Chapter 33

Monsters can be broadly classified into four categories.

1. Variants.

For example, regular goblins, goblin archers and goblin swordsmen. They’re all of the same race, but have different classes.

2. Higher species.

The deathfiends I’d met in the Land of the Dead belong to this category.

Note that this is a relative term. As long as the monster is one grade higher than the average of the current floor, it’s a higher species.

3. Rare species.

Monsters that can only be met in certain special places like the rifts, like corpse golems, or monsters that can appear in the general areas but are extremely difficult to find, like mimics, fall in this category.

4. High variants.

Named monsters, with unique memories for each individual, and individual names.

Their most prominent characteristic is that they can have ‘the power of essence’, giving them special abilities unavailable to their species.

In short, they’re much tougher and much more demanding to fight.

Imagine, what if an ‘ogre’, known for its thick skin, also possessed the regenerative ability of a ‘troll’?

A crazy monster would be born.

That’s why…

I was running with all my might.

“Who the hell is that guy?! Why the hell is there a vampire here…”

“Run faster if you’ve got the time to whine, dwarf.”

Out of the entrance to the boss room –

“Huk, huk, I can’t even run anymore… “

“Excuse me, Miss Raven.”

Following the same route by way of which we’d come in, past the water pipes –

“We can’t leave this place without killing him anyway. Wouldn’t it be better to fight?”

“We at least need to find sunlight.”

“What sunlight? The sky’s all red!”

“That’d still be better than here, though.”

Even after entering the maze-like dungeon –

“Turn left here!”

We continued to sprint.

Because this place was no different than ‘his’ home ground.

We had to get outside at any cost.

That way we could still have a chance to live.

“A, a high variant guardian… This is unprecedented.”

Well, that wasn’t strictly true.

High variants appear even in the ‘White Temple’ on the third floor. And from the eighth floor and up, in the true depths of the labyrinth, it’s safe to say that all rifts are like that.

But, well, it wasn’t wrong to call this unprecedented for the first floor.

Even I, an old pro in his ninth year with ten thousand runs under his belt, had never met the ‘vampire duke’.

I only knew about his existence from a recording a player had posted on the only community site for the game.

“Oh right! How did you know, Mr. Bjorn? You told us to close the door!”

Couldn’t that damned zeal for learning take a rest even in this situation?

“I repeat, run faster.”

“But I’m not running by myself, right?”

Ah, that’s right.

But can’t you see how hard I’m trying to run?

“… I just had an intuition.”

Before things got any more annoying, I looked around and cut off our conversation.

But if I were to answer that within my own head…

It was thanks to the unusual colour of the doorknob that I’d noticed.

In the Blood Citadel gameplay recording that player had uploaded, that had been the only unusuality.

When the vampire duke didn’t appear for me even after trying hundreds of times under the same conditions as that player, I’d thought there had to be some special condition, so I’d combed through the recording and found that small difference.

If I hadn’t been blinded by so many lucky breaks, could I have discovered it even before opening the door?

Well, there was no point thinking about that right now.

“You’re being rude, o guests.”

As soon as we reached the second floor of the dungeon, ‘he’ appeared on our trail.

Swaaaaaa–!

Chasing us in the form of a black mist, not as a human.

This wasn’t a vampiric ability. It was one of the dozens of black magic spells he possessed, ‘spiritization’.

This was why I hated monsters that used magic.

They were too damned versatile.

“Raven!”

I immediately called the wizard on our side.

I wanted to ask if she knew any solar magic, the elemental weakness of all vampires.

But I was thinking too much.

“Everyone close your eyes!”

The lady wizard had already finished casting.

“Aheschenbert tu!”

‘Radiant explosion’.

A support spell usually used for its AoE blinding effect.

Even with my eyes closed, I could clearly feel the sudden and intense flash of light.

Ppiiiii–.

Ignoring the tinnitus from my ears, I opened my eyes, and found that the black smoke that’d been chasing us had disappeared.

Thank God.

By cancelling ‘spiritization’, the next part of the combo, ‘materialization’, had also been prevented.

Meaning we’d earned at least three minutes of reprieve, or even more.

By now, ‘he’ must’ve again woken up in the shrine room.

But were triumphs bound to be accompanied by disasters?

“Bjorn! The wizard’s down!”

“What?”

