The Demon Worshippers
Reed stroked the damp soil with his fingertips, focusing his mind and probing the subterranean strata again and again.
As his mastery over Earth Control deepened, his ability to perceive through stone and soil had sharpened considerably. Because of that, he could be certain of what lay beyond.
There's no mistake. There's a hollow space right behind this wall.
Why would an empty chamber exist in the middle of an ancient sewer? Reed turned his head toward his senior colleague.
"Senior Loty. I think there might be a Treasure Room on the other side."
"...What?"
Loty's mouth opened and closed like a landed fish before he finally found his voice.
"...Are you serious?"
"Most likely. Want to dig it out and see?"
Loty seemed caught between disbelief and nervous hope, unable to formulate an answer. It was Iseline who stepped forward with boundless enthusiasm.
"Is that true?! In that case, we must start excavating at once! Members!"
At Iseline's command, her undead laborers marched forward in crisp unison, clearing away rubble and shattered stone from the perimeter.
Accepting that there was no turning back, Loty shook his head with a resigned sigh, pulling a hammer and chisel from his tool belt.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
As his hammer drove into the pre-existing fissures, the masonry gave way with surprising ease.
"Huh. This section really is abnormally thin..."
Unlike the massive, enduring blocks that lined the rest of the sewer conduits, this partition was unmistakably distinct—a hastily laid screen meant to conceal rather than support.
Once the skeletons cleared the loosened stone, the task of displacing the packed earth fell entirely to Reed.
As Reed channeled his mana, the soil churned of its own accord, flowing out smoothly to carve a clean opening through the earthen barrier.
Watching the spectacle, Iseline's eyes sparkled.
"My word! You truly are a mage! Now that I think of it, I've heard rumors about this—a peculiar mage who works as a stonemason!"
Reed flinched slightly. The gleaming look she gave him was unsettlingly intense, not unlike a predator fixing its sights on a prime cut of meat.
"Ahem."
Clearing his throat awkwardly, Reed redoubled his focus on the spell. Before long, the partition crumbled away entirely, laying bare the hidden space beyond.
It was a compact chamber. Resting right in the center, lonely and undisturbed, was an ancient wooden chest.
Loty swallowed hard, his throat bobbing nervously.
"It could be rigged with traps. Or cursed the moment someone touches the latch."
"Leave that to us! Shall we, member?"
Under Iseline's instruction, a skeleton strode briskly toward the chest and rapped on the lid with a bony knuckle. When no poison needles sprang forth and no hex flared to life, it pushed the latch open. Seeing nothing amiss, the skeleton curled its thumb and forefinger together, flashing an impeccable 'all clear' sign.
Only then did Reed, Loty, and Iseline hurry inside.
The chest held ancient antiquities: an ornate silver candlestick, a heavy handful of tarnished silver coins, three raw rubies glowing with a deep crimson luster, and a weathered leather notebook.
Every single item was worth a handsome sum on the surface.
Yet what seized everyone's gaze was none of those. It was a tightly bound scroll resting in the center.
Though it had undoubtedly endured thousands of years buried beneath the city, the parchment was immaculate, free from rot or dust. Reed carefully unrolled it to reveal glyphs unlike anything he had seen in this life or his past.
They looked like intricate illustrations, yet bore the geometric precision of mystical sigils. From those archaic strokes emanated a distinct, potent resonance of power.
Loty let out a breathless murmur.
"It's a Rune Scroll."
"A Rune Scroll?"
"Runes are scripts imbued with ancient magic, and a Rune Scroll holds that power in ready form. I have no idea which rune this is, but still..."
Whatever its nature, it was an authentic artifact. It would require professional appraisal by an expert to determine its exact function, but there was no question it would fetch an astronomical price.
"Let's pack it away for now and get it properly appraised when we get back!"
"We're rich...! Reed, you magnificent bastard!"
Loty, who had spent the entire expedition grumbling and jumping at shadows, looked utterly ecstatic. Iseline beamed with equal delight.
An unexpected windfall had a wonderful way of brightening the atmosphere, melting away the awkward distance that had lingered between them.
Seizing the warm mood, Iseline leaned in with a bright smile.
"Don't you think we make a rather exceptional team? Both of you truly ought to consider joining our cooperative! Reed, since you're an accredited mage, you could even start at Gold grade! Ah, what the heck, I'm feeling generous! If you sign up right now, I'll throw in a full year of complimentary meal vouchers for Aunt Petra's sandwich parlor!"
"...No thank you."
Pouncing the exact second someone lowered their guard—the woman was terrifying in her own way.
Still, at a moment like this, even her relentless recruitment pitches were easy to laugh off. They had acquired an ancient artifact, after all. With their pockets about to overflow with gold, there was plenty of room for magnanimity.
