The Story Only I Don't Know 5

I'd heard all kinds of expressions before — feeling so good you could fly, like your body had been made brand new. Honestly, I'd always figured they were exaggerations. So maybe treating the whole "divine blessing upon the flesh" thing lightly and just going about business as usual had been a mistake.

…The sky?

I concentrated mana into my mace the usual way — brutally, mindlessly. It was the game's basic avatar weapon, so maybe it had some indestructible property; I'd swung the same mace that had been with me for ten years the same way I always did. Then suddenly the world flipped and my senses scrambled.

A buzzing filled my ears. My head went fuzzy. The mana coating wrapped around my body wavered unsteadily, and what spread before my eyes wasn't a sticky mud swamp and ash-white tentacles — it was an open, ashen sky, bleak and vast.

Which meant I was currently—

I'm flying? No — falling?

Apparently the recoil from bringing the mace down had launched me into midair.

I tensed my back, twisted my body in the air, and corrected my posture. Looking down from the sky, the horde of ash-white tentacles that had been below was nowhere to be seen. The problem was that the mud swamp, the poison pools, and the grove of ashen trees that had been around us were also gone without a trace.

The one silver lining was that a pure white barrier still held firm over the ground, which had been turned into a complete mess by raining mud, poison fluid, and vine fragments. I hadn't struck it directly, and what had splattered was soft mud and poison rather than hard debris, so the barrier hadn't shattered.

…Though it was cracked all over, like a window about to break.

"Ro-Roland?! You're okay, right?!"

After rocketing skyward with no regard for altitude, my speed slowed and I began to fall again. I righted my posture and glanced at Han Se-ah's stream window in the corner of my vision.

Past the wrecked surroundings and the cracked barrier, a tiny blue speck floated in the air. Judging by how much higher I'd gone than a normal jump, I'd misjudged my strength — badly. Apparently the blessing on my body had also improved the efficiency of physical enhancement through mana.

…Last time, against the full-moon wolf, I'd flipped the surrounding ground and raised a wave of earth, but it hadn't been enough to send my own reinforced body flying along with my weapon. It was like the grenade in my hand had turned into dynamite.

"Roland! Aren't you blasting things a little too hard?!"

"So this is what an Upper-grade — no, a Highest-grade adventurer looks like…?"

I landed with a heavy thud on ground churned into a slurry of mud, poison, and dry earth, sinking in up to my knees, and the party came rushing over in a cluster. Not knowing anything about the nameless god's blessing, they seemed to think this had been intentional rather than a mistake.

As they ran, I could see them stumbling because the floor had been punched into a quagmire. Only then did Han Se-ah check the ground's condition and hurriedly use Earth Control to carve out a narrow, long footpath.

"Ugh, the ground… Should we get out of here first and talk?"

"I didn't even touch it directly and my ankles ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠are tingling. Does the toxicity get stronger when the poison fluid mixes with the swamp?"

Grace, clearly eager to leave the center of the chaos, and Katie, who'd staggered through the mire before climbing onto the dry path and shaking out her ankles with a grumble. Watching them, I felt a mix of guilt and embarrassment.

Look, I hadn't expected to get this strong. My body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was already ridiculously tough and powerful on its own — add improved mana efficiency on top of that, and the control just wasn't there. It was exactly like a college student bitten by a spider getting superpowers and then crushing a doorknob.

…Though the scale of the mistake wasn't even remotely comparable.

I'd put everything into that single downward strike. But just as a person doesn't pass out from swinging at a punch machine until all their strength drains away, my mana wasn't exhausted and I wasn't left too weak to continue the adventure.

"Ahem. They were reacting to holy power, so I figured they'd stick to me and try to absorb it. I couldn't go around smacking every single one of that many, so I was trying to blow them away with just the shockwave, but…"

"You thought they were so sticky they'd cling on hard?"

"And the ground was weaker than I expected."

