109. Finals Are... Out of Service (11)
109. Finals Are... Out of Service (11)
"This stench..."
"The smell of rotting corpses."
"Urp..."
What the hell were they doing in there for a rotting-corpse stench to be this strong? We had no choice but to hold our noses at the stench of decaying bodies seeping all the way out to the temple entrance. At this point, had they piled up a mountain of corpses somewhere inside?
"Ughh... just breathing is agony..."
"Shuri, you have to bear it."
Maybe because she was a dog beastkin, Shuri was already retching, her face completely pale. She wasn't going to be able to fight properly like this. I pulled a cloth from my pack, cut it into suitable sizes, and handed a piece to each member of the party.
"Cover your faces with these. It'll be better than nothing, at least."
"Urgh... thank you..."
We swiftly covered our lower faces with the cloth. It wouldn't block all the smell like a real mask, but it would be better than nothing. Having weathered that first ordeal, we were able to enter the temple.
The temple contained a vast lobby, a bizarre stone statue at the far end, and red shapes gathered before it with their heads bowed. Was the statue the god worshipped here? We hid behind a pillar to avoid notice and surveyed the layout.
The lobby. Two corridors, one on each side. The corridors were what we had to investigate first.
"We'll search starting with the right corridor."
"Wouldn't splitting up be more efficient?"
"No. The risk is too high."
I shot down Lewis's suggestion instantly. At a glance, nothing could be more efficient, but with two non-combatants in the group, splitting up now would only provide an opening for us to be defeated in detail.
A little slower, but thorough and safe.
That was the primary objective of this temple expedition.
We began moving toward the right corridor, stealthy as petty thieves. How far had we gone? We had traveled quite a distance, pressed against the inner wall and carefully scanning our surroundings, when I faintly sensed a presence.
"Someone's there."
"Could it be one of those creatures?"
"Probably."
"Wouldn't it be wise to use a detection spell?"
"No. If we use magic and get caught, things will get messy."
"Didn't you have a detection Skill?"
"...My Skill is too conspicuous to use."
Ah, right, that was the story I'd spun... It was something I'd said while glossing things over, and I only remembered making that claim after Sif asked about it. Sif looked a bit dubious, but she let it slide without further comment. This wasn't the kind of situation where anyone could quibble over every little thing.
"Then what should we do?"
"...For now, everyone hide behind the pillars."
The moment I finished speaking, everyone hid behind the pillars and waited for the unidentified presence to approach. Tak, tak. The footsteps grew clearer as it drew closer—the first regular footsteps I'd heard since entering the Dimensional Rift.
I quietly adjusted my grip on the shovel and tensed my muscles.
One.
Two.
Three.
A heavy impact ran up my arms. Blood spattered across my face, but the temple air was already too rotten for me to notice its coppery smell. I crouched before the cleanly decapitated body and looked it over.
"A human..."
Not a monster. A person. I stared fixedly at the neck, which had been covered by a red hood. The clothing looked familiar.
Halphas?
Was this shitty island some kind of base for the Cult of Halphas?
No, if these bastards were Halphas, then there ought to be a cult emblem or something—
"I'm searching the body. Keep watch and report immediately if you sense anyone approaching."
Everyone nodded at my order. I patted down the corpse's torso, searching for anything that could be a clue. But all I found was a small dagger and a small notebook. I hid the body appropriately behind a pillar and opened the notebook.
[!@()!#&!$_!)(!]
"...A language I've never seen before."
Strangely, my Auto-Translate Trait did not work. It wasn't as though it used a machine, so I had no idea why it failed here. Why had it not translated? I closed and reopened the notebook, then turned it upside down, but the unknown writing remained unchanged.
I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
"Does anyone recognize these letters?"
"Hm... I don't recognize them."
"I don't know them either."
"M-Me neither."
"Couldn't it be some kind of cipher?"
A cipher? At Sif's suggestion, I scrutinized the writing. Perhaps she was right, and my Trait did not work because it was encoded. Keeping that possibility in mind, I put the notebook into my backpack.
