Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 13
Page 11
“Turk did well, but he slipped up at the end. He got nervous about you, Leon, and let off the explosion too soon.”
Like a magician giving away his secrets, he throws the Inferno Stones he’d been hiding onto the ground around us.
There must be at least twenty of them. He definitely could have caused that much damage to the Dungeon with this many stones.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lyu, for doubting you even a little…!”
“…No, I got hotheaded and wasn’t discreet enough. I was trying to avoid you for your own sake…but I was wrong.”
We’re talking side by side, without looking at each other. Lyu mutters softly to me, her eyes glued to the man in front of us.
“Thank you, Mr. Cranell, for believing in a fool like me. I am deeply grateful.”
I’m not sure if it’s joy or happiness, but warmth floods my chest.
“I want to stop this villain…Please, help me.”
“Of course!”
I nod, a smile spreading over my face as I continue to look forward. Keeping my gaze carefully fixed on our enemy, I draw the Divine Knife.
“Jura, accept your fate. You very nearly incited the people of Rivira to kill me, but your plans have crumbled. You have no one left.”
Taming her rage with reason, Lyu speaks to Jura as if she is delivering a final decree. Her eyes drilling into him, she slowly closes the gap between him and us.
In response, he smiles.
Then, brandishing his scarlet whip, he laughs at us.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha, heh-heh-heh…! Don’t make me laugh!”
“…”
“Have you forgotten, Leeeon?”
Lyu’s rival—her sworn enemy—lets out another loud laugh.
An instant later, the whip lashes against the ground, gleaming with a scarlet light.
“I am a tamer!”
A second later, a massive shadow breaks through the ceiling and falls to the ground.
“Huh?!”
Both Lyu and I kick off the ground. She leaps to the left and I to the right; the enormous form crashes right between us. As the whole room shakes, I throw my arms in front of my face to block the flying fragments of crystal.
“Meet my pet.”
Astonished, I look up at an enormous writhing body.
Its gaping maw is searching for anything whatsoever to gulp down.
The long, swollen form has no arms or legs. Where the face should be, there are three pairs of eyes.
It’s a gigantic multi-eyed serpent.
“What the hell are you doing?” Aisha asked, her fearless smile belying her words. She glared at Turk and his companions as they drew their swords while lunging at her.
“So it wasn’t just one of them…” Welf said.
“Yeah, seems all of them were on the dark side,” Ouka answered. As their four opponents drew their weapons and exchanged murderous glances, the two young men pulled out their own weapons.
The enemy party was comprised of two humans and two animal people. All but Turk were wearing large packs. All four had finally shown their true colors.
“Since we’re pressed for time and you won’t leave us alone…we’ll kill you here! For the sake of Jura’s plan, of course!”
The next instant, Turk pulled out a scarlet whip and summoned a monster.
“?!”
Aisha and the rest of the party leaped back as its long body burst through a wall. Lilly gripped Daphne and Haruhime gripped Mikoto, and the four fled the crumbling passage.
Strangely enough, at the very same moment that Bell and Lyu were facing the huge serpent, another of the same monster was appearing before the rest of his party.
“What the…?!”
“A lambton…!”
The long, massive serpent is an extreme large-category monster, definitely imposing enough to be a floor boss. It measures around five meders high and at least ten long.
For a second, my mind goes blank before the overwhelming presence of the beast.
Despite its awesome appearance, I can’t recall anything about the monster before my eyes. Even when Lyu shouts what must be its name, I can’t remember anything. What happened to all that information Eina drilled into me before I left on our expedition for the lower levels?
“—Oh yeah.”
Finally, from the depths of my memory, I manage to extract some information. The instant I do, my breath stops.
“No way…!”
“Ouranos.”
The black-clad figure gripping a crystal ball spoke into the surface of the magic item.
“As you expected, I have discovered a storeroom full of monsters.”
“Are any Xenos imprisoned there?”
“No, none. Just ordinary monsters.”
The figure talking with Ouranos was his closest assistant, the eight-hundred-year-old fallen sage, Fels. The mage had used special powers to invade Knossos on a top secret mission and was now reporting back via an oculus.
“It seems they were transporting other types of monsters captured in the Dungeon as well, not just Xenos.”
“How many?”
“Let’s just say there are too many for me to count.”
The cold stone room was filled with black cages of varying sizes containing different kinds of monsters. There was a plant-type monster with yellow-green skin, a group of large-category monsters captured as a herd, and a dragon with drool dripping from its razor-toothed maw. They seemed to have been suppressed with some kind of tranquilizer, perhaps a magic item, so that even when Fels drew close, they reacted only dully.
The mage held a magic-stone lamp up to the cages one by one. Even without human flesh, the wise skeleton felt a vague chill.
“Are Lido and the others with you?” Ouranos asked.
“No, we split up. Some of the Xenos were imprisoned like this in the past. Even if they’re not of the same species, I decided it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for them to witness this…Also, the enemy’s attacks are quite brutal.”
