Chapter 8 | Coat The Blade

[New main character detected.]

“Huh?” Theo blanked out. He stared at the system notification for a few seconds before his brows rose, and his mouth opened and closed in awe.

This guy is a main character!

“What, ‘huh’? Why the hell did you enter the tower if you can’t even protect yourself against these?” the guy asked with furrowed brows. Theo dismissed the system prompt and looked down at him. Two unassuming daggers, gripped in a reverse hold. Although they seemed ordinary, there was something different about them. A hunch.

Theo’s gaze rose. He came eye to eye with the man. A green gleam shone deep inside his pupils. His hair danced wildly in the wind. He stood with one hand on his hip, a scowl creeping onto his face.

Better not annoy him, Theo thought.

“T-Thank you,” he said. If he utilized this chance well, this person could be his ticket for a way out. What he just did was not an ordinary feat.

Seeing Theo stammer under his gaze, the man sighed.

“That’s not an ans—You know what? Never mind. No problem. I’m Satou Hiroshi.”

“Theo.”

“Theo, huh? I say, this place is too dangerous for the likes of you. If you can’t even handle something as simple as the faceless, how did you survive so far?”

The corner of Theo’s mouth twitched. That was the exact kind of question he didn’t know how to answer. So he averted his eyes.

“Umm…”

“It’s okay. Don’t talk if you don’t want to.” Satou freed him from his agony. Still, his piercing gaze remained focused on Theo. They waited in awkward silence for a moment before Satou finally moved.

“Follow along if you don’t know where to go.”

Fortunately, he was heading in the same direction as Theo. There was no reason to refuse his offer. If Satou had malicious intentions, Theo was completely defenseless anyway.

“So… How did you get here?” Theo decided to try and make some small talk and hopefully gather some information about the outside world.

“Here, at this exact place? Or in this tower?” Satou asked, giving Theo a sideways glance. He didn’t seem to care whether or not he followed him.

“This tower.”

“Where do I even begin?” he thought out loud. “I was wandering the forests around Vandreth after the new king took over. I wanted to settle somewhere, but that crazy bastard… Never mind. All in all, I had to enter this place to… recuperate.”

Satou clicked his tongue. There was a permanent frown plastered onto his face, like he had just eaten shit. “But I had underestimated the rumors. This place is really hard to get out of. I have been here for more than a month. These entities are ethereal, and I have to spend quite a bit of aura to harm them.”

Interesting. So, he uses aura? Not to mention, a month?

“Excuse me, how big is this tower again?” he asked. Satou looked up for a moment, as if trying to see the answers on the ceiling, before answering.

“On the inside? Nobody knows. It looks to be about fifteen meters wide and a hundred meters high on the outside—”

“But on the inside?” Theo continued Satou’s sentence in his stead.

“As I have said, nobody knows. It’s impossibly wide and impossibly tall. It even sprawls underground. In fact, the visible part of the tower is only the tip of the iceberg, as far as I understand. You know, the current holy emperor apparently tried digging to see,” Satou said. He pointed downward and shook his head.

“They couldn’t. Even the Sword Saint tagged along. The man had to dig with his precious meteor iron sword. They dug a hundred meters but it wasn’t viable to keep going because of the demon invasion. It was too much manpower, apparently. Not to mention, The Eternal Night doesn’t seem capable of leaving the tower anyway. So no incentive to do so anymore.”

The Eternal Night? So they do know Leila’s title. And if the tower is that big… Will we even be able to leave?

“Wait, who built the tower, then?” Theo asked. Satou shrugged and shook his head.

“It just appeared out of nowhere a year ago—Tch. Look at that.”

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Theo was about to ask further, but he followed Satou’s gaze and noticed the entity blocking their way.

“What the hell is that thing?” Theo muttered, half-expecting an answer.