Chapter 4

Chapter 4. The Porter of Yensi (3)

Every room in the dungeon had lighting, but the passage leading to the M-floor was dark as anything. The door we'd come through closed naturally behind us.

That door wouldn't open again. Because in every dungeon, you had to clear the room's monster before it would open.

Beyond the corridor, an ominous-looking door came into view. Purple flames whipped around the square frame, like the gate a circus tiger leaps through.

"Everyone, check your skills before we go in!"

The butler was now speaking in full informal to the guards. His mood was clearly foul. Airi didn't object to it, either.

At his words, Airi, the butler, and the guards all stared into the air, as if zoning out. Could I do it too? I called out internally with a spark of hope.

'Skills.'

A semi-transparent skill window appeared. Its layout matched the one that had shown me the word 'Apparition' earlier. So that had been a skill window all along.

"Porter, what skills do you have?"

"His corpse dismantlement skill has to be at least level 7, right?"

Several guards approached me with curiosity. I had nothing to tell them. Because my skill window was full of nothing but characters that looked like earthworms and pigtails.

In other words, I couldn't read them.

"I can't read any of this."

"What, are you illiterate?"

"Well, Yensi folks do tend not to learn because they find Trafvichan too hard."

They lost interest in me and left. That suited me fine. Wait—I could speak the language, so why couldn't I read it? That was genuinely irritating.

My skill window was packed. But I couldn't read a single thing. Maybe the dictionary that had told me the meaning of 'Apparition' earlier could do something? But no such luck.

In the end, I went to the one person here who seemed most like an ally: the butler.

"Butler, sir."

"Porter, what?"

Even though it was the same word 'porter,' it didn't feel contemptuous coming from him. He had to still be angry, yet his tone was calm. He seemed like a composed person despite everything.

"I'm sorry, but could you read just this one thing for me? It's from my skill window."

"Ah, illiterate. If you can't read your skills, everything else is pointless. Skills are power bestowed by the gods, after all."

"So that's why Yensi is called the cursed land."

That's what the novel said. But the butler shook his head firmly.

"No. Yensi has other ways of living besides skills. Our god is not that merciless."

"I see."

"Don't put yourself down. Struggle until your body breaks, and the answer will always reveal itself in the cracks."

"That's a tip I can relate to."

I smiled slightly and used the butchering dagger to copy the characters from my skill window onto the ground. The butler tilted his head slightly, then made an expression like he'd realized something.

"It means 'swift.'"

Okay. Then what about this one? I tried my best to copy the next one accurately. He pondered for a moment, then spoke.

"It means 'movement.'"

Got it. So I had a skill called Swift Movement. The moment I recognized it, the worm-like characters in my skill window straightened rigidly or bent at right angles, forming legible text.

The result was this:

【Skill: Swift Movement Lv. MAX Unlocked】

【Skill: Swift Movement Lv. MAX In Use】

"That is a skill, isn't it? Somewhat unfamiliar name, though."

I wanted to ask more, but Airi rapped on the door wreathed in purple flames.

"Butler, let's go in already. It's hot in here."

"Have you finished your skill check?"

At Airi's call, the butler immediately ran to her. Well, I had a lot of skills, so I could figure them out gradually.

Swift Movement—I just needed to think of when I moved fast. It wasn't like I ran around shouting 'Swift Movement!' during my Hunter days.

Still, just that one skill should keep me from dying. I quietly tried activating the Swift Movement. The movement was clearly different from when I'd tripped over myself doing tap dance earlier. So this was the power of a skill.

"Ack!"

The ponytailed guard yelped. Of course he did—I'd gone behind him and smacked him on the back of the head.

"What the—who the hell hit me?"

"The hell are you on about, man."

"No, it didn't hurt, but someone definitely poked me."

I'd hit him as hard as I could, but without a combat skill, was it that weak? Or maybe this body was too frail to channel an S-rank Hunter's power. Since this body must have belonged to someone else.

"Regardless of the dungeon entry, your fundamentals are severely lacking. Apart from this situation, I'll be reconsidering your contracts."

The butler spoke in a frigid tone. Airi had zero interest in the guards—her attention was fixed solely on the M-floor.

The guards grumbled quietly.

"This is all because of you."

"I'm telling you, someone really hit me."

"You probably got hit by a water drop from a stalactite."

The guards ultimately pinned all the blame on the ponytailed man. Having become the scapegoat for the contract review among his peers, he looked deflated.

"Hah, just let me catch whoever did it."

Catch me if you can. Even though I wasn't strong right now, I was confident I could run. What I needed right now was the ability to escape anyway. Airi would either clear this dungeon just fine or escape.

Because she had to meet Marina. That was how the novel went. In between, I needed to not die. I was an existence unprotected by the novel's framework.

"Going in."

Airi pushed the door open with an eager voice. When it opened, black sprouts were growing on the other side. Everyone lost their words. Because they all knew what it meant.

I, too, knew what those black sprouts meant.

In this world, something called the Corrupted Tree served as a monster's nest. Their rank could be determined by color, but black was the exception. Because black was the tree where the strongest villain of this world—the 'Demon'—dwelled.

Ah, so this was just before the novel began. That's all I thought. Because the novel started during a situation where black trees were sprouting everywhere, throwing Trafviche into chaos.

"Everyone, fall back behind me."

"Butler! Do you have a death wish?!"

