The Underground Dungeon
As the sun sank, the ground was dyed crimson from end to end.
Yona, watching the sun slip away beyond the western hills, hauled off and smacked the back of Alec's head with a sharp crack.
"What the hell was that for?!"
"You're the one who wouldn't shut up about my vibes being off, so this is what you get."
Alec, who had been glaring back at the growling Yona, quietly averted his eyes.
Of all parties, it had to be the vanguard.
Kayak, the lizardman warrior who kept rolling his shoulders with a series of ominous pops and cracks, was part of the same party.
"How is that Alec's fault, Yona?"
Kayak slammed his hammer into the ground with a thud and flashed a toothy grin.
Of all the adventurers here, he was the highest ranked—Silver—and a seasoned warrior already in his third year on the field.
A beastkin born to fight, and among beastkin, a lizardman whose love of battle was legendary. Kayak was already trembling with excitement for the coming fight.
"You're the reason we're the vanguard party."
"What? Why me—?!"
Yona shrieked in a strangled voice, then flushed crimson the instant she realized every head around them had turned her way.
"Why, why me? What did I even do?"
Kayak let out a low snort.
"Look around you. Do you see a single healer of comparable rank?"
"...So what, anywhere I go automatically becomes the vanguard party?"
"That's exactly it."
At that moment, Alec smacked the back of Yona's head again.
With another sharp crack, pain burst bright enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she whirled on him.
"So it wasn't me, it was you, you cursed woman."
"You son of a—!"
"Unbelievable, you lunatic."
"Why you little—!"
"That's enough, both of you."
The two of them, who had looked ready to come to blows at any second, simmered down at Kayak's word.
It wasn't as if they'd actually meant to fight, anyway.
"You know full well how precious a Bronze-rank healer is. Don't you? Wherever a healer like that goes, that's the vanguard. Simple as that."
"Ugh, fine. I get it. I get it, alright?"
"Good enough. It's getting dark. Gear up."
Kayak said, surveying the area around them.
At his words, the other party members, who had been sitting about however they pleased, began hurriedly strapping on their equipment.
Vanguard, Alec. A Bronze-rank tank with a one-handed axe and tower shield. Human.
Healer, Yona. A Bronze-rank healer with an unranked Holy Shroud. Human.
Warrior, Kayak. A Silver-rank warrior wielding dual battleaxes. Lizardman.
Archer, Emerson. A Bronze-rank archer with a shortbow. Kobold.
Mage, Freaky. A Bronze-rank mage with a stubby little wand. Goblin.
A party of five in all—the party that would lead the charge into the Catacombs.
"Hey, Alec. Hand me my shield."
"Carry your own gear for once, you cursed woman."
"Less complaining, more handing."
Grumbling all the while, Alec pulled the tray-sized round shield clipped inside his tower shield and passed it over.
Only after taking it and sliding it onto her left arm was Yona fully ready.
"Alright, I'm set."
"Would've been nice to have Alephri with us."
"Ah... you mean, that buffer girl?"
Alephri. The rarest of the rare, a Buffer.
She didn't join the fight directly, but a Buffer who could layer the whole party with beneficial effects from the back line made an enormous difference. Having one was a massive help.
"Yeah. Well, she's dead."
She'd been cut clean in half at the waist during the wild orc suppression a while back.
By the time they'd finished trading stories, night had fully fallen.
They could still make out faces, dimly, but the moment they drew near the underground dungeon, even that much would be swallowed by pitch-black darkness.
Torches flared up through the gloom.
From now on, even the sound of voices had to be kept to a minimum.
Yona slowly began circulating her holy power from deep in her lower abdomen, channeling it into her right arm.
It was something like a warm-up done in advance—a preparatory ritual she had never once skipped in all her time as a healer.
Feeling the holy power flow smoothly down her right arm, Yona moved forward slowly at Kayak's silent hand signals.
"Ooh, now that's a nasty look."
Alec's quiet whisper nearly made Yona laugh out loud.
But he had a point. The entrance to the underground tomb before them was seething with an ominous energy that kept oozing out, wave after wave.
She had holy power, but Yona was a healer—her gift lay in mending, not purification. Even to her, the miasma hanging in the air felt anything but ordinary.
Was it always this bad here?
It wasn't.
This wasn't her first time in this underground tomb.
She'd been here several times before—when the purge first began, while it was underway, when it ended, during the cleanup.
