An elder lich was a fairly strong enemy; for platinum-rank adventurers it would still be pretty difficult, while a mythril-rank team would have a decent enough chance of winning.
For Gringham’s team, if they didn’t think about how tired they were, they could defeat it. Luckily, this time he’d brought along members who were quite strong against undead. That was encouraging.
It would have been tough to fight if the lich had kept some distance, but at this range, he felt they could probably gain the advantage.
“So this is the master of the tomb!” That’s what Gringham had concluded. An elder lich was a ruler. They controlled mobs of undead and sometimes had dealings with the living.
There were even famous elder liches, like the captain of the ghost ship that sometimes sailed through the fog on the Katze Plain or the one ruling an abandoned castle.
If this one was an elder lich like them, it wouldn’t be any surprise if it were the master of the tomb.
“So we hit the jackpot? Super lucky!”
“Uh, it’s not like the request was to kill the master of the tomb, you know.”
“Shall we show it the might of Heavy Masher?”
“Let’s show it our divine protection!”
Everyone chimed in excitedly. They roared to chase off the fear of facing such a powerful enemy.
“We need defense magic and…” Just as Gringham was about to shout the plan of attack to his determined teammates, he was assailed by the feeling something was off. He understood its cause immediately. It was the enemy before them, the elder lich.
“……What is it?”
“We’re not…taking it by surprise, are we?”
Although the party was in full sight, the elder lich didn’t make a single move. It didn’t raise its staff or begin casting a spell. It simply watched them in silence.
The workers couldn’t contain their confusion. The monster had obliterated their prediction that it would engage them immediately, but now they hesitated to make the first move and attack.
Certainly undead were hostile to the living, but it was also true that some of the intelligent ones could negotiate. Usually if a living thing initiated, the terms went in favor of the undead, but if the undead proposed a truce, one could sometimes acquire an item made with technology lost long ago.
In any case, when it came to an enemy as powerful as an elder lich, there was nothing better than getting through an encounter without fighting. Perhaps it was irritated that its traps hadn’t finished them off, but there was also the possibility that it recognized their ability and had chosen the peaceful path of striking a deal.
Thinking that way, it was horribly thoughtless to make the first move and attack. That would mean completely abandoning potential negotiations. But they were in enemy territory. With no secure escape route, they risked a tough battle ahead.
The team exchanged glances and concluded they were all thinking the same thing.
Speaking on behalf of the team was the job of the leader, naturally.
“Excuse us for intruding. You seem to be the master of this tomb. We—”
The elder lich turned its awful face to Gringham and pointed a bony finger at him.
It meant, Shut up.
The gesture didn’t seem very elder lich–like at all, but he wasn’t brave—no, suicidal—enough to say it to the powerful monster’s face.
Gringham obediently shut his mouth. Then in the hallway over which silence had fallen once more, he heard that sound again, and strained his ears in spite of himself.
It was the familiar sound of something tapping against the floor—but of more than one something.
Gringham and his teammates all looked at one another. Upon hearing the sound, the conclusion they had arrived at was inconceivable.
Then they all shrieked at once.
“Who said this elder lich was the master of the tomb?!”
“Sorry! It was me!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? This can’t be happening!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa—there’s no way we can win this!”
“Even divine protection has its limits!”
More elder liches appeared from behind the first one—six of them.
That meant a total of seven immensely powerful undead casters.
Certainly since they were all one race, their method of attack would be the same. If only they had a way to neutralize all the monsters’ attacks, they would be able to defeat all seven of them.
Of course, they didn’t have such a way, and neither could they possibly acquire one.
Under those impossible circumstances, Gringham and his team completely lost the will to fight.
“Now then, shall we begin?”
As the elder lich, who had not the slightest intention of negotiating, spoke, the seven staves were slowly raised.
At the same time, Gringham’s scream rang out. “Retreat!”
As if they’d been just waiting for him to say the word, everyone ran as fast as they could. They raced in the opposite direction of the elder liches. Of course, they didn’t have the presence of mind to consider what might be at the end of the hallway. They just wanted to survive the excessive power of the mob of elder liches a little longer.
At the front of the line was the thief. Then came Gringham, the wizard, the priest, and the warrior.
The workers ran. They ran with no misgivings.
A corner. Normally, they would be on the lookout for monsters or traps, but with footsteps coming after them, they didn’t have time to make cautious observations. They left their fates to chance and raced on.
Both sides of the hallway had stone doors, but when they imagined the possibility of dead ends, the courage to open one was nowhere to be found.
The clanking of the workers in metal armor as they ran echoed off the walls. The noise could have given away their position to other monsters, but they didn’t have the presence of mind to cast Silence.
They ran, and ran, and ran.
They pumped their legs in a frenzy, turned random corners, and got lost after sprinting down each hallway; they no longer had any idea where they were.
They would have liked to get back to the entrance, but they didn’t have the wherewithal.