“Can you dispose of them?”
Glancing over a hastily drawn-up list of the monsters, Fels answered Ouranos in a straightforward manner.
“To be honest, it would be difficult. Their numbers aside, quite a few of them are hard-to-handle specimens.”
Most of the middle- and lower-level monsters generally considered formidable were represented in the group. The documents Fels had discovered suggested that Ikelos Familia and other Evils’ Remnants had been conducting some sort of experiment on them.
Fels stopped in front of several large cages at the back of the hall.
“All the same, this is hard to believe…”
The voice that came from the depths of the black hood was part moan, part whisper.
“I didn’t expect them to have brought up monsters from the deep levels…”
There were two enormous cages. The bars of both had been bent out of shape from the inside.
CHAPTER 4
COUNTDOWN
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
The catman’s laughter echoes through the room.
As Lyu and I stand side by side watching, a large drop of sticky liquid falls from the serpent monster’s pointed fang.
It’s a lambton.
A rare monster from the deep levels. Its head narrows toward the tip, and its jaws—which open vertically—look wide enough to swallow an orc whole. On either side of its mouth are nine holes comprising an organ not seen on other monsters.
But the first thing I notice is the man-made collar attached below its head. It sparkles with a red jewel that seems to mark it as the tamer’s “pet.”
Its skin is deep blue, and its amber eyes roll restlessly in its head as it glares at Lyu and me.
“How did a monster from the deep levels get all the way up here…?!”
For a monster from so far down in the depths of the Dungeon to appear here in the Water Capital is a very unusual irregularity indeed. As I gape in shock at the unbeliev
able phenomenon, the catman smiles jeeringly at us.
“I brought it from Knossos. It’s one of the monsters the crew over there captured. You probably know what I’m talking about, since you were mixed up with those creepy talking monsters and Ikelos Familia.”
“…!”
He sounds like he knows all about my connections with the Xenos and Ikelos Familia. And if that man-made dungeon has something to do with this, then everything is starting to make sense. Still, a monster this huge would surely catch the attention of other adventurers. But there haven’t been any rumors about this, let alone a single report of a sighting. Strange!
My thoughts must be showing on my face, because the catman continues talking, his expression still as relaxed as ever.
“You haven’t heard about it, Rabbit Foot? The special ability of the wormwells?”
“…!”
“‘Lambton’ is just a nickname, like the ones we adventurers have.”
Now I remember.
I mentally run through the information about deep-level monsters that I reviewed in one of the illustrated books I studied with Eina before the expedition, just in case.
“Lambton” is the nickname adventurers have given the species. Its proper name is wormwell, the first part meaning “serpent” and the second referring to a “water well.” As I recall with a jolt of surprise why this is its name, Lyu draws her brows together and says what I’m thinking.
“Lambtons are able to move between floors by boring through the earth…!”
“A monster that moves between floors?!” Welf shouted in response to Aisha’s explanation, completely forgetting his surroundings.
“Yeah, that’s why it has that over-the-top nickname, ‘lambton.’ The written characters for it mean ‘evil omen.’”
They were in a passageway on the twenty-fifth floor. As the party faced the same type of monster Bell was encountering two floors down, Aisha smiled nervously.
Normally, the wormwell—or lambton—lived on the thirty-seventh floor. But just as its name suggested, it had the ability to bore vertically upward through the floors, as if it were digging a well in reverse, and appear on the higher floors. That’s what made it so terrifying to adventurers.
“You mean a monster from the lower floors can invade the higher ones…?!”
For wormwells, that wasn’t an irregular characteristic; it was simply their nature. They paid no attention to the principle of levels and instead moved freely between floors. Mikoto and Chigusa, who understood exactly how terrifying this was, turned pale.
“So just how strong is it…?” Lilly squeaked, stunned by this encounter with a totally unexpected monster.
According to the Guild, it had a potential of Level Four.
It only rarely appeared in the lower levels, but when it did, it was as good as a death knell announcing total destruction to adventurers.
“You must be kidding!!” Welf barked, holding his greatsword at the ready.
Under the control of Turk and his scarlet whip, the growling wormwell slowly twisted its body into an attack position.
As nervous tension rippled through the party, Aisha shouted out a warning.
“Whatever you do, don’t cling onto that monster! If you do, it will carry you to another floor!”
What she didn’t say was that most likely, before the unfortunate adventurer got there, they would be ground to mincemeat between the monster’s massive body and the rocky walls of the Dungeon tunnel it crawled through.
In either case, the moment the monster captured you, you were done for.
“Get ’em, lambton!”
The werewolf Turk beat his whip against the ground. In response, the giant serpent growled loudly, then lunged toward the party.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
“Aaah!”
I leap to avoid the wormwell’s darting head.
With a shiver, I realize it can easily reach every corner of this huge room, which measures around twenty meders high and fifty across. The serpent’s slithering body shaves off crystals and clusters from the floor and sends them flying. Meanwhile, a wave from the turbulent waterway splashes over me.
