Chapter 16
Clang! Claaang!
Dexter hurriedly backed away after driving off the believers rushing toward him with Magic Missiles.
The first floor was already burning.
Smoke was beginning to rise from the second floor.
And fighting was still raging on the third floor.
For the expedition members, who had already exhausted themselves fighting monsters outside, this was a completely unexpected second battle.
Frank sniped a believer who had begun casting curse magic from a distance, knocking him unconscious, then shouted at his comrades.
“Stop packing your stuff and jump down already!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
Boom! Booooom!
Crash!
After smashing through the windows and jumping outside, the expedition members were met with an even more shocking sight.
“What the hell... happened here...?”
Most of the people who had escaped the surprise attack inside the buildings had been killed by other believers waiting outside.
The once lively streets were now filled with the corpses of many different races, and the smell of blood hung heavily in the air.
Most of those corpses were human.
As Dexter hurried forward, wondering where they should go, there was a corpse beneath his feet.
Another lay beside it.
And another in front of him.
They all had similar wounds.
The exact length of the weapon was unclear, but every corpse bore stab wounds caused by an extremely sharp blade.
“Kyaaaaaah!”
“S-Save me!”
“Is anyone there?!”
“Anyone! Please, just open the door...!”
The chaos had only just begun.
More than two hundred corpses were already scattered through the streets.
And even that number was only slightly more than twenty percent of the village's total population.
There were still people trapped inside buildings.
People who had already been killed inside them.
And those who had died long ago and been buried beneath the temple.
There were people everywhere.
“This way!”
“Stick close behind me! Hurry!”
Even in the middle of the chaos, the expedition members watched one another's backs and formed a formation without any blind spots.
After all, they had trained together for several months before entering the dungeon.
The dungeon was a lawless land.
There was no rule saying monsters were the only enemies they would face.
In fact, believers like these could be even more dangerous because people were more likely to lower their guard around them.
While the expedition members slowly moved their formation toward the entrance and continued confronting the enemy—
Danfos, who had become separated from the others, looked bitterly at Erich and the believers blocking his path.
“Nothing ever goes smoothly, damn it...!”
Earlier, he had spent a long time talking with Erich to exchange information.
Because of that, Danfos had been assigned different sleeping quarters from the rest of the expedition, and he had gone to sleep much later than everyone else.
Thanks to that, he noticed the surprise attack before falling into a deep sleep.
That was the only reason he was still alive.
Even so, Danfos's mind was filled with confusion.
“Why are you doing this? If you're still conscious, answer me, Erich!”
“Knowing won't change anything, Danfos.”
“I'll decide that! Just tell me the reason!”
Unlike Erich, who still seemed to retain some level of consciousness, the other believers had already become soldiers who followed only a single command—
Kill the enemy before them.
Whoosh!
Dozens of Magic Missiles shot directly toward him.
Danfos tightened his grip on his sword.
Danfos Corsi.
A magic swordsman capable of wielding both magic and swordsmanship.
His specialty was Banish, a technique that used his own mana to neutralize an opponent's magic and erase their attack.
The moment a red aura covered his sword, Danfos casually swung it.
Whoosh!
Dozens of Magic Missiles disappeared instantly the moment they touched the path of his blade.
However—
“I know your fighting style pretty well. Sorry about this, Danfos.”
Several believers carrying daggers had already reached Danfos from behind.
“Tch...!”
He had only just finished swinging his sword.
There was no time to counter with swordsmanship.
That left magic.
Or aura.
If there had only been one or two enemies, he could have neutralized the damage he would take as well.
But there were too many this time.
No matter what he used, one of his arms would probably become unusable.
Should I use defensive magic instead?
No.
That wouldn't work.
A strategy based on buying time was inefficient.
He couldn't expect reinforcements from his allies.
If he wanted to survive, he had no choice but to defeat every single one of them himself.
Danfos quickly reached his conclusion.
He clenched his teeth and activated his magic.
It was a spell called Mana Explosion, which released compressed mana all at once to create a violent explosion and shockwave.
BOOOOOOM!
A shockwave erupted in midair and blasted five charging believers in every direction.
Using the cloud of ash and dust that rose from the ground as cover, Danfos broke straight through the front.
“Keugh!”
“Aaaaargh!”
He stabbed through one enemy's abdomen before cutting through his left side and killing him.
He severed another man's arms so he could no longer resist, slammed him into the ground, and pierced straight through his neck.
Then Danfos gripped his sword with both hands and attacked Erich, who was staring at him with empty eyes.
Clang!
Clang!
One wielded a longsword.
The other wielded two daggers.
After exchanging several fierce blows, they both stepped back and briefly faced one another.
“...It would've been better if you hadn't resisted.”
“Did I look easy enough to just die without knowing why? Huh?”
“The captain won't escape from here anyway. Even if you learn the truth, it'll only bring you despair. What are you going to do with that knowledge?”
“This whole damn world is already full of despair, so what the hell... Forget it. There's no point talking to a fanatic whose soul is already chained.”
“...Danfos.”
“Don't regret it after you die just because you served the wrong god.”
While deliberately provoking him, Danfos calmly analyzed his current situation.
I could probably aim for mutual destruction... but there'd be nothing after that.
Five believers had slipped into his blind spot.
A mediocre area-of-effect spell wouldn't have been enough to drive them away.
That was why Danfos had used Mana Explosion at its maximum possible strength.
And naturally, he had been caught in its power as well.
He protected himself as much as possible with aura, so he hadn't suffered burns or lost any limbs.
Even so, his left arm was already nearly useless.
