Purge Squad (2)
Purge Squad (2)
Two forks in the road.
From the traces, it looked as though those who had arrived first had taken the left path.
"Which way should we go? Should we take the opposite path?"
Katrin asked as I examined the traces.
What should I do? It would be better not to run into them, so should we take the other path?
As I pondered, the Princess, who had been watching, spoke up.
"How about asking the sword?"
Pfft.
Knight Axel burst into laughter.
He seemed to think it was a very girlish thing to say.
Thump!
The senior knight promptly smacked him on the head.
"S-Sorry."
Knight Axel quickly apologized, and the Princess accepted his apology.
Knight Axel laughed at the Princess's suggestion, but I didn't. She wasn't wrong.
I pulled the sword out of my backpack.
Even after we came inside, the sword still trembled slightly.
I channeled mana into the sword and flipped the switch.
Click.
The Mana Threads began to appear.
They were different from before.
Instead of piercing through the walls to connect to the target, they stretched far down the corridor.
It was almost like a navigation system showing the way.
The Mana Threads led to the left, where the traces remained.
"It's the left path."
Both the knight and Katrin gave me questioning looks, but the rest of our team headed left without hesitation.
Katrin fell in beside me as I brought up the rear.
"Playboy Young Lord! Since when did you two get so close?"
She spoke quietly, but everyone here could hear her at that volume.
I shook my head and put up a soundproof barrier.
"What are you talking about?"
"No, I mean, what makes her trust what you say so much? Even I, who was closest to you until recently, find it hard to believe you so readily."
"It seems you've gotten closer to Balea, too. The Princess has changed completely, and when did you get so close to the Grand Archduchess?"
I thought she had something important to say, but what Katrin said was closer to idle gossip and chatter.
With a sigh, I was just about to dispel the soundproof barrier when Katrin asked again.
"Matchmaking proposals will probably start coming in for both the Grand Archduchess and Balea soon. Will you be okay with that? No, wait, once you graduate, will women be lining up for you, too?"
I nearly stopped in my tracks for a moment.
It was an unexpected topic, and one that hit right on the mark. No, actually, it was a topic I'd been intentionally avoiding.
If they hadn't come to the Academy, both the Grand Archduchess and Balea would already have been engaged or married by now.
And since I, too, had grown stronger, if I hadn't come to the Academy, I might at least have been engaged by now.
During winter break, while I was back in the territory, I'd heard that my second brother's engagement was well underway.
I vaguely recalled hearing that she was the daughter of a count's family...
I shook my head.
Now wasn't the time to be thinking about such things.
"Aren't you getting married, Katrin?"
"As for me, I'm set to inherit my family's ability. On top of that, since I can even use the shield, marriage will be difficult unless a proper son-in-law willing to marry into the family comes along."
Katrin was the top ability user in the Count's family.
And since she had even retrieved her ancestor's ability, just as she said, they wouldn't be able to easily send her off to another family.
"Don't change the subject."
"What is it you want to say?"
"I'm asking who your heart belongs to."
I sighed at Katrin's words.
That was exactly why I'd been ignoring this topic all this time.
To even dream of the Princess or the Grand Archduchess was utterly out of the question, and as for Balea, I knew her true nature all too well.
Since I wouldn't find an answer no matter how long I thought about it, I had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the matter.
After scanning the surroundings with my senses, I dispelled the soundproof barrier and stepped forward.
The straight corridor opened into a vast underground plaza.
Perhaps because it was underground, it wasn't as ruined as the surface.
As we stepped into the underground plaza, a mural covering the ceiling dazzled us.
It resembled the Creation of Adam mural I had seen in my previous life.
The story of the world's creation, the appearance of humans, the emergence of demons, and God helping humans defeat the demons unfolded across the entire ceiling.
Although the mural looked old and worn, it was incredibly splendid and well-painted, enough to capture anyone's attention.
But we couldn't keep our eyes on the mural right now.
An even more staggering sight lay before us on the floor.
Shattered boulders and stones were scattered all over the floor.
They were no ordinary stones and rocks.
Runes were engraved on the stones and rocks, and they had all been carved into specific shapes.
There were stones shaped like arms, legs, heads, and torsos. Others served as joints, while some looked like spears and swords.
"So golems really existed..."
The Grand Archduchess muttered as she looked around the floor.
Just as the Grand Archduchess had said, the scattered stones and rocks looked like the remains of destroyed Rock Humans—golems.
Judging by the scattered stones and rocks, there must have been quite a large number of them when they were intact.
The traces of the destroyed golems were fascinating, but that wasn't what surprised us.
The golems hadn't been destroyed long ago.
Until just a short while ago, they had been roaming this underground plaza.
They had fought the people who entered before us, and all the golems had been smashed to pieces.
One could tell just by looking at the remains of the golems, but there was even more definitive proof.
Corpses could be seen among the stones and rocks on the plaza floor.
There were men who looked like mercenaries, dressed in worn leather armor, a woman in priestly robes, and shrine knights.
Not a single corpse was intact.
They were all broken, shattered corpses.
Their bodies had been ruined by massive impacts. They had all been killed by the golems.
Perhaps because they had left in a hurry, there were no neatly arranged corpses like the ones seen in the monster nests.
It was a gruesome sight, but no one turned away.
The people living in this world had seen and experienced such sights plenty of times.
There was no need to search around to see where the survivors had headed.
Bloody footprints and handprints led straight into the passage ahead.
I glanced at the sword in my hand.
The Mana Threads coming from the sword also led into the central passage.
The people ahead of us had chosen the right path once again.
Did they also possess a 'Divine Sword'? And the ability to see that Divine Sword as well?
Since I couldn't grasp the situation, my imagination only continued to run wild.
