Chapter 43

Chapter 43 . Dungeon Escape (1)

"Uwaah!"

The darkness vanished from my sight, and the instant the message blocked my vision again, I was falling once more.

The pain from before I died remained as phantom pain and muddled my mind, and the message made it difficult to look around, but I managed to regain my senses at once.

Whoooooosh!

My body was falling fast.

When I poured mana into my ears, I could tell that the water’s surface was rushing up toward me.

First, I drew in a deep breath.

'What do I need to do next? Ah! Right.'

The struggle I had gone through because of the sword underwater came back to me.

I hurriedly forced mana into my arm. Then, before I hit the water, I swung my arm with all my strength and threw the sword away.

Crack.

My joints screamed, but I trusted in the recovery of my young body.

I saw the sword flying toward the dim light above.

Splash!

Then I plunged straight into the water.

A brief shock swept through my body, and I sank beneath the surface.

Just as I had seen in my previous life, this pool, which was closer to a small reservoir, was extremely deep.

But this time, I did not need to worry about the depth.

The moment I stopped sinking, I swam straight upward.

"Pwah!"

Perhaps because I was so much lighter now, I had not sunk very deep after all. I broke the surface quickly and looked around.

In the dark underground reservoir, a single light was rising toward the surface.

The light drew near, and then the Firebird Hunter came up through the water.

Pwah!

"Alex?"

The moment she surfaced, she looked for me first.

"Over here."

"Ah, so you’re safe. Thank goodness."

When she saw I was unharmed, relief spread across her face.

I began swimming in the direction where I had thrown the sword, and she followed behind me.

Fortunately, I had not thrown it in the opposite direction, so we were able to reach dry ground quickly.

"But where’s the sword? Did you throw it away in the water?"

"No. It’s over there."

Thankfully, the sword was stuck in the ground not far from the water.

I walked toward it.

"Why is the sword over there?"

The Firebird Hunter asked as she followed behind me.

"I threw it through the air before hitting the water. If I fell in with it, it would make swimming difficult."

At my words, she made an incredulous face.

"My god, you thought of that in that tiny instant?"

Well. To be honest, I had not thought of all of it in that instant alone, but I kept my mouth shut.

Once I retrieved the sword, she looked upward.

Thanks to the lamp hanging at her waist, the black hole in the ceiling came clearly into view.

"I’m sorry. I had no idea the altar would collapse. I was told only that a passage leading downward would open...."

In my previous life, I had been the one to bring it up first, but there was no need this time.

She looked thoroughly apologetic herself.

"The holes up there are the same as the caves we can see here, right?"

When I pointed to the caves riddling the walls of the cavern, she nodded.

"I saw those too. Yes. There were many caves opening into the shaft we fell through."

So far, things were progressing much the same as in my previous life. Since the first time we encountered the monsters had not been too much of a problem, I moved as I had back then.

After taking off my wet outer garments, I asked the Firebird Hunter,

"After you dry your cloak, could you do the same for my clothes too?"

"That’s not hard. But how did you know I knew that technique?"

"I just had a feeling."

Looking at me with surprise, she removed her cloak, then dried it by channeling mana into it.

After that, she dried my outer garments as well, and after thanking her, I put them back on.

"Those caves must connect to the caves inside the shaft above. If we choose one and search for a way upward, we should be able to get out."

At her words, I lifted my sword.

"Then if something made those caves, wouldn’t it still be down here unless it’s already dead? The sound of us falling into the water was loud enough. If it’s alive, it should come looking for us."

At my words, she hurriedly drew her sword as well.

At the same moment, I heard the footsteps I had heard in my previous life.

Skrrrrrrrrr.

The sound of countless legs scraping across the ground.

It was the very sound of the monsters called Red Mice.

"So there were still Red Mice down here?"

Gray monsters that looked like some grotesque blend of rat and insect, despite their name not suiting their color at all.

Just as in my previous life, the monsters that appeared numbered three.

No, was it really three?

In any case, three were all I could see and sense.

I poured mana through my entire body and pushed the rest into my sword.

Once again, I felt as though the mana might burst free from both my body and the blade.

I wanted to shut myself away somewhere and keep retracing that feeling, but there was no time for that now.

Seeing me draw up my mana to the limit, the Firebird Hunter spoke.

"As I thought, there’s no way we can shake off Red Mice underground, is there?"

The emblem engraved along her blade shone brightly.

"More importantly, that amount of mana makes no sense for your age. Don’t tell me the ducal house still had [Mana Sensitivity] left in its bloodline?"

Then, just like before, she said the same thing again. And just like before, she immediately made a face as though she realized her mistake and changed the subject.

"Anyway, you’re a much better comrade to fight beside than I expected."

With those words, she rushed forward.

I ran after her.

The monsters came charging toward us as we did.

Perhaps because everything was happening just as before, only the one at the far end came at me again.

Watching it rush toward me, I drew in a low breath. I sharpened my senses and matched my breathing to the monster’s.

I had no intention of repeating the same mistake just because I was repeating the same event.

