Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 61
The Underside.
That name quite literally means “below.”
Does it refer to its physical position?
Or perhaps… to the nature of its inhabitants?
“This is it. This door is the entrance to the Underside. There are a lot of staircases leading underground in inconspicuous places like this. Well, most of them have been sealed off by now, and only a few remain in areas that are easy to monitor.”
“I haven’t been here since my dad brought me ages ago. It’s not exactly a den of criminals or anything, but you can find goods that are a bit… unsavory to deal above ground. Like, you know… aphrodisiacs.”
“Aphro… Oh! You mean the warm-and-fuzzy medicine!”
Melt, in fact, possesses pharmacological knowledge on par with a professional.
However, her understanding of aphrodisiacs is simply that they “make your body warm and fuzzy.”
That’s because that’s what happened when she brewed and drank one herself—not entirely wrong, in her experience.
“Still, we’re going underground, huh… Oh! So that’s what it means!”
“Huh? What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Alright, let’s head down.”
“Yeah, but be careful. Melt… you stand out. You’ve got such beautiful hair.”
“Yeah, seriously. You draw attention.”
“I thought so… Then I’ll wear this.”
With that, Melt pulled out a cloth like a furoshiki from somewhere, wrapped it over her head, and tied it under her nose.
It looked exactly like something that would make Shizuma yell, “You look like a thief!”
“Pfft! That just makes you stand out more! Here, do it like this… make it a triangle scarf or something.”
“Yeah, and if you tuck your hair inside a bit… okay, there.”
“All set? Maybe I should just buy a hat later.”
With Melt finally in a somewhat normal outfit, the group descended underground.
At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in a slightly outlaw-feeling world with a unique atmosphere.
“Wow…! This place is kind of cool!”
“Yeah, it’s got that thrill to it.”
“Hmm… There’s definitely more lighting than when I came here before.”
Warm lights—like incandescent bulbs on Earth—were installed everywhere, giving the Underside an unexpectedly bright appearance for an underground space.
To someone from Earth, it would feel almost like a festival or street fair.
Dim, yet warm. Secretive, yet a little dangerous. That was the air they breathed here.
“We’re looking for someone with their face hidden by a hood, right? Honestly, there are a lot of people like that around here…”
“They were shorter than Kash, slim, and didn’t have a tail—so either human or elf. And their footsteps didn’t sound like armor. Something like that?”
“Whoa, Melt! That’s some keen observation. Let’s search with that in mind.”
“Their cloak wasn’t fully black—it had a greenish tint.”
And so the trio advanced into the Underside.
It wasn’t bustling like the surface, but you could still feel the presence of people.
Conversations were held in low, discreet voices—not quite whispers, but clearly cautious.
People avoided eye contact, as if intentionally not trying to learn about each other’s identities.
To Melt, all of it felt fresh and new.
Until—
“…Maybe it’s that person?”
“They match the description but… huh!?”
“They’re running!?”
They finally spotted their target.
But the person suddenly bolted, fleeing into a cluttered alley filled with strewn materials—more like a storage area than a market.
That was as far as they got.
By the time Melt and the others caught up.
“Wait… they came this way, right?”
“Yeah, no doubt. And there’s nothing overhead to climb…”
“Maybe behind the rubble… No, no one’s here.”
Only a dead-end littered with debris and scrap remained.
No way to climb out, no hidden passageways.
No sign of anyone behind the rubble. The person had quite literally vanished.
“This doesn’t make sense…”
“Yeah… something’s off. Maybe there’s some kind of mechanism…”
At that moment, Melt recalled the traps and devices she had found at her own home not long ago.
Could the same sort of mechanisms be here as well?
If so, trying to find them now would probably be nearly impossible.
“What are you doing there!”
“…No one move. Don’t even twitch a finger.”
A sharp voice cut through the silence from the alley’s entrance.
They turned to find a group—not knights, but something more like mercenaries—spreading out to surround them.
“Wait! You’ve got it wrong! We were just chasing a suspicious guy—”
The moment Kash raised his hand and tried to step forward to explain—
One of them, moving at blinding speed, instantly pinned him to the ground, straddling his back and pressing a dagger to his throat.
“…I said don’t move.”
A cold, simple warning.
But someone still moved—instinctively.
“Let go of Kash!”
It was Melt. In an instant, she attacked to protect her friend.
The person avoided her strike with ease, but Melt’s follow-up kicks and flowing footwork left no room for complacency.
The two clashed: one wielding twin daggers, the other a single blade—fighting on equal footing.
“Kash just recovered from being sick! We’re not suspicious at all!”
“…You’re suspicious. Unfamiliar faces stand out here. Where did you come from?”
The attacker calmly questioned her as they fought.
The Underside was wary of outsiders.
And Melt, who fought with such skill and strength, had instantly become someone to watch closely.
“Squad leader, fall back. The upper forces are on their way.”
“…Understood.”
The one who had first issued the warning spoke up, and soon after, patrol knights from the surface—called by Rikka—rushed in.
“These knights were summoned by our companion. We were just chasing a suspicious person. Right now, some guilds—including the Adventurer’s Guild—are on alert around the Underside.”
“Y-Yeah! We’re seriously not suspicious! Look, here’s our adventurer ID tag!”
Melt and her opponent remained locked in a tense stare, weapons still raised.
“Squad leader, their tags are authentic. We’ve been on expedition—we’re not up-to-date with current Lindblum affairs.”
“…I see.”
Grant explained the situation to the knights. Hearing it, the person who had first given the stop order understood and realized Grant was telling the truth.
