Chapter 4: An Exploration to an Escape

Chapter 4:
An Exploration to an Escape

 

THE EXPEDITION PRESSED ON without issue. Just as Chuck said, the only monsters they encountered were goblins, which Ritz’s party immediately dispatched. They took just the ears and left the bodies behind.

Loren worried that the goblins might turn undead, but there was no place to bury the bodies in the ruins, and they had neither the fuel nor the proper ventilation to burn them.

“Even if they go undead, they’re just goblins. They won’t be too much of a hassle,” Ritz said. Though from Loren’s point of view, goblin ghosts and zombies sounded like more trouble than they were worth.

All that aside, thanks to the wave of goblins being defeated no sooner than they had appeared, Loren’s sack of severed ears swelled near to bursting. It wasn’t much of an issue at the beginning, but after a certain point, the cloth oozed with goblin blood, and its scent grew foul. While Loren very much wanted to throw it away, he couldn’t possibly discard what Ritz’s party had so generously conceded to him; what’s more, these disgusting bits could be converted into cash as soon as they got back, so he couldn’t treat them roughly.

At one point, he glanced around, wondering if the smell bothered anyone else. However, it was like the scent didn’t even register to Ritz’s party. Only Lapis—still clinging to his back—scrunched her nose, and as she did her best not to inhale through it, he heard her panting through her mouth.

“Let me make this clear,” she scowled, “I am not unduly excited by blood. In fact, my nose has pretty much given up the ghost.”

“You didn’t have to spell it out.” The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Nym watched this exchange with a smile when all of a sudden, her eyes turned grim. “Hold on. The air is strange,” she called out.

The rest reacted quickly. Ritz readied his weapon and shield while Chuck scanned the area. Koltz brandished his staff, ready to use it at any moment.

“What is it, Nym?”

“The smell changed. Blood. Not goblin.”

Loren took a sniff, but all he could pick up was the stench wafting off the sack at his waist. He didn’t detect whatever Nym had. In fact, the goblin stench rendered him unable to smell anything else. Amazingly enough, Nym stood quite nearby and should have been in essentially the same state.

“In the first place, both human and goblin blood smell like rusted iron. Are they really that different?” asked Lapis, sounding rather fed up. It wasn’t as if Loren didn’t get where she was coming from.

“I won’t tell you guys to hold your tongues, but I suggest you keep an eye out. Nym’s senses are the real deal. Her nose, eyes, and ears are sharper than any of ours.”

“It’s the only part of her that’s devel—ow!”

Nym silently delivered a kick to the back of a certain thief who had said a little too much. Chuck looked like he had the physical edge on Nym, but she had put a lot of power into that kick and he was thrown to the floor.

“Quit fooling around. You’re setting a bad example again,” Ritz sighed.

“Now, now, I just thought we were getting too tense, eh? Relax or we’ll lose our minds.” Chuck snorted, rubbing his back, but he kept his eyes alert. “From what I can tell, there’s no one near. They’ve gotta be further down.”

“Fine. Let’s go,” Ritz ordered. It seemed he had determined it was useless to waste his time on someone so unrepentant.

Their march slowed considerably. However, Loren far preferred that over rushing ahead and succumbing to whatever Nym had sensed. No one else objected either.

“Can your missy move yet?” Ritz asked Loren as they crept forward.

Don’t ask me. Loren glanced back.

Lapis slowly lifted and lowered her arms. Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. It will take a little longer.”

“It’s your legs that gave out, right? What’ve your arms got to do with it?”

“My body locked up with fear, I’m afraid. My legs utterly gave out… I know it’s pathetic.”

Ritz heard out her excuses with a tired look and he turned to Loren. “I don’t know where you met her, but it’ll be better for the both of you if you drop her back at the church.”

“That’s up to her. It’s none of my business.” In any case, Loren wasn’t in any position to decide Lapis’s course of action. He hardly even knew her—though he didn’t plan on explaining any of this to Ritz.

