Chapter Text
By midday, the streets of Rome had become a river of voices, all flowing into one another until the city itself seemed to hum with life.
Italian rolled through the streets in rapid bursts, expressive hands accompanying every conversation. English drifted from tourists carrying maps and cameras. Chinese blended into the crowd alongside the occasional familiar sound of Korean, catching Jinwoo’s attention for only a moment before disappearing beneath the endless tide of noise.
The summer heat pressed down heavily.
It rose from the ancient cobblestones beneath their feet, making the air above the streets shimmer like a mirage. Those stones had been walked on for thousands of years—by merchants carrying goods, soldiers marching toward battles they would never return from, nobles wearing fine clothes, beggars searching for coins, children chasing after each other through streets that had witnessed the rise and fall of empires.
Centuries of footsteps and rainstorms had polished them smooth; yet it still wasn’t smooth enough to keep Jinah from tripping.
Jinah had been staring at every gelato shop window they had passed by for the past ten minutes.
He could already guess what she was going to say before she said it.
"Oppa."
Jinwoo glanced sideways.
His younger sister pointed dramatically toward a small shop displaying colorful cups of gelato. "I want gelato."
"You had breakfast an hour ago."
"That was breakfast."
"You also snacked on a pastry."
"That was a cultural experience. It doesn’t count"
Jinwoo stared at her, unimpressed.
Jinah stared back.
"...You learned that excuse from Mom, didn't you?" He exhaled with a huff.
Their mother immediately looked away with a hand rising up to cover a smile.
Jinwoo sighed. "Fine."
Jinah smiled triumphantly.
Somewhere nearby, a church bell rang. The deep, heavy sound rolled between buildings, announcing the start of another hour with the confidence of something that had been doing so for centuries.
"Jinwoo, stand closer to your father." Mom starts herding them for a photo - any food purchased in Italy deserved to be photographed well.
Jinah is placed in the center with her gelato cone naturally.
Jinwoo grumbled but shifted even closer. "I am standing close."
"Closer." Mom tsked.
"There is already only three centimeters between us."
"Then make it two centimeters."
Jinwoo looked at his father. His father simply smiled and placed an arm around his shoulder.
A long time ago, Jinwoo had wondered if he would ever experience normal days like this. He would daydream what such a normal day like this would look like as he endeavored to become stronger when he had yet to become the shadow monarch.
Before carrying the weight of humanity’s survival on his shoulders, he had spent his life worrying about hospital bills, dungeon raids, and whether he would come home alive after entering another C-Rank gate.
Now he was standing in Rome with his family while his mother argued over photographs and his sister demanded gelato. Scooters terrorized the streets with violent screeches and illegal turns with all the dignity of a dying goose in the background. Rome, apparently, had survived invasions, wars, plagues, and political disasters only to be terrorized by scooters that had no respect for traffic rules. Jinwoo could especially relate with that.
Yet It was still strangely peaceful.
Then his father spotted another Korean tourist wearing a football jersey.
"...No way." Jinah groaned as their father broke free from containment and rushed to approach the stranger.
Within thirty seconds, they were discussing football.
Within one minute, the topic had somehow become the 2002 South Korea versus Italy World Cup match.
Jinwoo closed his eyes. Of all the battles his father could have chosen… This was the one.
"Your father really loves that story." His mother smiled.
Jinwoo glanced at her. "He has told it at least fifty times."
"Only fifty?" His mother laughed softly.
For a moment, Jinwoo simply watched them. The smell of freshly brewed coffee lingered through the narrow streets along with the scent of warm bread from nearby bakeries. The old stone walls baked beneath sunlight, and the faint sweetness of flowers hanging from balconies. Above them, laundry fluttered between buildings like surrender flags.
This was what he fought for. His family, alive and well. It was something he treasured more than he could explain.
-o-o-o-o-o-
As he and his family wove through the streets toward the meeting point for their afternoon tour, Jinwoo found himself looking down more often than ahead.
He could feel death beneath his feet.
It wasn't a sensation he could describe to anyone else. Not even another Hunter would understand. It wasn't mana and it wasn't hostile intent. It wasn't the unmistakable pressure of a powerful monster waiting to strike.
It was simply… Death. Old death. The kind that had long since surrendered its names and faces, leaving behind only an imprint too deep for time to erase.
It kept tugging at his awareness like an annoying fruit fly circling around his lunch. Every time he focused on the bustling streets above, his senses drifted back underground again.
