Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The two knights had done such a clean job clearing the field during the previous gauntlet battles that the upside was they definitely would not run into enemies. The downside was that they would definitely get lost.

By the time the three of them stood before the enormous gates of the Royal Capital for the fourth time, the silence was so complete that all they could hear was the bleak wind whistling past…

“This is not my fault!” Galahad clawed wildly at his hair. “Who knew this city was this big? And all the buildings look the same… The fact that we managed to find the entrance again is already pretty impressive!”

Ruiyin sighed inwardly. It really was not Galahad’s fault. This Undead City was obviously a magical city. Plenty of intersections she had clearly marked would suddenly vanish or jump somewhere else. The city itself was alive, and it did not want these intruders to reach their destination.

“Looks like there is only one way,” Ruiyin said. “We need to find someone to guide us.”

Galahad muttered under his breath, “How are we supposed to find anyone? Lars killed all the Undead. They must all be recuperating in the Abyssal Demon Prison right now. Who’s going to guide us?”

Every lamp in the city was lit, but there was not a single living thing in sight. Ruiyin looked around, and her gaze settled on a nearby fruit stall. Please do not worry about why an Undead City would have fruit. Piled on the rough wooden boards were many round fruits with tiny spikes on their surfaces, looking a little like pineapples.

She casually picked up one of the pineapples. The pineapple trembled in her hand.

Her drooping eyes studied it. The pineapple continued trembling.

She took out a dagger, measured it against the roundest part of the pineapple, and decisively stabbed.

“Awooo!” With a miserable shriek, the pineapple sprang up, all the fur on its body standing on end. Its round shape unfolded, revealing a pair of round eyes inside, now brimming with tears and rimmed red from the pain.

“Waaaah, please don’t kill me! I’ll do anything, please don’t hurt me! I can do anything QAQ!” The pineapple threw itself down flat in a full prostration, all its fur rustling and shaking like a sieve.

“Huh?” Galahad curiously leaned closer. “Isn’t this a Ruchika? It’s just a very low-level herbivorous magical beast. A species with a very strong personality! But this creature isn’t even dark-aligned, so why would it appear in the Undead City?”

“I-I-I…” The furball kept trembling. Under everyone’s curious stares, even its pearly white, translucent body turned faintly pink. Tears plopped out of its eyes one after another.

“It’s fine. Judging by its form, it should be a resident here too. We just need to make it guide us. Stop crying.”

The furball instantly sucked all its tears back in and looked up pitifully at the three huge creatures in front of it.

How did one threaten a hostage into guiding them? Lars tried hard to recall the handful of evil people he had met in his life.

Hmm. Ruiyin coldly ordering Galahad to gather firewood. Ruiyin spraying Galahad with aqua regia. Ruiyin swindling Vigia out of his property. Ruiyin grabbing a knife to bully a little furball… Uh, why did it seem like the only evil person he could remember was Ruiyin…

Lars shook his head hard, doing his utmost to fling that “only evil person in his life” out of his mind. He took a deep breath, tightened his armor, and stumbled stiffly over to the furball with his arms and legs moving on the same side. His hand shook as he drew his sword, tracing a crooked arc before the rusty, nicked blade landed half a meter away from the furball. Red-faced, he stammered, “T-take us to that tower! Or else… or else…”

He got stuck halfway through. After thinking with great difficulty for a long time, he finally continued haltingly, “…or else I’ll shave off all your fur!”

It was acting so powerful it could scare an Oscar winner into wetting himself.

“Hey, this isn’t going to work, is it?” Galahad weakly held his forehead. “You don’t look like a bad guy at all. I think we should let Ruiyin do it. Only she can…”

Before he could finish, the furball burst into loud sobs. It swiftly resumed its full prostration, crying with snot and tears everywhere. “Please don’t hurt my fur! Waaaah, I’ll do anything! I won’t dare do it again, please don’t do this to me!”

Galahad: “…” Everything in the books was a lie!

Lars still looked as though he had not quite reacted, but he quickly seized the opportunity and continued his stammering threat. “Move! Or I’ll immediately…” He gestured with his rusty, nicked sword. “I’ll immediately shave the fur off your head!”

“Waaaah, I’ll go right now!”

And so everyone happily set out on their adventure…

This magical beast Undead called Ruchika had an extremely peculiar appearance. Its body was the size of a pineapple, yet it had no hands, no feet, no mouth, and no ears, as though the sole purpose of its body’s existence was to grow two ping-pong-ball eyes. It bounced along in front of them, shaking its coat of fur, and every so often it would stop and timidly look back to see if everyone was following. As hostages went, it was so cooperative that one wanted to present it with a commendation banner.

“Um…” the furball said timidly. “May I ask… how did you see through my disguise?”

“Too much fur. Too fat,” Ruiyin said, glancing down at it before offering a gentle suggestion. “So you see, shaving off the fur would be better, right?”

“QAQ I was wrong! Please don’t touch my fur, we’re almost there, waaaah~~~” It scrambled and rolled forward in a panic.

“Hey, don’t bully a kid…” Galahad said, unable to bear it. “But I am still curious. Isn’t this city for the strongest dark creatures? Is Ruchika also a believer of the Dark God?”

The furball stopped. When it turned back, its two ping-pong-ball eyes were rippling with fried-egg-like rings of tears.

“I-I’m not! It was that… that devil!” the furball protested timidly with its head lowered. “She… she said she was lonely here by herself and forced me to come here! I had clearly just finished storing up a winter’s worth of rabbit-tail grass, and it all went to waste, waaah…”

Ruiyin ignored all the long-winded sobbing about how it was supposed to survive the winter and cut straight to the point. “You said that devil? Who is she?”

