The Index Finger
The expedition hurried up a staircase that seemed to have no end. Water was slowly rising behind them, and there was no time to go looking for traps, let alone disarm them. Whether they died on a trap or drowned, dead was dead either way.
By the time everyone's breath was climbing past their chins, they finally reached a chamber. The moment the expedition's boots hit flat ground, they collapsed where they stood, gasping. Perhaps because they'd only barely escaped becoming water ghosts, everyone wore a dazed expression. Fortunately, the water had stopped short of flooding this room as well—by all appearances, it had been designed with even that possibility in mind.
Captain Lecadi went around lightly tapping the cheeks of the mercenaries sitting blankly on the floor, telling them they'd done well. Bald Victor let out a great whooping laugh and boasted of his luck in surviving to the very end.
"That's right! I'm not the kind of bastard to die in a dump like this!"
"You didn't live because you were lucky, you nearly died because you weren't, you bastard."
Along with that hearty laughter, the stiff atmosphere began to thaw. Even the disheveled noblewoman had recovered enough to take stock of herself and start tidying her appearance.
"Yurik, you beautiful bastard—we owe you our lives, honest to god."
"But how'd you know there was a passage there?"
Everyone looked terribly curious. The spot where Yurik had fired his magic had been precisely, to the inch, where the passage lay. This hadn't been a guess—he had known.
"There was writing under the marble statue. It said that a wizard always points the way. I took it for a riddle—dungeons are full of those, after all."
"Goddamn it, so illiterate bastards are just meant to die, huh."
"Even if you'd read it, you're too dumb to have caught on."
The others nodded in grudging agreement. Even if they'd read the inscription like Yurik, most of them would have failed to understand it and drowned in the dark.
"Captain, imagine if we hadn't brought the kid."
"We'd all be doing the backstroke down there together, real friendly like."
And then, astonishingly, in the middle of all that chaos, Acho the tomb raider had gone and retrieved the sword she'd plunged into the marble statue.
"No wonder they call you a tomb raider. You had the presence of mind to grab that, in that situation? I'm impressed. Genuinely impressed!"
"Grabbed your bonus and now you're all talky-talky, huh!"
"Aww, aren't you sweet. Let me give you a kiss."
"Blow it out your ass, ma'am."
The noblewoman—the instigator of the whole disaster—cast furtive glances about as she quietly ordered the hired hands to secure the sword. The mercenaries all wore expressions that said they had plenty to unload on her, but they held their tongues, at least for now. They were alive, after all. Noble or not so noble, a noble was still a noble, and none of them fancied getting pinned with some charge of insulting the aristocracy.
Once they'd caught their breath, the expedition began exploring the chamber in earnest.
They couldn't tell if this was the final room or not, but like the ones before it, it had been built in lavish style with marble walls.
"...Captain. Over there...!"
The light of the mana orbs revealed something arranged in a regular pattern across the chamber floor. It was the same material as the walls themselves...
...Coffins?
The expedition's expressions froze over in an instant.
Nobody had imagined they would stumble across coffins here of all places.
"Don't tell me... is this a burial ground?"
"Gives me the shivers, it does."
Yurik approached the nearest coffin and examined its lid. Something was written there—a name, and a brief account of a life.
"It seems... these are the ones who fought alongside those heroes from before."
The captain warned everyone not to touch anything.
"Unless you want to end up underwater again."
There were close to twenty marble coffins. Worried they might be enchanted, Yurik swept them with mana detection, but nothing responded. They were ordinary coffins.
"Over there!"
At the far end of the wall stood a stone monument—a memorial inscribed with words of mourning for those who had died fighting bravely. Yurik stood before it and offered a brief moment of silent tribute. Because they had existed, humanity now enjoyed this peace.
Fortunately, a passage opened right beside the monument. Before moving on, the captain called a rest break, both to let everyone recover and to build up their strength for what lay ahead.
During the break, Yurik made the rounds—not just to the memorial stone, but to each and every marble coffin, taking a rubbing of them one by one.
He didn't know when it would be. But he hoped that someday, these traces of their great ancestors could be passed down to their descendants—
Egged on by the noblewoman, the expedition leader suggested to Captain Lecadi that perhaps they ought to try opening one of the coffins. At those words, Acho the tomb raider practically leapt out of her skin.
"You must NEVER open a coffin! Coffins are riddled with traps above all else. There's a good chance they're packed with poison needles, too. There could even be a curse. Disturb the rest of the dead and you'll regret it, mark my words!"
Acho stressed, again and again, that no matter how degenerate a tomb raider might be, coffins were off-limits. With her taking such a hard line, the noblewoman gave up on the idea of lifting the lid.
After all, if another disaster like the one earlier broke out, it would be a genuine catastrophe. However entitled she was to profit, no profit was worth more than her life.
When the rest period ended, the expedition formed two lines and moved along the passage. They'd been running on tension all day, and their stamina was draining fast.
The noblewoman, whose strength was already spent, kept calling the captain to a halt. The column stopped dead in the middle of the passage time and again. Unable to watch any longer, Yurik pulled a potion from his sack and handed it to her. The moment she sampled the taste, she nearly gagged herself inside out.
"You must drink it anyway, madam. It's for your fatigue."
