Entering the Ruins (2)
Entering the Ruins (2)
Before we had gone much farther, I understood why there were corpses lying at the entrance.
Thud!
A hammer suddenly shot out of the wall, sending the knight at the front flying backward.
His armor caved in, and the arm he had used to block the hammer looked broken.
"It's a trap! Injured man!"
A knight close behind him shouted, and the senior knight immediately gave an order.
"Switch the lead!"
An ordinary person would have been killed on the spot without even having time to react. But at the senior knight's command, the knight who had blocked the hammer clutched his injured arm and stepped back.
After securing his broken arm inside his armor, he downed a potion he had been carrying, and the knight behind him immediately took his place.
Despite the injury, their pace didn't falter.
"An ordinary person really wouldn't be able to block or dodge that."
It was a trap an ordinary person would have found nearly impossible to react to.
Just as Katrin had said, it seemed difficult for adventurers or mercenaries to operate inside these ruins.
The traps kept coming relentlessly.
The ground suddenly collapsed, and the ceiling caved in. Poison gas spewed from the walls, and arrows shot up from the floor.
Even so, the group overcame the traps and continued forward.
They used telekinesis to pull up knights who were falling and brute strength to hold up the sinking ceiling.
Those who inhaled the poison gas were given antidotes, while shields were raised to block the arrows.
More casualties mounted amid the chaos, but the injured were made to drink potions and keep moving at the rear.
Though the continuous traps left more and more people injured, expectations rose with each new obstacle. After all, a high concentration of traps meant that relics of equal importance must be hidden within.
It was certainly different from the ruins in our domain. The underground facility in the ruins back in our domain lay dormant, accumulating nothing but dust.
With all these traps still functioning, there was bound to be an intact artifact left behind.
As we continued forward, the group suddenly came to a halt.
A fork in the road lay before us.
The senior knight looked around at the noble officers and the Count, then turned to the Princess.
"The Princess must make the decision."
A dry laugh slipped out of me at the senior knight's words.
After making all the decisions himself up until now, he was suddenly handing the authority over to her.
No matter how young the Princess was, that was hardly something one should say to royalty. Surely this wasn't a decision the senior knight had made on his own.
'Don't tell me... Is this the kind of hardship she was talking about?'
Just as the Princess had said, her life wasn't in immediate danger.
Still, it was a truly nasty prank.
As though they had received some hint beforehand, everyone looked at the Princess with great interest.
Grind.
Katrin ground her teeth, while the Princess replied calmly.
"Are you saying I should be the one making the decisions from now on, too?"
Ooh! What a brilliant counterquestion to such a bullshit request.
The senior knight was at a loss for words.
"Ah, that is..."
His eyes wavered, and in the end, he apologized to the Princess.
"...I'm sorry. Please pretend I never said that."
The Princess accepted his apology.
It was only a brief exchange, but I could feel everyone's opinion of the Princess changing.
'Should I be happy about this or not...?'
It was such an excellent response, but at this rate, it would be difficult to hide how impressive the Princess was.
Was this what they meant by a needle in a pouch always poking through, no matter how hard you tried to hide it?
After conferring with the Count, the senior knight chose a path and led us onward.
It seemed we had taken the wrong path.
After walking a short distance, we found the passageway in complete disarray.
Traps lay broken and exposed, and the passage walls had collapsed in several places.
On top of that, a foul stench and tainted mana permeated the air. They were traces left behind by monsters.
I wondered if we shouldn't turn back, but the senior knight seemed intent on pressing forward.
'Is he feeling sore because the Princess outwitted him?'
That would be a truly foolish way to think, but since I couldn't know his true intentions, I simply warned Katrin and the Princess to be careful.
"Monsters might appear."
The Princess looked puzzled, but Katrin understood at once.
The Princess and Katrin moved toward the center of the group, while I stayed behind at the rear to keep watch on our surroundings.
"Are you the escort chosen by the Princess?"
A knight who had injured his arm and was walking at the back spoke to me.
I didn't like the way he looked me up and down as he spoke, but since he wasn't wrong, I nodded.
"She must've picked some young brat because this is the academy. I wonder if you'll be of any use."
He must not have seen me fight earlier, since he'd been busy holding off monsters at the front.
"You're probably not a commoner, but since you're the Princess's escort, you can't be from a prominent noble house, right?"
I was from a prominent ducal house, but as an illegitimate son, my prospects might have been worse than those of someone from an obscure house.
"Tsk, tsk. I'm sure it wasn't your own decision, but you backed the wrong horse."
The knight looked down at my still-growing frame and clicked his tongue softly.
"It seems it's too late already, so I actually feel sorry for you."
His words offended me, but the warning was surprisingly sinister.
Was he not simply telling me to be careful, but warning me of an immediate danger right in front of us?
"Among the princes' followers, there are nobles with radical ideas. They think that while it's hard to touch another prince, someone like the Princess is fair game."
Unless I had misheard, what he had just said sounded rather like a confession.
"Including me."
It really was a confession.
He drew the sword at his waist with his uninjured hand.
At that, I shouted.
"Everyone, watch out! Monsters!"
"What! Monsters?"
The knight who had raised his sword looked at me in bewilderment, but that was his last moment.
