid a hand on the dragon's flank.
"No. No it doesn't. Nothing lasts forever, and if you pass away having lived happily, are you worse off than if you pursued power and a life you didn't want and died unhappy as a result?" Ainz asked, and Hejinmal's eyes widened like saucers, he brought his head up closer to his Master's masked face.
"You're right… you are a truly wise King…" Hejinmal said with reverence, which was rewarded with Ainz' white gloved hand patting his head.
'I'm patting a dragon's head!' He cried inside his mind, his gamer happiness engaged to new heights, for the moment all stress vanished, even to the point that the aching wish for his friends to see this moment, didn't ruin it.
Hejinmal didn't seem to mind, he returned to watching the way ahead, if anything there was a spring to his step that had him bobbing his head back and forth quite contentedly. 'A King who understands me! My luck has turned!' The young dragon thought with joy in his heart that filled him with energy of the sort he'd never had in his life.
"You were saying before?" Ainz prompted, and that finally brought Hejinmal back to reality again.
"Oh, yes, My Lord… you'll see the long chasm… it's so deep it seems to go all the way down to the center of the world."
"Has nobody ever ventured to its depths?" Ainz asked.
Hejinmal shook his head and neck with vigor enough that it was remarkable it didn't break. "No, if there is any record of that, My Lord, the dwarves have lost it. There have been many expeditions to the bottom, but nobody has ever returned alive. I've read about many hypotheses about why, but nothing going down there ever comes back up."
It was just then that the chasm came into view, a great wide crag, like glass that had something dropped on it, the jagged crag was a bowshot's distance across, and if the interior seemed dark before, then the chasm made the understone realm appear to be high noon on a clear day in Re-Estize by comparison.
Darker than pitch, the inky depths were like an ocean painted black, his explorer spirit grabbed hold of Ainz and would not let go. "Stop." Ainz whispered.
Hejinmal obeyed and Ainz looked back at the hidden route. In retrospect it was little more than a broken down cave hidden by rocks that jutted out at just the right angles to hide it on either side, and far away from any area anyone had any reason to travel.
But the interesting thing was the chasm itself. He approached the abyss, his shoes slapping lightly on the stone, but there was nothing to stop the small echo other than the interior walls.
"My Lord, you shouldn't go too close, you might fall." Hejinmal said in a small voice.
"I can use flight magic." Ainz said, but raised Hejinmal a notch in his loyalty meter for the concern.
He stopped at the edge nonetheless and stared down into the abyss.
The great crag held Ainz' full focus, He took out a lamp from his dimensional storage, a worthless trash item from his beginning days, lit the candle within, and tossed it down the supermassive hole.
He watched, the light pulsed back and forth, in and out from the central wick, the fire bouncing off the nearest wall, and shrinking more and more into the depths.
He listened with care, even holding his hand beside his ear and leaning over the edge with his head tilted to one side.
There was nothing, no sound. 'Nothing… if even 'I' can't hear the noise down there, how far down must it go?'
Ainz knew enough about geology from one of his guildmates to know that this was a truly ancient place even by geological standards. 'This may very well be as old as the mountain itself, and if things form at the same pace here as in my world, then this chasm may be millions of years old.' His breathing picked up a pace at the sheer awe inspiring moment of looking into the deepest depths to the invisible heart at the bottom of the world.
"One of the books I read said that it is bad luck to look into the abyss, they say if you look long enough, the abyss looks back at you…" Hejinmal approached with several hesitant steps.
"If it does, I will make it blink first. My friends and I know what it is to walk an abyss, beautiful, majestic, deadly… and make it known, make it ours." Ainz said, and straightened up. "I want to go down there, and do it again…"
"My Lord!" Hejinmal shivered and shook his head, "That would be too dangerous to do without an escort that can help you, and I'm useless for that!" He eeped out in a very undragonlike way, and to that Ainz had to laugh.
'How old is he, to speak of something like that… how truly strong…?' Hejinmal asked himself, but could not bring himself to vocalize it. 'What lies beyond the mask?' He dared not ask the question when the King approached him again.
Ainz patted Hejinmal's shaking blue scaled shoulder, "No, I know that. But what an adventure it will be one day." Ainz said not even realizing he'd already made the promise to venture into its depths until he had remounted Hejinmal and they were well on their way to the city again.
When he did realize what he'd said, his conviction crystalized. 'Yes, exploring this is what my friends would want to do… and me too… how can I pass this up?' He asked, knowing he definitely would not.
Hejinmal however, politely and subtly, put them well away from the edge of the deep gorge as they rode on, and the dwarven city finally came into view.
"Hejinmal, fly. We want to give a powerful impression here." Ainz gave the order, and the mount did not even think to question it.
He spread his wings, flapped several times, they bobbed up and down in the air, and then began to go forward, his blue tail batted about in the air at his back drawing them ever closer to the distant city walls.
The light of glowstones laid into the walls came into view, going from little dots to a brighter, but still soft white hue.
The dwarves on the walls went from invisible in the distance, to tiny dots, to moving people as they came into focus.
And as he drew closer, they too finally caught sight of the dragon soaring toward their walls.
Before Ainz could even shout toward them, all hell broke loose upon the walls. Panic seized their souls, fear consumed their hearts.
And the dwarves cried out for salvation to whatever mountain god they worshipped, their stubby bodies rushing too and fro, while a massive bell somewhere out of view called all the city to face what they believed was a coming terror.
'Perhaps I should have remained on the ground.' Ainz thought, and with a gentle push of his hand, he gave a subtle order. At the very slight pressure Hejinmal took the hint and began their descent.
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