Chapter 100
Hide-and-seek with the faculty.
As soon as the activity began, we crossed the island in a straight line.
Before long, my teammates and I reached the edge of the island.
“Phew··· We arrived at exactly the right place.”
The fierce sea wind beat against our faces.
Just a few steps ahead, a precipice stretched out before us.
Whoooosh-.
A deep cliff, with a blue sea spread out below.
The teammates following behind us stopped, taken aback.
There was nothing resembling cover around us; only a cliff stood forlornly at the edge.
“What? It’s a dead end···?”
“Sir Victor! It seems you’ve taken a wrong turn!”
The teammates hurriedly pointed that out, but I merely smiled leisurely.
“It’s all right.”
“Pardon?”
“Everyone, please rest assured. We came to the right place.”
“But there’s, th-there’s nothing around us···?”
“Didn’t I tell you? We’re going under the sea.”
““······?””
The teammates tilted their heads as if they had no idea what I meant.
I left that suggestive remark hanging, then pulled something out from inside my clothes.
It was an item I had obtained as a quest reward the previous night.
Ding-!
[Sea-Flavored Candy]
-Category: Food
-Grade: B-
-Condition: Sweet, Salty
-Description: A candy with a blue hue, as though it were modeled after the sea. Upon consumption, it grants the user the [Underwater Breathing] effect for 30 minutes. Apparently, the candy’s flavor combines sweet and salty notes with the taste of the sea.
Blue, round candies contained in a small glass bottle.
I swallowed one first, then held the bottle out to the other teammates.
“Everyone, swallow one each.”
“Um, what is this···?”
“Candy? Why are you suddenly giving us something like this···?”
“I have my reasons. You’ll have to do as I say.”
The teammates raised question marks, but they had no choice but to comply with my firm request.
Without much suspicion, they tossed the sea-blue candies into their mouths.
Soon afterward, a bluish light shimmered around them.
“Hmm? There’s some kind of light coming from my body···.”
“What is this? What did you make us eat? Since everyone ate one, you need to explain.”
“They’re candies with a special spell attached. They’ll help you breathe comfortably underwater.”
Underwater breathing.
I conveyed the situation as matter-of-factly as possible.
“We’re jumping off the cliff.”
“······What?”
Caitlyn merely furrowed her brow, dumbfounded.
I nodded as if I understood.
‘She must be wondering what kind of bullshit this is.’
A cultist hideout hidden deep beneath the sea.
Naturally, the branch was located somewhere inaccessible by ordinary routes.
If that had been possible, the faculty would have discovered it when they came to inspect the area beforehand.
As outsiders, it was impossible even to sense the existence of the space.
Even in the original, no one could enter this field until the incident occurred.
‘In that case··· we have to use an unconventional method.’
We were planning to take an extraordinary route.
Why did we have to fall from a cliff, of all places?
Only by diving here could wall-phasing be performed perfectly.
I clasped the teammates’ hands tightly and slowly led them toward the cliff.
“I’ll take the lead.”
“No, wait! Is this really okay?”
“Of course. I guarantee it.”
“There’s a place to hide down there? It isn’t some kind of burial ground, is it?”
“Shall we make a bet? If there’s no place to hide, I’ll become Miss Caitlyn’s slave starting today.”
“No···.”
Caitlyn was left speechless by my confident answer.
There was no reason to be afraid of the cliff in the first place.
Alice was one thing, but weren’t Ranne and Caitlyn among the most elite students in the academy?
With the sea spread out below us, they certainly wouldn’t be injured by falling from a cliff this small.
‘I can just jump while holding Alice in my arms. The Mask of the Evil God will nullify the impact anyway···.’
It was a perfectly sound plan.
Of course,
it wasn’t entirely without concerns.
‘If it’s a cult branch, then I suppose I’m dragging them into something dangerous···.’
It couldn’t be helped.
After all, these children needed to grow stronger if they wanted to survive.
The [Impossible] difficulty in the original was hardly a hopeful story, even if one were being generous.
The main and supporting characters were cut down like autumn leaves, and massacres broke out at the drop of a hat, especially in the latter half.
‘I have to help them grow strong enough to overcome it.’
