Chapter 11 – Sewer Exploration Request (3)
Creak… Creak…
As I descended the iron ladder, the smell of toilet sewage filled the room.
Within 3 fucking seconds, I also wanted to call and use subcontractors of subcontractors. If it weren’t for the question of who to hit the subcontractor with 3 coopers per day, he would have done so.
“As soon as I came down, there was a broken spot.”
Said Gentrick, pointing towards the interior illuminated by the lantern. A small entrance attached to the wall. It was a circular drainage ditch with bars attached vertically like a prison. One iron bar is completely missing.
“Sewer? No, it’s a passage.”
“This is an emergency exit. Looking at the map, there are a few more inside the sewers.”
Tirsi, who came down next to us, opened the map and said.
“Escape. Was it made to escape in an emergency, such as when a torrent strikes?”
“I do not know? I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s locked, so we can’t use it.”
“Cabi.”
“I hope you never have to escape.”
Gentrick wiped his nose over his mask. Don’t sound ominous, old man.
“Miss Francesca? Could you write down on a piece of paper that the A01 sewage passage is broken?”
“Cracked bars? All right.”
Francesca wrote down the numbers Tirsi had read on the map. Like a dwarf with good dexterity, the handwriting was round and pretty.
But when I heard that the barbed wire was broken, the memory of the barbed wire investigation in the military came to mind. Even if I fell to another world, I still had vivid memories of my days as a soldier.
“Move. I hope it’s over before nightfall.”
Starting with Tirsi’s words, we started reconnaissance.
***
That buck… That buck…
Gentrick and I moved in the lead according to the unspoken rules.
The warrior is always a tanking role at the front. We don’t even use fucking magic, we don’t have any other abilities, and we’re even men.
So, it was literally the law of nature to become the body of wizards & thieves. Because this is a different world engulfed by machoism and Gao.
We wandered through the sewers for a long time. The interior, which looked like London’s sewage system, was quite tolerable if you closed your eyes to the dark and smelly things.
“The ropes on the bridge are damaged. Should I record that too?”
“Uh… I’ll write it down for now.”
“At the entrance to the sewer over there, the bricks have collapsed.”
“There… It’s an inward corner. There is no number recorded on the map. What should I do?”
“How about writing between sewer passages D04 and D05?”
“It’s fine. I will.”
We faithfully carried out the commission.
According to Tirshi, who has a pocket watch, he has already slept for nearly three hours. The inside of the sewer system recorded on the map was long and complicated, so it was necessary to walk with an efficient circulation in mind.
However, it was boring to just walk around, so we naturally chatted.
“Why did you apply for this request, Mr. Tyrsi? Sorcerers are… You can get a better request.”
Francesca asked, eagerly following our stride. It was the car I was curious about, so I listened to the conversation behind me as I walked.
“It’s for a promotion. Not from the silver class, but from a longer-term perspective.”
Tirsi, who had the map under her armpit, pulled out a gun plate around his neck and said.
“Up to the gold class, the history of performing quests tells everything about the promotion conditions. But beyond… In order to obtain a plate made of platinum or divine silver, you must meet the standards of the Adventurers Guild Association.”
Adventurer’s Guild Alliance.
Considering that the word guild means ‘combination’, it is an extraordinary naming. Because it means the Adventurer Guild Alliance. However, the actual meaning was the same as the name.
“It must be a group formed by the gathering of adventurers’ guilds.”
Grandpa Gentrick also turned around and joined the conversation. Tyrsi nodded.
“Yeah. It is an organization that mediates between guilds and countries with branches in each country.”
It was as Tirshi put it. I also saw and heard what the adventurer guild union was doing, and roughly regarded them as a different world version of the BE Violent UN.
A group that is close to an interest group and occasionally intervenes with force. It seemed like a very appropriate metaphor to me.
“Are there any special requirements to become Platinum or higher?”
Intrigued, I also asked Tyrsi a question. It was because my respected advisor Brahmaton Sensei also had an adventurer grade of Gold.
