CH 87

“... Well, this sure is different.” I muttered, taking in the new scenery.

In our journey into the depths of the dungeon, and in our search for Momokawa, the place in which we currently found ourselves was not stoney ruins, but looked like a palace with pristine white walls. Everything was white. But in spite of the single tone color scheme, the walls and floors were beautifully embellished like European chateaus. It was not the same old panels of white light that illuminated this area but lavish chandelier-like fixtures on the ceiling. And looking up at them, I was further surprised by the elaborate murales also carved there. They sort of looked like angels; nude boys and girls with wings coming out of their backs, frolicking and dancing. It was detailed work.

From the impressive murale to the dazzling chandelier, anything and everything looked brand new, like they’d been created just recently. Was there some kind of magic that could preserve the state of things so cleanly? Or what, maybe we’ll finally get to meet some of this world’s people now, someone has to take care of this place.

“It’s beautiful here.” Sakura, unlike me, had an eye for the fine arts and was entranced by the scene.

“I know. That only makes it all the more jarring.” Class Rep, in contrast, diligently kept up her guard.

“Guys, I kinda have the feeling we won’t meet any gomas around here.” Natsukawa-san, ever the perceptive Thief, said with a hint of confidence.

“Then again, that means there’s something else here, doesn’t it?” Asuna replied.

I also had a similar feeling. Intuition maybe? This sort of place seemed like it’d have skeletons or other inorganic types of monsters spawned by the dungeon.

“Uhhh, I hope there are no ghosts.” Whimpered Takanashi-san. Ghosts, well, I wouldn’t say it’s likely.

“Let’s get going.” Finally, Futaba-san strode ahead indifferently. She wasn’t like Sakura, appreciating the beauty, nor like Class Rep, who expressed vigilance towards the unknown.

Of course, I knew for a fact that she hadn’t let her guard down, not in the least. A Berserker would surely also sense the strange air drifting inside this zone. Yet, it was all the same for her. The same dungeon. The same danger at every step.

“Yeah, there’s no telling what might pop out here. Let’s proceed carefully.” I finished, prompting everyone to start walking.

As usual, we had Natsukawa-san leading, followed by Futaba-san and me as vanguards. Sakura and Class Rep walked behind us, with Asuna at the very end. One member each as the head and tail with two middle pairs; this was our current basic formation.

It was quiet. Too quiet really. Only the sound of our footsteps echoed along the white halls. We weren’t rushing either. We were watching out for anything that might appear, but for a while, nothing seemed to…

Suddenly, “Guys, stop!” Natsukawa-san raised a sharp voice. Trusting her judgement, everyone did as she said. “Walk a few steps back.”

“Alright.” I said. She must’ve sensed a trap of some sort and no one doubted her.

After having us step back, she did the opposite, taking a few steps forward. She stopped and bent her knees, ready to dodge if anything happens. A second passed, then two. The rest of us watched with bated breath as she stayed still, then suddenly――

Natsukawa-san leaped backwards, back to where we were standing. The next moment, from above, the chandelier on top of her old position crashed into the ground, shattering loudly like glass as it broke into a million pieces.

“This thing’s designed to fall on someone in the middle, so it has a delayed drop… they’re so scummy!” Seriously, she pouted. Her competence as a Thief made her reliable, but her attitude was rather cute.

“That would’ve been pretty bad.” I said. “If you hadn’t sensed it, it would’ve fallen on Sakura or Class Rep.”

“You’d expect a party to travel in formation, after all.” Class Rep added. “And with how us slow reacting mage types are almost always in the middle… Minami’s right, scummy indeed.”

“Yes,” Sakura replied, “we should be more careful of traps here than monster.”

“I think so too,” I agreed, “we’ll be counting on you, Natsukawa-san.”

“Nihaha, leave it to me!” laughed the girl in question with the radiance of a sunflower. And reliable she was. After that incident, we still didn’t see any monsters but the traps were plenty. There were 2 more dropping chandeliers, 3 pitfall traps, and we even had arrows and spears launched at us.

