Chapter 11
Creak… Creak….
As soon as we climbed down the iron ladder, the place was filled with the smell of a public restroom drain.
Within about three fucking seconds, I wanted to call in a subcontractor's subcontractor's subcontractor too. I would have done so if not for the question of whom to subcontract the work to at three coppers a day.
“There's a damaged section right here, right after we come down.”
Gentric said, pointing with the lantern toward the inside. It was a small opening in the wall—a circular drainage passage with vertical bars across it like a prison cell. One entire grate was missing.
“A drain? No, it's a passage.”
“It's an emergency exit. According to the map, there are a few more inside the sewer.”
Tirsi, who had come down after us, said while unfolding the map.
“An exit? Was it made for escaping in emergencies, such as when a flash flood comes rushing in?”
“Who knows? I don't know what it's for, but there's a lock on it, so we can't use it.”
“What a bummer.”
“We should hope we never have to escape.”
Gentric casually wiped his nose over his mask. Don't say ominous things like that, old man.
“Ms. Francesca? Could you write ‘A01 sewer-passage grate missing’ on the paper?”
“The grate is missing? Yes, understood.”
Tirsi read the number from the map, and Francesca wrote it down on the paper. True to her dwarven reputation for dexterous hands, she had a round, pretty handwriting style.
But talking about missing grates brought back memories of inspecting barbed wire in the army. Even after falling into another world, I still vividly remembered my fucking military days.
“Let's move. I hope we can finish before nightfall.”
With Tirsi's words, we began our reconnaissance.
***
Trudge…. Trudge….
Following an unspoken rule, Gentric and I took the lead.
A warrior always tanks from the front. We couldn't even use magic, had no other special abilities, and were men on top of that.
So it was only natural that we serve as meat shields for the female mages and rogues. This was an otherworld consumed by machismo and swagger.
We walked around inside the sewer for quite some time. It looked a little like London's sewers, and if you ignored the darkness and smell, it was fairly bearable.
“The rope on the bridge is damaged. Should we record that too?”
“Uh…. I'll write it down for now.”
“Those bricks have collapsed over there at the sewer entrance.”
“That's… a corner that curves inward. There isn't a separate number for it on the map. What should we do?”
“How about writing ‘between sewer passages D04 and D05’?”
“That works. Let's do that.”
We carried out the request diligently.
According to Tirsi, who had a pocket watch, nearly three hours had already passed. The sewer's interior, as marked on the map, was long and complicated, so we had to keep an efficient route in mind as we walked.
However, simply walking the whole time was boring, so we naturally began chatting.
“Why did you apply for this request, Ms. Tirsi? You mages could probably get… better requests.”
Francesca asked while hurrying to keep up with our strides. I had been wondering the same thing, so I listened to the conversation behind me even as I walked.
“For a promotion. Not for Silver class, but from a more long-term perspective.”
Tirsi, who had tucked the map under her arm, took out the plate hanging around her neck and showed it to us.
“Up through Gold class, your record of completed requests accounts for all the promotion requirements. But beyond that… to obtain a plate made of platinum or mithril, you have to meet the standards of the Adventurer Guild Union.”
The Adventurer Guild Union.
Considering that ‘guild’ meant ‘association,’ it was an extraordinary name. It meant an association of adventurer associations. But its actual meaning was exactly what the name said.
“You mean an organization formed by gathering adventurer guilds together?”
Gentric turned around and joined the conversation. Tirsi nodded.
“Yes. It has branches in every country and serves as an intermediary between guilds and nations.”
That was exactly how Tirsi described it. After hearing and seeing what the Adventurer Guild Union did, I roughly regarded it as this world's BE Violence UN.
An organization closer to an interest group that sometimes even intervened militarily. It seemed like a very fitting comparison to me.
“Are there separate requirements to reach Platinum or higher?”
I was curious too, so I asked Tirsi. Even my respected academic advisor, Professor Brammathon, was only Gold class as an adventurer.
