Chapter 42
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: A Desperate Retreat
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With the sound of a detonator activating, the world was swallowed by a blinding white light.
The ceaseless onslaught of heat, light, flash, and shockwave paralyzed my senses as my body burned.
The hem of my jet-black robe caught fire, and my white hair curled as flames licked at it.
My mind, caught in the sudden explosion, couldn't even process the thought of death. A normal mage would have deployed a barrier to minimize the damage, but for me, such an option didn't exist.
...No, perhaps even an ordinary mage would have found it impossible to block this explosion with a barrier.
After all, even Rireu hadn't managed to deploy a shield.
Even an elf, renowned for her agility and quick reflexes, had failed to deploy a barrier.
It was an ambush no one could have seen coming, so I guess that was to be expected.
Only now did I feel my skin searing beneath my robe.
The belated agony crawled up my nerves and began to torture my brain.
My ribs and left wrist throbbed as if they were broken.
Soon, this pain would spread throughout my body. And then, before long, my world would fade to black like a TV being turned off.
…The thought sent a chill down my spine, despite being caught in a massive explosion.
Shit, I don't want to die.
“…Get a hold of yourself!”
Rex’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears.
*You dead too?*
Damn, that was one hell of a mine. I get it taking out a squishy mage, but to think it could one-shot an orc barbarian...
Was it because he was a high-level Mazoku? The craftsmanship on that mine was quite…
“Damn it, this is no time to be waking him up! Just sling him over your shoulder and move!”
Trian’s voice also cut through the awful ringing.
Something was strange. Trian should have been several meters away from the source of the explosion.
“Fuck, hurry up and move!”
“…Ah, okay, just a second!”
I could faintly hear Rireu’s voice, too.
What, was that Mazoku bastard carrying a nuke or something?
A single mine… and the whole party’s wiped out.
“…Hngh!”
A sharp gasp burst from my lips. I forced my eyes open, trying to find the source of the sudden agony.
My blurry vision was shaking violently. I could see the crimson-flushed skin of an orc.
I tried to rub my eyes to clear my vision, but I couldn't; something thick and hard was holding me fast.
I turned my head and saw lumps of flesh staring blankly into the void, like toys with their batteries drained. Only then did I notice the dungeon’s scorched black floor and walls.
‘…Am I alive?’
“Clear a path, Rex!”
Before I could even feel the relief of being alive, my vision started shaking violently, far worse than before.
The sound of an axe slicing through flesh, gobs of toxic blood spattering past my cheek.
“…Rex?”
“Stay still!”
I muttered Rex’s name. He had me slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, swinging the axe gripped in his prosthetic arm.
I blinked, unable to comprehend how I was still alive.
As I kept blinking, my focus slowly returned. With my vision restored, I could clearly see Rex’s back, bubbling like soup in a witch’s cauldron.
His skin was melting away, thoroughly soaked with the toxic blood of Mazoku and mutants.
The sight left me speechless.
The reason I was alive was very simple and clear.
Rex had shielded me from the mana mine’s point-blank explosion with his massive back.
I owed my life to Rex yet again.
The pain in my ribs and wrist intensified as my focus returned. I suppressed a groan and kept turning my head, trying to grasp the situation.
“We’re backtracking the way we came! Dammit, Rireu! Keep your head down and close the gap! I said stick close to the orc!”
Along with Trian’s sharp curses, a faint vibration began to emanate from among the masses of flesh.
It seemed the massive explosion had finally provoked the dungeon’s natives.
“Let me make this clear, you mages! Don’t use any flashy spells unless your life is literally on the line! If we draw any more attention, this situation will spiral completely out of our control!”
Trian shouted the moment he noticed I had regained consciousness on Rex’s shoulder.
“Hah, haah…!”
Rex’s ragged breathing resonated through my broken ribs and my frail body.
How many times had my vision swayed? Rex swung his axe with all his might, retracing our steps to get as far from the source of the sound as possible.
Past the mutants staring blankly into space, we reached the next room.
“Incoming! One at nine o’clock!”
Trian’s warning had barely registered when a long spider leg smashed through the doorway.
