The Supporting Protagonist Gets to Work - 2
The founding of the Holden Kingdom had been a tangled affair of many hands and many deeds, yet on one point every account agreed without dissent.
Without Felix, there would have been no founding—and no Holden dynasty at all.
Among the companions of the first King Holden stood a prophet by the name of Felix. The title was no empty honor; he possessed the power to see the future, and he tempered that gift with the knowledge to unravel whatever dangers those visions revealed. With those formidable talents he stood at the first king’s side and poured every ounce of his strength into the birth of the realm.
Yet his body had always been frail. An incurable illness claimed him while he was still young.
Before he slipped into his final sleep, Felix left the first King Holden two last wishes.
One was that an institution for raising heroes be built upon the grounds of the royal capital.
The other was that all of his personal belongings be buried somewhere not far from that same institution.
The first king wept for his dearest friend and accepted both requests. Thus the Felix Academy of today was raised according to the prophet’s dying will.
And the legacy Felix had asked to be buried in the earth, at some later date, transformed into a dungeon of exceptional rank.
A grave robber’s discovery of that fact sent the entire kingdom into an uproar. Successive kings of Holden dispatched knight orders to confirm whether anything was amiss with Felix’s inheritance. Not a single man returned alive. Even a renowned S-rank adventuring party vanished without a trace. In the end the dungeon that held the legacy was sealed off from all approach and left to molder for a very long time.
“That’s where we’re going.”
“A dungeon where that prophet’s legacy sleeps… how intriguing.”
“You know Felix?”
“I never met him myself. I only remember the first Demon King flying into a rage every time her schemes were dismantled one after another—and that the culprit behind it all was a certain prophet.”
“I see.”
My interest in Adokchoe had long since cooled, but stories of the distant past still held a certain appeal. The first Hero—King Holden—the first Demon King, the Four Evil Beasts, and the prophet Felix… if I could watch the tale those figures had woven, it would have been entertaining. At this late date, however, all I could do was examine the remnants they left behind and guess.
“Still, will you be all right? This is a dungeon that neither the kingdom’s knight orders nor any adventurer has ever conquered.”
“That’s no problem at all. In the original story Kang Junhyuk cleared it, so I already know every last detail about the place. Early on I would have struggled to force my way through, but the me of today could stroll in alone, thrash every monster inside, and still have energy left over.”
“When you say it like that, I almost believe you—and that is what frightens me.”
“Just a figure of speech. Point is, for me it’s an easy dungeon. Don’t worry.”
“Mmm… even so, this body cannot shake a certain unease.”
“You really do worry a lot.”
Clank—! Screeech—!
I opened the hatch that led underground. Because the legacy had been buried in the earth, Felix’s dungeon took the form of a subterranean warren. Passages branched in every direction, and different monsters waited in each sector. One could ignore them and make straight for the depths, yet the barrier sealing the deepest level would not vanish until every monster had been subdued. In short, it progressed much like clearing successive stages of a tower.
“Let’s start with the nearest one.”
Thud—!
The moment my feet touched the ground, the hatch above slammed shut and locked. An extreme dungeon that would not release its captives until it was cleared. With only Frach and me isolated inside, she polymorphed into her human form.
“Let’s wrap this up quick and get out.”
“Take care not to rush and meet an ugly end.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The first sector was the Garden of Full Bloom. At a glance it was a breathtaking flower field carpeted with thousands of blossoms—yet mixed among them lurked Acid Nepenthes, the man-eating plants. In ordinary times they disguised themselves as ordinary flowers; the instant a human drew near they bared their fangs and spat acid. The acid was said to dissolve every scrap of flesh, leaving only bone.
So all one had to do was dispose of the Acid Nepenthes while minding the acid.
If only it were that simple. This place had not been ranked exceptional for nothing.
“While dealing with the Nepenthes, you mustn’t harm a single flower. The ones in this dungeon cherish the other blossoms so fiercely that the moment you damage one, they fly into a frenzy and mutate.”
“Hmm? Then one cannot even set foot in the flower field, can one?”
“Exactly. Step into the field and you’re bound to crush flowers underfoot.”
“What about burning the entire field?”
“For every flower you harm, the Nepenthes grow stronger. Torch the lot and they’ll probably gain fire resistance and come charging straight out of the dungeon.”
“In all my long life I have never encountered so unreasonable a situation.”
“Which is why no one has ever walked out alive.”
But because of me, every last Acid Nepenthes was about to go extinct—by a method no one else had ever conceived.
“What do you intend to do?”
“Acid Nepenthes feed on human bone, so the usual method is to scatter bone dust on the wind and lure them out.”
“Hmm. Yet it seems you have prepared something else.”
“Of course I have.”
