"......"
In that instant, tension crawled up my back.
This street was one where it wouldn’t be strange if someone drew a knife at any moment.
A pack of ghouls ahead, an unidentified stranger behind.
There was nowhere to run, and no room to hide.
But he continued quietly, in a very low voice.
"Please calm down and steady your breathing. Ghouls are sensitive to sound."
......I guess it showed that I was tense.
Well, in a situation where I couldn’t even breathe properly and was panicking, I couldn’t exactly hope for a convincing act.
I drew in a small breath.
I exhaled slowly, very slowly, as if emptying the air built up in my lungs, cooling the sweat on the nape of my neck.
"......Who are you?"
At my quiet question, he tilted his head ever so slightly.
Then, after casting one more glance toward the forest, he answered cautiously.
"I suppose giving my name first would be... proper manners."
He lowered his head and muttered briefly.
"My name is 'Silen.' Let’s just say I’m a passerby."
"For a passerby, you found us a little too accurately."
"I didn’t find you. I simply followed... the direction the ghouls were gathering from where I was."
"......"
He looked beyond the pack of ghouls and spoke quietly.
"That group will move soon. They won’t stay there like that. Once the sun tilts, they begin hunting."
"......And?"
"I know a way out."
As he said that, he pointed with his finger toward the edge of the forest on the right.
A place where vines and trees were tangled together, somewhere that didn’t look like a path at all at first glance.
"Depending on what you want, I may be able to help."
At that moment, silence fell again.
Aileen carefully nudged my side.
I read the question in her eyes: What should we do?
After a beat, I opened my mouth.
"This way out you’re talking about... is it really safe?"
If there was such a safe path, why would he bother taking us with him?
Silen gave a faint laugh and answered briefly.
"In this forest, a safe path is merely a less dangerous one. Still..."
He slowly turned and met our gazes.
"It’s not as if you have any other method right now, do you?"
...He wasn’t wrong.
We had to avoid the pack of ghouls somehow, and he was the one claiming to know a way.
"Then how about we move while keeping some distance from each other?"
Aileen cautiously suggested from beside me.
"We don’t trust each other, so I suppose there’s no helping it. Let’s do that."
Without saying anything else, he turned away.
Not even a word telling us to follow—he simply started walking.
We naturally kept our distance and followed behind him.
By the time the pack of ghouls had completely disappeared from sight, the scenery beyond the forest began to reveal itself again.
But—
"......It’s a cliff."
"Yes."
There was no path ahead.
To be precise, there was one, but it was a path that dropped straight down.
A naturally eroded fault cliff stood at the point where the dense forest ended.
It looked about as high as the third floor of an apartment building, and below, grass and stones were tangled together irregularly.
"We have to... go down this?"
I instinctively swallowed.
If we fell wrong, it wouldn’t end with just a sprained ankle.
On top of that, my wrist wasn’t in good condition either, so it was definitely a burdensome option.
"This cliff was originally the height difference that separates the outskirts of the forest from the plains."
"The plains?"
He lifted his hand and pointed into the distance.
"If you go down there, it connects to the northern trade route. The city is at the end of one of that road’s branches."
At those words, I let out a small breath.
So this really had been the right way.
"You’re not telling us to just jump down, are you?"
"No. If you follow along to the right, there’s a gentler slope. We can circle around to there."
He quietly walked ahead, and we began walking along the cliff again.
When I looked back, only then did the shadow of the forest start to recede.
"Can we trust him?"
Aileen asked cautiously.
"No."
I answered firmly.
Looking at Silen leisurely walking ahead, there was no reason to soften my words.
The timing of his appearance, his attitude, his reason—there wasn’t a single part of it that wasn’t suspicious.
We were following him not because we trusted him, but simply because we had no other option.
"Still... for now, we have to follow him."
"Yeah. Because we have no choice."
Whether he heard our conversation or simply sensed something off, Silen glanced back over his shoulder and let a slight smile slip.
Somehow, that expression felt like an act deliberately meant to lower our trust in him.
'He really is suspicious as hell.'
After walking a little farther along the cliff, the slope finally came into view.
On the right-hand incline, a narrow stone path continued between solid cracks in the rock, and below, a dense forest and open flatland spread out widely.
"This is it. If we descend along this slope, we can reach the northern plains directly."