Down.
Down.
Even further down.
Rome had buried almost as much of itself as it had built. Every generation had built over the last. Temples became churches. Markets became ruins. Palaces collapsed into foundations for newer palaces. The dead were laid beneath the living, and eventually the living joined them. The city wasn't just standing on history; there were thousands of years compressed betwee stone and mortar like a crepe cake.
His senses reached downward almost instinctively, crawling through empty chambers, remnants of trodden down roads and long-forgotten aqueducts.
For a brief moment, Jinwoo wondered just how much of Rome still existed beneath Rome.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The guide and the rest of their tour group gathered beside a narrow staircase chained close with a lock that descended into the earth.
"If everyone will follow me." She smiled while unlocking and undoing the chained gate. She motioned everyone into a more organized line before beginning the descent.
The entrance itself looked almost disappointingly ordinary. It was just a narrow stairway disappearing into darkness between weathered stone walls. If the tour guide hadn't pointed it out, most tourists would have walked past without realizing an entire world slept underneath the city.
Cool air breathed washed over Jinwoo's face like the city's first exhale.
The air smelled of wet stone, dust, and dampness.
Jinwoo stepped below and felt the temperature drop almost immediately.
The heat of the Roman afternoon vanished from his skin, replaced by a cool dampness that clung to the air. Moisture beaded faintly against the walls, tiny droplets catching the electric lights installed for visitors.
After barely a dozen steps down, the daylight disappeared.
The stones swallowed the sounds of Rome with startling efficiency. The traffic faded first, then the distant conversations. The world above slowly disappeared until only the footsteps and voices of the tour group remained and even those seemed muffled. Each word sounded as though it had been wrapped in thick wool before reaching his ears.
People lowered their voices without realizing it; the place demanded quiet.
Jinah unconsciously did the same. "...It's creepy."
"It isn't."
She looked sideways at him. "You say that because literally nothing scares you."
Jinwoo thought about it. "...Probably."
She rolled her eyes. "You're impossible."
The corridor stretched ahead. It narrowed enough that two adults would have brushed shoulders passing one another. Niches had been carved into either wall in endless rows, each one once home to someone who had laughed, loved, quarreled, prayed and died before half the world's kingdoms had even learned their own names.
Now there was only stone.
The guide raised her lantern and began the tour.
"Many of these galleries date to the second century," she explained, her accented English echoing gently through the tunnel. "The catacombs extend for many kilometers beneath Rome. Some sections remain unexplored even today."
-o-o-o-o-o-
"Oppa." Jinah nudged his arm. "You've been staring at that corridor for like... five minutes."
Jinwoo blinked. "...Have I?"
"You didn't even notice everyone started walking again."
"...Sorry."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You've got that face."
"What face?"
"The one where you're thinking about something weird."
"...I don't have a face for that."
"You absolutely do."
Their guide continued enthusiastically.
"...many sections remain inaccessible to the public due to structural instability..."
"...estimated at over twenty kilometers..."
"...some passages have never been fully mapped..."
Jinwoo barely listened. His senses had already wandered elsewhere.
Passage after passage, maze after maze… his senses traced along the pathways.
Some tunnels had collapsed centuries ago. Others curved downward into darkness untouched by electric lights. Rats nested where bishops had once walked. Tiny insects crawled through cracks in walls older than most nations. Water dripped patiently from ceilings, wearing away stone one drop at a time.
To ordinary eyes the walls were only tuff rock, rough beneath the fingertips, damp where tiny beads of water gathered. To Jinwoo they were little different than fog. Darkness spread beneath the earth like veins. His awareness slipped through solid rock as naturally as breathing.
His shadows felt it too.
His soldiers whispered from within his shadow.
My Liege. Beru sounded almost reverent. What a magnificent kingdom…
Jinwoo resisted the urge to sigh.
Look how many tunnels! Such beautiful darkness! Such wonderful natural fortifications!
Kaisel released a low rumbling sound suspiciously close to a snort.
Even Igris inclined his helmet ever so slightly which was saying something given how the two never were able to agree on much.
Tusk was even less subtle.
UNDERGROUND!
A pause.
SO MUCH UNDERGROUND!
Another pause.
EXCELLENT UNDERGROUND!
Jinwoo bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing.It occurred to him—not for the first time—that commanding immortal warriors capable of conquering nations occasionally resembled supervising an unusually destructive kindergarten class.
