“I-I’m out!?”
“Is that a real ghost!?”
Ludell and Leje screamed, completely forgetting that they were hiding.
In the next moment, both realized their mistake and held their breaths in the darkness, but fortunately, the guards didn’t come back.
Just as they sighed in relief, a figure approached them with a fluttering motion and spoke again.
“Do… you… help…?”
“Are they asking us for help right now?”
“It seems like it…”
Even Ludell could hear that the voice was clearly asking for help.
“What do they want us to help with?”
“Through… the wall…”
After Leje’s question, the ghost said that and began to glide down the hallway with no apparent weight.
Watching this, Ludell and Leje followed, and the ghost stopped in front of a wall that didn’t look particularly special.
“It’s here… but this is just a wall?”
Looking at the wall in front of her, Leje voiced her confusion. No matter how she looked, what was in front of her was just an ordinary wall.
However, the ghost seemed unfazed by their words and glided right through the wall.
“What? You just go through and leave us hanging?”
“Hmm…”
Leje yelled in disbelief.
Meanwhile, Ludell let out a low groan.
A moment later, he approached the wall with a doubtful expression.
“Leje, wait a sec.”
“Okay.”
Leje stepped aside, and Ludell moved closer to the wall, reaching out his hand to lightly tap it.
His fingertips began to follow a specific pattern…
– Click.
After a moment, one side of the wall opened, revealing a suspicious-looking passageway before them.
“What, what is this? How did you know?”
“I used to solve these things to death years ago.”
Looking at Leje, who was flustered, Ludell smiled lightly.
A few years ago, while active in Prucelium’s vigilante group, Ludell had destroyed numerous church hideouts.
Most of the church hideouts were protected by secret passages that required a specific pattern to open, but figuring out those patterns wasn’t too hard for Ludell.
“When they called me The One Who Steals Lives, right?”
“I’d rather you not call me by that nickname…”
“Please don’t call me so urgently…”
Rudell made a sour face like someone had just dug up his cringey middle school memories, and Leje burst into giggles.
In the meantime, a ghost moving ahead in the distant corridor suddenly stopped, as if waiting for the duo. Rudell, seeing this, took a step forward alongside Leje down the passageway.
The sound of footsteps echoed in the narrow corridor, leading the two deeper underground.
*
“This looks oddly familiar.”
“Right?”
What lay before Rudell and Leje was a spacious area at the end of the dark corridor.
Leje squinted, likely recalling events from the Empire, and Rudell nodded in agreement, scanning their surroundings.
Just then…
[This way.]
“Huh?”
“Oh?”
A clearer image of the ghost began to emerge before them.
She appeared to be around Leje’s age. If one were to describe her ghostly presence in a word, it would be an eerie-looking girl.
[Sorry for the late introduction. My name is Nirel.]
The girl—no, the ghost—identified herself as Nirel, drifting in the air.
“What’s going on? Why suddenly so clear?”
[That’s because my corpse is nearby.]
“Your corpse?”
“Wait… were you a necromancer before you died?”
Necromancers are beings closely connected to the realm of the dead.
Even while alive, they exist in a sort of half-dead state, allowing their souls to linger in this world should they choose, even after their bodies die.
Of course, if too much time passes, they might devolve into monsters like wraiths or specters.
[Right, it seems like you’ve got a necromancer among your acquaintances?]
“Close enough.”
Thinking of his occasional chats with the necromancer Capeles, Rudell nodded.
[Then this should be easy. As I said earlier, I need your help. Something horrific is happening here.]
“Horrific?”
“It must have something to do with the Church.”
Even though Nirel had yet to elaborate on the details, it wasn’t hard for Rudell to guess.
It wasn’t hard to guess.
The circumstantial evidence so far indicated that this incident was also related to the Church.
[This way.]
Saying that, Nirel moved along the wide corridor.
Rudell and Leje followed behind, and as they passed through the corridor and arrived at a certain place, they let out low groaning sounds.
“That’s…”
“Monstrous Beasts…”
[Kiik!! Kiiieee-!!]
[Krek, keeeek!!]
A vast space.
There were numerous monstrous beasts tearing apart an unknown chunk of meat.
Just the visible ones alone numbered in the hundreds.
If such a number of monstrous beasts were to be unleashed, the surface would undoubtedly turn into hell.
[My corpse is probably caught in that mix. Thankfully, they haven’t eaten me yet.]
“How is that possible?”
It was a given, but Rudell had never heard of monstrous beasts having preferences for food.
[It’s all thanks to Goddess Nixia’s blessing.]
At that moment, Nirel answered Rudell’s question.
“Rudell, look at that.”
“That’s…”
As if discovering something, Leje raised her hand and pointed somewhere, and Rudell’s eyes widened as he saw it.
A round mechanical device that looked all too familiar.
Though its shape was slightly different from what he remembered, it was undoubtedly something Rudell and his friends had seen before.
Back when Rudell and his friends were first-year students at the Academy.
It was the bomb that almost blew everyone in the Maze Forest to smithereens during that incident.
“Now I understand. What’s really going on.”
The moment he saw it, pieces of the puzzle began to fit together in Rudell’s mind.
After trapping Rudell and his friends here, unleashing the monstrous beasts to cause slaughter on the surface while taking advantage of Rudell and his team being distracted, they would detonate the bomb.
That way, the incident that occurred here would remain known to no one.
Blowing up the frontline fortress defending the Empire from the Nord tribe, while simultaneously taking care of those eyesores—the hero party.
It was clear that this was the Church’s scheme.
“What are we going to do? I don’t think the two of us can handle all those monstrous beasts.”
“Well…”
In response to Leje’s question, Rudell let out a low groan.
Monstrous beasts were inherently incredibly dangerous beings.
The Chimera they had dealt with previously was a monster that could be taken down like a snack.
Monsters that could be handled.
That was the existence known as a Monstrous Beast.
No matter how much Rudell and Leje had grown stronger compared to then, dealing with hundreds of Chimeras with just the two of them was a difficult task.
“Isn’t it impossible to boom! with magic?”
“It’ll be tough; we don’t even know what’s up there.”
Since they couldn’t pinpoint their exact location, recklessly using area-of-effect magic was out of the question.
The size of the common area where the Monstrous Beasts were settled was large enough to fit an entire Fortress.
Assuming there was a Fortress above them, it might just get buried underground.
“Ugh… what do we do…”
Retreating wasn’t an option, given that they had no idea what the Church folks would do next.
Just as Rudell and Leje were struggling to think of a good plan in a bind, it happened.
– Whoooooooom…!!
“That, that…!!”
“The bomb…!!”
With a low hum, a purple light began to spread across the surface of the bomb, and seeing that, Rudell and Leje made a low gasp.
The implication was clear.
The bomb was activated.
[KREEEEEEE-!!]
[KYAAH!! KYAAAAA!!]
And at that moment, as if possessed by something, the Monstrous Beasts began to shriek and rush somewhere.
“W- what do we do now!?”
“Damn…!! We have to stop them!!”
“Ugh!! I don’t know either!!”
Rudell shouted back at the flustered Leje, raising his magic.
A sphere emitting a white light began to form above Rudell’s head, and Leje also drew her sword.
If they couldn’t stop those guys here, the Fortress would turn into a hellhole.
Then once again, the souls of the victims would be sucked into that bomb and transformed into magic power, and after that, it would all be over.
“Please notice…!!”
In a situation where everything would come to an end if things went wrong, Rudell muttered desperately, casting the glowing sphere toward the massive ceiling of the common area.
And the next moment.
A tremendous loud noise shook the common area.
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