“Don’t stop, Rex! Getting as far away from the blast zone as possible is the top priority!”
We still hadn't put enough distance between us and the explosion. Trian, judging that we couldn't afford to be held up here, yelled for us to keep running straight ahead.
*CRASH!*
A giant spider, easily ten meters tall, shoved its legs through the small doorway before squeezing its massive body into our room.
Its enormous poison fangs lunged toward Rex and me, but at that moment, a steel arrowhead flew through the air, striking the spider squarely in the eye.
“Run, run!”
Rex trusted Trian’s covering fire and didn't stop moving. Trian unleashed a volley of arrows while sprinting between rooms at incredible speed, and Rireu followed close behind Rex, her head ducked low.
*Clank!*
Shoving his steel shoulder forward, Rex opened the door and moved to the next room.
The giant spider, though momentarily stunned by the steel arrow in its eye, seemed to have suffered no life-threatening injury and pursued us relentlessly.
“This is insane… Rex! Axe up! There’s more in front! One big one, two small ones!”
After we’d burst through three or four more rooms, Trian let out another curse-laden warning.
“Ma-Manifestation!”
On Rex’s shaking shoulder, I bit my tongue and focused on the foreign presence in my chest.
Thankfully, the artifact worked properly.
*Thump!*
The moment we opened the door, four pairs of massive eyes and legs greeted us. The clever, agile monster had seemingly predicted our path and was waiting right in front of the door with its massive maw wide open.
“Rex! Duck!”
The orc immediately ducked his head at my words. A thin, crimson line passed over the back of his head and tore a large hole in the giant spider’s maw.
*WHOOSH!*
The sound of slicing wind shook my vision. A moment later, I was drenched in bright blue blood. Rex’s giant axe had torn through the large hole in the spider’s mouth, splitting its body in half.
Fortunately, the spider monster's blood wasn't poisonous. That was one of the few things that made them better than the mutants.
*WHOOSH!*
As my vision swayed with each swing of Rex’s axe, I saw a steel arrowhead flash past my nose.
Simultaneously, I heard the sound of thin flesh and organs being pierced.
Two small spiders that had been riding on the back of the bisected mother spider had leaped for Rex’s head, only to be precisely sniped by two of Trian’s arrows.
“Move!”
Without a moment to assess the situation, Rex started running again.
“Aaaah…!”
I heard Rireu cry out in disgust at the sight of the spider’s burning entrails and flesh. I had no idea why her small voice came through so clearly amidst the damnable ringing in my head.
We ran on, covered in the spider’s remains. Rireu seemed to be running out of breath, but we had no time to spare for her.
*Crash!*
From behind, I heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh. It seemed Trian had been forced to haul Rireu back to her feet after she nearly tripped over the spider’s corpse.
“Dammit, do I have to tell you to watch your step?! Snap out of it!”
At this pace, even an elf, whose specialty was agility, could easily be left behind if she lost focus for a moment. I was genuinely thankful to be dangling from Rex’s shoulder like a sack of luggage. If I were on my own feet, I would have fallen behind and died before I even knew what was happening.
*THUD!*
*THUD!*
*THUD!*
*THUD!*
Behind us, the giant spider with an arrow in its eye was still in hot pursuit, smashing through doorways as it came.
“There’s another one in the next room, on the left! Ignore it and keep running!”
We just kept running and running.
We backtracked through about forty or fifty rooms from the epicenter of the explosion, eventually finding ourselves almost back at the room we first entered.
By ignoring every monster we encountered, we now had about seven giant spiders on our tail.
We’d been in a chase for about ten minutes, maintaining a gap of two or three rooms. Thankfully, the number of monsters pursuing us wasn't increasing.
“Damn, so about seven of them are on our tail…”
In a dungeon, nothing is more important than avoiding loud noises that attract the attention of the natives. This was especially true in high-level dungeons.
The best strategy was to achieve the objective quickly and get out without fighting. If a fight was unavoidable, the second-best strategy was to lure monsters out one by one.
Fighting seven high-level dungeon monsters simultaneously with a small party of four was, by all accounts, the worst possible strategy.