There was no way someone capable of serving as a professor at Carmine University was stuck at Gold because he lacked ability. In fact, Tirsi's words had carried the implication that there were other requirements.
“There must be standards for promotions. They simply haven't officially announced the requirements, so I don't know them. All I have are my own personal guesses.”
Tirsi answered while tucking her plate back against her chest.
“The one thing that's considered virtually certain is that adventurers who belong to other organizations have difficulty reaching Platinum or higher.”
Huh? Why? I tilted my head for a moment, but it didn't take long to realize the reason.
“It's a matter of vested interests and pride.”
In other words, they treated people like Professor Brammathon and me, who also worked in ‘other industries,’ harshly.
Even if they gave an archaeologist a Platinum or Mithril plate, we wouldn't quit our professions and devote the rest of our lives to adventuring.
“…I'm impressed. You catch on quickly.”
Tirsi widened her eyes in feigned surprise. She seemed impressed that I had figured it out without an explanation.
“Huh? What does that mean?”
Francesca, who had asked the original question, still had no idea what we meant, so I gave her a brief explanation.
“You don't see a blacksmith going around praising another forge in every neighborhood, do you? That other blacksmith is ultimately a rival, and praising them doesn't help you.”
“Ah─. I understand. So that's what you mean by ‘a matter of pride and vested interests.’”
“Exactly. That tendency is especially strong toward mages without sponsors from the Mage Guild.”
Tirsi said it as if she were resentful.
“They can't discriminate openly, so they find all sorts of faults. They say you showed a tendency to choose requests only for profit when you were a rookie, or that you lack the attitude needed to cooperate with other adventurers, things like that.”
“People are the same everywhere.”
A deduction for poor teamwork.
It was the sort of thing group-project leaders who had done all the work alone often heard.
Even after all their teammates had run away and they had sweated their asses off to finish the project alone, some professors still pulled that kind of bullshit. It had been years ago, but I was still just as furious as if it had happened yesterday.
“Then you accepted this request partly to leave a record of volunteer work?”
“…I wouldn't call carrying out a request with all of you volunteer work.”
“My apologies. That was a poor choice of words. I only said it because, in some places I've heard about, volunteer points are counted too.”
When I was aiming to get into a prestigious high school as someone born in 1995, I had to fill volunteer hours to qualify for admission.
I had said it because it reminded me of those days, but I could see how it might have sounded unpleasant. When I apologized, Tirsi shook her head.
“No. It is true to some extent. The truth is, I wanted to leave a record of performing an avoided request as the party leader.”
“There's nothing wrong with that, is there? We're helping each other out.”
I said that with a faint smile.
“We receive help from a Bronze-class mage, and that mage benefits too. If anything, we should be the ones thanking you.”
“…Thank you.”
Tirsi answered awkwardly. Gentric and Francesca secretly laughed at her reaction.
“Oh, look over there. That sewer cover is missing too.”
Just then, Francesca pointed to the sewer drain on the opposite side. The cover meant to keep out debris had been pulled out of the drain she indicated.
“Oh, you're right. Hmm. So that sewer passage is….”
While Tirsi shone the lantern over the map and searched for the passage number, we stopped walking for a moment.
“Phew…. By the way, why is this sewer so damaged? Are some punks breaking things for fun?”
Gentric suddenly grew irritated as he massaged his knees. We had found more than ten problems in three hours, and the endless workload was starting to piss him off.
“That's not entirely wrong. The monsters that creep into places where people live are worse than punks, after all.”
Whether on Earth or here, the creatures that wrecked barbed wire were always vermin.
The creatures living in the sewer were breaking things left and right to make their own shortcuts, leaving us to deal with the trouble.
“Monsters did this? That's ridiculous.”
Despite having worked in this field for so long, Gentric looked as if the thought had never occurred to him. I was about to chalk up another loss for the otherworlders' general knowledge, but his next words left me frozen.
“Then why haven't we encountered a single monster until now?”
“…Huh? That's true?”
I had absolutely nothing to say.