But even as I’m drenched from head to toe, I never take my eyes off the writhing monster on the far side of the room.
“It’s way stronger than anything on the twenty-seventh floor…!”
The wormwell seems to mysteriously appear from its habitat on the thirty-seventh floor, and then disappear again without a trace. It never burrows down below the thirty-seventh floor, though. That’s because it would be suicide to go even one level down in the Dungeon, where monsters grow stronger the deeper one descends.
I’ve heard that many a party of adventurers has been wiped out when this monster with its disproportionate potential appeared on a higher floor. I even seem to recall hearing that the wormwell is the most feared of all creatures among adventurers who explore the lower levels.
The distinct sound it makes as it burrows through the ground foretells disaster. It is indeed an evil omen.
All the same, it’s unprecedented for a wormwell to appear in the Water Capital!!
The highest floor it’s ever been sighted on is the twenty-ninth. Eina told me that it would be impossible for a lambton to burrow through ten floors’ worth of solid rock.
But things are falling into place now.
That huge hole I discovered with Bors’s party was made by this monster. It was the track the thing made as it moved between floors!
“Sic ’em, lambton!”
The catman tamer lashes his whip against the ground. As soon as he does, the lambton roars and hurls its body into the air.
“Wha—?”
Its head draws a ten-meder-high arc through space. Its long body follows, swimming through the air with flashes of deep blue. I’m captivated for a moment by the fantastic sight, monster or not. Time seems to slow down. Even as it does, though, my instincts are screaming out a warning.
The body twists, and slowly the menacing form is drawn downward by gravity. A black shadow blocks out the white crystal lights on the ceiling, darkening the spot where I stand.
I look up in shock as the serpent’s huge body spins downward toward me.
“Run, Mr. Cranell!”
Lyu’s voice pushes me into motion, and I rush away from the falling form with all my strength.
“!!”
The room—no, more likely the entire Dungeon—shakes with a thundering crash as the lambton smashes onto the floor where I was standing a second before.
I’m thrown into the air by the shock waves, and my vision blurs.
The serpent is twisting and burrowing its way into the rock floor. Even as my body flies over the crystals, the long form is swallowed completely by the ground.
Using the momentum from my rolling landing, I quickly stand up and manage to recover a fighting stance. My blood runs cold as I look around the room now disfigured by a gigantic hole.
“…?!”
“…!”
Lyu and I both aim our weapons at the ground.
The vibrations emanating upward are ceaseless. The serpent is digging through the ground with the intention of swallowing its prey—us—whole.
Where will it reappear?
From land or from water?
“Wrong!” The catman jeers as we stare warily at the ground.
The next instant, the huge form emerges with a crushing noise off to one side. Crystal fragments fly from a wall near Lyu on the west side of the room, and the lambton lunges forward with its jaws open wide.
“Miss Lyu!!”
“Yaaa!”
Lyu seems to be on fire as the serpent bears down on her. To make up for lost time, she kicks the ground and, with a swish of her long cape, flies upward. She’s deftly taken refuge in the air as the long body rac
es past below.
She lands next to me and takes in the monster that is now charging across the center of the room.
“Are lambtons always this insane?” I ask, panting.
“Well, since they’re a rare monster, I’ve only encountered the species one other time. I can’t really answer your question…” she replies vaguely, readying her wooden sword.
The only time I’ve ever confronted a monster this huge was when I fought the Goliath. But this thing…Both its attack methods and its scale are crazy. I guess that’s what deep-level monsters are like!
“So the end has come, eh, Leon? You and Rabbit Foot can get real close inside this guy’s stomach!”
The catman laughs loudly.
“We don’t need to take part in our enemy’s circus performance,” Lyu whispers into my shoulder.
I’m surprised, but I nod quickly. After exchanging these brief words, we start running forward in parallel.
I extend my right hand toward the roaring lambton.
“Firebolt!”
The electrifying flames that burst from my fist reach the monster’s face and land on one of the nine holes next to its mouth. Of course, this magic attack doesn’t inflict much damage on my extreme large-category opponent.
Still, the three pairs of bloodshot eyes focus in on me.
Gotcha!
The monster’s angry shriek makes me sweat, but nevertheless, I form my hand into a fist.
This is my first fight with a tamer, but even I can figure out that it makes more sense to aim for the tamer himself than for the monster he’s controlling. Given that they have to learn tamer skills, my guess is they’re often weaker than other adventurers.
So you separate them from their monster and attack them in their “naked” state.
In this case, I’ll serve as the bait to draw away the monster while Lyu acts as the spear that pierces the tamer.
As the lambton momentarily focuses its attention on me, Lyu speeds up.
Like a falcon gliding across the open sky, she races forward, body tilted toward the ground. She slips through the narrow gap between the monster’s body and the ground and arrives next to the tamer, who had been obstructed by the serpent.