I Became an Undetected Priest Impersonator - Chapter 12

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became an Undetected Priest Impersonator ◈

Chapter 12

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I Became a Building Owner

"Hold!"

"Kweeeegh!"

The tightly interlocked shields skillfully took the orc's body-slam.

All the while, the soldiers behind thrust their spears through the gaps in the shields and subdued the orc.

‘They fight better than I expected.’

I quietly revised my assessment of the soldiers.

Weak as individuals, maybe, but excellent as a group.

‘Well, an army is a mass, not a handful of people, so this is only natural.’

The battlefield changed when one last orc burst out of the dungeon entrance.

Thud!

A huge foot trampled down on the corpse of its own kind.

Its whole body was blistered raw from burns, yet its menace at least hadn't died, and it glared at the soldiers with murderous eyes.

There was no mistake. It was a boss specimen.

"Ra! Kraksa!"

The chief orc roared and swung its axe.

The axe, heated red-hot by the fire, slammed into the shield wall at the front.

Crash-!

With the sound of iron plate buckling, the soldiers' entire formation shook.

Some of the soldiers in the front row couldn't withstand the impact and were even shoved backward.

‘In Awakener terms, roughly D-Rank, I'd say.’

To soldiers who, being generous, were F-Rank, it was an opponent they had no chance against.

There was a limit to how much a phalanx could make up for a gap in weight class.

"Time for me to step in, I think."

Charlotte, who had been watching over the soldiers, finally drew her sword and stepped forward.

It seemed she, too, judged that the soldiers couldn't handle this.

‘Now I can see how good the knight really is.’

"Open the wall!"

At the command, the soldiers, who had barely been holding on, moved as if they'd been waiting for it.

As the shield wall parted, Charlotte kicked off the ground and leapt in.

Before I knew it, the shield wall had reshaped itself into something like an arena, and only the orc and Charlotte remained inside, glaring at each other like gladiators.

The orc moved first.

It swung its axe with a hand dripping pus.

Clang-!

A heavy clash echoed through the forest.

From the sound alone it would have seemed a collision of strength against strength, but the reality was different.

Charlotte tilted her sword at an angle from above to deflect the axe, then rode the line straight on and slashed the orc's flank.

In a way, it was a familiar style of swordsmanship.

‘Longsword technique, wasn't it called?’

The higher up the Tower you went, the more melee Awakeners tended to learn martial arts or swordsmanship, so it wasn't hard to identify.

‘So that's what the unity of offense and defense meant.’

I finally understood the principle a former party member had once bragged about.

A sword path I'd taken for a mere block became an attack, and one I'd taken for an attack cut off the enemy's strike, the shift between offense and defense flowing like water.

The orc's axework, by contrast, was crude to the extreme compared to Charlotte's.

Chop down, or swing.

That was all.

But if technique alone decided the outcome, no fighting match would ever bother with weight classes.

The orc had no technique, but it pressed Charlotte hard with the strength that came from its overwhelming frame.

‘Even so, Charlotte will win.’

Charlotte's level was around D-Rank, the same as the chief orc.

At the same rank, an orc burned all over and having inhaled smoke was bound to be at a disadvantage.

The prediction was right. As time passed, the orc's movements grew noticeably duller.

Charlotte knew it too, apparently, and took the opening to cut deep into the orc's throat.

"Kuraaagh..!"

Blood from the orc's neck sprayed like a fountain.

Drenched in its own blood, the orc staggered and dropped to its knees.

"..?"

I noticed something was off around then.

‘Can blood dry that fast?’

Only a moment ago it had been soaked in its own blood, but now it looked dry, with only a red haze left behind.

The change became obvious at this point.

As if blood were gathering on the orc's axe, the red energy gathered strand by strand.

Then, just as it straightened its kneeling legs and heaved the axe high, a faint red glow spread along the blade.

‘Weapon Enhancement?’

The red light clinging to the axe was unmistakably Weapon Enhancement, the exclusive preserve of C-Rank melee Awakeners.

Seeing a mere D-Rank orc use it, my brow naturally furrowed.

It should have been a technique far beyond it, but it seemed to be forcing it out, burning its own life as fuel.

"Aura!"

For the first time, Charlotte let out a flustered voice.

Apparently, here they called Weapon Enhancement Aura.

‘If it's really Weapon Enhancement, this is dangerous.’

For the orc, which had temporarily transcended its rank, Charlotte was no longer a match.

Sure enough, the axe wrapped in red light drove Charlotte back.

Screeeech-!

An ear-scraping sound rang out as axe blade and sword locked.

The enhanced axe was slowly biting into the sword.

Had Charlotte carried a high-grade sword, it could have withstood the enhanced axe, but unfortunately the one she held was just an ordinary iron sword.

In the end, a thin crack ran through the blade she was blocking with.

"Ngh!"

When the blade cracked, I saw Charlotte's face fill with dismay.

‘You can't just think of a Healer as someone who heals.’

Before she could really go and Lotte it up, I reached out my hand.

‘Weapon Aura.’