He was right. If monsters had wrecked the sewer, then after walking around here for hours, we should have run into them and fought them for our right to survive.
“…You're right. If it wasn't monsters, what else could it be? People wouldn't have any reason to damage the sewer.”
Francesca put down her writing paper and voiced her doubts as well.
“Monsters must be the cause. Come to think of it, we haven't seen any of the cleaning slimes released by the Mage Guild, either.”
After the three of us discussed it, Tirsi agreed.
“Um…….”
I hadn't noticed the incongruity because I'd simply been following orders like a game quest.
The dark sewer passage I had gradually grown used to suddenly looked like the stomach of some grotesque creature.
People wouldn't have broken it, and there were no monsters in sight.
“If a monster broke things, but that monster isn't here….”
I spoke to shake off the ominous feeling.
“…could those monsters have disappeared for some reason?”
And the moment I said that, they appeared.
Crack.
Crackle-crackle.
At the dead end of the sewer, we found ‘those creatures’ clinging to the walls. They were insects—large exoskeletal creatures with six bent legs and two antennae.
There was nothing particularly strange about such creatures living in a sewer.
“Ddet?”
Except for the fact that they were fucking huge.
Rustle-rustle.
──Rustle.
Dozens of gigantic bugs abruptly stopped moving their antennae and bodies in the lantern light─
Skritchskritchskritchskritchskritch!!
─then thrashed wildly, landed on the floor, and charged toward us.
“Aaaaaaaah!!!!! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!! What the hell is that!!!!!”
I screamed until my throat tore in a corner of the dim underground sewer.
─Once, I saw a post online that said something like this.
If spiders the size of humans existed, their characteristic physical abilities and hunting techniques would make them the strongest carnivores on land.
But the post ended by concluding that it was impossible for insects to grow to human size.
The explanation was that an insect's exoskeleton couldn't support the weight of its own body after it grew to human proportions.
I remember looking at that conclusion and feeling damn grateful for Earth's gravity.
“But fuck me, ‘unable to support their weight,’ my ass!!!”
Reflecting the light of our lanterns, they shone black—glint, glint, glint!!
Every last one of them was the same kind of enormous bug!!
“Aaaaaaaah!!! Great big fucking katydids!!!!!”
“Aaaaaah!!! There are so fucking many of them!!! There are so fucking many of those bastards!!!”
“Kyaaaaaaaah!!! The sound!! I hate the sound of their wings so much!!!”
Fuck! I let my guard down!
This was a world with giants and dinosaurs and all sorts of shit. There was no way there wouldn't be bugs the size of a person's knees.
Insects with faces like a hybrid of katydids and cockroaches!
Maybe there wasn't a god in this world either. Even if there was, surely it hadn't created every living thing in this world.
Because otherwise, it meant there was a god who enjoyed making creatures like that. For the sake of my mental health, I would rather abandon my faith than affirm the existence of such an insect-fetishist god.
Skritchskritch!!
Skritchskritchskritchskritchskritch!!
“Aaaagh!!! Those bastards can fly!!! Flying katydids!!!”
“Run, hurry!!!!!!!”
“Flee! F-f-f-flee!!!!!!!”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
We became a single screaming (scream) speaker and sprinted back through the underground sewer passage.
The four brave adventurers had been reduced to a profanity-spewing pest-control truck, pumping their legs for dear life while screaming and cursing!
“Fuck!! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!! What kind of bug is that!!!”
“It's a giant roach!! It's carnivorous!!”
“Thanks a fucking lot for that incredibly useful information!!!!!”
A death race between bugs and humans unfolded in the sewer beneath the city.
Fortunately, those bastards didn't seem to possess the physical abilities peculiar to insects. If the katydids I knew were that large, it would have been perfectly normal for them to soar forward in a single jump and land in front of us.
Had they poured all their skill-tree points and stats into supporting their increased weight, causing their jumping ability to tank?
