Chapter 45

Pain clawed at my consciousness, dragging it from some deep abyss to the surface.

Once again, a sliver of light pierced the inky darkness.

Lir was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. She rushed to my side the moment I stirred on the floor, asking if I was alright as she wiped the cold sweat from my brow.

I had no idea how many hours had passed before I regained my senses. Lir’s sweat-dampened robe was bone dry, and Trian was meticulously fletching arrows with feathers plucked from the spider corpses.

“Haa…”

My entire body screamed in agony. Even turning my head was an ordeal, but I struggled to sit up and observe the state of my companions.

Trian’s hands were stained with the vivid blue blood of the spiders, but he didn’t appear to have suffered any serious injuries.

“Lir, fetch bread and water and feed it to Bean.”

Seeing that I was awake, Trian pointed to a bag in the center of the room. Inside was roughly a week’s worth of food and water. I forced the dry bread Lir offered me into my mouth.

It wasn’t just that I had no appetite; I felt nauseous, on the verge of retching. But I had to get food into this wretched body quickly, inject some vitality into it.

Clatter!

As I was choking down the food and water, the sound of sharp steel striking the floor rang in my ears.

The noise came from Lex’s prosthetic arm. The explosive and venom-corroded mechanical limb had begun to spill its components onto the ground, one by one.

“Haa… Ssup, haa…”

Lex, slumped on the floor, stared with vacant eyes at his deteriorating prosthetic.

Only now did I realize how erratic his breathing had become.

“Lex.”

I called to him, my voice laced with worry.

“…Yes, General.”

The flesh of his back was practically melted away. He had thrown himself in front of the blast to save Lir and me.

“The explosion is bad enough, but the demonic blood that seeped into his wounds is the real problem. He’s been poisoned,” Trian explained for Lex. Trian’s hands were busy, relentlessly sharpening blunted arrowheads, but his eyes and lips betrayed his concern for Lex.

“…”

Lir, too, seemed at a loss for words, her lips twitching before she fell silent.

“We don’t have time for him to be lying here like this.”

Ignoring the screams of protest from my own body, I forced myself to stand.

Through Lex’s ripped and torn back, the venom-laden blood of the demon and the mutated creature was polluting his body.

Simple herbs or potions would be useless for healing this. It was demonic poison, not just from a mutated beast. Only a proper cleric, with their healing prayers, could purge it completely.

“Lex, how many days do you think you can last?”

“…I’m fine,” Lex replied, scraping the dried spider blood from his body. It wasn’t hard to see the boast for what it was: empty bravado.

“Report accurately, Lex. Now is the time to assess your condition coldly and formulate a suitable plan.”

Even the most skilled barbarian has their limits.

And he had clearly reached his.

I didn’t need bravado or a rousing cry to lift the team’s spirits.

I needed cold, hard facts.

“…The poison is spreading through my body. Probably because that demon’s blood mixed into the wounds. I can probably function normally for a day… But tomorrow, just moving my legs will be difficult. By the third day… you might have to leave me behind.”

Even after pouring the blood of a powerful demon into him, Rex declared he could still fight without issue for at least a day. Honestly, that claim felt like just another boast.

If I were the one with that wound, I wouldn’t last five minutes before collapsing, let alone a day.

“…This is bad.”

Rex’s body was larger and heavier than any elf or human, incomparably so. If time passed and Rex became bedridden, who would carry his body?

Liru and I were physically incapable, and even Trian, whose muscles were developed from long years of battle, wouldn’t be able to carry that giant on his back all day long.

Carrying Rex would slow our progress, and slower progress would inevitably delay our finding the exit.

Delaying our exit means Rex dies.

No matter how exceptional a barbarian he was, he couldn’t possibly survive for days while infected with demon venom.

“…Trian, roughly how long do you think it will take to find the dungeon’s exit?”

“It’s only been two days. Don’t rush me.”

“I don’t want to either, but the situation, you know?”

“…I’ll try my best. But the odds of finding the dungeon’s exit in a day or two are slim.”

Trian must have arrived at that conclusion after a cold assessment of the situation. It was practically a death sentence for Rex, but not a hint of despair clouded the face of this brave orc.

“…We don’t have much time left. While my body still moves according to my will, you’d best make use of me as much as you can.”

Speaking with cold, detached words, Rex raised his heavy body again. His breathing was labored, and cold sweat poured from his skin, but he couldn’t stop.

In about two days, his body would no longer obey him. It was as if he were saying he needed to help his companions as much as possible before that happened.

“…”

I stared at Rex’s back as he, with sweat-slicked arms and trembling hands, began clearing away the corpse of a spider.

I already owed this orc two lives.

In contrast, what had I done for him?

“…….”

Lire swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, watching the orc’s back as he moved with a stoic calm even in the face of death, seeking out what he could still do.

