“...And that is how I came to fight him, and in the end, I won.”
I told the team members the story of my fight with the Chinese bodyguard without any lies.
There was no need to lie. The one who had come looking for me to kill me was the Chinese bodyguard, and he was the one who had attacked first.
I had merely defended myself.
There was the minor secret that I had moved alone on purpose to lure him in, but that was not something important enough to tell everyone.
“What kind of insane thing is that!”
After hearing me, the team members got angry in their own ways.
Hanna gripped her bow and glared at the Chinese man, while Sergeant Woo frowned as he looked at the sword.
Tom loudly denounced the dead man.
“I don’t understand what the hell he was thinking. It’s not as if China and Korea are at war, is it? And yet he tried to kill you, Captain, using that as an excuse. Was he out of his mind?”
For a moment I was startled, thinking he was saying it to me, but when I looked at Tom, it didn’t seem like that was what he meant.
In any case, no one doubted my words.
The same went for the Chinese secretary, Li.
Still holding his hands up, he earnestly explained the situation.
“From the beginning, he spoke ill of Captain Hyeon. It felt strange even then, but... after we found the sword, when he moved off separately saying he had business to attend to, I kept worrying he might do something.”
He spoke in English so everyone could understand.
His English was fluent enough that I did not need to interpret for him.
It did not seem like a lie.
Unlike the bodyguard, that Chinese man had not tried to cause trouble.
Even so, I could not let my guard down.
When I looked at Margretta, she wound up her rope and said to me,
“He seemed fine. The two of them didn’t exchange any signals either.”
I could not move alone without taking any measures.
Before moving alone, I had subtly given her a signal.
I had not left her any precise explanation, but pointing to the Chinese men with my eyes had been enough.
Just as I had thought, she had kept a close watch on the Chinese men, and she had not stopped the bodyguard from leaving alone.
She had understood all of my intentions from nothing but my gaze.
Having someone like Margretta among the team members was convenient, but in another sense, it was also frightening.
She pointed at Secretary Li.
“Then what should we do with this person?”
Secretary Li, who had been slowly lowering his arms, was startled and shot them back up.
“Weren’t you going to spare me?”
I answered his question honestly.
“I’m thinking about it.”
He hurriedly looked at the team members.
His expression seemed to be asking for someone to help him, but unfortunately, there was no one who would.
Hanna was still glaring at him, and Sergeant Woo was already treating him as if he did not exist.
Tom looked a little troubled, but when Li looked at him, he turned his head away and ignored him.
Margretta was watching him with a grin, but if anything, Secretary Li turned his head away with a look of horror.
[It seems he has good survival instincts.]
I did not disagree with Soph.
He seemed quick to grasp the atmosphere, and quick to figure out where his chance of survival lay.
In that case, he had his uses.
For now, I decided to keep him alive.
“For the time being, come with us. However, I cannot allow you to retain your previous status as an observer.”
I did not say it openly, but from now on, he was no different from a prisoner.
“That is fine. I will do anything. If there is work for me, please entrust it to me.”
After hearing my words, he nodded with a delighted expression.
I could only hope his thoughts would not change in the future.
While the others prepared to set out again, I examined the sword the bodyguard had used.
Unfortunately, the sword was not a relic, but an ordinary weapon.
As expected, that sword aura-like thing had been the bodyguard’s ability.
[This is a training ground. It would be stranger if magical weapons were just lying around.]
I knew that. The broken helmet alone had already been more helpful than expected.
Still, I could not help feeling disappointed.
I was especially disappointed about the bed.
As I clicked my tongue while thinking about the bed that had been cut in half, Soph asked,
[Leaving the relic aside, how did you do that?]
I knew immediately what he was referring to.
Because I had been waiting for him to ask since earlier.
To be honest, I felt proud because it seemed as though I had done something impressive, but I could not boast about it in front of a mage.
[I just felt like it would work. It’s not as if it was anything that amazing. I only changed the direction.]
I pretended it was nothing.
[What are you talking about! Do you not know how absurd that was?]
Soph’s reaction was even greater than I had expected.
[You interfered with someone else’s magic. You are not even a mage yet! And yet you snatched someone else’s magic and turned it back on him!]
At his reaction, which was more extreme than I had expected, I could not help asking,
[Is that a problem?]
[It is not merely a problem! You would have to reverse-calculate, in real time, every formula and magic circle the opponent constructed and then dismantle it! In other words...]
A complicated explanation followed after that, but once again, there was nothing I could understand.
It was a pity. If I had known what he was talking about, I could have joined in and acted smug.
For now, all I could tell was that I had done something amazing.
However, what I had done this time was closer to luck than using magic.
Since it was impossible to reproduce for the moment, I decided to keep it in mind and think about it later.
For now, I had to finish exploring these ruins.
I handed the sword to Sergeant Woo. I was confident in close combat now, but a spear was still more comfortable for me than a sword.
We resumed the exploration.
We had already examined almost all the rooms on this floor, so we headed straight to the end of the corridor.
Like the other ruins, there was a staircase leading underground at the end of the corridor.
“Damn...”
However, the staircase had already collapsed, and in front of the broken stairs, countless corpses were piled up.
Adults and children, men and women.
They looked like people, but they were all humanoid monsters.
