The river’s water, dyed a deep red like the sunset.
Boooom!
With each clash of swords and spears, a heavy drum sound echoes, and the swirling, smoky blood of the dead bursts forth with a thwack.
Pushed back by the force, a zombie glides away like it’s swimming, and the spear tip of another zombie that charged in gets blocked by my armor, forcing me back.
“Grrrrrk…!”
The horde of zombies attacks my back as if sensing an opportunity.
I swing my left arm out to the side, turning my body, then slam my longsword down diagonally, embedding the nearest zombie’s sword deep into the riverbed.
Then, I deflect another zombie’s axe with my shoulder, cutting off its wrist as I seize the axe.
With the stolen axe, I swing it sideways, cleaving the third zombie, who was trying to stab my thigh with its spear, cleanly in half like firewood.
Black, rotten blood bursts forth between the split ends like a squid barfing ink.
Yuck!
“Gaurrr…!”
“Kyaaaac!”
Just like that, as I take down three zombies, double that amount swarm in, rushing at me like a pack of sharks smelling blood.
Ugh, this is more troublesome than I thought…!
My brows instinctively furrow.
A relentless wave of rusty weapons crashes down on me. No matter how many I fend off, their numbers keep growing, reminiscent of the legendary Hydra.
…This isn’t as easy as I imagined. If we had entered the ‘ruins,’ things might’ve been different, but I thought the skirmish before entering wouldn’t be much trouble.
The ever-growing enemy numbers and the underwater environment were more restrictive than I anticipated.
Every time I swung my arm or sword, my body spun like a top, throwing off my balance, while my sword slowed down and my stamina drained faster.
Most importantly, breathing. That was the issue.
Neither Friede nor I were fish with gills, so breathing underwater was impossible for us.
The ‘drowned undead’ had no gills either, but they didn’t need to breathe as undead.
So, the longer the fight dragged on, the more we were at an overwhelming disadvantage.
Thankfully, Brunhilde’s lung capacity was much higher than before my possession, likely due to her training, but…
Damn it. I’m running out of breath…!
There’s a limit.
After testing my endurance when crossing the border bridge, I knew I could hold my breath for about twenty minutes, but that was only if I was holding it quietly.
Fighting the undead drastically reduced that limit. It felt like oxygen was being depleted from my lungs and blood vessels with every swing.
For that reason, I felt a flicker of alarm against zombies I could have wiped out easily on land.
If I continued to burn through oxygen with no gains, I might suffocate before even reaching the surface in a worst-case scenario.
It seemed Friede was in a similar situation, wielding her great sword in quick, short motions to land distant strikes, completely forgoing her usual spinning sword techniques.
Of course, even a simple ranged slash, befitting the Holy Sword’s hero, was enough to slice through zombies like harvest crops.
Whoosh!
As the golden crescent slashed through the river, the zombies recoiled in terror, much like a girl seeing a centipede crawling out from between her pillows.
The sluggish zombies that failed to dodge were shredded like tofu upon contact with that light, becoming scattered black dust.
It was like witnessing a god of farming wielding a sickle to harvest all the crops.
Honestly, as I struggled to snag a zombie, that level of power made me want to whine in envy. I felt really reassured.
Good job, Friede. Just chop them all up!
◆◆
One minute later.
As the banquet of endless zombies continued, filling my mind with the certainty that I’d lose to oxygen depletion before stamina, we finally spotted a massive crack beyond the undead throngs.
Found it…!
A glimmering space crack radiating a faint blue light.
Beyond the sword-slashed and glass-like fissure, a sinister aura of magic seeped out.
As the magical energy made contact with the riverbed, a withered, blue hand shot out along with a faint vibration.
Yes, those ‘drowned undead’ we fought until now were like a type of summoned being raised by something on the other side of that crack.
Though they weren’t allies with whatever was beyond the rift.
Tap tap.
Friede lightly tapped my side, gesturing to the crack with her great sword. She had a look asking if that was the place where the ‘family secret’ I’d mentioned was sleeping.
I nodded in answer before we both sprinted with all our might. We slashed, stabbed, and trampled the undead returning from the afterlife with the crack’s magical energy.
Forty steps. Thirty steps. Twenty steps. Ten steps…!
And finally, the tips of our outstretched fingers touched the magical energy flowing from the crack.
Whooooosh!
With the sensation of being sucked into somewhere, a sudden flash illuminated our vision in blue—
“Hah…! Haaaah…!”
In the next moment, a cold wind, welcoming visitors, filled my empty chest with fresh air.
