2. The Underground Dungeon (3)
"God, this feels like absolute shit."
"Shut your mouth, Emerson."
Emerson, the archer who never met a complaint he didn't like. The fact that Yona had snapped back at him for grumbling even now didn't mean her mood was any better.
Everyone down here had sticky, sweat-soaked soles — the whole lot of them. Nobody was wearing decent gear to begin with, and unless you were a freak like Alec who treated his equipment like his own life, boots were just roughly stitched leather. Yona was no exception.
"Alec, you're fine. You're fine."
Yona kept her hand on Alec's shoulder, murmuring the words over and over. Like it or not, once you were inside a dungeon, a healer had to stick to the tank like glue.
Alec had shielded her flawlessly up to this point, but nothing so far had been on this scale.
"If I'm fine, then—"
"Yeah, yeah, I said I'm fine."
"When we make it back alive—"
Alec drew a breath. He'd been leading the descent down the stairs, and now he hoisted his shield with a low grunt. It was practically a slab of raw iron; a wonder he carried the thing around at all.
"When we make it back alive, what?"
"You gotta let me feel your tits."
"You absolute dog."
A stupid joke, dropped in the middle of all this — and Yona giving it right back. Thanks to the two of them, a ripple of tiny laughter spread backward, and backward still.
Their footsteps never stopped. They'd been tramping down a long, spiraling staircase for what felt like ages, and just when it seemed the second floor had to be close—
- MAAAAAH!
A goat's bleat rang out, out of nowhere.
"...A goat?"
Someone behind them muttered it, and the question was on everyone's mind. A goat, suddenly, in an underground tomb like this? It couldn't have fit worse.
- MAAAAAH!
- CRASH!
Along with the bleating came the sound of something slamming into something else — and beneath it, faintly, someone screaming. Yona's body was moving before her mind caught up.
"Yona, stick right behind me! Everyone, RUN!"
At Alec's bellow, Yona gripped her Holy Shroud tight. Whatever was making that sound, it sure as hell wasn't just a goat. And that crashing, that screaming — Kayak's party had already made contact.
Prayer or no prayer, ritual or no ritual, some twenty adventurers tore down the stairs as one. Yona sprinted right on Alec's heels, readjusting the round shield strapped to her left arm as she went. The shouts, the screams, the clash of steel — all of it swelling louder with every step.
"Emerson, don't run so far up!"
At Alec's warning, Emerson eased his pace. Alec led the charge, with Yona close behind. They came off the last stair and passed through a stone door already standing open — and there it was, the vast expanse of the Catacombs. High torches running up the walls kept the interior from being too dark, but—
"Fuck. What the hell is that."
It stood four times the height of a grown man, with a bulk like five Alecs welded together. Its skin was a livid, blood-red from head to toe, and atop its head sat a single enormous pair of curved horns. A human upper body grafted onto a goat's hindquarters, its knees bending the wrong way — a sight that turned the stomach just to look at.
"I-it's a demon...!"
"Everyone SHUT UP! Battle formation, NOW—!"
At Alec's roar, the twenty adventurers scattered into their parties. Squads of four and five spread out across the wide cavern of the Catacombs.
"Alec. Alec. Breathe. Just breathe, okay? There you go."
Panting hard, Yona swept the hair plastered to her face back behind her ear. At her words, Alec shot her a quick glance.
"Don't worry about me. Worry about your own tits."
"Go guard your own dick."
Even now, the stupid banter. Yona raised her Shroud-wrapped hand, and holy power surged up in a rush — warmth flooding down her right arm, circulating smooth and strong.
"Alec! Behind you!"
Kayak's shout cut through the chaos. His party was supposed to have their own vanguard, but for some reason Kayak was now parrying the creature's greatsword with his two-handed hammer, filling in as the front line himself.
"Yona!"
At Freaky's voice, Yona spun toward it. At the end of the little goblin mage's outstretched finger, a man slumped against a pillar, breathing in ragged gasps, one arm half-severed at the elbow.
"Roque!"
"Go, Yona, hurry!"
If only there were two more healers. Yona shot Alec one worried glance, then sprinted for where Freaky had pointed. As she ran, she caught sight of the monster out of the corner of her eye — it swung a greatsword in each hand, its horned head thrashing like it had two. Something about it looked familiar, too. But yeah — so what if she'd seen it before?
"Hey, Roque! Stay with me!"
Yona's hands clamped down on Roque's half-severed elbow.
"AAAAGH!"
