The Healer’s Dark Night in the Mausoleum
The small skirmish had just ended, and the party began to move forward with cautious steps.
The darkness that swallowed everything a hand’s reach ahead was met by the single flame that one man had lit. Haru walked through the tunnel where not a single worm could be heard, murmuring to herself with great care.
“I thought you must have hidden something that would pop out, but nothing comes out at all.”
There was nothing but darkness.
Just how long this tunnel was, it was enough to let the tension slip away.
“Right. Not even one ordinary zombie.”
Er, who had been shouldering the front line alongside Haru, looked back with the same thought.
“Haru, is anything strange?”
“...I don’t know.”
“Well, we’ll have no choice but to head in as far as we can.”
“We’ll go in as carefully as possible. There’s no other way.”
While the three women chatted and exchanged opinions, what was Ahin doing?
“Um, um... hey, you guys?”
“What is it, Ahin?”
“I’m, I’m sorry, but... can you all carry this luggage just a little less? This is... I mean, not just the party’s luggage, but everything Er and Jina had in their various pouches and backpacks too, and I’m talking with a voice that’s already dying.”
“You’re carrying one whole person, and you’re complaining this much...?”
“What else can I do? Otherwise you’d just end up slouching again, right?”
“I-I never did that, right?!”
“Lies, I saw it all at the checkpoint.”
“...”
Why only me? Ahin cursed inwardly, thinking this was all because of that damn god.
“...Ahin, heavy?”
Haru, who had been carried on his back, tapped the hand looped around his neck and spoke.
“I, heavy?”
“...No, not heavy at all.”
Ahin answered her with a bitter smile.
Er, who had been watching Ahin refrain from telling an innocent little girl she was heavy, opened her mouth first.
“I’ll carry you when we go back too.”
“...Why?”
“Just because!”
Ahin looked at her with an expression of total incomprehension, while Jina beside him leaped up with a shout.
“No! I’m the one Ahin will carry!”
“Jina, why...?”
“Hehe...”
“Don’t laugh like that, it’s scary!!”
“Ahin, looking at you like that, you must still have plenty of energy left. The luggage is fine the way it is.”
“Yeah, you look completely fine.”
“Are you two demons...?”
Ahin shuddered at the helplessness of the inevitable cruelty, then tilted his head at the strange sensation he felt on his head.
“It’s okay... it’s okay...”
“Haru, what are you doing...?”
“Ahin, are you in pain...?”
Haru stroked Ahin’s head while speaking, her voice dazed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay...”
“...”
Surprised by Haru’s unexpected action, Ahin eventually spoke in a relieved voice.
“It’s not bad...?”
“Aahh! Ahin’s falling!!!”
“Y-you, you idiot...!”
Er and Jina, who had been about to separate him in panic, froze the instant Ahin reacted that way.
Clack, clack.
A sound of something colliding.
Ahin knew that sound all too well—it sent a chill down his spine.
After all, the incident he had experienced the moment he first heard it was still vivid in his mind.
“Skeleton...!!”
It was a skeletal swordsman.
Er, who had spotted the bony figure dragging a rusty sword and emitting a sinister red glow, turned deathly pale and shouted.
“Ahin!!”
“[Bless], [Divine Charge]!!”
Ahin, who hastily used his skill, and Er and Jina, who took it and infused their weapons with light, spoke with tense faces.
“Damn, it’s not easy at all...!”
“Three of them...”
Despairingly, three skeletons stood before them.
One skeleton swordsman had nearly wiped out Ahin and Er, but now there were three.
Er, realizing that ordinary methods would only lead to their collapse, spoke while turning back.
“Ahin, we can’t hold on like this! [Bond]...!”
And then.
“Ah, wait...!”
Ahin, who had been carried, lost his grip without realizing it due to the struggling legs.
“...Hah.”
“Wait, if you go forward like that...!”
Haru stepped down lightly to the ground and looked at Ahin.
And.
“...Hic.”
“...Hic?”
“Hehe, hehehee, heheek, heek, hehehee, hehe!!!”
With his head bowed, Haru shook her shoulders and let out a wheezing sound.
Her appearance was so alien and somewhere terrifying that.
“G-get away, Ahin!”
“W-what’s wrong with her?!”
Er and Jina, who had been attached to Ahin, pushed him toward the wall and began guarding the front.
Haru, now free, and the three skeletons.
One of the skeletons, dragging its sword and clacking its jawbone, realized that Er and Jina in front of them were gone.
“Hehe... what are you looking at...?”
Haru, who had kept her head lowered, lifted her face and spoke to them.
“You guys are... against me?”