At once, from the cracking, crumbling sword, a dazzling light bloomed as if to stand against the orc's axe.

…

At some point a scent of flowers had come to cover the smell of blood.

Following it as if entranced to its source, I found a radiant light blooming on the sword.

Charlotte's eyes flew open as if in full bloom.

At the same time she clenched her teeth and took one step forward.

To put her strength behind the sword.

A moment later, white aura and red Aura collided.

Bewilderment rose across the chief orc's face then.

"K, Krak..!"

It was a sword that should have been pushed back in a contest of strength.

But Charlotte's sword, steeped in light, cleaved the thick axe blade in a single stroke.

The flash of the sword that followed grazed past the orc's neck.

Slash-

‘I overdid the buff.’

It was no wonder I thought so.

Soon the split axe blade and the orc's head rolled across the ground one after the other, and a cheer erupted across the battlefield, which had been stifling even the sound of its breathing.

"Woooaaah-!"

"Long live Sir Charlotte!"

Clomp, clomp-

Charlotte came walking over amid the cheers and gave a quick bow.

"You saved me."

"I only did my job."

Applying heals and buffs at the right moment was my job, so it wasn't wrong.

I accepted Charlotte's thanks without making much of it and went over to the chief orc's corpse.

"This may be hard on you to look at, Priest."

"There's something I need to check for a moment."

If it was like a Tower floor boss, the corpse would surely have that.

When I put my hand near its chest, a familiar energy came through.

I took out a knife, cut the flesh open, and checked inside.

Sure enough. A red crystal a little smaller than a fist was in there.

‘..A Key.’

The Key to the door to the next floor.

It was also the Key that opened the reward room.

Of course, it didn't actually have the shape of a key, but Awakeners climbing the Tower called it that for convenience.

When I pulled the Key out, Charlotte showed interest.

"That's a Special Magic Stone, isn't it?"

"A Special Magic Stone?"

"Unlike ordinary magic stones, it's only occasionally found in monsters from dungeons. I understand the Mage Tower buys them at a high price."

"..I see."

Was it something different?

Charlotte's explanation didn't match the purpose I knew, and it crossed my mind that it might have no connection to the Tower at all.

But I soon shook my head.

‘..She might simply not know.’

Unlike Earth, here information didn't flow, it pooled.

Little wonder, when there was no internet, not even anything you could call a press.

I couldn't rule out that it existed and people just didn't know.

Stone in hand, I looked at the dungeon entrance.

"Let's go inside."

"It must still be burning. Even on the shore, the heat would be dangerous."

"If what I know is right, it'll be fine."

When a floor boss died, that floor's environment was reset.

Monsters didn't respawn right away, but destroyed terrain and other environmental elements were restored quickly.

So if the orc I'd just killed was truly the boss, the fire inside the dungeon should surely be out by now.

I stepped into the portal.

"See, the fire's.."

Fwoosh-!

A scorching heat slammed into my face.

The flames hadn't dwindled in the slightest and were swallowing the entire forest.

"…"

Charlotte, who had followed me in, looked back and forth between the burning forest and my face.

"It's still burning, though?"

"..That shouldn't be possible."

"For now, the heat is far too much. Let's go back out."

I turned around without any objection.

But my steps soon stopped again.

The stone in my hand was glowing faintly, as if reacting.

The blazing flames all wavered at once.

Then they began to shrink fast, as if being sucked into something invisible.

The smoke blanketing the forest flowed backward and vanished.

‘The boss died outside the dungeon, so it must have been cleared late.’

In the Tower, bosses never left their floors, so it was something I hadn't thought to suspect.

"The fire's dying down. No, the heat itself is disappearing."

Charlotte looked around in wonder.

"They say a dungeon disappears when its chief is defeated. Then, after some time, it reappears in a completely different place. I wonder if this is connected to that phenomenon?"

"..I'm not sure. But it's an interesting hypothesis."

I made a suitable response and walked deeper into the forest where the heat had gone.

‘But it's definitely suspicious.’

Towers had put down roots in every country.

And not separate towers, but towers with identical contents.

Yet a cleared dungeon appears in another place as if duplicated. Could that really be a coincidence?

Of course, it was a far-fetched guess without a shred of proper evidence.

‘Claiming the reward should tell me something.’

The closer we got to the destination, the harder the Key vibrated.

Following its reaction, we soon came upon a place that looked like the orcs' village.

Shoddy leather tents and a wooden fence came into view first, and inside stood a grotesque totem woven from the bones of various animals and tree branches.

‘This must be the place.’

The nearer I got to the totem, the more strongly the Key reacted.

I held the stone up to the totem and slowly poured energy into it.

The crystal floated up out of my hand.

‘Up to here, it's as I know it.’

Then, with the energy drained away, the hollow stone rolled to the ground, and at the same moment a message in a familiar font filled my vision.

-You have retrieved the Original Piece of Floor 7.

-Floor 7 of the Tower is being restored.

‘Original Piece?’

Unlike the familiar font, the wording was thoroughly unfamiliar.

The message didn't end there.

-Rewards are distributed to all participants according to their contribution.