Where the Alchemist Resides (2)
Joy wanted to know where on earth we were, and I could have answered her.
I could have told her what this place was, what monsters lurked here, and even at what level players normally entered and how the clear route was supposed to run.
But none of that mattered right now.
What good was knowing the monsters if we couldn't beat them? What good was knowing the optimal route if executing it was impossible? What we needed wasn't useless trivia to show off with.
I knelt down across from Joy and lifted her chin with my fingers. Even with tears brimming in her eyes, she looked like a villainess trembling under the weight of betrayal and humiliation — honestly, her face alone was a curse comparable to the Mesugaki skill itself.
'You don't have to be scared.'
"Scared, are we, Airhead Lady? Weren't you acting all confident just a minute ago?"
"But..."
'It'll be fine.'
"There's no need to worry. No matter how pathetic you are, Airhead Lady, I'm here, aren't I?"
"...What?"
'We're going to walk right out of here, the two of us.'
"A spineless crybaby of a pathetic Airhead Lady can leave all the effort to me. We're going home."
For once, I was grateful for the Mesugaki skill and its borderline-excessive bravado. My baseless confidence suddenly looked like the conviction of someone who actually knew something.
Joy, who had been listening in silence, had at some point stopped crying.
I rose to my feet again and held out a hand to her.
'Let's move.'
"Up we go, Crybaby Lady. You're not planning to lie here and sob yourself to death, are you?"
"Who are you calling a crybaby lady?!"
That much should be fine.
First priority was finding Jacob.
This was a dungeon I myself had never dared attempt a clear of — there was no way someone as fragile as Jacob could survive here alone. Left by himself, he'd be snatched up by a monster and die screaming. And if Jacob died, the responsibility would rest squarely on my shoulders.
Because Agra's involvement in this dungeon was entirely my fault.
I still didn't have the confidence to carry a human life on my back. Even after killing a single monster, I'd spent days gnawing at myself over it — I was still feeling the effects even now. If I ever had to bear the weight of a person's death, how long would I have to drown in it?
Hard pass on that.
Jacob had fallen from roughly the same position we had, so he was probably lying somewhere nearby. I didn't know exactly where, but I hoped he'd at least been unconscious when he landed. Sprawled among the wreckage like that, Argos wouldn't have spotted him.
While Joy took my hand, got up, and brushed the dust off herself, I scanned the room for anything that might tell us where we were. If this really was Where the Alchemist Resides, there had to be a sign marking the location somewhere.
There it is — buried under the rubble.
Let's see... A-01. So we're near the entrance section of the dungeon. After checking the inscription on the sign, I drew the dungeon map and our position in my head.
Worst-case scenario, avoided.
The entrance section of this dungeon doesn't have a particularly high monster encounter rate. If we moved carefully, we might even make it to a Safe Zone without a single fight.
'Grandfather. That monster-detection sense from earlier — how far can it reach?'
"Right now I can't pinpoint anything at much distance. There's one coming, though — about the distance from where you're standing to that door."
So what he's saying is, I can detect monsters within a radius of about five meters?
That wasn't represented in the game either, so it's probably some new function that awakened along with the old man. Whatever. If I can put it to use, that's all I need.
I had the layout of this dungeon memorized perfectly — which monsters were where, and exactly how they moved. If I combined that with Grandfather's detection, maybe I could dodge every single fight in this place.
'Joy...?'
"Airhead Lady. Moving out."
"Understood."
The two of us began picking our way through the surrounding rooms, careful of any signs of monsters.
"There's a monster right around that corner."
'Joy...'
"Airhead Lady. Freeze. There's a disgusting monster ahead. We wait here for twelve seconds, then move forward."
"Okay."
Thanks to the trust we'd built clearing the entrance-exam dungeon together, Joy didn't question my taking point and issuing orders for a second. A lucky thing. If she'd refused to trust me and demanded explanations, this would have gotten very annoying.
So we searched through several rooms — and then, from somewhere, came a commotion.
The ring of metal striking something. A man's voice, somewhere between a grunt and a shout. And the cry of Argos.
Yeah, I can piece this together. Jacob woke up, ran into Argos, and now he's fighting for his life.
He won't last long against Argos. This was a guy who couldn't even overpower the golem from the entrance exam — there's no way he can handle an upper-tier dungeon monster.
We have to help him. Now.
We broke into a desperate run, and before long we found Jacob locked in a standoff with Argos.
Jacob was in bad shape. His left arm bent at an unnatural angle. Legs that looked like they could barely hold him upright. The eyes of a man who had sensed his own death and sunk into despair. Anyone could see he wasn't going to last.
'Joy. You can cast flash magic, right?'
"Airhead Lady. You can use flash magic, yes?"
"Yes. I can."
'Get ready, and—'
"Get ready right now and fire it on my signal! And keep your eyes shut like a good girl so you don't blind yourself with your own flash!"
The moment I told Joy to ready the spell, I charged straight in. Argos swung its weapon at Jacob with all the indifference of a beast that didn't care about intruders — but I refused to allow it.