I planned to take it back and hand it over to a cryptographer.
"We'll continue."
There were many places to investigate. I chose the right path among the large central passage through the temple and the smaller ones on either side. The most efficient thing would've been to scatter and search the temple, but that was impossible as long as we had two non-combatants with us. I poked my face slightly into the right corridor to check if anyone was there.
"...That was grating."
The corridor protruded oddly from the middle of the temple building, and an incomprehensible prayer grew louder as we approached.
"!*@&(#$)!($*(!!"
The reverent voice scraping at my eardrums reminded me of a Mass I'd once attended back in my military days, but the moment I registered that the voice was spewing alien gibberish, it felt utterly uncanny. It sounded like something straight out of a horror game I'd enjoyed long ago.
"It's quiet."
"That racket makes it hard to pick anything out."
The nerve-grating noise of the sermon filled my head with clutter. That sound made it difficult to pick out what was happening around us. I stood beside the first door in the corridor and looked at the party. Save for Sif, the group members were pressed close together, their eyes on my lips.
"Lewis. You stand watch. Shuri, Laperinne. Can either of you use a Silence spell?"
A spell that used mana to break down sound within a designated area, effectively erasing it. In the game, it was a Skill often paired with stealth magic for assassination builds. The game's spell system ranked magic from Zero-Class to Fourth-Class, and Silence was Third-Class, so there was a fair chance they had learned it.
Fortunately, a positive answer came from Laperinne.
"I can do it."
"Cast Silence on the door."
I quietly adjusted my grip on the shovel and watched Laperinne cast the Silence spell on the doorknob. Now the door should open without a sound. I turned the knob, opened it just enough to slip my toes in, and pressed my eye to the gap.
"...A torture chamber?"
A corpse was strapped to a chair like something from a movie. Its face was hidden beneath a bag, but the body was large. I opened the door halfway and stepped inside. The room as a whole... was not something children should see. A blood-drenched corpse sitting in a room splattered with blood.
Gripping my shovel, I slowly approached the body. I wasn't keen on it, but I intended to frisk it. To begin with, there was nothing else in this room besides this corpse.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
The distance closed. Just as I came within reach of my shovel, my instincts screamed a mad warning.
"Oh, shit."
A creature burst out through the corpse's stomach. The disgusting mass of tentacles flew at my head as if trying to snatch it, and on reflex I drove my shovel into the creature's main body. The tentacle thing let out a hideous death cry and went limp.
Fuck. I didn't need this kind of jump scare.
I prodded the corpse's ruptured stomach several times with my shovel, then circled it while searching the body. I found nothing unusual. Did I really have to remove the bag?
Carefully, I removed the bag and checked the corpse's face. A middle-aged man. A face contorted in terror. Was the cause of death shock? I moved around to the back and checked his neck. No sign of ligature marks. The only thing there was a mark like an eye drawn in what looked like black ink on the nape of his neck.
If this was a religious symbol, this cult was not the Cult of Halphas.
Having gleaned some information, I grabbed the knob and pulled the door open to leave the room.
That was when it happened.
"Yohan, people are coming this way...!"
What?
I listened carefully at Laperinne's warning. Only then did I hear multiple sets of footsteps. They did not sound hurried, which suggested the people were walking, but that was not good news.
I hurriedly opened the door and called everyone inside. The room wasn't good for anyone's mental health, but there was no time to care. When I pulled the door wide, the party rushed in and covered their mouths at the gruesome state of the corpse.
I shut the door and pressed my ear hard against it.
Tak, tak, tak, tak...
The sound approached, then grew distant. Had they not yet found the body I'd hidden behind the pillar? The footsteps were regular, as if going about an ordinary day.
"Seems we weren't discovered."
"That's a relief. I was so worried we'd been caught..."
"Maybe they're dumber than they look?"
They were cultists, so Sif's idea was plausible. Suspicious signs were everywhere, yet they weren't searching for us. That would make the investigation easier—
Tap.
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"...Well, this is fucked."
Everyone's faces went pale.
With a hand slick with sweat, I adjusted my grip on the shovel.