The Simulacrum
~Chapter 162~ Part 3

"I never understood fashion."

Nobody responded to my muttering, mainly because there was nobody around in the fancy boutique at the heart of the Inannas' capital city. Or at least I figured it was their capital. It was the one around their humongous gothic castle with their Mana Well and everything, but I wasn't sure 'capital city' was the right term. On second thought, maybe I should look into the political and government structures of the Abyss, just in case. If I had done that before getting pulled into the Elysium, it could've saved me some headaches in the long run.

But before that, I needed to blend in. As Judy had correctly pointed out, wearing my usual long coat would've made me stick out like a sore thumb on the streets of this city, so the first step was to acquire a disguise. Not the fancy alternate-identity sort, but the kind that let me wander the streets and look for information, and that was a necessity because… well, I only ever kept tabs on Crowy in here. Plus Tajana, occasionally, after our chance meeting in the Mana Well chamber, but…

My point is, while I knew the layout of Castle Inanna, and I'd ventured into town on a few occasions to check on the tech level and other curiosities, I never interacted with anyone. Because of that, I didn't even know the name of this place, where its various points of interest were, and most importantly, where to find that dumb Chasm of Desolation thing.

The last time I was there, I directly Phased in following Brang's mark, so I had no idea where the dungeon was in relation to anything else in the Abyss, and I had a feeling that finding it by just Phasing all over the place and hoping for the best wasn't the smartest bet. As such, my first destination was this place: an extravagant boutique on the currently rather deserted main street of the town.

That last bit wasn't much of a surprise. It was rather late, and while this place was about as far from the front lines of the civil war as it could get, a war was a war, so it made sense that people tried to stay off the streets after dark.

I would've liked to say that I picked this place due to some very logical and well-thought-out reason, but in reality, it was just the first clothes shop I could find in town after Phasing down from the castle. It was pretty dark inside, with only the gas lamps of the street illuminating the inside of the store. Or rather, they looked like gas lamps, but I was pretty sure the Abyss didn't have abundant natural gas reserves, so there was most likely some magitech malarkey involved, and they just looked like Victorian-era lampposts for stylistic reasons. They may or may not have been a bit too bright for real gas lamps too, but I couldn't be sure, since I wasn't a gaslampologist or anything.

But speaking of the Victorian era, the clothes in the boutique were also following the same trend. I already noted it before, but much of Crowy's and his cronies' wardrobe consisted of a peculiar mix of late 19^th-century British high-society fashion combined with overly elaborate gothic designs right off the cover of some vampire-themed bodice ripper novel. Of course, because most of them were at least side-character grade, they somehow made it work anyway.

And that brought us back to this place, where I was absently going through the various outfits on display and trying my best to make out as much of the details as I could under the poor lighting conditions. I wasn't planning to steal any of them though; that would've been just plain wrong. I couldn't even leave behind some Abyssal currency either, because I had none, and while skimming some from Crowy's treasury crossed my mind more than once, it would've also been morally questionable. Also, time consuming. Mostly the latter, really.

However, I had a secret weapon: my Leoformer!

I had four 'outfit slots' at the moment. My school uniform, my Lion Knight armour replica, my Polemos outfit, as well as my Bel disguise. Yet, that didn't mean I had no space for more. These four took up a lot of 'capacity' because they were enchanted, yet if it was just normal, non-enchanted clothes, I figured could probably squeeze in about a dozen more full ensembles into the Leoformer before I would need to tidy up its memory.

I had to give credit to Gowan and his Artificers' Lodge for coming up with the template for the '-former' series, and while they continued to be extremely helpful and convenient tools till today, they had one unfortunate limitation that made them non-viable for mass production: setting up the actual outfits and imputing them into the memory arrays was an absolute pain in the neck. For anyone other than me, at any rate, but there was a reason why the original outfits in the Magiformers were block-coloured sentai jumpsuits. Apparently, that was the best the artificers who created the original enchantment could do. Or at the very least that was the Watsonian explanation they provided.

I, on the other hand, could mould and shape the appearance of whatever outfit was stored in the memory of these magitech devices, and while I was happy and willing to make custom designs for my friends and allies, I couldn't be expected to mass-produce them on top of all my other duties. I tried to delegate it to Galatea and the interested members of the Research Division, but so far there had been little progress, and I haven't been tweaking my outfits much as of late either.

Maybe that was the reason why I felt a bit rusty, and couldn't quite decide on the final design. In retrospect, maybe I should've picked a slightly less upscale establishment for inspiration, because all of the male outfits I could find looked way too fancy and I didn't want to stick out of the crowd too much. On the other hand, I didn't want to look too low-class either, so I had to constantly tweak whatever piece of clothing caught my interest to bring it in line with my objective.