Hearing Ainar’s exclamation, I glanced at Raven, who was being held by the porter as we ran, and saw that she had fainted. As if she’d suffered from some internal injury, blood was dripping from her lips.

… What? Did that bastard use some magic?

But one couldn’t use magic in ‘spiritized’ state, though?

‘Maybe the power of the essence?’

Maybe.

In the recorded gameplay, the player had gotten wiped out without much fuss, so it was impossible to confirm what kind of additional abilities the ‘vampire duke’ had.

Various possibilities swirled in my head, but I decided to stop thinking about it for now.

“What are you doing?! Not running?”

“The wizard who knew the way has passed out!”

“Don’t worry. I know the way.”

“… How?”

Looking at the dwarf’s face full of doubts, I answered briefly.

“I memorized it.”

“But isn’t this your first time here…?”

In fact, I’d been here hundreds of times.

I’d wanted to meet the ‘vampire duke’, so I’d been a really frequent visitor. Of course, I’d never expected that I’d get to see that face from up close instead of from the other side of the monitor.

“Follow me.”

I took the lead without allowing any further questions.

Would the wizard consider me too unusual for a barbarian when she woke up later?

But that’d be a concern for later.

Surviving now was the priority.

“Whoa, you really memorized the way…”

As we sprinted nonstop and reached the first basement floor, the dwarf exclaimed in amazement.

“You two, is it true that you finished your coming-of-age ceremony only last month?”

“Of course! Didn’t I tell you! Bjorn is a great warrior!”

“A great warrior, huh… Feels like that really might come true someday.”

They say praise can make even whales dance, but I’m not a whale… please, I’m begging you, if you’ve got the energy to talk, run faster.

Maybe two minutes had passed so far.

Pit-a-pat pit-a-pat.

Left, right, straight, straight, right, left, straight, straight.

As we kept running non-stop according to map I’d drawn in my head, the exit finally came into view.

Were we just under three minutes?

I checked our trail one last time before running up the stairs.

“Whoo, whoo…”

Everyone was breathing hard, but nobody had been left behind because they all had good basic stamina.

The problem was that I could see a trail of dark smoke following behind us.

Swaaaaaa–!

Should I have thrown away the whole backpack?

Else I could’ve widened the distance a little bit further.

But nothing would change even if I regretted it now.

Let’s focus on what we can do right now.

Pit-a-pat pit-a-pat!

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We rushed up the stairs.

But did he use ‘materialization’?

Pitter-patter.

I heard the sound of something being assembled behind us.

It was time to go for broke.

I started jumping two to three steps at a time with a last-minute burst of energy.

And…

“We’re out!”

We finally came out on the surface.

Without a single fatality.

“I was so worried deep inside, but it really didn’t follow us up, I see…”

The dwarf muttered with a sigh.

However, as if he wasn’t completely relieved, his gaze was still fixed on the stairs leading to the basement.

Anybody with basic sense would know.

In the end, we’d just bought ourselves a little more time.

None of the problems had actually been resolved.

“… How long do you think it’d take?”

In response to the dwarf’s question, I shrugged, looking at the ridge across the castle walls.

Well, although I didn’t know the exact time…

“Just from the looks of it, there isn’t much time left.”

Time was clearly not on our side.

Soon, that dark red sky would turn completely stygian.

So we needed to finish our preparations before that.

“So how’s the wizard, exactly?”

“She’s taken a potion, so she should come back to her senses soon.”

“Are you sure?”

“… I’m sure she will.”

That’s just your own wish then, you bastard.

Really, did this guy have no concept of our current situation that he was behaving like this?

I said firmly.

“You have to do more this time.”

“But…”

But, what?

“Or do you want to lose everything?”

Sometimes being completely direct is the most effective.

He couldn’t protect the wizard by himself if all the rest of us died.

“… What can I do?”

Although if he had to ask me that, it might be true that he couldn’t make much of a difference.

But I just wanted to remind him of his resolve before the battle began.

“Guard the wizard. Even if you have to risk your life.”

“… Of course.”

His tone changed, sounding a lot more reliable.

And now that this bastard had been dealt with –

Was there only one more thing left to prepare?

“Let’s go to the outer walls. It’d be better to have some cover.”

I used some unreasonable excuses to lead the party to the outer walls.

