The wood of the counter clung to the pad of his finger like it was being drawn in. Tsubaki Shinji sat at the right end of the reception desk, long past the point of counting how many documents had passed through his hands today. When had white begun threading through his black short hair? His deep brown eyes traced columns of numbers now, but his mind held nothing in particular. Gray work clothes, a green vest, sturdy leather shoes—the uniform of the Twin Blades Beacon Guild's administrative clerk, known to every resident of Feria. There was a small indentation in the counter's wood, shaped like an elbow. Shinji had noticed it sometime in his third or fourth year. Now it was his fifteenth. His own elbow had been slowly wearing away at wood that should have been harder than stone. Human persistence was something, he thought. Whether it deserved admiration or pity, he still hadn't decided. The door opened with a sound. The smell of blood came in with it. Shinji looked up. A D-rank adventurer—Roy, if he remembered the name correctly—rushed in with bandages wrapped around his shoulder, his cheeks flushed with excitement despite the injury. "Listen, Tsubaki!" Roy said. "The report forms are on the third shelf from the right," Shinji replied. "No, that's not it! Today, in the old mines to the south, I ran into Shadow Bison. They were thirty percent bigger than normal ones, and the charging speed was completely different. When I blocked with my shield, my arm went numb—" "If your arm only went numb from the impact, there's no problem. If the shoulder wound is worse than that—" Shinji pulled a form from the drawer and slid it quietly across the counter. "If the injury is C-rank or higher, you'll need a medical expense claim form too. Should I prepare one?" Shinji asked. Roy paused for a moment. "...No, I'm fine. It's just a light wound." "Then the standard report will suffice," Shinji said. He returned his gaze to the documents. He could tell Roy wanted to say something more. The battle with the Shadow Bison was probably still burning inside him. Whether from fear or excitement, Shinji couldn't say. He'd been listening to stories like this every day for fifteen years, but that feeling had never become his own. Roy picked up a pen and began filling out the form. His profile looked proud, almost enviable—Shinji caught himself thinking that and cut the thought short. Enviable. He'd used up all such feelings on his first day of work, fifteen years ago. —— When the afternoon work had settled, Shinji opened his desk drawer slightly. An old diary lay there. His father's. The leather cover had dried and hardened, but the writing was still legible. He didn't check it every day. Just confirmed its existence. That was all. Since coming to this town, almost nothing had remained in Shinji's hands. He barely remembered his father's face—the man had died around the time of his birth, after all. What was left was only this diary and a small stone-walled house on the outskirts of Feria. He closed the drawer gently. Looking out the window, the stone pavement of the main street gleamed white in the afternoon light. Feria's population was roughly twenty-eight hundred. A frontier town nearly four hundred kilometers southwest of the capital, Valenhight, its main industries were sheep herding, medicinal herbs, and the sparse mining of luminous ore in the northern hills. If you had the ability to sense and manipulate luminescence—the fine energy particles that drifted through air, soil, and water—you could become an adventurer or a mage-engineer. Over sixty percent of the population had that aptitude, or so he'd learned in elementary school. Shinji had zero. The measurement from his six-month checkup hadn't changed since. He didn't mind. Really. —— The incident happened the next morning. As Shinji was stirring barley porridge in the kitchen, a low sound came from the garden. A dull rumble, as if from the depths of the earth. His hand stopped. Again. Louder this time. Looking out the window, he saw the ground at the eastern end of the garden—about eight meters from the house—sinking steadily. Three meters in diameter. The soil crumbled with a grinding sound, and something made of stone opened its mouth. Shinji took the pot off the fire and went outside. Standing at the edge of the hole and peering down, he saw stone stairs descending into darkness. About thirty steps, then the light failed. Cold wind blew up from below. The smell of earth mixed with something else—the smell of old stone. Geometric patterns were carved into the stairwell walls. Shinji went back inside and opened his desk drawer. He took out the diary and opened to a passage that had bothered him for a long time. *'Beneath the garden, three steps from the eastern end, seek the stone pattern.'* He returned to the hole and measured three steps from the edge with his eyes. Around the center of the collapse. There, on the wall, a circular pattern was carved—clearly different from the other geometric designs, a unified motif. Shinji stared at it for a while. The barley porridge grew cold. —— The town hall was a single-story building at the end of the main street. Standing before the window, the clerk looked up. A man in his thirties with sleepy eyes. He opened a drawer while yawning widely. "I'm here to report a surface phenomenon," Shinji said. "Ah, a surface phenomenon. In Feria, that would be... the fourth time?" the clerk said. "So it seems," Shinji replied. "Location?" "My home garden." The clerk pulled out a form and began writing mechanically. His brush moved smoothly. "I'll forward this to the Gray Wing Bureau—the Royal Ruin Survey and Preservation Division. The field investigation will be at the earliest in three months." "Is it not dangerous?" Shinji asked. "E-rank and below just need the report. One came up in the northern pasture last year, and nobody minded. Just put up a fence or something and you'll be fine," the clerk said, stamping the edge of the document. The motion was so natural and practiced that Shinji found himself impressed. The man had probably done this dozens of times. *Like me*, Shinji thought. On the way back, Pale from the general store was outside. A man in his fifties with white mixing into his jaw. He saw Shinji, then looked toward the alley—toward Shinji's house. "Ah, yours then. Another one came up?" Pale said. "Yes, well," Shinji replied. "Just put up a fence or something," Pale said, and went back inside. Shinji stood there for a moment. The fourth time, he'd been told. For the residents of this town, ancient ruins surfacing from the ground wasn't particularly rare. There was no surprise, no fear, no curiosity—just administrative procedure and ordinary routine. *(No one cares.)