Having experienced so many of them, even I sort of got a knack for sensing traps, or maybe predicting was the right word? Well, it wasn’t anything near Natsukawa-san’s level, she was in a whole other league――

Skill learned:

Trap Search: The ability to detect laid out traps.

Well that was anticlimactic. I sort of felt sorry for Natsukawa-san too, so I didn’t speak up about it right away. Oh well, it was better to have two pairs of eyes looking out anyway.

“No way! There’s a secret room here!” Natsukawa-san suddenly cheered and pointed at a completely inconspicuous white wall. I tired focusing on the area with my Trap Search... Hm, I guess a trapdoor doesn’t really count as a dangerous trap so I could only faintly make it out, but that meant that there really was something beyond that wall.

“You guys, you think it’s a treasure box!?” Natsukawa-san said with visible giddiness.

“A treasure box inside a palace,” Sakura mused, “it might contain something incredible.”

“You’re right! Treasure box, hell yeah!” No one could blame her for jumping for joy. Natsukawa-san did do most of the work on the way here, she deserved a reward.

The trapdoor slid open on its own to reveal the room inside. Natsukawa-san practically leapt inside, “Where’s the trea―― ah!” and stopped. “Oh… uh, sorry guys…”

“Huh, what’s going on, Natsukawa-sa―― wha!?” I quickly rushed in and found the cause of her dismay.

Kohhhh... droned a black knight inside the white room. Its hulking two meter body was covered head to toe in jet black, full body armor. It carried a thick towershield, a massive halberd… and there were two more. One with a greatsword and another with a flail.

“Sakura, Class Rep, get back!” I yelled to get them to retreat away from the hidden room entrance. Natsukawa-san and I rolled to the side, dodging the first knight’s charge.

“Lux Sagitta!”

“Ice Sagitta!”

Sakura and Class Rep swiftly fired off their respective attack spells once they were far enough. But the tower shield and halberd knight had shield bashed the magic away as it bounded out of the trap room.

“That shield is tough.” I mumbled.

The greatsword and flail knights followed after the first, parrying away any bolts of magic fired at them. Now, all three were out and facing us in the white hallway.

“Nii-san, maybe we should run.” Sakura suggested.

“No,” I denied, “they might not look it, but they’re fast. They’ll get us from behind if we show our backs to them.”

Me, Asuna, Natsukawa-san, and Futaba-san may have been able to outrun them, but only if we used our battle arts to boost our speed. But Sakura and Class Rep didn’t have high physical stats like us, and Takanashi-san wasn’t even a combat class. I doubted if we could carry them and manage to escape.

“We have to defeat them, here.” Class Rep steeled herself, and,

“These knights, they’re strong… stronger than some of old boss monsters.” Asuna, who rushed up to the front sensing the danger, gulped after sizing up the enemies.

We each drew our weapons to challenged the black knights, the gatekeepers blocking our path.

“Souma-kun,” Futaba-san spoke up, “I’ll take the one with the shield alright?”

“Do you need any help?”

“Well, if you can hold off the others, that’d help.”

“Alright, I’ll take on the sword knight then. Asuna and Natsukawa-san, you two handle the flail.”

“Got it.” Asuna nodded curtly.

“Flay, what?”

“Dammit Minami, it’s the one with the spiked ball!” barked Class Rep. “Wait, you could’ve just guessed by process of elimination!”

“Hey, I’m sorry, alright!” Natsukawa-san was almost fooling around in the tense atmosphere, and the black knights hadn’t attacked us in the meantime. Whether they were cliche’dly waiting for us to finish the discussion, or trying to show off their confidence, I didn’t know.

Either way, it was convenient for us.

“ ―― Kotarou-kun, give me strength.” Futaba-san mumbled when I glanced to the side to give her the go ahead. She then popped a small, red nut into her mouth. And before I could ask――

“Haaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!”

Like a fiery explosion, Futaba-san released intense shockwaves of mana. And with a thundering roar, she burst toward the shield bearing black knight like a cannonball, true to her title of Berserker.

