LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 31
EP.31 Old Connections (3)
A dark and dreary underground sewer.
Belnoa was kneeling on the damp floor, soaked with moisture. Of course, it wasn’t out of someone’s orders. He just felt it was what he should do.
“Why did you suddenly shoot magic and make a fuss?”
“Uh, well…”
Belnoa was sweating profusely.
To be honest, he found that professor a bit scary. He remembered when he entered the territory of the Mana Spring.
Everything shook and distorted.
Meanwhile, that professor stood there unharmed.
‘Like a completely different entity.’
This was a fear stemming from that sense of strangeness.
‘…You’re not going to throw me into the Mana Spring again, are you?’
Surely not.
Belnoa subtly lifted his head and glared at Rania. She wore her usual attire. Ashen hair cascading down her back, a neatly fitted robe.
‘Really doesn’t suit her at all.’
He couldn’t quite feel the same appreciation for her in Apuria, but facing her in this underground sewer felt incredibly awkward. She looked every bit like a noble lady.
A lady who seemed to have no connection to this dark and dreary sewer.
“Hmm.”
Just as Belnoa was thinking this, Rania opened her mouth. She pointed at Belnoa with her fingers.
“But why are you kneeling?”
“…Huh?”
“I never told you to kneel. You’ll dirty your clothes. Get up.”
“Ah, yes…”
Belnoa slowly got back on his feet.
Then, while stealing glances at Rania, he asked.
“Um, Professor, what brings you to this sewer…?”
“I was asked by an old friend to help clean the sewer.”
‘Old friend? Asked for help?’
Belnoa cocked his head in confusion.
Other than that eccentric old man, is there anyone else interested in this sewer?
“By any chance, is your friend’s name…?”
“You would know him.”
“Excuse me?”
“I heard he’s your stepfather.”
There was only one person Belnoa could call a stepfather. An old man who disliked being called that.
“Are you talking about Cardi from the potion shop?”
“Cardi is right, but old man? Him?”
“Huh?”
“Hmm… Well, he did ask me, so that much is true.”
So that old man had friends?
Belnoa looked at Rania.
‘No matter how I look at it, she doesn’t seem old enough to speak informally to someone…’
Besides, hadn’t she said she was Rosel’s adopted daughter? If she could casually call that old man by his name, she should at least be the same age as Professor Rosel.
Belnoa cautiously asked.
“Uh, Professor, how old are you…?”
“Twenty… twenty-one.”
That didn’t seem right.
Belnoa squinted his eyes. His instincts honed in the slums judged that the age of “twenty-one” was a lie.
“What.”
“…”
“What, kid? Speak. Got something to say?”
“…Nothing at all.”
He just couldn’t ask, ‘What’s your age?’ So, Belnoa held his tongue.
‘I don’t want to experience the Mana Spring again.’
He was a mage who knew the value of his life.
“So, how much have you cleaned up?”
“I’ve cleared all the paths I took.”
Belnoa pointed behind him.
“I also cleaned up while coming.”
She too pointed to the path she had taken. There was no need to verify that path.
Greenish blood.
Just looking at the blood leading up to her feet gave a rough idea of how many Undead she had taken down.
“So, what’s left is this way then.”
Rania reached out.
Where her fingertip pointed was a fork in the road leading from the crossroads.
“Let’s go together.”
“…Yes.”
Belnoa followed Rania, who was in the lead. With every step she took, a clang, clang sound echoed ominously.
“Uh, what about those shoes…?”
“Ah, these?”
She raised her heel slightly.
“There are a lot of crawling Undead, you see. No need to waste time killing them by hand, right? It’s enough to just step on them.”
Thud, thud, lightly tapping the ground with her toes.
But the sound echoing was anything but light.
Clang, clang!
‘…Metal plates?’
Those shoes had iron plates attached to them, resembling military boots.
“This is quite efficient. Just a little pressure when stepping down is enough to snap their necks, you know? The weight is just right for shoes I care about.”
Rania chuckled in satisfaction.
That laughter sent an inexplicable chill down Belnoa’s spine.
Splash.
With each step, there was a squelching sound. Was it due to the water flowing beside them? That couldn’t be the only reason.
“…”
Belnoa looked down at Rania’s feet.
The military boots were stained green. The blood of the Undead. He glanced back. A green line trailed behind them.
Gulp.
Belnoa swallowed hard.
It had been thirty minutes since he started walking behind Rania.
During that time, he hadn’t cast a single spell. He was merely following Rania in front.
Didn’t monsters show up?
No, that wasn’t the case.
‘They did, a lot.’
From this point, zombies crawled out as if declaring this was the real deal. With this many, it felt like just bending a finger wouldn’t be enough.
-I’ll take the side, so Professor…
-Move.
-Excuse me?
-I said move because you’re in the way.
But Belnoa had nothing to do.
He glanced back briefly.
“…”
Piles of undead corpses with missing heads.
“Here they come again. Is there no end to this?”
And.
Crack!
They were continuously multiplying.
Rania extended her hand lightly.
Reaching out, she grasped a zombie’s head. She tightened her grip.
Crack.
The Undead’s head exploded. The fragments didn’t splatter noisily. As she waved her hand lightly, fragments and flesh intermixed with bones dropped into the sewer.
A graceful motion.
It didn’t seem like she was exerting much effort.
‘…Is she gathering while exploding them?’
He didn’t know her tricks. What was certain was that this wasn’t her first time doing such a thing.
The movement wasn’t messy.
Extend the arm, grab the head, swing.
