Operation: Subjugate the Maze Rat
The target of today's subjugation was the Maze Rat.
A former Swordmaster, he had carved out a colossal labyrinth spanning tens of thousands of square meters underground with nothing but the edge of a blade. A maze beneath the open plains, of all places—adventurers who went poking around it vanished one after another, and the Association dispatched fighters strong enough to matter. Fortunately, the truth came to light with only the third party. The party Lupin had joined was the fourth.
With three people whose skills were already proven, carrying out the mission would have been no trouble at all. For a handful of other reasons, though, Lupin had simply been dropped on top of the roster—and the tagalong was the one with the most complaints.
An hour in, with absolutely nothing to see, Lupin lost the fight against boredom and yawned wide.
"Not so much as the nose of a treasure chest."
"Chances are the adventurers who got here first took them. Of course, more than half of them probably died chasing the chests."
Useless bastards. If you're going to die, leave the chests behind first. Anyway, whether he was a sewer rat or a maze rat, he'd emptied them, so he must have stocked new treasure chests to replace them. If he hadn't, he'd better be ready. She'd invested a whole three days just to get here.
Lupin clicked the Lightning Sword at her hip, over and over.
The pointless habit must have grated, because Red, standing right behind her, whispered.
"Hey. Quit making noise. We might get ambushed."
Red had been prickly ever since raising a single objection. Aura whipped wild by emotion lashed out like a thin whip and raked across Lupin's back.
But Lupin was used to pure hostility. So used to it, in fact, that she knew exactly how to piss people like that off even more. Back in her school days she'd caught a few hits for it. These days she was fast enough that the hits never landed.
"Chicken?"
It was a taunt Red couldn't parse. Still, even when a foreigner curses in words you only half understand, the face and the feeling usually give it away. Red's brows drew a V sliced clean in half, and Lupin muttered.
"I mean, how strong can a guy be if all he does is set traps..."
"He's weaker now, but he was a Swordmaster once. Keep that up and your head might come off."
"That serious, huh..."
What was a Swordmaster, anyway? She didn't have the confidence to charge in and win, but she wasn't worried about dying in the middle of a fight. Lupin knew one person who had been a Swordmaster, and she had sparred with him for a full three days. It hadn't even been the wooden-sword practice cowards settled for. Ten exchanges—the very emblem of romantic swordplay—and live steel the entire time. A brutal, practical bout that ran until someone died, if you wanted it to.
And the result? Across three days and thirty exchanges in all, Lupin hadn't taken a single injury worth the name. She'd been too busy dodging to land one proper attack. Even so, she had avoided every strike a former Swordmaster threw at her.
Tassili, convinced he himself had simply grown old, went and reduced one of his disciples to a rag the next day, then came back lamenting. If only she'd been a proper orthodox Aura User, she would have reached greatness in time—aigoo, aigoo. Well, when a rock that rolls in out of nowhere outshines the disciples you've carefully raised, what else can you do.
"Just brimming with confidence, aren't you? Fine. Show me what you can do later, and I might acknowledge it."
"I'll show you when we meet that rat bastard. Or rat-boy. Whatever."
"It's the Maze Rat..."
Anyway, Lupin wasn't worried no matter who she met. Ever since she'd become a master of evasion, she had never once felt fear, and she was looking down on the whole world—reckless, arrogant, and utterly without restraint.
Some time later, the party stopped to rest. It had been roughly two and a half hours since they entered the maze.
At the word rest, Lupin dropped straight onto the ground and folded into a lotus position more comfortably than anyone. Red looked appalled. The floor was still wet, soggy and soft—no place to plant a backside.
"Hey, there are bugs crawling around down there..."
"Chicken?"
"Damn it."
After gaining dynamic vision and speed, Lupin had never once been afraid of bugs. Bugs were scary because even if you caught them they crawled up your fingers, slipped neatly between them, or burst when you didn't mean them to. But if you snatched them at lightning speed, with just the right force, before they even noticed? Then no matter how they flailed those disgusting legs in your hand, they were nothing but petty little lives about to die. If she'd had vision like this back then, she might have picked up a side gig plucking bugs off carrots when she was broke.
Lupin turned the idea over—weird as her own head—and felt a pang of regret. Then she spotted a cute pill bug, a.k.a. a bean bug, wriggling up her thigh.
Whoa. Long time no see, little guy. Around age five she'd dropped one onto a teacher's rice and passed it off as a bean, and the director had beaten the living daylights out of her. The habit had never died. Lupin closed her hand around the bean bug. The thing that had been crawling curled up tight, and she sent it off in a clean shot.
The flying bean slipped right through the gap in Red's collar. A ninety-nine-point buzzer-beater.
"...Eek. Eeeek?!"
Maybe the curled-up bug mistook the inside of her clothes for soil and got to work, because Red went into a full fit.
