“Phew…”
The executive bastards who appeared before my eyes.
I beat every last one of them down and sent them off to the side of the Demon King they loved so much.
Ah, no.
The Demon King isn’t dead yet.
Then…
Well… anyway, I killed them.
I don’t think there’s any need to describe exactly how I killed them.
It’s just, how should I put it… it feels a little too lame for me to bother narrating.
No matter how much those guys had combat power around the mid-to-upper Expert level, as I said before, once you reach Expert, the gap between lower, middle, and upper ranks is quite large.
If I were merely an upper-rank Expert like before, that might be one thing, but I’d grown even further through training with William.
So taking down guys at that level wasn’t all that difficult.
Which meant there wasn’t really anything worth showing in the process.
A fight has to be somewhat competitive for it to be worth describing.
Either that, or it has to be something attention-grabbing, like the final sword strike in the life of Grandpa William, who is supposedly over two hundred years old.
…The scary part is, I think I’d believe it even if he said he’d lived for more than five hundred years.
—Whoosh. Tap.
After shaking the blood off my sword once, I slid it into the temporary scabbard.
Seriously, what was it with these guys and the color black? Even when they died, they left behind black ash, and the blood on my sword was black too.
‘At this point, a black-color rights movement is honestly impossible…’
Even if I exterminated all of them, their representative color was so distinct that people would have a bad impression of black for quite some time.
Well… as long as the people around me didn’t misunderstand me in some weird way, that was enough.
What did it matter how other people saw me?
Once I built up some fame later by resolving several major incidents in this party, it was a problem that could be fixed anyway.
In any case,
I started walking deeper in again.
Since there were so many holes those guys had come out of, it seemed like it would take quite some time to look through this entire place.
***
There’s nothing…?
There was no passage leading deeper inside.
With the passage I’d just checked being the last, I was pretty sure I’d gone through every path in this place at least once.
It seemed like this vast cavern was simply the end, with no further path beyond it.
Most of the passages led to the bastards’ living quarters, and a few areas were just storage rooms.
‘Is this really the end…?’
I’d thought there would be someone here commanding all of them.
Because guys like these often caused trouble the moment you looked away.
If you left them alone, they’d suddenly get itchy for action, one of them would troll like crazy, their whole base would get wiped out, and they’d surrender right there—that was practically the textbook path of a mid-boss villain.
But like I said before, these guys were definitely insane, yet they behaved like a regular army that was, in its own way, well controlled.
“Tsk…”
I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was fine to go back like this.
It probably wouldn’t matter if I just returned.
But I couldn’t shake the suspicion that this place shouldn’t have yielded so little.
‘There’s no way they sent me to a place like this for nothing, right?’
No, of course, as a warm-up, it was pretty decent.
The executives all died in a single move, but after constantly getting beaten up by William and starting to wonder, “Am I actually weak?” the timing was good for me to confirm my own strength.
And though it was a bit cruel, by dealing with demonkin who were low in level but pointlessly numerous, I also learned how to decisively cut down something in human form.
Honestly, if I weighed everything, this was a place where it wouldn’t matter even if things ended here.
But…
Even though I was trying to convince myself of that.
‘I was still a mercenary, in my own way.’
Of course, that feeling had faded a little now.
Still, I considered my identity to be that of a mercenary, no matter what.
If someone thought otherwise, I’d feel a bit wronged…
Anyway, the instincts from back then still remained.
The instincts of a mercenary.
Like, “Guess your employer’s intent. (10 points.)”
I’d gotten truly sick and tired of solving problems like that.
Even if the Holy Kingdom hadn’t sent me here with absolute certainty, thinking, “There’s definitely more here,” it was more likely they’d sent me with a vague idea of, “It feels like there might be something here.”
Their expected value for this place had to be high.
‘Okay…’
Decisively, considering the fact that the Holy Kingdom even attached William to me, I judged that there could be something more here.
So I decided to wander around this place a little longer.
***
It felt like three hours had passed.
I’d searched only the inner area at first, then, because I kept finding nothing, I even went all the way back to the entrance and started coming down again, making a whole damn fuss.
‘Still nothing.’
At this point, it was right to say there was nothing.
—Thud.
I plopped down on the floor of the cavern.
“Ah!!! I don’t know anymore!!!!!”
—Ah!!! I don’t know anymore!!!!
Since it was a space like a cave, my voice echoed widely.
Every wall inside vibrated, and the air trembled.
‘My instincts are completely dead.’
I’d only made myself suffer for nothing.
I was even starting to think I’d become too suspicious.
Honestly, I’d trained my body a lot, so this much wasn’t physically exhausting, but mentally, I was a little tired.
It had also been quite a while since I’d breathed outside air.
After lying there for five more minutes like that, eventually—
“Let’s get up. Time to go back.”
I made up my mind to return.
Most likely, the party members had already finished their missions and were waiting for me at the Holy Kingdom.
They might even have other things scheduled afterward, but were staying behind for my sake.
Too much time had passed for me to remain here because of my stubbornness and a single gut feeling.
To begin with, just confirming with my own eyes that the demonkin could use aura or mana together with demonic energy seemed like plenty of valuable information, assuming the Holy Kingdom didn’t already know.
“Ugh…”
To raise my tired body, I used my sword like a cane and pressed it against the floor.
But then—
—Thunk!
“Hmm…?”
Thunk?
Not a tap, but a thunk???
‘Ah, shit… this.’
I wanted to pretend I hadn’t heard it.