...Though Iseline was likely banking on that exact sentiment.
Two skeletons hoisted the chest onto their shoulders. It was considerably heavy, but the chest itself was ancient enough to possess value, making it too wasteful to leave behind.
The party began their journey back toward the surface at a more measured pace.
Loty, still fraught with nerves, kept glancing over his shoulder every few steps.
"I really hope we don't run into anyone else. If those ruffians from earlier see us hauling an ancient chest around, there's no way in hell they'll just wave us through."
His concern was entirely justified. If opportunistic mercenaries caught wind of a recovered treasure chest, bloodshed was all but guaranteed. There would be no letting their guard down until they stood under the open sky.
Yet contrary to Loty's anxieties, they encountered no one for a long stretch. The underground aqueducts were eerily quiet.
Just a little while ago, mercenaries were prowling every intersection.
Had they all given up and cleared out already?
While Reed pondered the unnatural stillness, Shaka suddenly spoke.
"Reed. Bad feeling."
"A bad feeling?"
"Must leave. Now."
Though Shaka's reptilian eyes appeared as dull and unbothered as ever, a faint, sharp tension flickered within his pupils.
Reed remembered how Shaka had been the very first to detect the mercenaries approaching from far down the tunnels earlier.
Shaka's senses are extraordinary. I can't afford to ignore them.
Sometimes, primal animal instinct proved far more accurate than logic or deductions. Reed's expression hardened.
"Shaka. Just to be safe, ready your shield."
"Understood."
Shaka unhooked the painted round shield from his back and leveled his wooden spear. Loty swallowed nervously, hurriedly unfurling his parchment map.
"R-Right. If we keep heading south from here, we'll hit the junction. To reach the access shaft we came down from, we need to..."
Loty traced the lines with a trembling finger, trying to match their position to the faded ink. The labyrinthine layout of the conduits made navigation a grueling task.
Just as Reed's patience was beginning to fray, Shaka snapped his snout toward the right-hand corridor.
"Footsteps."
"..."
Everyone froze, holding their breath to listen.
Only then did Reed pick up the faint, scuffling noise approaching from the darkness. The cadence was continuous and overlapping, signaling a substantial crowd.
Yet something about the sound was deeply wrong.
There are so many of them, but the footsteps are impossibly quiet.
Up until now, detecting mercenaries had been simple enough.
Why?
The answer hit him an instant later.
Footwear.
Iron-shod boots clanking on flagstones, or heavy leather soles dragging through muck—such noises echoed through the enclosed tunnels with distinct clarity.
Yet from the approaching crowd, no such percussive clicks or scrapes could be heard.
It's like they're walking barefoot...
Reed tilted his head, troubled by his own deduction. Why would anyone willingly discard their boots to walk barefoot through filthy sewer effluent?
While the question hung in his mind, the figures drew closer, emerging from the gloom like pale phantoms.
Reed craned his neck, squinting into the shadows to make out their silhouettes. In that exact instant, the figures spotted them as well.
Twang—! THWACK!
"!"
The greeting they received was an iron bolt. Had Shaka not snapped his round shield upward in the nick of time, the missile would have driven straight between Reed's eyes.
His heart plummeted into his stomach at the sheer proximity of death. Stumbling two steps back, Reed roared at the top of his lungs.
"Hostiles incoming!"
Tearing through the murk, the ambushers charged.
"Ghhhrrr...! Ghhhk!"
"Khahaak! Khak!"
They looked less like men and more like rabid beasts.
Every single one was stark naked, their pale flesh caked in thick coats of rancid sewer sludge. Crude blades and rusted crossbows were clutched in their hands.
Guttural, choking howls tore from their throats as if their vocal cords were drowned in blood and phlegm. Their eyes glowed a feverish, lunatic crimson as they surged forward.
Terrified, Loty collapsed onto his backside, while Iseline, though briefly taken aback, issued her commands with crisp composure.
"Members! Form the line!"
The skeletons locked shoulder to bony shoulder, creating a barricade. In their hands were heavy stones plucked from the sludge, or spare ribs torn from their own ribcages brandished as clubs.
An instant later, the two lines violently collided.
CRUNCH! THUD! SPLAT!
Stabbing, smashing, tearing, and biting.
Fresh blood splattered across the stone walls. The one horrifying trait shared between the undead and their assailants was an absolute disregard for death.
The naked cultists cared nothing for their own flesh. Even with blades buried in their throats or limbs broken, they threw their weight forward in rabid frenzy.
"Demon worshippers?!"
Hearing Iseline's sharp exclamation, Reed realized with a sinking dread that they had stumbled into something monstrously foul. But his duty in the moment remained unchanged.
