Point of Contact
Point of Contact
As expected, we were able to rendezvous with the group before 6 o'clock.
"Oh. You'd already finished."
Even so, four neatly killed bodies and the rest of the party were waiting at the dungeon entrance. During yesterday's reconnaissance I hadn't seen the outgoing sentries emerge early for the changeover, but apparently today they'd decided to do just that.
"Arrived right on ti... hmm. You're both alright, right?"
There'd been no shortage of enemies smashed by Yekaterina's war hammer, and both she and I were splattered with quite a lot of blood. Gin hesitated at the sight before asking.
"The bastards couldn't even put up a shred of resistance. Shit, just like Eldmia said, once we started by taking one out, they were so stunned they couldn't do anything."
"Hmm. I see. An idea that catches them off guard is important. We finished up without much trouble, too. Rellie apparently knows how to use something called silence magic."
"Strictly speaking, I temporarily put up a barrier that suppresses the sound around it."
"Doesn't using magic get you caught?"
"Using it without getting caught is precisely where my skill lies."
As expected of a party you could hold up anywhere without shame. Working with other half-assed adventurers later was obviously going to make the gap feel painfully huge, which was already making me feel dizzy.
"I only briefly checked the passageway, but there was no difference from the scale marked on the map. If we proceed as planned, there shouldn't be any problems."
Gin's plan wasn't complicated. The passage was so narrow that two grown men standing shoulder to shoulder would nearly fill it, so Gaendal and I would take the front and push forward. Gin would follow behind us and guard against surprise attacks. Yekaterina, whose war hammer would be difficult to swing in the corridor, would stay farther back with Rellie and make sure no one slipped past us to escape.
Since her war hammer could probably block the path just by thrusting it forward, as long as we didn't lose track of the two archers and the mage while advancing, no problems would arise—a pretty perfect plan.
It was an approach perfectly suited to the word subjugation.
Just in case, Gaendal and I took the daggers and short swords we'd found on the dead men, then entered the dungeon. After descending the stairs roughly one floor underground, we reached a stone corridor lit by torches mounted on the walls.
The map was simple enough that I'd memorized it. From here on, all we had to do was count the people in each room alternating along the left and right sides and relay the numbers quickly.
There were roughly 9 humans left, plus an unknown number of Demonfolk we couldn't identify precisely. We had nothing to hesitate over, so we rushed forward.
Assaulting the first room we encountered was my job.
"One!"
"What? What the... ghk!"
While either Gaendal or I entered a room, counted its occupants, and dealt with them, Gin coordinated with the other frontliner to hold the corridor. If a room contained two or more enemies, we attacked together; otherwise, we repeated the same pattern.
We would repeat that until we either killed everyone on the way to the chapel or became certain no rooms had been missed. Then we would signal Yekaterina and Rellie behind us and enter the chapel first. That was the basic rhythm of the slaughter.
We moved with the speed of a special-operations team clearing terrorists, and the enemies died one after another.
"Three!"
"What the hell, an ambu—ghk!"
"Throw!"
"Agh!"
Working in sync with Gaendal was easy. From how quickly he understood the situation to how fast he grasped what my shouted calls meant, he reacted as though he'd trained for exactly this. I could confidently say the same of myself.
Thanks to that, we even caught the archer by surprise and eliminated 8 of them without breaking a sweat.
"The rest are probably in the chapel. Let's go."
At Gaendal's decision, I hurled the short sword in my hand as hard as I could back down the corridor we'd come through. I hadn't used aura on the throw, so there was no chance it'd accidentally reach Yekaterina.
Instead, it struck the stone floor hard, and a sharp metallic clang filled the corridor as it skittered away.
That was the signal. Yekaterina and Rellie, who'd been checking every room behind us, would come running. We sprinted toward the chapel, now only a short distance away.
Some enemies had noticed something strange in the noise of our advance, while others hadn't noticed anything at all. That left us with no way to know whether the commotion had reached the chapel and put its occupants on alert.
In the end, all we could do was hurry as much as possible to avoid giving them even a moment to prepare.
"The one thing I'm most confident in is cutting people down right after an ambush, so I'll start us off."
"I'll cover you."
The instant Gaendal answered, I accelerated again and burst into the chapel, which had no door across its entrance and glowed with an ominous blue light.
