Chapter 24
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 24
Chapter Title: It Must Be Something Like That (1)
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A clear day without a single cloud. It was a refreshing morning.
Ian naturally opened his eyes at his usual time.
The cold that had plagued him all yesterday had vanished without a trace.
Still, from lying down too long, dull aches radiated from his stiffened body here and there.
Even so, this was close enough to fully recovered.
Ian rolled his shoulders and quietly sat up.
"Captain... oh."
Tanya, who had come to check on Ian's condition, quietly opened the door and made eye contact.
Seeing that Ian was already up, Tanya's face showed a slight surprise.
"Y-you're awake."
"Yeah. I think I'm okay now."
For some reason, Ian spoke to Tanya, who was looking at him with a tense expression, gauging his reaction.
"Did you come for breakfast? Go on ahead. I'll be down soon."
"Ah... yes!"
Tanya, her face slightly flushed for some reason, closed the door and hurried downstairs like she was fleeing.
A short while later, Ian finished preparing and came down the stairs. He saw the three members of his mercenary corps already seated at the table.
Mika and Tanya.
And Rin, who normally wouldn't be up at this hour but had been forcibly woken and dragged along because she shared a room with the other two, was yawning as she sat at the table.
"Morning."
"Ah, Captain. You look fine today."
As Ian greeted them and sat at the table, Rin looked him up and down and spoke.
"Shouldn't you rest a bit more?"
"Nah. I think I'm good now."
Hearing that Ian had recovered in just one day, Rin puffed out her chest proudly, as if it were thanks to her.
"See? What we did must've helped after all."
"...Tanya's care helped the most."
At Ian's words, Mika flinched and looked up.
In Mika's mind, she recalled what Tanya had done to the sleeping Ian last night.
...That?
Catching Mika's gaze, Tanya vigorously shook her head, denying it.
Ian, about to bring up Tanya's story, remembered last night's events and recalled that he'd fallen asleep before Tanya returned after he ate the porridge.
"Oh. Sorry about last night. I conked out first."
"Y-yes?!"
Tanya jumped in surprise and dropped her spoon.
Mika whipped her head around, eyeing Tanya and Ian suspiciously in turn.
Ian sensed something odd in Tanya's reaction and spoke up.
"...Did something happen last night?"
"N-no!"
Tanya denied it immediately, but oddly enough, she glanced at Mika while doing so.
"N-nothing... happened."
Tanya answered in a voice that grew smaller as she gauged reactions, then cautiously asked Ian.
"Um... did you notice anything strange?"
"Like what?"
"Nothing, right?"
"...Did something really happen?"
"No......"
It was clear something had happened.
Ian eyed Tanya suspiciously, but he couldn't get anything out of her tightly shut mouth.
...It's Tanya, so it was probably nothing big.
Thinking that, Ian brushed it off without much thought.
Only Mika's piercing gaze quietly turned toward Tanya.
Not long after, the innkeeper personally brought food to the table.
As he set down the plates of breakfast, he spotted Ian sitting there and spoke.
"Had a cold, huh?"
"Yes. All better now."
"Haha, what kind of man lies in bed over a little cold."
The innkeeper laughed heartily as he placed the plates down.
"A mercenary all skin and bones like this—how's he supposed to work? Here, this is on the house."
The innkeeper slapped Ian on the back and set down a plate piled with meat scraps before leaving.
It was a dish made from leftover meat bits after preparing the menu.
Normally, such ingredients went into stew, but the innkeeper occasionally gave them away to guests like this.
Ian gave his thanks and slid the plate to the center of the table.
Everyone's eyes lit up as they reached for it with their forks.
To mercenaries, meat was something you could never have enough of, no matter how much or when.
Watching his team, Ian lightly checked his condition and thought he'd be able to head out on missions without issue by tomorrow.
Ian spoke to everyone.
"Come to my room later."
"...?!"
As everyone nodded, only Tanya flinched in surprise and looked at Ian.
"W-what for...?"
"A meeting."
"Ah...."
Because of Tanya's increasingly suspicious reactions, Ian fell deep into thought, wondering if he'd muttered something weird in his sleep.
