Chapter 24
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 24
Crunch.
After crushing the head under his heel as a finishing blow, Swallow, his face an expressionless mask, muttered to himself.
“Ah, how many was that again?”
The moment he finished speaking, a shadow fell over him.
The source of the shadow, Kasper, had leaped high into the air and was now plunging his sword straight down.
Or so he thought.
‘?!’
His vision spun.
Crash!
His airborne body slammed into the ground, skipping across the dirt like a stone thrown over water. Kasper only regained his senses after flying dozens of meters and grinding to a halt. His body creaked. A searing pain flared everywhere, making him acutely aware that he was covered in blood. If not for his rigorously trained body, he would have been reduced to unrecognizable mincemeat.
“What just…”
I couldn’t see it this time, either.
A groan escaped Kasper’s lips as he staggered to his feet.
He looked toward the distant Swallow, who glanced back at him with a look that said, ‘Oh, you’re still alive?’ In the brief moment Kasper had been sent flying, several more knights had been impaled by mysterious black thorns.
‘Ha, haha. You’ve got to be kidding me…!’
They were the self-proclaimed finest subjugation squad in the Empire. They had pressed him relentlessly, giving him no room to breathe. Everyone had given their absolute all, yet now, fewer than five of them remained, including himself. It hadn’t even taken a minute for things to end up like this.
‘At this rate, we’re just…’
Just then, Swallow smirked from afar. That smirk spoke volumes to Kasper.
—A dog’s death, it seemed to say.
No. We are the finest subjugation squad. How could our deaths be in vain? We are the elite. The absolute elite.
—And?
He couldn’t deny it. One minute? No, thirty seconds? Even less. Their current state—virtually annihilated—could only be described as, yes, a dog’s death.
—A dog’s death, Swallow’s smile whispered once more.
“Aaaaaaaaargh!”
The cool rationality that had anchored his sanity shrank to a tiny speck before vanishing entirely. Letting out an unintelligible shriek, Kasper charged at Swallow. He gripped his sword with both hands, pouring every ounce of his strength into the attack.
‘I must cut him. I must cut him. I must cut him.’
Cut him. He had to. He had to leave at least a single scratch on that mysterious monster—only then would their deaths not be in vain. He ran. He sprinted with everything he had, pushing his legs to their limits. I will show you my ultimate technique.
I’ll unleash a deadly strike that not even the Imperial Guard’s ‘Red Spear of Roa’ could replicate. It’s not a dog’s death. It’s not—
“Ha.”
A sigh escaped Swallow.
Kasper, who had rushed right up to his nose, froze.
More accurately, he was stopped. That was the end of Kasper’s desperate struggle.
Having blocked Kasper’s sword with a single index finger, Swallow reached out and grabbed the blade.
Like dry autumn leaves, it shattered into hundreds of pieces.
“Hi-hieek…!”
After shattering the sword, Swallow’s right hand shot up, grabbed the frozen Kasper by the head, and lifted him into the air.
Lifting him very slowly by the face, as if afraid he might crush it with even a fraction too much pressure, Swallow spoke.
“You know, actually…”
His voice was several octaves lower than any bass a human could produce. If Death itself possessed a body and a voice, it would surely sound like this.
“If you guys hadn’t gotten in my way, I was planning to leave quietly.”
Kasper had no mental capacity to ponder what that meant. His face turned deathly pale, as if he had aged in an instant, all his energy drained away. The only thing he could do was issue one final order.
“Rein… forcements…”
With a wet, bursting sound, a lump of flesh fell to the ground.
*
Reinforcements.
“We can’t win.”
The mage ran.
“We can’t… win. We can’t win. How… how could anyone win…? Ha, hahaha. What are we supposed to do against something like that? How are we supposed to fight it and win…?!”
Suppressing the mental collapse threatening to consume him, the mage ran. He had fled the moment the undefeated Kasper had fallen so helplessly.
「Rein… forcements…」
The syllables echoed clearly in his mind. The survivors of the Languer Blue Crane Subjugation Squad had all scattered, fleeing in every direction. This wasn’t a decision made through rational thought. Instinct had simply moved their bodies a step ahead of reason.
