Triple Excel
The soldiers were stunned by the monstrous strength Shrakhim had used to lift four people at once. The elite soldier Curtis, especially, feared that Shrakhim might collapse under the strain.
“Good heavens... are you all right?”
“I-I am... all right, sir.”
Of course he was not all right.
His thighs were screaming at full pitch. His knees groaned and crackled as though they might split apart at any moment.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we all just clung together and used the scroll?” Elite soldier Axle suggested another way. For him to suggest hugging someone he hated as much as Shrakhim did said enough about how dangerously unsteady Shrakhim looked.
“No. This is the only way. Even if we can manage without it ourselves, the unconscious soldiers might fall from the air. We can’t risk that.”
Shrakhim gritted his teeth and held on.
“More importantly, hand me the scrolls one by one and put them in my mouth. Quickly!”
“Ah, understood.”
No, he could not grit his teeth and endure any longer. He had no choice but to bite down and tear the blink scrolls open with his teeth.
With two men already held in his arms, he could not lift them any higher, and both of his hands were occupied clutching Curtis and Axle.
“Yip, ready!”
“Yes, sir!”
Shrakhim concentrated most of his aura into his lower body. Through their clasped hands, the soldiers sent him aura as well, weak though it still was because they had only just recovered.
“Anyway, make sure you eat properly on time. No, looking at that belly, I suppose I don’t need to worry about that. Do some exercise, you idiot. That potbelly almost got you killed by a Hogrifon. And work your lower body too, hmm? Swordsmanship comes from leg strength. Still, you’ve got the leave now, so go and get some rest.”
“...Are you telling me to train or to rest? In any case, I shall take your words to heart, sir.”
Shrakhim had taken the Byeonbangbaek’s advice to heart and never neglected training his lower body. And now, those results were showing themselves.
“Graaahhh!”
Even with four people on his back, Shrakhim sprang upward.
- Whoosh.
As he jumped and threw his chin up, the recoil let him bite down hard on the first scroll.
“Up!”
“Up!” “Up!”
Shrakhim and the soldiers shouted toward the ceiling, which seemed impossibly far away.
- Pop.
The bodies of all five people shot upward with force. Shrakhim had taken inspiration from Lilian using a blink scroll in a vertical direction.
This time, however, the blink launched them far higher and far more fiercely than before.
“Ooooh! So high!”
The speed and distance of blink movement varied significantly depending on the caster’s mana, weight, and posture. Environmental factors also played a large role. Wind, temperature, the distribution of mana in the atmosphere, and so on.
It, it’s going this high?
Even Shrakhim, who had activated the scroll, was astonished by the length of the airtime.
There was only one reason he could carry four people and still move at such a height.
Was it because Shrakhim was lighter than Lilian? It wasn’t even worth considering.
Was it because Shrakhim’s mana was greater than Lilian’s? At present, Lilian’s mana was C (15~24), while Shrakhim’s was F (3~5).
Right now, this is the only way we have to escape. I once heard this from the Byeonbangbaek and from a magic soldier named Sicoop. The higher the mana of the person using the scroll, the greater the effect. And if several people focus their minds at once, the effect becomes even stronger. So put aside your hatred for me for the moment and join as one heart, all of you!
This was thanks to mana resonance.
When those bound by the same will concentrated together, they could condense aura or mana.
“It... it was true. Shrakhim really was telling the truth...”
The soldiers were deeply moved by Shrakhim’s edification delivery, in which he risked himself with every fiber of his body. And the desperate crisis they now faced drew them even tighter together.
Because of that, not only did the aura being sent to Shrakhim intensify, but the mana for using the scroll also surged outward.
- Whoom.
Shrakhim’s jump, made with every last ounce of strength, fused with everyone’s mana into a vertical blink.
Even so, that desperate second leap still fell a little short of clearing the cliff. Anticipating this, Shrakhim tore the second scroll open.
“Ai-o o-o!”
“Forty-five degrees!”
He succeeded in clearing the cliff at a 45-degree angle.
“Aaaah!”
Shrakhim stretched both arms forward and landed on his belly.