Roque shrieked in agony. He thrashed like he wanted her to let go of his arm, and when she wouldn't — no matter how he fought — he swung his fist straight into her face.
"Ngh—!"
Yona's head snapped to the side, but her hands never left his arm. Her lip must have split, because she tasted the salty tang of blood. This godforsaken world wouldn't heal a wound unless a healer's touch made direct contact. In the novels and anime she remembered, people got mended from halfway across a battlefield with a chanted spell or two. But this miserable world demanded skin on skin — or rather, the touch of hands wrapped in the Holy Shroud.
The holy power circling her Shroud flowed down through her fingers and settled into Roque's wound. A soft blue glow rose from the gash as the severed edges slowly began to knit. At this rate, any moment now—
"YONA!"
At Alec's scream, Yona rolled sideways with Roque still clutched in her grip. Where she'd been standing a heartbeat before, a greatsword punched into the ground amid a billowing cloud of dust — then wrenched back to position.
"Archers, what are you doing?! SHOOT!"
Kayak's roar rang out, answered by the monster's defiant MAAAAH. The ring of spear on sword, the chanting voices of the mages — and from the flashes bursting across the cavern, the casters were holding their own well enough.
Once Roque's arm had fully reattached, Yona patted his cheek twice and immediately turned back toward Alec. The moment she did, something whistled past right in front of her nose. When she saw what had buried itself in the stone-brick wall, she froze solid.
It was the haft of Kayak's two-handed hammer — snapped clean in half, whizzing past her face and now lodged in the brick, trembling.
"Th-that's..."
Her legs gave out and she crumpled right there. And as she turned to look where it had come from, Yona found herself staring straight into the eyes of the monster bearing down on her.
Its greatsword hand rose high overhead. All that punishment the adventurers had rained down on it, and the thing had nothing to show for it but wounds — it moved like it hadn't even noticed.
The blade cleaved through the air, falling in what felt like slow motion. Inch by inch, second by second, it was coming down toward her face.
Move. I have to dodge.
That hits, I die. Just like that.
Ah.
Fuuuuck.
So this is how it ends?
I'd already given up on going back to my old world, but I didn't want to die like this — in some girl's body.
Ah.
Yona's golden eyes filled with nothing but the monster's descending blade.
"YONA!"
Someone slammed into her, shoving the dazed Yona violently aside. She toppled over without even a cry, and the impact of her collision brought a chunk of the brick wall crashing down behind her.
"What are you doing?! Where the hell is your head, you crazy woman?!"
A face thrust itself in front of her glassy, unfocused eyes — a bald head still gleaming in the torchlight even in the middle of all this. Alec.
'Shit. We're screwed.'
Kayak hurled away the ruined half of his hammer and snatched up an axe dropped by who knew who. No adventurer carried around spare weapons, so its owner was probably dead. In Kayak's judgment, this thing was no demon. If a true demon had appeared, there'd be no handling it with this crowd — forty adventurers, no, fewer than thirty now. Just a monstrous magic beast, then. One he'd never seen before, but a beast all the same.
"Mages, fire school! Cast fire magic — alternate your volleys! Freaky, you little shit! Hiding won't make you invisible!"
Kayak cursed a blue streak, whipping everyone around him into motion. You had to raise hell if you wanted to live.
"Alec, cover me!"
"Got it!"
Alec came running from across the chamber, Yona trailing after him. She who insisted at every turn that she was a man inside — panting like the woman she claimed not to be, and clearly struggling just to keep up.
"Yona, can you keep healing?"
"...I can. I can manage."
Alec's clothes were soaked with blood in patches. He couldn't block the monster's greatswords head-on, so he was deflecting them, letting the blows slide off — and wounds were the price of that. Still, seeing him up and fighting this hard, well. That was Yona's doing, wasn't it?
"Emerson! Arrows?!"
"Running low!"
"Freaky, Freon — mana?!"
"Almost dry!"
Fuck, this is fun. This is so fucking fun.
Kayak laughed, sheer disbelief bubbling out of him. The subjugation force that was supposed to handle this thing — the knight orders, the priest corps — hadn't even made it inside. That a band of adventurers, most of them mere Bronze Rank, had dragged the fight out this long was staggering. And yet Kayak understood the truth of it.
No one here was walking out alive.
They'd fought with everything they had, and still the monster showed no sign of dying.
Yona knew exactly what Kayak was thinking, because she was thinking it too. And yet — a thought had just flickered to life in her mind.
"...No. Wait. I think there's one way."
Yona spoke up.
"But it might get me killed."