Ranne in particular had to grow, since she was the protagonist of this world.
There would be no point in sheltering them all myself.
It wasn’t as though I had the capacity to protect everyone, either.
In that case, it was better to let them gain experience within my sphere, under my watch.
‘As long as they stay where I can see them, I won’t let them die···.’
That was what it meant to pursue safe growth.
And, as a bonus, I could get some help clearing the quest myself.
“Trust me.”
“······.”
I resumed walking and continued leading the teammates toward the cliff.
Before long, the four of us floated into the air.
Immediately afterward, gravity yanked us downward at terrifying speed.
The blue beneath our feet grew distant, while the blue above our heads drew closer.
Sssrk-.
Alice squeezed her eyes shut, while Carmilla was tucked inside my front pocket.
I held the two of them in my arms and adjusted my mask.
Before long, a heavy thud reached us.
Splash-!
Our bodies plunged through the surface of the water.
I carried that momentum onward and sank all the way to the bottom.
Even through the water-blurred view, the status window’s glow remained clear.
Ding-!
[The item ‘Mask of the Evil God’ has been activated.]
-Uses remaining: 1/3
-Time until the uses recharge: 35 hours 36 minutes 29 seconds
My vision rippled as I sank deeper.
Soon, my toes touched the bottom.
Plop-.
My hands remained clamped around the teammates.
I pulled them along and began scraping my feet against the bottom.
<Huff···.>
Thanks to the candy, I had no trouble breathing.
As I calmly settled into a rhythm, something snagged against my scraping foot.
‘Found it.’
I thrust my leg straight into that spot.
At the same time, our bodies were sucked through the floor.
Splat-!
The next moment, we had been transported to an entirely different space.
The teammates tumbled over, then looked around with dazed eyes.
“W-What? This isn’t underwater···?”
“Just a few seconds ago, we had sunk all the way to the bottom···.”
What appeared in our vision was a neatly ordered corridor.
The ceiling rose endlessly high, while the corridor twisted into a maze with hundreds of branches.
Considering that this place was beneath the deep sea, it was an impossibly vast space.
Ding-!
[You have entered the hidden rift ‘Deeper Than the Deep Sea’.]
[This rift is not marked by coordinates.]
Perhaps it was because of the unknown scene spread before them.
The children stood there in a daze.
“What happened? Are you saying this is underwater right now?”
“Sir Victor, did you cast a teleportation spell? If so, I can’t sense any flow of mana at all···.”
The teammates lay sprawled, utterly defenseless.
Just then, several shapes sprang out as though welcoming the intruders.
They were centipedes several meters long, with fangs covering their entire bodies.
<SliksSliksSliksSliksSliksSliksSliks>
<RitsRitsRitsRits>
It’s lit.
The mutants were falling toward the teammates’ heads.
They launched a sudden ambush while the teammates remained unaware.
“Activation. Scythe.”
Stab-!
Of course, I had read this move long ago.
It was a pattern I knew by heart after clearing it several times in the original.
The pitch-black scythe pierced through the mutants.
<SliksSliksSliksSliksSliksSliksSliks>
<Sseutsseutsseutsseut>
The centipedes thrashed violently.
I added a brief command.
“Activation. Thorns.”
Burst-!
Pitch-black thorns sprouted from every inch of their bodies.
The mutants were butchered on the spot, reduced to heaps of flesh scattered across the floor.
Patterpatter-.
I casually shook the gore from my hand.
When I turned around, I saw the teammates staring with trembling eyes.
“Are you all right?”
The children had collapsed to the floor.
Their gazes were fixed on the corpses lying there.
The miasma seeping from them made it unmistakable: they were chimeras.
““······.””
Their expressions hardened.
Amid all that, only Alice seemed to realize something and whispered a question.
“Sir Victor, don’t tell me this is···.”
“That’s right. It’s part of the Slayers’ activities.”
“S-So it is···.”
Alice nodded as though she understood.
She seemed to accept the situation calmly.
Ranne, too, was at least surveying her surroundings.
Having accompanied me and encountered all sorts of strange phenomena, it seemed the two of them had developed some resistance.
“What is this···?”
Of all the teammates, Caitlyn was naturally the most flustered.