Silen pointed downward as he spoke.
We followed behind Silen, carefully heading out of the forest along the slope.
The narrow path leading down below the cliff twisted and wound, and the damp dirt kept making our feet slip.
"It’s just a little farther. Once we get down there..."
Silen spoke from the front.
His voice was still calm. But somehow, it felt as if it was trembling.
I met Aileen’s eyes over my shoulder.
"......Doesn’t this seem strange?"
"Yes. Look at the ground there."
There were strangely split cracks in the ground.
They looked as though they had been stepped on and compacted dozens of times, yet also like something had pushed up from within.
I instinctively took one step back.
And then—
Crack! Cra-crack!
The ground heaved.
"What the—!"
A rotten hand burst through the dirt.
Soon after, decayed skin, rotting eyeballs, and a jaw with exposed bone broke through the ground and appeared.
"Gwooooooo——!!"
I thought they were ghouls.
But they weren’t.
They were different from ghouls.
More rotten, more corpse-like.
...If I had to describe them, they were like zombies.
And there wasn’t just one.
The ground surged up all around us.
They had been hiding beneath the soil, and as if they had received some signal, they all burst out at once.
"Damn it, it was an ambush!"
"......Silen?"
I turned my head.
Silen was gone.
At some point, he had turned back and was running away.
Without a word, without any signal.
"That son of a—!"
I leapt up at once, pulled the staff from my waist, and extended it toward him.
A small water bomb made with a brief Compression.
"You bastard, where do you think you’re going?!"
Without hesitation, I fired it.
Whoosh—boom!
The water bomb struck the back of the fleeing Silen’s head directly.
A moist current burst, and the shockwave smacked the back of his head. He staggered and lost his balance.
"Urgh... you, you bastard...!"
"You’re the bastard, you idiot! You’re running after dumping us here?!"
I rushed in and kicked him again without pause.
At that moment, the zombies had come right up behind us.
"Liv, behind you!!"
At Aileen’s shout, I hurriedly turned.
Whoosh. Crunch!
The mace I swung with my left hand crushed a zombie’s head.
Blood and rotten fluids splattered, soaking the ground.
"One, two, three... Damn it, how many are there?!"
"We’re surrounded!"
"Damn it, then let’s break through the encirclement first!"
I grabbed the fallen Silen by the collar and threw him toward the horde of zombies.
"You fight too, you bastard!"
"U-uaaaaaaah—!!"
And just like that, the battle began.
Silen was a more seasoned fighter than I had expected.
Whether he had half regained his senses despite being hit in the back of the head, he responded with surprising speed.
Getting to his feet, he drew a short dagger and swung it at the approaching zombies.
"D-don’t come! Get lost, you rotten bastards!"
The dulled blade split a zombie’s shoulder, but the rotten flesh clung like mud and didn’t even cut properly.
Silen seemed to realize that quickly as well, and swiftly changed his line of attack to target arms, legs, and joints.
He was cowardly, but perhaps he hadn’t armed himself for nothing; his practical combat sense seemed fairly sharp.
"Uuuuuugh..."
The appearances of the zombies surrounding us were the stuff of nightmares.
Some had missing eyeballs, some had entrails spilling out, some had exposed bones instead of fingers.
Every single one of them was damaged beyond recognition from what they had been in life.
"Liv, right!"
At Aileen’s shout, I turned my head reflexively.
One of them had been crawling on all fours, then suddenly sprang up.
"Grrrraaaah—"
"Get lost!"
Crack!
I swung the mace in my hand and smashed the top of its head.
Its head burst like rotten fruit, and it staggered before collapsing to the ground.
Before I knew it, the zombies were swarming like a pack of rats, forcing me to draw out a Current Barrier to block the front.
Thud! Thud, thud!
Streams of water formed a translucent wall, pushing back the zombies’ hands and feet.
Amid the fierce pressure, I gritted my teeth.
Fortunately, Silen was drawing the attention of most of the zombies by himself in front.
He had, in every sense, been thrown alone into the middle of hell.
...He brought it on himself.
Among the creatures clawing up from the ground, Silen staggered with a half-dazed expression.
He was holding out with a single short dagger, but that weapon was already as good as useless.
"S-save me!!"
I ignored the scream from ahead.