I crash-landed forward, gasping for breath. Friede was also panting next to me.
Drops of water dripped from my strewn hair to form small puddles on the stone floor.
No, it wasn’t just from my hair; water streamed down my entire body like a rainfall—like a diver who had burst forth from below the surface.
Of course, we hadn’t surfaced. We hadn’t been moving upward; we had been rushing forward. This place was still beneath the Rhine River.
It was just filled with cool air instead of water.
“Huh, haah, haaaaa…! Did we arrive? Are we really here…?”
Still propped up, Friede turned her head to look at me, her disheveled dark hair sticking to her face like seaweed.
“Okay… yeah, for now.”
I got up and brushed her hair away from her face. It looked so tangled up that it was likely going to make me uncomfortable just by looking at it.
“The important part starts now… but we actually made it. Come on, get up and see. This is the place I was talking about.”
“This is….”
Friede, her face slightly red from my touch, stood up and looked around.
“…Wow.”
With her mouth slightly ajar, she let out a quiet gasp.
“What is this, what on earth…?”
A mixture of admiration and awe sparkled in her golden eyes like stars.
She had the face of a child seeing the aurora for the first time, wide-eyed and overwhelmed by wonder.
On the small, adorable girl’s face, the trembling excitement and overwhelming awe were etched in a way that felt almost tattooed on.
“See? Isn’t it amazing?”
Watching her expression made my heart flutter with an inexplicable warmth, so I smugly spread my arms wide.
“This is the ruins beneath the river, ‘Banafitza.’ In fact, this is also my first time seeing it for real.”
The ruins beneath the river, Banafitza.
That was the name of the hidden dungeon I had first set foot in.
◆◆
Friede, her face filled with wonder, surveyed her surroundings.
I wrung out my soaked hair, shaking off the water while also slowly examining the area around us.
Hummmmm…!
A faint vibrating sound reverberated. From the ground beneath our feet to the ceiling above us, it came from beyond the translucent curtain that enveloped us.
A magical barrier, forming an hemispherical dome over an area the size of a village, literally seals off the water of the Rhine River while humming.
The riverwater, unable to pierce through the barrier, rolled beautifully in the air like a blue veil laid out.
This magical barrier was set up to conceal and protect these ruins—and for several other purposes.
The reason we could breathe normally while still standing at the riverbed was all thanks to that magical barrier.
Since it blocked the riverwater, the inside was filled with fresh air, though slightly humid, instead of water.
In other words, if that barrier were to break, these ruins would be swept away by the incoming river like a tsunami, leaving not a single stone behind.
Drip drip.
After glancing up at the magical barrier, which was our lifeline, I finished drying my hair and turned my gaze forward.
We stood on a flat hill paved with even stones, with a long bridge of rock stretching out before us.
And beyond the bridge was—
“…What’s that? A fortress? It feels like a fortress or a forward base.”
“Right. Banafitza was originally a defensive stronghold built by my ancestors. As you can see, it’s crumbled a bit.”
Banafitza was a stone fortress that had a castle and walls for the lord built on a high hill, and additional walls enclosing the flat area below.
Inside the walls of the flat area were military facilities like watchtowers, forges, and barracks, while the outside was protected by a bottomless moat.
The bridge before us connected across that moat to the city gate on the flat side.
Of course, true to the name ‘ruins’ below the river, it was hard to find a single intact building peeking from across the bridge.
The walls were shattered in several places, as if struck by artillery fire, and the gates had completely fallen off.
The buildings that faintly peeked out inside were all piles of crumbled stone, like the remains of a town abandoned after the war.
To put it mildly, it looked like a castle that had been overrun after a war and left to decay.
Though that’s slightly off from reality, at least its appearance was pretty much like that.
Hummm…! Hummmmm!
Naturally, this was the case when excluding the magical barrier that covered the entire fortress and the battlements and inner keep that still stood firm despite being half-destroyed.
“Hey, Hilde. What’s that…?”
Just then, Friede pointed, raising a finger to the keep atop the hill. No, more precisely, to the gigantic purple crystal floating above it.
“That’s something you really shouldn’t get too close to if you want to stay alive… a trap, I guess. It’ll be fine as long as we don’t approach.”
Instead of a detailed explanation, I offered a vague warning while wringing out her hair with both hands.
I expected her to blush at the smell of her hair, but she surprisingly remained calm.
Perhaps she was too absorbed in the sights or maybe thought she was clean thanks to the river. I wasn’t quite sure.
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