Iron Bronze Duo
“Hah!”
A short battle cry rang out as the sword swung through the air.
Er, who had been pushing back the zombie’s hand with her shield, struck without hesitation.
Crunch. The sound of rotten flesh being cleaved as the zombie’s body toppled to the ground, but that was all.
Three more zombies still circled her.
“[Heal]!”
At that moment, white flames burst across the approaching zombie’s body.
—Greeeeek!!!
Even though the undead should feel no pain, one of the zombies twisting its head screamed and swung its arm at Ahin.
“Ahin, look out!”
“I’m fine!”
One man grinned as he watched those zombies.
Ahin, gripping a glowing branch, swung it down hard and shouted.
“Die, you rotten corpse monster!”
Crack. The sound of a skull shattering as rotten flesh and bone fragments sprayed outward.
Even though Ahin hadn’t managed to dodge the noxious stench, he still yelled in a furious voice.
“I can deal damage too, you bastards!”
“Ahin! Don’t push yourself—!”
“Hiyaah!!!”
Despite Er’s protests, Ahin swung his club again and again, blood and flesh spurting everywhere, and soon white flames rose around him.
Watching him methodically slaughter the zombies, Er narrowed her eyes, swinging sword and shield with a subtle scowl.
Soon after, having dispatched the remaining two, she turned to the Ahin who had turned one zombie into minced meat and said.
“…You’re all right? Your stamina looks really low.”
“Huh? I’m fine, my body temperature’s just right! We can take on any number of these with this energy!”
Ahin waved his glowing club around casually.
Next he brushed off the ash on his clothes and face, speaking with a completely nonchalant expression.
“Er, aren’t you the one who looks tired? We’ve already taken down how many…”
“…I’m fine.”
“Then let’s hurry!”
Saying that, Ahin picked up the lantern he had been carrying and moved his feet lightly as he spoke.
“How many places do we still need to check?”
“We’re right on schedule with the map. So… just the innermost room and its surroundings, and we’ll be done.”
The guild request was to explore the underground mausoleum that had turned into an undead nest and return.
They were to exclude any reasons that could make the appearance of zombies impossible if they could.
Recalling the content of the request written on the paper, Er said.
“It’s been several hours already. Let’s finish and go back quickly.”
As instructed by the guild staffer Lise, even a normal party would have struggled with this request.
If Ahin hadn’t had his skills, they would have had to spend days poking around the underground mausoleum and expanding their area.
Just the fact that they could shorten a days-long request to hours proved the usefulness of the skill he possessed.
If the guild learned of Ahin’s abilities, what would happen?
At the very least, they would receive tremendous special treatment.
No one had ever heard of someone who could instantly heal wounds and boost mana.
On top of that, from his usual demeanor and speech, they would probably doubt him, and he himself didn’t seem to want to reveal it, but he was an apprentice priest.
That meant his identity was solid.
Unlike Er, who was only being treated as a promising talent, Ahin would be recognized as a capable expert right away.
With his only weakness eliminated, he would soar to the top in an instant.
He wouldn’t even need a party with Er; he could head straight for the unreachable heights.
That thought was what caused the deep frown on Er’s brow at that moment.
“Er, what’s wrong?”
“…Huh?”
“You look a little tired today…”
Saying that, Ahin waved his hand.
At the same moment, countless light particles appeared on Er’s body.
When those touched her, a little vitality returned to her exhausted body.
“How is it? Feeling better now?”
“…You used heal?”
“Yeah, you looked a bit tired so—”
“It’s unnecessary.”
“Eh, eh?”
Even though Ahin startled at the words that accidentally slipped out, she couldn’t stop her own mouth from playing on its own.
“There’s no need to waste a heal when fighting zombies. Being blessed with a weapon is enough for me.”
“Eh, I see…”
“Be careful.”
Even Er herself didn’t understand why she had said such a thing.
This was only going to sour the mood.
What if Ahin got fed up and left right now? From what she had seen so far, he probably would.
Er, who had once seen him lash out at a lizardman in a cave, thought he might turn his back on her at any moment.
She didn’t want that.
If they parted here, it would all end.
They would never meet again, just two people who had once been party members, nothing more—
“U, Ahin. Sorry. About just now…”
“…Er. Wait a second.”
Ahin cut off Er’s voice aimed at him and narrowed his eyes.
Seeing that, Er flinched, thinking he might be about to get angry, but she realized his gaze was fixed on the far inner part of the underground mausoleum.
Shrouded in darkness, something was moving.
Er, thinking it might be another zombie that she had seen countless times before, finally understood why Ahin had stopped.
Grind. Grind.
The sound of something being dragged echoed through the underground mausoleum.
The occasional sparks flying up from the ground indicated the thing hitting the floor was some kind of metal.
There was no need to think so hard.
Through the dim shadows, revealed along with the sound of footsteps, it was clearly a sword.
A rusted, toothless, ugly sword.
But the faint mana flowing along it, enough to take a life even from a rusty blade, looked plenty dangerous.
The hand gripping it was not white at all.
Or rather, it couldn’t even be called white.
Because it was nothing but bones.
Thin, bare bones without a single scrap of flesh.
Though thicker than other skeletons, it was still just bone.
A wandering skeleton that had lost all blood and flesh.
Er, recalling the name, turned pale and opened her mouth.
“Ahin, that…”
“…A skeleton.”
“A skeleton? Why here…!”
Skeletons were different from zombies.