It was a tremendous relief. If creatures with incredible reproductive power and vitality also had high stats, then from the moment I arrived in this world, the entire sky and earth would have been covered in cockroach eggs.
Even now, those katydid bugs couldn't catch us.
We were running as if squeezing out our very souls, but their leg strength was comparable to ours, if not weaker. That was proof enough.
So if we steeled ourselves and fought, we might be able to win, but—m-m-m-motherfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!
Those bastards have compound eyes!!! They're fucking terrifying!!!!!
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Tirsi!! Ms. Tirsi!! Try shooting some magic or something!!!!!!!!”
“You want me to focus on magic in a situation this chaotic?! More importantly, I'm out of breath and can't run anymore!!!! Mr. Nord, could you carry me?!!!!!!!!!”
“Oh, stop fucking around!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Don't call it fucking around!! Don't call it fucking around!! But it is kind of fucking around, isn't it!! I'm sorry!!!!!!!!!”
Fuck, if I tried running while carrying a forty-kilogram sack of rice with its center of gravity completely fucked up, I would have to start counting down the ten seconds until my life was ruined.
There had to be more than twenty of them, and if we were surrounded and had our bodies eaten piece by piece by those things?
Fuck, even Hercules would die. A corpse chewed, torn apart, tasted, and enjoyed by bugs would be so thoroughly destroyed that even Zeus couldn't put it in the constellations.
“Th-th-th-th-there!!!”
Francesca trembled and shouted something. What did she mean? That her breasts were bouncing so hard from running that they felt like they were about to be torn off?
“Th-there!! Run into that sewer passage!!”
Francesca was pointing at a round iron grate set into the wall. It was so dark around us that we could hardly make it out at a glance.
Gentric, who had spotted the same thing, screamed.
“Don't be stupid! Didn't they say that emergency exit was locked earlier?! Do you want to die in front of the grate?!”
“Ten seconds!! No, give me five seconds and I can open it!!”
Fuck me. I was going insane. With our breath already running short, arguing among ourselves was completely fucking useless.
I looked back, but the distance between us and the swarming katydid bugs had barely changed.
It wasn't because they were running at about the same speed as us. At first, we'd managed to widen the gap without much trouble. But once the stamina of our four-person loser party ran out, the distance we'd worked so hard to create began shrinking.
At this rate, they'd catch us! And we'd be exhausted when they did!
“Ms. Tirsi!!”
I shouted after squeezing out every last ounce of strength I had.
“Attack or defense, I don't care! Just use some kind of magic!! Please!!! At this rate, we'll all be bitten to death by bugs!!!”
At my scream, Tirsi panicked, gripped her wand, and began chanting a spell. Without exaggerating even a little, it was as solemn as a nun offering her final prayer in front of a horde of zombies.
But that alone wasn't enough.
We had to buy even one more second. If that woman failed her magic, it would be an immediate countdown to heaven.
So I put my second plan into action.
“Ms. Francesca!!”
“Yes!!”
“I'm going to throw you!! Brace yourself and roll when you land!!!”
“What?!!”
I didn't need to hear her answer. I hoisted Francesca, who was running beside me, over my shoulder like a piece of luggage.
Flash!
Despite her small frame, her brutally large breasts made her weigh much more than expected. But this much was still light enough to throw!
“Kuuuuuuuuugh!!!”
I poured strength into my fantastic muscles, which had become overadapted to otherworldly fantasy over three years, and pulled my body as far back as I could. I intended to throw her and buy even one second to pick the lock.
That was when it happened.
Skritchskritch!
Grab!
“───Ddet?”
There was a strange sensation at my waist.
How should I put it? It felt as if six thick plastic bubble-tea straws had grabbed my waist at the same time.
It made sense.
Carrying a person must have slowed my feet, and since I had pulled my body backward, there was nothing strange about one ‘lucky bastard’ managing to latch onto me.
Skitter-skitter!
─But fuck, this thing is moving.
“─Oh.”
I felt the blood drain from my head as I screamed.
“─Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaah!!!!!”
“─Hikkyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!”