She'd come here plenty of times, and the miasma had never been thick enough to make her Holy Shroud itch the moment she got this close.
Is it because the passage to the lower floors opened up?
The demon slumbering down there had been awakened, so this must be its miasma leaking out. That had to be it.
Yona swallowed hard at the thought.
Glancing sideways, she saw that Alec's face had gone rigid with tension.
"Hey, Alec."
"What."
No matter how quietly she murmured, he always caught every word.
"You nervous?"
"Oh, piss off. The great Alec, nervous? Please."
And yet he looked genuinely tense.
"Alec."
"What is it now, you cursed woman."
"If you admit you're nervous, I'll let you feel me up."
"I'm nervous. I'm so nervous I'm losing my mind. I think I'm gonna die."
"Go to hell, you bastard."
Yona spat out the filthy curse and turned her gaze forward.
Five women in flowing white priestly vestments were advancing slowly toward the underground tomb.
Priestesses.
Unlike a healer like Yona, whose holy power was bound to healing, these women wielded holy power of purification.
In other words, the so-called "precious few."
Defeating demons like these required disposing of their miasma first, which was why the priestesses were arrayed at the mouth of the tomb like that.
The torches flared again.
The signal to enter.
As the vanguard party, their compensation was five extra silver pieces.
Not a bad sum by itself—but thinking of it as the price of her life left a sour taste in her mouth.
"Alec, careful."
Walking directly behind him, matching his stride, Yona fussed over him yet again.
Alec, advancing slowly with his shield raised, merely nodded without turning around.
She looked around.
The stone brick walls still rose in layers, sopping with moss, and the corridor floor was slick with some unidentifiable liquid that squelched and stuck to the soles of her shoes with every step.
It was silent.
Not a single adventurer had spoken since entering the dungeon.
There was no need for communication right now, and no reason to make noise and attract a demon's attention.
Well. It's my lot in life.
Even sighing a long sigh inside changed nothing.
No matter how many times she rubbed her eyes, this world was nothing like the one Yona had come from. Back there, no matter how poor or destitute she'd been, she'd never once had to worry about her life. Here, she was poor, destitute, and gambling her life with every step.
She'd never imagined there'd come a day when she'd be walking the corridors of an underground tomb.
Even so, Yona kept pace behind Alec.
- Shrrrrrik!
Something was skittering rapidly across the stone.
Alec thrust up his right arm, and at the signal, Yona raised hers as well.
The ones who caught the halt signal each lifted a right arm in turn, passing it down the line.
Once the whole party had frozen in place, Alec pointed a finger back at his sling bag.
Then he mimed a fist opening and closing, blinking. Yona nodded.
Alec, shield and hammer in hand, leaned back just enough, and Yona opened his sling bag and drew out a Luminous Orb.
In its normal state it was just a glass marble, but crush it hard enough to shatter the core inside, and it would burn with blinding light for about a minute.
"Throw it?"
When Yona asked, Alec nodded and jerked his chin toward the darkness ahead.
"One, two, three."
Yona hurled the orb in the same instant.
It rolled tumbling into the darkness, and then blazed to life with a searing, brilliant light—
- Kieeeeeeek!
"Wh-what the..."
A good ten of them, at a glance—dog-sized monsters running loose like strays—shrieked at the sudden light and scattered in every direction.
Something was wrong.
Alec thought so. So did Yona.
Dog-sized or not, these things had teeth and claws. In darkness like this, the small ones were often the more dangerous.
Not just Alec—even Kayak judged that they needed to fall back.
"Ru, run—"
—was what she was about to say.
- ——————!!!
A roar bellowed out of that abyssal darkness, a howl that shook the very stone.
And at the same instant, the chill at their backs cut off abruptly.
The entrance was gone.
The adventurers had entered first; the knightly order and the priestesses charged with the suppression had not yet come in at all.
And the entrance had sealed itself away.
- Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud...
Alec re-gripped his shield, knuckles white.
A hand wrapped in a Holy Shroud came to rest lightly on his shoulder.
"...I'm scared."
"Hey, I'm supposed to rely on you, remember? What am I supposed to do if you're the one getting scared, you cursed woman?"
The faces of the forty-odd adventurers now trapped inside were going pale by the minute.
And Alec and Yona, standing at the very front of them all, were turning the whitest of all.
- Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud...
The corridors of the underground tomb began to tremble with the sound.
It was coming.
Coming.
Something was approaching.