Loren didn’t consider himself good with words, and there was always a chance he would end up saying something he shouldn’t. While he himself didn’t think much about Lapis’s identity, others might not take too kindly to her heritage. He couldn’t predict how Ritz’s party would take the revelation that they were traveling with a demon. His conclusion: I should keep it on the down low, and if I want to do that, I should keep my words to a minimum.

Chuck raised his voice. “Hey, take a look at that.”

Loren followed the thief’s pointing to a fallen form quite a bit further down the passage. He couldn’t tell what it was at first; at this distance, he could just barely make out something was there at all.

But, either due to her role as a hunter or her abilities as an elf, Nym muttered, strained: “Armor…covered in blood.”

Their wariness didn’t falter here. While they wanted to hurry and investigate that very instant, they had to expect traps, particularly those that might have led to that lump of bloodstained armor. They took their time, making sure nothing was about to descend upon them, and slowly approached the remains as a party.

Ritz stooped down to get a closer look. “It’s armor, all right. Leather. But I can’t tell anything else about it.”

In other words, it was exactly what Nym had said it was, nothing more and nothing less. It had been destroyed to the point where it was difficult to confirm it had in fact once been leather armor, and no traces of its former owner remained.

“One thing’s for certain, though. Its owner is dead as a doornail.”

The amount of blood splattered across the armor made it pretty clear the owner had sustained a lethal blow. It wasn’t only on the armor either; a rust-red stain spread out over the floor below. Even if the strike hadn’t killed them immediately, no human could survive losing that much blood.

“I’m pretty sure our competition is the only other group of people in these ruins. Did they fall into this place too?”

“I’m trying to remember. Which one of them wore leather armor again?”

With Koltz’s prompting, Ritz and Chuck crossed their arms at practically the same time and fell into thought.

Looks like their competition didn’t leave a strong impression on them, thought Loren.

Beside him, Nym looked at the struggling men of her party with cold eyes. “Ritz and Chuck are too careless. Koltz is going senile.”

“Am not!” the old man cried.

“Then remember already. Who was wearing the leather armor?”

“Grr.” Despite Koltz’s groans, it wasn’t so easy to drag back what was forgotten.

“Admit you’re going senile and give up.”

“I am not senile! Not on my life. Just you wait, I’ll remember soon enough.”

Koltz had grit his teeth, straining his mind to its limits. The others—Ritz and Chuck—had reached the groaning stage. Nym rolled her eyes and turned to Loren.

“I want your opinion.”

“Mine? Not your friends’?”

“Let them think it over. They might remember eventually.”

And you’re all right with that? Loren thought.

Nym, meanwhile, passed on what she knew. “If we assume this leather armor belonged to the party competing with us, the one wearing it was the thief.”

“That sounds about right.”

“But that’s not the problem. I want your opinion on the other part.”

Magicians generally didn’t wear armor, instead opting for cloth equipment like robes. Priests were a similar case, though they might wear chainmail under their vestments for added precaution. Thieves and warriors, meanwhile, focused on defense and mobility. The scraps of leather had no signs of riveting or reinforcements—a lighter variant, then, which led Loren to agree it had been owned by a thief. Loren hadn’t met the competing party, but it was easy enough to deduce that.

Nym went on. “Say our assumptions are correct. Their thief was a woman.”

“Yeah?” Loren said. What about it?

But Lapis seemed to pick up on the problem Nym implied. “Ah, and thus far, you’ve only seen goblins in these ruins.”

“You say that like you think there is something else.”

“Well, a goblin generally won’t kill a woman—not immediately,” said Lapis. “They have their own uses for them. But if the owner of this armor was a woman, that person was killed here without a second thought. Isn’t that strange?”

Loren took another look at the wreckage littering the floor. With how violently it had been destroyed, he couldn’t tell whether it had been worn by a woman or not. However, if it had been worn by the woman Nym identified, then Lapis was right. Something felt off about her sudden death.

“She could’ve been killed by accident,” he said. “A lucky shot, maybe.”

“I won’t deny the possibility. But there’s so much blood.”

He agreed with Lapis there too. Given a goblin’s crude weapons and mediocre strength, even if they struck a vital organ by chance, the wound wouldn’t be deep enough to produce this bloody mess.