Scooping up the dense sludge piled along the aqueduct floor, Reed cast his spell.
A mass of wet, heavy muck shaped itself into an oversized fist, surging out to clamp around a cultist's ankle with the crushing grasp of Earth Grasp.
Shaka seized the opening. Lying in wait behind the skeletons, the lizardman thrust his spear forward like a streak of lightning. The hardened tip drove cleanly through the cultist's eye socket.
Squelch!
The cultist shuddered violently before collapsing face-first into the murky water.
Even demon worshippers die when their brains are scrambled, it seems.
Reed released the spell, letting the hand collapse back into mud. In an environment scarce in natural dirt, he had to recycle every grain of earth efficiently.
Dividing the sludge into three separate spheres, he prepared to strike. Splitting his concentration to guide earth along three divergent trajectories was something he had never attempted before, but...
Somehow, I feel like I can pull this off.
It was a flash of intuitive confidence, yet Reed shaped his mana with steady conviction.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
Different velocities.
Different directions.
Different arcs.
The three muddy projectiles sailed through the air and plastered themselves directly over the faces of three charging cultists.
Sewer sludge was far more difficult to manipulate than dry earth, demanding substantially more mana to propel the same mass. Yet mud possessed a unique, suffocating viscosity.
Blinded and gasping, the cultists clawed desperately at their own faces, tearing their skin with ragged fingernails to pry the muck off. But mud governed by magic refused to yield to simple human fingers.
Through Reed's relentless suffocation tactics, the cultists began dropping one after another.
Even while frantically managing her undead vanguard, Iseline's eyes went wide at the sight.
"To exhibit such fine magical control... what in the world...?"
Her distraction was proof enough that the tide had turned in their favor.
With Reed's support holding the center, the engagement tipped steadily toward victory.
The cultists' suicidal ferocity was undeniably terrifying, yet their movements were far too primitive. Had they fought with the disciplined formations and tactical maneuvers of trained mercenaries, they would have been infinitely more perilous.
Reed refused to drop his guard, but inwardly, he began to anticipate an imminent victory.
...Until the murky sludge beneath their feet began to undulate.
Rumble... slosh.
With dozens of bodies clashing in the tunnel, shifting ripples on the water's surface were only natural. Yet this disturbance grew steadily more violent, swelling into an outright surge.
As if something colossal was plowing its way toward them.
"!"
Reed snapped his head up.
And there, barreling through the darkness at terrifying speed, was a monstrous silhouette.
"Ooooohhh!"
Like the worshippers before it, the creature had once been human. It was similarly naked, and its eyes burned with the same hellish red glow.
Beyond that, however, it shared nothing with humanity.
Its grotesque bulk was swollen like a distended leather bladder, warped beyond recognition. It was impossible to tell where its front ended and its back began; multiple arms and legs sprouted erratically along its sides, while yellowish pus and foul dark blood oozed continuously from its sagging, pleated skin.
It was an abominable creation born of demonic corruption.
The moment the party laid eyes on the monstrosity, panic rippled through their ranks.
"W-What in the gods' names is that thing?!"
"Horrifying..."
Yet while Reed was startled, his gaze did not waver. He fixed his sight upon the creature with the cold, measured focus of a hunter assessing dangerous quarry.
Is this... an offering?
Reed slapped both of his cheeks with a sharp crack. Fearlessness in battle was an asset, but underestimating an opponent was suicide.
That thing existed on an entirely different plane from the fragile rabble they had just put down. He could not afford to let it close the distance.
Having made his assessment in an instant, Reed concentrated the entirety of his magic on the beast.
SPLASH!
Dense masses of sludge hurtled forward, while great earthen hands burst from the effluent, spreading wide to seize it.
Yet the creature was unnervingly swift. Scuttling like an enormous centipede upon its mismatched limbs, it skittered across the curved stone walls and ceiling, easily evading the airborne mud. Even the grasping earthen claws repeatedly closed on empty air.
Reed committed every erratic shift of its trajectory to memory, continually unleashing his spells.
More precisely.
Sharper. Finer.
At last, an earthen hand clamped hard around one of the creature's flailing hind legs.
Got you!
The soft mud petrified instantly into dense rock, locking the limb in an unyielding vice. For the first time, the rampaging beast's advance stalled.
Yet in the very next second, thick tears leaked from its bloodshot eyes as it let out a sorrowful, piercing wail.
"Ooooooohhhhhh!!"
"What?!"
A deep, guttural vibration shook the foundation of the sewer as the creature's disfigured musculature swelled like bellows.
CRACK!
The petrified stone grip shattered into gravel. Freed from its bonds, the monstrosity lunged forward once more.
It trampled over its fellow cultists, crushed two skeletons beneath its bulk, and charged straight for Reed, unhinging its distended jaws.
