Chapter 29
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: Invasion (1)
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A night shrouded in thick clouds, where even the moonlight was hidden from view.
On the walls of Labyrinth City, braced for battle, countless soldiers and mercenaries stood in formation, vigilantly watching the world beyond.
The gazes of numerous sentries fixed intently on the maze district outside the walls.
Just looking at the ominous labyrinth stirred an unsettling chill.
According to the investigation team's analysis, the monster assault was due any day now.
With no way to pinpoint the exact time, every soldier remained on the walls, ready to respond at a moment's notice.
Tension etched the faces of all the soldiers patrolling the battlements.
Night gave way, and dawn was fast approaching.
As the horizon began to redden, a sentry on watch heard the sound of a few soldiers climbing up from below.
It marked the end of what had felt like an endless shift.
"Shift change. See anything?"
"Nope."
In that instant, as the relief spoke from behind, the squinting sentry caught sight of something hazy moving in the distance.
He rubbed his fatigued eyes with his hand.
"What's wrong? Go get some rest."
"Hold on... there was something just now."
A ripple of murmurs spread among the other soldiers and mercenaries atop the walls.
Glancing sideways just in case, the sentry locked eyes with a mercenary who had turned in the same direction.
"Hey! You saw it too?"
The shout came from a mercenary sentry stationed a short distance away.
Realizing he hadn't imagined it, the soldier whipped his gaze back to the labyrinth.
The sentries on duty that night had been specially selected for their exceptional night vision.
In the eyes of the soldier blessed with the [Owl's Eyes] trait, the shadows of monsters stirring in the darkness were unmistakable.
Sleepiness vanished in an instant, his eyes snapping wide.
"They're out!"
"For real? Sound the alarm!"
Confirming it wasn't fatigue-induced hallucination, the mercenary swiftly rang the bell at the outpost.
Just before dawn broke, the shrill toll echoed through the bustling camp inside the walls.
"Emergency! Enemy sighted!"
The sentries' cries poured toward the interior of the walls.
At the same moment, monstrous roars erupted from beyond the horizon, rising with the first light of dawn.
Couriers immediately dashed through the streets, and every communication channel in the city broadcast the same urgent message everywhere.
"Invasion underway! Invasion underway!"
Soon, massive bells began tolling from the city's spires.
The signal of the enemy's assault. The call to battle.
"To your positions!"
Countless soldiers scrambled up onto the walls and took their places.
From atop the battlements, they watched monsters pour out from the myriad entrances of the labyrinth.
The sun rose fully, and with its rays, the monsters blanketed the plains—like waves crashing toward the city.
True to their relentless drills, all forces snapped into position and readied their attacks in seconds.
"Fire!"
At the command, arrows launched from the walls darkened the sky, followed swiftly by spells that swept through the monster horde.
Not a single arrow or spell went to waste amid the densely packed monsters; every one struck true.
Yet the fallen were trampled underfoot, their spots instantly filled by the surging masses behind.
Volley after volley of arrows and magic followed, but the wave of monsters showed no sign of thinning.
Rookies on their first invasion swallowed hard, their weapon grips trembling.
Veterans merely wore expressions of weary disgust as they silently prepared for combat.
Moments later, the monster wave slammed into the obstacles erected before the walls and stalled briefly.
Piles of rocks, wooden barricades, and sharpened stakes blocked their path, forcing smaller monsters to seek detours.
The fiercer ones attacked the barriers outright.
Confusion rippled through the vanguard, slowing the advance just a touch.
While the common monsters were held up, the swift climbers vaulted the obstacles and began scaling the walls first.
"Melee teams, prepare for combat!"
The forces lining the walls gripped their weapons, bracing for the fight.
One particularly massive and agile monster reached the top first, clawing its way up.
The first to crest the wall let out a roar and leaped forward.
"──!"
The instant its head appeared over the parapet, a spear flashed from behind like lightning, piercing straight through its skull.
