Yaji fell silent for a moment. It was not that he did not know how to answer, but that he was weighing the best way to answer. He could not tell the truth, at least not now.
"Because you need help, and I can provide it," Nuoyaji said. "Isn't that enough?"
"No." Dezi did not back down. He looked straight at Nuoyaji, his voice level but firm. "No one takes such a huge risk to help a bunch of strangers for no reason. What exactly are you after?"
Nuoyaji looked at him and suddenly smiled. It was a faint smile, seemingly helpless, yet also self-mocking. The corners of his mouth rose slightly, but little amusement reached his eyes.
"If I said I simply didn't want to see anyone else die for nothing, would you believe me?"
Dezi did not answer. He stared into Nuoyaji's eyes for a long time, long enough for the miners in the room to start shifting uneasily, long enough for the wick in the oil lamp to give a faint crackle. He wanted to find a flaw in those eyes, a lie, even the slightest trace of insincerity. But he found nothing.
Only something he could not describe-something hard that seemed to have settled in those eyes after countless losses, something that would not easily shatter.
He had seen many kinds of eyes. Greedy, timid, numb, angry, despairing. But he had never seen eyes like these.
"Our goals align," Nuoyaji added when Dezi remained silent, his tone calm. "Just as you've long wanted to rise up."
The heavily bearded miner abruptly straightened, staring wide-eyed at Nuoyaji as if he had seen a ghost.
"When... when exactly did you start watching us?" Even Fuke's voice was trembling.
Nuoyaji did not answer that question. He merely gave Fuke a brief, indifferent glance, one that sent a chill down Fuke's back and made him instinctively shrink his neck.
"Don't be nervous." Nuoyaji withdrew his gaze, his tone relaxed, as though that look had been nothing more than a casual glance. "I just arrived in this city. But the place I come from... has gathered quite a bit of intelligence."
"Who are you people?" Dezi's voice dropped a little, and his speech slowed, as though he were weighing every word.
Nuoyaji looked at him and remained silent for a few breaths. Then he shook his head slightly.
"Sorry, I can't tell you yet. But..." His gaze lingered on Dezi's face for a moment. "You'll find out someday."
Dezi did not press him.
Not because he did not want to know, but because he realized that asking would do no good. This man was different from every mage he had ever met. Those people all but wrote their identities on their faces, putting on airs wherever they went, afraid others might not know they were professionals. But this man was different. He hid everything so deeply that Dezi felt he could dig for a lifetime and never uncover it.
Dezi stared at Nuoyaji in silence for a long time. The oil lamp's flame danced in his pupils, like two faint flames that might go out at any moment.
Finally, he spoke.
"All right."
Just those two words.
Fuke froze. The heavily bearded miner froze. The other miners froze too. They had not expected Dezi to agree so readily. An apprentice mage of unknown origins had said a bunch of things they only half understood, and Dezi believed him?
But they did not know what Dezi was thinking.
What Dezi was thinking was that he actually had no choice. Even without this man, he had planned to gather the miners over the next few days and go smash up the lord's manor. He knew it was a road to death, but he had no other choice. Starving meant death, and resisting meant death. At least he would die like a human being.
And now, this man had given him a third path.
He did not know whether that path would lead anywhere. But he was willing to gamble. He had not planned on surviving anyway.
"What do you need?" Dezi asked calmly, as though discussing the most ordinary of transactions.
"Manpower." Nuoyaji dispensed with formalities and stated his needs directly. "I need a few people familiar with the terrain outside the city to come find that old mine tunnel with me. Also, I need you to help keep the miners in the city calm. Don't let them do anything foolish over the next few days. I know you're almost at your limit, but you have to hold on at least until I get the grain in."
Dezi nodded, shifting his gaze from Nuoyaji to everyone present.
"Fuke, take two people outside the city tomorrow to scout the route," Dezi said, naming him.
Fuke opened his mouth as if to refuse, but swallowed his words when he saw Dezi's look. He shrank his neck and nodded.
"You three," Dezi said, looking at three other miners. "Go back to the miners' shantytown and tell everyone not to act rashly yet. Tell them... I'm still working on something. Ask them to wait a little longer."
The three miners exchanged a glance and nodded without saying anything more.
Finally, Dezi looked at Nuoyaji.
"Where are you staying tonight?"
Nuoyaji stood, moved his arms, which had grown a little stiff from sitting so long, and shouldered his worn cloth bag. Hooking his fingers around the iron sword at his belt, he shifted it into a more comfortable position.
"There's an Old Oak Inn at the east end of the street. I passed it on my way here. I'll make do there for the night."
Dezi nodded, took a few silver coins from inside his clothes, set them on the table, and pushed them over. His movements were decisive and unhesitating, as though he had prepared them long ago.
"Take them. With Luoweida in this state, everything's expensive. What little travel money you have won't last more than a few days."
Nuoyaji glanced at the silver coins on the table, then reached out and pocketed them without refusing. Not because he needed those few coins, but because he knew that if he refused, Dezi would instead suspect he had ulterior motives. In a place like this, refusing was sometimes more suspicious than accepting.
