Chapter 95: Can You Keep Up?
Chapter 95: Can You Keep Up?
I sat on the cold marble floor, waiting for the others to finish their preparations. Of course, I’d tried to help break down the camp, but Yoojung and Sol had vehemently protested, leaving me with no choice but to sit around like a sack of potatoes. Something about this being “women’s work.” And yet, they had no problem ordering Ahn Hyun and Shin Sangyong around. In any case, thanks to them, I had plenty of time to get ready.
I drew my sword, sat cross-legged, and placed it across my lap. Shing. The cool sound echoed through the room. The sword I was currently using was a standard iron sword I’d bought at a forge after arriving in Mule. As a swordsman, I knew exactly how to handle and maintain a blade.
My hand reflexively reached into my coat. I had a habit of smoking a cigarette while cleaning my sword. But my fingers found only a single one. The last stick. I hesitated for a moment, but then smacked my lips and pulled out only a piece of cloth. I wanted to save it for after the expedition, right before heading back into the city.
The party’s movements were swift and organized, with one exception. They were all packing up their sleeping bags and cleaning up after breakfast. Jung Hayeon was folding her sleeping bag with such military precision it would make a soldier weep. In contrast, Ahn Hyun was busy cramming his into his magic backpack until Ahn Sol caught him and gave him an earful.
I leisurely watched the scene unfold as I carefully wiped down the blade of my sword with the cloth.
“L-Leader. Are we planning to head straight to the second floor today?”
“Heh. Your stutter tells me you’re nervous.”
“Ha, haha. Not at all. It’s, uh, just a h-habit of mine. I’m definitely not nervous.”
Shin Sangyong gave an awkward laugh, embarrassed by my joke. I nodded once or twice. Then, with a final, firm motion, I slid the cloth up the length of the blade.
“The plan is to head to the second floor, yes.”
“A g-good decision.”
“However.”
I paused, my gaze falling to the gleaming blade. I tucked the cloth away and sheathed my sword, which slid home with the same cool shing as when I’d drawn it. A satisfied smile touched my lips at the sound, and I continued.
“First, we’ll go up to the second floor and fight the monsters they considered ‘successes.’ One hundred humans can summon one low-grade Demonkin with its full power intact. So, if we can gauge the strength of the hundred people sacrificed, we should be able to estimate the rank of the summoned Demonkin.”
“Brilliant. If I may, j-just to be safe, I heard the hundred people sacrificed were the ones with the best results.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
See? This is how members of an expedition should converse. You all should watch and learn. I glanced back at the kids with that thought in mind, but none of them were even looking at Shin Sangyong and me. I sighed inwardly and turned my gaze to Vivian.
She was rubbing her eyes sleepily. She and Shin Sangyong had been discussing the records for a while after an early dinner last night. She’d mostly been on the receiving end of the questions, so she seemed quite tired. Still, I knew she’d be a different person once a fight started, so I didn’t say anything.
One by one, the others finished their preparations.
Seeing Ahn Sol give her bag a final tug and sling it over her shoulder, I dusted myself off and stood up. As all eyes turned to me, I began to speak in a calm voice.
“Good work, everyone. Of course, there’s probably more hardship to come.”
“…”
“But yesterday, we cleared the first floor of this laboratory. Our primary goal today is to clear the second floor, and our secondary goal is to enter the third.”
“…”
No one responded, but I could see a flicker of anxiety in Ahn Sol’s eyes, so I added one more thing. Just before I spoke, I deliberately looked up at the bright sunlight streaming in through a window high up on the distant ceiling.
“We’re starting early this morning, so we have much more time than yesterday. If we can clear up to the third floor today, we can be back in Mule by tomorrow at the latest. We’ll make a triumphant return with the items we got yesterday and the ones we’ll get today.”
Only then did I see a spark of life return to their eyes. Boosting morale like this, rather than just charging ahead, was one of the duties of an expedition leader. The kids, who had been looking at me with eyes still puffy from sleep, were now watching me with a much brighter gaze. I immediately turned and continued.
“There are stairs to the north and to the east—one in each passage, for a total of two. No need to go out of our way, so we’ll use the eastern staircase.”
With that, we walked over to the stairs leading to the second floor. As I took the first step, the old staircase groaned as if it were about to collapse. The entire party began to ascend calmly, one careful step at a time.
The staircase was longer than I expected. It spiraled upward, and with every turn, the first-floor landing grew more distant. After climbing the narrow stairs in silence for some time, we finally stopped in front of the door to the second floor. I was just about to open it.
“Soohyun-ssi. Wait a moment.”
The User who stopped me was none other than Jung Hayeon. I looked at her questioningly, and she asked Ahn Sol for a protection spell. Guessing her intentions, I gave a faint smile. Her meticulous nature was shining through once again.
“Protect!”
Ahn Sol pointed her staff at me, and a translucent sphere materialized around me. Seeing this, Jung Hayeon quickly muttered an incantation while forming a hand sign with her other hand. It was Double Casting.
“—Reflect Shield!”
Before her clear voice had even faded, her lips moved again.
