Chapter 86: There is a Third Way
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 86: There is a Third Way
I finished collecting all the corpses of the monsters and adventurers scattered across the Central Section and stowed them away in my subspace pocket.
All that remained was managing the surviving adventurers and planting the vine beans Rafnel had given me.
"Twenty-one of them made it, huh?"
Raphael chewed on a piece of jerky as he looked over the adventurers.
The twenty-one survivors were currently undergoing a rigorous examination by Paramel, the Recorder, to ensure they weren't under mental control or deluded by the heretics' lewd rituals.
It was better to be thorough. The cultists' tricks were notoriously foul; if we were even slightly careless or lax in our handling of them, there was no telling what kind of godforsaken terror they might unleash.
Fortunately, perhaps because a Saintess was standing right before them, the survivors were submissive to the Inquisitors' orders.
They knew all too well that one wrong move could lead to them being branded as heretics and getting their skulls cracked open on the spot.
"Still, a lot more survived than I expected."
Twenty-one survivors meant that nearly half of the adventurers who had attacked us while possessed by skinwalkers were still alive.
Furthermore, since most of the deceased had died from brain death, it meant that almost everyone had survived except for those who died the moment the skinwalkers exited their bodies.
In short, the dead were almost exclusively those whose brains had been more than half-eaten by the skinwalkers.
A skinwalker devours the host's brain and replaces the empty space with its own body. Once the skinwalker leaves, the brain is simply gone.
In such cases, unconscious functions like breathing—the natural act of inhaling and exhaling—become impossible, leading to suffocation. In other cases, the muscles seize up, leading to a slow death.
Simply put, they die because their brain suddenly vanishes. All the unconscious biological activities that were taken for granted simply stop.
'And the time it takes for a skinwalker to eat more than half of a human brain, making the host entirely dependent on the parasite, is roughly one to two weeks.'
At the earliest, the brain is half-eaten and beyond recovery by the seventh day. By the fourteenth day at the latest, it’s completely gone.
I had just pulled out Monster Dismantling Savoring from my inventory to check, and that’s what the records said.
I didn't know exactly how they had experimented to find this out, but since Monster Dismantling Savoring served as a sort of definitive walkthrough for monsters in this world, its accuracy was over ninety percent. It was reliable.
Based on my experiences so far, most of its information had been spot on.
'This means the period during which the heretics have been able to control skinwalkers hasn't been that long.'
Since some had died the moment I used the Bug Repelling Blessing because their brains were already gone, I could estimate that the heretics had been able to handle skinwalkers for about a week at most.
Then here was the question.
How did their monster-taming technology advance so much in just one week?
According to Recorder Paramel, their primary weapons—curse magic and black magic—had barely evolved from where they were thirty years ago.
'They are systematically taming monsters that appeared after the Labyrinth Eruption. Even the massive monster wave they triggered in the Central Section... that was likely possible because of their advancement in monster-taming arts.'
They must have gained the ability to control variant leader entities like High Orc Lords or Hobgoblin Shamans to pull off such a stunt.
But these were monsters that didn't exist in the Underground City thirty years ago.
How were they able to understand and dominate them so precisely?
While their other technologies remained stuck thirty years in the past, their monster-taming skills had advanced excessively in just a few weeks? Even if they had read Monster Dismantling Savoring, it should have been impossible.
'Furthermore, now that the control over the Underground City's indigenous species has fallen into their hands, we have to assume the Underground City has already become the heretics' playground. This is an unprecedented situation.'
The greatest threat in the Underground City is none other than the indigenous species.
These are the "landlords" of each section who possess a certain level of intelligence. High Orcs rule the Plaza Section, Hobgoblins rule the Ruins Section, and Werewolves rule the Spire District.
To put it simply, they are the demi-humans who have made the Underground City their home. The heretics had used some means to bring them all under their control.
'To recap, the methods of their sorcery and black magic are similar to thirty years ago.'
The forms and compositions of their curses were said to be almost identical to those from thirty years ago.
While their specialty, curse magic, remained exactly as it was during the Great Purge thirty years ago, their skill in handling monsters had reached an incredible level.
If I were to make a guess based on this... it meant there was a clear anomaly.
There was definitely something.
We had to assume that something specialized in controlling monsters existed on the enemy's side. And that "something" might not even be the heretics.
"Raphael."
"Hmm? What is it?"
"Are we absolutely sure it's just the heretics?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I just have a bad feeling. I feel like there might be something bigger... something other than the heretics."
"Is that so?"
Raphael wore an expression that suggested he didn't quite understand.
It was highly likely he didn't know.
'The news that Transfer Stones have appeared all over the continent is top secret.'
I had heard from the Guild Master and Yuria that a Transfer Stone connected to the 5th Floor Underground City had appeared in the forests of the Keislan Kingdom, but the Inquisitors likely didn't have this information.
'Of course, the high-ranking officials of the Church would know.'
People like the Pope or the Saintess would already be aware.
'I keep thinking this isn't just the work of the heretics. It feels like something else is mixed in.'
Something specialized in taming monsters had joined forces with the heretics to seize the Underground City for themselves.
This was a very dangerous development.
'The most serious problem is that there are no Transfer Stones... in the Central Section.'
When you descend from the Upper Levels to the Underground City, everyone is funneled into the Central Section.