"Hey, all-eyes freak♡ Can't even sense a person sneaking up behind you?♡ If your eyes are that useless, why not just claw the whole pathetic set out?♡"
The countless eyeballs studding Argos's body all swiveled toward me.
There we go. Aggro drawn.
'Jacob!'
"Runt! You in one piece?!"
"My lady."
He's lucid enough to answer, at least. Thank god. I'm not too late.
The instant I shouted to Jacob, Argos came charging at me. Damn it. All those eyes and the damn thing still moves fast.
A fist easily twice the size of my head came hurtling toward me.
Iron Wall commands: raise the shield.
My body, its shield proficiency ground to the absolute limit, obeyed the command as a matter of course — and the shield met Argos's attack in a clean, perfect block.
"Ugh!"
Blocking the blow, however, did not mean negating it. The arm clutching the shield trembled. The braced legs locked up under the impact. I gritted my teeth and held — but I could feel myself being pushed back, inch by inch.
If this standoff kept up, Argos would beat me. If it kept up, that is.
"Airhead Lady!"
"O light!"
Argos was, by design, a monster so crowded with eyes that it couldn't actually watch where it was going — but every last one of those countless eyeballs functioned perfectly. So what happens when all of them eat a faceful of flash?
This was a trick straight out of my Soul Academy playthrough days. Argos's resistance to blinding was far lower than any other monster's — and its stun duration was longer, too.
The moment the blinded Argos staggered back, I bolted for Jacob. There was no way a guy whose legs could barely keep him standing could run, so if I wanted to save him, carrying him was the only option.
'Jacob. It's going to hurt, but bear it!'
"Runt! This'll hurt, but don't go shrieking like some helpless wimp!"
"What?!"
I didn't wait for an answer. I slung him over my shoulder like a sack of luggage and tore off toward Joy.
'Joy! Run!'
"Airhead Lady! Run as fast as those pathetic little legs will carry you!"
When he received the report and came sprinting to the Academy, what Carl found was a team of priests conducting a purification rite at the dungeon's entrance.
"Carl. There you are. Been a while."
Professor Anton of Combat Studies, overseeing the purification near the entrance, greeted him with an easy nod. Carl returned no such greeting. Instead, he strode right up to Anton and growled with a ferocity like he was ready to tear the man's throat out on the spot.
"What in the world has happened here?"
"Agra has intervened in one of the Academy's dungeons. Because of that, the entrance has been sealed — no observation from within, no communication of any kind. We've called in the priests and begun the purification as fast as we could, but..."
Agra.
The moment he heard that word, Carl understood why this had happened. He had visited the church in the Arlen territory with Lucy not long ago. He knew exactly what she had done there.
Which meant the reason Agra had reached into this dungeon was unmistakably the young lady herself.
Damn it all!
"How long until the purification is complete?"
"The priests say roughly an hour."
"An hour?!"
Every minute counted in a crisis like this. God only knew what was happening inside that dungeon. For all anyone knew, Lucy was fighting for her life this very second. And he was supposed to stand here and wait an hour?
"Carl. We are doing everything we can. You know full well that Soul Academy does not simply stand by and watch in its darkest hour."
Carl had studied at Soul Academy and graduated from it — he knew this place was not staffed by incompetents. Even now, with numerous other academies established across the land, there was a reason Soul Academy was still called the finest of them all.
Knowing that made it no easier to leash the emotion surging up inside him.
To be able to do nothing but wait, while the lady he had sworn his life to might be facing catastrophe — what kind of useless knight did that make him?
Carl took a step back from Anton, gazed in silence at the dungeon where the purification raged, then lowered his eyes. And as he looked at the sigil of his Binding Vow carved into the back of his hand, he offered a prayer to Armadi.
Please, let her be safe until I arrive.
After sprinting for my life, I'd made it to the area where Argos appeared least often. I finally stopped running and lowered Jacob to the floor.
"Looks like that monster's fists caught you a few times. He's in rough shape."
'Can I heal him with Mercy of Armadi?'
"It should work."
With the old man's confirmation in hand, I knelt beside Jacob, placed my hand over his heart, and offered a prayer to Armadi — praying with everything I had that this boy would be whole again.
The moment that wish took shape in my heart, mana drained out of my body, and slowly, the wounds carved across Jacob's frame began to knit closed.
"What... what is this?"
Marvelling at his own rapidly healing body, Jacob staggered to his feet and tested his limbs. He wasn't fully restored, but nothing about him looked like it would hinder movement anymore.
Good. With that, my objective — saving Jacob — is accomplished.
Now all we have to do is hold out until Soul Academy's rescue team arrives. That's not so hard. With my knowledge and Grandfather's detection combined, we can dodge fights as much as possible. And if a variable ever does pop up, we just flee behind Joy's flash magic.
The real question is how long the Academy will take to mount a rescue... no. Not thinking about that. They'll come eventually. It's easier on the heart to believe that.
It's fine. There's nothing to worry about. We're going to walk out of this dungeon without a scratch.
"Young one. Another monster is closing in."
'Got it, Grandfather.'
So for now — survival first. Nothing else matters.