Lining its maw were twin rows of serrated, shark-like teeth—deadly fangs built to splinter bone and shear human flesh in a single bite.
In that suspended instant, Reed saw the cold silhouette of his own demise. The end of his life was bare inches away.
Yet he didn't freeze, nor did his life flash before his eyes. Had he been the sort of person prone to sentimental daydreams in a crisis, he would have died to a back-alley shiv in the Asteritz slums years ago.
Instead, even as the serrated teeth bore down upon his face, Reed's calculating mind refused to stop running.
What do I do? Dodge? No, too slow. I have to block. Wrap myself in hardened earth? You just saw it snap stone like kindling. I need something harder. Harder than stone... then—!
And so, as he had always done, Reed found his path to survival.
He poured every shred of mana and raw concentration into his spellcraft. The surrounding mud surged upward, wrapping around his frame. His magical current shifted, forcing the earth to rewrite its very essence.
Translucent, gleaming crystal formed over Reed's skin like a suit of faceted armor.
At the exact same moment, the monster's jaws snapped shut. Teeth capable of grinding granite struck the crystal shell.
SKRRRRKKK!
A web of violent fractures erupted across the surface, sending jagged crystalline shards spraying in all directions. The shell, forged with every ounce of his power, held against only a single bite.
Yet that single deflection was enough to save his life.
"Reed!"
Shaka bounded forward, seized Reed by the scruff of his collar, and slung the boy onto his broad, scaled back. Iseline, holding the rear, shrieked her command.
"Members, engage!"
Five of the remaining seven skeletons threw themselves directly into the path of the snapping monstrosity.
Bolstered by Iseline's dark incantations, the skeletons moved with sudden, uncanny speed. Though they were no match for the beast's raw carnage, their bony frames were more than enough to tie up its limbs and stall its momentum.
That bought Shaka, Iseline, and Loty—who was clutching the treasure chest for dear life—just enough time to break into a desperate sprint.
As they fled down the corridor, Iseline cast a mournful glance back toward her thralls as they were pulverized to splinters one by one.
"Your service contracts are officially fulfilled. Thank you for your tireless dedication. Farewell, and may we cross paths again in the next life!"
The party scrambled back into the concealed Treasure Room, ducking inside to hide. There was no safer vantage point to catch their breath than a chamber that had remained undiscovered for millennia.
"Haaah... haaah..."
Reed drew in deep, shuddering breaths. His pulse still pounded like a war drum against his ribs, but the thumping in his chest was not born of terror.
It was something much closer to exhilaration.
All that training actually paid off!
Enveloping his entire body in crystalline armor to withstand a lethal strike. Putting everything on the line in a moment of absolute crisis and having that desperate gamble succeed delivered a jolt of intoxicating satisfaction straight to his mind.
Watching the crystal shatter had certainly sent chills down his spine... but so what? He was alive, wasn't he?
While Reed gradually calmed the rush of combat adrenaline coursing through his veins, the rest of the party collapsed against the walls to rest their trembling legs.
Yet it was an agonizingly fragile reprieve.
Breaking the stifling silence, Iseline spoke in a grim tone.
"Those zealots hold complete control over these conduits. They've likely blockaded every single access point leading up to the surface. Our only option is to somehow cut our way through them..."
Loty clutched his hair, venting his sheer frustration.
"Dammit! Of all the rotten luck, why did we have to run into demon worshippers?! And that thing earlier—that was a demon, wasn't it?! It had to be!"
"It wasn't a true demon... but it has certainly been blessed by demonic power. The aura radiating from it was utterly vile."
The three humans—and Shaka beside them—huddled close, racking their brains for a way to break the deadlock. But no matter how hard they turned the problem over, no clever strategy presented itself.
"First, we have to find a way to put that abomination down... Hey, Reed. Can't you do something with your magic?"
Reed shook his head firmly.
"It's too fast and hits too hard. While my earth magic excels at defensive utility, its raw offensive power is severely lacking."
That was the inherent limitation of his current earthcraft.
Reed could reshape terrain, dig trenches, and erect barricades to blunt enemy charges. As a support mage providing battlefield control, he was exceptionally capable.
When it came to outright lethal burst damage, however, his arsenal fell short. After all, his most reliable method of execution remained slowly suffocating his targets beneath wet soil.
"Offensive power... raw firepower, huh..."
Loty's eyes drifted downward. Resting on the stone floor was the ancient chest he had stubbornly hauled along through their frantic retreat, driven by sheer mercenary instinct.
Flipping the lid back open, Loty reached inside and drew out the parchment radiating that quiet, primordial hum.
The Rune Scroll.
"Maybe... could we somehow make use of this?"