Her yellow pupils churned as though waves were rising within them.
‘I suppose that’s understandable.’
They had suddenly been transported somewhere unknown.
Before they could even determine where they were, they had been attacked by [those things].
On top of that, miasma was oozing from them, making it impossible not to think of a cult in this situation.
“Where the hell have we entered···?”
Caitlyn asked in a mutter.
I answered her calmly.
“These look like chimeras modified with miasma. It seems we’ve entered a cult branch hidden away somewhere.”
“Who doesn’t know that? I’m asking why there’s a cult branch underwater!”
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t know?”
“This place must have been inspected several times by the academy, so how could something like this···.”
“Hey, isn’t this the place you led us to? Stop dodging and explain properly···!”
Perhaps because of the sudden situation, Caitlyn’s temper flared.
The girl was about to explode at him, but suddenly stopped where she stood.
Afterward, she took a deep breath as though trying to calm herself.
“Wait, huff···.”
She rubbed her face with both hands.
She seemed to be trying to regain control of her emotions.
For all that she was steeped in jealousy, envy, inferiority, discrimination, and hatred, she really was remarkably levelheaded when it mattered.
‘The damage was already done.’
Having stepped into a dangerous space, starting a conflict with the teammates would be utterly pointless.
Caitlyn must have reached the same conclusion, because she cooled her temper on her own.
The girl pressed her brow for a long while, then tossed out a single question.
“······I have to ask. You’re not some kind of spy for the cult, are you?”
“You haven’t forgotten who apprehended Professor Glinbert, the cult’s spy, in the last infiltration incident, have you?”
“Yeah. Fuck, right···.”
Caitlyn nodded quietly.
Her temper had cooled, but she still looked confused.
“What the hell is going on···?”
“Miss Caitlyn? I understand that you’re flustered, but we don’t have time to linger like this.”
“Why not?”
“I said we don’t have time, didn’t I? Just like my parents.”
“Fuck, stop using that line.”
Unfortunately, my claim that we had no time to rest was entirely true.
Something was rushing toward us from beyond the endless corridor.
They were mutants like the centipedes from before.
<ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump>
<HiltHiltHiltHiltHiltHilt>
<DwakDwakDwakDwakDwak!>
They were creatures formed from all kinds of life-forms grafted together into grotesque shapes.
Masses of writhing tentacles seized our attention.
“You’re right. It doesn’t look like we can stay here at ease.”
“Fuck, it looks like I’m about to throw up everything I ate for lunch···.”
“That would hurt the chimeras’ feelings if they heard you.”
“Do you even understand what they’re saying?”
“Who knows?”
Crackle, crackle-!
The girl furrowed her brow and gathered electricity.
Ranne and Alice, who had been standing behind her, also prepared for battle.
[Victor.]
[I shall help as well.]
Her Highness had been fidgeting in my shirt pocket.
She also abandoned her bat form and stood in front of the corridor, her silver hair flying.
“What? Where did that one come from?!”
“Very well.”
Leaving the startled Caitlyn behind, I took a step forward.
The hand searching through my clothes soon gripped something tightly.
I drew a brightly multicolored blade.
[Balloon Sword+]
-Category: Growth-Type Weapon
-Grade: D+
-Maximum Growth Grade: None
-Status: Colorful, Soft, Sparkly
-Description: This is a special balloon sword. It emits a faint purifying light from its blade.
“Shall we?”
The Absolute Balloon Sword Plus had made its entrance.
It was perfect timing, since I had a challenge to deal with as well.
I held a scythe in one hand and a sparkling Balloon Sword in the other.
Ding-!
[Sub Quest]
-Title: Continued Growth! Continued Balloons!
-Content: Achieve 3,000 parries with the growth-type weapon ‘Balloon Sword+.’
-Penalty for Failure: None
-Reward: Increase the grade of the growth-type weapon ‘Balloon Sword+’ by five levels -> (Grade B)
<Current Progress>
2971/3000
“Let’s wipe them all out.”
Now then.
Here goes the Holy Sword (Balloon Sword).
===
This is Jaber Droit.
Since I’m always in uniform, I don’t wear a swimsuit like the one above.