Crunch.
A massive maggot burst through the wall and swallowed him whole.
"Monsters!"
"They're bursting out of the walls!"
"Multiple monsters up ahead!"
"They've appeared behind us too!"
Giant maggots surged in from every direction.
They flooded down from the front, blocking the entire passage, while maggots rapidly crawled toward us from behind, along the path we had just taken.
The Knights Order hastily raised their shields, and fireballs and various other attacks rained down on the charging monsters from behind them.
They truly were the Royal Knights and the noble officers of the Kingdom's army.
The dozens of monsters that had suddenly appeared couldn't advance any farther and died one after another.
The monsters charging from the front were being held off, but the real problem was those at the rear.
At the back of the group were only the wounded knights and me, an academy student.
Thud!
I swung my greatsword, blocking the oncoming swarm of monsters.
As I swept the greatsword through them, a giant maggot split in half.
An undigested knight tumbled out, and unfamiliar monsters spilled forth along with gastric fluid.
But I had no time to care about what was coming out of its belly.
The wounded knights beside me were dying one after another.
Long-range attacks from the noble officers flew in from behind, and I used all my skills to cut down the monsters. But there were simply too many for me to handle alone.
"Send reinforcements to the rear!"
I bellowed as I looked back, but judging by the battle at the front, it seemed unlikely they could send help anytime soon.
Slash!
Just then, someone came to my aid.
Katrin stood beside me, raising her shield.
Given her personality, there was no way she could just sit back and do nothing.
A translucent barrier spread out from the sides of her shield, and the charging maggots slammed into it, grinding to a halt.
Behind it, a haze flickered over Katrin's sword as she sliced through the halted maggots one after another.
But Katrin and I alone couldn't stop all the charging monsters.
Among the wounded knights, those still alive were holding off the remaining monsters.
"Hold them off!"
"Aaargh!"
Whether they were allied with a prince or harboring secret agendas, the Royal Knights were doing their duty, throwing themselves at the monsters.
Seeing that, another person moved.
"I can't just let them die."
The Princess could no longer hold back and charged forward.
"Aisha!"
Katrin shouted in alarm, but the Princess ignored her and leaped at the monsters.
Flare!
Her sword swung through the air, cleaving a monster apart.
Crackle.
Sparks burst from her blade, and the monsters tumbled across the floor, electrocuted.
The knights, saved at the very brink of death, stared at the Princess in shock.
A brilliant glow radiated from the Princess's entire body as she stood in the monsters' path.
'Hide her abilities, my ass. She learned from Katrin, so of course she couldn't stand idly by. We're screwed. Totally screwed.'
I sighed as I held off the monsters.
After going to all that trouble to conceal her abilities, everything had been exposed.
Though she was an admirable princess for saving the knights' lives, at this rate, it seemed unlikely she'd survive the princes' political schemes.
Thud!
But now wasn't the time to worry about that.
The swarming monsters triggered a trap that hadn't yet been activated.
Walls descended, and sections of the floor dropped away.
The formation holding off the monsters on both sides fell into complete chaos in an instant.
And one of the traps was triggered directly beneath the Princess.
Clunk.
The floor collapsed, and the Princess plummeted along with the monsters.
"Aaah!"
The Princess screamed in terror, and I threw myself toward her.
Thud!
I managed to catch the Princess just in time.
I immediately kicked off the falling monsters and launched myself upward.
Fortunately, we hadn't fallen far. At this height, escaping would be a breeze.
Clang!
But at the very last moment, I slammed into something in midair.
Startled, I looked up, but there was no ceiling—only empty air.
Beyond the trap, I saw a noble officer reaching out toward us.
He was a noble I recognized: the telekinesis user who had earlier saved the trapped knight.
He was smirking at me.
Looking at him, I realized what I had hit.
It was an invisible wall he had created with telekinesis.
'So he wasn't the only one.'
It seemed I had let my guard down too much after seeing the other knights throwing themselves at the monsters.
I had no choice but to fall back down.
The walls were too far away, and there were no monsters left to use as footholds.
"Aisha!"
The Princess and I plummeted as Katrin's scream echoed above us.
Thud.
A moment later, the Princess and I landed on the ground below.
Fortunately, we hadn't died.
I was holding the Princess, but how heavy could a ten-year-old possibly be?
The impact was heavy, but I was able to endure it.
'Did the Princess faint?'
Fortunately, her breathing was steady.
I set the Princess down and surveyed our surroundings.
There was no light, but by infusing mana into my eyes, I could see quite far ahead.
'Are we still inside the ruins?'
Unlike the dungeon I had explored with Katrin, this place bore clear signs of human craftsmanship.
Corridors built of stone walls stretched endlessly in every direction.
No matter how I looked at it, this was definitely a maze.
"Things just keep getting worse and worse."
I sighed and looked around.
Since the Princess was unconscious too, no one was watching.
I pulled a pouch out from inside my shirt.
I hadn't been able to check it because there had always been people around.
Honestly, it hadn't seemed particularly useful anyway.
But since we seemed to have entered a strange maze, I needed to look for even the smallest hint.
I opened the pouch and pulled out the map.
"Huh?"
The map was glowing brightly, and the sections that had been sparsely erased were now completely filled in.