I knew the moment I entered. Every eye had turned toward the sound of our hurried footsteps to see who was coming, but there was no real vigilance in those looks—only the kind of curiosity you'd show when someone suddenly came sprinting toward you. In other words, the ambush had succeeded completely.
15 years after reincarnating into this world, I finally saw Demonfolk with my own eyes.
There were five of them. The only obvious feature they all shared was the horns growing from their heads.
Their horns came in several shapes that looked like they'd never fit a hat. They weren't especially large, but they stood out clearly. Some had two, some one, and none seemed to have three—unless there was one hidden on the back of somebody's head.
Beyond that, there was no single physical trait that marked them out. Their hair wasn't uniformly black; their skin wasn't uniformly dark; the whites of their eyes weren't black either.
But outside of appearance, there was one unmistakable difference.
"Just what are you...?"
One Demonfolk bastard, apparently struck by a question much like my own, pointed at me in shock.
Those fuckers can use Magic Power.
The instant I realized that, I stopped caring whether I'd be bedridden tomorrow and drew out every bit of Magic Power I could manage for enhancement. I crossed the distance in a burst and swung at the Demonfolk who had stared at me in shock.
"Imposs..."
The effect of a level of physical enhancement I'd never attempted before was tremendous. I launched myself forward, drew my sword, and took the Demonfolk's head off before he had time to blink.
Even to my own senses, the speed was incredible, but one bastard not only reacted to this speed, he was precisely aiming at me and thrusting his sword in.
"Mage! Fix the gate! We have to escape!"
I barely knocked aside the sword thrust from my flank toward my temple and kicked him in the abdomen. He was the only one with two horns. Were Demonfolk ranked by horn count? The other three had reacted, but their movements were slower. This one was clearly their leader and the greatest threat.
The proof was that even in a state I could reasonably call my full power, I wasn't crushing him. If anything, we seemed almost evenly matched.
He looked different from the brief glimpse I'd gotten a moment earlier. His eyes were frighteningly bloodshot, and veins bulged across his face and body. He had clearly enhanced his body somehow—and whatever the others might think, I knew exactly what he had done.
He was forcing Magic Power into his body like someone pumping himself full of a dangerous drug.
"I'll hold this one! Protect the spellcaster!"
In the brief moment he gave orders to the Demonfolk, our blades clashed five times. If I hadn't learned swordsmanship from the Ogatorf family, the counterattack that came in on the third exchange would have split my jaw open and killed me—he was a bastard with real skill in swordsmanship.
Fuck. Ambush or no ambush, I was pretty sure this was the first time in my life I'd properly fought someone this strong.
Would fighting Delt head-on have felt like this, instead of killing him with that absurdly one-sided ambush? Of course, my swordsmanship had been far worse back then, so I probably would've died five times over.
"You've been chugging Magic Power like it's fucking drugs?!"
I wound my blade around the sword thrust toward my eye and knocked it aside, then used the rebound to try to split his skull. His displaced blade snapped back into line with terrifying speed and knocked mine away. He immediately followed with three lightning-fast attacks, and I had to block every one.
I wasn't being overwhelmed, but the Magic Power doping had made him very slightly stronger than me. If I gave him space, he'd use the opening to recover his stance and escape, so I stayed glued to him and kept our blades colliding.
The impacts were heavy enough that I could feel both weapons protesting. Then I noticed a small chip in my own blade.
All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant.
Were Demonfolk weapons built with clashes like this in mind? If so, was mine the only blade being destroyed while his remained intact? Was breaking my weapon part of his plan?
"Mage! Hurry up!"
I had considered enhancing my body by forcing Magic Power through it too. Naturally, I hadn't even tried. Maybe someday—but absolutely not any time soon.
That method was the fundamental reason every human who had experimented with using Magic Power this way had burst apart like fireworks and died.
But he was enduring it. Did Demonfolk bodies actually tolerate this?
"As if, fuck!"
The bastard's veins, swelling up as if about to burst any moment, his eyes turning increasingly blood-red, his ragged breathing—all of it was telling me. And the moment he snapped at the mage, who had been standing with arms outstretched in front of the gate, nervously glancing around and shuffling, everything became clear.
He can't last long like that!
"My big sister told me that’s a suicide move, you fucker!!"
Then the one who lasts longer wins—and that's me!