“Reinforcements, reinforcements, we need reinforcements…”
Like a man possessed, the mage muttered the same words over and over as he ran. He ran until his lungs burned and his throat felt squeezed shut. Every time Kasper’s desperate cry echoed in his mind, his stomach churned.
Driven by a terrifying curiosity, he glanced back and saw the monster still standing in the same spot. It wasn’t pursuing them. Yet, no matter how much he ran, the distance didn’t seem to widen.
He ran and ran and ran. Finally, the mage collapsed. His hand brushed against leather.
He raised his head. The hand he had stretched out as he fell had touched someone’s leg. He looked up.
“Leave the rest to us.”
“Ah…”
Over a hundred people dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Defense Force stood before him. There were reinforcements from the nearby Magic Tower ‘Red Moon’, as well as prominent subjugation squads that had joined from all over Survey Rose. The mage’s eyes widened.
It was reinforcements. The reinforcements he had been waiting for so desperately.
“Help… help us… Help! Help us, please…”
The mage clung to their pant legs, gasping and begging. He was so terrified he could barely form a coherent sentence.
Calming the mage, the reinforcing forces gathered from all over Survey Rose took a step toward the monster. Every single one of them possessed as much pride as the Languer Blue Crane Subjugation Squad. Each was an elite capable of taking on a hundred foes alone.
“Identify yourself.”
“Don’t you have any more original lines?”
When the man at the front spoke, a grumbling reply came back. The monster narrowed his eyes, looking bored to death. His eyes were pitch black.
And then, the monster…
“Ah, there are too many of you to deal with one by one.”
He spoke a single sentence, sounding thoroughly annoyed.
He raised his right hand.
The mage saw it.
The monster was casting. The magic circle forming the foundation of the spell was for a truly simple technique. Even so, his casting was clumsy. The jagged, crooked lines were crude and unrefined. Furthermore, the time it took for the magic to activate was so slow it seemed useless in actual combat. The mage knew what that spell was.
The low-tier magic, <Breath of Flame Fairy>.
It was a spell so inefficient that it was rarely used, even among low-tier magic. The mage also knew that normally, such a spell could never contain such a massive amount of mana.
But he also knew it was far too late to warn the others.
Flames erupted from Swallow’s right hand. He pointed it toward the mage.
Right at the spot where the reinforcements were gathered.
His vision was dyed pure white.
Phase. 6
“Ah, they’re finally here. Or are they earlier than expected? Whatever. If I’ve been waiting this long, then they’re late… Sigh, to think I’d end up talking to myself like this.”
The Primordial Core, with only Patrick inside, was as silent as a cave untouched by humans for hundreds of years. It was no exaggeration to say the only sound was the dripping of water from stalactites.
Since it was quiet for once, he thought about catching some shut-eye, but as expected, lying down didn’t mean sleep would come.
“Does it make sense for a skeleton to sleep? I’ll sleep for you, so you guard the dungeon for me.”
Swallow’s voice, which used to tease him day in and day out, echoed loudly in his head.
Lying spread-eagled on the floor with nothing to do but wait for the humans was driving him stir-crazy.
At first, he mindlessly counted sheep. Then, he counted the stalactites hanging from the ceiling. After that, he measured the speed of the falling water droplets down to the decimal point. When he grew tired of even that, he just rolled around on the floor.
After debating what else to do, he had gone to visit Mr. 116 Black Tentacles. However, the core was thrashing about like someone who had been forcibly woken from a deep sleep, looking so painfully agitated that Patrick had slunk away. When his boredom reached its peak, he went to see the Anthropophago mother in Room 5. But instead of a chat, the low-intelligence plant immediately opened its maw, so he kicked it and came right back.
It was quite heavy for a plant, so it didn’t fly very far.
“Anyway, I wonder what the Boss is up to… I even gave him Demeura, so surely he isn’t doing something stupid somewhere? No, surely not. No matter how dumb the Boss can be, he wouldn’t go that far. Right. He’s old enough to know better…”
While chiding himself and insisting it couldn’t be, Swallow’s past track record flashed before his eyes like a panorama.