“Given the amount of blood, we should assume she was dismembered right here,” Loren muttered.

“And that goes completely counter to standard goblin behavior. So long as their female target still breathes, they prioritize dragging them back to the nest whole.”

“Then something else is in here.”

“So it seems.” Nym took a moment of silence to get her thoughts in order before turning again to Loren. “Do you remember the way through the nest beyond the crack?”

“I do. It was pretty much a straight path.”

“I see. Ritz.” Nym called over to her leader, who had given up on remembering the other party’s faces. She waited until all eyes were on her before she made her proposal. “Something is strange. We might want to leave and re-strategize.”

“Hold on, I feel something off too, but there’s no guarantee this armor belonged to those guys,” said Ritz. “If we want to retreat, we’ll need a stronger reason to justify it.”

“Our reputation’ll take a hit if we leave just because we ran into bloody armor,” Chuck said. “If we got an ID tag, on the other hand…”

Nym scanned the floor, but she couldn’t spot anything that fit the bill.

Ritz sighed and frowned. “We’ll redouble our precautions. But we can’t turn back yet. Otherwise, we risk losing work after this.”

“If that’s your decision, I’ll go along with it. But, Ritz…”

“I know. We’ll aim to find an ID, and the second we do, we can go.”

“Understood.” Having been given conditions under which they would confirm the dangers Nym outlined, she was satisfied.

Ritz made sure there were no other objections before declaring: “Now that’s settled, we’re moving on. Keep on your toes.”

Whether he agreed or not, at the moment, Loren had no choice other than to follow the party. He silently nodded.

When it rains, it pours, they often say, but it seemed Loren had reached a break in the storm. A short while after they spotted the tattered leather armor, Lapis lightly tapped him on the shoulder. She chose the uninjured one, and the ease with which she moved her hands made her message clear.

“Are you fine now?”

“I believe so. I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

Loren made sure Lapis nodded confirmation before gently lowering her from his back. Once she was down, she tried stomping her feet a few times before taking a large stretch and nodding again.

“Hey, missy, you back up?” Ritz said with a grin, but he didn’t sound critical, and Lapis didn’t seem to mind.

“Yes. It was so comfortable up on Mr. Loren’s back that I would have liked to stay longer, but I know I shouldn’t get in the way.”

“Wait, are you two like that?”

Loren opened his mouth to object, but Lapis covered it. His eyes widened. What could she could be up to now?

“It’s still a work in progress,” she said—which was completely outrageous!

“Nice going. You managed to nab yourself quite a pretty gem there, mister,” Chuck crowed. What was he so happy about?!

As Chuck cheered, Nym calmly kicked him in the back. “If you want to draw monsters, do it alone.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll end me before any monster can,” he groaned.

“I’ll have to agree with him there,” said Koltz.

The kick had looked merciless enough, but the damage dealt proved surprisingly light. Chuck was up on his feet in no time, rubbing his back.

“You can participate in combat now, right?” Ritz asked, and Loren nodded.

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have taken part in battle before, but as he would have had to lower Lapis whenever he wanted to draw the sword on his back, it had been difficult to join in at the drop of a hat. Naturally, he would have dropped her in an emergency, but he did feel some reluctance toward being so careless with someone who couldn’t move.

“Then I’m counting on you to watch our backs. Missy, you help him out.”

“Leave it to us.”

They were truly a six-person party now. The formation changed to put Ritz and Chuck at the vanguard, Nym and Koltz in the center, and Loren and Lapis heading up the rear.

“You don’t get to experience this often, Mr. Loren,” Lapis whispered. “Not only are we in an ancient kingdom ruin, it’s an unidentified one at that. And we’re accompanying the initial exploration. You’d never usually get to go on a job like this at copper rank.”

In Loren’s opinion, for a girl whose legs had just recovered, Lapis was in exceedingly high spirits. The party competing with Ritz’s—presumably a silver as well—had likely suffered heavy casualties. That in itself made Loren anxious, as did the age of these ruins and the mysteries they contained. He didn’t see a single reason to be optimistic. Lapis’s exuberance felt completely out of place.

