Chapter 46

Chapter 46. I Found the Legacy (2)

"Pwah!"

The moment I surfaced, I saw the monsters collapsed outside the reservoir and her sitting on the ground.

She looked utterly exhausted.

Perhaps she heard the water, because while gasping for breath, she turned around with startled eyes.

"My god! You were alive?"

Why would I be dead?!

The monsters lying on the ground were one, two, three. Three in total.

They were the same monsters we had fought at the beginning.

Seeing that all three were down, it seemed that, as expected, she really could handle that number by herself.

Even so, she looked utterly spent.

It seemed that fighting three at once had not been easy even for her.

I drew in a deep breath and filled my lungs with air. Thanks to mana, I had managed to endure for a long time, but holding my breath was still incredibly taxing.

She staggered to her feet and came toward me, while I gripped the strangely light shield in both hands and swam out of the water.

A short while later, once my feet touched the ground, I used the shield for support and pulled myself up.

I felt a little dizzy, but fortunately there seemed to be nothing wrong. I did not appear to have gotten the bends or anything of the sort. Once again, mana proved supreme.

The moment I got upright, she hurried over and began patting all over my body.

"Are you all right? You were underwater for such a long time! I’m sorry. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find you, so I ended up coming out of the water first. If I’d known you’d be safe, I would’ve kept searching. I’m really sorry!"

She poured out words nonstop while checking me over.

When I looked at her amid that flood of speech, I saw that she was looking at me as though she were about to cry.

It was a side of her completely unlike anything I had seen so far.

The fact that I, whom she had thought dead, had come back alive seemed to have struck something deep inside her.

"I’m fine. More importantly, what about these monsters?"

"Ah, they showed up the moment I got out of the water. They looked like Red Mice, but with three of them attacking at once, it was hard to deal with their speed. And...."

After asking the question, I casually looked over the shield I had brought up with me.

Even on a second look, it was not a large shield. It was a size small enough for a child like me to carry around. On an adult man, it would barely cover the chest.

A shield that had spent so long underwater without rusting at all. On the front of it was engraved the same soaring bird.

'Huh? It’s pretty heavy now.'

Was that because I was out of the water? Or because I was not feeding mana into it?

I tried sending a little mana into the shield.

Wooooong.

The shield trembled slightly. Then it became remarkably light. So the weight had been because I was not feeding it mana.

A shield that grows lighter when you pour mana into it. Did that make any sense scientifically? Then again, mana itself made no sense to begin with.

As I thought that, I studied the shield more closely.

'When I pour mana into it, the emblem looks a little less distinct....'

"Where’s your sword? Why are you carrying a shield?"

"I left the sword at the bottom of the reservoir because it was too heavy."

"But you brought that shield up instead?"

She looked at me in confusion. It was only natural. I had left the sword behind because it was too heavy, and yet I brought up something else.

"So why that shield... Wait a second!"

But her expression changed in an instant.

She rushed toward me and shoved her face right up to the shield.

As she examined the emblem on the surface and checked the material, her mouth slowly fell open.

"You found this at the bottom of the reservoir? W-wait, may I try it?"

For a moment, I was tempted to tease her because of how restless she looked, but instead I handed it over without fuss.

"Here."

It was a shield found in the reservoir where the objects from the hidden vault had poured down, and the emblem on the shield was identical to the one engraved on her sword.

I had known from the moment I first sent mana into it underwater.

This shield was what she had been searching for.

Since I handed it over without hesitation, she received it carefully.

She strapped the shield onto her opposite arm.

When I had been holding it, it had still covered a fair amount of my body, but once it rested on her arm, it looked much smaller.

It seemed about the size of some captain’s shield I had seen in my previous life.

She held the shield on one arm and her sword in the other hand.

'So she was a sword-and-shield fighter?'

The sight of her with both sword and shield suited her far better than when she had carried only the sword.

Taking her stance, she focused her mind.

Wooooooong.

I could feel mana pouring out from her body.

The sword began to hum, and the emblem on the blade gave off a bright light.

At the same time, the emblem on the shield took on a faint glow as well.

Against the backdrop of the lamp set on the floor, it looked as though two birds with their wings spread wide were rising into the night sky.

Wooooong. Wooooong.

The resonance of sword and shield grew stronger, and the tip of the sword began to waver.

Then the same phenomenon appeared around the shield as well.

A wavering shimmer formed around it, as though an invisible wall had sprung into being.

As I had expected, the shield and sword were a matched pair.

Its true owner had always been someone else.

When I had poured mana into it, only the space directly in front of the emblem had wavered a little, but with proper mana flowing through it, the shield now showed its real form.

She stared at the shimmering shield with a face full of emotion.

It was the expression of someone who had found the object she had dreamed of her whole life.

If I left her alone, she looked as though she might spend the whole day doing nothing but stare at the shield.

Sorry, but given our present situation, and simply because it irritated me a little, I could not just leave her like that.

"Excuse me? Hello?"

Only after I called to her several times did she finally come back to herself.

I pointed at the shimmering shield.

"Is that really what you were looking for?"

"Mm. Yes."

At my question, she made a startled face and hurriedly hid the arm with the shield behind her back.

As though that would hide anything....