“Do not look at me with such eyes. The infantry’s role is to protect the mage, I am merely fulfilling my duty.”

To look at him with pity was an insult. He seemed content so long as the mages behind him considered him a staunch shield.

“…Rex.”

“Speak, General.”

“Clear a path. I have somewhere to go.”

I stepped over the spider’s corpse, staining the jet black of my robes with shimmering blue blood as I moved through the room.

“Somewhere to go? You don’t even know the way, where are you leading…”

“Just trust me and follow.”

There was only one thing I could do for Rex.

Just as he had saved me countless times, I would save his life.

“…Did you sense something?”

Trian stared at me with a puzzled look, then, his face hardening with seriousness, he asked, noticing the confidence in my gait, so different from before.

This b*stard thinks I’m some kind of shaman.

Sense something? What am I going to sense, I just know it from clearing this dungeon hundreds of times.

The location of the only ‘fixed escape route’ in the dungeon, that’s what.

But there was no way I could say that.

“…Uh, yes. Actually, there’s been a disturbing energy since the moment I set foot in this dungeon.”

Frankly, repeating these lies over and over wasn’t sitting right with me.

But no good excuse came to mind to allay Trian’s suspicion of my actions.

Well, might as well play the shaman.

Rex has thrown his life away for me twice now; I can certainly spin a few yarns.

“This is a dungeon. We don’t know what threats lurk. An unusual aura doesn’t guarantee it’s an escape route.”

“When did I say I sensed an escape route? What I sensed was quite the opposite.”

“What?”

I quietly removed Trian’s hand from my shoulder and looked him in the eye. I don’t know what he saw there, but his mouth snapped shut as our gazes met, as if he’d lost his tongue.

“I sense the location of the most dangerous monster in this dungeon. A foul, viscous aura of magical power.”

Damn it all. Never thought I’d be uttering these words as a mage…

“Let’s clear this dungeon. It’ll be much faster than aimlessly searching for an emergency exit.”

There are essentially two ways to exit a dungeon.

The first is by using ’emergency exits’ that randomly appear throughout the dungeon.

We were originally planning to use this method.

The dungeon’s difficulty was considerable, and more importantly, the rewards for clearing it were of no use to me.

But now, that method is unavailable. To find an emergency exit whose location is unknown requires diligent searching every single day.

And Rex will be bedridden in two.

It usually takes a skilled guide five days to find a dungeon’s emergency exit. If luck is against you, it could take over a week.

Rex doesn’t have much time left. That’s why I chose the second method of escaping the dungeon: ‘clearing’ it.

Each dungeon always has a monster that acts as its boss, a being called the ‘Treasure Guardian’.

Eliminating this Treasure Guardian grants you a vast amount of gold or special equipment, and a fixed exit appears, allowing you to leave the dungeon.

The treasure keeper’s position is always fixed. Unlike the randomly generated emergency exits, the fixed exit guarded by the treasure keeper, that means you can use it whenever you want.

Of course, you have to deal with the treasure keeper first, though.

“Are you sure about this? You can see for yourself, the monsters in this dungeon aren’t exactly average. So the treasure keeper here might be quite the handful…”

I frowned, looking at Trian who spoke with worried eyes.

“Why, are you sitting there talking like it’s not your problem?”

“What, am I supposed to fight too?”

“…You weren’t planning on fighting?”

“The treasure keeper is stronger than any normal monster. I can barely manage to target the eyes of these monsters and deal some damage. I don’t think I’d be much help against the treasure keeper.”

I don’t know how he can say he’s useless so confidently.

“Rex is the same. He’s putting on a brave face saying he can move, but if he gets into a fight with the treasure keeper, he’ll just be a hindrance to you.”

Rex pressed his lips tightly together, as if he had nothing to say.

It seemed he had no real retort to Trian’s cold assessment.

Well, it’s okay for Rex to be like that. He’s done so much for me.

“…Alright, then. I’ll take care of the treasure keeper. Instead, I need you to do something else.”

“What is it?”

“When I fight the treasure keeper, it’s going to get pretty loud. It’s not the kind of opponent I can deal with while controlling the thunder.”

“You mean?”

“Just buy me some time against the monsters that come swarming.”

“…So you’re telling us to die.”

“Can’t you hold out for about five minutes?”

Trian sighed, glancing from me to Rex, then to Lirr.

Fighting off all the monsters swarming toward them was, realistically, impossible. But enduring for just five minutes? With this team, maybe they could manage it.

The possibility wasn’t nonexistent. Or rather, if one had to quantify, the odds of lasting five minutes were better than the odds of failing.

“…You’re really going to finish within five minutes, right?”

Hmph, Sergeant Trian worries too much.

If I can’t finish in five minutes, it means we’re all dead anyway, so you don’t need to prepare for that scenario.