My Villains Episode 215
46. Master of Dreams (5)
Stone steps thick with dust.
Beneath it was a dark world without a single light. A piece of stone stuck in the tip of the foot bounces back and forth and makes a loud sound, and soon it is swallowed up in the pitch-black darkness, leaving only a faint echo of ‘Ta-Dak-Tada-‘.
“…hmm.”
It’s creepy. If it had been Kim Seung-soo, not Gimpo Enix, I would have never been able to go down.
I pulled out the Hrunting and held it out to Ellen.
“Light the fire, Ellen.” The
“O”
guy put his palm on the milky black surface and said
“Tielum ensara.”
he muttered softly. At the same time, flames rose from the blade.
With the unique longsword Hrunting added fire damage with the ‘Burning Weapon’ spell, quite a few ghosts would be scattered in one sword strike.
Even the reluctance that remained in my confidence due to this disappeared like snow melting, and I entered the stairs to the basement without hesitation.
Behind me, Steedman, ponytail Lee Fritz, Sergeant Prosecutor Umberta followed closely, followed by El Ren, accompanied by a mummy archer Cole with bundles and freckles as an escort. After that, the other mercenaries and Heila Alena came down with a little distance, and Utequai was the last one.
“slowly. Keep your guard up.”
A small whisper ran up the stairs through the mouth of the party. Because I had warned them in advance, the mercenaries groped along the wall nervously.
But nothing happened until we reached the basement floor after passing through the spacious landing. There were no corpse golems with only the upper body remaining, no red eyes on the walls, no giant bats, no evolved corpse beetles.
The crow’s castle I saw in the game was a place teeming with all kinds of nasty guys, but in reality, at most, small mice and bugs rarely appeared.
It’s a bit embarrassing to scare the party while taking a break, but…
well, it doesn’t matter. Not a bad thing.
It’s rather fortunate that I didn’t waste time.
Entering the basement floor, I lifted the burning Hrun Ting and looked around. The mercenaries who arrived later also lit up the surroundings with torches and oil lamps.
“It’s damp.” Heavy swordsman Umberta sniffed while holding a torch with her left arm hanging a targe and resting her gloved right hand on top of the one-handed and half-sword permal.
“The fishy smell is too strong.”
“…Are there even water veins flowing nearby?”
He sniffed after Umberta and held Hrunting high.
“Ellen.”
Receiving my gaze, Ellen held out her wand and muttered something, and
the flames on the blade grew even more intense.
A pillar of fire soaring more than 2 meters brightly lit up the wide rectangular basement. The two thick iron doors that were sparsely located on the wall also revealed their appearance.
“Move, you filthy vampire.”
Gidon, holding a gun, stepped forward, aiming at Kelsene’s back with a large crossbow. Kelsenne staggered and sat down in front of me.
“Where is the throne room?”
“Not here.”
“……what?”
As I twitched my eyebrows, Kelsene quickly pointed to the archway on the other side.
“If you go down there, it’s the audience room.”
“An audience room?”
Hrunting looked out and saw that the archway was the entrance to a narrow spiral staircase.
“Your throne room. There is a throne there.”
“It’s the audience room on the second basement level.”
…my mouth is tingling.
I approached Kelsenne with a smirk and patted him on the cheek.
“How come you seem to be missing important information one by one.”
“yes yes?”
“The throne is in the basement, so I’m not saying it wrong… It’s the first time I’ve heard that it’s on the second basement floor. right?”
“I don’t think there’s any need to tell you that in advance.”
“Hmm?”
I nodded quietly and said,
“Kheuk-”
I grabbed her by the neck and pulled her up. It was a pale face that approached right in front of me, red lips and quivering eyes stained with fear.
“It looks like you’re joking around.”
“No *kre* no. I said, “
No, what is it? You say I think so, you mosquito-like bitch.”
As I tightened my grip, a soft sound came from the white neck that looked like a handful.
“Gee-uh-uh-”
Her eyes turned upside down and her whites were showing, and her gaping mouth let out a stream of saliva.