But we didn't have a choice right now.
…If I’d known this would happen, I would have brought a large-scale force.
“We fight in the next room! Mages, I’ll emphasize this again, absolutely no spells that make a thunderous noise!”
“Hah, haah… hah…”
Rireu seemed too out of breath to reply. She wiped the sweat from under her chin with the back of her hand and nodded instead.
We had arrived at a place that was practically the dungeon entrance. If we made another loud noise here, we would be forced to run not through a path we already knew, but into the complete unknown.
Throwing oneself into an unknown room full of traps and monsters while being chased was the quickest and easiest way to get a party wiped out.
*Clank!*
The moment he opened the door in front of him, Rex set me down in a corner.
There was no time for a gentle touch. He practically threw me to the ground before immediately raising his axe and pressing himself against the doorway.
“Rireu, Bin! Take positions on the left wall! Hurry!”
Trian quickly pointed out where Rireu and I should go, then moved to stand against the right wall.
Mages on the left, ranger on the right, ready to unleash a concentrated barrage into the narrow entrance—for a formation thrown together in a hurry, it was quite rational and ideal.
Even in such a tense situation, Trian’s experience shone through.
“Ugh.”
But as I leaned against the wall to focus, my vision began to waver for no reason.
The strength drained from my legs, and my arms and legs trembled, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“Are you okay?! Can you move?”
Damn it, did I get injured somewhere I can’t see?
Even after Rex had carried me all that way, my body refused to obey me.
It seemed getting caught, even slightly, in the mana mine’s explosion was the problem. A groan escaped my lips every time I moved my right shoulder, and both my legs were shaking.
My vision kept tilting. I nearly fell twice just moving from where Rex had put me down to the spot Trian had pointed to.
“Shit…”
Rireu, who had already taken her position, couldn’t bear to watch any longer and came over to lend me her shoulder.
“Move it, mage! If you collapse now, we’re all dead!”
Trian’s loud voice spurred me on.
“…Hah, hah.”
Even for a standard mage who had invested a decent amount of stats into stamina, there inevitably comes a moment on the battlefield when an unexpected accident turns them into dead weight.
A well-organized formation can collapse in an instant, and in the chaos of a melee, a mage is nothing more than an ant dropped into a fire.
What’s more, my body’s stats were at rock bottom, not just in stamina but also in agility, strength, and even luck.
I knew a moment like this would come eventually.
…I knew it.
“…Fuck.”
But now that the moment had arrived, now that I was actually dragging the party down, something began to boil up inside me. Maybe it was shame, maybe it was guilt, or maybe it was anger at myself.
In the heat of battle, where a split-second decision means life or death, what good is a mage who can’t use his skills because of something as pathetic as low stamina?
I dragged in a ragged breath, used the wall for support, and forced my collapsing legs to stand. My legs screamed in protest, but I didn’t care.
If I can’t pull my weight here, everything they’ve done for me, all the sacrifices they’ve made, will be for nothing.
They sacrificed for me, so now it’s my turn to repay them…
“Huh.”
As I took a tense step forward, I felt a strange sensation under my foot. My nerves, sharpened by tension, made my senses so acute that I could feel something caught under the thin sole of my shoe.
I looked down to move whatever it was, a rock or something else. It wouldn’t do to trip over it in the middle of a fight; it was best to deal with such things beforehand.
…However, the source of the strange feeling wasn’t a rock.
It was a scratch.
A very artificial scratch, one left recently by a giant axe.
A primal sense of dread made me slowly turn my head.
Right next to where I stood was the door that Trian had warned us never to open, the one Rex had marked just in case.
No, not a door, but a giant mimic disguised as one. A level 40 mimic big enough to swallow even the massive Rex in a single bite.
…Shit. As if things weren’t chaotic enough, there’s a damn mimic right next to me.
“They’re here!”
An icy grip tightened around my throat.
Before I had a chance to warn Rireu about the mimic, a heavy thud echoed from beyond the door Rex was guarding.
*CRASH!*
A giant, pointed leg smashed through the door, and a massive body began to squeeze its way in again.