I pointed toward the central passage.
"Let's keep going."
We were gradually closing the distance between us and the people ahead.
It wouldn't be long before we ran into them.
It was then.
Rumble.
The mural on the ceiling began to move.
Startled, I looked up and saw large holes opening in the ceiling.
Boulders, stones—no, Rock Humans—began to rain down from the holes.
Thud, thud. Thud.
They were Rock Humans, identical in appearance to the golems scattered across the floor.
The only difference was that these Rock Humans were moving.
The runes engraved on the rocks and stones glowed, and the Rock Humans moved swiftly to surround us.
A shrine knight swung his sword with all his might.
Whoosh.
His mana-infused sword swung with a terrifying sound.
Crack!
But that sword had only managed to sever a single arm.
The opponent continued to move perfectly well, even with its arm cut off.
Franz, the Second Battalion Commander of the Purge Squad, felt his expression darken.
The opponent giving him such a hard time was neither a fellow knight nor a noble.
If it had been a monster instead, this wouldn't have been so difficult.
Absurdly, the opponents he and his subordinates faced were Rock Humans.
He had heard that among the religions that worshipped the evil god, some employed rocks as servants, but he had never imagined this place would be one of them.
He had fallen into a difficult situation due to a lack of proper information, but he couldn't exactly sit down and study other religions now.
In the end, as always, he had to overcome the hardship with his own strength.
He swung his sword once more to strike down the Rock Human blocking his path, then looked around.
The area was so packed with Rock Humans that neither his subordinates nor the others were in sight.
Franz shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Augustin!"
"I am here."
Fortunately, the senior knight was safe.
"Stefano!"
"...He is dead."
Augustin answered in his stead.
"Nicola!"
"..."
"Mathia!"
"I am finished as well. I will fulfill my mission! Aaargh!"
Franz kept calling out his subordinates' names, but few answered.
Almost all of them had died while passing through the three underground plazas.
The Rock Humans were endless.
No matter how many they smashed, more kept appearing.
In the first plaza, they came down from the ceiling; in the second, they came from the walls; and in this one, they rose from the floor.
There was nowhere else for them to come out from.
Unless the cycle repeated itself, this would be the last wave.
With that hope, he shouted loudly once more.
"Everyone, break through on your own! This time, it's the right passage!"
The priest who held the relic that showed the way had died just moments ago.
If there were more plazas, he might have to guess the way next time.
It shouldn't be this difficult...
Even if it was a temple of the evil god and a religion that had produced a hero during the Great War, there was no way the temple could have remained intact until now.
Besides, this was the Seal Grounds, the site of the ancient imperial capital that had been destroyed by the Demon King's direct attack during the Great War.
There was no way the temple could be this perfectly preserved.
A third of the Purge Squad, which consisted of up to three battalions, had been completely wiped out in this dungeon.
A single battalion of the Purge Squad was enough to match the royal knights of most countries.
To have lost such a battalion.
Franz couldn't help but clench his jaw at the high priests who had ordered him to retrieve the 'Divine Sword'—and at himself for being unable to refuse.
He forged ahead, cutting down the Rock Humans that blocked his path.
"Ugh!"
Though he dodged and swung his sword with all his might, he couldn't completely block the Rock Humans' attacks.
He, too, had no choice but to take several hits.
Perhaps because of those strange runes, the Rock Humans' punches were on a completely different level from being hit by an ordinary rock.
It felt like being battered by a boulder saturated with mana.
It was fortunate that he could deflect the impact; had he been an ordinary knight, he would have been dead already.
That was why his subordinates and the others couldn't withstand the Rock Humans' attacks.
Even as he felt his internal organs rattling from the impact, he managed to break through the Rock Humans and enter the passage.
The Rock Humans that had been rushing toward him stopped in their tracks in front of the passage.
Thud.
The Rock Humans stopping in front of the passage was just like in the other underground plazas.
Franz let out a sigh of relief and waited for his subordinates to cross over.
But the subordinates he was waiting for did not come. Instead, the Rock Humans began to retreat.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Franz bit his lip.
Franz knew why this was happening.
This was what happened when there were no living people left in the underground plaza.
The Rock Humans jumped into the holes in the floor one by one.
Once they had all jumped down, nothing remained in the underground plaza but the remains of the Rock Humans and corpses.
Franz glared at the sight before turning around.
He intended to make whoever was responsible pay dearly for this, no matter who they were.
He walked down the passage again.
The passage was short.
At its end was a plaza.
Fortunately, this plaza was the last one.
There was no passage on the opposite side of the plaza.
Nor were there any splendid murals like in the other plazas.
Only a single statue stood there.
It wasn't a giant statue, either. It was a life-sized statue of a knight.
Though it had a somewhat ominous appearance, Franz's eyes gleamed when he saw the sword beneath the knight's hands.
It was the Holy Knight's Divine Sword.
Franz rushed toward the Divine Sword.
But he had to stop after taking only a few steps.
Rumble.
The knight made of stone had begun to move.
Everyone raised their weapons toward the golems surrounding us.
Nothing ever came easy.
If they were golems, smashing them wouldn't be easy, and what's more, this might not even be all of them.
There was no telling how many more would appear.
I stole a glance at my sword.
'Should I switch swords?'
I had never used this sword in actual combat. It would be a disaster if it ended up breaking for no reason.
Just as I was about to pull out another sword.
Hum.
The sword hummed once again.
It was loud enough for the others to notice.
It wasn't just the sword humming. The same sound echoed from the golems as well.
While everyone looked on in wonder.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The golems that had surrounded us dropped to one knee, one after another.
Everyone stared at me with bewildered faces.
I could only stare back at them.
This was something even I didn't know about.