The castle, restored to peace, was like a silent great box.
Ruger crept through the dim corridor and descended the stairs, feeling like the villain doomed to die horribly in some clichéd horror story. He already had a strange appearance; now he was hunched over, carrying half a human face in his hand.
"Big brother, if you can wake up, don't worry about scaring me—just open your eyes. You've seen a lot and know a lot, unlike this foolish little kobold here, whose experience isn't even as long as his tail." Ruger shook the half-face in his hand as he spoke softly.
This place was even colder and gloomier than the rest of the castle. The stone steps beneath his feet seemed uncarved, their roughness deliberately preserved, as though he were setting foot upon a savage, primordial road.
Listening to his own footsteps, he walked step by step to the end of the path.
Before him stood a crude altar, so rudimentary it beggared imagination.
The things making up the altar looked as though they had been scavenged from a heap of rubbish—bones of every kind, clothing, even books. At the edges were darkened crimson stains, along with dismantled wardrobe pieces.
Ruger pinched the fragment of tooth between two fingers.
He circled the Abyss altar again and again.
Where's the corpse I need to take away? he wondered.
"Here..."
The handsome youth appeared at his side, seemingly in a rather good mood.
Ruger looked back the way he had come. He saw no sign of the old butler, nor did he hear any footsteps.
"Why is there an Abyss altar here?"
"Oh? This? I wanted to have extraordinary abilities like Izel and my father, to go out adventuring and traveling, so I secretly gathered materials and hid here to make