Airi shouted, but the butler scooped her up in an instant and deposited her squarely in the middle of the guards. Clean movement. About B-rank Hunter level?

Right, of course. A ducal lady of Airi's stature had to have at least one capable guard.

"B-Butler?"

Airi's voice came out flustered. It seemed she hadn't known the butler's true combat ability. The butler ignored Airi and removed his monocle. I could feel mana infusing into the monocle he'd been wearing.

So this place had mana too. Right—the terminology was different and it wasn't well-described, but this world's setting was undoubtedly modeled after our Hunter world.

"Guards, make protecting the lady your highest priority. Guard her with your lives."

The flimsy gold monocle straightened rigid, then extended even longer. Even Airi couldn't object to that solemn voice. That man was strong. I could feel it.

The guards, who'd also had their share of sword work, must have known it too.

"Porter, I'm entrusting our lady to you as well. You're not one of ours, so I can't make demands, but I know your secret."

He smirked at me. Secret? What secret? I didn't even know my own secret. When I made a confused expression, he flicked his hand in a downward striking motion through the air.

Oh—he was talking about when I smacked Ponytail's head earlier. He saw that? Sharp eyes. Well, at B-rank Hunter level, he could probably see at least my afterimage.

"Guards, form a defensive formation."

At those words, branches shot out from the black sprouts and impaled themselves into the ceiling in an instant. Ominous energy dripped down from them.

For a moment, I was reminded of when I faced Leviathan. I'd been anxious then too. Power and anxiety were always inversely proportional. If I felt powerless now, the anxiety was bound to grow.

"Nobody provoke it. It's still just a sprout. It might let us pass."

The butler whispered just loud enough for us to hear. Even the usually loudmouthed Airi was quiet, apparently aware of the gravity, and the guards were no different.

But on the tree that had stretched to the ceiling, droplet-like things began to swell. They likely knew, and I knew it too—this was what it looked like when a Corrupted Tree was producing monsters.

POP—!

The droplet, swollen to its limit, fell to the ground, and a monster emerged. Sticky mucus clung to it like a newborn baby.

"SCREEEEECH—!"

As if that voice—boiling up from hell itself—were a starting signal, the butler charged. He swung the monocle in circles, then struck the beast's cheek with the lens portion. A chunk of the beast's cheek was ripped clean off. His monocle no longer felt like eyewear—it was more like a miniature flail.

Several guards moved to assist, but the butler bellowed.

"Do not break formation! The only thing that matters is the lady!"

"Butler, it's fine. We can help too."

"Please be quiet, my lady. This is an emergency."

At the butler's words, Airi clamped her mouth shut. The Airi from the original novel should have been shrieking at the top of her lungs in this kind of situation, but she surprisingly didn't.

Was her villainy really only to this extent? I raised a slight question about it, but that wasn't what mattered right now. Because the droplets kept swelling and falling.

But they were all just mediocre monsters. The butler hurled his monocle before the droplets could burst, and inside them were the corpses of beasts drenched in slime.

"Is that all?"

"At this level, we could've stepped in."

The guards muttered, but it seemed only the butler and I felt the gravity of the situation. This couldn't possibly be all there was.

The butler knew instinctively, and I knew from having read the novel—just how dangerous a black tree was.

The black tree soon stretched its branch into a V-shape from the ceiling, plunging into the left and right walls and continuing to spread.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK.

Like planting seedlings in soft earth, small branches crisscrossed and embedded themselves into the walls. Even the butler had to retreat a few steps before the black tree's ferocious advance.

Soon, branches spread before us in a dense web, like a spider's silk. From what I knew, this was the black tree's defense.

I darted to directly in front of Airi and crouched as low as I could. Immediately after, a shockwave burst from the black tree's center and a tremendous force came crashing in.

The guards who'd been standing flat-footed were blown away. Those with enough instinct to shift their weight forward barely held their ground. I held on too.

I glanced behind me. Airi had been standing there blankly—if I hadn't blocked the front, she would've been sent flying.

"......A lowly Yensi dares to block my path?"

Airi said that while trembling. Right. You were always that kind of woman. I never expected a 'thank you' from you anyway.

The real problem was what came next. Soon, a spider with eight squishy legs crawled through the gaps in the branches. Its body was divided into two segments, and it was grotesque beyond measure.

How strong was that thing? 「The Bed Strewn with Rose Petals」 was a romance fantasy. The main focus was the romance between Gatess and Marina, and the male lead, Gatess, was simply strong—he never struggled in combat. So gauging that monster's strength was beyond me as a reader.

"Be careful! Something is very wrong!"

The butler shielded us and shouted.

The spider extended its squishy legs and struck at the butler with blinding speed. He tried to block by pulling his monocle taut from both ends, but... I saw it—a blade-like edge at the tip of the spider's leg.

I reflexively rushed in and blocked the spider's leg with my dagger. Or thought I had.

But both my dagger and I were far too weak. I watched the dagger split apart before my eyes and realized the spider's leg was about to cleave me from the crown of my head down. I immediately pivoted on my right foot, spun my body, and pulled back.

Even so, the half of my wrist I couldn't pull away in time was severed and left dangling.

"Ngh!"

I stifled a scream and retreated. Someone stared at me, dumbfounded.

"Wh-what the hell is that guy doing?"

Now wasn't the time to answer.