There is no way that a person who manages to hold a professorship at Carmine University will end up in trouble because of his lack of skills. In fact, Tirshi’s words evoked the nuance that there were other conditions.
“There must be a standard for promotion. I just don’t know because the federation hasn’t formally announced the conditions. I’m just personally guessing.”
Returning the plate to her bosom, Tyrsi replied.
“What is only half certain is that it is difficult for adventurers belonging to other groups to rank above platinum.”
Belt? Why? I tilted my head for a moment, and then I realized what the reason was.
“It’s a matter of interest and pride.”
It was said that he was harsh on people like Professor Brahmaton and me who were active in ‘other industries’.
Even if we give an archaeologist platinum or mithril plates, we don’t lose our livelihood and bury our bones in the adventurer industry.
“… I was surprised. You understand quickly.”
Tirshi opened his eyes wide as if he was deliberately startled. He seemed to be in awe when I turned a blind eye without listening to an explanation.
“Uh? Uh? What does it mean?”
Francesca, who asked the first question, still didn’t understand why, so I gave a brief explanation.
“Isn’t there a blacksmith who goes around praising other blacksmiths for doing a good job? In the end, that person is also a rival to you, and praising others won’t help you.”
“Ah— I understand. That’s why it’s a matter of ‘pride and interests’.”
“Exactly. Especially against wizards who don’t have sponsors in the wizard guild, there’s a big tendency.”
Tirshi said indignantly.
“I can’t discriminate openly, so I find many flaws. When I was a rookie, I tended to only want to make a profit when choosing a quest, or I didn’t have the mindset to collaborate with other adventurers, it’s like that.”
“Everyone is the same when it comes to living.”
Points are deducted for lack of cooperation among team members.
It was a common sound heard by the team leaders who did shit on group assignments alone.
Even if the members of the team are all slick and make it by themselves, fucking shit, some professors say shit like that. It was already several years ago, but I was vividly upset as if it happened just yesterday.
“Then, the reason you accepted this request is to leave a kind of volunteer activity record.”
“… I don’t think that carrying out a request with you is a volunteer activity.”
“Excuse me. The expression is bad. It’s just that places I’ve heard of also calculate service points.”
Born in 1995, when I was aiming to enter a prestigious high school, I had to fill up volunteer work hours to enter high school.
I said it because I remembered those days, but I think I should have listened to it. When I apologized, Tyrsi shook her head too.
“Nope. Because that’s true to some extent. Actually, I wanted to leave a record of carrying out a request that was avoided as a party leader.”
“It’s not too bad, is it? It’s mutual aid.”
I said with a grin.
“We get help from a bronze tier mage, and the mage also benefits. Rather, it is something we should be thankful for.”
“… Thank you.”
Tirthy replied shyly. Gentrick and Francesca laughed secretly at her appearance.
“Oh, look over there. There’s a sewer cover over there too.”
Then Francesca pointed to the drain opposite her. The sewer she pointed to had the lid pulled off to keep out foreign objects.
“Oh, really. Mmm. So, that sewer over there…”
We pause on her feet as Tyrsi shines a lantern on the map, searching for her number with her sewage.
“Whoa… Anyway, why is the sewer system so broken? Where are the bullies breaking things for fun?”
Gentrick, who kneaded his knee, suddenly became annoyed. He found more than 10 problems in 3 hours, so he was starting to get fed up with the endless work.
“That is not wrong. Aren’t monsters crawling into human habitation worse than bullies?”
Creatures chewing barbed wire, both on Earth and here, have always been harmful assistants.
Creatures living in the sewage system are destroying things and fucking saying that they are making shortcuts, so we are the only ones suffering.
“Are you saying that monsters are like that? Nonsense.”
Even after rolling on the floor for a long time, Gentrick looked as if he hadn’t even thought about it. I tried to accumulate 1 defeat this time to the level of knowledge of the people of the other world, but the words that followed made me stiff.
“Then why haven’t we met a single monster so far?”
“… Uh huh is it?”