The oil lamp was blown out.
Darkness instantly swallowed the entire stone house. No one spoke. Guided only by memory and feel, they fumbled their way toward the door. Their footsteps shuffled over the dirt floor with dull thuds. The wooden door was pulled open, and the night wind rushed in, carrying the smell of standing water and chilling their faces.
The miners disappeared into the darkness one after another.
Nuoyaji came out last and stood in the doorway, taking a deep breath of damp air. The night breeze carried the earthy smell peculiar to the aftermath of rain. It was not pleasant, but at least it was better than that stifling stone house.
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick, hiding the stars, and even the moon was barely visible as a blurred patch of light. The entire city seemed trapped beneath an enormous black pot, so oppressive that it was hard to breathe.
Nuoyaji tightened the cloth bag on his back and headed toward the Old Oak Inn.
He walked through the standing water, the water in his boots squelching with every heavy, echoing step.
He was thinking.
What he had said in the stone house had not been made up on the spot. He really had known about that old mine tunnel in his previous life. He had heard about it from an old miner while passing through Luoweida. At the time, he had paid it no mind, treating it as an inconsequential anecdote and forgetting it as soon as he heard it. But in this life, while thinking on the road about how to gain a foothold in Luoweida, that forgotten memory had suddenly surfaced from the depths of his mind, like a stone on the bottom churned to the surface by a wave.
He also knew the exact location of that granary.
He had visited the place while traveling the continent in his previous life. The storm had destroyed the main road, but not the old mine tunnel hidden behind the ridge. As long as he could find the entrance, as long as the tunnel had not completely collapsed, the grain could be brought in.
But the problem now was that he was alone. He needed help, local miners familiar with the terrain. Fuke looked like someone who spent much of his time outside the city. Sending him to scout the route should not cause any major problems.
As for the grain...
Nuoyaji's gaze darkened slightly.
When he had said "friends" earlier, he had not been entirely lying. Those "friends" were still alive now; they simply did not know him yet. The storm had changed far too much, but it had not changed their fates-at least not yet.
They ran an unremarkable little farm somewhere far away. In his previous life, they had taken him in during his hardest days, giving him food and a place to stay, and even scraping together travel money for him. Back then, he had had nothing. He had been nothing more than a fugitive wanted by the Empire, yet they had helped him without hesitation.
In this life, he had not reached that point yet. But he knew how to find them and how to persuade them.
What he needed was not their grain, but their connections. They had their own contacts and channels in the lower tiers of the grain trade. The storm had destroyed the main road, but it could not destroy their smuggling network. Those people had been doing this since the Empire's founding. Their routes were written in their minds, not marked on maps.
As long as he could contact them, the grain could be brought in.
But right now...
Nuoyaji stopped, glanced at the pitch-black sky, then at the standing water rising above his ankles.
Right now, he still had to survive the night first.
He shook his head and continued toward the inn.
At a distant street corner, Black Owl stood in the water like a lifeless statue.
Through this avatar's senses, King Ghidorah had witnessed everything that happened in the stone house, from Nuoyaji pushing open the door and entering, to his exchanges with the miners, to Dezi's concession, and finally to Nuoyaji leaving alone.
Hmm...
King Ghidorah gave an inscrutable murmur in his mind.
He had not relied on force, nor on magic, nor even on his silver tongue-at least, not entirely. He had relied on information.
The information in his head that no one else possessed. He knew things the miners did not, things Dezi did not, and even things that the lord of this city did not know.
Was this the advantage of a regressor?
It was the certainty and composure that settled into one's bones after crossing countless mountains and rivers and witnessing life and death countless times. It was the keenness and calm of someone who, despite being only seventeen, was like a wily old fox who had lived for fifty years.
King Ghidorah thought that this man might truly be able to stir up some waves in this new world that had veered off course.
Black Owl stood in the water, his enclosed mask turning slightly as he watched Nuoyaji disappear at the end of the street. King Ghidorah made his avatar withdraw his gaze and was about to consider what to do next when suddenly-he sensed something.
Not through Black Owl's senses, but through those of his true body.
In that instant, King Ghidorah's true body abruptly raised his heads in the distant valley, all three gilded heads turning southeast at once. His golden slit pupils narrowed slightly, and bioelectric light flickered restlessly beneath his scales for a moment.
There was something there.
Not a human.
Not an ordinary monster.
But something...
A trace of confusion flickered through King Ghidorah's mind.
He could not say what it was, but the sensation was familiar-somewhat similar to Apekus's presence, which he had sensed on the coast of the Endless Ocean, yet different. More... chaotic? He could not tell.
But there was one thing he could be certain of-that thing should not be here.
The presence was faint, so faint that he would never have noticed it had he not deliberately extended the range of his senses.
King Ghidorah made Black Owl turn around. Instead of following Nuoyaji any farther, he headed in the direction that presence came from.