Something Is Strange About the Gift (2)
Something Is Strange About the Gift (2)
Just before she was attacked again.
Staring at the dagger, she snapped out of it.
"You have to tell me what happened later!"
With those words, she dashed toward the red monster, which had been driven back and was breathing raggedly, while I blocked the path of the remaining monster.
The monster growled, but I simply hovered in front of it, dagger in hand.
To be honest, I wasn't very confident I could win, and my young body was utterly exhausted.
I'd already done more than my share. All I had to do now was keep this monster occupied.
Because she'd left the red monster covered in blood, its movements were extremely cautious. That let me hold it back without actually fighting it.
A moment later, the monster she was fighting collapsed.
As expected, she'd only struggled because there were two of them. One-on-one, it was over in an instant.
"Good job!"
Having defeated the monster, she rushed straight toward me without even stopping to catch her breath.
Now, she was doing more than just panting; she was so low on mana that the flickering aura rising from her sword had weakened.
She still seemed to have enough mana to deal with the one remaining monster.
Just as I expected, she brought down the remaining monster before her mana ran out completely.
The monster fought back fiercely, but my joining in from the side created plenty of openings.
A moment later, the last monster collapsed, and she slumped to the ground, panting heavily.
"Ugh... ugh. What on earth happened?"
Neither the joy of defeating all the monsters nor the agonizing lack of mana could keep her from asking questions.
She stared at me, gasping for air with her whole body.
I scratched my head.
I needed to understand what had happened myself before I could answer her.
"I don't know. I was trying to fight with the dagger, and then an illusion of the bird drawn in the crest appeared. And..."
In the end, I told her what I had just experienced.
I told her about seeing the illusion, hearing the auditory hallucination, and answering it, which had caused my mana to change.
I also told her that after my mana shifted, I lost consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, all the monsters were dead.
"Even now, if I hold the dagger like this and move my mana, its properties change."
I showed her the flickering dagger.
Once again, she stared blankly at the dagger.
"An illusion and an auditory hallucination? That makes no sense. The inheritance has already been passed down, yet another successor appeared?"
A topic I knew nothing about had come up. Wasn't the inherited ability passed down through genetics?
That was quite different from the inheritance I knew about.
At those unexpected words, I stared back at her. As we gazed blankly at each other—
Gurgle.
The sound of rising water echoed from the cave we'd climbed up from.
Hearing it, I snapped back to reality.
"This is no time for this. We have to get out first."
At my words, she came back to reality too.
But she still looked as if she'd just witnessed some bizarre entity.
Fortunately, she'd recovered a little of her mana and physical strength as well.
As she got up, I looked at the fallen monsters.
"Are Red Mice usually this strong? I heard they were common, low-grade monsters during the Great War. If these monsters were swarming, how did anyone win?"
When I said that, she furrowed her brow.
"I don't think these monsters are ordinary Red Mice. I've never heard of Red Mice being this strong. It's also my first time seeing gray Red Mice. Did something change inside here?"
Fortunately, she answered my question properly.
At her answer, I imagined the past of the fallen monsters.
Had they been left behind in the underground caves during the Great War, trapped in this subterranean world for hundreds of years and waiting for the Demon King to return?
Had they bred to increase their numbers, growing stronger over the years as they waited for their master to return?
An isolated life of hundreds of years that no one knew about...
Seeing my own reflection in the dead monsters, I felt a brief shiver run down my spine.
But I shook my head at once. There was no reason to get sentimental over monsters.
"Still, it's a shame. If they're monsters from the Great War, merchants would pay a good price for them."
At my words, she sighed.
"No, the problem right now isn't that we can't take the monsters."
Indeed, the water was rushing in. This wasn't the time to talk about things like that.
"Considering your inherited ability, monster carcasses aren't important at all!"
Well, even if money wasn't important, we could still retrieve them, couldn't we?
In fact, it made even less sense for her, a mercenary, to dismiss the subject of money.
Still, her words made sense too.
Being able to obtain an inherited ability twice over... This wasn't something that could be easily brushed aside, just as she'd said.
If word got out, it would cause trouble, and because of me, her situation would undoubtedly become a headache.
But I remained calm.
If I were an ordinary person, I would've been terrified by what had just happened. Perhaps because I'd died several times, though, I wasn't that afraid of what might come next.
At any rate, thanks to my words, the atmosphere lightened a little.
Just as in my previous life, the two of us opened the iron door and checked inside the warehouse.
The warehouse was no different from what I'd seen before.
A huge hole pierced straight through the center of the warehouse, from top to bottom, and not a single intact item remained in the rest of the space.
I'd seen it before, and she'd expected it, but she still let out a sigh.
I checked my thick pouch and urged her on again.
The hole pierced straight upward.
She lifted the lantern hanging from her waist.
By the lantern's light, I looked up and saw the ceiling far beyond the hole.
It was the ceiling of the tomb where she and I had fallen.
Clank.
But while we were looking up, the water filling the lower hole began to overflow.
Water was rushing in through the open warehouse door too.
