Chapter 44

Chapter 44. Dungeon Escape (2)

I proposed that, on the assumption that the monsters could not swim, we should fight them with the reservoir at our backs.

But that suggestion was rejected outright.

"If we rush blindly into the tunnels, we might get surrounded."

I cautiously brought up what had happened when I died in the tunnel a short while ago, but it did not change her mind.

"With the water at our backs, all it does is reduce one side of the encirclement. It might even make it easier for them to surround us. And even if we try to escape through the water, they’ll catch us in the end."

At her words, I studied the reservoir again.

The underground reservoir in the middle of the cavern did not appear to connect anywhere else, nor was it close to the wall in any direction.

Just as she said, it looked difficult to evade the monsters’ legs by swimming.

I scratched my head.

The military tactics I had heard about in my previous life were not especially useful in actual combat like this.

No, rather than the tactics themselves being the problem, it was my fault for not properly understanding them.

My knowledge of military strategy in my previous life had come vaguely from novels and internet posts.

There was no way an opinion I had thrown out without ever fighting for real, or studying it properly, could be any good.

"Even so, I think your point about being surrounded inside the tunnels, and the possibility that the monsters can’t swim, is worth keeping in mind."

After hearing my opinion, she came up with a new plan.

It was a far more plausible strategy than the one I had suggested.

'Just who is she, really? This isn’t something an ordinary mercenary would come up with.'

Thinking that, I followed behind her.

Curiously enough, she entered the very same tunnel as before I died.

I could have suggested another one, but I silently followed her.

There was no reason to switch tunnels and create some unexpected complication, like running into a dead end.

In the end, we killed the monsters and walked into the very same tunnel.

The situation from before my death was repeating itself exactly.

But our movements were different this time.

We moved at only half the speed we had before, and at fixed intervals we stopped and strained our ears in every direction.

Both she and I were being several times more cautious than before.

Sssrrr.

And not long after, we heard it.

When I pressed my mana-filled ear to the wall, I could barely make out the sound.

It was the sound of the monsters’ legs.

The sound of the monsters’ legs did not draw any closer, and once it reached a certain point, it vanished entirely.

"So the monsters really are stalking us in secret?"

After hearing them, she looked at me.

"It seems that way. The others are probably waiting farther ahead."

At my words, she stared into the darkness before us.

"That must be it, right? Good grief. So we’re being driven like prey in a hunt? Were these things always this clever?"

After muttering that little complaint, she looked back at me.

"You really are strange. How did you know? Honestly, until just now, I could barely believe it...."

I knew because I had already experienced it, but there was no way I could say that.

"I have good instincts."

"Instincts.... So it’s not just your mind that’s sharp."

Judging from her expression, I had the feeling that once we got out of here, rumors other than the ones about me being a genius might begin to spread.

"Well then, we should go with the plan, right?"

"Yes."

She and I turned around.

Then we began running back the way we had come.

We ran with our legs filled to the brim with mana.

The tunnel flew backward, and from behind us—or rather, from the front, since we were now running toward them—we heard the scrambling sounds of startled feet.

Scritch, scritch.

Before long, we saw the monsters that had been following us from behind.

In a straight tunnel like this, being surrounded from both ends was truly dangerous, but that was only once the encirclement had been completed.

Before it closed, an encirclement was nothing more than prey for defeat in detail.

"We have to take them down quickly!"

"Don’t worry!"

The tip of the sword she was carrying wavered, and the blade in my hands began to give off a faint glow as well.

Ahead of us, the monsters were approaching, filling the tunnel.

There were four of them in total.

It was one more than the group we had killed earlier, but the number we had to face at once was actually smaller than before.

The monsters were so large that only two could barely stand side by side.

The tunnel was not tall enough for the monsters behind them to leap over.

All we had to do was handle one each.

I filled my legs and hands with mana and drove my sword forward with all my might.

"Let’s see you dodge this if you can!"

The tunnel was too narrow to swing such a large sword freely, but it was even harder for the monsters to dodge.

Pinned in by the monsters beside and behind them, as well as the walls and ceiling, they did not look capable of producing their characteristic speed. They hardly seemed able to move at all.

I thrust my sword forward and simply slammed my body behind it.

Thrust!

The blade pierced through the foreleg blocking my way and punched straight through the head of the rat-faced monster.

"Grrrk."

As expected, inside a tunnel like this, flashy swordsmanship was unnecessary.

I kicked the monster away, pulled out my sword, and charged ahead again.

The next monster died just as quickly.

As expected, the Firebird Hunter brought down her monsters faster than I did.

Watching me finish mine, she let out a sound of admiration.

"Are you really only ten? How can someone your age fight like that?"

"It’s thanks to my ability."

"An inherited ability that can produce someone above knight level at ten years old?"

Tch, had I shown too much of my strength? Even so, it would have been difficult to survive if I had tried to hide it.

Fortunately, her doubts ended there.

Grrrrrr.

From deep within the tunnel we had been about to enter, we heard the sounds of monsters.

