The Big Ones and the Little Ones 3
The man's face was set in a rigid mask as he thrust his sword without a shred of hesitation. The long two-handed blade drove straight for my neck, ghosting unerringly into the hairline gap left uncovered by armor and helm — a killing stroke that alone was proof enough he was an Upper-grade adventurer.
A fierce, lightning-quick blade wreathed in flickering blue aura. No matter how formidable my body was, taking that hit without reinforcement was not something I could shrug off. It wouldn't sever my head in a single blow, but it would hurt like hell.
I snapped my left-hand shield up at once. The sword rebounded with a solid thung, failing to leave so much as a scratch — yet I couldn't relax. The blade, flung back by the impact, half-ignored the laws of physics and carved a bizarre arc as it came around again to take my neck.
Fucking sword masters, man.
This guy wasn't a warrior like me who solved everything with raw power and physical ability. He was the kind of swordsman who had polished his technique to the absolute limit and achieved enlightenment through it. The fact that a man like that had lost to his own lust, screwed a doppelganger, and gotten himself infected or brainwashed was almost too absurd to process… but then again, he wasn't alone in this.
Before his companions could join the assault or lunge for Katie, a pure white protective holy spell wrapped around my body. Even an Upper-grade adventurer's strike wouldn't punch through that easily, so I trusted the barrier and charged straight in.
He might have expected his sword to return along that uncanny trajectory — but he clearly hadn't expected it to stop dead in midair. His eyes went wide. I drove my shield straight into his face.
"Ghk— gyaaah—!"
"Kill him and grab the women!"
What the hell? Was the virus these doppelgangers carried some kind of sex-crazed pathogen? Every single one of them I ran into started howling about women, women, women — to the point I half-wondered if they weren't doppelgangers at all but some kind of orc variant in heat. Looking at how thoroughly this Upper-grade adventurer had lost his mind after sticking it in one of them, though, I had a pretty good idea of the reason…
Those doppelgangers weren't undead, but some kind of infectious hosts, weren't they? No wonder they'd come squirming and writhing out of that grotesque tree like things being born.
Think of that famous drama line — "Even cancer cells are life!" — and it starts to make sense. Not undead, but living monsters crawling with viruses and bacteria: walking STDs with legs. With that cheerful thought, I looked down at the Upper-grade adventurer whose nose had been flattened and whose teeth had been pulverized.
"Katie, Grace! Capture them alive if you can! These aren't the Demon King's creations — they're those adventurers from earlier!"
"Hah! These people have holy brands on their arms!"
"Then let's take them alive and hand them over to the Temple!"
Even after watching their strongest member — the Upper-grade adventurer — get put down in a single blow, the infected adventurers still charged in without fear, lust plain on their faces. If I could drop an Upper-grade in one hit, that put me at Upper-grade or higher myself… and yet they came at me no differently from actual monsters.
Of course, for all their swagger, the infected adventurers were subdued almost immediately.
The one who'd lunged at Katie was only Intermediate-grade; pure swordsmanship outclassed him so thoroughly he never even got to swing his axe before the tendons in his arm were severed. The rogue who'd been preparing something from behind took an arrow through the thigh before he could move, and the one further back nocking an arrow lost his balance to Han Se-ah's magic and face-planted straight into a patch of paralyzing mud.
Having a small infected adventurer party instead of a swarm of doppelgangers was convenient, at least. Just four of them — two warriors, one rogue, one archer — and they were done.
"Whew. Is it because they're infected? They're weaker than I expected."
"Yeah, this one was pretty sloppy with his axe, too."
No, it's just that our party is strong…
I was glad they weren't getting cocky, but the viewers who'd watched the fight seemed to take it a little differently.
A textbook adventurer party: one Upper-grade up front, three Intermediate-grades supporting. They were skilled enough to have casually crushed a doppelganger bandit gang and done something unspeakable afterward — but once their single Upper-grade was neutralized, the remaining Intermediate-grades couldn't even put up a fight against our Intermediate-grade party members.
At the lower ranks it might not matter, but once you hit Intermediate, the presence or absence of a gacha buff apparently made a bigger difference than I'd thought. Then again, at this level, fights were already decided by the thinnest of margins. And if that margin came from the buff of extra ★s, it wasn't a thin margin at all — more like a full handspan of difference.
"Should we tie them up with rope and haul them back?"
"We can't let them die, so we'll need to stop the bleeding first."
"I hope the brothers at the Temple can treat them. To fall from a single moment of temptation…"
And just like that, the adventurers were subdued. One with a crushed face, one with arrows through thigh and the back of the hand, one with a deep cut across the shoulder, one who'd inhaled paralysis-toxin mud through his nose…
That last one was an Intermediate-grade archer, and the second the ground gave way under him he'd face-planted like an amateur. Were our kids not actually that strong — were these just fragile bus passengers who'd never developed real skill because they'd been carried by their Upper-grade?
Anyway, I trussed the subdued adventurers tightly with rope bought on the 35th floor, then stacked them two and two and hoisted them onto my shoulders like sacks of rice. I didn't want our party members touching the doppelganger-screwers; the thought alone was unpleasant.
