Visitors from Another Dimension (2)
Descending to the second floor, we began to spot other adventurers. Their origins were impossible to determine. I could recognize those who looked like the ones we'd seen at the Audumla Guild—explorers in rugged gear, teams dressed like mages. "The number of people has increased since we came down to the second floor."
"Yes. My ears are picking up a lot more noise now too." When Tirsi spoke, Franc tugged at her own ear. With this many people around, Franc's detection method, which relied on her senses, was useless. That also meant there were plenty of suspicious characters lurking about.
Those scanning the walls with bloodshot eyes for hidden passages, or those who treated everyone else like thieves—they were still the relatively sane ones. Once we went deeper into the ruins and the crowds thinned, some would start targeting other parties. When had I made the most money since starting my adventurer life? 'When I raided the circus troupe and took their wealth.' That had been the single biggest haul. The mithril I'd received was a gift from Nefertiti, so that didn't count.
'Robbing other parties and emptying their pockets is the easiest way to make money.' Wiping out the circus had been an extremely special case, but even in this world, nothing beat sucking the lifeblood out of others when it came to easy money. 'There aren't many who openly kill and rob people.' So instead, they lure monsters in to do the killing for them. Since our party consisted of nothing but women besides me, I'd have to be extra careful. A group of beauties who didn't even know who their own mothers were—plenty of bastards would get ideas.
—Crackle.
We entered a room where the wooden door had rotted away. Footprints covered the floor; it had clearly been looted already. Tirsi picked up an empty bottle. "It's a potion bottle. The stopper must have rotted after being left alone so long—the contents have completely evaporated."
"If there had been any left, could we have sold it~?" Larilura asked, examining the scattered bottles. Several gaps lined the neatly arranged shelves. The previous visitors had only taken the bottles that still contained potions.
Tirsi gave a bitter smile. "Hardly. For a potion over a hundred years old to still be intact, it would have to be an Elixir. Even if some remained, it would just be herbal vinegar."
"Herbal vinegar? Aha! It would be good for your health if you put it in food!"
"And what if it kills you instead? You'd get a stomachache."
"Is it really that bad? Well, if the ones who took it can't sell the vinegar, they can always use it as poison."
"Hmm. I don't know. They say too much medicine becomes poison, but wouldn't it just be easier and faster to use actual poison?"
Once the conversation turned to her specialty, Tirsi couldn't take a joke. That was the curse of being a model student.
"Hey, hey. Darling. Stop talking nonsense and come help me." Dana tugged at my sleeve. Her rough tone contrasted sharply with how timid her actions were—it was oddly adorable. I almost kissed her on the cheek but stopped myself.
"What? Did you find some records?"
"If there had been any, the people who came before us would've taken them. Look at this." —Clink. Dana showed me the label on a potion bottle—an emblem etched into the glass through glasswork. I recognized it immediately.
"Oleum Sanctum?"
"Yeah. I'm not seeing things, right? To me, this looks like the emblem of a potion manufacturer from the Golden Age."
"It looks that way to me too…… Why is it here?"
Oleum Sanctum had been a famous potion manufacturer of the ancient civilization—so large that calling it a mere "company" felt inadequate. It was common to find phrases in ruins like "purchased several dozen Oleum Sanctum potions and deployed them." "Was this room a potion storage?"
"For a simple storage room, there are quite a lot of them~?" Larilura said. Franc mimicked lockpicking. "Yeah. The entrance security wasn't much either. With just two needles, I could've picked it."
"……Just in case, should we keep this as a sample?"
"Is there any point?"
"What does it matter if it's a dud?" These were supplies the tower's former residents had kept on hand. I didn't think we needed them, but Dana carefully wrapped the bottle in cloth. "Larilura?"
"Yes~. Open♡!" —Click. The bottle disappeared into Ring-Ring 3.5's stomach. That thing's belly was being treated as a convenient storage by its owner, Larilura.
We gave the second floor a cursory look before heading down. We avoided combat as much as possible—there was no loot to be gained from these monsters anyway.
"Hey~? At this rate, I'm going to lose the bet and get bullied by Senior, you know? Senior, are you really okay with such a cowardly victory~?"