Vampires in this world shed tears. Those tears won’t prove innocence, but watching Kelsenne weeping makes you forget the fact that her kind is half undead.
Maybe that’s why I’m excited for nothing.
I tossed Kelsenne to the floor and put the sword blade on her back.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
The magic fire burned through the white skin and made a cracking sound, but it was buried in a tearing scream.
“We believed only what you said and came down to this basement. Wouldn’t we be uneasy if we were suspicious?”
“Keuaeuuk keuh-”
“Take care of yourself. I want you to think about my position as well. huh?”
When Kelsenne nodded with a trembling chin, I clicked my tongue and retrieved the hrunting.
“lily.” A veteran conductor who scanned every nook and cranny of the basement floor with a sharp gaze gave advice.
“It would be better to check here before going down.”
“…When I was young, I went into a little catacombs.”
As the party’s eyes gathered, Confair looked back at them and shrugged.
“Just in case, I’m telling you, it wasn’t robbery. It was just a request from some madman who wanted to explore the graves of his ancestors.”
“What so?”
“Uh then… I found some artifact on the lowest floor and picked it up, but the corpses lying on the upper floor woke up all at once. I don’t know if it’s a curse or what, but it wasn’t very hellish. Half of the 14 mercenaries who entered the tomb together died.”
Hearing his story, some of the party made a reluctant expression.
He must be imagining the iron doors around him opening and monsters pouring out.
“That makes sense.” Kelsen, whose white skin and hideous burns were clearly showing through the rags, felt my gaze and hurriedly opened her mouth.
“Here, on the first basement floor, was where Tenbierma kept her collectibles and kept her monsters. Those doors won’t open, but if you’re feeling uneasy, you can check before you go…
Now I’m starting to like it.
I looked back at the group with a smile.
“good. Let’s take a look and go.” The search operation that followed was carried out quite simply and ignorantly.
When the party finished preparing for battle at the door, Utequai swung his dolma and knocked on the thick iron door.
Did he put a spell on the door?
Obviously, I didn’t feel anything when the door was attached, but when the door was hit by a stone and fell down with a heavy sound, I could feel the presence and something would come out.
All sorts of monsters came out of that open room.
The first thing they encountered were ‘living armor’ armed with swords and shields.
Contrary to their flamboyant appearance, they weren’t difficult to deal with, and the mercenaries recovered their remains and reinforced their armaments.
I also got a decent pair of shin guards and pauldrons to replace the ones I was using temporarily.
Three or four ‘Brimstone Wolves’ and ‘Red Hounds’ jumped out of the next room.
The Brimstone Wolf, which spewed flames from a distance, and the Red Hound, who ran at it with foam at its mouth like a rabid dog, were a pretty tricky combination.
However, the ensuing battle was quite easy. It was thanks to Ellen’s performance.
He memorized a spell like a rapid-fire cannon and fired his awl one after another, and the brimstone wolves became skewers in an instant. The rest of them were easily dealt with by me and the Utequai mercenaries.
Other rooms went through a similar process.
Most of them were crappy ones like the giant corpse worms and disfigured corpse golems, but there were also those that were difficult to deal with like the enchanted greenskin tribe.
However, the fact that greenskins are difficult to deal with is also a common story when meeting in the mountains or forests. If you meet in a space like this, it’s all Ellen’s food.
Whether or not they fired poison arrows, we threw a couple of fireballs into the room with the door closed, and that was all it took. The four or five that managed to survive were shot down by Cole and Gidon with arrows.
There were also some rooms without monsters.
The mercenaries who entered, expecting to find some kind of treasure, looked at the piles of withered corpses and rotten blood puddles, and in the
meantime found a few chests with bundles of blessings here and there. All together, it was 40 gold coins and 60 silver coins.
I was debating whether I should sell the diamonds I bought in South Harbor because I was running out of money, but thanks to you, I’ve been able to breathe a sigh of relief.
“This is the end.”
Utequai
looked back at us, swinging his arms around as if his shoulders were getting sore.