* That fact caught oddly in Shinji's chest. —— The Akatsutsubo was a shop on the south side of the main street. Sample exploration lamps hung from the eaves, casting pale blue light even in daylight. They were portable lighting devices using luminescent crystals as a light source, usable even without luminescence sensitivity. The mechanism was simple—physically shaking them made the internal crystals react. Shinji entered and picked up an exploration lamp from the shelf. He checked the price tag. Three thousand reg. A full month's salary. He started to put it back. But his hand stopped. His father's words came to mind. *'Seek the stone pattern.'* What had his father intended when he wrote those words? Why specify the eastern end of the garden? Why had the ruins, sleeping underground for decades, surfaced now, of all times, in his garden of all places? Was there a reason? Maybe not. Maybe it was just coincidence. But. Shinji sighed and picked up the lamp again. He carried it silently to the counter. The elderly female shopkeeper said "much obliged" while accepting his coins. —— When night came, Shinji went to the garden. He shook the exploration lamp vertically. With a sensation like something ringing inside, pale blue light ignited. Soft, calming color. Standing at the edge of the hole, he directed the light downward. The stone stairs floated up in blue-white. The geometric patterns on the walls responded to the light, glowing faintly. The lines of the patterns absorbed and released the light, shimmering. Shinji held his breath. *Beautiful*, he thought. He was startled that such a feeling had come from within himself. He'd never thought the work documents beautiful. Never thought the counter's indentation beautiful. In fifteen years, he didn't know where such emotions had gone. He descended the stairs. One step, two steps. The stone's texture transmitted through his leather soles. Air two or three degrees colder than outside touched his skin. The smell of earth and old stone grew stronger. After thirty steps, a stone corridor opened to the side. He raised the lamp and lit the passage ahead. The corridor stretched straight. Twenty meters, thirty meters, then the light couldn't reach. The patterns continued along the walls. His footsteps echoed. He reached the entrance to the first chamber. Darkness. Only the range touched by the lamp's light existed in blue-white. Shinji stepped inside. In that instant— Something moved. Black luster shifted in the darkness. One, two, three. Beetle-like shapes. Bodies over thirty centimeters long, black carapaces gleaming dully. Red compound eyes glowed, looking at him. Gorg insects. He'd read about them in reports—shallow-layer dwellers in ancient ruins. Danger rank E, the lowest. *(E-rank, so...)* Before he could finish the thought, the first one moved. Fast. Faster than he'd imagined. Before he could dodge, a black mass slammed into him from the front. Impact to the stomach. His back hit the wall. Stone struck his head. His vision went white. The second came. Hit his chest. Pressed against the wall again. The third. This time his arm. The lamp nearly fell. He gripped it with both hands. It hurt. Really hurt. The question of when he'd last felt pain this intense floated oddly clear through the impacts. Before the fourth charge came, Shinji lowered his body and retreated. Less running than crawling. Holding the lamp forward, moving his body toward the entrance. His feet tangled. He tripped on something. Got up. Ran again. The stairs. He climbed on all fours. Thirty steps, skipping every other one. His hand struck stone midway. His heel slipped on leather. He climbed anyway. When he reached the surface, cold wind blew up from behind. He heard no insect sounds. Shinji fell backward onto the garden soil. The sky was there. Feria's night sky. Stars were unusually clear. Almost no clouds, the stars numerous. Had they always been this visible? Maybe he'd had no chance to look up at the night sky in fifteen years. His chest hurt. His arms hurt. His back and head hurt. His whole body was making its presence known. His heart was beating terribly fast. Faster than it had in fifteen years, he thought. It hurt. He'd been scared. Really scared. He hadn't expected to be driven out so quickly. Gorg insects were "danger rank E, lowest" on paper, but the real thing was completely different. He'd been completely defeated. He was bleeding. It would affect tomorrow's work. Yet the corner of his mouth wouldn't come down. He was smiling. He didn't know why. There was nothing to smile about. He'd lost completely. Blood was coming. The pain would interfere with work tomorrow. Yet his mouth wouldn't return to normal. Shinji lay there looking at the stars for a while. —— The next morning. When he opened the guild branch door, his coworker's face went rigid. A woman in her twenties, second only to Shinji in her meticulous document organization. "Shinji, what happened?" she asked. "I fell," he replied. "...Your face and both arms, at the same time?" Shinji became aware of the bandages on his arms and the bandage