“Are they still behind us?” Gringham shouted as they ran.
The warrior bringing up the rear answered, “Yeah! They’re running after us!”
“Dammit!”
“Don’t run! Use Fly!”
“If they flew over here, the next thing that would fly at us would be spells, you idiot!”
“Let’s hole up in one of these little rooms and try to negotiate!” the wizard shouted, gasping for air. He was the weakest of the group and seemed about ready to collapse.
This is bad, thought Gringham. Physically, he’s not going to last much longer.
Undead monsters like elder liches didn’t get tired. If Gringham and his men kept getting chased, they would slowly be killed off as they ran out of energy.
“Why the heck are there that many elder liches…?”
Common sense said this situation couldn’t be.
“The master of this tomb must be stronger than an elder lich, huh?”
That was the only answer that made sense. But did such an undead even exist? Gringham didn’t know.
“Dammit! This fucking tomb!” the wheezing warrior at the end of the line screamed.
As if on cue, a crest appeared glowing in the floor. It was big enough to capture all of Gringham and his teammates inside.
“Wha—?!”
Someone’s voice, something like a scream, rang out…
This floating sensation was different from the fall earlier.
Gringham’s field of vision was enveloped in pitch-black. He could hear things crunching and snapping underfoot and sensed his body slowing sinking. It felt like he’d been thrown into a swamp. He panicked for a split second before realizing it didn’t seem terribly deep. He sank to about his hips but no
farther.
In the darkness ruled by quiet, he asked in the timid voice of a boy who’d lost sight of his parents, “…Is anybody there?”
“Over here, Gringham.” The voice of the thief gave an immediate answer—and from not too far away. He was probably about as far away as he had been while they were running.
“…Is anyone else around?”
There was no reply. He’d expected as much. If there wasn’t a light, it meant his wizard and warrior weren’t around. He just had to count himself lucky the thief was there.
“…Seems like it’s just us.”
“Thou art…tch! Ya, you’re right.”
He scanned their surroundings without taking a single step. The deep darkness went on forever, and a fear welled up inside him—he couldn’t tell where the darkness stopped and his body started.
There’s no sign of anything moving, but…
“Should we turn on a light?”
“Guess we have to.”
It was unfortunate, but despite countless worries—moving would break the silence, maybe it would trigger a trap—their human eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness. They needed a light no matter what.
“Okay, just a sec.”
Gringham sensed some rummaging around from the direction of the thief. Then a light appeared.
The first thing he saw was the thief holding up the Fluorescent Stick. Next, innumerable gleams, reflections of the light. It reminded him of the treasure they’d seen in the mausoleum—but something was different.
Gringham frantically bit back the scream that welled up deep in his throat. The thief’s face also seemed to cramp up.
The countless reflections, the sparkles, were bugs—cockroaches—that completely buried the area. The smallest were the size of the tip of his pinkie finger, but the largest were over three feet long. Layers upon layers of cockroaches.
The crunching sensation beneath his feet was trampled cockroaches. Considering the bugs were piled up to his hips, he didn’t want to imagine how many of them there must have been.
The room was so large the light didn’t reach its walls. Considering the range of a Fluorescent Stick was around fifteen yards, they got an idea of how big the room was. When they looked up at the ceiling, there were a great many cockroaches reflecting the light there as well.
“Where…are we…?” the thief gasped in a murmur.
Gringham understood how he felt. He must have thought the bugs would start to move if he raised his voice.
“What the hell happened?”
As the thief scanned the area, Gringham recalled the scene before they found themselves in this darkness, the magic circle that had appeared on the floor, and asked, “…Probably a pitfall, no?”
“No, it can’t be that. I think we were hit by some magic…”
“A teleportation trap…? Or did the elder liches cast something?”
Teleportation spells were normal. For instance, there was the tier-three escape spell, Dimensional Move. But that only teleported the user. To teleport someone else—and more than one person at that—
“There’s some tier-six spell that can teleport multiple people, I think, right?”
“Ahh yeah, I think you’re right.”
“But could there really be someone who can use it…?”
Gringham didn’t even know of that many casters who could use tier five. But it still made sense to him. He could see how there would be multiple elder liches here if such an absolute power existed. It would probably have no problem dominating them and ordering them around.
It hit Gringham what a dangerous place this tomb was, and he shuddered. He also felt a hostility toward the count, the requester, appear inside him. Of course, it was Gringham and his team who had taken the job; they’d understood the risks and bet the chips of their lives. If someone had said he was just blaming his problems out on the count, there wouldn’t have been any way to argue.
But the count should have been informed to some degree. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have made the request to survey the tomb, offered such a large reward, gathered together so many workers, and sent them there.
“So he was sitting on some info? Shit… Let’s hurry up and get out of here. These ruins…should have been left untouched.”
“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll go out in front, Gringham. Follow me.”