Right now, blocking even one zombie in front of me was all I could handle.
"They’re weaker than I thought... The problem is their numbers."
Compared to their terrifying appearance, the zombies were slow, and their attacks were simple.
But dealing with them one by one was burdensome because of how many there were.
If I dealt with one, two more had already approached, and another would lunge from outside my field of vision.
"Ugh, I’ll hold the rear!"
Aileen was blocking the back with her dagger in hand.
There was no helping it. I had no choice but to go at this the brute-force way.
Trusting Aileen, I focused on gathering mana.
"Good, just hold on like that!"
I released the Current Barrier and wrapped that flow of water around my staff again.
The blue sphere gathered to the size of a head was already vibrating so fiercely it hummed.
I couldn’t control it any further than this.
"Move!!"
I shouted at Silen and swung my staff with all my strength.
[Water Bomb]
Whoooooosh!
The water current shot forward like a compressed waterfall.
Its trajectory cut straight through the center where the zombies were most densely packed.
"Aaaagh!"
Kwaaaaaang!!
The water erupted as if exploding, sweeping across the earth, and the zombies that lost their balance from the impact were torn apart and sent rolling in all directions.
In that instant, a path opened, and my vision brightened.
"Now! Break through!"
I shouted, and we all stepped forward at once.
A few small fry sprang out, but I gripped my mace and struck the knee of one lunging in from the left, while Aileen held her dagger short and stabbed another in the nape, bringing it down.
"Move!"
"This way!"
We matched each other’s rhythm and desperately broke through the gaps in the zombie horde.
Behind us, along with the stench of rot, hands still crawled toward us in twisting motions, but we only looked forward and ran.
And finally, as we shoved through the bushes and burst out, our view opened.
My breath had risen to my throat, and my whole body was covered in mud and blood, but we had definitely passed one hurdle.
Panting, I muttered quietly.
"Hah... hah... This is fucking awful."
I caught my breath in short gasps and sat down beside a rock.
Beside me, Aileen quietly steadied her breathing while fixing her disheveled hair.
And Silen.
He plopped down on the ground, wounds on his arms and face, and let out a hollow laugh.
I had thought he would run away just like that, but whether it was because he had no stamina left or because he had more guts than expected,
he had followed us all the way here.
"Hah, hah. I-I’m alive..."
When I quietly approached from behind, Silen sensed my presence and recoiled in horror.
"Eek! I-I’m sorry. Please spare me just this once...!"
"......"
Silen collapsed where he was and pressed his head to the ground.
I glanced toward Aileen beside me.
She looked into my eyes briefly, then nodded silently as if to say, I’ll leave it to you.
"Take off the cloth."
"Y-yes... Yes..."
With trembling hands, Silen carefully untied the rough cloth covering his face.
The skin revealed between the folds looked far younger than I had expected.
The short brown stubble and unkempt hair spoke of an awkward age.
Sun-darkened skin, a wrinkled forehead, but a jawline that had not yet fully hardened.
At a glance, he looked to be in his early to mid-twenties, a face not yet fully mature.
Even now, he stood slightly hunched, wearing an expression as if he were about to offer some excuse.
I clenched the hand holding my mace and glared at him.
"Hey."
Silen flinched.
Maybe because my tone was filled with displeasure.
"Let’s hear an explanation. Those things earlier—why did they suddenly pop out of the ground?"
He lowered his head without a word.
There was no real explanation, not even an excuse.
That irritated me even more.
Aileen was also quietly watching his reaction.
Her gaze was colder than mine, and sharper.
"Did you take us there on purpose?"
"......"
After a long silence, he reluctantly opened his mouth.
"If I’d known that was going to happen... I wouldn’t have moved with you... sir."
"Don’t dodge the question. Answer me. You knew there were zombies there!"
"......My original companions were taken down first, and I had no way out alone."
I drew in a deep breath.
So he had originally been with companions, gotten caught, and then tried to use us to get out again.
For that, though, he had tried to run away again with a terrified face.
The sight of him being dropped by a single water bomb while fleeing was still vivid in my mind.
If he had been targeting us, he would have simply ambushed us from behind.
In the end, he was...
just a coward.
I turned away and said,
"......Tch, get lost."
He didn’t say anything.
Only one of his eyebrows trembled faintly.
We began walking toward the plains again.