That was why the heretics were able to prepare such a massive "gift" as a monster wave in advance.
However, to leave the Underground City, one had to move past the Central Section into another area to find a Transfer Stone.
The Central Section only had an entrance.
And now, we had twenty-one patients on our hands.
'We are critically low on daily necessities. The food I prepared is only enough for six people to last a month—or two at most if we're extremely frugal.'
Naturally, things would start getting difficult after a week.
But could we really reach a Transfer Stone while dragging twenty-one patients along?
'I figured out where the Transfer Stone in the Plaza Section is when I was here with the body recovery team. It's recorded in my Map Creation.'
Finding the location of a Transfer Stone is a task in itself. But I had a map that could lead us directly to one.
The problem was that the Plaza Section was the perfect place to be surrounded and annihilated, and the heretics might have already swarmed the area around the Transfer Stone with monsters.
No, they had definitely placed a trap of monsters around the Transfer Stone.
They had been killing adventurers and stealing their abilities; they likely had a Map Creation ability similar to mine by now.
"This is driving me crazy."
As I clutched my head, Rosier, who had just finished washing her hands, looked at me with a questioning gaze.
"What's wrong? Is something the matter? If you're in pain, I can cast a healing spell on you."
"No, it's not that... I think we're in a real bind."
"Pardon? A bind?"
"Do you think we can escape the Underground City... while carrying twenty-one patients?"
"Well, that's..."
Only then did Rosier truly grasp the situation we were in.
"There were no Transfer Stones in the Central Section."
"Yes. I'm starting to think... the heretics might have intentionally put us to this test."
They might have set the stage this way, knowing that a significant number of the adventurers infected by skinwalkers would survive.
The thought sent a shiver down my spine. They had already figured out how to handle skinwalkers long ago and used that knowledge to dump the survivors on us at the perfect timing.
"Let's report this to the Saintess first."
"Yes. We should."
I relayed the information I had gathered and my deductions to the Saintess.
The Saintess, who had been staring blankly at the ceiling of the Central Section to steady her mind, frowned upon hearing my words.
"We've been given two choices. No, perhaps three."
"Three choices?"
"Yes. As the Porter said, there is no way to leave directly from the Central Section. We must leave this place and head to one of the other five sections. That gives us three options."
First.
Lead the twenty-one patients through countless traps, monsters, and the heretics' schemes to find a Transfer Stone.
This was extremely dangerous. There was a high probability of being wiped out during the move, and the twenty-one survivors were currently suffering from mental instability, malnutrition, anemia, dizziness, vomiting, and seizures.
Then, the second.
Leave the twenty-one patients and a few Inquisitors to protect them in the Central Section, while a small group searches for a Transfer Stone and goes up to request reinforcements.
Leaving adventurers who aren't in their right minds here would be no different from throwing them to the wolves. Therefore, Inquisitors would be essential to protect them.
The problem here was that even the remaining Inquisitors might lose their minds under the heretics' harassment. According to my theory, it wasn't just heretics here. Unknown enemies would be invading alongside them.
Furthermore, my Map Creation was necessary to find the way quickly and efficiently. If I joined the scouting party, we would need more personnel to protect me.
That meant the Saintess would have to come along, and if she joined me to search for the Transfer Stone, the remaining Inquisitors would have to hold out until we brought reinforcements from above.
The even more serious issue was that the adventurers we'd need to bring down would have to be at least Gold Badge rank.
It was questionable whether the Labyrinth City could even mobilize that many Gold Badges right now.
Many Gold Badges had retired after the Labyrinth Eruption, and too many had vanished in the chaos.
We were short on manpower. That was why we had come down for this heretic hunt by ourselves in the first place.
There was no one left to fight. It was a situation where we might even have to drag the Guild Master down here.
'If only we had known beforehand that there were people who could handle monsters better than the heretics...'
We might have been able to respond to this situation more easily, but we had no information that a third party's intervention would make the monsters move like an army.
Even Olivia, who was practically a walking walkthrough for the Labyrinth, hadn't known about this. Just where did that Transfer Stone connect to for people with such ridiculous authority to enter the Underground City?
I judged that both the first and second methods were too risky.
I had to hear what the final option was.
"Saintess. What is the third way?"
"The third way. This will likely be the most efficient method."
The Saintess replied with a smile.
"We kill all twenty-one of those adventurers. Then, we carry them in your subspace pocket. This is the safest and most efficient way."
"...."
I was speechless.
Right, I had been vaguely thinking about it too.
Killing them and carrying them myself... would be the most efficient.
"Are you saying we should resurrect them once we're back up?"
"Yes. We have the Goddess's blessing. If we use the Resurrection Spell, we can return them to their original state. In fact, they'll be even healthier than they are now."
In terms of efficiency, it was indeed the best.
However, it was also the most inhumane way possible.
It meant we would have to kill them with our own hands.
"We just have to bring them back to life. The Resurrection Spell is perfect. Since it's a method guaranteed by the Goddess herself, they will be resurrected without any issues. Oh, of course, there might be some minor side effects. But isn't that better than everyone dying together?"
"Wait, are you... really a Saintess?"
"Hahahaha. I hear that often. Now, what will you do? I believe the third way is the most efficient. What do you think, Mr. Porter?"
The Saintess made the decision as if it were nothing of consequence.
She truly was a madman with clear eyes.