WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 68: Big and Beautiful (2)
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If we couldn't enter the dungeon because of its mana, then we just had to absorb all that mana.
Of course, it wasn't as easy as it sounded. Even the Magic Department believed the surest method was to defeat the dungeon boss from within and destroy the dungeon core.
But if we could use the Demon King-brand magic sword, all of that would be resolved.
The problem was...
“How long is that thing going to keep growing?”
It seemed the true workhorses of romance fantasy, the Dark Mages, had done their job very well.
The sword of mana was growing far larger than the one we'd seen in the Dogfolk village yesterday.
It was getting big enough to remind me of Jack and the Beanstalk.
If someone could climb it, they might even reach the clouds.
“...”
“...”
“...”
Uncle Aryn and the other two all looked at me.
Their expressions roughly said, What the fuck is that?
“...”
I don't know either, fuck.
What is that? It's starting to scare me.
“Um, Adam?”
Apparently, Daisy, the magic sword's wielder, felt the same way.
Her eyes shook as she looked at me, silently pleading for me to do something about this.
“Hmm.”
Let's assess the situation calmly.
It had begun with her sticking the sword into the sealed dungeon entrance to drain its mana.
As the absorbed mana gathered around the sword, it gradually forced her backward.
“...”
And now, even I, a trained fighter, was too far away to see the entrance.
So how were we supposed to deal with that?
According to the method Arang had shown us, we needed to strike it with compressed aura and make it consume mana faster than it could absorb it.
Could I do that right now?
“No.”
That was a job for the Sword Emperor.
So I tried to leave and call the Sword Emperor.
“D-Don't leave me?!”
Daisy misunderstood something and moved.
Her small movement caused the sword to sway slightly.
“Uh, uh?”
“Be careful!”
Was this the butterfly effect?
The magic sword had only moved a little, but the massive, big, beautiful sword of mana at its end was sent into violent motion.
“Y-You made me do this!”
“You said you wanted to help your friends too.”
“I-I didn't know it would turn out like this!”
As if I knew.
“D-Don't move! If you don't take responsibility, I don't know what I might do either!”
I'd lived long enough to see the Saintess threaten people.
Unfortunately, what she held in her hands was a genuine nuclear missile button.
If that thing exploded, or even if she swung it wrong, the dungeon itself could collapse.
Would even Prince Ellen survive that?
“Calm down.”
As I carefully tried to negotiate with Daisy and calm her down...
“Uh, uh?”
I thought the pressure on Daisy had suddenly intensified as her body shook.
But when I looked closely, the source of the trembling wasn't Daisy.
It was the dungeon.
“It, it opened!”
At someone's shout, Daisy panicked and pointed the sword, which had been touching the dungeon, toward the sky.
“Wow.”
Everyone stared at it in awe.
Not only the swordsmen, but even Flame-Slinger, a mage, could only gape at the enormous, magnificent sword.
And that included...
“...”
“...”
“...”
The romance-fantasy male leads who had just emerged from the dungeon.
No matter how thick their rose-colored glasses were, they had witnessed something that far surpassed even those with their own eyes.
Even the famed romance-fantasy male leads couldn't give an ordinary reaction this time.
* * *
“You want me to disperse this with aura?”
The big, beautiful sword of mana, which had overcome even the romance-fantasy male leads' rose-colored glasses, left even the Sword Emperor flustered.
“Hoho. This is... Hmm.”
It was at least five times larger than the mana sword we'd seen in the Dogfolk village.
It was difficult even to point its tip forward.
Should we just plant the hilt in the ground and have the Sword Emperor beat it like a scarecrow?
“Excuse me.”
At that moment, Violet, who had been hiding until now, stepped forward and cautiously offered an opinion.
“Why don't we use what we can?”
“Student Violet, what do you mean by that?”
That came from McGregor, the head professor of the Magic Department, who had been agonizing over how to deal with this alongside the Sword Emperor.
“I heard the culprits behind this incident haven't been caught yet.”
“That is true.”
“The Rias Territory has many dangerous places, so the search is limited. But the same is true for the Dark Mages, right? No matter what methods they used, they must have had a harder time than people who'd lived in the Rias Territory for a long time.”
“That would be so.”
“But if they still haven't been found, then unless they escaped using teleportation, isn't it obvious?”
Daisy's gaze turned toward one place.
The dungeon where some Academy students, including the romance-fantasy male leads, had been trapped.
“They set a trap and wait for their enemies. It's as basic as it gets.”
The battlefield where a mage could truly shine was within a prepared domain.
Unlike swordsmen, whose victories were generally decided by pure differences in skill, a well-prepared mage could often defeat one two levels above them.
And if they weren't ordinary mages, but Dark Mages who had used a dungeon core to create a trap like this, it was impossible to imagine what awaited inside that dungeon.
So...
“Why don't we just destroy it?”
“...?”
McGregor tilted their head at Violet's words.
They also looked toward the Sword Emperor as if asking what she meant.