Her ferocity had almost left the me in the dust: “O-okay, time to fight!”

The fairy squares in the palace zone seemed to be built just as opulent as the rest of it. The fairy walnut trees were in a neat lined and well pruned, the various flowers had been planted with care to their placement, even the central fountain was bigger than usual, with fancy golden rimming. It felt like a well maintained park.

Looks aside, its function remained the same. After arriving at the square, we took a well deserved break.

“Haah... this place isn’t very easy.” Class Rep complained once she drank a mouthful of cold fountain water.

“You’re right,” I could only agree, “but we did get some good rewards out of it.”

After dealing with those first three, we had periodically faced more of this zone’s monsters. They weren’t many, but they were all strong. Like Asuna had said, they were stronger than many of the earlier bosses.

All the monsters here were like the black knights, covered in tough full body armor and carrying weapons. We first thought they might be heavy armored skeletons, but it turned out that the armors were empty.

Natsukawa-san and Class Rep had a dialogue which went something like: “Yikes! Aren’t these monsters those uh, dullahan things!?” “Don’t you mean living armor? Because that’s what they’re usually called.” And so we started calling them living armors.

These living armors, as the name implies, had bodies of tough armor with nothing inside. In other words, trying to hit a weak spot between the gaps in the armor did nothing as there was nothing to hit. From that description they may seem nigh unbeatable, but they did have a weakness and we had discovered it: lux magic.

After a number of stabs and slashes seeming to be useless in weakening them, Class Rep was the one who realized that the armors weren’t simply moving on their own but were perhaps being controlled by dark spirits hosted inside. Drawing on that logic, she figured that a well placed hit from a lux spell might purify them from the inside.

I also got the feeling that it might work. This sort of thing was really common in the fantasy RPGs or manga or novels I used to read at a kid. Video game logic of opposing elements aside, I also sensed a strange mana leaking from the hulking masses of steel, and that was what convinced me. I already use Lux Elementals, light spirits without any sort of substance, so I was naturally able to pick up on the similarity.

And once we had a plan, there was nothing stopping us from getting it done. Sakura fired a Lux Sagittainto the gash I had opened up on the sword knight’s armor. Hitting the armors directly with lux was not very effective but what about inside? Frankly put, our guess had been on point. The dark spirit did indeed dwell inside the black armor, and the moment Sakura’s lux bolt hit, ominous black mana gushed out like a spray of blood.

One shot left the black knight writhing in pain. 2 more and the black haze cleared, letting the armor fall into pieces with several clangs.

So, the way to defeat a living armor can be summed up in one line: physically attack it to create a gap in the armor, then deliver blasts of its elemental weakness, lux, inside. Now that we knew the method, Asuna and Natsukawa-san, who were having trouble with the flail swinging knight, were also able to beat it with Sakura’s help.

Additionally, we figured that since Lux Sagitta works, why not weapons with Holy Enchant cast on them? That also worked, granting us another way to deal with these powerful enemies. Lux magic ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting… but it wasn’t the only way to beat a living armor, as we found out very soon after finishing our side of the fight.

That method too wasn’t overly complex: Pummel it until the whole thing is reduced to scrap. Tried and tested by Futaba-san, this was her way of dealing with the new type of monster that was completely at contrast with our tag team approach of exploiting their weakness.

By the time our fight had finished, Futaba-san had disarmed the black knight of its towershield which had been thrown to the side all dented up. The knight had lost its shield and also its halberd, and was facing a similarly barehanded Futaba-san. But she didn’t need weapons for what she was about to do.

She had knocked down the towering knight and grabbing hold of its leg, she pulled. With a screech of metal the metal leg was torn off and then thrown away like a piece of trash. She then grabbed the remaining leg at the ankle. I had thought she would pull it off like the last one but she had instead used it to lift the living armor and slam it back down on the floor. She did it a 2nd time, then a 3rd, and then more, again and again, with unbelievable speed and strength. The arms and even the head came off… Futaba-san stomped down on it, crushing it like a pop can. At that point, the living armor stopped moving entirely.