I drew a bottle from my subspace. The colorless, odorless liquid inside sloshed gently; bubbles rose in lazy streams. Frach tilted her head and stared hard at the bottle, so I explained quickly.
“This is Poison Alpaca saliva diluted in water. I’m going to use it as a medium and rain it down over the flower field.”
“So you mean to employ poison. Will that not kill the other flowers as well?”
“Mixed with water, Poison Alpaca spit makes an excellent herbicide. Damage to ordinary flowers is almost nonexistent. Against monsters that merely look like flowers—like Acid Nepenthes—the effect is rather different, of course.”
The source of the knowledge was the old coachman who had looked after me before I ever met Frach. One of the scraps of worldly wisdom I had picked up after arriving in this world; I had stocked it in advance in case I ever needed it for a quiet farming life. I had heard that monsters often nest inside the fields of this world’s farms.
“Never thought I’d end up using it like this, but might as well put it to good use.”
“A truly clever method. This body never imagined her Contractor possessed such intellect.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
I inscribed a magic circle on the ground and set the water bottle atop it. Concentrate Rain—a spell that could turn any liquid into rainclouds and scatter them across a wide area. Even poison clouds were within its reach; only mages of sixth rank or higher could cast it.
“Shall we see how well it works?”
“Oh-ho…!”
Shaaaaa—!
The liquid that left the bottle became black clouds in an instant. Moments later countless raindrops began to fall across the flower field.
“Kiiiieeeek!”
“Kieeeeeeh!”
For a long while there was only the sound of rain. Then screams erupted from every corner of the field. One by one the Nepenthes that had been posing as flowers thrust their heads out and began to writhe. Smoke rose from their leaves, stems, and buds as they slowly melted away. In roughly thirty minutes they would all dissolve into nothing—save one.
“Even a flower field has a boss, huh.”
At the very heart of the garden stood a colossal blossom. An Acid Nepenthes that had never bothered with camouflage from the start. More precisely, it was an evolved specimen that appeared to possess poison resistance.
“That one I’ll have to break myself.”
Its habits were the same as the rest, so I did not set foot among the flowers. Instead I formed ice platforms in midair and approached the leader Nepenthes. I expected it to spray acid the same way the others did.
“Whoa!”
The boss Acid Nepenthes extended dozens of vines from its stem and tried to bind me. Completely different from the ordinary ones. Because this leader specimen had never appeared in Adokchoe, I took a solid hit.
I would have to dodge the vines that filled the air and look for an opening.
And yet…
“Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it feel like those vines are obsessively targeting only my lower half?”
“Mmm… this body sees it the same way.”
“Thinks it’ll win if it topples me from the waist down?”
“How should this body know the thoughts of a plant? Finish it already.”
“Right. If it’s only after my legs, that works out fine for me.”
I stepped on a vine that lunged for my legs and leapt high. Spinning through the air, I threw its attack lines into confusion. In that opening I gathered jet-black sword aura.
“Die.”
When I judged I had enough, I released it. The razor-sharp aura cleaved through the Nepenthes and drove deep into the roots beneath the soil, severing them cleanly. With a single stroke I bisected the leader specimen and landed atop the flower field. Petals drifted down around my head. The scenery alone was magnificent enough to call a true spectacle.
“First sector, clean clear.”
“Not even a proper warm-up. Let us move on at once.”
“Yeah. Before that, though…”
I approached the corpse of the boss Nepenthes. Something had caught my eye when the sword aura carved into the ground.
“You’ve been busy, haven’t you…”
Countless skeletons lay beneath the roots. Unlike the other Acid Nepenthes, the leader had been collecting human bones. Perhaps it had been saving them as emergency rations—yet somehow that did not feel right.
“What is it?”
“Hey, I’ve suddenly got a hypothesis. Want to hear it?”
“Speak.”
“What if the leader specimen was killing humans in a… different way?”
“I would prefer a more detailed explanation.”
“Look at these pelvic bones—every single one is male. That’s extremely suspicious.”
I had never heard of Acid Nepenthes sorting their meals by gender. Next came the sap that had leaked from the leader. When I carefully touched it, I felt not a trace of acid; it was sticky and slick, almost like lotion. Then there was the shape of the boss’s flower itself—petals folded in a way that looked uncannily like a human mouth. And finally, the way the Nepenthes had so single-mindedly targeted my lower body…
“……Ah, never mind! I must have been imagining things.”
“What?! Finish what you were about to say!”
“It’s nothing! Let’s just go to the next sector.”
“Contractor! Did you never learn that stopping halfway through a sentence is the worst habit of all?!”
“I know nothing!”
“Wait!”
My suspicion was an abyss that should never be plumbed any deeper. I left it behind as nothing more than a Nepenthes ghost story.