The monster's corpse plummeted back down the wall, while the spear rewound through the air to Rebecca's hand.
"Attack!"
Weapons from the waiting mercenaries and soldiers rained down on the monsters clambering up behind it.
"Urgent dispatch! Invasion has begun! Combat engaged at the north gate!"
In the command post at the rear of the underground sewer, Ian—waiting there—received word from a messenger who had raced down from the surface.
Though the underground made it hard to gauge the situation above, the growing clamor and vibrations from overhead had given everyone a vague sense of it already.
"Time for us to move out."
The officers who met Ian's gaze nodded in agreement.
Leaving Ian behind to remain at the command post, the squad members and soldiers headed to their assigned positions.
Rin took her place at her first outpost, silently watching the forward passage where monsters would soon appear.
Faint echoes of the surface battle drifted into Rin's ears.
And then... a sound approaching from deep within the sewer passage—familiar, yet unnervingly off.
It was the sound of slimes, one she'd heard ad nauseam during sewer patrols, but this carried a far greater presence.
Soon, what appeared before Rin were slimes.
...But calling them "just slimes" didn't do it justice. It was a tidal wave of enormous slimes.
Facing it head-on, Rin swallowed hard.
Monster wave.
Rin could feel firsthand why the monster invasion was called that.
What approached wasn't hyperbole... it was truly a wave.
A countless mass of slimes merged into one surging tide.
The sewer gates had been narrowed, exposing the channel floor, yet slimes crawled forth in numbers enough to fill it completely.
─Thud!
The slime wave, moving like a single organism, crashed into the barricade piled midway through the sewer.
The simple wooden obstacle halted the slimes' tide momentarily, but it creaked and began to collapse under the pressure.
The assault against the barrier caused a slight jam-up.
...Now!
True to her endless practice, Rin hurled her orb at that precise instant.
The orb struck home, and azure flames erupted, blanketing the floor.
The flames were quickly smothered beneath the slimes, but they persisted, rising ceaselessly from below.
The slimes bubbled and churned like water coming to a boil.
But such measures couldn't fully halt the horde.
Before long, the obstacles crumbled entirely, and the wave pressed onward once more.
"Post 1 destroyed!"
With the soldier's shout, Rin lobbed her final orb and bolted backward.
As she sprinted down the passage, she spotted a soldier waiting at the next designated point ahead.
The soldier, alerted by the cry, confirmed Rin's approach and triggered the floor trap.
Rin extended a hand to the soldier hastily climbing a ladder from the sewer bed and hauled him up.
"Next! On to the next!"
Whenever time allowed, Rin consulted her map while navigating the underground sewer, following paths she'd memorized down to her dreams, racing along.
From behind came the sound of the freshly set trap activating, engulfing the passage in roaring flames.
Luke-warm heat washed over her, accompanied by the crackle of burning slimes.
A few minutes of dashing through the passages like that.
Reaching the intersection, Rin spotted Mika and Tanya arriving from other directions alongside their soldiers.
It was the planned rendezvous point.
Everyone arriving right on time meant things had gone smoothly on their ends too.
"Haa... you're all still alive..."
"Cut the nonsense... prep the next one."
No time to swap stories about how it went.
But their dazed expressions suggested they'd all faced much the same.
Rin, Mika, and Tanya took up positions at the next post in the rendezvous area.
Slowly, the slimes advanced toward the trio once more.
They'd surely taken heavy losses passing through multiple traps, yet the slimes converging from three directions seemed even larger in scale than at the start.
"Th-this... we can actually stop it, right?"
Mika's inadvertent mutter hung in the air; Tanya and Rin had no real answer to give.
Facing what felt like an impossible task, Ian had always insisted they could handle it.
And even missions that seemed utterly hopeless at a glance had, in the end, turned out just as he'd promised...
...But gazing at the slimes pouring in from afar.
This time, it truly felt like they were doomed.