Zombies could appear anywhere there were corpses, but skeletons were a huge difference.
Skeletons were undead that could never be created naturally.
Zombies could be made from mana-infused corpses, but not skeletons.
Someone had to have created that.
“No way, the zombies that kept appearing around here…”
“…Damn black magicians.”
Ahin bit his teeth as he said the name “black magician.”
“These guys just barge in anywhere and cause a ruckus…”
“What do we do? Should we retreat and call for reinforcements?”
“…That’s best. We don’t know what those black magicians have done.”
They had even raised a skeleton to the front yard of their house.
Fighting in a place like this was basically suicide, and for a Bronze or Scrap Iron adventurer, it was sheer madness.
Fortunately, both Er and Ahin knew how to gauge their own abilities.
They could quietly withdraw, return obediently, and report the fact at the adventurer guild.
That they had become the target of the skeleton was simply bad luck.
Someone who had discovered they could attack undead had gone wild poking everywhere,
and someone had felt tired and used their skill as a favor.
Consequently, they had encountered a skeleton whose empty eye sockets burned with red light, drawn to Ahin’s holy power.
His spine turned cold.
The sinister red light rising from the empty eye sockets of the skull locked onto their gazes.
Saliva slid down his throat.
Sweat poured down his whole body, and the hand holding the weapon trembled with his owner’s tension.
And finally.
When the skeleton that had recognized them raised its rusty sword,
“[Bless], [Divine Enchant]!!!”
Ahin’s urgent voice filled the underground mausoleum.
Kaka-kak!!!
The skeleton’s iron sword clashed with Er’s shield, sending sparks flying.
“Ugh…!”
Er let out a pained groan from the heavy pressure pressing on her arm.
Normally it would have been an almost deadly attack.
If she hadn’t had Ahin’s skills, she might have been pushed back or broken bones.
Perhaps she would have lost her life to a shattered shield.
Just as Er had taken the attack and swung her sword in counterattack,
the skeleton’s red eyes noticed the man behind her.
That was only natural.
Even the lowest undead, zombies, were drawn to Ahin’s holy power, so a skeleton made by a black magician who clashed with the church would never miss it.
Ignoring Er, who was facing him with a weapon, Ahin saw the skeleton swinging its sword at him and shouted confidently.
“You think I’m just a healer? …!”
The club in his hand glowed with light.
“Hey, I have attack skills too—”
“Ahin, duck!!”
The end of the severed branch.
If Er hadn’t shouted and he hadn’t ducked, it wouldn’t have been just the branch that was cut off.
“Oho?”
“Hah… [Pierce]!!!”
Instead of the dumbstruck Ahin, Er swung her sword.
The sword, strengthened by Ahin’s blessing, was enough to stop the skeleton’s attack and stagger it.
“Ahin, run!”
“Why are we always running every day?!”
The two of them charged straight behind the gap.
Behind their backs, the angry skeleton smashed the surroundings with clattering sounds.
Unlike the slow zombies, their forward speed was faster.
The distance between them, Ahin, Er, and the skeleton didn’t open up easily, and the pressure behind them didn’t lessen at all.
“Damn it, skeletons aren’t normal trash!”
“Save the weird talk and run!!”
Er chased after Ahin, who was wailing.
In Er’s sight, the stairs leading to the surface soon appeared.
“Ahin, there…”
“Er, dodge!!”
Ahin’s voice cut off Er’s words.
At the same moment as his shout, bright light burst from Ahin’s body—
at that instant, a rusty sword was driven between Ahin and Er.
Kwaaang!
Among the scattering stones, a sinister red light appeared.
A skeleton clad in black mana surrounded by darkness targeted her and Ahin.
It was a powerful attack that would have left them unconscious in an instant.
To avoid it, Er threw herself to the ground and rolled, then raised her upper body and said.
“How did it get here so quickly…!”
“Snap out of it! There’s no time to think about that!”
Ahin grabbed Er’s hand and pulled her up, lifting his shortened branch as he said.
“We can’t run anyway, so we have to take it down!”
“No, there’s not much distance left to the stairs! If we just run away…”
“How are you going to get to the stairs?”
Er could understand those words from Ahin only right after.
The skeleton stood there.
It had blocked the path to the stairs and, with its sword hanging limp,
still aimed its unchanging sinister red eyes straight at them.
The escape route had been cut off.
The moment the realization hit, icy sweat ran down his spine.
“Now you get it? To live… we have to take that thing down.”
As Ahin said that, light gathered on his branch,
“Still, it’s lucky. I have some attack power too… cuck!”
Right after his determination flared, Ahin twisted his face and bent over.
Squish. Wet, thick bloodstains smeared the floor.
Er’s voice came out shocked.
“Ahin!”
“Eh, ra…? What the hell…”
That was the end of the words.
The man who had been dashing through the underground mausoleum moments ago dropped to his knees and collapsed onto the floor.
His body was drenched in sweat.
It wasn’t the tension or hot sweat from running.
It was cold, thick sweat like that spilled from patients.
Er’s mind flashed with a memory of how she had thought his body felt burning hot together with that.
“I’m fine, my body temperature’s just right!”
If that heat hadn’t come from him moving himself,
perhaps the poison from the zombie’s flesh and blood had directly touched his skin without proper protection, and that poison had seeped through his entire body.
So, had this man been poisoned to death, and the symptom had only just appeared at this moment?
Just thinking about it made her dizzy, and the world around her went black.
This was a crisis.
One-on-one.
She had no escape route left.