"If we go any deeper, we'll have to fight whether we like it or not. Behave yourself." "Hmph."
Hmph or whatever—avoiding fights was best when possible. I quietly shut Larilura up (half-joking, half-serious) and resumed moving. Franc worked hard to help us avoid combat. "This direction is noisy inside. Sounds like fighting."
Thanks to Franc, who served as our radar using her ring and mana, we were able to avoid fights after the first one. I tried listening too, but I couldn't distinguish the noises as well as she could. —Scratch, scratch.
While moving, Dana drew a map. It was because healers could afford to react slowly in the early stages of combat. And so, when we reached the third floor, we found a space that appeared untouched by others.
Tirsi spoke on behalf of the group. "……Excuse me, everyone? Are we going that way?"
"I don't want to go……. There must be a reason the people who arrived before us didn't go……." Larilura pointed at the entrance to the passage. Dark blood stained the walls. "It hasn't been long since it was spilled." I could roughly tell from the color of the blood. I could practically see the face of some adventurer who had confidently entered only to trigger a trap and go "Aaaagh?!"
"They bled an awful lot. Let's hope they got treatment in time."
"You say that while making the sign of the cross? Wait, you don't even have a religion, do you, Sis?"
"It's the thought that counts. It's not like we can hold a druid-style funeral here anyway. That's the only religion I know."
"What's a druid-style funeral?"
"You make a person-shaped figure out of straw, stuff the corpse inside, and burn it."
So that was a cultural practice in Ulster. "There's something similar in Britannia too. It's called cremation."
"That's a method for executing criminals. Ah, though you could say it's similar in that it leaves only bones behind?"
"If you called it a barbecue, they'd bring in wild boars……. If you just kissed them, their bellies would swell……. That's why they're even cuter……."
"You lunatic."
After that dignified conference worthy of Dr. Seok, I proposed a way to dismantle the traps here. "Franc?"
"Yeah." At my call, Franc pulled a knife from her leather armor. I spoke while marveling at our Franc's wisdom—she understood my garbled words perfectly. "Go, golem. Go."
"Arise, O god (Dd.f xa m nTr)……?"
"GOGOGOGOGOOOOOO─!!" Even with Franc's clumsy pronunciation, the golem summoning succeeded. An earth golem took form with the throwing knife as its core. Since we were indoors with no soil, maintaining it would consume mana, but we didn't plan to operate it for long, so it was fine.
"It's done!" Franc cheered and made the golem move. Watching it was frustratingly slow, but its broad back made it incredibly reassuring. "Ah. But Sis, its core is half sticking out. Is that okay~?" Larilura pointed at the core embedded in the golem's neck. For a normal golem, that would be considered a failure—its heart was outside its chest. But this time, that was exactly what we wanted.
"Yeah, that's perfect. Larilura. Can you connect your Puppetry to the core?"
"──Ah! I see! If it breaks or falls, I can just pull it back and retrieve it, right?"
"Good that I don't have to explain. Our Larilura is so smart."
"Hehe♡ I am pretty clever, aren't I?" Larilura boasted as she connected mana threads to the golem's core. Now even if it was destroyed or fell, we could recover it. I also carved a rune onto the golem's forehead. ᚨ (Ansuz). Bestowal. A three-hit combo with Burning Hand.
"GOOOOOO──!!" Empowered by the rune, the earth golem gained enhanced durability and a faint heat! Now any traps that reacted to weight, heat, or mana would trigger on the golem instead. Since these were semi-automatic traps that didn't activate on humans, they wouldn't be able to distinguish between this golem and a plump intruder.
"Our three-person collaborative golem! Let's go☆!"
"I'm the one controlling it, though." —Thud! Thud! Whether it was the power of rune magic or not, the now swift and precise golem challenged the traps under Franc's control. Still, it couldn't fully replicate Franc's dexterity. Its hands were too thick, so it felt like a fifty-fifty success rate.
—Clang! Thud!—Stab, stab, stab, stab!! Murderous iron bars shot out and skewered the golem. Dismantling attempt: failed. "GOGOGO." But to an earth golem with no life, no intelligence, and no sense of pain, it didn't matter at all! Had anyone ever seen a stuffed doll die just because it got holes in it? The three-minute instant golem shed dirt and moved on to the next trap.