Thanks to his sturdy stomach absorbing the impact, the others were not injured.
“Ugh...”
As for him, he rolled around clutching his belly. The recoil from leaping while carrying four people had hit all at once, and every muscle and joint in his body was crying out in protest.
“A-are you all right?”
“Shrakhim, no, Sir Shrakhim! Get a hold of yourself!”
Only after Curtis and Axle helped him up could he finally manage to stand.
“I am... all right. It was only because you all trusted me and helped that I was able to do it. If I had been alone, I never could have managed it. Thank you.”
“That is what we should be saying. We were convinced we would die in that ravine... I don’t even know how to thank you for saving us.”
The former enmity between them was melted away in warm gratitude.
“But we’ve only just escaped the dragon’s maw. If we can’t get out of the dragon’s lair, we’ll die in the end anyway.”
“Mm... that is certainly true.”
They had broken through the immediate crisis, but they were still trapped in the cave.
“Special soldier Curtis, what about Austin and Erez? Even now, they still haven’t woken up.”
“Just so.”
The two soldiers who could not be fully healed because they lacked enough potions were still unconscious.
“They look weak, so it may be better not to wake them. Even if they did wake, they couldn’t move on their own... we’d have to carry them out whether on our backs or in our arms.”
“Please rest a bit, Sir Shrakhim. We’ll carry them.”
“Thank you. Then let us hurry to the place that man saw.”
The party approached the front of what Shrakhim believed to be a portal.
“Though I cannot guarantee that it is really a portal...”
Shrakhim hesitated, uncertain.
“It seems to be a spatial transfer magic circle.”
“Yes, when we were brought here one by one earlier, we saw the same pattern.”
“Truly? Thank Hariad! Still, to be safe, we had better test it for a moment.”
He was relieved by Curtis and Axle’s testimony, but Shrakhim still chose to proceed cautiously.
“You two, step back for a moment.”
Only a few hours earlier, they had nearly been caught in a troll trap.
“Hm... it doesn’t seem to be a trap.”
He threw stones into the magic circle and even dropped in a half-dead shell beetle, but nothing happened.
“Which of you two has the faster feet?”
Axle raised his hand.
“Then, Elite soldier Axle, it would be best if you took all the wounded out first. Once you escape this place, set the wounded down and go straight to the Byeonbangbaek to ask for rescue. As quickly as you can.”
“What about you, Sir Shrakhim?”
“Curtis and I will get the children out. We can’t carry the wounded and the children all the way out of the mountain, so we’ll find a safe place, hide, and wait for rescue. How about it, Special soldier Curtis? Can you follow this man’s lead?”
After some thought, Curtis, the senior-most member of the search party, nodded.
“That seems to be the best course. We’ll do that.”
“Thank you.”
Now it was time to activate the magic circle.
“Since I, and all of you, seemed to move in an instant, it looks like three people have to go in at once...”
After placing one wounded man on each of Axle’s shoulders, they shoved him into the magic circle.
The magical characters lining the circle’s edge began to glow blue.
- Spat.
Within seconds, Axle and the wounded men vanished.
“Good. It really seems to be the exit.”
“Then hurry and bring the children...”
“Wait a moment. There are a few things we need to know first. For one, the magic circle took about four seconds to activate...”
Shrakhim carefully checked the magic circle.
The magical letters carved into the floor lost their light after the spatial transfer effect was triggered, but over time they gradually recovered their blue glow.
“I think that indicates the cooldown for this magic circle.”
“Most likely. Then it will probably take three or four minutes for those letters to fill back in blue.”
“Right. Then let us quickly bring the children in the meantime.”
Shrakhim and Curtis headed to where the children were. Since there might be guards, they took cover against the wall and observed the area below.
“How strange. There were no guards earlier, and there still aren’t any now. Curtis, by what you said before, I thought they would certainly be hiding somewhere.”
“Yes, they certainly would have been before. Which means they must have knocked us out and shoved us into that damned pit.”
According to Curtis, he had been the first to be spatially transferred into the cave. He had wandered through the cave, discovered the children lying there, and just as he tried to approach them, he lost consciousness to some kind of attack. When he woke, his limbs had been severed and he was lying in a deep ravine, and after that the other soldiers were dumped into the ravine one by one.