Beru emerged from his shadow just enough for his head and antennae to poke into existence. His compound eyes gleamed.
There are more tunnels.
"I noticed."
Many more.
"I noticed that too."
May we explore them?
"No."
Silence. It felt like a particularly mournful silence. Then… Beru visibly deflated.
Just one?
"No."
Half of one?
"...No."
A very small tunnel?
"No."
Perhaps merely looking?
"No."
Beru slowly lowered himself back into the shadows with all the dignity of a soldier receiving devastating battlefield news.
The shared psychic connection carried a wave of profound disappointment.
Jinwoo rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Children. They were all children.
Ignoring his increasingly dramatic shadow army, he turned his attention back toward the guide.
"...as I said earlier, these chambers date back to the second century..."
Jinwoo’s gaze lingered on the stone walls that had no trace of mana, monsters, or gates. There was nothing that should have interested the Shadow Monarch. Yet he could feel death layered upon death until the tunnels themselves seemed to breathe with weight and power - it was a different kind of power that still called out to the Shadow Monarch.
-o-o-o-o-o-
That evening, they had dinner overlooking the Piazza Navona.
Street musicians played violins near the fountains, their melodies drifting lazily across the open plaza. Children chased pigeons with loud shrieks. Artists packed away half-finished portraits while waiters navigated the outdoor tables with practiced ease.
The city with death under its feet felt wonderfully alive.
His mother declared the pasta the best she had ever eaten.
His father somehow entered an animated discussion with the waiter about football despite neither of them speaking the other's language. Neither seemed particularly bothered by that fact. They were able to communicate enough by pointing dramatically, laughing loudly, and repeated player names with increasing enthusiasm. Jinwoo had absolutely no idea how either of them understood the conversation.
Jinah took approximately two hundred photos of dinner.
Everything was normal, peaceful. It was exactly what vacations were supposed to be.
It was... nice.
The evening breeze carried away the heat that had settled over Rome throughout the day. Warm golden light softened into amber as the sun dipped lower behind the old buildings surrounding the Piazza Navona. Conversations drifted lazily between outdoor tables. Glasses clinked. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed loudly enough that half the plaza glanced over before returning to their own meals.
"...Oppa?" Jinah had finally stopped taking pictures.
"Hm?"
"You've been distracted all day."
He looked over. "...Was I?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she gave him a look, the kind only younger siblings possessed. It was one that silently communicated don't even try lying to me.
Jinwoo held her gaze for several seconds.
"..."
"..."
She folded her arms. "The catacombs?"
His eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the darkening skyline beyond the plaza.
Even from here, even surrounded by thousands of lively living people, he could still feel it. It was like hearing a familiar melody carried in the wind from somewhere impossibly far away.
"...A little."
"A little," Jinah repeated flatly. "You've spent half the day staring at the ground."
"I have not."
"You walked into a lamp post."
She wasn't wrong. His thoughts had wandered back underground dozens of times since leaving the catacombs. It annoyed him because he couldn't explain why. There had been no mana; there was nothing nothing that should have held his attention.
And yet… Every instinct he possessed kept circling back like an itch he couldn't scratch. It was like a word resting on the tip of his tongue yet not remember what the word was.
"...You're going back, aren't you?"
Jinwoo blinked.
Jinah watched him for exactly two seconds before letting out a long, theatrical sigh. "I knew it."
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to." She pointed her fork at him accusingly. "You've got that look. You know, The one where you're pretending you've already made up your mind when you've absolutely already made up your mind."
"...Is it that obvious?" Jinwoo looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. Maybe it was. He hadn't consciously decided to return yet. But the possibility had already begun arranging itself in the back of his mind.
Maybe he’ll go back tonight after everyone was asleep. It wouldn't take long. His shadows could map every unexplored passage before dawn. He could satisfy his curiosity and be back before anyone noticed he was gone.
It was a perfectly reasonable plan.
"You promised Mom this was a vacation."
"It is."
"A vacation where you don't secretly disappear to investigate mysterious underground places."
"I wasn't planning to."
She stared.
"...Okay," he admitted after a moment. "I was considering it."
She groaned, dropping her forehead into one hand. "I can't believe I have to tell the dumbest detective in the world not to go exploring creepy underground tunnels full of dead people by himself."
Above ground, Rome buzzed with life. Below, an older Rome waited in silence.