After breakfast ended, the members immediately gathered in Ian's cramped room.
"What's this about? Why not during breakfast?"
It wasn't a great place for talking without a proper table, but in an inn like this, there was no suitable spot for a meeting anyway.
Ian usually just talked over breakfast at the first-floor table, but this time, there was something he couldn't show to others, so he had no choice.
"This."
Ian spread out a paper on the bed. It was the map of the underground sewer he'd been drawing.
Everyone crowded onto the bed and peered at the map Ian showed them.
"Whoa... it's come a long way. Isn't this basically done?"
"Yeah. Almost finished, except a few spots."
Ian pointed to a specific location.
The map showed countless passages tangled complexly, and the spot Ian indicated stood out with an especially empty space.
"Look here."
"What's this?"
To Rin, it just looked like a wall, but if you examined it closely, it was indeed unusual.
But that was all you could tell from the map, so Rin looked at Ian with a puzzled expression.
"What's here?"
"Yeah. There's probably a secret room here."
"...Why would there be something like that?"
"Secret...!"
Rin looked skeptical, but conversely, Mika's eyes began to sparkle.
The word "secret" had a way of stimulating a mage's curiosity no matter where it was attached.
"Labyrinth City is an incredibly old place. The underground sewer was built ages ago too. Especially back then, with no guild around, places like this weren't well managed."
According to the setting.
This city's underground naturally hid secret rooms.
An underground without secrets? How could such a space exist in an RPG?
"So... there's a secret storeroom here?"
"Yeah. We'd have to open it to find out what's inside."
For example, it could be a smuggler's hideout or a place to stash black market goods.
If it was hidden in a place like the underground sewer, it was bound to be for something illegal or secretive that couldn't be seen by others.
That's how Ian explained it to his team, but from the room's shape on the map, he already knew what was there.
"We'll need to prepare to get in here. Let's all head to the shop."
The hidden place in the underground sewer was... a black mage's laboratory.
"Everyone got everything?"
"Yes."
The next day, everyone had packed their gear and supplies more thoroughly than usual.
As they headed to the underground sewer, their expressions seemed a notch more tense than normal.
Ian had told them in advance that they'd check out that secret spot in the sewer today.
Everyone walked through the underground sewer with far more tension than usual, vigilantly watching their surroundings, and soon arrived at the suspicious area marked on the map.
Ian examined the nearby wall briefly and spoke.
"This is it. Everyone, look for anything suspicious on the wall."
"Suspicious?"
"Cracks, protruding bricks... that sort of thing."
He could predict the room's location, but the entrance direction was random, so they had to search nearby directly.
After safely clearing the nearby monsters, they split up at Ian's command and began feeling along the walls for anything suspicious.
"Found it!"
"Again?"
"This time it feels real!"
After about three false alarms.
This time, Tanya found the real switch.
Ian carefully pulled out the brick, revealing a switch that opened the door inside.
Ian placed his hand on the switch and turned to the three.
"Everyone ready?"
The three nodded with tense faces.
Ian had warned them yesterday during preparations that there was a high chance of monsters inside the secret room.
Of course, knowing the inside of a secret room he'd never entered would be suspicious, so he'd just said "high chance." But monsters appearing was confirmed.
In the "Black Mage's Laboratory," the boss monster was a "Giant Scavenger."
A massive rat mutated by the abandoned lab's chemicals.
The strongest boss monster in this underground sewer.
Ian had spent yesterday teaching his team how to fight large monsters and prepared plenty of items for taking down the Giant Scavenger.
Though enlarged and with more HP, it lost the Scavenger's signature evasion, killing its strengths. Following the original Scavenger's simple patterns exactly, it wasn't that tough a boss.
Ian signaled the mercenaries and pressed the switch. Dust billowed as the wall parted, revealing a hidden passage.
Ian quickly tossed a light orb inside the passage.
"......"
No ear-splitting monster roar... just quiet silence.
Thick dust illuminated by the light swirled chaotically in the air.
"...There's nothing there?"
The orb's light rolling inside gave a peek at the interior.
It wasn't ruins; it was a perfectly intact laboratory, just old and dusty.