Elise
Solomon steeled his resolve and took the lead. Being discovered was no longer an issue. The moment he had turned the corridor into a lavish fountain of blood, the situation had become irreversible.
However, the “problem” arose faster than expected. The instant Solomon started down the spiraling staircase that twisted round and round, the cry of a hound rang out from above.
— Hiiiik! Those bastards!
“Oh, fuck.”
Dr. O’Neil’s soul was openly terrified, and Oberon spat out a curse of his own.
“■■■■■─!”
The first short howl was immediately followed by a cry that was unmistakably different. It sounded as if it were deliberately broadcasting the situation to everyone nearby.
Crack. Crack.
The alarm device activated at once. From the stairs beneath Solomon’s feet to the mansion’s walls, corridors, carpets, and every inch of wallpaper, color began to drain away.
“!”
With the fading came a weathering effect that seemed to compress eons into seconds. Everything crumbled into powder and scattered on the wind.
Rumble!
The mansion began to collapse entirely. The staircase Solomon stood on was no exception.
Yet strangely, he neither fell nor was buried. Nor did the exterior of Ghosttown appear once the interior vanished.
Instead, the sensation was closer to—
It’s sinking!
Submersion. In the dizzying feeling that the entire mansion was plunging underwater, Solomon barely kept his balance. The structure disintegrated under the accelerating decay until nothing that could be called a mansion remained.
Only darkness surrounded him.
As if the building had been swallowed whole by jet-black shadow, an endless void stretched in every direction—darkness that could no longer even be called an “interior.”
“Those fucking bastards really half-assed the construction.”
Even in the middle of it all, Oberon was still there. He glowed with an alien fairy light, hovering beside Dr. O’Neil’s bluish, trembling soul.
“Where are we?”
“Below Ghosttown.”
The fairy’s rough voice answered. Below Ghosttown.
“In case you didn’t know, Ghosttown’s a maritime city.”
Above the sea. Solomon had no time to process the revelation. A chill raced down his spine; he immediately braced himself.
Bang!
The Nightfall automatic crossbow, its bolts already coated in the poison of ruin, fired. The quarrel shot forward and punched straight through the thing that had lunged right in front of his face.
“■■■!”
It was a black hound. The transparency potion had been useless; the creature had sensed him and charged.
Got it?!
One bolt. He was already preparing the next shot when a purple shimmer erupted from the quarrel embedded in the hound’s spectral body and swallowed it whole, tracing its veins like surgical contrast dye.
The bolt itself could not harm a spirit. What wounded the black hound specter was not the steel but the ruin poison smeared on its tip.
The way the hound thrashed like a living thing in agony as its body turned purple proved it.
The poison of ruin.
That ominous violet hue dyed the black hound purple and silenced it, as though it were twisting and rotting from some unknown plague.
Just one crossbow bolt. The opponent was laughably easy, making his earlier worry seem ridiculous. Still, it was no time to celebrate.
!
Howls soon echoed from every direction—an uncountable number. The moment he heard them, Solomon moved without hesitation.
He gripped the spell-infused, poison-coated Ghostwhale Bone Blade in one hand and the Nightfall crossbow—nine bolts remaining—in the other.
From somewhere distant came the sound of rolling dice. By the time it reached him, Solomon had already pulled the trigger. Bang! The second Nightfall shot. The sound of his second ambush from invisibility.
Whoosh!
The transparency surrounding him vanished. His form materialized in the empty darkness.
Fortunately he still wore the gas mask prepared for Ghosttown’s toxic air, so his face remained hidden.
— Y-you… how the hell are you here…!
Ah.
But his equipment and weapons were unchanged, so the disguise meant little.
It’s hard for anyone to forget the person who decorated the end of their life.
Dr. O’Neil finally recognized Solomon and recoiled in horror. Only then did Solomon realize his mistake and play dumb.
“Hmm, why are you acting like this?”
— Why?! Think about what you did to me…!
Deception failed! You should only deceive what can actually be deceived.
Fuck.
Even he had to admit it sounded weak.
— You killed me! Aaaaah, y-you! You’re the one who— Aaaaah…!
“Shut your mouth, you fucking ghost bastard.”
— !
Solomon had no choice but to curse openly.
“Go ahead and keep whining. I’ll be happy to show you what it feels like to become dog food after you’re dead.”
His tone suggested he was ready to grab O’Neil by the collar and hurl him straight into the pack of hounds.
— H-hiiik!
Intimidation Success! Dr. O’Neil’s face has turned pale as a corpse! Just so you know, that’s not a metaphor.
With another roll of invisible dice, the already bluish glow around O’Neil’s face grew even paler. And it really wasn’t a metaphor.
“Yeah, isn’t hate supposed to be solved with forgiveness and reconciliation? This is all love and peace, baby.”
By the way, forgiveness and reconciliation tend to have particularly high success rates when you’re pointing a blade at someone.
“……”
Oberon chimed in from the side as if it were none of his business. The narrator’s nonsense continued. Solomon was so dumbfounded he simply shut his mouth. There was no time to waste on it anyway.