I didn’t have anything to say.
That was right. If the monsters were the giblets in the sewer, we, who had been wandering around here for several hours, should have given up on the monsters and the right to survive long ago to be normal.
“… Iknow, right? If not a monster, then what? People would have no reason to mess with the sewers.”
Francesca also put down the writing paper and expressed her doubts.
“Monsters must be the cause. Come to think of it, I can’t even see the cleaning slime released by the wizard guild, right?”
As the three of us talked, Tyrsi said the same.
“Uh…”
Like a game quest, I just did what I was told, so I didn’t notice the discomfort.
The dark sewers, which had been slowly acclimatising, suddenly looked like the camouflage of a grotesque creature.
I wouldn’t have broken people, and I can’t see monsters.
“If the monster is destroyed, but the monster is invisible…”
I opened my mouth to shake off the ominous feeling.
“… Did those monsters disappear for some reason?”
And as soon as I put those words into my mouth, they appeared.
Crisp.
Crispy.
We found ‘the creatures’ attached to the wall at the dead end of the sewer. It was an insect, a large exoskeleton creature with six bent legs and two antennae.
It wasn’t even that the creatures that lived in the sewers were terribly strange.
“Det?”
Except it’s fucking fucking big.
Crispy.
──Crisp.
Dozens of super-giant bugs all stopped their antennae and movement in front of the lantern’s light—
Pasasa sasasa sasasak!!
——They jumped wildly, landed on the floor, and attacked us.
“Aaaaa!!!!! Ceeeee!!! What is that!!!!!”
I screamed at the top of my throat in the dark corner of the aqueduct.
─At one time, I saw an article like that on the Internet.
If there exists a spider of a similar size to humans, that spider will become the strongest carnivore on land through insect-specific physical abilities and hunting skills.
However, the article concluded by concluding that it would be impossible for an insect to become human-sized.
It was said that the insect’s unique exoskeleton could not withstand its own weight when it had grown to the size of a human.
At that time, I remembered that I was so grateful for the earth’s gravity while watching the conclusion.
“But motherfucker, what a disease she can’t stand her weight!!!”
Reflecting the light of our lantern, the shining black light, light, light!!
They were all one kind of big bug!!
“Aaaaa!!! Dog fuck great big yodaaaaa!!!”
“Kwaaaaagh!!! There are so many!! There are so many of those bastards!!!”
“Kyaaaaa!!! Sound!! I hate the sound of those wings!!!”
Fuck! I was caught off guard!
It was a world where there were just fucking giants and dinosaurs here. There was no way there wouldn’t be an insect the size of a person’s knee.
Wakku insects like a hybrid of katydids and cockroaches!
Maybe there is no God in this world? If there were, at least they wouldn’t have created all life on this earth.
Fuck if that’s not the case, it means that there is a god who makes that kind of creature good, but it seemed that it would be good for my mental health to give up my faith if I wanted to affirm the existence of such an insect-loving god.
Pasasasak!!
Pasasa sasasa sasasak!!
“Aaaaa!!! Those babies fly!!! Flying Yeochi!!!”
“It jumps, quick!!!!!!”
“Run away!! Do-do-do, run away!”
“Ahhhhh!
We became scream speakers as one body and ran in reverse on the road to the underground waterway.
The four brave adventurers had turned into a profanity prevention vehicle that emits screams and curses while teasing their legs!
“Fuck!! Ceeeee haircut!! Why, there are all those bugs!”
“Giant Roach!! It’s carnivorous!!”
“Thank you so much for the frugal information!!!!!”
An untimely dead race between bugs and humans unfolded in the sewers beneath the city.
Fortunately for the misfortune, those cubs didn’t seem to have the physical abilities unique to insects. If the katydid I knew was that big, it wouldn’t be strange if it flew in one fucking jump and landed in front of us.
Did the skill tree and stats keep up with the added weight, and my jumping power was all but gone?
It was a thousand times fortunate. If those guys with great fertility and vitality had high specs, the moment I came to this world, the sky and the ground would have been full of cockroach eggs.