After confirming that the mercenaries had completed their combat readiness, they nodded, and Wu Tequay clapped his hands a couple of times before lifting them while gripping them tightly.
As Utequai inhaled, his muscular body swelled even more. Then, the dolme struck the iron door, drawing a gentle trajectory with a bloody gong sound.
Kwak!
As always, the steel hinge snapped at once, and the dented door slid down on the floor with a heavy ‘goong’ sound.
Steedman and Fritz threw their torches quickly, and the flames that rolled towards the center lit up the room.
“That one?”
Cole, who was drawing his bow, narrowed his eyes when he saw something reflected in the orange light.
“…looks like a tree.”
“A tree? What kind of bullshit are you talking about?” I slowly
entered the room,
letting the freckled mummy’s bewildered voice go through one ear .
There was no sign of it, and even when I looked at every nook and cranny with a lit hrunting, there was nothing special except for the object in the center.
It was then.
“Ah ah-”
“Alena, stop.”
Looking back, Alena was struggling in Heila’s arms.
“Ahhh. Oressa Oressa-!” The girl possessed by the spirit cried out and looked at a large tree in the center of the room.
A bare tree with black bark and no leaves.
It was so thick that I couldn’t hold it in my arms even with my arms wide open, so it looked strange enough to stand out wherever I planted it, but I couldn’t feel any vitality because the lower part was neatly cut off.
I looked at Alena and the old tree, then nodded to Heila, who was holding the girl with an expressionless face.
“Let go. Because there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly dangerous.”
W……Uh ”
……Chi-san
Heila hesitated for a moment before letting go of the girl, and Alena ran as if crawling and knelt down in front of an old tree.
“Oh no no no-!”
The girl groped the old tree with her fingertips trembling. And after a moment of screaming like a dying horse, he collapsed behind him and passed out.
“Alena!”
After accepting the girl, Utequai quickly approached me.
“are you okay. I just passed out for a moment.”
“…well, that’s right.”
After entrusting Alena to Utequai with a hard face, he asked Ellen, who was looking at the old tree before he knew it.
“You know what?”
“No at all.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, seemed to concentrate, then shook his head again.
“I don’t feel anything. It is just a dead tree.”
“Looking at Alena calling this Oressa, it looks like that guardian tree or something.”
I asked Kelsenne about this old tree, but she didn’t know anything either.
“I never dreamed that this tree would be here.”
“You didn’t know?”
“yes. Tenbjerma hated this tree.”
“why?”
“Well, it stinks and it’s said to interfere with your ability to grow… so I heard that you ordered soldiers to cut it down, but I didn’t know you brought it here.”
…I don’t think he’s lying. I’m in trouble.
“Should I wait for Alena to wake up?”
“I think that would be nice.”
Ellen nodded with a thoughtful expression.
“The spirit possessed by Alena is powerful enough to instantly push away the fog created by quasi-dimensional magic. Besides,”
“It’s a half-changed spirit.”
“that’s right. Looking at Alena’s reaction, it seems that this old tree was what the spirit wanted
…
“I feel like I shouldn’t be standing still. If that powerful elemental goes berserk because of this.”
“Okay.”
Ha, I’ve been caught up in trouble again.
The group gathered around the old tree shared their opinions, but nothing was new. Should I wait for Alena to wake up?
at that time.
Driven by something like inspiration, I put my hand on the old tree.
It feels familiar. The feeling I felt when I saw purple flowers under a fence in Longville
.
“Let’s get this out.”
“Yes? Is it outside?”
“Out of the castle. To the greasy dirt floor.”
The ponytail Fritz asked back with a strange expression.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“To plant it in the ground.”
“…Are your eyes hurt? All the roots have been cut off.”
As I frowned slightly, Fritz put his mouth shut.
“Don’t talk nonsense, everyone take out the rope! Because I have an idea.” At my confident voice, the mercenaries met each other’s eyes with expressions of ‘what the hell is that?’.
But that was for a moment, as Cole and Steedman pulled out the rope and approached the old tree, sighed and rolled up their arms.