"Whew. Weird stuff just keeps happening, doesn't it?"
"Well, that's the Tower for you."
"True… I never expected to climb into a rideable golem and fight a giant worm."
"…And I never expected that rideable golem to destroy a family heirloom, either."
"Ahaha… Still, I heard the Northern Knight Order gained a solid new asset out of it, so."
With the party members who couldn't quite bring themselves to laugh at Katie's self-deprecating joke leading the way, I carried my four bundles of cargo and set off back toward the 35th floor. Honestly, I'd have preferred to turn them into corpses and dump them in my inventory — but I held back, because living research specimens were probably going to be needed.
I arrived on the 35th floor without incident, four bundles of cargo in tow, and found Temple knights eyeing us with open suspicion. The moment I raised my holy power as proof, those wary gazes filled with goodwill. Was holy power just a cheat key for raising Temple faction favorability?
…Come to think of it, from their perspective, a guy without a holy brand had just violently subdued adventurers who did have holy brands. Of course they had to be suspicious, whether they wanted to or not.
"Is that so? They failed to master their lust against the Demon King's creations…"
"I brought them in alive so research can be done on treatment."
I handed over the four of them and requested research — and the female Temple knight who received them smiled sweetly and said something terrifying in a lovely voice.
"Research? Hmm. We were simply planning to hang them as an example."
"Excuse me?"
She gestured proudly toward a gallows set up beside the open square. The posts still gleamed like new — built, perhaps, for the adventurer bandits we'd captured and handed over last time.
"B-but they've been infected by a newly appeared monster. Shouldn't that be studied?"
"Hmm. But Sir Roland — this isn't some wicked magic or poison. These are simply degenerates who tried to violate the Demon King's creations because they found them beautiful. However merciful the Goddess who governs life may be, She is not merciful toward those who harbor such… abnormal lusts."
The Temple knight was ready to proceed with hanging without the slightest hesitation, treatment be damned. And to be fair, she wasn't wrong. In a world that cut off pickpockets' wrists, who was going to protect a rapist's human rights?
The targets might have been monsters rather than humans, but word about the holy brands hadn't spread widely yet. These could well have been innocent adventurers on their way back to receive their brands — so the Temple knight was naturally applying a presumption of guilt.
Kind-hearted Irene looked a little pained, thinking they deserved a chance at rehabilitation, but that was as far as it went. The rest of the party didn't particularly object to the idea of hanging the infected adventurers we'd gone to the trouble of capturing alive.
"Hanna? There are plenty of ways to research the infection. Ways that focus on saving any potential victims, for instance."
"Victims… But last time, didn't they kill all the stonemasons? If they have an infection ability, why do that?"
Only Han Se-ah fretted that hanging the adventurers we'd worked so hard to capture might break the quest, and tried to redirect the conversation — but to the party members already thoroughly smitten with her, it just looked like she was trying to show mercy for no particular reason.
I gently wrapped an arm around Han Se-ah's shoulders and shot the Temple knight a look that said hanging them was fine by me.
But the knight still hesitated, glancing at me instead of dragging the infected adventurers away. I was wrestling with the same concerns as Han Se-ah, so even when the rest of the party sent subtle signals, the knight kept looking to me. Apparently she considered the opinion of someone who'd joined the Holy Crusade the most important one present.
"How about hanging the leader who failed to guide his party down the right path, and handing the rest over to the Magic Tower alive? The mages there might figure out an effective way to deal with these vile degenerates."
"Hmm. True… there's no need to hang them all at once."
So I offered a compromise of sorts.
I'd reached that conclusion because, while a player climbed the Tower, the Magic Tower functioned like an all-purpose delivery service. Buy mana stones, craft magic tools and high-grade items, even open gates — you could practically call it the Magic Tower That Keeps on Giving.
This time, too, if I tossed them a few "adventurer specimens who got infected while getting intimate with doppelgangers~," the mages who'd been prowling around like hyenas looking for a thesis topic would come swarming.
The Magic Tower felt less like a combat organization and more like a research collective — a mix of scientists and university professors — so whenever something new was discovered, they descended on it with more fervor than blood-starved piranhas.
Of course, the character design of Heroes Chronicle played a role in that background. There were quite a few characters like the beautiful mage and the assistants who'd voluntarily become her slaves after falling for her looks, or the dark-haired, long-haired, busty mage big-sis type who wore her white robe like a lab coat and sported heavy dark circles under her eyes.
"We'll do as Sir Roland suggests. It will benefit the brothers as well. One will be hanged as an example; the remaining three will be handed over to the Magic Tower."
"Thank you for hearing me out, even if it may have felt like meddling."
"Meddling? For a brother who has become the sword of the Holy Crusade, the Temple would gladly accept far greater requests than this. Hmm — is this one with the crushed face the leader?"
The Temple knight seemed to find the idea of handing them over to the Magic Tower as research specimens reasonably logical, and listened to what I had to say. Watching her sort the leader from the party members, Han Se-ah let out a long sigh of relief.
At least, with specimens delivered to the Magic Tower, something would progress from here.