How to Save a Prince (3)
When I came to, I frantically scanned my surroundings.
Where in the world was this?
At least I hadn't been dumped into some other dungeon entirely, apart from the Temple of Kolhiti. I'd only been flung to a different spot within the same one.
Stay calm. Panicking here wouldn't get me anywhere.
"Wha—?! What in blazes is this?"
Just a moment, please.
"Poor little Prince. Quit flailing around like a scrub and hold still."
When a situation like this blows up out of nowhere, the very first thing you do is set in stone.
Establish your current position.
If this happened to be the middle of a monster's patrol route, I'd be dog-meat in seconds.
Under normal circumstances, clearing the Old Temple of Kolhiti the proper way meant bringing a thoroughly prepared party in the mid-level 30s.
That was the bare minimum of firepower you needed to go up against Minotaurs and heavily armored Orcs.
And what about us right now?
I was a level 11 Paladin, and Arthur was even frailer than I was.
What would happen if the two of us ran into a monster? Didn't take a genius.
It was so obvious I could picture it even when I didn't want to.
The vines growing along the cracks in the walls were barely visible, which meant this was a deep floor.
Floor 6? Or 7?
The murals painted on the walls were crisp and vivid.
Then it's Floor 7.
I swept my gaze around while recalling the map of the dungeon's seventh floor in my head, checking the alleyways and landmarks nearby.
Lass!
Grandpa was shouting — which meant it was a warning, so there was no need to hear the rest.
I had a fix on where I was. Working from the map etched in my memory, I charted an escape route.
The one mercy was that the temple's depths were a tangled mess of a labyrinth.
It was meant as a cheap trick to corner players, but from my perspective, it was something else entirely.
For someone like me, who had every inch of this place memorized, maze-like corridors were simply a convenient tool for running away.
I hoisted Arthur, who was standing there dazed without the faintest idea what was going on, up onto my back.
"Lucy Alrn?!"
I'm sorry! Please just bear with me!
"Poor little Prince! If you want to keep that worthless life of yours, shut your mouth!"
"Behind us!"
I know!
"Did you think I was as useless as you, poor little Prince?!"
I sprinted for my life along the path drawn in my mind, heavy thudding footsteps pounding after us.
Damn it. How far do I have to run before the aggro drops?!
Only after a desperate flight — when I'd finally shaken the footsteps — did I set Arthur down from my shoulder and catch my breath.
Haah. I'm seriously going to die.
How many all-out sprints was that in a single day?
If I'd slacked off on even a little of my endurance training, I'd be dead right now.
It took everything I had to calm my hammering heart, and when I lifted my head, I saw Arthur putting on a strained show of composure.
Right now, he was probably the most confused one here.
I knew that Agra, that bastard, had pulled some dirty trick — but Arthur had simply been caught up in it.
And yet he wasn't saying a word, probably because he didn't want to pile more confusion on top of confusion by running his mouth.
It was the same in the game, but the kid really was competent.
If you have questions, ask away.
"Poor little Prince. If there's anything you don't know, just ask. I'll explain it very, very~ politely."
"...Then I shall not decline. Lucy Alrn. Do you have any idea what situation we are in?"
I gave Arthur the standard rundown.
That we'd been thrown to a different floor of the dungeon. That if we wanted to survive, we had to hold out until a rescue party came down from above. That our only options were to keep running, or to make for the Safe Zone.
"A dire situation indeed."
I didn't deny Arthur's words.
Right now, things were worse than when we'd fallen into Where the Alchemist Resides.
The monsters themselves were weaker than back then, but the thing we'd faced there was an absolute eyesore.
Those creatures had such glaring, obvious weaknesses that they were easy to shake off.
But this place was different.
No matter how far you fled, the Orcs would hunt you to the ends of the maze, and the Minotaurs — for all their massive bulk — were pointlessly, infuriatingly agile.
One wrong turn mid-escape and you'd be caught in a pincer and killed on the spot.
So until the professors came to rescue us, the best bet really was heading for the Safe Zone.
We had to move.
Grandpa. I'll be counting on you, same as last time.
Hard road for a little one, isn't it.
What can I do? Got swept up in it.
If I wanted to be safe from this dog-and-pony show, there was only one answer: get strong enough to crush whatever tricks anyone tried to pull, no matter what they were.
Just you wait, Agra.
I'm still growing, but give me a little time, and I'll be strong enough to greet your dirty tricks with a smile.
Behold the skill of a Soul Academy veteran!
You'll be my piggy bank soon enough, so sit tight and enjoy the wait!
"What is your plan?"
When I raised my head again, mace in one hand, Arthur tossed out the question.
We're heading for the Safe Zone.
"Even a poor little Prince knows what a Safe Zone is, right? That's where we're going."
"And you know where this Safe Zone lies?"
Arthur spoke up.
He'd seen just now, during the chase, how this place was as convoluted as a maze. One misstep, he said, and we'd wander lost until we ran into enemies and died. So rather than charging blindly forward, he suggested we stay somewhere quiet and only move when monsters showed signs of activity.
It was a perfectly rational judgment.
If this had been a dungeon-studies exam, I'd have given him full marks.
But this wasn't an exam — and for me, at least, it was the wrong call.
I know what's where. All of it.
"Poor little Prince. Would you kindly not assume that you being a scrub makes me one too? I happen to know exactly what's where in this dungeon."
"Impossible. This is the first time you've ever set foot in this place."
Not even close. I've seen it until I was sick of it.
If we're just counting clears of this dungeon, it has to be in the thousands.
Maybe even more than that.
The rewards from Kolhiti's Fragment, the boss here, were actually pretty good, so I used to come clear it every single time.