Then, with all my senses fully awakened, I swung my sword at the oncoming monster.

Whoooom.

A strike released with perfect timing.

But I already knew full well that this strike would not land.

Just as expected, the instant the sword came down, the monster sprang upward with a movement that seemed to ignore inertia altogether.

The creature shot several meters into the air in a single bound.

No wonder I had lost sight of it last time.

But this time, I had no reason to lose track of it.

And now that its body was suspended in midair, this was my chance.

I used the momentum of the sword I had already swung to spin my body once. Then, continuing that rotation, I leaped upward as well.

Hero Carlos Swordsmanship, Extra Form 4.

"Soaring Wyvern!"

Damn it, just like before, the name of the technique made my face want to burn.

From now on, I absolutely must never say the technique names aloud.

Reciting the name only inside my head, I raised my sword toward the falling monster.

Slice.

Thud!

Caught in an unforeseen situation, even a clever monster could do nothing.

The monster rolled across the ground with two legs on one side severed.

The legs I had cut were not the two forelimbs it used like arms, but the legs that supported its body.

Good. Now that monstrous speed was sealed away.

Spinning once before landing, I dashed at the monster again.

In my previous life, I would have been too dizzy even to land properly, but with my ears protected by mana, my sense of balance now was better than that of a figure skater.

I rushed the monster before it had even gotten back up and continued swinging my sword.

By the time the monster regained its senses, another leg had already been cut away, and by the time it finally managed to block my sword with its claws, its opposite forelimb had already been severed.

The outcome was already decided.

I did not let excitement carry me away. I simply finished it methodically.

I cut away its remaining claws, severed its forelimb, climbed onto its back, and drove my sword into its spine.

Grrrrrr!

But even with the sword buried deep in its back, the monster thrashed wildly.

"I struck where its heart should have been.... Does it have a different structure?"

I considered testing further, but I did not know what variable might arise, so I pulled the sword free and cut off its head.

Thud.

Just as before, losing its head was enough to kill it.

After confirming that all life had left the fallen monster, I turned to check on my companion’s battle.

She was still fighting the other two monsters. Last time, there had only been one left by the time I finished mine.

Had I killed mine faster than before?

Even so, there was still no need to worry about her.

One of the monsters had only a few legs left and looked ready to die at any moment.

The other was in better condition, but even so, she had not suffered a single wound.

Just as before, the wavering force at the tip of her blade was cutting into the monsters.

I stopped paying attention to her and began butchering the fallen monster.

Now that it was dead, even without coating my sword in mana, it cut apart easily enough.

I split open its belly to inspect the inside, and I split the severed legs apart as well to study the muscles.

"Damn it, what the hell is going on inside this thing?"

After seeing the inside of the monster’s body, I could not help but make a disgusted face.

"That’s why monsters are hardly ever edible. Alchemists or blacksmiths can use them for all sorts of materials, but as food? No chance."

It seemed she had finished her fight while I was dissecting it.

She walked over to me, looked at the butchered corpse, and spoke.

Of course, undead-type monsters were impossible to eat because their bodies were already rotting away, but these creatures were clearly living beings.

And yet their internal structure looked nothing like that of a living organism.

I had not majored in biology in my previous life, but even so, I could tell that they had nothing resembling a normal digestive tract except for one huge stomach, and there was no heart-like organ to be found anywhere.

Blood vessels wrapped around the stomach ran through the entire body, and even the muscles were twisted into shapes I had never seen before.

It was not insect anatomy, nor did it resemble an animal.

Until now, the living creatures in this world had not differed all that much from those in my previous life. But the monster before me had an internal structure that belonged in a fantasy—no, a horror science-fiction film.

"Tch, they say most monsters came over from another world together with the demon race. So despite the way they look, they’re more like aliens or something."

In the end, with my meager biological knowledge, finding a true weakness by dissecting monsters was impossible.

"More importantly, you fight incredibly well. You could beat most knights flat in no time."

The way she looked at me seemed even more favorable than before.

Probably because I had finished faster.

Of course, I could only do it because I had already experienced it once, but her praise did not sound unpleasant.

"Then can we move now? There may be more of these things around. Let’s get out of here quickly."

Perhaps because the way she saw me had changed, this time she asked my opinion instead of deciding alone like before.

'All right. What do I do?'

In my previous life, we had simply entered a random cave and ended up surrounded from both front and back, dying there.

There had been well over ten monsters that time.

It was a number we could never defeat all at once.

I looked around.

We were in a large underground cavern with holes riddling the walls.

At the center was a fairly large reservoir, and the rest was flat ground.

'Would it be better to go into the caves and pick them off one by one, or should we put the water behind us and make a stand there?'

But the monsters were bound to know the structure of these caves hundreds of times better than we did. Trying to fight them one by one inside them right now was impossible.

I looked toward the reservoir, then back at the dissected monster.

There were no webbed feet to be seen, and it did not look especially light either.

I turned to the Firebird Hunter and asked,

"Do you think these monsters can swim?"