Chapter 20
“So that’s what it was.”
“What a stupid thing to do...”
When we ran into the suspicious party we had seen two days ago, the sword spirits growled in furious voices.
Nierel, too, had a hard, unfamiliar look on her face.
What is it? What happened?
“The kind of idiots who keep going on and on about childhood friends always end up—”
“Hey! First, snatch the map from that guide bastard—Dogo or whatever his name is!”
The Invisible Sword shouted urgently.
Something was clearly wrong.
This was no time to show restraint or courtesy.
I strode straight up to the guide, Dogo, and roughly wrenched the map from his hands.
“H-Huh, Mr. Ivan? What are you doing all of a sudden?”
“P-please give the map back!”
Kane and Dogo reacted passionately when I took the map.
They behaved as though they should never have shown me the map in the first place.
Clang—
Rather than answering, I drew my sword.
I did it so the childhood friends couldn’t come any closer, and so the sword spirits could get a clear look at the map.
“Do not approach me. I need to check the map.”
“M-Mr. Ivan! That’s not it!”
When I came down hard, Kane flustered and begged me to listen.
They didn’t seem to be planning to attack me.
But it was obvious they were hiding something.
The map had a few markings and notes on it, probably from the guide’s own methods.
The Invisible Sword, who had experience as a guide, read the map.
“Those bastards were deliberately wandering around instead of heading to the transfer stone.”
Under normal circumstances, they could have reached the transfer stone yesterday too.
Dogo had been deliberately circling around, avoiding it.
“If they’d gone straight to the transfer stone, there’s no way we’d have run into the same party twice in reverse.”
The sword spirits had realized it when they saw the same party twice.
“So you deliberately avoided the transfer stone and kept circling. You could have reached it yesterday too, so why did you do that?”
“S-sorry, Mr. Ivan. Please hear us out first. We absolutely had no intention of harming you.”
Kane said, looking extremely flustered.
The other two childhood friends were the same.
Nierel came over to my side and glared at the three of them.
As a ninth-grade Climber, Nierel seemed to have come to the same conclusion as the sword spirits.
“L-like I said before, we need money for our friend’s medical treatment. So we wanted to earn as many magic stones as we could on this labyrinth trip.”
“I clearly said that when we first formed the party, our goal was to break through the first floor as fast as possible.”
“That’s... because in a rookie party like ours, it’s hard to find a first-Stigma examiner, so we thought we should at least grab one...”
It was hard for a rookie party to build a proper team.
There just weren’t many skilled tenth-grade Climbers around. I knew that from experience.
As a tenth-grade party, this one was actually remarkably stable.
Kane must have known it would be difficult to assemble another party at this level.
Now that we had worked together, they were better than I’d expected.
He must have thought this party could earn all the treatment money in one go.
The note from the first night had been sent to Dogo, telling him not to go to the transfer stone until they had gathered all the treatment money.
“We never intended to take anything away from you and Nierel, Mr. Ivan. We just planned to circle around until our share alone was enough to cover the treatment costs.”
Kane pleaded with both hands raised.
He seemed sincere about having no intention of attacking me.
“Tsk. That’s the kind of thing only rookies would think of.”
“Didn’t I tell you? The ones who go around spouting crap about childhood-friend friendship always end up screwing over the party.”
The sword spirits clicked their tongues in disdain.
Then, in quick succession, they said:
“The circumstances are understandable, but you shouldn’t have done this.”
“Get out of there quickly for now. Sort out who was right and wrong later.”
“Run first. We can settle the rest later.”
I’d expected them to be angrier at the childhood friends, but the spirits all agreed that leaving the area came first.
And it wasn’t just the spirits.
Nierel, too, said with an anxious expression, “L-let’s get out of here first and then talk. If those people from earlier are raiders...”
Thud, thud, thud, thud—
Just then, I suddenly felt the ground rumble.
It wasn’t an earthquake.
Several sets of footsteps were rapidly approaching.
“So the raiders were hiding instead of leaving!”
“We should have dealt with them first... Damn it, all because of those childhood-friend bastards!”
The sword spirits shouted anxiously at the exact moment a silhouette burst out of the darkness from the direction the earlier party had gone.
Their claim that they were just passing by was a lie. They grinned viciously, drew their weapons, and came charging straight at us.
They were raiders.
“Get the healer first!”
“Aaaah!”
One of the raiders snatched Hena up in an instant.
Hena was knocked on the back of the head and collapsed unconscious in a flash.
The others drew their swords and rushed in, while the rear line fired arrows from a distance.
It was a coordinated movement.
It meant this wasn’t their first time raiding.
Craaang—!
I hurriedly raised my shield.
One raider’s sword slammed against the wooden shield.
The heavier force, far more solid than a goblin’s, bore down on it.
The iron blade gouged the wooden shield, sending splinters flying everywhere.
“Graaah!”
I let out a cry and shoved the raider back.
Perhaps surprised that I was stronger than he’d expected, the raider grunted and stumbled away.
Weren’t these the same people who just let us pass two days ago?
“Maybe they thought there was nothing worth looting early on. There were other parties nearby too.”
“And this time, since they saw us wandering around without going to the transfer stone, they probably thought we were a lost, stupid rookie party. Easy pickings.”