In the end, she screwed her eyes shut and gulped down a swallow. Then she immediately grabbed the wall and retched, heave after heave. Thankfully, she managed to keep everything down.
"Never again. Never...!"
The noblewoman muttered this through tears wrung out of her by the violent retching.
The expedition rested until she'd recovered, then set off once more. And so they arrived at the next chamber.
The three mages, who had sensed nothing at all on their mana detection, noticed something at the center of the room. It didn't seem to be a golem—it looked like some kind of device.
"...What's that supposed to be?"
Something jutted up from the very middle of the chamber like a display pedestal. A platform just wide enough to hold a single book, hollowed out with a recess—as if inviting them to place something upon it.
Beside the pedestal, an inscription had been carved. It promised that the way would be shown.
"So we set a mana orb on it, and it activates?"
"It would seem so."
Of course, they didn't move at the dungeon's beck and call right away. It wouldn't be too late to act after investigating the thing as thoroughly as possible and confirming the risks.
But they found neither passage nor mechanism anywhere else in the chamber. By all appearances, the way forward would only open once the pedestal at the center was activated.
The captain placed a spare mana orb on the pedestal. A violent surge of mana answered.
—!
Blue light rippled across the pedestal, and then it vomited an immense torrent of mana toward the orb. At the same moment, a current of blue flooded out across the entire chamber. The expedition startled and immediately raised their weapons, watching their surroundings.
The spreading mana seemed to be searching for something. It prowled around the expedition's feet, and then it began to gather—converging on the spot where Yurik stood.
"Everyone, get back!"
Captain Lecadi shouted for them to move away from Yurik. Yurik stood perfectly still, careful not to provoke it.
When all the mana filling the chamber had pooled at his feet, it climbed up his body and compressed itself into the index finger of his right hand.
—!
Yurik gritted his teeth against a pain like burning flesh. It felt as though someone were pressing a branding iron against his finger.
"Nngh...!"
"Yurik!"
The mercenaries cried out to him at the sight of their sweet, well-mannered youngest wracked with pain. But Yurik stretched out an arm to hold them back, telling them not to come closer, reassuring them.
"It's fine, it's fine. I'm all right. It only hurts a little."
Thankfully, the searing ache subsided quickly. Yurik, who had sunk to one knee under the pain, rose to his feet again. He raised his right hand and inspected his index finger, but aside from the ordeal itself, he could feel no change.
Once Yurik seemed himself again, Captain Lecadi came over and asked how he was. He said he was fine.
"Doesn't seem to be any kind of curse."
"I don't think it's a curse either. ...Still, I should probably visit a temple, just in case."
Only then did the mercenaries come up and ask if he was okay. Yurik smiled and thanked them for worrying.
"Quit smiling like that, you little brat. You'll make me soft."
And at that very moment, Yurik felt a stimulus in his finger—and a wall rumbled and ground open, revealing a passage. The expedition, ignorant of the cause and effect, cheered: so setting the mana orb on the pedestal had been the right call after all.
Captain Lecadi gingerly lifted the mana orb from the pedestal. Fortunately, the passage stayed open, so he retrieved it at once. Even a cheap mana orb was worth a fair sum.
There had been a bit of an incident, but no real harm done. The expedition pressed on along the passage.
This corridor, however, was considerably long and narrow. The expedition, which had been traveling in two files, was forced to reform into a single line.
...We're going uphill, aren't we?
It was truly subtle, but Yurik could feel them slowly climbing.
The sharp-eared old-timer Haral seemed to have caught it too.
"Captain, I do believe this is an upward slope."
That was a good sign. It meant they were getting closer to the surface.
And then they arrived at yet another underground chamber. But this time, the passage was visible right away—and it was a staircase leading up!
"Could it be... the exit?"
Every exhausted face lit up in an instant. The noblewoman wanted out sooner than a minute from now.
"Shall we not rest for a moment?"
"...Out. Let's get out, first."
The noblewoman looked as though she hadn't even the strength to speak. The captain sent them up the stairs one at a time.
The moment Yurik stepped into the stairwell, he caught the scent of damp earth. He knew it instinctively—at last, they were near the surface.
They climbed the stairs for a long while. The floor was pitch dark, and the noblewoman slipped and nearly fell more times than anyone could count.
And then, at last—
"The end! It's the end!"
Acho's shout rang down from the front of the line. Engelgard, right behind her, forced the sealed hatch open. The lid splintered apart, and they drank in the fresh outside air.
As expected, it was pitch black outside. One by one, they stepped onto the surface and collapsed flat on the ground.
"Goddamn... it's finally over...!"
The expedition didn't even have the energy left to celebrate conquering the dungeon. It felt like they'd die on the spot if they didn't rest right now.
They hastily set up camp and assigned night watches, deciding that those less exhausted would take the first shifts.
Yurik crawled into his bedroll, rubbed his sleepy eyes, and yawned until his jaw ached.
He tried to think back on what had happened to his body earlier. The circuits he kept turning endlessly within himself were untouched. His finger, too, was fine, at least for now.
...I'll think about it later...
Too bone-deeply weary to think any longer, Yurik was gone the moment his eyes closed.
Yurik dreamed.
A dream of wizards battling the demonkin.
Every time he moved his fingers, the air seethed and the earth turned over.
It was—the index finger.