"Kyaaaa! What! Something went in!! Kyaaa!"
Lupin handed Red's own words straight back.
"Hey. Keep your voice down. We'll get ambushed."
At that, Yegor barely swallowed a laugh. Blue shot Lupin a single glare, then grabbed Red's shirt and shook it out hard. A moment later the poor bean bug went plop. It hit the ground, flipped onto its back, and was stepped on by the flailing Red, buried in the soggy mud.
You have suffered nobly, Lord Bean. Thanks to your sacrifice, I have witnessed a delightful scene.
Even she thought it was ridiculous. Lupin couldn't stop snickering for a long while.
"...Huh?"
Why was this fun? It wasn't supposed to be fun. Most of Lupin's joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure lived and died with treasure chests. Usually she got angry because a chest was fake, and happy because she found a real one. Just now, though, she had purely enjoyed Red making a fuss.
"...Huh?"
It was day five of failing to open a treasure chest. She'd already decided that if this was a bust, she would slaughter the master of the maze. And yet her mood right now wasn't particularly bad. Had she been drinking? No. Then she shouldn't be in a good mood, should she?
She went looking for the reason, and her brain threw a fit. You won't find it even if you look. When it was like this, there was nothing for it but to think later. She'd come to find treasure chests, not to go hunting for some other kind of fun. Right. All Lupin needed was a treasure chest! A complete food that healed body and mind in place of a meal. The King Chest. Was he a god?
"Wait. This smell..."
Maybe because she'd been thinking about food, a fishy tang tickled her nose even from a distance. It was the faint scent of rust off a treasure chest's hinges.
Sniff. Sniff. Lupin flared her small nose and glanced around. Red and Blue looked at each other, trading a silent thought, and found no answer worth having. Lupin's behavior was that bizarre.
"There's more than one."
She didn't stop there. Lupin shot to her feet and kicked off the ground, looking ready to hit a full sprint within two steps at most. The party tensed and gathered strength in their legs—Red and Blue to test whether they could keep up with her speed, Yegor so that if she charged ahead he could move up and protect the other two.
One. Two.
"...Huh?"
On the third step, Lupin vanished without a trace. Only the oil lamp she should have been holding lost its owner and dropped in free fall.
"Hah!"
Red slid forward, barely caught the falling lamp, and threw its light ahead. A long cave swallowed by darkness. Lupin was nowhere in it. A person had moved, so there ought to have been footsteps, but even that sound vanished under the drip of water falling somewhere in the cave.
What kind of speed is that?!
She really was an Aura Master...?
Red and Blue became convinced of it. The space the oil lamp lit was a dozen meters at least, and she had crossed it at a speed the eye couldn't follow. Run a filter on four keywords—orthodox aura, sword, speed, lightness—and exactly one name made the shortlist. The Shadowless Sword Style, come from the southern isles.
That old geezer...
These days the lineage of the Shadowless Sword Style was carried on by the retired Tassili Maksikov. He had sent Lupin, so Lupin had to be someone who wielded it too. Rumor had it he didn't have a single decent disciple. Perhaps all of that had been a smokescreen.
The two women spoke with prearranged hand signals and their eyes.
Aura Master. Pull out and assess.
If their opponent was an Aura Master, fighting in a space this cramped left them no chance of winning.
Then Yegor looked around and cupped a hand to his ear like a funnel.
"Wait. Did you hear something?"
Still gathering the sound, he spoke again.
"Something clanking..."
—————!
A small blast cracked from far away.
"...Did you just hear that?"
Then the vibration swelled, a low rumble growing louder. From beyond the reach of the oil lamp, an unidentified sound was drawing closer. The party stood on a downward slope. And water flows from high to low.
"It's a trap! Run!!"
A current filling the entire cave came slamming in, roaring at every fork it met as it surged. Would Lupin, far ahead of them, have heard it?
"No. Oh, shit."
She hadn't. She'd been busy opening treasure chests. Inside the cave that ran straight as a line, in a burrow gouged deep into the earth, sat ten head-sized treasure chests—the ones her nose had locked onto. But the face that should have been pure delight twisted a little further every time a chest opened.
———♪
Once again a small mechanism sang out in a clear, ringing tone, scraped her nerves raw, and was crushed under her boot, spilling its iron guts. A music box. All ten of them!
Secret Safe: 2 / ? (?%)
Staring at a count that had not changed by a single one, Lupin trembled.
"This is a lie, right...?"
The stream packing the cave came roaring in, and the ceiling let out a heavy groan. Picking up the music box had sprung the trap, but Lupin was sure the whole world was rumbling because her heart had shattered.
"Does this make any sense? How are all ten of them music bo—glub—"
The deluge pouring from the ceiling swept her away.