“You’re cleared of suspicion. But taking conspicuous action in the Underside is foolish. This was bound to happen. The locals hate change—so much that they’ll ‘silence’ it if necessary.”
“…But I apologize.”
The person who had restrained Kash and fought Melt lowered their head in a sincere apology.
As they lifted their head, their hood slipped off, revealing their face.
“…! We were careless this time as well. Now, excuse us—we have a report to make to the guild.”
“H-Hey! My neck’s bleeding a little, you know! Wait, Grant—!”
Grant grabbed Kash and Melt by the arms and, along with Rikka, hurried back toward the surface.
Only Melt, furious over Kash’s injury, glared daggers at the now-unhooded woman.
“Hey, Grant, what’s going on?”
“We absolutely cannot mess with those people. All we can do is back off.”
“Did something happen with them?”
To Rikka’s question, Melt raised her voice a bit in response.
“They were awful! We weren’t doing anything suspicious, and they just tackled Kash and tried to slit his throat! They meant to kill him!”
“I seriously thought I was gonna die… It all happened so fast… I’m never coming near the Underside again… ever…”
The experience left Kash with what could only be called trauma—so intense was his brush with death.
To that, Grant responded—
“No, Kash. You were just unlucky this time. Or maybe… lucky, actually.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“…Here in Lindblum, there are forces you must never cross. One of them is, obviously, the national knights.”
Grant began to speak calmly.
“The other group I was recently involved with is the Glory Knights. They crack down even more harshly than the knightly orders — they’re experts who sometimes engage with adventurers, mercenaries, or combat classes.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them too. Shuris-san… she was intense.”
“Right? And she was really beautiful.”
“But she gets all flustered, so I don’t really like her~”
“Flustered?”
Then finally, Grant turned to Kash and said—
“The last group is a clan from the Explorer’s Guild called Killcrawler. Kash, the person who nearly killed you… was Rivanna, the leader of their raid team. She was supposed to become one of the Thirteen Knights.”
“Wha— supposed to become…?”
“Yeah. The one who actually made it into the Thirteen Knights was Killcrawler’s guild leader. But from what I’ve heard, Rivanna is far stronger. Probably, they chose the other person to maintain internal hierarchy in the clan.”
“You really are unlucky, Kash, to get restrained by people like that.”
“Unlucky doesn’t even begin to cover it… I thought I was gonna die…”
A tense moment in the Underside. Now that they knew who they were dealing with, everyone felt a fresh chill run down their spines.
—Except for Melt, who still didn’t seem to fully grasp the situation.
“But Kash got hurt, didn’t he? They injured him by mistake, right?”
“Well, yeah… but it probably wasn’t smart to move in that situation. When someone tells you not to move, you don’t. That’s an important rule.”
“My bad… I panicked.”
“Ugh! I mean, you apologized and all, but… is your neck okay, Kash?”
“Yeah, it’s just a scratch. No big deal. But still… she was a candidate for the Thirteen Knights? No wonder she was that strong. I seriously didn’t see a thing. Not until she had me pinned.”
“Same here. Melt… I’m amazed you managed to fight her at all.”
Everyone turned their attention to Melt, who had managed to trade blows with Rivanna several times.
“But I probably couldn’t beat her. Honestly… if we’d kept fighting, I would’ve lost for sure.”
“Well, she is one of the best in the country.”
“Alright! I’m gonna get even stronger!”
And so, with Melt’s renewed determination, the group headed back to the Grand Guild, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun.
————————————-
Meanwhile…
As night began to fall, Sheele burned incense and stood alone in the swamp, locked in battle.
A magic barrier sealed the undead within the swamp. Within that same barrier, Sheele kept vigil, managing the undead while waiting for a large bird-like monster to appear.
“Light-based enchantments really are effective against undead.”
Despite the treacherous terrain, Sheele moved with graceful speed, slicing through hordes of skeletons — animated bones — with her radiant knife.
With dry, brittle sounds, the skeletons collapsed into the marsh.
But then, pale blue lights rose from the corpses and drifted to other bones and beasts, reanimating them as undead, standing once more to block Sheele’s path.
“Leaving the corpse of that Dive Condor was a mistake… Hah!”
The bird had returned as a flying undead and dove at her from above.
While staying alert for aerial threats, she continued cutting down skeletons with fluid motion, leaping into the air to avoid attacks, drawing her bow, and shooting the undead birds mid-dive.
It was a one-woman war — against dozens of undead, she stood her ground.
“…I’m moving better than I imagined.”
More undead birds fell from the sky.
And as pale spiritual lights rose again—
[Brightness Circle]
Forms a zone of light, granting her attacks strong purification powers.
Can completely destroy undead within the zone.
Has no effect outside the zone.
Using this skill, Sheele finally purified the undead completely and waited for the incense’s effect to take hold.
Eventually, she wiped out the surrounding undead and paused to catch her breath—when:
“…That size, from this distance… I’ll need to go all out…”
Just before the sun fully set, a massive shadow eclipsed the last rays of sunlight.
Even though it was still far away, the shadow was so large it blotted out the evening sun.
This time, Sheele drew a single arrow, not a handful.
“This will be the first time I unleash the highest-level technique… in this world, among all of us.”
She clasped the arrow in both hands, as if in prayer before her face.
It was a gesture not unlike a knight pledging an oath upon their sword—solemn, sacred.
The arrow glowed with holy light as she nocked it on her bow.
“Evening Starfall — Divine Demon Bane”
With the name of the technique spoken aloud, a colossal arrow of blinding light shot forth, piercing the encroaching darkness—