The Lair Beneath the Hill

The forest ran deeper than I had expected.

Jerret took the lead and picked out the path with an easy competence, but fatigue began to settle into me as I followed. We had left the horses back in the village to push through the dense woods, and it was telling. I had thought a week of hard training had dragged my stamina up to something respectable. Apparently I still had a long way to go. The uneven mountain trail set my legs to aching, and my breath came short.

Damn it. This useless body...

I grumbled inwardly and pulled a potion from my inventory, draining it in one pull. The body that had been screaming in protest a moment before went quiet, as if the pain had been a lie. It was no anesthetic. Whatever else you could say about potions, their effect was beyond dispute.

"There's another trail here, sir."

Jerret, still out ahead, found something and pointed.

What he indicated lay beneath a tree: a mound of earth turned only lightly, bone fragments scattered carelessly across it, and the gnoll prints I was already growing tired of seeing.

"These bones?"

"A boar's, sir."

"So the gnolls fed here."

"Just as you say, Sir Knight."

Walter and Jerret murmured between themselves. The village chief had not been wrong about Jerret's skill. He kept turning up gnoll sign through the forest, and every find drew us closer to their den.

We're getting near.

The traces grew thicker and thicker, and then, at last, something else appeared.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"The trail seems to run that way."

Jerret pointed ahead.

It was a burrow opening into the earth from a low hill. Deeper inside, a flight of clearly man-made stairs descended into the dark.

"What is that?"

I tilted my head at the sight. Gnolls were a race of monsters that built their villages on open ground, not in tunnels. It was strange enough that they had taken a burrow for a home. Stairs were another matter entirely. They had not made those. Gnoll craftsmanship ran to crude huts and no further. They had nothing like the skill to raise a structure underground.

"That is..."

Even Walter looked thrown, as if this were not the sort of thing one stumbled across every day. The look on his face put me in mind of the way he watched me after I had spent a whole day running the training yard.

"I cannot be certain, but... it appears to be the work of heretics."

"Heretics? There were heretics in this forest?"

"It is a matter of centuries past. Heretics once ran rampant in these parts, and I have read the record of the first Duke of Loenheim putting them down. I suspect that structure dates from those days..."

Walter said it while staring at me, as if to demand why I did not know the history of my own house. Lucas, it seemed, had never cared for old stories. I ransacked his memories and found nothing at all about a first duke. So I turned the subject with a light hand.

"Then you're saying it could be a dungeon?"

A dungeon was exactly what the name implied: a dangerous stretch of ground crawling with monsters. In Crius Saga, they were hunting grounds you only entered after you had grown to a certain point. Twenty soldiers were nowhere near enough for a place like that.

Walter shook his head.

"No. If the mana here were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠twisted enough for a dungeon to form, a 3-Star Knight such as myself could not fail to sense it."

Pride sat plain in his voice. The three stars he spoke of marked a knight's realm, a height reached through aura, a power hunters had never possessed. One began at one star, and at five stars one was called a Sword Master. Three stars was the realm commonly known as a mid-rank knight, a level that earned a man the respect due a veteran wherever he went. If a knight like Walter said this was no dungeon, he was probably right.

"So the gnolls only nested in an abandoned heretic hideout."

"That is what I believe."

I nodded at Walter's words. If that was the case, there was only one thing to do.

"Hunter. Wait here."

At my order Jerret bowed his head and drew back. Walter looked at me.

"What do you intend?"

"What else? We charge. You got another idea?"

"......"

Walter's mouth twitched. He clearly wanted to say something about an answer tossed out without a thought. The trouble was that there really was no other way, and so he could not quite bring himself to speak.

"Then follow me."

"No. I will take the lead."

"I can't allow that. Sending an old man in first? I'll go."

"I am your bodyguard, young master. A noble ought to know the worth of his own body and blood. It is right that I clear the way."

I met the plea in Walter's eyes. Dragging nobility into it, flattering me in that roundabout way—I could all but hear him begging me, just this once, not to be stubborn. And fair enough. A 3-Star Knight like Walter could swat gnolls aside without breaking a sweat. If I simply put him out front, there would be little reason for me to step in at all.

"If you insist."

I nodded, as if I had no choice. Walter let out a short breath that sounded like relief.

"I'll allow you to take point. In return, you follow my orders."

"...Understood."

At that, Walter drew his sword with a complicated look on his face and was the first to descend. Two shield-bearers and a spearman followed with torches. I went after them, and the rest of the soldiers filed in behind.

The stairs running underground were wider than I had expected—a good five meters across. If the entrance was that broad, the space below was likely considerable as well.

Why does this feel... off?

The unexpected grandeur of it sent a thread of unease through me. Gates were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the same way. As a rule, the size of an entrance scaled with whatever waited inside.

"......"

How far down ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠those stairs we went, I could not say. At the bottom lay a great stone chamber, square in shape, its walls lit by murals of a form I could not read, glowing with a faint light of their own.

"Hah..."

Walter let out a breath that was nearly a sigh as he took the room in. The chamber opened onto three further corridors where even the torchlight failed to reach, and the soldiers glanced uneasily into that dark.

"What is this place..."

The moment Walter murmured it—

"Grrrr..."

A low beast-growl rolled out of the darkness.

"Gnolls."

At my quiet word, Walter and the soldiers dropped into a crouch. From every side, the threat-sounds of beasts answered us. At least ten of them. I could feel monster presence down every corridor that left the room.

"Prepare for battle! Form up!"

Walter's shout snapped the soldiers into ranks around me as one.