Even now, those katydids can’t catch up with us.
We squeezed our souls, and the rabbits were heavy, but anyway, leg strength itself was proof that our leg strength was similar to or higher than ours.
So if we stick our minds together and fight, I think we can win!
Those bastards are double-eyed!!! So fucking scared!!!!!
“Aaaaa!! Tyrsi!! Mr. Tyrsi!! Try shooting some magic!!!!!!”
“You want me to focus on magic in such a hectic situation?! No, more than that, I can’t run anymore because I’m out of breath!!!! Can Mr. Nord carry me on his back?!!!!!!!!!!”
“Ah, don’t give a fuck, really!!!!!!!!!!!”
“What the hell!! No shit!! But damn it’s right!! Sorry!!!!!!!!!”
If you run with a 40kg bag of rice that has damaged your center of gravity against those damn bastards, you will have to count down the 10-second countdown to the end of your life.
At a glance, it looks like there are more than 20 of them, but they get surrounded and eat their whole body?
Damn that’s even behind Hercules. The corpse, which was chewed on, bitten, tasted and enjoyed by worms, would not be put on the constellation even by Zeus.
“Me, me, me, me, me, me!!!”
Then, as Francesca shuddered, she shouted something. What? Do you mean that your breasts are shaking from running so much that they’re about to be ripped out?
“Hey, hey, hey!! Run through the sewer passage over there!!”
What Francesca pointed out was a round iron grate in the wall. The surroundings were so dark that it was difficult to see at a glance.
Gentrick, who found the same thing as me, screamed.
“Sounds stupid! Wasn’t the escape hatch locked earlier! Do you want to die in front of an iron bar?!”
“Ten seconds!! No, just give me 5 seconds and I can open it!!”
Mother. I will turn around. There was no fucking point in arguing with her teammates while she was slowly running out of breath.
I looked behind me, but the distance to the swarming katydid chicks barely changed.
It wasn’t because we and them ran at the same speed. Rather, in the beginning, it was enough to spread the distance without difficulty. However, when the stamina of the 4 members of the cocksucking party ran out, the distance they had been able to open gradually began to decrease.
If you keep going like this, you will catch up! Even in a state where stamina is running out!
“Mr. Tyrsi!!”
I shouted, squeezing even the strength I had been sucking on.
“Attack or defense is good, so anything is magic!! Please!!! At this rate, we all get bitten by bugs and search for them!!!”
Tirshi was frightened by my screams, then grabbed the wand and recited an incantation. It was the same piety as a nun offering her last prayer in front of a horde of zombies without any fucking exaggeration.
But that alone is not enough.
I had to buy even one second more time. After all, if that person fails in magic, it’s the countdown to heaven.
So I took the second measure.
“Miss Francesca!!”
“Four!!”
“I’ll throw it!! Grab your teeth and take the trick!!!”
“Four?!!”
I didn’t have to hear the answer. I lifted Francesca, who was running beside her, onto her shoulders as if carrying a load.
Flash!
She weighed more than I thought because of her violent chest, which contradicted her small frame. But this is enough to throw!
“Ooooo!!!”
I pulled myself as far back as I could, channeling all my strength into my fantastic muscles, which I had over-adapted to another world fantasy for three years. I was thinking of throwing it like this to gain time to pick the lock, even for a second.
It was then.
Pasasasak!
Bang!
“───Defect?”
Discomfort in the lower back.
What should I say? It felt like six thick plastic straws for bubble tea were holding my waist at the same time.
It was worth it.
My feet must have slowed down because I was lifting one person, and since I pulled my body back, there was nothing strange about a “Lucky guy” Sticking to me.
Sasasasak!
─But the fuckin’ bastard is fucking moving.
“—Oh.”
I let out a scream as I realized that the blood was draining from my Daegalpak.
“—Owaaaaa!!!!!”
“—Hikkyaaaaa!!!!!”
True horror start when cockroach use its wing