It seemed her mind still had not entirely returned to her.

"That’s good, then. If that shield is what you were looking for, then according to our contract, it belongs to you."

At my words, her face brightened, then quickly turned guilty and troubled.

"But you’re the one who went into the water and found it, and you’re the one who brought it back. For me to just take it...."

Was she naive? A pushover? Or simply fair-minded?

Whichever it was, at least she was consistent.

"It seems the tunnels those monsters dug caused us to fall down here."

I pointed to the corpses of the dead monsters and the holes in the walls.

At my words, she nodded.

"Then that shield...."

"It looks like the monsters’ tunnels caused the hidden vault to collapse too, and the things inside spilled down into this reservoir."

I looked toward the water.

"By luck, I found the shield while setting my sword down on the bottom. The problem is the sword I left there. I’m not sure how to find it...."

At my words, she took the shield off and handed it back to me.

Along with that, she handed me the sword she had already sheathed.

"The sword’s down at the bottom too, right? And if what was in the hidden vault spilled down as well, then the other items should be down there too?"

"Hm? Ah, I planted the sword into the bottom, but other than assorted junk, I didn’t see anything else."

"Well, even if there’s nothing else, we still have to retrieve the sword...."

She peeled off her armor at once, then stripped off her outer clothes and shoes as well.

After that, wearing only her underclothes, she fastened on a belt and hung the lamp from it.

Then, as she walked into the reservoir, she said,

"Just wait a bit. I’ll bring it back."

Splash!

"Ah... wait...."

Before I could say anything, she had already dived into the water.

Her decisiveness was absurdly fast.

Left in that ridiculous situation, I gathered up the clothes scattered all around.

After that, I stood in front of the pile, holding her shield and sword while keeping watch on the surroundings.

It was unlikely that monsters would appear before she returned, but it was still better to be prepared.

It was a perfectly reasonable thought, and yet I could not help letting out a sigh as I stood there with sword and shield in hand.

No matter how I tried to justify it, at that moment I was simply a young boy guarding a woman’s clothes while she was in the water.

While I waited, I tried feeding mana into both the shield and the sword.

Unfortunately, when I did it, nothing happened like what had happened for her.

The weapons accepted my mana readily enough, but neither the sword’s edge nor the area around the shield wavered. Only the emblems gave a faint shimmer.

And so time passed.

"One, two, three.... Two hundred, two hundred one."

I counted out the seconds one by one while waiting for her, and just as I began to worry that she was taking too long, I heard something.

Not from the reservoir.

From the tunnel on the opposite side.

Grrrrrrrr.

"As expected, nothing ever goes smoothly."

With growls rumbling out, the monsters appeared.

One, two, three. Four.

Four in total.

That was a number I had no hope of handling on my own, and even for her, after barely winning against three, it would not be an easy number either.

"I suppose I should be grateful there aren’t any red ones among them?"

I tried consoling myself like that, but it was empty comfort.

The monsters saw the corpses lying on the ground and advanced cautiously.

Looking at them creeping closer, I felt as though the neck that had been torn off earlier was starting to hurt again.

How many times had I already died down here?

I had died so many times in such a short span that it was beginning to wear on me mentally.

I did not know where my limit lay, but I had the uneasy thought that if this kept going, I might truly lose my mind.

"Hey. Hey. I’d really appreciate it if you came out a little faster."

The moment I muttered that, the monsters’ movements sped up.

Movement so fast that, if I lost focus, I might fail to follow it.

I hurriedly raised the shield.

At that moment, behind me, I heard the sound of water bursting upward.

Shiiiiiik!

At the same time, from behind me, a greatsword shot forward through the air.

It flew past my face and struck the body of the monster charging straight at me.

Kyeeek!

The monster attacking from the front tumbled across the floor after being hit by the sword, but the others did not stop. They kept charging toward me.

The instant the monsters were about to overwhelm me, I heard her voice by my ear.

"Sorry, I took too long looking for the things."

Along with the words, her hand clasped the hand with which I held the shield.

From her hand, mana flowed into mine.

Her mana, slightly different from my own, passed through my hand and into the shield.

Wooooong!

The shimmering field that rose around the shield spread out and covered my whole body.

At the same time, the monsters crashed into both me and her.

KABOOOM!

A thunderous blast rang out.

Kiiiiiik!

The monsters that collided with the shimmering field screamed and were flung away in every direction.

"Thanks for guarding them. I’ll take the sword and shield now."

She took the sword and shield from my hands.

Then, dressed only in her underclothes, she charged at the monsters that had been thrown back.

I watched her running form for a moment, then heard a monster’s growl at my feet.

Grrrrr.

The monster that had fallen with my sword still stuck in it was trying to get back up.

I grabbed the sword buried in the monster and slashed down with all my strength.

Slash!

Blood sprayed as the monster’s upper body split open.

Amid the spouting blood, I pulled up the greatsword.

The blade was unharmed.

Then, leaning on the sword, I watched the Firebird Hunter fight in her underclothes.

The lace on her undergarments fluttered while sword and shield tore through everything around her.

Space itself seemed to ripple, and the monsters’ bodies were cut apart and crushed.

The very same woman who had been gasping while struggling against three monsters was now smashing apart an even greater number of them.