Because it was the sound of all the hardship I’d gone through until now,
the decision I’d just made to go back,
and everything else getting tangled up again.
But,
—Thunk! Thunk!!
Even when I struck it again, there was no sign that the entire interior was echoing or that only this place had some exceptional resonance. Within a circular area at the center of the cavern floor, it made a hollow thunking sound, clearly announcing that the inside was empty.
In that case, I had two choices.
Ah, not the choice of pretending I hadn’t heard it and going back.
Exploring the hidden space was already confirmed; I was deciding how to explore it.
1. Like William did, just smash it with my sword first and think later.
2. Figure out the device or method to open the door to the passage leading into the hidden space.
There were these two choices.
Honestly, under normal circumstances, I think I would have chosen option 2.
That was my usual default when digging into an unknown space or an enemy stronghold.
However,
‘Not now.’
I had already wandered around this place for a long time.
As I moved around, I’d carefully examined everything, looking for a device that could be used to open a passage or something leading to a hidden area like this.
In other words, even if I searched more from here, could I find the method or device to enter the hidden space through option 2?
That was impossible.
If I did find it, then my eyes were useless now.
‘This time, option 1 is right.’
They say that if you use your head well, your body doesn’t have to suffer.
But conversely, if your body is good enough, your head doesn’t have to suffer either.
It’s not that one of the two is superior.
You need to have a proper amount of both and make different judgments depending on the situation.
There’s a proper place for each to be used.
This time, it was a situation suited to using my body.
‘Now then… shall we?’
—Fwoosh!
First, I lightly used sword aura and struck down at the floor.
Then—
—Tututututungk!
With that sound, my sword bounced back from the floor.
‘This…?’
Honestly, it was an unexpected situation.
My sword’s performance was so good that, until now, aside from masters above me or weapons of equal rank, there had hardly been anything I couldn’t cut.
The amount and quality of my aura had also increased quite a bit.
Right now, I could probably cut through part of Kaliseo’s wall.
I had grown that much.
And yet,
‘I feel like I could even cut through the fortress wall built in preparation for an invasion from the Demon Realm, but I can’t cut through the floor here…’
Along with their fusion of aura, mana, and demonic energy, this was another point worth noting.
If there wasn’t some specific way to break through this, then from now on, if the demonkin built castles or bases on the surface, the minimum realm of the personnel that had to be deployed there would rise to Master.
Or we’d have to conduct sieges like in the distant past.
Climb over castle walls… throw fireballs…
‘If magic can break through this, then it won’t really matter.’
That’s exactly how sieges work now.
If the side that built the castle deploys defensive magic to protect it, the opposing mage dispels that defensive magic.
That process is the first stage of siege warfare in this era.
Then the second stage is using other attacks to bring down the walls and enter.
‘I hope that’s how it turns out.’
For the sake of humanity, and for the mages of the Magic Tower who might have to stay up all night solving this problem—no, wait, the people who were going to stay up probably already were.
Anyway… I mourned for them briefly.
***
After that, I made several more attempts.
But each time,
—Tututututungk!
The sound of my sword aura being blocked mixed with the resonance of the space below, and only that kind of noise repeated.
‘This… isn’t it.’
I stopped using sword aura over and over like this.
‘At this rate, I’m just throwing aura into the sky.’
There was only one thing I could try in this situation.
Sword Force.
If I could reproduce Sword Force, the technique that symbolized a Master, I felt like I could get past this place.
Truthfully, I had thought about trying it from the start.
I was curious whether I had really grown close to Master level.
In the end, my realm hadn’t risen through my sparring with William, after all. According to William, I’d only accumulated sufficient experience.
Of course, since I wasn’t a Master, fully reproducing it would naturally be impossible.
But if I could bring out even seventy to eighty percent of Sword Force through my sword, it would obviously be stronger than ordinary sword aura.
That was why I thought it might be able to cut through this floor.
Naturally, I had confidence too.
‘It’s a hypothesis worth trying. For now, it’s my only choice.’
I would have to use a lot of aura to attempt Sword Force, and if I broke through, there was a high chance I’d be exhausted. If there was an opponent down there, I would face considerable difficulty fighting them.
But I believed this kind of thing was a trial, and that this kind of thing was true growth.
‘Pain that does not kill me makes me stronger.’
Mulling over a famous saying that someone had probably already said, I took an upper stance and gathered all my energy into my sword.
—Fwoosh!
Aura flared up along the blade.
‘Not yet… not yet…’
An image of taking hold of strands of aura one by one and forming a massive pillar.
An image like countless stems gathering together to form a tree.
Thinking of the sword William had shown me back then, I compressed aura into my blade.
I couldn’t control it finely.
But I stopped worrying about my sword exploding or breaking.
‘My sword is a famous blade drawn from none other than Mount Tuthnis. It even changes its shape on its own sometimes.’
At the very end of everything I’d gone through so far, I even poured in my resolve to finish this shitty job so I could go meet Veronica.
—Kwooooooooh!!!!!!!!
My aura responded to my will, and dark-red flames wavered as if they were about to reach the ceiling.
At the same time, the amount of aura my body could withstand reached its limit.
‘I’ll have to be satisfied here.’
If I went any further, my body, which had already collapsed once at the Magic Tower, felt like it would collapse again before long.
So with the help of gravity, I drove that heavy sword down into the floor.
“Uaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!”
Then—
—Booooom!!!!!!!!!!!
A thunderous roar exploded, shaking the inside of the cavern.
—Fsssssssh…
“S… success.”
Beyond the gray dust, at last, a path leading downward revealed itself.