—Rattle!!—Clang!—Boom! After getting caught in traps four or five times, Franc seemed to give up and just let the golem tank everything. In TRPGs, there's a tactic where warriors charge through traps relying on healers or potions—that was the otherworld version of it.
"Ahahaha! This is so convenient! The other guys would die of envy if they saw this!" Dana clapped in delight at the golem's performance. Watching it plow straight through the complex traps instead of going around them was incredibly refreshing. Franc muttered while focusing on her control. "Dana. Some of the traps aren't activating. Probably because they haven't been maintained in a long time. And the trap structures don't feel like they were designed when the building was built."
"You mean they were added after it was already made?"
"Yeah, probably? At first, it seems like they just built it as a normal tower without considering intruders."
"Installing traps inside a tower would be a waste of money. If this place weren't covered in dirt, we could've just broken through the ceiling or walls." Tirsi said. That was a tactic we couldn't use. 'If we waste mana, the monsters will get us.' Breaking relics was also problematic, and if we carelessly destroyed things, the tower might collapse and bury us in dirt.
"Dismantling complete. I've found every trap I can detect." Franc said as she released the golem's maintenance. Since Franc, who could sense mana, said so, that meant we'd dismantled them all. Finding traps wasn't difficult. The hard part was dismantling them without getting killed.
—Rustle, rustle. The mana-formed earth gradually lost its shape and disappeared. Larilura retrieved the knife and handed it to Franc. I also dispelled the rune. We carefully advanced through the passage. The traps didn't activate.
"Hehe. Our Franc is the best. What would we have done without you?"
"Hehehe." When I praised her while touching her ear, Franc looked delighted. We couldn't linger affectionately for long in such a dangerous place. Dana clicked her tongue as she advanced through the passage. "A stone gate. Another trap?"
"Where?" Franc spotted the weathered stone door and put on her gloves—thick leather ones. Wearing those, she skillfully picked up her lockpicking tools, touched the door handle, then stepped back. "If you try to pick the handle, poisoned needles come out. It's an old mechanism, so it's easy to find, but hard to dismantle. Can I break it?"
"Anyone against it?" No one was. With the party's tacit consent, Larilura spoke up. "If we're breaking it, leave it to Ring-Ring~☆! It's completely unfazed by poisoned arrows or baptism by fire~!"
"Please, Larilura. My golem is weak." "Okay~." "Then everyone, get behind me. I'll put up a shield." Even though this was our first time working together, the collaboration felt smooth. The marionette advanced while the party members moved behind Dana. Dana raised her hand and took a deep breath. —Hoooooo!!
I noticed that the mana moving through Dana's body was circulating in a very specific pattern. Normally, magic didn't make the flow of mana feel this distinct. 'Come to think of it, I've never seen Dana chant a spell when using magic.' Was it some kind of traditional Ulster shamanism? Just like the rune magic Bicorn used, everyone except modern-style mages seemed to be like that. 'Bicorn, huh.' Where was that guy now? It said it was coming to see me, but there'd been no word. Was the distance too far to cover in just a few days? It had definitely seemed like it was far from Sargadis in the dream. Though I couldn't figure out how it had traveled such a long way in just a day or two.
—Kiiing! "Done." Dana deployed a massive shield three meters in diameter. Larilura manipulated the mana threads extending from her fingers. A thick blade shot out from the right arm sleeve of the marionette. "New equipment! Its name is Clang-Clang-Clang Knife☆!"
"Isn't it about time you started doubting your naming sense?" I should've realized it the moment her name was Larilura. Ignoring my sigh, Ring-Ring 3.5 sliced through the door handle. —Boom!—Crash! The door was completely destroyed by the empowered marionette's punch. The trap didn't activate. Perhaps all the traps in this passage had already been used up. Using Dana's shield magic as cover, we entered the room. What we discovered was—
"——A laboratory?" Rows of enormous spherical glass flasks large enough for a person to enter, along with rusted pipes—a research laboratory from the ancient civilization.