Maybe that’s another reason folks don’t get on with demons. He prodded the bouncing girl with his elbow and spoke, voice low. “Do you even remember the situation we’re in?”

For a moment, Lapis seemed completely lost. She tilted her head at Loren, thought for a while, then abruptly hugged his left arm. “Oh, Mr. Loren. I’m so scared.” Her voice trembled.

“How are you so bad at acting?”

Luckily, as the party had entrusted them with the back line, they didn’t draw attention whispering to one another. That said, Loren wanted to do something about Lapis’s reactions. If she kept this up, they’d arouse suspicions. With that in mind, he tried imagining what reactions would be more appropriate and, unfortunately, drew a blank. If Lapis acted scared, for example, she would be in the way. Yet he still got the feeling something was off about her current attitude—she brimmed with curiosity, showing not even an inkling of fear.

“I get that your interest’s been piqued, but keep it in check, would you?”

“If you insist.” Lapis didn’t look the least bit convinced, but she released his arm and nodded. “Incidentally, what exactly do you consider our current objective again?”

Nym faithfully answered. “Fundamentally, we intend to continue our exploration. However, we’d now also like to establish the whereabouts of our competing party. We do not presently have enough information to determine which takes priority.”

“I see,” Lapis replied. “Then I suggest returning to the pitfall you all fell from.”

The sudden declaration earned Ritz’s interest. “Let’s hear your reasoning, missy.”

“I presume the pitfall was a trap to intercept intruders,” said Lapis.

“Well, yeah. Of course it was.” Chuck’s tone said he thought this so obvious it didn’t need stating.

Lapis paid no mind to this. “Yes, and the fact that the trap wasn’t lethal suggests this entire floor was built to hold any such intruders.”

This seemed far from obvious, but Lapis said it so offhandedly that she perhaps thought it was.

“You mean like the monsters on this floor are only here to sic on the fools who fell? Why would they go outta their way to do that?”

“I don’t yet know the specifics, but no matter the era, no matter the country, it’s often the case that unlawful entrants lack any manner of legal protection. Hence, they may be treated howsoever one desires to treat them. You must understand where I’m going with this by now.”

They did, which was why they all had such unpleasant looks on their faces. Lapis was implying that whoever had designed this place had a use for those who were wounded by the initial fall from the trap above, or who were killed by monsters roaming the floor. What those uses might be, no one could say, but everyone sensed they were anything but decent.

“Let’s put all those musings on the shelf for now. What I want to say is that there is no possible way the creators of this facility would put anything of import on this floor. Hence, searching here is largely pointless if your goal is to investigate the ruins as a whole.”

“So why should we return to the pitfall?”

“There will probably be a passageway nearby, built in order to maintain the trap. Or perhaps to collect the hole’s unlucky victims. Either way, I believe we will find a way up.”

Ritz considered Lapis’s proposal. “There’s some worth in what you’re saying. Especially when we don’t have any other ideas.”

While Nym voiced her agreement, Chuck took up the role of devil’s advocate.

“Hold up. We didn’t see anything like a passageway around.”

“Since the fall isn’t designed to be lethal, they couldn’t make the path up too obvious,” said Lapis. “I presume it is hidden.”

“I didn’t notice it.”

“Well, you’re Chuck…” Ritz muttered. Nym and Koltz nodded along.

Lapis at least seemed to understand she shouldn’t pile on, given that she put on a troubled smile. Wanting to avoid any unnecessary trouble, Loren looked away, expressionless.

“Dammit, how am I supposed to argue with that?” Chuck sighed.

“Then it’s settled,” said Ritz. “We’ll return for now and investigate the area around where we fell.”

Once their leader gave his verdict, the party moved fast. They were just retracing their steps, but they apparently remembered each fork well. Additionally, thanks to the map Koltz had kept, they managed to reach their destination with no issue whatsoever.

“Is there seriously a way up around here?” Koltz muttered.

The pitfall deposited its victims in the middle of a long, unremarkable corridor. They saw no hint of the hidden passage Lapis hypothesized would be there. When Loren squinted up, he could make out a discolored portion of the ceiling—presumably the cover of the pitfall—but it had already resealed. Not to mention, the ceiling was too high to reach without tools.