“You don’t know?” The furball blinked. “The tower you’re going to is her residence.”
Then it burst into tears again, frightened by the murderous aura that suddenly erupted in front of it.

Wasn’t that bastard Mordova the one who said there was a way out inside the tower?!

After Ruchika led Ruiyin and the others to the Central Tower, it scrambled away at top speed, practically rolling and crawling as it fled. The trail of tears it left behind once again rewrote the textbook definition of “Ruchika are mild, tenacious herbivores.”

The three people left behind held a silent group meeting beneath the tower, all of them radiating gloom.

The tower was not especially tall. From the outside, it looked to be only five or six stories high. Its Gothic spire and pure black stone made it look solemn and strange among the pale gray buildings around it. It did, in fact, have a bit of a final-boss lair atmosphere.

“We can’t go in!” Galahad, leader of the escape faction, was the first to speak. “That’s the God of Darkness we’re talking about. Everything he says has to be understood in reverse! There has to be some kind of scheme inside this tower!”

Ruiyin said blandly, “I remember him saying you were worthy of being called the Silver Knight.” In reverse, that probably meant, “What a waste of a human life.”

Galahad, who could already hear the subtext: “…Lars, what do you think?!”

When he asked, he did not hold out any hope. Without even thinking about it, he knew the only lines that ever came out of this guy’s mouth were variations of “Ruiyin is great, Ruiyin is amazing, Ruiyin is absolutely the best!” But this time, to his surprise, brainless fan Lars did not immediately jump out wagging his tail. He stared cautiously at the pitch-black door before them, his eerie green eyes almost glowing.

“There is a dangerous presence inside the tower,” Lars said. “Inside… it’s very dangerous. But right now, it seems we don’t have any other choice.”

Ruiyin pondered. “What do you mean by ‘dangerous’?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t intend to attack us, but… just like this city, it doesn’t welcome our arrival.”

Sometimes, Ruiyin found Lars very difficult to evaluate. Most of the time, he was like a silly puppy gnawing on a bone and thumping its tail. But once he was provoked, you would realize that this puppy actually had tremendous potential to become a wolf king. His indescribable instincts, along with power that might evolve into a world boss, often made Ruiyin feel the strain of trying to teach someone she could never truly rein in.

“We go in.” After a long silence, Ruiyin made her decision. She glanced at Galahad, who was already preparing to jump up and argue back, then pointed in the direction they had come from. “If you don’t want to go in, I won’t force you. There are plenty of people back there who would welcome your return.”

Miss Mermaid and Purple-Spotted Venomous Python and Dark Elves and Centennial Corpse and the hibernating Bull Demon King all sent invitations in unison.

“…I’ll go in.” In that incomparably suppressed, dispirited voice, the green algae swaying all over his head instantly drooped.

As a miserable honors-student type, Ruiyin had not watched many fantasy movies before. Although certain past experiences meant she was not exactly timid, the instant she entered the tower, she was still nearly scared into a fragile little white lotus.

An entire row of skulls had been nailed to the wall. Each skull clenched a brass lamp holder between its teeth, and the candles on the holders gave off a dim blue light, illuminating the narrow spiral staircase leading upward.

Because none of them had expected such a grotesque scene the moment they pushed open the door, all three were a little stunned. Galahad, standing at the very back, could not help taking a step backward. His armor lightly knocked against the wooden door behind him with a soft click.

At that single sound, the skulls on the wall all turned their heads one after another, their pitch-black eye sockets fixing on the three people standing below. They let out a bizarre series of clacking laughs, then slowly opened their mouths.

“Food.”

“Delivery.”

“Please.”

“Go upstairs.”

Starting from the lowest skull, each one spat out a word, mechanical and orderly, following the stairs upward.

“I.”

“Don’t like.”

“Eating.”

“Vegetables!”

It continued upward. And oddly enough, the brass lamps in their mouths did not fall out when they spoke…

“I.”

“Want.”

“To eat.”

“Meat QAQ!!!!!!”

…All of a sudden, it did not feel scary at all.

Ruiyin silently waved a hand. “No danger. Let’s go.”

The three of them followed the spiral staircase all the way up. As they walked, the skulls beside them continuously issued bold declarations of “I don’t eat scallions!” “I don’t eat green peppers!” and “Give me meat!” until they reached the very end…

At the end was a wooden door with a heavy sense of history. A rusty lock hung crookedly on it, almost as a formality.

The three exchanged a glance. Lars was the first to step forward. His hand rose and his sword fell, cutting the lock cleanly in two. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he pushed the door open.

In that instant, a deep, sweet fragrance rushed toward them along with a wind-chime-like tinkling. It was a room with a very low ceiling. Candles could be seen everywhere, tinting the whole room in a warm, glowing color. Caramel-colored shelves lined the walls, piled with all kinds of messy things beyond mortal imagination: ancient books, crystal balls, dried heads, tiny snakes as thick as fingers, and more.

Yet those were not the most eye-catching things. What made them even dizzier was the sheer number of cushions almost filling the room to overflowing. Pale colors, yellows, oranges, pinks… feather cushions, cotton cushions, silk cushions… warm colors and soft materials of every kind were spread everywhere. Together with the warm candlelight, they made a person want to collapse at a single glance and sleep forever.

And in the middle of all this clutter, the most exquisite and beautiful young man they had seen on this entire journey was sleeping on a long couch piled high with cushions.

Author’s Note:

Commemorating Lars’s first time being a villain. Ruiyin, please teach me properly how to be a qualified bad guy (starry eyes)!

Sigh, I originally wanted to put another lunatic in this chapter, but in the end he only showed his face. So next chapter is “How a Beautiful Boy Becomes a Pervert”…