They were the ones waiting for us.

"Well then, what do we do?"

Perhaps because things had turned out just as I said, she now asked for my opinion.

It seemed she would likely listen to whatever I suggested.

But we already had a plan, and I had no better idea anyway.

"We retreat according to plan. Let’s thin their numbers as much as possible."

"Good!"

The two of us quickly withdrew to the underground cavern with the reservoir where we had first started.

While running through the tunnel, we noticed a hole we had never seen before.

"That hole wasn’t there earlier, was it?"

"No. It seems the monsters chasing us must have dug it."

"So they can dig tunnels? I knew they could burrow, but I didn’t think it was this easy."

Well, if you don’t know, there’s no way I would know either.

In any case, I felt as though I finally understood why we had been so easily surrounded.

On top of that, the monsters’ sharp claws were not just for tearing enemies apart. They were meant for digging through the earth.

So that was why their claws were so absurdly tough.

We passed the hole gouged into the wall and kept running through the tunnel.

Fortunately, for all their speed, the monsters did not seem to have much endurance.

The sounds of the monsters never drew closer again, and we managed to make it back to the underground cavern with the reservoir.

Then we entered another tunnel.

We moved in and out of different tunnels, always trying not to stray too far from the cavern with the reservoir, and killed the monsters as we went.

Whenever only a small number approached, we would listen carefully and take them out first. If there were too many, we withdrew again into the underground cavern and entered another tunnel.

There were times when we misjudged the numbers and nearly got into danger, and times when we went too deep and almost got surrounded.

But in the end, we managed to kill most of the monsters.

"So in the end, we really are finishing it here."

Sitting down on the ground and scooping up water from the reservoir to drink, I said that to her.

We were back in the same underground cavern where we had first fallen. All around us lay the corpses of dead monsters.

Once the monsters realized that we were moving around with this cavern as our center, they eventually gathered here around the reservoir.

We were surrounded, and in the end we had no choice but to fight with our backs to the water, exactly as I had suggested at the start.

But unlike when I first proposed it, the number of monsters surrounding us now was not that large.

That was because we had already whittled them down drastically by defeating them in detail.

Six in total.

After all the fighting we had done, the two of us were now well accustomed to their hunting methods.

It was a number we could handle.

And then came the final clash.

She and I brought down every last one of them.

After drinking the water, I looked around.

"But they really did seem reluctant to come near the reservoir, didn’t they?"

"That does seem to be the case. But it doesn’t look as though they can’t swim...."

Tilting her head, she knelt on one knee and carefully lifted water in both hands to drink.

I watched her for a moment as she drank, then turned my gaze toward the reservoir.

It looked like an ordinary underground reservoir beneath a ceiling with a hole in it.

Then again, an underground reservoir with drinkable water might not have been ordinary at all.

"There must be some reason for it, but this probably isn’t the time to study the underground ecology of monsters."

Once strength returned to my body, I stood up.

No more monsters appeared, no matter how long we waited. It finally seemed safe to relax.

She appeared to think the same. After putting her cloak back on, she asked me,

"Then shall we go?"

"Yes. Let’s head back."

We turned toward the tunnel again.

"Don’t those monsters fetch a decent price?"

"They do, but there’s no good way to carry them out, and taking them out would be troublesome too."

Since there was no guarantee that the treasure vault was still intact, I thought it might be better to make some money by selling the monsters instead, but unfortunately, we could not let anyone else learn what had happened down here.

It would have been difficult for me to explain to the people at the estate, and she clearly did not want other people learning about this tomb either.

'Now that we’ve killed all the monsters, it shouldn’t cause any trouble for the territory.'

I was neither the lord nor the heir, so there was no reason for me to carry troublesome matters back with me.

Suppressing that small sense of regret and unease, I kept walking.

From what we had confirmed while fighting the monsters, all of these tunnels sloped upward, and at intervals they connected with one another.

The cavern where I died earlier had been one of the junction points, and the tunnels that converged there grew fewer as they rose.

After climbing for quite a while, we realized that the tunnel had changed.

The passage we were now walking through was not a tunnel dug by monsters, but an underground corridor made by human hands, with stone walls and pillars supporting the ceiling.

"Don’t tell me.... Could it really still be here?"

At the thought that the hidden vault might still remain, light returned to the eyes of the woman who had looked listless until now.

She lifted the lamp at her waist in one hand and hurried forward as though she might start running.

Dragging my sword behind me, I followed after her as fast as I could.

As we advanced down the corridor, small rooms appeared off to the side.

Unfortunately, the rooms were so old that nothing remained in them but broken tables and chairs.

We gave the rooms only the briefest glance and kept moving, until at last we reached the end of the passage.

There, at the very end, stood an iron door.

A door engraved with the very same emblem as the one on her sword.

It was undoubtedly the door to the hidden vault she had been searching for.

With trembling hands, she pushed against the door.

Creeeak.

Fortunately, it was not locked.

The door opened little by little with a harsh groan.