“Normally, I’d say shut up and look for it, but I’m starting to have my doubts,” said Ritz.

“No matter what you think of me, I’m still a silver-rank thief, you know? Of course I’d be able to spot a hidden—”

A shifting sound, heavy and hard, cut Chuck off.

As the party readied themselves for whatever was coming, the hole overhead once more opened up. A long, pole-like something extended down from it.

Unable to understand what had happened, the party searched for an explanation until their eyes landed on Lapis, who was touching a portion of the wall. For a while, no one spoke, until Loren finally interpreted for the lot: “What did you do?”

“It’s hard to make out on the manamen wall, but this panel operates the hatch.”

Loren leaned down to inspect the section of faintly glowing wall that Lapis traced with her fingers. At a glance, it didn’t look like anything, but after staring at it fixedly for a while, he made out faint lines etched along the surface. As a non-magician, he couldn’t begin to fathom what it might mean. However, the professionals could vouch for Lapis’s find. Loren turned to them.

Chuck and Koltz immediately abdicated responsibility.

“Isn’t this up your alley, old man?”

“Fool. It’s up to a thief to find hidden mechanisms.”

The pole continued to stretch and stretch until it finally reached the floor. Soon enough, a number of handle-like protrusions sprouted from its sides, revealing it to be a rudimentary ladder.

“How should I put this…” Ritz muttered. “It feels like we wasted a lot of time.”

“Well, your excursion worked out nicely for Mr. Loren and myself,” said Lapis. “If you had returned to the upper floor the moment you arrived, we wouldn’t have been able to join you.”

“Luck is also a skill, they say,” Ritz mused. “Now then, we’re supposed to climb?”

Even including its horizontal bars, the pole wasn’t too wide. Nym and Lapis were one thing, but if Ritz, a well-built warrior with heavy equipment, set foot on it, it looked bound to snap.

“This is a facility of the ancient kingdom. I doubt any of its installations will break under human weight,” said Lapis, though she didn’t sound especially confident.

No matter how far the ancient kingdom’s technology surpassed that of the present era, it couldn’t beat the wear and tear of time. The long years might well have compromised the structural integrity of this relic.

“I’ll climb first,” Chuck volunteered. “If you want lightness, sure, Nym would do too. But if there’s a monster up top, I’m probably the only one who could jump back down relatively unharmed.”

Nym nodded. “Good call. It was nice knowing you.”

Chuck sighed, looking miserable. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”

Perhaps Chuck wanted to take responsibility for failing to notice the escape route earlier. In any case, he grabbed the pole and climbed up with nimble movements befitting a thief. Soon, he had reached the top. He grabbed the rim of the open hole and hoisted himself up.

“All clear. Nothing up here.” Chuck leaned back over the edge and beckoned them up. “The ladder’s sturdy enough, though you should come up one at a time.”

Now they just had to decide who went up next.

 

Loren watched Ritz’s back as he hauled himself up the ladder. He glanced at Lapis. Where Loren had done his best to maintain a sense of level-headed alertness, she remained in high spirits, smiling brightly, and he thought he now understood why. Lapis had, by chance, been able to explore ancient ruins she would otherwise never be permitted to enter.

“Hey, Lapis,” he said, taking care not to let his emotions into his voice. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but once we get up there, they’ll probably tell us to leave.”

She froze.

“They were down here because they didn’t know how to get out,” Loren went on. “If they get back to the upper floor, they’ll want to point us back the way they came.”

It was a simple equation of cost and benefit: the cost of shepherding copper-rank adventurers—potential liabilities—put up against the benefit of one blessing. The way Loren saw it, even if Lapis didn’t ultimately expend a blessing on the party, her critical role in revealing the way out more than made up for the protection the party had afforded them thus far. In their shoes, he would say, You’re in luck, now out you get. It would save him quite a bit of trouble. He expected these veterans had similar thoughts.

Lapis remained petrified.

She clearly hasn’t thought this through, Loren realized.

