Chapter 47

Chapter 47. I Found the Legacy (3)

A short while later, all the monsters had fallen, and the Firebird Hunter came over with a radiant expression.

She hugged me tightly, and I ended up buried against her stomach.

Well, with the height difference between us, the sight must have looked rather ridiculous.

On top of that, her arms were extremely strong.

"W-wait! I can’t breathe!"

Only after flailing both arms several times was I finally able to free myself from her.

Once she stepped back, she seemed to realize she was still dressed only in her underclothes, and hastily put on her outer garments and armor.

After roughly wiping the water from my face, I said to her,

"Wow! Just by adding one shield, you’re completely different from before."

"Before?"

Ah, right. That was something only I had experienced.

"No, I mean, you were completely different from when you fought with only a sword at the marquess’s house. Have you gotten stronger in the meantime?"

"Ah, you saw that back then. It’s not that I got stronger. As you said, it’s because of the shield."

She stroked the shield with a smiling face.

Fortunately, it seemed I had smoothed that over.

I really had to watch what I said. After repeating life so many times, I had begun making little slips here and there.

My body was fine, but after all the repeated deaths and pain, it felt as though my concentration had begun to fray.

"Ah, right. Look at this."

After stroking the shield, she hurried toward the reservoir.

At the water’s edge, there was a large iron chest half lodged against the bank.

No way.

I followed her over to it.

Unlike the shield she was holding, this chest was made of ordinary iron.

It had rusted and deteriorated from having sat underwater for such a long time.

If it had not been made of thick iron, it would have fallen apart long ago.

"You found something like this at the bottom of the reservoir?"

Was it because of that lamp that did not go out even underwater? It was a chest I had not seen when I searched before.

"There were probably more originally. But after being submerged so long, this was the only chest I could find."

After pouring mana into her sword, she slashed down beside the chest, where its ruined lock still hung.

Slice.

The lock came off easily.

"Then shall we see what’s inside?"

She opened the ancient chest.

Flaaash!

The moment the chest opened, a brilliant light flooded my vision.

I rubbed my eyes against the sudden brightness, and only then could I properly see inside.

What dazzled me first were the gold coins thickly carpeting the bottom of the chest.

And not just any gold coins, but gold coins of the Old Empire, the kind said to be worth several times their face value.

"Were they using gold coins as floor covering?"

But even after seeing the coins spread across the bottom, the Firebird Hunter merely nodded with a dull expression.

No, a mercenary should not be making a face like that.

Perhaps because the tension had finally lifted, the Firebird Hunter was unconsciously revealing more of her true nature.

I pretended not to notice.

Half-buried among the gold coins were several other items.

A small blade that looked like a dagger, and an old booklet.

She picked up the worn booklet with a delighted expression.

Then she handed the dagger to me.

Huh. The dagger was engraved with the same soaring bird emblem as well.

"This one has the emblem too."

The relics bearing the emblem, and that book, were what she had wanted. As for everything else, our contract said it would go to me.

Thinking about it now, it seemed our agreement had turned into a loss for me...

"What with everything falling into the water, the contract ended up benefiting me too much. The shield and the book alone are already more than enough reward for me."

Well, after the fight just now, it was obvious enough that the shield and the sword were a matched pair.

And the book was probably something written about the inherited ability that had supposedly been lost.

But the dagger she had given me also bore the same emblem. Since it had been stored together with the others, it was clearly part of the same set as the sword and shield...

"That dagger is one of the items that has been passed down in our family together with this sword and shield as part of the legacy."

There. I knew it.

"To anyone else, it’s just a dagger that cuts a little better than usual. But it’s a blade meant to show that I—no, my family—owe you a debt. If you return that dagger to us one day, our family will repay the favor."

Hm. She really was a rigid sort of person.

From my perspective, it was not a bad arrangement at all, but...

When she said family, she surely meant nobility, and yet even by the standards of a noble, she was far too upright.

I shook my head inwardly.

Well, people differed. There had to be people like her too.

Thinking that, I asked again,

"Will you tell me where I’m supposed to come later?"

At my words, she nodded with a serious expression.

Honestly, that was just as well. The reward mattered, of course, but what I really wanted to know most was who she actually was.

Besides, all the gold coins carpeting the bottom of that chest belonged to me, and there were surely still more objects left at the bottom of the reservoir.

The reservoir was not going anywhere. I could always come back and search it properly later.

"The place you should come to later is..."

She opened her mouth, and I focused on her words so intently that I nearly poured mana into my ears.

But just as she was about to speak—

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

A tremor came from the direction of the reservoir.

Then a column of water shot into the air.

KWA-GWA-GWA-GWAA!

It was a surge so high that it blasted past the ceiling and up through the hole above.

Splash!

Both of us were drenched in an instant.

"What in the world..."

Stunned, I turned to look at the Firebird Hunter.

"Why is the reservoir suddenly doing that?"

At my words, she frowned. Tilting her head, she muttered,

"The chest was wedged between some rocks, so I did break the rocks to get it out..."

"Don’t tell me you struck an underground water vein?"