“Sir Shrakhim, looking at their actions so far, I think those pointy-eared bastards were probably keeping track of the search party’s movements. In that case, it makes sense that there are no guards.”
“What do you mean?”
“The children are unconscious, and the rest of us searchers are about as useful as slimes in salt water.”
“So there was no need to post guards?”
“Exactly. They probably thought the search party was already taken care of, and there wouldn’t be any more searchers.”
Curtis nodded and continued.
“And wasn’t that practically true? Even the Byeonbangbaek intended to search only after all the trolls were defeated. I don’t know the details, but I heard the elves were the ones who brought those trolls here. I don’t know what those bastards are plotting, but they were probably too busy controlling the trolls to bother with this place.”
“Your words sound plausible, Special soldier...”
“But Sir Shrakhim came here. For those pointy-eared bastards, that must have been completely unexpected. You, who were not part of the search party, found traces of the missing so quickly.”
Curtis was largely correct.
Under the game system, Shrakhim’s involvement had been a kind of random event. Normally, he should have remained in Darckovo village by Ho-yeong’s order, but the variable of the encounter with the ogres had arisen.
Ho-yeong had anticipated the event in which the ogres would help eliminate the fleeing trolls and wipe them out, but Shrakhim rushing out after hearing about the missing people from the ogres was something that had not been planned.
“The Heavenly Maiden sent Sir Shrakhim to save us.”
“No, I just did what I should have done. You make my ears itch.”
“In any case, with no guards, this is fortunate for us, is it not?”
“That is true. Then let us hurry and get moving.”
Shrakhim and Curtis thought about how to move the children.
“If one person carries three or four at a time, we’d still have to make several trips... It would be nice if we had a stretcher.”
The search party had brought numerous supplies, but their weapons and baggage had all been taken away by now.
“If we don’t have one, we make one.”
Shrakhim cut down a bundle of thick vines and wove them into a net. Once they laid eight of the younger children on it, it became manageable to carry. The remaining four were carried directly by Shrakhim and Curtis.
“Go first. I’ll follow behind.”
The magic circle was too narrow to hold them all, so Curtis and the eight younger children went first.
Shrakhim laid the remaining children down for a moment and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Even the bigger ones, if you look closely, are only about ten years old at most... how terrified they must have been.
Just seeing those pale faces made his heart ache.
“Wait just a little longer. You’ll all be able to go home.”
The magic circle soon recovered its blue light.
Shrakhim tried to sling the four children onto his back, but it was not easy.
“Agh, my whole body...”
He had already been exhausted by the battle with the trolls and the search through the mountain, and after pushing himself so hard earlier, his body simply would not obey him.
“Still, I have to keep going. I carried four sturdy soldiers, so four children like these are nothing! Grrr!”
He squeezed out the last of his strength and lifted the children all at once.
With trembling knees, he barely managed to step into the magic circle before collapsing into it.
“Huff... huff. I can’t believe just taking one step is this hard. I’m glad I trained my lower body like the Byeonbangbaek said.”
Within the blue light that wrapped around him, Shrakhim closed his eyes.
When I open them again, I’ll be outside this godforsaken cave. I don’t know where it’ll send me, but it’ll still be somewhere in the mountains. Ugh... my legs are killing me. I should rest a little before I move.
When he opened his eyes, he shot to his feet, forgetting the pain in his legs entirely.
“Wha...?”
There was no doubt that the magic circle had been set with spatial transfer. The only problem was that the coordinates were not outside the cave, but still inside it.
“How did it feel? Like you were a hero for a brief moment?”
A clear, beautiful voice drifted down from a high ledge. As though drawn by it, Shrakhim lifted his head.
More than a dozen elves were looking down at him.
“How could this...”
“You seem to have enjoyed yourself very much?”
The elf in the center smiled faintly. She was a woman with beautiful platinum-blond hair and silver rings.
“I hope you did enjoy it. Despair that follows hope is always the deepest and darkest of all.”