“What do we do?” she whispered. “This didn’t enter my calculations.”

“You’re surprisingly thick.”

“I was so caught up in the prospect of exploring ruins… But it is absolutely necessary to return to the upper floor. I wasn’t lying when I said we wouldn’t find anything down here.”

Lapis looked so troubled. Loren thought for a moment as he watched Ritz laboriously climb. Personally, he wanted to get out of these ruins as fast as his feet could take him. Ancient kingdom ruins were, perhaps, a bushel of fun for adventurers and those driven by intellectual curiosity. To Loren, they held nothing but danger. Even so, seeing Lapis wallow in her failure made him want to grant her wish…even if it meant taking on some minor risks.

“Maybe if we had something else to offer,” he suggested.

“Other than my blessings?” Lapis frowned, contemplative. “That’s difficult. They’d get suspicious if I revealed I can use magic as well.”

“Do you have any special knowledge or technical skills or something?”

“Well, if we identify what kind of ruins these are, I probably have a pretty good idea of the layout.”

As ignorant of ruins as Loren was, that still sounded like incredibly useful information. If Lapis could describe the basic layout of this place without having to walk around and map everything, the party’s investigation would be much more efficient.

“That’s amazing, but how do you know that?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Koltz began climbing seconds after Ritz clambered over the edge. With his bulky robe and elderly body, Koltz moved even slower than the warrior. In fact, the two of them were so sluggish that Nym’s expression was gradually growing irritated. Loren, for his part, watched with the indifferent air of a man observing somebody else’s problem.

“Mr. Loren, could you describe the interior of an adventurers’ guild building?” Lapis asked.

“Not in detail. They’ve got a desk and a dining area. And a reference room, a storehouse, the guildmaster’s office… Something like that?”

As a new adventurer, Loren wasn’t exactly familiar with such structures, but he managed to blurt out some vocabulary he had heard tossed around a few times.

“Yes, the details don’t really matter. The point is that any building housing an adventurers’ guild branch has essentially the same structure. They construct them this way so staff members still have an idea of where to find things even if they’re transferred. The same could be said to apply to ruins.”

Around the center of the ladder, Koltz missed a rung and fell right back down. He fell from a decent height, so Loren worried for a moment, but though old, Koltz was an adventurer. A strong blow to the behind couldn’t stop him, and he quickly stood. He did yelp, however, when Nym, at peak irritation, kicked him back onto his backside. The kick didn’t seem any more serious than this party’s usual shenanigans. Loren nevertheless averted his eyes from the abuse.

“Even if that’s not quite the case here, the architecture of the ancient kingdom is defined by an ethos that prioritizes efficiency, to a certain degree,” Lapis continued. “Buildings serving the same purpose often share the same structure.”

“Are there exceptions?”

“Of course. Every rule has an exception—often many more than that. Just so, every creed has its apostates, and at times you’ll find some ancient kingdom ruins with truly outrageous structures.” Lapis crossed her arms, still frowning. “What a troublesome matter.”

Loren wasn’t about to make anyone any guarantees, but he suspected that if Lapis told the party she had a trove of useful, if unspecific, information, she’d be rather convincing—especially given she was a priest of the god of knowledge. If she offered those insights up alongside the use of the blessing she’d earlier promised, perhaps the party would find the two of them valuable enough to outweigh the trouble they brought.

Lapis still looked troubled and groaned under her breath as she mulled this over; Loren was prepared to put in a bit of elbow grease to perk her up.

We’ll bring it up before Ritz tells us to go home, Loren concluded. They’ll be more amenable then.

Just as Loren reached this conclusion, Koltz reached the top of the ladder. The old man placed his hands on the ledge and pulled himself up, but the moment he did so, he froze.

Loren readied for danger.

“Trouble!” Chuck cried out, leaping past Koltz and thudding to the ground.

He was followed closely behind by Ritz, who shouted on the way down. “Goblin stampede!”

Nym had her bow ready before Ritz had finished. Chuck landed without a sound, while Ritz touched ground with a dull thud.

“Jump down, Koltz!” Ritz yelled.

