v3c79

Chapter 79: The Ruins of Avsdrakdu ②

The three of them were alive.
I was surprised—and at the same time, relieved.

When we all lowered our weapons, the red dots from [Danger Detection] disappeared.

That was because the conditions for becoming enemies were gone.

The red dots—those “enemy conditions”—appear when someone harbors hostility or killing intent toward me.
In other words, when there is an intention to attack me.

To put what happened this time simply—

“Not knowing who the other party is, but still being on guard because someone showed up, raising weapons with intent to attack.”

That alone is enough for [Danger Detection] to display red dots.

Once we confirmed who each other were and put away our weapons, the display changed and the red dots vanished.

“I’m Seed. A member of ‘The Lid of Tartarus.’”

The short blond man holding a spear introduced himself.
Judging by his appearance, he seemed about the same age as Agaro-san. He had a cut above his eye.

“Dokkas. Also a member of ‘The Lid of Tartarus,’ da ba.”

The next to introduce himself was a dwarf.
He vaguely resembled Hoss-san, but with a beard.

“I-I’m, M-Miles Cornwell. I-I’m with the g-guild… an a-ancient-ruins inspector……”

The woman answered timidly. Her long grey hair hid her eyes.
She had large fox ears and two tails—a foxkin, the same race as witches. Though she seemed to be missing one tail.

She was wearing glasses, but with her eyes hidden by her hair, I wondered if they served any purpose.

“I’m Agaro.”
“I’m Narcissus Utopia!”
“Um, um, I am Juicy Tasan.”
“I’m W—Wof.”

“!”
“!”

“? What are you saying? You’re—”

“Hah—man, I’m really glad we’re alive! Seriously, I’m so relieved. Standing around talking isn’t ideal—how about we go somewhere and hear everything properly?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a place we’re using as a base.”
“This way, da ba.”
“Ah, ahu……”

The three of them led us.

“Hey, wait a second.”
“Narcissus-san.”

I leaned in and whispered to her.

“What? Mm-hmm. Ah, I see.”
“So please.”
“You don’t really need to worry about that… but, well, everyone feels differently. Got it.”

The reason I used a false name was because I didn’t want to cause a commotion.
It might sound conceited.

But after seeing the reaction to ‘Cerberostern,’ I didn’t feel that way anymore.

That’s why I used an alias. I didn’t want attention, and the atmosphere wasn’t right for it anyway.

We arrived at a control room with a pedestal.
In the corner, sheets were spread out, and two sleeping bags were laid down.

“We’re mainly using this control room, plus four other rooms.”
“Four?”

“Yeah. A food production room. A shower room. A rest room. And a toilet.”

“Food production?”

“Miles discovered it using that pedestal. Apparently it can produce highly nutritious paste or something like that. That’s what we eat. It doesn’t look good, but the taste is decent. There are dozens of varieties, so you don’t get tired of it. Drinks too.”

“Alcohol?”

“Unfortunately, none of that.”

Seed-san laughed. Agaro-san looked disappointed.

“I’ll continue. The shower room lets you wash your body with hot water. The rest room is used by Miles. The toilet doesn’t need explaining.”

“I-I’m the only one with a room… s-s-sorry for u-using it a-alone……”

Miles-san bowed deeply.

“It’s fine. Miles is a woman—and without you, we’d have starved to death.”
“She’s our lifesaver, da ba.”

Miles-san bowed again to the two of them.

“Seeing that you’re living properly here is a relief.”

“By the way, where did you guys come from?”

“Well, about that—first…”

Agaro-san carefully took out his explorer tag from his pouch and showed it to them.

Seeing it, Seed-san and Dokkas-san immediately understood.
Miles-san realized a moment later, collapsed to the ground, and began trembling.

“A-ah… aah…… ah……”

“Hey, are you okay?”
“Um, um, are you all right?”
“S-sorry……”

We left her to Narcissus-san and Juicy-san.

“What happened?”

When Agaro-san asked, Seed-san began to explain.

“When we went to inspect the 44th floor, we were attacked by some nasty-looking guys. We repelled them, but it didn’t make sense—why would a band of thieves be on a special floor? We tried to report it to the guild, but then we made a mistake, and Miles got kidnapped by them.

