Chapter 49

Chapter 49. Something Strange About This Gift (2)

Just before she was attacked again,

she came back to her senses while staring at the dagger.

"You’ll have to tell me what happened later!"

Leaving those words behind, she rushed toward the red monster that had been driven back, breathing harshly, while I stepped in front of the remaining monster.

The monster growled, but I merely hovered in front of it with the dagger in hand.

To be honest, I did not have much confidence that I could beat it, and this young body of mine was utterly exhausted.

I had already done more than my share. At this point, all I had to do was keep one monster occupied.

Thanks to the fact that she had already turned the red monster into a bloody mess, its movements were extremely cautious.

That was enough for me to keep it tied down without even needing to fight.

A short while later, the monster she had been fighting collapsed.

As expected, it had only been because she was facing two at once that she had struggled. One-on-one, it had ended quickly.

"Good work!"

After bringing the monster down, she ran over to my side without even pausing to catch her breath.

More than just panting now, she was so low on mana that the wavering aura rising from her sword had grown faint.

Even so, she still looked more than capable of handling the one remaining monster.

Just as I had expected, she brought it down before her mana vanished completely.

The monster resisted violently, but the fact that I was helping from the side created openings everywhere.

Not long after, the final monster fell, and she collapsed onto the ground, gulping air.

"Huff, huff... What in the world happened?"

Neither the joy of defeating all the monsters nor the exhaustion of mana depletion was enough to stop her question.

She looked at me while dragging in breath with her entire body.

I scratched my head.

How was I supposed to answer when I did not understand it myself?

"I don’t know. I was about to fight with the dagger when the phantom of the bird engraved on the emblem appeared. And then...."

In the end, I told her what I had just experienced.

I told her about seeing the vision, hearing the voice, and how the moment I answered that voice, my mana changed.

I also told her how, after my mana changed, I lost consciousness, and when I opened my eyes again, all the monsters were already down.

"Even now, if I hold the dagger and move my mana through it, the nature of my mana changes."

I showed her the wavering dagger.

She stared blankly at it once again.

"A vision and a voice? That’s absurd. The inheritance already passed on, so how could another inheritor appear?"

That was something I had never heard before. Wasn’t an inherited ability something passed down through blood?

This sounded completely different from the inheritance I knew.

At those unexpected words, I looked back at her, and while the two of us simply stared at one another—

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

We heard the sound of water rising from the tunnel we had climbed out of.

At that sound, I came back to myself.

"This isn’t the time for this. We need to get out first."

At my words, she too returned to reality.

Even so, she still looked as though she had just witnessed something incomprehensible.

Fortunately, she had recovered at least a little mana and strength as well.

While she got to her feet, I looked at the fallen monsters.

"Are Red Mice really this strong? Didn’t you say they were a common low-grade monster during the Great War? If monsters like these were swarming everywhere, how did anyone win?"

At my words, she frowned.

"I don’t think these are normal Red Mice. I’ve never heard of Red Mice being this strong. And I’ve never seen gray Red Mice before either. Did something change inside here?"

Fortunately, she answered my question properly.

At her answer, I found myself imagining what these monsters must once have been.

Had they been stragglers trapped in underground caves during the Great War, left behind here for hundreds of years waiting for the Demon King to return?

Had they borne children, multiplied their numbers, and slowly grown stronger through the ages while waiting for the return of the lord they served?

A life of hundreds of years in total isolation, with no one knowing....

For a moment, seeing the dead monsters like that gave me a chill, as though I were glimpsing something of myself in them.

But I shook my head right away. There was no reason to sink into sentiment over monsters.

"Still, it’s a shame. If these are monsters from the Great War, merchants would pay a fortune for them."

At my words, she let out a sigh.

"No, not being able to take the monster corpses isn’t the real issue right now."

Well, she was right. The water was already pouring in. This really was not the time for that sort of talk.

"With what happened to your inherited ability, monster corpses don’t matter at all!"

Well, if the money was a waste, there was nothing wrong with mentioning it.

If anything, it made even less sense for a mercenary like her to disregard money so easily.

Still, her point had merit too.

To be able to gain the same inherited ability twice.... Just as she said, that was not something I could brush aside.

If word got out, troublesome things would surely happen, and my situation would not be the only one to become a headache. Hers would as well.

But I remained calm.

If I had been an ordinary person, I probably would have been terrified by what had happened just now, but having died so many times, whatever came next did not seem especially frightening.

In any case, thanks to what I had said, the atmosphere lightened a little.

Just as in my previous life, the two of us opened the iron door and checked the inside of the vault.

The vault was no different from how I had seen it before.

A massive hole gaped straight through the center, running up and down, and nothing intact remained in the parts that were left.

I had already seen it before, and she had probably expected it too, but even so, she let out a sigh.

I checked the heavy pouch at my side and urged her on again.

The hole yawned straight upward.

She lifted the lamp hanging at her waist.

Using its light, we looked up, and far above we could see the ceiling.

It was the ceiling of the tomb we had fallen from.

Splash.

But while we were looking upward,

the water filling the hole below began to overflow.

Water was already surging in through the open doorway to the vault as well.

It had already soaked our shoes and was climbing up to our knees.