But Koltz was twice as high as he had been the last time he fell. A thief with nimble feet and a warrior with sturdy build could jump down from such a height without hesitation. The magician had his qualms.

The stampede made his decision. A club and a shortsword grazed Koltz’s head and shoulder, encouraging him to let go and fall to the floor, face-first.

In the time it took the rest to realize how terrible this landing might go, Loren had already moved. He moved at speeds unimaginable for someone shouldering such a hefty sword, scrambled up the ladder, and grabbed Koltz halfway to the ground. From there, he jumped, landing safely.

“S-sorry to trouble you,” Koltz gasped.

“Less talking! More running!” Ritz howled.

Loren’s head jerked up. Goblins poured down through the hole. He took off.

“What the hell is this?!” he yelled back at Ritz as the party pelted down the corridor.

“How am I supposed to know?! Never seen anything like this before—there’s so damn many!”

Ritz took position at the head of the group. Leader’s instinct, probably, rather than because he was the fastest. Loren slowed a bit to retake his position at the rear, letting Nym, Lapis, and Koltz get ahead. He called out to Chuck—he wanted details on what had happened up top.

Chuck just screamed. What could have made a silver-rank adventurer screech like that? Loren risked a glance over his shoulder and promptly groaned.

An avalanche of goblins poured down through the hole—more and more with no end in sight. So many it was pointless to count. Some fell dead upon hitting the floor. Others were crushed. Others still squirmed out of the pile with broken bones, writhing with pain. Their sacrifice gave the goblins who followed a cushioned landing. Most now fell unharmed, ready to fight.

You didn’t have to be Chuck to scream at the sight of that.

The never-ending goblin cascade obliterated the last shreds of Loren’s desire to stand and face the enemy. He could think of nothing but of how to get the hell away.

“What the hell is that?! What the hell is all this?!” Chuck wailed.

“Aren’t these supposed to be abandoned ruins?!” Loren snarled. “How are there so many?! Where the hell were they hiding?!”

“Dammit! I’m too pretty to die like this!”

Loren grit his teeth. “Shut up and run. That’s all we can do now.”

They moaned and groaned, urging one another to run faster and keep running. But where were they supposed to go? The party raced blindly from corridor to corridor. One wrong turn would spell disaster. If they hit a dead end, their only future would be goblins, goblins, and more goddamn goblins. Every soul in the party racked their brains for a solution, but the massive, surging wall of goblin flesh left them coming up empty. They had nothing left to do but pray the path kept going.

“Th-this is a bit—” Koltz gasped.

“W-we might be in trouble here,” Lapis panted.

Elderly Koltz ran out of strength first, followed closely by Lapis. Only Loren knew why Lapis flagged more quickly than the rest. The vigorous movement of her artificial magical limbs had to be draining her mana supply. The two started losing speed, and if this kept up, they’d fall behind Loren.

So he wrapped his arms around their waists and heaved them off the ground.

“H-hey, are you sure about this?” Lapis asked.

“I’m used to it.”

Running with incapacitated comrades in tow was an everyday trial for Loren. He’d had to carry or be carried countless times in his day, and with his company, he’d carried men of much more substantial size wearing near their own body weight in equipment. This time, under one arm Loren had an old man in a robe, and in the other, a girl in priest vestments.

Even so, it was two extra bodies. Yet Loren’s physical might allowed him to maintain speed.

“I’m sorry, young man… I’ll repay you someday…”

“I’m so sorry to be a burden once more.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Loren insisted. “Now you don’t have to think about running—so start using your heads and get us out of here. If this keeps up, we’ll falter, and the second we do, they catch up.”

Loren didn’t know whether goblins or humans had more base stamina on average, but in this scenario, only one side ran weighted down with equipment and bags. The other hurtled forward essentially naked save for the weapons in their hands. In Loren’s estimation, that gave the goblins a dangerous upper hand.

For now, the party kept the lead. Eventually, they’d tire. When that happened, they might as well not even resist. The sheer numbers—the veritable goblin tsunami—would crush them.

So Loren ran and ran, frantically keeping pace with the others, and as he did, he prayed the two under his arms figured out how to save them.