[It seems the trap functioned properly. Though only the small fry got caught, in any case, it achieved its purpose.]
[Can you really say it achieved its purpose when the trap only activated after tens of thousands of years?]
I corrected Soph’s mistaken thinking, but he simply clicked his tongue and ignored my opinion.
I turned my head and asked Margretta,
“There’s no need to collect them all, right?”
“No.”
Margretta nodded.
We had already stored two humanoid monster corpses in the box.
From the dissection, these creatures did not seem to have black stones either.
[It is not that they do not have any. It is simply that tiny grains are scattered throughout their entire bodies, making them difficult to find.]
That was no different from not having any.
Listening to Soph, I walked toward the pile of corpses.
As I approached, several tentacles shot up from the corpse pile.
It was a sudden attack.
“Danger!”
Along with my companions’ shouts, the tentacles that had shot up came stabbing down toward me.
The startled team members tried to rush over, but I raised one hand to stop them.
At the same time, I swung my spear with my other hand.
The spear moved smoothly along the path my senses showed me.
A spear drifting through the air as if dancing.
Along the path the spear moved, the tentacles came shooting in.
Slice!
The tentacles were caught by the spear and were all cut away.
Fragments of tentacles scattered in every direction.
I spun the spear wide, shook off the tentacles clinging to it, and then hurled it with all my strength at the corpse pile.
Thud!
“Kiiiik!”
Along with the sound of the spear sinking in, a monster’s scream rang out.
It was the scream of the monster hiding inside the corpse pile.
Had it used even its companions’ corpses as a trap?
I did not know whether it had any sense of companionship, but seeing something with a human form do such a thing made even me feel a little sickened.
After calling back the spear that had killed the monster, I looked at the team members and found them all staring at me with amazed eyes.
“What is it?”
When I asked them with a puzzled expression, Margretta answered on their behalf.
“You’re better with the spear than I expected. You weren’t this good before.”
Before Margretta even finished speaking, the others’ admiration followed.
“Oppa, that was really amazing.”
“The way you moved the spear looked like something out of a Chinese martial arts movie.”
“I thought you were only good at shooting, but I was wrong.”
Even the Chinese secretary, Li, was staring at me with surprised eyes.
I had only moved the way my senses showed me, but it seemed it looked better than I had expected to others as well.
However, I felt dissatisfied.
Even just now, my movements had been clumsy compared to the Chinese bodyguard’s.
If I practiced a little more, I felt I could reach that level, but my goal was not that bodyguard.
The martial artist I had seen in my dream.
The man named Gibor, who had driven his fist down from the sky and blown apart the scout monster, was my current goal.
The monster hiding in the corpse pile had been the last one.
My senses had already confirmed it, but the team members checked the corpses one by one.
After confirming them all like that, we descended to the lower floor.
Because the staircase was broken, we had no choice but to use Margretta’s whip.
Margretta’s whip was sturdy, and it became incredibly long.
The whip did not budge even with all of us hanging from it, and it extended dozens of meters, allowing us to descend easily to the lower floor.
Unlike the floor above, the floor below was intact.
Nothing was broken, and the walls and floor were clean.
It seemed the monsters had been annihilated by the trap on the stairs.
I called over the Chinese secretary, Li.
“What have you called me for!”
I placed the Chinese man, who had hurriedly come running, in front of me.
“You said you would do anything, so from now on, I will entrust you with a task.”
It was time to begin the work I had intended to entrust to them from the moment I brought the Chinese men along: checking for traps.
“The task you intend to entrust to me couldn’t be...”
The Chinese man, his face gone pale, broke out in a cold sweat.
“Please... spare me.”
I patted his shoulder.
“I will find the traps, so all you need to do is help me from the side.”
He seemed somewhat relieved by my words.
Clearly, he had misunderstood.
There was no way I would make him search for traps with his bare body without even inspecting them myself.
That would be the foolish act of killing the trap tester at the very first trap.
He had to stay alive for a long time.
[From where I stand, it does not seem all that different...]
Soph did not seem to understand my consideration either, but once he saw the results, he would surely change his mind.
“Now, let’s go.”
I took Secretary Li with me and walked down the passage.
Thud. Bang! Crunch! Flash!
As expected, traps remained.
Walls came down from above, and all sorts of magic fried, roasted, and even exploded at anyone passing through.
If I had not discovered and dealt with the traps in advance, Secretary Li would have died several times over.
“Aaagh!”
“Save me!”
However, thanks to my consideration, he survived.
He had suffered some minor burns and abrasions, but nothing had been cut off, and he was still alive.
When we reached the end of the passage, he collapsed on the floor with a deathly pale face.
“I-I’m alive.”
Watching him kiss the floor, the team members said,
“You worked hard.”
Unlike when we set out, he had grown closer to the team members.
Even Hanna, who had been glaring at him, was now looking at him with pity.
[Two birds with one stone.]
[I will pretend I did not hear that.]
Unfortunately, Soph did not seem to approve of how I treated my prisoner.
In any case, thanks to him, we were able to reach our destination.
At the end of the corridor on the second basement floor, in the armory, was the relic that Soph and I had been looking for.
An iron door that was still clean, even though tens of thousands of years must have passed.
I placed my hand on the cold door and pulled it open with all my strength.
The door that had been shut for tens of thousands of years swung wide open.