The Cross of Memories #7
The Cross of Memories #7
After killing the three Rattmen, I lopped off their thick tails with my longsword and stuffed them into my backpack.
A Rattman tail went for two copper each—same as a single goblin fang.
There was a reason I kept calling these Rattmen bastards the goblins of the underground waterway.
"Why cut off the tails, Mongma-nim?"
"Because they sell."
"Really? How much?"
"Two copper each."
"Tch."
Kate turned her head away with a disappointed look. The Rattman tails in my hand were clearly beneath her notice.
So even junk items under ten copper didn't interest her?
Come to think of it, Kate had always filtered out gifts worth less than ten copper whenever adventurers offered her things.
'She doesn't grasp the concept of many a mickle makes a muckle.'
Admittedly, my income had improved quite a bit since I started learning magic.
But I still made a habit of collecting every sellable scrap from monsters. Collect two copper fifty times and that's a whole silver, isn't it? Scraping up even the copper coins was the shortcut to wealth. Someday, I'd take this money I was scraping together and build a bathhouse at Yoen-su without fail.
"Are you done?"
"Let's move."
Kate, who'd been killing time gnawing on hard biscuit, started walking again at my signal. Rattmen kept popping up after that, but none of them were much of a problem. They all flopped over the moment my Water Whip lashed out.
If there was one problem, it was Kate.
"HIYAAAAAAAAAAAP—!!"
"THIS IS THE WRATH OF THE DIVINE!!"
Because Kate kept joining in to finish off the Rattmen during every fight. Watching her swing her mace while shrieking those bizarre war cries was so absurd I thought I'd die laughing. A status effect of laughter was plaguing me.
"You really don't have to push yourself."
"Fufu! I'm just working off the frustration of missing my walks with a bit of bludgeoning! Standing still makes me fidgety, you know."
That's what she said, but Kate seemed pretty damn pleased about earning praise earlier.
If I kept complimenting her, would this blonde nun end up multiclassing into a monk?
The thought crossed my mind, so I decided to hold my tongue.
As I continued exploring with Kate, a moment came when we had no choice but to stop. We were walking along a straight underground passage. The path cut off partway through, making it impossible to go any further.
"The path's broken. The map said to go this way."
"Hm? This used to be connected."
The corridor linking to the southern stone chamber was severed. Had some huge battle happened around here recently? The passage was completely wrecked, and filthy water had filled the gap. My guess was the church's paladins had fought the pagans here.
"Do we have to swim?"
"Absolutely not. You soak yourself in this water, you'll catch a disease and die."
Swimming through the waterway was out of the question. The polluted water in the underground channels was toxic in and of itself.
"The map says this is the only passage to the southern stone chamber."
"Not exactly. There's another passage nearby."
"What? There's another passage?"
Kate looked around with a surprised expression. The straight underground passage was lined with large pillars jutting up everywhere. I pointed a finger at a spot between them.
"Space behind the pillar."
"Whoa!"
In the gap where I'd pointed, a narrow path was hidden—a path that also connected to the southern stone chamber. It was so cleverly concealed by the pillar that most adventurers walked right past it.
The cartographers of the underground waterway didn't know every single route, after all. No surprise if Kate's map had a few omissions.
I headed toward the hidden passage behind the pillar.
Falling in step behind me, Kate spoke up in an excited voice.
"What's gotten into you today? You're so reliable, Mongma-nim!"
"As opposed to other days?"
"You were perfectly fine on other days too, of course."
When I glanced back, Kate was twisting a lock of hair around her finger.
She smiled and added,
"...You're just especially cool today. Enough to make me want to recruit you as my fixed party member."
"Fixed party?"
"W-well, that conversation is long settled, of course. Romance is forbidden in my fixed party, after all. I only meant to say you look dashing, Mongma-nim."
Hearing a beautiful woman call me cool made my mood lift despite myself.
I cleared my throat and answered.
"Right."
"You still have no intention of forming a fixed party with just the two of us, do you?"
"Obviously not."
"Kuh."
Kate turned her head away as if disappointed.
So this was the second time Kate had proposed a fixed party to me.
I appreciated the offer, but there was no way I'd cut Rebecca from the party. Once again, I flatly turned down Kate's proposal.
"What a waste."
I walked on in silence, listening to Kate's words.
The moment we reached the end of the hidden passage, a wide plaza opened up before us. A plaza built inside the underground waterway.
This area seemed to have served as temporary housing for the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom. Countless stone chambers lined the perimeter of the plaza.
Naturally, the southern stone chamber that housed the pagan totem was near this plaza as well. From the moment I stepped into the plaza, I couldn't help but tense up.
Because the undead summoned by the totem had finally revealed themselves.
"Skeletons."
Bone-white skeletons with nothing but bones left.
The skeletons were wandering the square. The instant my lantern light touched them, they turned their hollow eyes toward Kate and me.
"Undead monsters. Probably summoned by the pagan totem."
"Did you bring Holy Water?"
"Of course!"
Kate pulled out Holy Water from her backpack. Judging by the faint aura it emitted, it was low-grade Holy Water. That meant it could still deal sufficient damage to undead monsters.
"Horrible bastards."
I clenched my Water Whip, trembling with fear. Seeing actual walking skeletons with my own eyes was grotesque beyond belief. If they were just bones, it might've been tolerable, but chunks of rotting flesh still clung to them for decoration.
Crack-crunch! Crack-crunch!
Making those sickening bone sounds, the skeletons started to charge.