That was the reality — but even if I said all that, I doubted Arthur would believe a word of it.
So I put on the most trustworthy smile I could muster and spoke up.
Trust me.
"Poor little Prince. Don't trust the thoughts of a scrub like you — trust mine."
"...On what grounds?"
Yes! Because I have a Blessing!
"I'm loved by the pathetic Chief God Himself, you know."
At that, Arthur's eyes widened — and then he let out a short, wry laugh.
"Very well. Let us put that to the test."
There had been no lie in Lucy Alrn's claim that she was loved by God.
Just as she had so confidently said, she knew every last detail of this dungeon down to the bone.
The layout of its corridors. Where monsters spawned and how they moved. The precise arrangement of every trap hidden within its halls.
This went far beyond merely knowing a strategy guide.
Lucy Alrn's judgments were so accurate you would have believed her if she'd claimed she had designed this dungeon herself.
She'd said it herself — a Blessing that granted knowledge of a dungeon's secrets.
Ha. So this is what I challenged — I proposed we settle things through a race to conquer dungeons, against someone who possessed this?
How foolish. How utterly foolish of me.
I had walked into the path of my own defeat with both feet, all while certain of my victory.
How pitiable I must have looked to Lucy Alrn as I proposed the contest.
Haah.
Was this what it meant to be born with talent enough to look down upon the world itself?
"Lucy Alrn."
"What is it?"
Perhaps it was because she stood in the very heart of danger — Lucy Alrn's voice was sharper than usual, its edges honed to a cutting edge.
"May I ask why you call me 'poor little Prince'?"
Arthur had heard from Joy before that Lucy Alrn mocked him without knowing anything about his circumstances — that her insults were not aimed at what she could not know.
Coming from anyone else, he would have dismissed it as nonsense. But Lucy Alrn was a girl whose overbearing pride had kept her isolated her entire life.
She could hardly be expected to keep up with the world around her.
Before, when his emotions had held the reins, Arthur had looked away from that truth. But not now.
With his head sufficiently cooled, Arthur had to admit there was a strong chance Joy's explanation had been the truth.
So he raised the question. Why did she call him poor little Prince while knowing nothing whatsoever of his situation?
At the question, Lucy Alrn turned her head, stared at him as though he were a hopeless fool, and said this:
"Because you act pitiful, you're the poor little Prince."
"I... do?"
"You didn't even know that? Pfft. You're such a scrub I can barely be bothered to explain."
I act pitiful? Me?
Impossible.
He had lived his whole life so as never to be pitied.
If only to fulfill the last wish his mother had spoken to him.
If only to keep his late mother's name from being spat upon.
He had given everything to become a man whom no one alive could look down upon.
And yet he walked around acting pitiful?
"Explain. In detail."
"Poor little Prince. Quit lunging at me like a dog in heat and hold still."
Despite the insulting words, her tone was grave, and Arthur fell silent.
He was a man who knew how to kill his emotions when the matter before him demanded it.
Following Lucy Alrn's lead, Arthur poked his head around the wall — and spotted a monster standing guard across the corridor.
A Minotaur.
Arthur had heard tales of such creatures before.
One of the knights he'd known back at the royal palace was fond of droning on about his own war stories, and among them had been an account of the Minotaur.
"The Minotaur is a fearsomely strong monster. It has the strength to twist an ordinary soldier in half, armor and all, and the speed of a charging buffalo. On top of that, it possesses the wisdom and weapon-skill of a man. Its vitality is so tremendous that ordinary wounds will not kill it."
"My Prince, remember this well. The Minotaur is a monster that can drive even a knight into mortal peril. Should you ever face one, you must run."
Arthur remembered the knight's words as clearly as if they'd been spoken that morning.
The professors of Soul Academy were all veterans who'd once made their names in the field — they could handle such a beast with ease. But Arthur himself? Lucy Alrn? They were not.
To lunge at it rashly would be to die a dog's death.
Lucy Alrn could hardly be ignorant of this — and yet she showed no intention of heading anywhere else.
Instead, like a soldier steeling herself for battle, she drew several potions from her pouch and poured them down her throat.
"Lucy Alrn. Surely you do not intend to fight that thing?"
"Yep. Gonna splatter that pea brain of its across the floor."
"Are you mad?"
That was suicide.
Even granting that Lucy Alrn possessed skill far beyond her years, she could not possibly stand against that thing.
"What's the matter, poor little Prince? Afraid you'll wet yourself?"
"This is not a matter of fear. It cannot be."
"That pea brain has to splatter, or we never reach the Safe Zone."
The Safe Zone.
A place where the authority of Armadi descended upon the accursed space Agra had wrought, guaranteeing safety.
The only ground in this dungeon, where anything could happen, where challengers could rest without fear.
To hold out safely here, Lucy Alrn had said, they had to get there. And to get there, that Minotaur had to fall.
"Impossible. Rather than court such danger, we should keep evading the monsters as we have been."
"Poor little Prince. Do you really think a scrub like you and me can hold out until the academy's scrubs come crawling to find us?"
The moment he heard that answer, Arthur understood.
Of course Lucy Alrn knew how dangerous this path was.
She who knew everything about this dungeon could not possibly be ignorant of that monster's threat.
"Then this truly is the only way?"
The instant Lucy Alrn nodded, Arthur gripped the hilt of his sword, hard.
So he was to stake his life on it.
"And if you're scared witless, poor little Prince, feel free to cower in the back and wet your pants. I won't judge."
"No. I fight as well."
Would it not be the height of disgrace to leave everything to a girl and flee?
He refused to become any more of a disgrace than he already was.