He probably wouldn't last another five minutes.
Even if he somehow survived here, countless believers were still scattered throughout the village.
Without reuniting with the expedition, there was absolutely no way he could survive alone.
I'm going to die on the first floor...?
Not to a Gatekeeper.
Not even to an Apostle.
But to bastards like these...?
In truth, Danfos understood better than anyone.
In a world where wealth, love, honor, and even human dignity were not permitted, simply continuing to live was already a pitiful thing.
And yet—
Even if life was like that...
No.
Precisely because life was like that...
Surely there was a difference between meeting an end you had chosen yourself and one forced upon you by someone else.
“...Yeah.”
He couldn't die like this.
He still hadn't figured out what that bastard Yohan Blake was trying to do.
He still didn't know how far that insane savior intended to go.
He wanted to meet him again.
To follow behind him.
To uncover the secrets hidden throughout this world.
For the first time in Danfos Corsi's miserable and boring life, something had appeared that stirred him this intensely.
That strange, inexplicable desire wrapped around his entire body.
Watching the believers begin gathering around him again, Danfos shouted.
“Sorry, Erich, but you're going to have to let me out of here! I've still got a reason why I can't die yet!”
At the tip of the blade he gripped tightly with both hands, an intense amount of mana he had never shown before began taking the form of a razor-sharp edge.
At the same time, near the village entrance.
The expedition members continued fighting while desperately holding together a formation that was slowly beginning to collapse.
“Huff... huff...”
“Hey, wake up! If you pass out now, we're all getting slaughtered!”
“...”
“Wake the hell up, you bastard!!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
The price of continuing a battle of attrition for more than fifteen minutes was severe.
They had been outnumbered from the beginning.
Most of the villagers were former expedition members, but the long period of peace maintained by the Black Magic Cult had dulled them completely.
And the shock was even worse because the believers who attacked them at dawn were people they had spent years with and had come to regard as family.
Even the people who barely managed to survive and escape didn't particularly follow the expedition's orders.
Those who somehow fled the believers and escaped outside the village found monsters waiting for them instead.
And every one of them died.
The only reason they had managed to hold out this long in such a hopeless battle was the expedition members' stubborn refusal to die on the first floor.
But even that determination had reached its limit.
Frank, who had taken over as acting captain in Danfos's absence, looked at his exhausted comrades and thought quietly.
Are we going to be wiped out...?
He might have been somewhat stronger than the others, but he was still only an ordinary human.
Fighting more than a hundred fanatics who didn't care about their own lives was impossible for him alone.
And even if it were somehow possible, the world outside the village belonged to the monsters.
In their current exhausted condition, there was no way they could survive a fight against a monster pack.
Whether they ran or continued fighting, the ending wouldn't be much different.
Perhaps everything had already been decided the moment they chose to enter the dungeon.
No.
Perhaps their final destination had been decided from the moment they were born.
If there was one human being capable of overturning such an ending by himself...
There could only be one.
Though if it were that man, he'd probably abandon useless bastards like us and head to the lower floors alone...
Once Frank accepted that he was going to die, he strangely felt much calmer.
At least dying while fighting as a proud member of the Imperial Expedition until the very end would be a better way to go.
After making up his mind, Frank pushed his way through the slowly collapsing formation.
He believed that if he refused to take even a single step backward until the moment he died, his courage might give strength to the others.
“S-Senior Frank? You're outside the barrier...!”
“I'll reduce their numbers as much as I can! At least the rest of you survive!”
“What are you going to do alone?! If we're going to die, then we'll die togeth—!”
“What are you doing?! Hurry up and stop them! Stop them!”
Leaving the protection of the barrier, Frank charged directly into the enemy formation.
With aura protecting his entire body, he continued advancing without hesitation despite the storm of Magic Missiles pouring down on him.
Five minutes at most.
Maybe ten enemies killed.
That was all.
Even though Frank knew it perfectly well, he never stopped moving.
Rumble...
And then—
A gigantic shadow suddenly fell over the battlefield.
Thick smoke surrounded the area.
Flames rose fiercely enough to swallow even that smoke.
Terrified residents were desperately fleeing.
Monsters waited outside for them.
The expedition members were making their final stand.
And the believers continued raining magical bombardment upon them.
Yet every single person there could only stare in shock at the enormous figure that had appeared.
Its huge dark-red body poured out waves of deep-blue cold.
Three massive tentacles descended toward the believers without even the slightest hesitation.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The ground shook from the impact.
Only then did Frank finally stop and look behind him.
More than a dozen believers of the Black Magic Cult who had been standing to his left had literally exploded.
The scene to his right and directly ahead wasn't much different.
Those crushed beneath the enormous body were mangled so badly they were almost impossible to recognize.
And those who had barely escaped the tentacles themselves were frozen solid by the cold pouring from them and died from the freezing temperature.
“WAAAAAAAH!”
Amid the deafening chaos, several figures strode forward.
First came Rodur and several dozen dwarf soldiers, roaring with metallic voices as they thrust their spears toward the surviving believers.
The dwarf magician Belvar summoned enormous spikes in every direction, blocking the flames from spreading any farther.
And then—
There was the human man walking at the center of them.
While tentacles as large as houses squirmed back into the man's shadow, he looked across the sea of corpses and blood with an extremely interested smile.
One tentacle trembled violently and refused to return.
Yohan stepped on it and forced it back inside.
Then he smiled.
“I didn't realize you were this bold, Naberius.”
Standing before a mountain of corpses, Yohan's eyes were shining with a liveliness they had never possessed before.