“Does the reason matter right now? What matters is that everything got screwed because of those childhood-friend bastards!”
“Don’t let a single one escape. Kill them all! That sword looks good, so be sure to take it!”
While the sword spirits rattled inside my head, the raiders charged even more violently.
Hena, the healer, had already been taken.
Kane and Dogo were fighting somehow, but it didn’t look like they could hold out for long.
I blocked the attack of the raider in the vanguard once more, then looked back at Nierel.
“Nierel, please cover me.”
“Ah...!”
The dazed Nierel fumbled hurriedly for an arrow from her quiver.
But the hand pulling out the arrow was trembling violently, as though an earthquake had struck.
“What the hell. Is this the time for that?”
“At the worst possible moment, of course.”
Nierel, the elf archer who always made mistakes at crucial moments, had started to panic at exactly the wrong time.
“Nierel, you can do it!”
I shoved the raider back with my shield again and shouted.
Nierel’s pupils were blown wide as she gasped for breath.
Kane and Dogo were already bleeding.
Unlike Nierel, the raiders’ rear line was firing crossbow bolts without hesitation.
“Tell the elf to just stand still! If she screws up and shoots an ally, it’ll be even worse!”
“Even without an elf, we’d still lose. She has to shoot.”
“If I were there, one shot would be enough for these bastards!”
“Hah... things were going so well, too...”
“Charge! If we break into their formation, we might still have a chance!”
The sword spirits all shouted wildly inside my head.
This was a sudden situation.
Even the sword spirits had no room to organize their opinions neatly.
Besides, compared to them, I was still far too weak.
No amount of spirit advice could make up for my own lack of combat power.
And yet I never stopped listening to their voices.
In the midst of the chaotic shouting, one shared point came through.
“If the elf can perform at full strength, we might be able to buy ourselves enough time to run...”
“Just tell the elf to shoot. We’re already losing because we don’t have a rear line of our own!”
“The cave’s narrow and the melee’s a mess. Just look at the elf’s hands shaking.”
“Break through and grab their archers! Then we can still seize the initiative, user!”
“We’d lose even if we fought without the elf! Ugh, I never should have joined a childhood-friend party!”
To survive by gambling on even the smallest chance, Nierel’s arrows were essential.
Whether we ran or fought off the raiders, there was no possibility at all unless Nierel fought properly.
“I-I have to... I can do it...”
By then, Nierel was muttering with the bow in her hands.
But her right hand, resting on the arrow, was still trembling violently.
The bowstring quivered as if it were dancing.
“Nierel!”
There was no time to think any longer.
I made my decision and shouted.
The sword spirits were still yelling in my head.
But as always, in the end, I was the one who had to judge and act.
“I’ll rush in and target the enemy rear line. Please cover me!”
“You crazy bastard! That’s not how you do it!”
“How are you supposed to target the rearmost escort? And even if you can do that, the elf’s arrow might end up buried in you!”
The sword spirits were stunned by my shout.
And they were right.
It was hard to ignore the vanguard and go straight for the rear line.
Besides, the cave was narrow.
Nierel could easily shoot me in the back of the head by mistake.
But I no longer listened to the sword spirits.
More precisely, I had listened to all of them.
Since the battle began, they had kept talking.
But after a certain point, they were only expressing the same meaning in different words; there was nothing new left in what they said.
The sword spirits had already given me every piece of information they could.
Now it was time to act.
“Nierel, you can do it!”
“Y-yes... yes!”
I shouted at her again and again.
Nierel answered in a voice lacking all confidence.
It wasn’t a reassuring answer at all, but I ran toward the enemy archer anyway.
“Hey, you crazy bastard!”
“Run, user! Charge!”
“No, trusting the elf is dangerous!?”
The sword spirits screamed in chaos inside my head.
Run while leaving the rear to the elf.
The arrow would end up in the back of my head.
Or else, targeting the rear right away was far too dangerous.
But I ignored all of them and ran.
All while waiting for Nierel to shoot her arrow.
“U-uh, uh...”
Fortunately, Nierel didn’t hesitate for long.
The moment I started running, I heard the twang of the bowstring almost immediately.
“Damn it, no!”
“Dodge it!!”
The sword spirits shouted in shock at the same time.
That alone was enough for me to tell where the arrow was headed.
But their worry was meaningless.
The instant I heard the sound of Nierel’s shot, I had already thrown myself downward.
Whoosh—
Nierel’s arrow skimmed just above my forehead.
It passed through the exact path where my head had been.
At the end of that path was the enemy archer’s head.
Since my body had blocked the enemy’s line of sight, the archer couldn’t even react before the suddenly appearing arrow killed him instantly.
Slashhh—
And the moment Nierel fired, I threw myself to the ground and slid beneath the arrow.
My legs scraped across the floor with a sharp hiss.
Feeling the flesh of my thighs drag against the stone, I swung my sword.
Still sliding along the ground, I cut at the enemy vanguard’s ankle.
Caught off guard by the low strike, the enemy screamed and toppled over.
The sword spirits cheered at the sudden feat.
“Ooooooh!”
“Were you aiming for this from the very start?”
“To think of that situation and make a judgment like this... truly astonishing.”
“So you never trusted the elf in the first place!”
No. I did trust her. I trusted that Nierel would make a mistake.