108. Finals Are... Out of Service (10)
108. Finals Are... Out of Service (10)
"Hold position a moment."
"Huh?"
"Something to do before we go in."
I needed to guard against an attack from behind, just in case.
I adjusted my grip on the shovel over my shoulder and drew lines around the cave entrance. There was no time to draw a full blueprint, so I was roughly marking out the dimensions. This was hardly my first time doing it; by now, a glance was enough.
...Hmm, that should cover it.
"Everyone, five steps back."
At my word, the whole party stepped back. I gave the safety distance a final check, confirmed no issues, and activated the Skill.
"Craft. Craft. Craft. Craft."
Three oval walls and one roof. One handspan thick. That should be enough to stop anything from hitting me from behind. I pressed one hand against the center wall and used the Skill again.
"Craft."
A dirt door was born—slightly heavy, but with decent defensive strength.
Since I had already started, I might as well do it properly. The work took a full hour to finish.
"Thought you'd just throw up a few walls at most, but you built a fortress? Is that right?"
"I-I don't think we needed quite this much..."
"That is why you people keep getting chased around. If you want to secure your safety, you have to go so overboard that anyone would call it excessive. Only then can you actually secure safety when a real emergency hits."
Call it safety hypersensitivity. Safety only did its job when you were obsessively thorough about it. The party nodded at me with blank faces. Clearly, they didn't quite grasp it. I stepped over the traps I'd plastered across a ten-meter radius around the cave and opened the door.
"We're going in now."
"Ah, y-yes..."
Why did everyone look so dubious?
Guess being students, they all had a serious case of safety apathy.
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The cave was quieter than expected. It wasn't completely free of grotesque creatures, but they were sparse, and one or two here and there could be taken care of with a few swings of the shovel. So passed the first hour of our cave exploration without incident.
Except for the fact that there were no light sources at all, so we had to light the way with magic.
"The inside of the cave is safer, actually."
"But we must not let our guard down. They can burst out in large numbers all at once, you know."
Pretty sharp for a noblewoman.
"That's because we've sealed off the rear. Normally, monsters would've swarmed in from outside the cave too. Being attacked from front and back, even in small numbers, is a whole different problem from being raided from only one side."
The difference between having to mind your back and not having to was overwhelmingly huge.
Even when dealing with enemies in front of you, not worrying about your rear let you act more aggressively—and it was far more comfortable psychologically.
If only these kids could pick up even half my know-how.
It was self-evident that practical experience was more useful than dead theory.
"Shuri. Crank up the light magic."
"Yes!"
With the view ahead brightened, we could now confirm a bit farther into the cave as we advanced. I moved forward carefully, genuinely gauging whether we ought to bore through the floor.
Was the first floor here nothing but gimmicks too, like the uninhabited island?
Considering the island's size, an exit on the opposite side ought to have shown up by now. The fact that it hadn't meant either the structure was more tangled than I'd thought, or there might be some gimmick hidden like on the island.
"Sif. Notice anything unusual?"
"Mm, don't think so?"
"Laperinne. Can you cast a detection spell?"
"Shall I cast it right here?"
"Go ahead."
No sooner had I spoken than Laperinne gathered her hands at her chest and closed her eyes.
"Detect."
A wave of mana spread outward from Laperinne. I pulled jerky from my pocket, held it between my teeth, and waited for the result. The Nereid heiress opened her eyes just as I finished it. Likely pale from excessive mana use, she reported what she had found.
"There's an empty space fifty meters straight ahead. It appears to be stairs."
"Stairs, huh..."
At Laperinne's words, I moved my feet without hesitation to the fifty-meter point. No interference. And no sound either. I stared at the smooth wall—unlike what Laperinne had described—and pressed my hand to it. Somewhere around here, I figured.
Walking with the shovel blade against the wall, I found a relatively soft spot amid the sensation of scraping rock. So this was the hollow Laperinne had mentioned. I raised a foot and stomped the shovel blade, driving it deeper.
Bingo.
One, two, three, four.
I must have dug into the wall about ten times. The resistance I'd felt with each scoop decreased noticeably. From the look of it, Laperinne's magic was right: it was indeed stairs.
Hah, if only the spell didn't guzzle so much mana, I'd have her spamming it as we went.
"Shuri, come this way and send your light down the stairs."
"Y-yes!"
Shuri, who still seemed intimidated by me, trotted over in quick little steps and sent a sphere of light down the stairs. The area around me darkened, but the stairway became bright enough to see clearly. I raised my telescope and carefully examined its interior.