“Oops, did I finish last? Sorry about that, it was a tough one.” Her instant smile gave me a little scare to be honest.

This was the way of the Berserker. Only a mad warrior could think to destroy a living armor with nothing but violence. Even I couldn’t do that.

That aside, “We sure got our hands on some good weapons.”

Living armors were tough enemies who carried strong weapons. Weapons that were much better in quality compared to the stuff we’d get from a troop of skeletons. The blades were well sharpened, and some were even enchanted. We could even have Takanashi-san Upgrade them. She could combine the new weapons with the ones we already use and make them even stronger. Finally having something to do, and so much of it at that, Takanashi-san was hyped up.

“I know,” Class Rep replied in a satisfied tone, “I even got this staff, finally.”

Among the living armors, there were those that wore robes over their armor and used magic to fight, mage armors. One of those carried the staff topped with the glowing blue orb that Class Rep was happily holding. The moment she realized that it was a cryomancer behind those robes she’d immediately set her sights on its staff. I guess she wanted one of her own for the longest time.

Weaponry aside, Natsukawa-san’s keen senses also came into play as she led us to a number of treasure boxes. Most of those contained healing potions, bit they also had a variety of magic items. Rings, necklaces, and even hairpins. I could only tell that these were magic and not ordinary accessories from sensing traces of their mana within… which didn’t really tell me anything about how they could be used, but that’s where our Sage, Takanashi-san, came in.

“Looks like Kotori’s going to be busy for a while.” Said Class Rep. “We got her a lot of weapons and items to go through.”

“She should take all the time she needs.” We had no reason to rush, after all. We spent some time in each new area searching for Momokawa. Unfortunately, we hadn’t found any trace of him as of yet, and neither did we find any of our other classmates.

Finding one person in this dungeon, that was not only incredibly vast, but even allowed for teleporting to different locations, felt like an impossible ordeal. Our best bet would be for Momokawa to somehow get ahead of us, and stay in one place until we reached him. But the task was not completely fruitless. Exploring places like this palace zone let us gather up lots of good weapons and items even up the search turned up nil.

“Souma-kun, can we go search this area now?” Futaba-san spoke up, almost as if she sensed that the topic was on my mind. Well, no, it wasn’t like she was waiting for the right time. She had been spending the last few minutes cleaning the tower shield, which she had claimed, at the fountain.

“Fighting all those living armors took a big toll on us, so let’s head out a little later.” I said. “And let’s keep the search close to the fairy square today. We’ll expand the range tomorrow once we’re rested up.”

“No problem. And who else is coming with us?”

“Takanashi-san will be busy for a while so… how about Sakura, Asuna, and Class Rep stays with her, while the rest of us go?”

I had enough energy, and along with Natsukawa-san, we were the only ones with trap sensing skills. Fighter classes like us and Futaba-san could move faster too. We could also retreat if we get into too tough a fight, since we’d be much speedier without the full party.

“I’ll come with you.” Class Rep demanded.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes. I wanted to get used to my new staff you see.”

That’s as valid a reason as any. Maybe it’s just me, but Class Rep kind of looked excited to be able to blast chunks of ice with her new toy.

“Okay, I’ll see you three a little later then.” Futaba-san said with a soft smile, as she turned away. She went over to a quiet corner of the square, likely to get some rest herself.

Fighting so many living armors really was taxing, both physically and mentally. They were far more dangerous than any mobs and required our full concentration to defeat. It was one grueling battle after another. None of the girls voiced any complaints but the evidence of fatigue was all over their faces. That was the case even for me. I could still fight if I had to, but it wasn’t a breeze like taking care of a pack of goma or red dogs.

“Haah... Futaba-san, she sure is strong.” I muttered under my breath. I genuinely admired her strength of heart.

But soon, that very night, I would come to learn―― how much of an idiot I was for thinking that.