After nearly half an hour of doing that, I ultimately settled on an ensemble I considered to be fine. A dark shirt with a matching vest, grey pants, and a loose black tailcoat with a high collar and minimal embroidery. The outfit on which I based this one was way more elaborate, with golden buttons and silver threading and whatnot, but replaced all of them until it felt just right. I switched to it, and after readjusting it here and there, it even felt comfortable.

Now, I only needed two more things to complete the costume, so I picked up a simple polished wooden walking cane from the corner of the boutique (they had like a hundred of them; I was sure they wouldn't miss one) and also added a top hat to the outfit through the Leoformer, because… let us be honest here for a moment: When else was I ever going to have the opportunity to unironically wear a top hat?

I didn't have a mirror, but with all of that combined, I imagined I looked like a distant relative of an Abyssal Noble House, which was precisely what I was aiming for. I rolled my shoulders, readjusted my hat, and then finally Phased out of the boutique and headed down the street, towards the only lively place I could see in the dark.

"Good evening… sir?" I was greeted as soon as I stepped into the well-lit building at the corner of the street.

It was… well, maybe not a 'pub', but not quite a 'salon' either. The place was closer to a traditional Viennese coffeehouse than anything, though by a glance, the clientele looked a bit rougher than the usual poets and intellectuals of those places.

It had been a while since I last had to flex my refuge in audacity skills, and after getting in character, I marched over to the barista (or whatever the local equivalent was) and threw my hat onto the nearby coat hanger before taking a seat.

"Good evening, friend," I started, adopting an exhausted mien feigning joviality. "Can I request a glass of water?"

"Water?" the middle-aged man on the other side of the counter asked back, and I nodded.

"Yes. I'll have to head back to my estate within the hour, so I can't drink." I paused for a strategic beat and then let out a forlorn sigh. "Believe me, once this night's over, I'll drown my sorrows all the more."

"You must've had a rough day," he said while reaching for a large glass and filling it up from the tap.

"You don't know the half of it!" I began as I unbuttoned my cuffs and exhaled another dramatic sigh. He placed the drink in front of me and I accepted it with a weak smile. "Thank you, friend."

He nodded and looked me over. I was pretty sure my disguise would hold, but I still felt a bit nervous for a second.

"I have a good memory, and I don't believe we've met yet, Sir…?"

"You're correct," I answered, dodging his attempt to get a name out of me. "It's my first time in town, though I wished my first visit would be under better circumstances."

"You must have a story to tell," he concluded, and I nodded along with a smile.

"Don't we all?" I took a long sip from the glass and followed it up with a third sigh before clenching my free fist on the table. "This damnable war, and those damnable Nergals! I lost half my estate because of them overnight!"

That perked up some ears, and before long, another man joined our conversation. He was wearing an outfit similar to mine (though with much fancier embroidery) that had some trouble keeping his belly under control, and he had bushy side-burns that put Arnwald to shame.

"Good evening," he greeted me with a good-natured smile as he sat down next to me. "I couldn't help but overhear what you said. About the Nergals?"

"Yes. Bastards, all of them!" I barked, and for a moment I considered if I should spit to the side to emphasize my indignation, but I decided against it. Instead, I drank the rest of my water in one go and set the glass back down with a rough clank. "The curs were cowards escaping from a battle, and they barged into my manor to hide! I, of course, rebuked them, but by the time the Fauns of House Inanna showed up to chase them away, they set half my estate on fire!"

"My sincerest condolences," the man with the sideburns said, and he sounded like he meant it. "This war is a true tragedy."

"A senseless one," I added, closely watching the reactions of the barista and the other people around me, and to my surprise, they shared my sentiment.

"Indeed. But what can we do about it?"

"Nothing," a grizzled older man chimed in from the back, and despite looking like a veteran soldier, he was elegantly drinking a small cup of coffee with his pinkie finger held out and everything.

"It's a matter between the Noble Houses, but collateral damage is sadly unavoidable," the barista noted with the kind of world-weary wisdom one would expect from the average bartender.

"I just wish we could throw everyone involved into the Chasm of Desolation, and call it a day," I broached the main topic, but before I could move on, another man joined our conversation.

"Everyone?" asked the oddly deep baritone of a scrawny bald man from the left. "Does that include our Liege?"

"What?" I blurted out, making sure to sound suitably baffled by the suggestion. "He's the Lord of Inanna. Why would he send himself there?"