Five skeletons were rushing in from all directions. Holding back a scream, I frantically lashed out with my Water Whip. The skeletons crumbled every time the whip struck. But these things were clearly different from normal monsters.
"They keep moving even when they're knocked flat."
"They're undead, so they don't feel pain—!"
Even a skeleton with shattered legs would crawl after me using its arms. The way its jaws snapped furiously made me think it'd bite me to shreds if it grabbed me. Their empty eye sockets were filled with pure hatred for the living.
Taking out five skeletons at once was too much.
They were charging from different directions, so wiping them out in one swing was impossible.
Were a bunch of skull-headed bastards seriously executing that famous encirclement annihilation formation?
"Smart little shits!"
One skeleton exploited a gap and swung its arm. It tried to rake me with the tips of its sharp finger bones. The moment I narrowly dodged the attack, a glass bottle came flying from behind.
Whoosh!
The glass bottle nailed the skeleton square in the skull!
What filled the bottle was aura-infused Holy Water. Kate had hurled it with perfect timing. The liquid that spilled from the shattered bottle melted the skeleton's head on the spot.
"Its skull's melting."
"Thirty copper per bottle of Holy Water! Behold the power of money—!"
The surprising part wasn't just the melting. The skeleton collapsed mid-stagger and went utterly silent. Unlike when I struck it with the Water Whip, it didn't even thrash with its broken body.
"Go to your god!!"
Kate flung Holy Water at the approaching skeletons. Every time the Holy Water splashed, the skeletons dropped like puppets with their strings cut.
All five skeletons were cleaned up in an instant.
I stared at Kate, still clutching a bottle of Holy Water, eyes wide with astonishment.
"You just have to splash it and that's it? They all went down in one hit."
"You have to hit the head. Otherwise they'll get back up. I learned that the head is where a skeleton's soul resides."
"The head, huh."
True to her word, every bottle Kate had thrown struck the skeletons squarely in the head. She'd nailed moving skeleton heads with glass bottles. Kate might actually have a hidden talent for throwing.
"How much Holy Water left?"
"Eight bottles!"
"We'd better conserve it."
Not that Holy Water was the only way to subdue skeletons. I could just methodically smash their bones to pieces. If I crushed their limbs and even their spine, even an undead wouldn't be able to move.
"The stone chamber with the totem should be around here. Let's smash it quickly and head back."
"Yep—!"
I pressed forward toward the southern stone chamber with Kate. But the closer we got to the totem, the more skeletons kept pouring out. I swung my Water Whip and thoroughly wrecked them, but I didn't have the means to just endure their sheer numbers pushing in.
As time went on, our Holy Water depleted bottle by bottle.
By the time we finally reached the entrance to the southern stone chamber, Kate had only three bottles left. That meant we had to finish off every skeleton inside with just those three.
"Ready?"
"Absolutely."
The entrance to the southern stone chamber was discreetly hidden.
Before it, I checked Kate's condition. Her complexion had gone pale as she clutched the Holy Water bottles to her chest.
The prolonged fighting meant Kate had been exposed to skeleton attacks several times.
I'd managed to block them so far, but I had no idea what would happen inside this chamber.
The stone chamber housing the pagan totem.
It was practically a production facility summoning undead. I couldn't even guess how many skeletons were waiting inside.
I thickened my Water Whip and carefully pushed open the stone door. As the slab slid aside, the interior came into view. The moment I shined my lantern inside, I could clearly see what awaited within.
"That must be the totem."
A thick totem planted upright on the chamber floor.
The materials that made up the totem were horrifyingly composed of animal bones and flesh. Naturally, the materials for a totem made by pagans would be utterly gruesome. Just thinking about having to smash that thing with my own hands made my legs go numb.
"There's only one skeleton in here."
"Really?"
At Kate's words, I hurriedly scanned the chamber. She wasn't mistaken—there truly was only a single skeleton inside the stone chamber. But its appearance was different from the bare-bones skeletons we'd seen so far. The moment I examined that single figure closely, I couldn't help but feel a chill of alarm.
"It's carrying a sword and shield."
"An armed skeleton."
A skeleton revealed in the lantern light.
The skeleton was clad in rusted armor from the ancient kingdom, gripping a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Unlike the decrepit armor, the sword and shield were remarkably fine quality—likely looted from a dead adventurer's corpse.
A soldier of the ancient kingdom, buried in the underground waterway.
It seemed to have been resurrected before my eyes as an undead.
The armed skeleton was silently watching us near the totem, its sword and shield raised.
I asked Kate in a wary voice,
"Undead are basically dead people brought back to life, right?"
"That's right."
"So if an undead learned swordsmanship when it was alive... does that mean it can still use those skills?"
"It almost certainly can. Though the swordsmanship would be severely degraded compared to when it was alive. In an undead state, its memories inevitably grow hazy."
Tensing up, Kate raised all three bottles of Holy Water above her head. She seemed intent on hurling them all at once to dispatch the thing in a single strike. An armed skeleton was a clear departure from everything we'd faced so far. The fact that this one was holding the entire chamber by itself was far too suspicious.
"I'm throwing."
Just as Kate reached back to hurl the Holy Water.
"Wait."
I quickly grabbed Kate's wrist.
I stopped her from throwing the Holy Water.
"I need to check something. Hold on."
I faced the armed skeleton alone.
Because I'd realized it in that fleeting moment.
The skeleton's hollow eye sockets were locked onto Kate's bottles of Holy Water.