“Calamity’s Sickle, the foul-dragon Valacirca…”
The demons aside, I’d never expected to be able to cheat my way to a victory against the dragon. I’d felt a prickling on the back of my neck immediately after we’d purified the Lord of the Woods, so I’d even had a vague awareness that we’d been detected. I’d known it — but I hadn’t expected Valacirca to be this far off the scale.
Menel breathed very deeply and hit his own quivering legs over and over, cursing at them. Reystov was breathing slowly and steadily. His hand was gripped very, very tightly around the handle of his sword. Ghelreis and Al had just about managed to prevent themselves from collapsing by leaning against one of the doors.
When I turned around, I saw that all of the elves had passed out with the exception of Dine. Even she had sunk to the ground and was shaking heavily and weeping.
That malicious gaze from below the earth was so harmful on its own that
“devastating” would be too tame a word. So this was a dragon, and this was what it meant to oppose a dragon. I’d been expecting it, but I couldn’t help shivering at just how far removed from everything else it was. Demidragons and dragons were nothing alike. This dragon was probably even above the god of undeath’s Echo in terms of power.
“You… You’re going to fight… this?” Dine murmured in shock.
“Yes. That’s why we came.”
I looked up at the reddish-brown mountains to which we’d drawn so close. I thought of the peaceful scenery of Whitesails and Torch Port. I thought about the whiteness of the sails traveling back and forth on the river and sea, the cheery shanties, the bustle of people putting their all into their daily labor, the daily activity that ought to continue a long time into the future.
“To take back the mountains. To take back peace.”
I gripped the handle of Pale Moon once again. The spear, which I’d grown quite accustomed to by now, fit snugly into my palm just as it had when I first laid hand on it. I incanted a single Word and lit up the blade.
Everyone had already regrouped without me saying anything. With their weapons in hand, they had picked themselves up and were standing firm. It struck me how ready they looked. Those were the resolved expressions of warriors.
“So, we’ll be going,” I said.
“Don’t sweat it, we’ll make it back alive somehow.”
“Yeah. Just another job.”
“I’ll do my best…”
“Mm.”
We all offered a parting remark, and headed for the open doors together.
Beyond, the creepy entrance to a pitch-black tunnel awaited us like a gaping maw.
“Wait.” It was Dine’s voice. As I turned around, she shakily rose to her feet and looked directly at us. Her face was pale, but still she gracefully placed a palm over her heart. “We elves of Lothdor will not forget this debt. I swear here to our creator, Rhea Silvia. One day, we will repay your kindness.” She smiled, as though giving us her blessing. “May the protection of the good gods and the spirits of courage be with you wherever you go.”
All of us replied with a smile and a nod. And then we walked. Into the stone tunnels of the dwarves, the roots of the Rust Mountains, the ruins of the once-prosperous Iron Country, the downward slope of darkness—
We walked forward, never turning back.
Chapter 3
Beyond the West Gate lay stone walls and stone floors — endless stone passages that gave a rigid and cold impression. The passages were wide with high ceilings, probably because they had been important trade routes with the elven lands.
A lot of dust had piled up over the past two hundred years. It would have been normal for a place like this to have spider webs everywhere and be covered in droppings from bats and beasts, but there was no sign of anything like that.
The reason was the foul-dragon’s miasma filling the air with a black, mist-like smoke.
“Urgh.”
“I don’t think any of us want to stay here long.”
Though I’d stacked anti-poison miracles and magic upon us, I could still sense something unpleasant. And because of the miasma filling the air, we didn’t have a very clear view ahead of us, either.
“Enemy encounters and traps are the big worry,” Al said.
Ghelreis nodded. “Apart from the demon traps, I also cannot deny that there might still be some untriggered traps that were set by our fallen brothers.”
He was right. Since they’d been trying to repel a demon invasion, the dwarves of the Iron Country at the time must have prepared a large number of defenses. In a situation like this, it was possible to anticipate that we wouldn’t be dealing with tame traps that set off alarms, but serious ones that could kill you instantly if you stepped on them.
“About light. Gonna be using fire?”
“Let’s not. There’s a chance that there are buildups of bad air.”
The best practice for a source of light was to prepare both a magical light and a regular flame and make it so that even if one went out, you still had the other.
However, this used to be a mine, so I had some concerns that buildups of gas could ignite here. Deciding to hold back on the fire, I supplemented Pale Moon by converging mana into several pebbles with the Word of Light engraved upon them and handed them out. Menel threw them into lanterns with shutters, making it so we could control the amount of light being produced. It was a trick that also considered the scout at the front of the party, who needed to work in low light.
“What order are we going in?” Menel asked.
“Menel, you lead us. Be on your guard for traps and demons. Ghelreis, you go behind him.”
I placed Menel, who had good ears and could detect traps, at the front. Next came Ghelreis. Like all dwarves, he could see in the dark and excelled at sensing things underground, and additionally, he had a good grasp of what the internal structure of the Iron Country was like at the time.
“Then Al and I will go in the middle. Reystov, you take the back, please.”
I placed Reystov the veteran at the end of the line and asked him to watch out for attacks from the rear. Because I could use magic and was the most powerful force in battle and Al had high physical offensive strength, I placed us right in the middle so we could quickly change places according to the situation.
“Our opponents are demons. There are some that crawl along walls and ceilings, and some have wings. Take care you aren’t surprised by an attack from an unexpected direction.” Everyone nodded.
As we got walking, I noticed Al constantly turning his head, so I added in a quiet voice, “Oh, I didn’t mean to stay alert in all directions at all times.”
“Really?”
“Yes. After all, that’s impossible.”
A person who has his guard up in all directions at all times only exists in the imagination. Humans can’t change the fact that they find it easier to detect things in front of them than behind them, and being constantly on your guard in enemy territory is exhausting. That’s why it’s meaningful to have a few people each look in different directions to cover for each other.
“Just keep it in the back of your mind. It’ll make it faster for us to reorganize ourselves.”
When you are actually attacked from an unexpected direction, whether or not you were told that might happen translates to a difference in the speed of the reaction. When something they weren’t expecting in the slightest happens to a person, they freeze up and stop thinking for an instant. It happens to everyone.