A mad smile spread across her normally expressionless face.
The usually straight mouth tore into a sinister grin, and her half-lidded sky-blue eyes, filled with wild light, fixed on the skeletons.
The wind blew.
Wind blew in the deepest underground where air circulation was impossible.
They would only learn the reason a little later.
The mana of the underground mausoleum was stirring violently, stimulated by someone’s mana.
Black mana that had simply been scattered in the air now faced a mana storm so powerful it could not be contained.
In the center was a sky-blue girl with a smile that seemed to lack something.
The girl who had originally been a tiny and dazed child now possessed the eyes of a slaughterer obsessed with killing.
“Heeek, heeek, hehehehe!!!”
Haru, who had burst into laughter, reached out and spoke.
“Burn everything, burn it, burn it until it turns to ash, until it becomes nothing but useless dust... and keep burning, keep burning, keep burning... burn, burn, burn...!!”
Haru’s laughter echoed through the silent underground.
The mana that shook with her began to spread out around her, displaying its presence as it tried to create its own space by stirring the surrounding mana.
The place where the mana gathered was Haru’s tiny outstretched hand.
Haru checked her hand full of faint light particles as if she had gathered fireflies and spoke with a twisted corner of her mouth.
“[Fire Wave].”
Bright light burst from the dark underground mausoleum.
It was not enough. The horrific heat, as if scorching the skin, filled the underground mausoleum.
“Hehe, hehehe, hehehehehee!!!!”
The mad laughter of a witch rang out too clearly.
The mana gathered in her hand turned into flames.
Pyre meant to burn everything to ash according to her master’s will.
It greedily devoured her master’s mana and swelled her body like a wave.
Everything burned.
The thick air in the underground, the dried-up roots here and there, the soil and sand that had been stepped on with rustling sounds, the pebbles that had clacked under her feet, and even the three skeletal figures lifting their swords while clacking their jaws.
The flames had burned everything.
Iron swords held by the skeletons heated to the point of breaking, bending, and their thin bones withered and burned.
Everything turned to powder.
Thin ribs, thick legs, the horrifying skulls.
Skeletons that had lost their original shape crumbled with silent screams of despair.
Just fire.
She burned them, burned them, and burned them again.
What she had sent back to their original places was.
“Heheek, heheek, heheek, heeek...!”
Flames of a smiling girl looking at a burning red world.
Those flames were terrifyingly hot.
They released such immense heat that facing them bare-skinned would feel like burning skin.
If Er had not hastily raised her shield and Jina had not wrapped their faces in her gauntlets, they might have suffered a horrible fire that would have scorched their skin.
Their own abilities could not have blocked that heat.
Without Ahin’s [Bless] and [Divine Charge], her mana and weapons might have been exhausted first, leading to an unimaginable catastrophe.
“Ah, it’s hot!”
After the magic’s aftereffect subsided, Jina threw away her gauntlet that had heated up from the heat, and Er pulled away from her shield with rising steam and muttered in shock.
“What the...?”
The endless underground passage had become a sea of fire.
Why so much fuel? Flames clung to the walls, the floor, even the ceiling, licking with their tongues and spewing deadly heat.
The skeletons burned by those flames were not just three.
Five skeletons that had been hiding in the darkness and waiting for them to die without being noticed were now burning together to ashes.
Eight in total.
It was an incredible sight: eight skeletons that Er and Ahin, using [Bond] as well, had barely defeated, collapsed all at once.
Everyone was speechless.
Some did not know what to say in front of the amazing spectacle created by a single spell,
Others were stunned that something so small could create it,
And others sent envious glances at it all.
In the underground where no one spoke, the sky-blue eyes turned toward them.
“Hehe...”
The girl who had been laughing in a wheezing voice spoke with her mouth torn into a grin.
“Ahin... where are you...?”
That girl was looking for a man.
“Ahin...?”
Her eyes flashed with the remaining madness, her voice sending chills.
“Ahin...?”
Er and Jina swallowed dryly at the sight of the girl speaking that way and blocked Ahin’s front.
“...Ahin, he’s behind.”
“Yes, she’s weird. Right now...!”
“Wait.”
Ahin, who had slipped past the two and stepped forward, spoke.
“Haru, that just now... was your magic?”
“Hehe, but?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean...”
Ahin, who had obtained the answer he wanted, seemed about to catch his breath, then spoke with a voice full of sincerity.
“I have a request.”
“A r-req...uest?!”
“Yeah, it’s the request of my lifetime.”
Ahin, with a more serious expression than ever before, bowed his head to the much smaller girl than him.
“Teach me magic too!!”