It was already soaking our shoes and rising to our knees.
There was no time to stand there admiring the ceiling.
She looked me up and down and asked,
"Judging by the skills you've shown so far, it seems entirely possible... but can you climb up?"
"Yes."
At her question, I replied as I drew the greatsword from my back.
I held the dagger in one hand and the greatsword in the other.
Then, as I focused my mind on the greatsword,
Hum.
The wildly fluctuating mana returned to its original state.
As the flickering mana on the dagger vanished, the Firebird Hunter stared at me in wonder once again.
I waded through the rising water and walked toward the warehouse wall.
The solid stone wall looked as though it wouldn't even be scratched by a decent blow from a hammer.
Rock climbing with swords in this underground place...
If this had been my past life, I would've raised my voice and called it nonsense.
Even now, it would be impossible if I didn't have mana.
But thanks to the cheat key called mana, I could do the impossible.
I focused my mind on the dagger again to change my mana, then drove the flickering greatsword into the wall as high as I could.
Thunk.
Before the greatsword even touched it, a blade-shaped hole pierced the wall.
I slid the greatsword into it with ease.
Even I thought it was impressive, but in exchange, my mana drained away in massive chunks.
"Damn."
I immediately returned my mana to normal and stood on the greatsword.
As soon as I did, my mana quickly filled back up.
This time, I drove the dagger into the wall in the same way, hung from it, and pulled out the greatsword.
After stepping up onto the dagger, I returned my mana to normal again.
Fortunately, the mana behaved as expected, so I didn't have to worry about running out while climbing.
'But will the Firebird Hunter be okay...?'
I could change my mana and refill it, but she couldn't.
Besides, she hadn't even had much of a chance to rest.
Worried, I turned my gaze toward her.
And I recalled a saying I'd heard in my past life.
"They say you shouldn't worry about successful people..."
Originally, it was something like 'worrying about celebrities is a waste of time,' but feeling like a fool for worrying about her was much the same.
She was already passing the ceiling and entering the hole.
She was climbing the wall in a completely different way from me.
Unlike me, who was diligently making footholds with my sword, she drew lines on the wall with her flickering sword and climbed by stepping on them.
It was an excellent application of mana and a proper way to rock climb.
Indeed, it wasn't my time to show off yet.
Embarrassed, I drove my sword into the wall again and started climbing.
I wanted to do it like her, but I couldn't use a mana sword that far or that quickly.
Besides, I'd never learned to rock climb, either.
If I tried to copy her and fell into the water, that would be trouble.
With the greatsword and the gold coins in my pouch, I'd be perfectly set up to drown if things went wrong.
I diligently moved my hands and feet to escape the rising water.
After getting past the difficult ceiling and entering the hole, I kept climbing.
Since she'd hung the lantern midway up the vertical cave, climbing wasn't difficult.
But the water kept rising, chasing after me.
"Just how high is this water going to rise?"
Muttering as I watched the sloshing water, I busily moved my hands and feet, and finally managed to reach the end of the hole.
I planted my hands on the edge and retrieved the dagger beneath my feet. The moment I finally hauled myself up—
Whoom!
I saw a massive greatsword coming down toward my head.
"Whoa!"
Startled, I hastily dodged, and naturally, I ended up floating in midair.
While suspended in the air, I could see the person who had attacked me.
A knight holding a greatsword. He was a handsome, middle-aged knight.
Why was a knight here? And why was he attacking me?
Beside the knight stood the Firebird Hunter, who had climbed up first.
She was sitting on the ground, panting, but she didn't seem to be hurt anywhere, and she still had her weapon. She didn't look as though she'd been subdued, either.
So, were the knight and she working together? As expected, she was no ordinary mercenary.
More than that, could I have been deceived by her?
Honestly, looking at these ruins and the inheritance she'd obtained, I thought it entirely possible that she might kill someone to keep it secret.
Besides, my obtaining her inherited ability could be far more dangerous for her or her family than I'd thought.
But this outcome was completely at odds with the personality I'd observed through my multiple deaths.
No, more importantly, I'd taken precautions in case something like this happened.
We'd definitely made a contract at the temple, hadn't we? Was there a loophole in the contract? Some sort of workaround?
As all kinds of thoughts flashed through my mind,
I saw her expression change.
"Stop! That child is my companion!"
When she said that, the knight's expression changed too, and I fell straight down.
Splash.
No, what the hell was going on?
As expected, having plunged into the water, I sank rapidly.
Sinking into the water, I couldn't help looking bewildered.
If it ended like this, I wouldn't know how to do it all over again.
The situation was tangled. I didn't know whether I could trust my companion, why the knight had appeared, or what had happened to the soldiers guarding the well.
Anyway, I'd barely made it to the end!
A curse naturally escaped my lips.
At that moment,
I saw someone plunge down from above my head.
Splash!
The person who'd plunged into the water with a splash approached me at high speed.
Thanks to the lantern floating in the water, I could see his figure.
Even underwater, the handsome, middle-aged knight in full armor was swimming rapidly toward me.