“We couldn’t just leave her. Especially since she’s a woman. We had no idea what they might do to her while we went to report to the guild. So we headed to this town to rescue her.

“They had a necromancer with them, and the zombies he controlled were troublesome, but we chased the thieves into these ruins of Avsdrakdu. We rescued Miles and killed the boss of the band. That part went well. But there was something outrageous inside these ruins—something even worse was sealed here. That damn necromancer released it. At that point, we were separated from the other three, and we managed to escape here. We were lucky—but then another problem arose.”

“Ah… because that is outside, you can’t get out?”

“That too—but there’s another problem…”

“Another? Seed, what is it?”

“Before that, Agaro—how did you all get here?”

“O-o-outside… t-that thing… it’s there……”
“Da ba. Impossible from the surface, da ba.”

“That thing is—”

Agaro-san spoke.

Seed-san, Dokkas-san, and Miles-san were stunned.

“Haaah!? You defeated that thing…!?”
“It’s true.”
“How did you do it, da ba!?”
“D-defeated… y-you defeated it? H-how, h-how did you—”

“About that—sorry. I can’t answer.”

I did it.

“Y-yeah… figures. As expected of a Class I explorer.”
“Being able to beat that thing is insane, da ba.”
“…R-really… t-that thing…”

“I’m Class I too. But even I couldn’t beat something like that!”

Narcissus-san declared proudly.

“O-oh.”
“D-da ba.”

The two of them recoiled slightly at her enthusiasm.

“Th-then… w-we can g-get outside… r-right?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a forced transfer stone. We can leave immediately.”

“Seed!”
“S-Seed-san……”

Dokkas-san and Miles-san looked at him as if to ask, “What are you going to do?”

He wore a pained expression, lightly shook his head, then looked at Agaro-san.

“…If you can defeat that thing… Agaro, there’s another problem.”

“What is it?”

“There’s something on the lowest level that absolutely has to be destroyed.”

“Absolutely?”

What is it?

“What do you mean by that?”

“That is… an event-generation device.”

Seed-san said it gravely.

“An event-generation device…?”

“A device that can arbitrarily trigger events.”

Trigger events at will…?

“Huh. That’s quite a ridiculous piece of machinery.”

“Um, um, it’s—it’s something extremely dangerous!”

“Y-yeah… it’s r-really, r-really bad……”

“Something like that actually exists?”

I was only half convinced, but the purple light on the lowest floor made sense if that was it.

“It exists. And Agaro, you should understand why it must be destroyed.”

“…Yeah. That definitely needs to be destroyed.”

If you can freely trigger events, the consequences are obvious.

There’s no way that would ever end well.

“Um, um—does it really have to be destroyed? If it can trigger events at will, couldn’t it also do the opposite?”

“It can’t. All it can do is trigger events.”

“And besides, da ba—even if you could turn it off, it’s not something that can be managed. If it fell into the hands of evil people, it’d be a disaster, da ba.”

In fact, the bandits had already tried to abuse it.

“And it already became a disaster. The one who broke the seal did so using the power of that event-generation device. The seal was lifted by triggering the event ‘breaking the seal.’”

“That’s the worst…”

“That’s just cheating. Anything goes.”

“So it was sealed in the same place as something like that?”

A perfectly reasonable question.

It would mean the seal could be undone at any time.

“No. That device was something the necromancer brought with him. You’ll understand once you see it—what kind of device it is. Now you get it, right? The event-generation device—no matter what, it has to be destroyed.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll smash it to pieces—spectacularly.”

“——Then why didn’t you do it, Swede?”

Agaro-san asked calmly.

He was right. If it truly needed to be destroyed, they should have done it already.

Seed-san let out a sigh.

“…The necromancer. He became undead as the price for breaking the seal.”

“He became undead and is guarding the device, da ba.”

“A-and on top of that, th-that undead… i-it’s a l-lich.”

“A lich, huh.”

A lich—an upper-tier Gold-ranked undead. Said to wield the dark relic [Relic: Darkness].

“And to make matters worse, that bastard became a lich while still holding the necromancer’s relic.”