There was no time to stand around admiring the ceiling.

She looked me up and down and asked,

"Judging by your skill, you should be able to manage it, but... can you climb?"

"Yes."

At her question, I answered while unslinging the greatsword from my back.

The dagger in one hand, the greatsword in the other.

And the moment I focused on the greatsword—

Srrrr.

The violent mana calmed and returned to its original state.

The wavering mana around the dagger vanished, and the Firebird Hunter looked at me again with that same astonished expression.

I pushed through the rising water and walked toward the wall of the vault.

The wall was made of solid stone that looked as though even repeated hammering would not leave a scratch.

Rock climbing in an underground chamber using swords.

If this had been my previous life, I would have loudly declared the whole thing impossible.

Even now, it would have been impossible if not for mana.

But thanks to mana, that cheater’s key, I could attempt the impossible.

I focused on the dagger again, changed my mana, and drove the wavering greatsword into the wall as high as I could.

Thunk.

Even though the greatsword itself had not touched the wall, a blade-shaped hole opened in the stone.

I pushed the greatsword into that hole easily.

Even to me it looked incredible, but the price was that chunks of mana were being torn away at a time.

"Damn."

I immediately restored my mana to normal and climbed onto the greatsword.

Once the mana returned to normal, my reserves began refilling quickly.

This time I drove the dagger into the wall the same way, hung from it, and pulled the greatsword free.

Then I climbed up onto the dagger and let my mana return to normal once again.

Fortunately, just as I had expected, my mana was cooperating, so it seemed I would not need to worry about running out of it while climbing.

'But will the Firebird Hunter be all right....'

I could replenish my mana by changing it back and forth, but she could not.

On top of that, she had not had much time to rest.

Worried, I turned my eyes toward her.

And then I remembered something I had once heard in my previous life.

"They say there’s no point worrying about people who are far more capable than you...."

Originally, I think it had been something like, "Don’t worry about celebrities," but the way I felt like a fool for worrying about her was much the same.

She was already past the ceiling and climbing into the hole.

Her way of scaling the wall was entirely different from mine.

Unlike me, who was laboriously making footholds with my sword, she was using the wavering blade to draw crack after crack in the wall and climbing upward by stepping on them.

It was an excellent use of mana, and proper rock climbing too.

Clearly, this was still no time to feel smug.

Feeling awkward, I drove my blade into the wall again and began climbing upward once more.

I did want to do it her way, but I could not use the mana blade at that range or speed.

On top of that, I had never actually learned rock climbing.

If I tried imitating her carelessly and ended up falling into the water, that would be a problem.

With the greatsword, and the gold coins stuffed in my pockets, it would have been all too easy to drown.

I moved my hands and feet diligently, avoiding the rising water.

Passing through the difficult stretch at the ceiling and climbing into the shaft, I kept ascending.

The lamp she had hung midway through the vertical cave made the climb easier.

Even so, the water continued rising after me.

"Just how high is this going to rise?"

Grumbling while watching the water slosh below, I finally managed to reach the end of the shaft after moving my hands and feet relentlessly.

I placed my hands on the ledge, retrieved the dagger beneath my feet,

and just as I heaved myself up for the last time—

Whoom!

I saw a huge greatsword falling toward my head.

"Uwaah!"

Startled, I twisted out of the way, and naturally, my body was left dangling in midair.

While suspended there, I saw the one who had attacked me.

A knight holding a greatsword. A handsome middle-aged knight.

Why was there a knight here? And why in the world was he attacking me?

Beside the knight was the Firebird Hunter, who had climbed up ahead of me.

She was sitting down and gasping for breath, but she did not seem injured anywhere, and she still had her weapons. She did not look as though she had been subdued either.

Then was she in league with that knight? As expected, she had never been an ordinary mercenary.

More than that, had she deceived me?

To be honest, after seeing these ruins and the legacy she had obtained, I had thought it possible that she might kill me to keep everything secret.

And on top of that, the fact that I had inherited her ability might have placed her—or her family—in greater danger than I had expected.

But that outcome felt completely at odds with the personality I had seen from her through all those repeated deaths.

No, more than that, hadn’t I already taken out insurance against something like this?

We had definitely made that contract at the temple, hadn’t we? So did the contract actually have some loophole? Was there some kind of trick to bypass it?

All sorts of thoughts raced madly through my head.

And in that very moment,

I saw her expression change.

"Stop! That boy is my ally!"

At her cry, the knight’s expression changed strangely as well,

and then I dropped.

Splash.

No, what in the world was going on?

As expected, once I fell back into the water, I sank rapidly.

As I sank beneath the surface, I could only make a stunned face.

If things ended like this, I had no idea how I was supposed to repeat the sequence again.

The situation had become tangled, I no longer knew whether I could trust my ally, why a knight had appeared at all, or what had happened to the soldier guarding the well.

After all that, I had finally made it to the end!

There was no way a curse would not spring to mind.

And then,

above my head, I saw someone falling after me.

Splash!

The one who plunged into the water with a great spray and came rushing toward me at once

was clearly visible thanks to the lamp floating on the water.

Even underwater, the knight looked like a striking middle-aged man, clad in armor and advancing toward me with startling speed.