"...Just ordinary stairs."
I scrutinized the stairs and surrounding walls like a customer choosing an expensive item, but nothing stood out. They really were ordinary stairs... I turned, picked up the chunks of stone left from breaking through the wall, and activated a Skill.
"Craft."
A bowling ball of suitable weight rolled across the floor. I hooked a finger into its finger hole and sent it rolling down the stairs.
Bang, bang, bang, rumble-rumble-rumble...
Making a racket, the bowling ball rolled down below. The noise subsided, and I heard a faint rolling sound. So no traps or anything?
"Seems safe. Lewis. You take the very rear."
"Understood."
"Directly behind me, Shuri and Laperinne will stand. Sif, stand behind them and follow."
The stairs were too narrow for us to enter except in single file, like a toy train. Once I confirmed the party had lined up like a JRPG protagonist's group, I began descending.
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"Huh."
Just what was wrong with this world?
No, was the Rift the issue?
A magnificent temple, the sort you'd glimpse in faded memories of ancient Greece, sitting underground—who'd have expected that? As if someone had paid special attention, red-lit ornaments shimmered from ceiling to walls.
The floor, red as blood, felt sickening.
"This place..."
"Is a temple."
"Who could this temple serve? It surely wasn't Kalon..."
"Perhaps the master of those grotesque creatures?"
I half-listened to Lewis and Laperinne while staring at the distant temple.
A temple that outright ignored the laws of physics, like something from a shoddily made game. What's more, it was so colossal that it sat perched on a cliff yet somehow hadn't fallen off.
Those grotesque creatures, this temple—what on earth had led to the creation of such a hellish chunk of land?
"Yohan, what's the plan?"
"We head for the temple, keeping watch around us."
"Couldn't we build camp here?"
I shook my head at Laperinne's suggestion.
"This is a poor spot to build camp."
Making camp in front of stairs with an exposed perimeter was a gamble. Building camp noisily in a place where you didn't know what might pop out was asking for attention.
If something worse than the grotesque creatures—something our party couldn't handle—showed up, camp or no camp, we'd be smashed in an instant.
Even if we fled back up the stairs in the worst case, the entrance could end up blocked. If we were going to build camp, tunneling in near the temple was the better option.
Or going back up to the first floor and making camp there.
"All of you, follow quietly."
At my words, everyone nodded silently. Like petty thieves, we crept along the shadows of the walls toward the temple. As if waiting for us, the temple loomed with aloof elegance, looking down upon us.
Were those grotesque creatures born here?
Or was there some other factor?
My question found its answer the moment we pressed ourselves against the temple's outer wall.
"O-over there, monsters..."
I looked down over the cliff at Shuri's voice.
A murky crimson swamp.
Small organisms writhed in the murky crimson swamp. From the cliff above, they only looked like tiny specks, but instinctively I knew what the specks were.
"...They were born here, then."
I stole a sidelong glance at the party's faces. All of them wore expressions of disgust. Who wouldn't, after witnessing the birth of such life-defiling abominations?
Fighting my revulsion, I observed them. Creatures rising from the swamp and heading in one direction. The darkness made it hard to tell, but it was probably the route out to the island. Since the path up into the cave was blocked, I could only assume the monsters had a separate way out.
"...Keep watch around us. I'm making camp."
I adjusted my grip on the shovel and drove it into the ground.
Fortunately, digging a tunnel didn't take long. In less than ten minutes, we were inside, eating what might have been our final meal.
Though it only amounted to a few strips of jerky and some water.
"Eat up, and make it hearty. This may be your last meal here."
"Saying stuff like that will make the food stick in my throat."
"I mean stay on guard. No one knows what's inside that temple."
"Lewis... we're going to make it back alive, right...?"
Shuri's voice echoed through the tunnel, her ears drooping like those of a frightened puppy. When I glanced over, Lewis was comforting her with an unbearably tender look.
"Don't worry. We'll make it back."
"Lewis..."
"Shuri..."
For a moment, I considered leaving them behind.
"To engage in such shameless conduct in a place like this! Have neither of you any sense of dignity as students of Kalon Academy?!"
"This is getting fun."
"Agreed."
Sif and I chewed jerky while watching the fresh young love triangle unfold. I didn't want to miss one of the few sources of amusement available in this hellish rift.
And amidst the chaos, Viola, right next to Sif, added one more word.
"Fucking hell..."