The only result was that mud swamp and poison fluid had gone flying in every direction like a missile had hit, and the ground had been punched into a crater. I'd only meant to use the shockwave to scatter them, yet the vines hadn't even left a trace. I'd reinforced my body as a side effect in the first place — I just hadn't expected to go floating up into the sky.

My figure soaring up through the scattering mud must have been pretty entertaining, because there wasn't a hint of fear or dread on the party's faces. They just complained about the mud making their ankles squelch.

I spun it as a ground problem rather than a failure of strength control, and the party nodded along. I was still swallowing my embarrassment when Grace looked around, fixed her gaze in one direction, and grinned at me.

"Still, looks like we achieved the goal? That way's a little noisy, and I can sense some presence."

"It definitely drew more attention than the holy power! Could it be our isolated brothers and sisters?"

At the mention of a presence, Irene latched onto Grace with a bright smile and started peppering her with questions. Something twinged in a corner of my chest, but what mattered right now were the unknown survivors who might be stranded on the 35th floor.

Seeing Irene grow restless, Han Se-ah ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠followed Grace's guidance and used Earth Control to cut a straight path through the swamp.

While I'd been floating up into the sky, the quest window must have updated too — she was pouring mana out without holding back. Whether she figured I could handle it even if she burned a little mana, or she just hated the idea of arriving late, people dying, and botching the quest, I couldn't say.

Thanks to that, the viewers started pinning new nicknames on Han Se-ah.

"What hired-muscle duo?! With the quest updated, if we took the long way around you'd all foam at the mouth going, 'Why, why aren't you going straight?!' and give me endless crap about it!"

"Would you do that?! If you got stuck with a party member like that in the first place, how were you planning to clear the game?"

Both Katie and Han Se-ah seemed quietly fired up from the destruction they'd just witnessed. Between those two fretting for a different reason than Irene — who was restless with worry and hope for her brothers and sisters — the only one in the party keeping a cool head was Grace.

And so, after pouring mana the whole way, we arrived at a place where a single Temple knight lay in ruins.

"B-Brother!"

"Kh…"

More precisely: a Temple knight in ruins, and wounded adventurers surrounding him.

The Temple knight lay on the ground half-conscious, and the adventurers stood swaying on their feet, exhausted. The strange part was that the place they were in was a very wide open clearing. Had this been a safe zone?

"S-Sister! You mustn't use holy power!"

"Back off!"

I was looking around with that thought when the startled adventurers came rushing over in a group, trying to grab Irene's wrist and stop her — only to retreat under Katie's threat. They hadn't been trying to attack Irene out of malice. They genuinely seemed terrified.

Irene seemed to guess something from that and gently lowered her hands. Instead, Han Se-ah pulled an emergency health potion from her inventory and casually held it out to an adventurer.

"…Hey, I've never used a potion, so — do you drink this? Or can you just pour it on?"

The way she muttered that under her breath left me speechless. I'd started thinking she might have grown enough that Jjanhae-jwa wasn't needed anymore — but she still had a long way to go.

Han Se-ah held out the potion while talking only to her viewers, and one of the adventurers snatched it, pulled off the Temple knight's helmet, and poured it past his lips. It was a low-floor potion she'd bought in advance, so the effect wasn't spectacular, but it should be enough to restore some vitality to someone half-unconscious.

Removing the pure white helmet revealed a brown mop of hair and a simple, honest face. Ignoring the viewers who were disappointed he wasn't a beauty, Han Se-ah stepped closer to the knight with the kind of plain look that would fit right in at a rural vegetable shop, and asked her question.

"Brother, what happened here?"

"Th-they kept coming… endlessly… the sanctuary… they were gnawing at the sanctuary…"

"Rest, Sir Knight. We'll explain."

As if the word "Brother" were some kind of password, the Temple knight — who could barely open his eyes — started to speak toward Han Se-ah, only for the adventurers to stop him and ease him back down onto the ground.

Still. Just from those words alone, I could roughly guess the situation.