—Wasting time. He’d probably do that and still have enough energy left over to cause another mess. No way. No way. Surely not. But why does the anxiety only grow the more I think about it?
“…Please, let our Boss not do anything weird in some weird place.”
After clasping his bony hands together to pray toward the entrance, Patrick drew the sword planted in the ground. He had polished it so thoroughly that Tanabella was now dazzlingly brilliant, an entirely different sword from when he first acquired it.
It emitted a silvery radiance befitting its blade. The red ornamentation surrounding the edge smoothly reflected the faint light of the dark cave.
The presence of humans was drawing closer. Their numbers were close to thirty. He had expected at least fifty, so this was fewer than anticipated. Just how much were they underestimating this place?
“Well, I suppose I should get going too.”
Finishing his monologue, Patrick took a step toward the entrance.
*
From the Count’s castle to the Primordial Core.
The short journey took less than half a day.
The thirty-one members of the Paimore Subjugation Squad, led by Niphrim, only halted their steps when the sun, once high in the sky, began to sink toward the horizon.
A massive underground cave gaped open before them, capturing everyone’s attention. On the surface, it looked like an ordinary large cave, but an oppressive pressure, immense enough to swallow most of the squad members, hovered around it.
A signpost planted at the cave’s entrance by the Alliance was particularly eye-catching. A curse had been crudely scrawled over the description identifying the place as the Primordial Core. The red ink used was livestock blood. No matter whose prank it was, there was no better way to escalate their fear.
“Niphrim, Niphrim! Look at this. It says no one who entered this cave has ever survived. Apparently, if you die here, your soul becomes corrupted and wanders the earth forever. Should we just go back? Can we go back now?”
“…Don’t be an idiot.”
“I-I’m just kidding! It’s not like going back now will save us anyway, so what do I have to be scared of at this point!”
Glaring sharply at Sylvia, who was making a fuss over nothing, Niphrim quietly scanned their surroundings. None of the other squad members seemed shaken by Sylvia’s joke. Knowing that resting at the entrance for too long wasn’t a good idea, Niphrim headed inside without delay.
As they stepped through the entrance, a chamber several times larger than the opening welcomed them. The path sloped steeply downward, continuing without end. The slippery incline finally leveled out once they reached a depth equivalent to about three basement floors. It was a dungeon several times larger than an ordinary underground cave, a space so vast that “underground world” suited it far better than “underground dungeon,” instilling a vague dread in those who had let their imaginations run wild about the Core. Light filtered in from the entrance at an exquisite angle, preventing pitch-black darkness, but Sylvia still illuminated the interior brightly with a magical lantern. The chamber was so massive that the light couldn’t even reach the far end. Each chamber was large enough to host an entire ecosystem of monsters.
“According to our information, this is Room 1. It seems… there are no living monsters.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. Sylvia, any life signs?”
“Hold on… I don’t sense any presence nearby.”
“It hasn’t regenerated yet.”
The voice echoed faintly. The chamber’s interior was so desolate it felt as if the sleeping things in the cave might wake at any moment. Niphrim briefly scanned the area. The chamber was certainly vast, but not a single sound could be heard. As they walked cautiously, one of the squad members stepped on something. He flinched and drew his sword.
What he had stepped on was a demonic corpse torn in two by a slash—the monster Glacia, once called the Grim Reaper due to its bizarre appearance and claws capable of crushing stone.
“G-Glacia in Room 1… As expected of one of the Seven Great Evil Caves.”
The squad member, who had nearly fallen backward in shock, muttered while trying to act composed. A monster that could easily serve as the boss of a B-rank dungeon was present in Room 1. Although they had received information beforehand that Glacia inhabited this room, seeing it in person sent a shiver down his spine.
“There must be at least fifty or sixty of them. I guess these monsters are a dime a dozen here.”
Niphrim’s half-joking, half-serious remark echoed through the cave. Everyone except Niphrim and the monk shrank back.
“Don’t be cowards. Don’t get scared over nothing. The fact that this place hasn’t regenerated yet means the other rooms haven’t either. That’s good news.”
It was the most basic structure of a dungeon. In most cases, the monsters in the very first room were the weakest.