Bang!
He pulled the Nightfall’s trigger again, then swung the Ghostwhale Bone Blade toward the hound lunging at his blind spot. The trigger clicked a third time.
There are so fucking many.
Solomon swallowed another curse. Even so, the black blade and the poison-coated Ghostwhale Bone Blade tore through the fourth hound’s spirit body. The crossbow barked again off-rhythm. The fifth.
If this keeps up, there’s no end in sight.
Fighting them was one thing, but the bigger problem was that he had no idea which way to run.
“Hey, this way.”
Right then, Oberon flew ahead as if he had been waiting. His Jesus-like hippie hair and beard fluttered as he illuminated the darkness with sacred fairy light.
Solomon followed without hesitation. Then something astonishing happened. Even though the mansion was submerged in total darkness, the interior began to reveal itself bit by bit along the path the fairy took.
It was as if the sunken mansion were rising back to the surface. Before he knew it, Solomon was walking through rooms that should have collapsed.
Like a submarine resurfacing after sinking to the ocean floor.
It’s coming back.
All thanks to the guide fairy’s blessing. And what waited at the end of the path was…
“My, if it isn’t Oberon?”
A voice rang out.
— Hiccup!
Dr. O’Neil made a sound behind them—a physiological reaction one would never expect from a soul.
“Fairy King my ass! It’s that piss-squirting bitch from the dog kennel!”
Oberon shot back without missing a beat, as if he knew her intimately.
“You were crying your eyes out over ghosts just the other day, but now you’ve become a vicious ghost-spine-sucking dog butcher. Time really is a heartless bitch.”
“……”
The grey-haired beauty—Elise Haunting. The direct descendant who called Duke Haunting “father” stood before them.
“That filthy rag of a mouth hasn’t changed one bit.”
Elise answered in a cold, emotionless voice.
Insight Success!
Actually, it’s not that she lacks emotion. It’s closer to the side where emotion is excessively loaded.
Whew, I swear I’m going to shut that guy’s mouth one of these days…
Solomon swallowed a curse, feeling like he was going to get an ulcer. So this was why people said not to pick at scabs.
“That one must be a lackey of the bourgeoisie, I take it?”
“Correct.”
Solomon didn’t bother denying it. Elise continued in an icy tone.
“Anyone can see you’re a bottom-feeding assassin from that pathetic hotel who doesn’t know his place.”
“I’d like to hear your reasoning.”
“Because any contractor with a shred of common sense would never set foot inside our family’s mansion.”
“Hard to argue with that.”
He agreed. No matter how you looked at it, Solomon’s current behavior was anything but sensible. The truly unfortunate part was that the situation had already gone far beyond what sanity could resolve.
Winning in a fight… is impossible.
Even an idiot could see that. He wasn’t even in a position to launch a surprise attack. And even if he could, the opponent wasn’t some mediocre mage from one of the great families.
According to the setting Solomon remembered, the heads of the Five Great Families were level-20 powerhouses.
Level 20 was essentially the limit of what a mortal could reach in this game.
The woman before him was the direct descendant of exactly that kind of monster. It was painfully obvious that a few ambushes and a high-grade transparency potion would never be enough.
Not that Solomon himself was in any position to criticize others anymore.
We have to run.
The problem was that he wasn’t the only one who needed to escape. And wanting to run didn’t mean he could. Solomon scanned his surroundings with colder eyes than ever.
“Sir Hector.”
Elise whispered softly. Within that whisper, an absurd amount of magical power surged. It was easy to tell the words themselves were a spell.
The moment he realized it, an intangible current swirled and another silhouette appeared beside her—a dark soul clad head to toe in medieval armor.
“Knight of the Swamp.”
Elise continued calmly.
“By the ancient covenant, I entrust your sword with the annihilation of our enemies.”
This was different from the souls he had seen before. It was not a one-sided debt or bondage, but a proper contract carried out with due respect.
— …Very well.
With that answer, the silhouette known as Sir Hector, the Knight of the Swamp, gave a slight nod.
“!”
At that moment the entire landscape twisted. The ground beneath his feet felt as if it were being sucked into a swamp. It wasn’t quite the total submersion of the mansion from before, but it was close enough.
Your body grows heavy as if trapped in a quagmire.
Step.
The Swamp Knight did not hurry. He moved as though he already knew they could not escape. True to his title, his movements showed not the slightest hindrance within the mire. Seeing it, Solomon instinctively understood.
Unbeatable Enemy
“Do you hear something?”
Solomon spoke, unconcerned.
“I don’t know what nonsense you’re trying to spout, but you’d better finish it quickly.”
“Strange. I hear it perfectly.”
Ignoring Elise’s bored tone, Solomon reached into his coat and pulled something out.
It was the insurance the bourgeoisie had prepared for mission failure—a trump card that could physically “erase” many of the problems here.
“The sound of my conscience exploding.”
“……!”
It was the Runestone of Great Explosion.