It seemed like the thief hadn’t realized yet—that none of the cockroaches were moving one bit—but that was probably for the best.
Gringham flicked his eyes over all the cockroaches before him.
From the way their feelers were moving slightly, he could tell they weren’t dead, but they didn’t budge. An uncanny feeling he couldn’t place took root in his mind.
“No, I doubt you can escape.”
Suddenly, a third voice sounded.
“Who’s there?”
Gringham and the thief scanned the area in a panic but couldn’t sense anything moving.
“Oh, how rude of me. I am the Prince of Fear, the one who was granted this realm by Lord Ainz. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
When they looked in the direction the voice came from, something strange appeared in their line of sight. Something was shoving the cockroaches aside, trying to get out from beneath them.
They weren’t at a range where they could use close-proximity weapons. The thief silently drew his bow. Gringham moved to get out his sling—but stopped. He thought if it came to it, he would wade through the cockroaches and cut the thing.
Before long, the creature pushing through the other cockroaches emerged—and it was yet another cockroach.
But it had an elegance that set it apart from its surrounding brethren. This cockroach was nearly a foot tall and stood upright on two legs.
It wore a brilliant red cape gorgeously bordered in gold thread, and a golden crown sparkled on its head. In its forelegs, it carried a scepter with a pure-white jewel at the tip.
The strangest thing of all was that despite standing upright, its head was still pointed at Gringham and the thief. If a normal insect stood upright, its head would, of course, point up. But this odd being before them was different.
Besides that, there wasn’t anything else in particular to separate it from the other cockroaches. But that one difference was plenty.
The worker pair exchanged glances and decided that Gringham would be in charge of negotiations. The thief still had an arrow nocked. Once Gringham made sure it was pointed down, he addressed the Prince of Fear. “Who…are you?”
“Hmm. It seems you weren’t paying attention just now. Shall I introduce myself again?”
“No, I don’t mean like that—” Having gotten that far, Gringham realized that wasn’t what he needed to be asking. “…I’ll be blunt. Want to make a deal?”
“Oh-ho. A deal? I’m grateful to you both, so I’m not adverse to the idea.”
The mystery contained in those words—what was he grateful for?—gave Gringham pause, but he wasn’t in a position to ask.
“We would like…to be let out of this room unharmed.”
“I see. That’s only natural. But even if you got out of this room, we’re currently on the second level of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. I must advise you, it would be extremely difficult to return to the surface.”
The second level…
Gringham’s eyes widened at the words.
“Am I right in thinking that the area through the door at a slight descent from the mausoleum on the surface is level one?”
“Isn’t that the usual way to count them?”
“Well, yeah, but I just wanted to confirm.”
“Ha-haa! Well, you were teleported from level one, so it makes sense that you’re a little turned around.”
With the cockroach before him somehow nodding its head, Gringham felt a freezing chill like he’d been stabbed with an icicle.
It was fear due to his earlier conversation with the thief being affirmed.
It meant that somehow—who
knew?—someone had used teleportation magic like a trap. What kind of spell? What sort of technique? He wasn’t a caster, but even he knew what an incredible feat that was.
“…It would be great if you would also tell us how to get out of the tomb, but we aren’t hoping for that much. Letting us out of this room is fine.”
“Hmm, hmm.”
“In return, we’ll…give you what you want.”
“I see…” The Prince of Fear nodded emphatically and appeared to be thinking things over.
A short time passed in the quiet room. Soon enough, the Prince of Fear seemed to have made up his mind and spoke.
“I already have what I want. Anything you are capable of offering is insufficient.”
Gringham was about to speak, but the prince held up his forelegs to silence him and continued.
“But before we get to that, you seem to be wondering why I’m grateful to you, so I will satisfy that curiosity now. My kin are sick and tired of cannibalism; thus, you two delectable morsels have my thanks.”
“Wha—?!”
The moment he comprehended the words, the thief loosed his arrow.
It flew through the air, got caught in the prince’s cape, and fell impotently.
Then the room began to squirm.
With myriad rustling noises, the prince’s kin formed something gigantic.
And there was a tsunami.
A dark torrent.
“It’s a terrible shame that there are only two of you, but please try to fill the stomachs of my kin.”
The massive, swollen wave engulfed Gringham and the thief. It was exactly like they’d been hit by a tidal wave.
As he was swallowed up by the black maelstrom, Gringham frantically batted at the cockroaches coming in through the gaps in his armor.
A weapon wouldn’t work against a mass of tiny insects, but Gringham didn’t have any area-of-effect attacks. It was faster to just swat them with his hands. For that reason, he’d already thrown away his weapon and had no idea where it had gone.
He tried to flail his arms, but it was difficult to move now that he was completely covered in bugs. The scene was like a drowning man’s floundering. The only sound he could hear was the scrabbling of countless cockroaches.
The Invaders of the Great Tomb Page 17