In fact, it might’ve been best to leave everything here and go alone right away…

But if ‘he’ popped up in the meantime, it’d be game over.

“Wait here for a moment. I’ll take a look around and come back.”

“Splitting the party’s a bad idea!”

The dwarf shouted something, but I pretended to be deaf and ran towards the fountain I’d noticed the last time.

I had no choice then but to ignore it in order to not attract attention, but this time I had to get that item.

Clang! Crumble.

A fountain, dry and full of pebbles.

After breaking the statue in the middle, I combed through the fragments and pulled out a small box from the debris.

「The character has obtained the [Tear of the Goddess].」

When I checked, the contents also matched how it’d been in the game…

Other good news also followed.

“This is…”

When I came back after packing my new prize into the sole of my boots, Raven had come to her senses.

“Vampire! What about the vampire?”

“We managed to escape somehow. But he’ll appear again after the sun goes down.”

“I see.”

Maybe because she was still in pain, so she frowned.

Now it was her turn to answer.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Raven took a cursory sip of the potion the porter handed her like it was plain bottled water, and answered in a half-dead voice.

“Ugh, I’m not sure, but… augh, based on the symptoms, sss… it was most likely ‘pain sharing’.”

‘Pain sharing’.

We were pretty lucky if that was true.

The eighth-grade monster with this ability, ‘nightflier’, was one of the ones with the lowest basic stats among its peers.

If the essence had been sixth grade, no, even seventh grade, the difficulty would’ve been even higher.

“Ah… In fact, when I tried to use the spell one more time, the backlash… “

Raven grabbed the collar over her chest with a painful expression.

Seeing it made me feel very sad too.

Seemed like I’d have to cover for her a while longer.

“How long would the recovery take?”

“Ugh, a complete recovery is impossible. My magic circuit’s gotten completely twisted.”

“A rough estimate is fine, so give me some numbers.”

“Twenty minutes? I should heal up enough by then for up to five rank seven attack spells.”

Five magic spells in the same class as ‘flame baptism’.

This was a pretty big deal.

“Are there any other solar magics you know of?”

“It’s very rude to ask a wizard about their spell repertoire, you know?’

Of course, in terms of the worldview, I knew that.

But right now I was one of the barbarians, who stood at the very apex of rudeness, with a cultural tradition of daring to talk smack towards anybody except the king.

Looking at my eyes which were bluntly saying ‘so what?’, Raven could only sigh.

“I could cast one ‘sunspot sphere’.”

“Sunspot sphere…”

Its basic form was similar to a fireball, but it was a rank six attack spell that used the solar attribute instead of fire.

Now how could I spruce this up even more?

“What about using the ‘attribute strengthening’ spell on the sunspot sphere?”

“… If I had ten more minutes to gather the mana.”

“Alright then. I’ll try to hold on somehow until then. So don’t go out of your way to help, and save your magic.”

“Yes, got it… Wait, but why is Mr. Yandel acting as the leader?”

As expected of a wizard, huh? She sure caught on quickly.

The dwarf had just followed along when I’d ‘naturally’ taken the lead.

“Then is there anyone else who can do it?”

She glanced at the porter, Ainar, and the dwarf, in that order, then shook her head as if she’d been convinced.

“That, really… I see how it is.”

“Ha ha ha! Sorry! I was just born like this, so what can I do?”

The dwarf scratched the back of his thick neck as if he was indifferent. And Ainar also joined in the conversation because she saw a way for a quick victory.

“Are you going to admit that a barbarian is better than a dwarf!”

“Of course not! However, as the barbarian lady here said, this friend here is really something special. I could feel it.”

“Special…?”

“I’ve always been confident in my eye for people.”

Raven was curious about what’d happened while she was unconscious, but sadly, we couldn’t spend our precious time on that.

“Murad, how many essences do you have?”

“Four.”

“What kinds?”

I made the questions as short and concise as possible, trying to grasp the dwarf’s overall capabilities.

Among the essences he had, there were no key cards that could turn the game around…

Still, I could draw a strategy inside my head.

The one disappointment, however, was that there was no time to discuss it with the team members.

Swaaaaaa.

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A cool wind blew, and the shadows that covered the earth congealed and grew thicker.

Thirty minutes left until the preparations were ready.

「Night falls. 」

Now there was no place to retreat to.

I’d just have to endure it somehow.