My naïve response earned me a few good-natured chuckles and the scrawny man shrugged.

"Who knows? Maybe the 'Emperor' will?" He paused and sent a wry glance at the disapproving barista. "What? I can't be the only one to think that. That's how politics work between the Houses."

"Maybe, but you aren't supposed to say that out loud," the man with the side-burns said, resulting in another bout of slightly more nervous chuckles.

I used this opportunity to shrug and casually wave my hand.

"Whatever. As you said, we can't do anything about it. Let the Lords of the Houses throw each other into dungeons for all I care, it won't bring back my estate." Once again, I found a surprising number of patrons agreeing with my words, and even clearly sympathizing with my 'plight', so I looked around and loudly asked, "By the way, where's this 'Chasm of Desolation', anyway?"

My sudden question didn't raise any suspicions, and one of the other patrons was happy to answer.

"Ah, that's the big 'ole behind the castle." He sounded just a bit tipsy, but it didn't stop him from giving directions. "It's just past the Faun barracks. A nasty place, that one."

"Of course it is," the barista interrupted him with a huff. "You don't expect criminals to be housed in a guest room."

"Especially not now," the scrawny man added, sounding even more sombre than before. "The cells must be teeming with prisoners of war."

"Probably," the man with the sideburns agreed half-heartedly and ordered another drink, and the conversation continued to meander around the war and the Noble Houses for a while longer.

For a while, I hesitated over whether I should bring up the stupid dungeon again and hope for more accurate directions, but I didn't want to look suspicious, so I just listened to the unfolding conversation and agreed with whatever the most popular opinion seemed to be. Which was rather surprising, really.

While I couldn't be sure I didn't just accidentally stumble upon a cabal of revolutionaries or something, Crowy didn't seem to have a particularly high approval rating among the people present. The same could be said about the civil war itself, and as for Bel, while most of the patrons were reluctant to even mention the 'Emperor', the bald guy was pretty vocal about his opinions on him. Which mostly boiled down to this: whether he was the Emperor or not, showing up out of the blue and throwing the Abyss into a civil war was a dick move. He used more or less the same terms too, though with more colourful language.

After experiencing the religious zeal of the average Celestial, this kind of smack-talk felt almost refreshing, Yet, as much as I would've liked to stay and tune into the frequency of the average Abyssal, I had other things to do. I patiently waited for the conversation to reach a bit of a lull, and then I forcefully stood up and cleared my throat.

"Thank you for the company, my good fellows, but I'm afraid it's time for me to go."

"A shame." The portly man on the seat next to mine chuckled. "Give our regards to the missus of the house!"

"I will do. Now then…" I theatrically reached into my pockets and pantomimed utter shock. "Oh, damnation! I was in such a hurry when I left home, I forgot to bring my wallet."

"What's the big deal?" another patron asked, sounding eminently amused by my reaction. "You only drank a glass of water. It's a pittance."

"And that makes this all the more embarrassing!" I griped with some theatrical flare and slumped my shoulders before turning to the barista. "I'll be shameless and as for you to open a tab for me." Before he could respond, I held out the walking cane, the only part of my outfit that wasn't of the Leoformer, and placed it onto the counter. "I'll leave this here for collateral. Once I put the affairs of my estate in order, I shall return for it and pay for my drink."

"But…"

Before he could get a word in, I put on my top hat, inclined my head towards the group of friendly patrons, and then stormed out of the establishment. Overall, I managed to gather some intel about the general attitude towards Crowy, Bel, and the war, but it wasn't my main objective, and I'd already spent too much time here.

Following the previous instructions, I started rapidly Phasing around, and while it wasn't exactly easy to find the right location, the castle served as a good landmark. It took some time, and lots of Phasing around in circles, but I successfully managed to locate the aforementioned Faun barracks. They would've been hard to miss in daylight, but in my defence, it was bloody dark out here.

There were a few guards on duty, but most of the compound was empty. No wonder; chances are, the Fauns of House Inanna were out there in the field, fighting the other Noble Houses, with only a token garrison being present here.

Now, off to find the elusive Chasm of Desolation!

…

It really wasn't that hard.

The castle was sitting on a natural plateau, and while most of the surrounding neighbourhoods were densely packed with buildings and roads, a large area near the southern base of said plateau, just a stone's throw away from the Faun compound, was simultaneously empty yet well-lit. It was also surrounded by a perimeter of high stone walls forming four sides of a pentagon, while the last side was instead the sheer cliff face with a conspicuously round hole in it.