"Was that it? It did feel oddly easy climbing back up while carrying both the iron chest and the sword."

That absolutely was it!

The rock she had broken must have been one of the rocks that had blocked the reservoir’s watercourse when the ceiling collapsed.

Because the rock was broken, a water channel that had been blocked for hundreds of years had opened.

KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!

The water that had spouted upward like a fountain now crashed back down to the floor.

The reservoir was widening as the water poured out.

No, the water level was rising.

The Firebird Hunter and I looked at each other.

"We have to run, right?"

"What other choice do we have?!"

There was no longer any chance of luring the monsters in and defeating them in detail, nor of waiting for a chance to take down the larger monsters.

Now, I had no choice but to trust the Firebird Hunter, who was stronger than before, and escape the surging water.

I stuffed gold coins into my pockets as best I could, then started running with her.

The Firebird Hunter jumped into the nearest tunnel first, and I shoved the dagger into my belt, slung the greatsword over my shoulder, and followed after her.

KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!

Behind us, I could hear the water continuing to rise as we ran.

Perhaps because of the tremors and the roar of the water, the monsters blocking our way were acting differently from before.

Rather than trying to surround us or drive us into a trap, they seemed even more startled than we were when we met them.

Even if things had changed, there was no way for her to know that, and no way she would spare them.

The instant her shield and sword moved, the monsters blocking the way were sliced apart and thrown aside.

Neither she nor I finished off the monsters that had been flung away. We simply kept running.

The wounded monsters would be dealt with by the torrent rushing behind us.

And so, killing and passing them by, we kept climbing upward.

While we climbed, I did not have a moment to swing my sword.

The gold coins crammed into my pockets and clothes got in the way, and the weight of the greatsword slowed my steps, but more than that, she was simply too fast.

Ever since taking up the shield, she had continued growing stronger.

With every battle, she became more accustomed to using shield and sword together, and the flow of her mana had become smoother and smoother.

By the time we escaped the tunnels, she would surely be twice as strong as she had been before taking up the shield.

I had no complaints at all about doing nothing but chase after her.

Unlike her, I had already fought these monsters to the point of exhaustion.

If I could grow stronger while fighting the way she did, that would be one thing, but if I stopped carelessly now, I might simply get swept away by the rising water.

I could not afford to repeat death yet again for such a stupid reason. This time, I intended to escape no matter what.

Running desperately like that, we eventually reached an entirely different tunnel.

"Wait, this place looks like it was touched by human hands."

As she said, from here onward it was no longer a tunnel dug by monsters, but an underground corridor made by people.

It was the very passage connected to the hidden vault.

"Ah... so this is the corridor leading to the hidden vault?"

She noticed it immediately as well.

But unlike before, she was remarkably calm.

That made sense, since she already knew the vault itself had been destroyed.

She was about to continue on with a composed expression.

But this time, I stopped her.

"Wait a moment. From here on, I think we should be even more careful. It doesn’t seem like all the monsters have come out yet..."

The two great red monsters were still nowhere to be seen.

And it did not feel as though we had killed all the gray ones yet either. If they had not drowned, they were surely waiting around here somewhere.

But as things stood, my explanation was too weak...

So long as I could not reveal my secret, it was difficult to explain it properly.

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

"All right. Your instincts do seem to be pretty good."

Fortunately, she listened.

She spread out her mana while holding her shield and sword ready, while I retied the makeshift gold-coin belt I had fashioned from the hide of one of the monsters.

Then I slung the greatsword across my back and took the dagger in hand.

The corridor was not wide, and the greatsword would only get in the way of her fighting.

For now, it would be far more useful if I supported her from behind.

Seeing me draw the dagger, she smiled. It seemed she approved.

And so, the two of us began walking slowly down the corridor.

A short while later, the iron door we had seen before came into view in the distance.

As expected, monsters had gathered in front of it.

The gray monsters we had been killing all this time, and behind them two red monsters that looked twice as large.

The Red Mice, truly living up to their name, were standing guard before the hidden vault.

But from the look of things, they were not gathered there to stop us.

Amusingly enough, those monsters too had fled the rising water and gathered there.

Perhaps they meant to kill us while they were at it, but whatever the case, a fight could no longer be avoided.

Not that there was any reason to avoid it.

"I did think it was strange that the Red Mice weren’t actually red. Were the others just mutant offspring born from those two?"

Unlike in my previous life, when she had told me to run, she showed no fear at all when she looked at the two monsters.

"I’m counting on you to watch my back! Let’s finish this quickly before the water rises any further."

She said that to me with bright vigor.

But I could not answer her.

At that moment, I was too distracted by the visions and voices filling my head.

They began the instant I held the dagger and poured mana into it.

Little by little, flames appeared in empty air, and those flames changed into the shape of a bird.

It was instantly obvious that it was an illusion, since it was translucent and passed through the objects around it.

More than that, the Firebird Hunter had noticed nothing at all.

The vision continued to grow, and now I could hear something as well.

The illusory firebird flapped its wings, and the moment it opened and closed its beak, I heard these words inside my head.

—Do you desire power!