“Targeted protection spell. Overlap!”
The moment Jung Hayeon finished speaking, the Reflect Shield spell transformed into a wobbly mass of water and melted into the protection spell surrounding me. The kids gasped as the sphere began to glow with a shimmering golden light. I, too, stared at her with admiration. I never imagined she could interfere with another person’s spell. Even if it was only a support spell, it was an incredibly high-level application of magic.
“That’s amazing.”
“We’re on a staircase right now. It could be dangerous if a monster is waiting right behind the door. I was only preparing for that. It’s not that I don’t trust your skills, Soohyun-ssi.”
Jung Hayeon replied humbly, offering a gentle smile. In any case, I now had a sort of duty(?) to enter the room before this spell wore off. The kids didn’t say anything, but their eyes were practically begging for a monster to be on the other side of that door.
“The expedition’s exploration of the second floor begins now. Everyone, stay sharp. I’m going in.”
I spoke in a steady voice and pulled the doorknob, swinging the door wide open. And, just as I expected, no terrifying monster came leaping out. There was only an empty space. The moment I stepped inside, I heard quiet clicks of the tongue from behind me.
“Tsk.”
“Tch.”
These brats. I wanted to pull down their pants and give them a good spanking, but I suppressed the urge and led the party inside. As the others followed me in, their eyes were captivated by the scene before them. I quickly activated Sensing and Third Eye.
“Ugh… I feel uneasy.”
Sol, whose senses were keen, grimaced as she rubbed both arms. The malevolent energy was twice as strong as on the first floor. I whistled inwardly. It seemed safe to assume the Demonkin summoning had succeeded. I hummed a little tune, thinking about ripping out the Demonkin’s heart, processing it, and feeding it to the kids—quietly enough that the other Users couldn’t hear, of course.
The second floor was roughly the same size as the first, but its structure was completely different. While the first floor had been divided by four passages—north, south, east, and west—with rooms along each, the second floor was simply split in half.
There was a single passage in the middle leading to another area, with two enormous spaces on either side of it. I first scanned the area where we were standing. The layout was quite simple. It was a large, rectangular hall filled with piles of unidentifiable fragments that had crumbled with age. And this room, too, had one door on each wall, excluding the passage. In other words, there were a total of three doors we could open.
“Hmm. A different layout from the first floor. In a way, this floor might be simpler.”
“It seems that way on the surface. But if you think about it, there are bound to be fewer successes than failures. We can’t let our guard down.”
I could hear Shin Sangyong and Jung Hayeon chatting quietly.
“Hyung, what’s the plan now?”
“Hm?”
“Do we really need to open all these doors? Why don’t we just move on to the next area…?”
“The next area? What makes you so sure the stairs to the third floor are over there?”
Ahn Hyun immediately shut his mouth. However, I also suspected there were no stairs in our current location. Nevertheless, I had my reasons for wanting to search every room. I was determined to make Ahn Hyun an Aura Spearman, one way or another.
The others might not know it, but the person with the highest loyalty to me right now was Ahn Hyun. The feelings Ahn Sol had for me could hardly be described as loyalty. She often showed me complex, subtle emotions that even I, with ten years of experience, couldn’t decipher. Her actions were too incomprehensible to be dismissed as simple goodwill.
My thoughts must have drifted off on a tangent, because I found myself with a blank expression on my face. Ahn Hyun’s stare brought me back to my senses, and I quickly spoke.
“We might be able to clear the second floor faster than we think. First, we’ll open every door in this area in order, then we’ll cross the passage to the next section.”
“Ugh… Why are there so many crumbled fragments? It’s hard to even walk.”
“Be careful. There might be bone fragments.”
“Oh my. So scary. Aing.”
Yoojung’s cutesy act made everyone else look uncomfortable. As I started forward, Ahn Hyun followed without a word, but his face was filled with an unspoken apology to the rest of the party.
But my patience had its limits. When they continued to disrupt the atmosphere as we walked, I shot them a sharp glare. Ahn Hyun and Yoojung immediately fell silent. Maintaining the newly restored silence, I headed for the door on the left wall, relative to where we’d come up.
I’d said there were only three doors, but each one exuded an immense pressure. Even from a distance, I could see they weren’t the ordinary doors from the first floor, but massive iron gates bristling with sharp spikes. We walked briskly toward our target, steadily closing the distance.
We must have kept a quick pace, because we reached our first target door within fifteen minutes. The translucent golden sphere that Ahn Sol and Jung Hayeon had cast around me had faded away while we were walking. I scanned our surroundings for a moment before speaking in a quiet voice.
“I’m opening the door now. Everyone, get ready.”
“Hyung, that door looks really thick… I don’t think you can do it alone.”
“No, I can handle it. Don’t worry, just maintain the formation.”
At my firm tone, Ahn Hyun took a step back. But from his wide eyes, he seemed a little surprised.
Since I had decided to face the Demonkin likely waiting here in earnest, I needed to recover my old ferocity. I was a little worried about whether the others could keep up, but I cleared my mind as I reached for the handle, which was larger than my hand. I could feel an ominous energy beyond the door.