Just repeating a kind of formulaic process.
But the result was evident.
With each step she took, the bodies of the Undead whose heads burst open lay strewn about on the floor.
The amount of mana consumed was minimal.
It was a brutally efficient battle.
‘She’s not a mage, but…’
It felt more like watching a well-trained soldier.
“Professor Rania.”
“What?”
Belnoa asked.
“Can I ask what you were doing before you became a professor…?”
Most professors are scholars. They spend long periods building theories and have skills based on those theories.
However, this professor before him was different.
Belnoa sensed that intuitively.
It felt like she had accumulated experience not from theory but from real battles. She moved without hesitation. The movements were light yet efficient.
‘Skilled in actual combat.’
Belnoa, who had grown through real battles in the slums, could recognize that movement.
‘Twisting joints, gripping necks, bursting heads.’
Naturally incapacitating them.
Those movements were not something that could simply be honed.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because you seem skilled in actual combat…”
“Hmm…”
At that question, Rania fell silent.
“Well.”
Momentarily pondering, she finally spoke.
“I did roll around in some dirty places.”
“…Dirty places, you say?”
“Yeah, probably the dirtiest.”
With that statement, she didn’t add anything further. Belnoa also ceased his questioning. He had a rough idea of a place in mind.
‘The dirtiest place…’
That phrase reminded Belnoa of a specific location.
When he asked Cardi, the stepfather who raised him, about his hometown, he mentioned that place.
-My hometown, you say?
-It’s become somewhat different now, but there’s a place called the Ashen Wasteland.
-That’s a place littered with the ruins of a kingdom reduced to ashes. I’ve heard all sorts of dark factions have taken root there.
Ashen Wasteland.
A lawless land teeming with enormous organizations that Belnoa had shattered, incomparable to mere shadows.
Cardi referred to that place saying,
-Actually, that’s the Phantom Territory.
-It’s not just the underworld; there’s no distinct Phantom Territory.
-It’s the dirtiest place in the underworld.
Belnoa speculated.
‘Is she related to that place…?’
Then it seemed to make sense.
Connecting with that old geezer and being skilled in actual combat, if she were from that lawless land, it would all align.
‘To survive, she’d need to be accustomed to it.’
Just as he had.
Belnoa suddenly recalled the past.
‘Habits for survival.’
By any means necessary.
Using everything at their disposal.
Pursuing efficiency. The moment of hesitation could result in death. Thus, they aim for the vital points from the beginning.
An instinctive thought process.
A thought process that had to be developed through necessity.
“…”
Belnoa glanced at Rania, who was leading the way.
“Hmm…”
A slight realization hit him.
He found her rear figure strangely familiar.
2.
“…”
I paused mid-step and glanced back.
“Hmm…”
Belnoa was nodding as if he understood something. I had made some decent excuses but was it working?
‘Can’t say I just rolled around the battlefield.’
Whether it’s a misunderstanding or not, it seems he got it to some extent.
I resumed walking, keeping my gaze ahead. It was just a cycle of undead pouring out, cleaning, and repeating.
How long had it been?
Suddenly, Belnoa spoke up.
“…Why don’t you sweep them away with a wide-area spell?”
“What?”
“That one you showed in the grand hall; if you unleash just one, you wouldn’t have to deal with each one individually…”
What is he talking about?
I chuckled lightly while responding.
“Here?”
“Yeah?”
“If I mess up, everything flies away, doesn’t it? Do I want to risk collapsing the sewer just to catch a rat?”
I didn’t know how sturdy the sewer was, but when I used Smash earlier, bricks trembled.
‘If Smash is shakily fine, using a wide area spell would just…’
That spells certain burial.
Getting out wouldn’t be hard, but the aftermath would be a problem. I’d have to clean up and check all the debris.
“We have to see what’s at the end. If we blast it away, it’ll just be a hassle to check.”
“The end…? ”
“Do you think this is normal?”
I pointed inside the dark sewer.
“Monsters can appear in sewers after all. Maybe a Magic Circuit abandoned after an experiment. I thought that initially too, but…”
But looking more closely, my thoughts changed a bit.
“It’s excessive.”
This was a bit too much.
“There are too many.”
“…”
“Besides, they keep multiplying as we go further… doesn’t that give you an answer?”
I lightly kicked the body of an undead whose head I just smashed.
“They must have been created not long ago.”
“…That’s for sure.”
“The fact that they increase as we go further suggests there’s something in there.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Although it was engulfed in darkness, it wasn’t simple darkness.
‘There’s definitely something there.’
Something that can’t be seen with the naked eye.
“See?”
I laughed.
“With all that preparation, there’s no way there’s nothing there.”
Something blocking the way with darkness.
Crackle, crunch.
It wasn’t just mere Undead.
Something that resembled dozens of zombies gathered, blocking the end of the passage.
“…Ugh.”
The foul stench caused Belnoa to pinch his nose shut.
‘It does smell pretty bad, huh.’
I was about to swing my fist, but paused for a moment. Given the wider area, I had planned to use Smash, but…
‘The splatter is going to go everywhere.’
Having seen all kinds of gruesome and revolting things on the battlefield, I’ve become somewhat habituated to it. But still, seeing bits of zombie flesh splattering around isn’t…
Just imagining it made my stomach churn a bit.
“Ugh.”
I released my clenched fist, spreading my hand wide, bringing my index, middle, and thumb together. The spells stockpiled in each finger began to spark.
“That one needs to be burned down.”
Ashes.
Ignite.
The Ashen flames soared.