That wasn't quite a 'chasm' by any relevant definition of the word, nor very 'desolate', but if I was a betting man, my money would've been on it anyway. Luckily, I didn't have to guess.

With just half a dozen short-range teleports, I Phased right past the walls without anyone being the wiser. Before long, I was standing in front of the yawning opening in the rock, with a single metal staircase leading down into its unlit bowels. There were no guards, and while there was some kind of hazy barrier covering the entrance with an ethereal purple glow, I couldn’t see any security or surveillance spells. It perfectly matched how the place was during my first visit.

After spending some time making sure that there really wasn't anyone or anything that could see me, I Phased past the barrier and headed down, one teleport at a time. Even though I went slow and methodical, using Far Sight to check around every corner, it didn't take long to reach the familiar corridors of the dungeon.

Rough stone walls and iron bars, lit by honest-to-goodness wall torches, and most glaringly, filled with a thick, purple haze emanating from the similarly coloured symbols etched into the ceiling of every single cell. I didn't feel it during my first visit to this place (probably because I was wholly unfamiliar with the metaphysics of the Simulacrum in general and mana in particular), but just spending a few minutes here made me realize why there were no other security measures. The entire underground complex was under some sort of grand magic-dampening spell than interfered with enchantments and made handling mana pretty damn difficult.

Because I had to deal with the arch-mages trying to dispel my Bel disguise before, my Leoformer was fortified against the former, but the latter was still a problem. Staying here made me feel like I was constantly short of breath, and it got so bad that I had to undo my Leoformer and return to the casual clothes I was wearing before. The moment I did that, it was as if a weight was lifted from my chest.

I couldn't breathe easy just yet though. While this anti-magic spell didn't interfere with my extra-Simulacral abilities, such as my Phasing and Far Sight, all of my combat abilities were still reliant on the in-universe magic system, and I accessed those through my Leoformer and other equipment. Without any of those, I felt almost naked, but also just a bit excited.

It's been quite a while since the last time I had to skulk around like this, relying on my wits while attempting to accomplish something. Sneaking, using my Far Sight to peek around corners, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was pretty exhilara—

"Yo."

"Mother of a Swedish goat merchant!" I yelled out and jumped back, only to relax the moment I recognized the source of the voice in the dark. "Jesus tapdancing Christ, man! What are you even doing here?!"

"Waiting for you," the guy leaning against the nearby wall answered with a smirk.

"Then why didn't you call out of me earlier!?"

"I didn't want to ruin your fun too early," Bel, or rather, future-me responded flippantly and gestured for me to follow him. "Come, I'll show the way, so you'll get home relatively early and Judy won't be as mad."

"As mad?" I repeated while automatically following after him. On closer look, while he was wearing his Bel outfit, he didn't have the mask, and he seemed a bit more haggard than the last time I'd seen him. More importantly though… "Wait, why would she be mad at me at all?"

"Because it's past midnight, and you smell like cigarette smoke and liquor from the salon," future-me answered nonchalantly and pointed down the hallway. "More importantly, there's the stairwell leading down to the lower levels, where the kid is being held."

"Oh, okay then…" I mumbled while trying to sniff at myself, but all I could smell was the damp, fetid air of the dungeon. "So, why exactly are you here this time? To warn me about spoilers?"

"Partially." He shrugged, and pointed a finger down. "Three floors."

Before I could ask what he meant, he disappeared from sight, so I grudgingly Phased down, one storey at a time, until he was right in front of me again. He acted like he had to wait ages and gestured for me to follow him again.

"I'm mainly here to make sure you don't take the kid away from here ahead of schedule."

"Would I?"

"I know myself, and I know that I'm weak against kids, so it's better to be safe than sorry."

"I'm not weak to kids," I denied on the spot, and he rolled his eyes at me.

"Don't argue with yourself, you dolt, and listen up; just stick to the plot outlined in the notes, okay? Don't try to rush things, or it will just mess everything up."

"I wasn't planning to. I'm only here to scout out the situation… which you should already know."

"I do, but because of this stupid hard-coded Free Actor crap, it's better to make sure we're on the same page anyway," future-me insisted, but before I could get another word in, a young voice called out to us from the cell at the end of the hallway.

"Uncle Antonio? Is that you?"

That made me nearly stumble and turn a critical eye at my temporally displaced self. He acted like my reaction was funny and pointed at his face.

"Oh, before I forget it, right now I'm Antonio Balderdash, phantom thief par excellence."

I continued to eye him.

"Judy really is going to kill us."

"Don't be overdramatic," he dismissed me and walked ahead with wink. "What she doesn't know, can't hurt her. Or me."