CH ss - 24

[Alfine: The Inside of the Hole]

After I finished pulling up the rope, I imposingly stood with my arms crossed in front of Meila who came out to the ground.

“Al-kyun… if you look at me with such beast-like eyes, Onee-san will be embarrassed…”

“Meila Nee-san… you know why I’m angry, right?”

“Y-you got it wrong! See, that hole. It whispered to me! It told me to explore its inside, so I got no choice but to do it.”

“Whisper? There’s no way you could’ve heard such a thing…”

“I can hear it you know. ‘Come, come down here’ – like that!”

Meila desperately made excuses, but no matter how I think about it, there is no one inside the hole, so she couldn’t possibly hear a voice or the like.

“But thanks to it, I made a great discovery you know! A great discovery!”

“Now that you mention it, you also said something like that when I pulled you up, but what did you find? Rebecca said that there was nothing inside the hole, wasn’t she?”

Meila stood up and grabbed my hand with sparkling eyes.

“That’s because the people who were looking were just looking down! What I found is at the side of the hole. Side of it!”

“Side of it?”

“Yes, come, look here.”

Having said that, Meila pulled my hand and took me to the edge of the hole of the Abyss Hole.

Then she pointed at a part of the depth of the hole with a smug face.

That place is different from the other parts of the hole; the edge seems like it has been scraped off as if it was scrubbed with something, and the ground was exposed without any weed growing as if people often walked through it.

“It looks a little different from the surroundings, but… what’s wrong with it”

“Since it was told that the search team didn’t get down into the hole, I thought it was pretty weird when I saw the place. Because, this is a ‘trace of a large number of people got down with a rope’. When I searched around with that in mind, I found a trace of a rope fixed so that it would be hidden behind that large tree over there.”

At the place where Meila pointed, there is a deeply rooted biggish large tree with clump of bushed in its periphery.

“Do you mean that there were people who tied a rope to that large tree and got down recently?”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. It feels like a large number of people got down just before the search team came.”

“That means it was about two or three weeks ago… It seems like it wasn’t the adventurers. The Adventurer’s Guild forbids it; besides, even if they get down, there’s nothing inside after all.”

Abyss Hole is now crowded with adventurers who are searching for Abyss Walker, but I heard that before then, the only ones who came this far was the memorial group led by a representative of the Youg Hannotes Frontier Count’s Knight Order.

I wonder why there are traces of a large number of people going back and forth to the inside of such a remote Abyss Hole.

“I don’t know who got down there, but there were quite a few traces of people getting down on the wall of the hole. Though perhaps it wasn’t found because the search was focused on the area around the Abyss Hole and no one was interested in the hole. Undoubtedly, someone got down there.”

“So, what did Meila find?”

“Fufufu, it’s door. A door. A hidden door. Even if other people’s eyes are deceived, these eyes of mine, who specialized in ruins investigation, can’t be deceived. It was concealed on the surface of the wall, but after all, there were traces left after it was being opened closed until recently. Just straight from this large tree, and down to the hole.”

With her hands on her waist, Meila talked about what she discovered proudly.

“Door… Does that mean there is a room inside?”

“I don’t know because Al pulled me just before I tried to confirm it. But from the looks of it, it won’t be strange if there is a room or some kind of facility inside.”

“…That is certainly a great discovery… We have to immediately—”

“Dooon’t! Why don’t we investigate it first? If you report this to the guild, everything will be taken and I think they won’t let us to investigate it.”

“But there are only two of us, won’t it be dangerous? I think it’s better to report it.”

“Noo—, I’m the one who found iiit—, I must be the first one to investigate iiit—”

Meila clung to my waist, shook her head and shouted.

But I don’t like dark and narrow place…

That’s why I asked Finn not to choose monster subjugation in ruins and caves after all.

Besides, if the two of us get down, there’ll be no one to pull us up.

And I feel it is quite dangerous to let Meila go alone.

Seeing me didn’t nod, Meila stood up, entered the wagon, and began to look for something.

There was an unfamiliar tool in the hand of Meila who came out of the wagon after a while.

“Even if the two of us get down, as long as there is this, we can get up, so it’s fine.”

“Pulley?”

“It’s a manual winder! I got down in a hurry earlier, so I forgot, but if you stick a rope to this, you can get up just by winding this handle! Hey, hey, let’s get down! There are two of us anyway! Al-kyuu~n!”

Meila made her eyes sparkling, insisting that she wanted to get down no matter what.

Haah… now that it come to this, I feel that I can’t convince her otherwise anymore.

I don’t like dark and narrow place, but… at this rate, Meila will go, even if she is alone… it can’t be helped, let’s get down together.

I decided to raise a white flag to Meila’s insistence.

“Okay. Okay. Then we better bring some equipment and foods. And bring of a lot of illuminations. I hate dark places.”

“Kyaaa———! Al-kyuun is so cool! Onee-chan fell in love with you!”

Meila rushed out of the wagon towards me.

After receiving such Meila, I immediately started preparing to go down.

Welp, what is waiting for them behind the mystery door?