"Here they come!"

Glittering eyes that had been hiding in the corridors showed themselves. Brown-furred beasts clutching crude clubs and bone axes. Brown gnolls, just as expected.

"Graaah!"

They shrieked and charged.

"Hold formation! Shields forward!"

"Ha!"

Under Walter's command the soldiers moved like a single body.

The foremost gnolls slammed into the shields and staggered. Then, at the cry of "Spears!", long shafts shot out from between the shields, ran the reeling gnolls through without mercy, and spattered their blood across the floor. However hard these men had been drilled, the result showed. Walter's command was crisp, and the soldiers' timing locked together without a gap.

Then—

"Grooooh!"

One gnoll, markedly larger than the rest, burst from the dark. In its eyes there was something deeper than simple rage. A grudge.

"That one?"

The mother who had lost her cub, most likely.

A shield-bearer who took her strike head-on reeled under it. She was strong enough to pass for the leader of this pack, no monster a common soldier could hold. If she kept driving forward like that, the line might break.

Walter, of course, did not simply watch.

A auspicious light gathered along his blade.

"Aura...!"

I felt my eyes sharpen at that new power, one I had never seen in my hunter days. A knight who first began to sense aura was one star. A knight who could pour aura into a sword was two. A 3-Star Knight had begun to run aura through the whole body and claimed a monstrous physical might because of it.

Walter's sword met the mother gnoll's club. With a savage crack of impact, it was the mother who was thrown back.

"Ghk!"

The beast that had charged in so fiercely was shoved straight backward by the force in the blade. She found her feet again at once, but by then Walter was already in her face. The next stroke opened her body in a deep cut. True to the name of 3-Star Knight, he had finished it in an instant.

"......"

Which left me, ringed by soldiers, with nothing in particular to do. Ordinary gnolls could not break the defensive line, and even if a stronger one showed itself, it would be no match for Walter.

"Well. Doesn't matter."

I would not get to test the stamina I had worked so hard to build, but that was no loss. What mattered to me was not how I performed in the mission. It was whether the mission succeeded. If I simply stood and watched, I would still have done what I came to do.

Or so I thought.

"Hm?"

A window like that flared up before my eyes without warning.

A quest appearing was not, in itself, a surprise. I had been wondering, if anything, why the task handed down by the ducal house had never registered as one. The contents were the problem.

"Survival?"

The quest read as if I stood at the edge of certain death. As if, should I do nothing, everyone here might be wiped out. I frowned.

"Don't tell me..."

I looked at the mother gnoll dying under Walter's sword. If she truly ruled every gnoll here, something did not fit. She had come for revenge over her cub alone. The leader of a gnoll pack could have thrown every gnoll she had into that vengeance. Done that, and she might have erased not one hut but the whole village. She had not. Which meant she was not the head that controlled them all.

"...There's something above her."

The moment I muttered it, a heavy boom rolled out of the dark. At the same time the gnolls that had been charging like mad things fell back as one. The sound from the darkness was no mere noise. It was a footfall that shook the ground, as if a boulder were rolling toward us. Between the gnolls that had drawn aside to open a path, the owner of that tread finally showed itself.

"That is—!"

Shock rode Walter's voice.

What stood there was a body at least twice the size of an ordinary brown gnoll, and the fur covering it was black as pitch. Blood-red eyes fixed on us from its face. Everything about its presence said this was no opponent to take lightly. And yet—

"Its arm..."

Wounded, perhaps. One of its arms had been cut away. The black gnoll looked down for a moment at the mother groaning on the ground, and then it loosed a roar thick with rage.

"Graaaaaah!"

The vibration seemed to shake the earth itself.

"You!"

Walter met the black gnoll with courage. His aura-wrapped sword caught a rusted flail hurled like a cannon shot. The impact was so fierce that the air itself seemed to tremble where sword and flail met. Even that, it seemed, was only the opening blow to the black gnoll. Attacks of the same weight crashed down on Walter one after another.

"What is that thing?"

I clicked my tongue. One arm, and still that kind of strength.

"Were black gnolls this strong?"

A black gnoll was a higher species than a brown one. It was no great surprise that such a creature would lead brown gnolls, or that it would be stronger than they were. But this gap went past all measure.

The instant that wrongness struck me—

And then—

"----------------!"

A horrible sound, beyond any description, burst from the gnoll's mouth. It was no mere beast's cry.

"Fear...?"

I muttered it with a frown. Fear was a skill used by high-grade monsters such as dragons: a spell manifested as a mana-laden wave, or as sound itself. Unless you had the mental strength to resist it, simply hearing it opened a fatal gap. Why a mere gnoll could use such a thing, I had no idea. That was not the problem in front of me.

"Kh...!"

The soldiers went down where they stood, and even Walter, a 3-Star Knight, dropped to his knees with them. In that opening the black gnoll raised its flail. Walter, caught by Fear, was defenseless. If that flail fell, his death was certain.

"Tsk...!"

So I did not hesitate. For the quest, if nothing else. No—even without that, I could not stand and watch someone die in front of me.

I shouted it as I pulled out the hide of the gnoll cub. A moment ago the black gnoll had flown into a rage at the sight of the dead mother. From that reaction I had guessed it might be the father of the cub we had killed.

"Groooooooh!"

I was right. The black gnoll, about to strike Walter, would not let me go as I waved its child's hide and drew away.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Heavy footfalls, and its body came on like a black wind. The flail swept in all at once. I dodged it and ran for the narrow corridor.