“Destroy the dungeon?”
“We've already drained all the dungeon core's mana, so even if it's a dungeon, it's just an ordinary cave now, right?”
“That is true.”
“And since it's related to Dark Mages, it would be difficult to reuse anyway.”
“That is also correct.”
“And we have an excellent demolition tool, don't we?”
At first, no one understood what she meant.
Then, after a moment, everyone looked at Daisy.
More precisely, they looked at the gigantic magic sword Daisy held.
With that thing, which was so huge and magnificent that it was difficult to tell whether it was a sword or a club from up close...
“Let's bring it down on them?”
Like swatting cockroaches with a flyswatter, Violet was suggesting we crush the Dark Mages.
* * *
Just as Violet expected, the Dark Mages of Rias were hiding in the dungeon.
The documents they had received from followers of the Evil Gods, who claimed they had received teachings from Demonkin, contained many suspicious points, even to the Dark Mages.
But they had tried them just in case, and everything had worked perfectly. They couldn't help believing them.
That was why they could also believe in the reward promised for succeeding this time.
Those fanatics crazed over religion had sworn it in the name of their gods.
“A magic circle that can even control the dungeon boss. With this, Rias will be in the palm of our hands!”
“Uooooh!”
The Dark Mages cheered at their leader's words.
Ordinary people wondered why anyone would live in a place like the Rias Territory.
But for Dark Mages, there was no better place to live.
It was dangerous by nature, so few people wandered around.
That meant they were less likely to encounter their most dangerous natural enemy, humans.
And that wasn't all. Fog thick with demonic energy periodically flowed out from somewhere. To ordinary people, it made using mana difficult and was a dangerous force that could sometimes clash with their internal mana and cause internal injuries.
But for Dark Mages, it was naturally occurring energy like a restorative elixir, capable of raising their realm merely by being absorbed.
The problem was that wild animals, monsters, and suddenly appearing dungeons didn't go easy on Dark Mages. They could die if they were unlucky.
But even that would become an endless army if they had the monster-controlling magic circle the fanatics had told them about.
And it would be an army of powerful monsters befitting a place called the Demon Realm, incomparable to anything found in ordinary regions.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
That was why they laughed even as the dungeon roared.
The Academy brats had finally moved to defeat the dungeon boss.
The countless traps and magic circles they had diligently prepared, along with monsters driven savage by berserk magic, would block their path.
And even if they overcame all those trials, they would face an enhanced dungeon core and a dungeon boss that had received further enhancements.
A reinforced Stone Golem waited for them.
“An already sturdy Stone Golem has been enhanced again and again. Unless it's aura, mediocre sword aura can't even scratch it. And the coating and magic circles greatly raise its magic resistance, so even magic, which is effective against a Stone Golem, will struggle!”
Unless the Sword Emperor or the former Magic Tower Master who had come with them entered the dungeon as well, the Academy's first-year brats could never defeat the reinforced Stone Golem.
They had worked hard.
Even in the Rias Territory, called the cursed land, they had proven their strength by surviving in forbidden places where people were said to be unable to live.
Their strength had been recognized, catching the attention of worshippers of the Evil Gods, who had provided them with numerous secret techniques.
They had used those techniques perfectly and placed their targets firmly in their grasp.
Even then, they hadn't let down their guard. They had accounted for the worst of the worst possibilities and raised their chances of victory as high as possible.
What they lacked was...
“But why is it still shaking?”
“...Did we make the traps too excessive?”
“They haven't reached the dungeon's center yet, right? Besides the Stone Golem, was there another monster in the dungeon capable of causing this much impact?”
“At this point, could this just be an earthquake?”
They simply hadn't accounted for things beyond the common sense of ordinary people, Dark Mages, or even fanatics who worshipped the Evil Gods.
They hadn't imagined that the Saintess would take out and use one of the Evil Gods' weapons that the Goddess had sealed in ancient times.
They hadn't imagined she would use it to absorb every last bit of mana from the dungeon core.
And they hadn't imagined she would use that absorbed mana to batter down the dungeon itself.
That was all.
“S-Something is wrong.”
“The earthquake is getting stronger!”
“Dirt keeps falling. Is it safe to stay here?”
“Not yet! Do you know how much we prepared here? We aren't the only ones here. Academy students are here too. Find those panicked fools and take them hostage!”
The Dark Mage calmly assessed the situation despite the panic and quickly issued the next order.
“Leader! The door is open! All the Academy students have escaped!”
“What?!”
Unfortunately, before the natural disaster that was the romance-fantasy heroine, they could do nothing.
“Aaargh!”
“The dungeon is collapsing!”
“Run!”
They were merely ordinary people.
Author's Note
The Ssukgaticons have been released.
The illustrator put a lot of effort into these emoticons, so whenever you see the illustrator, please leave them some encouraging words: “By the way, when is the next illustration coming out?”
Footnotes:
“Ssukgaticon” combines ssukgat, a Korean leafy vegetable also called crown daisy, with “emoticon.”
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