Mistaken for a Masked Monster - Chapter 100

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 100: The Holy Sword Is Coming Through

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A game of tag with the faculty.

The moment the activity began, we cut straight across the island.

Before long, my group and I reached its edge.

“Whew... We arrived at just the right time.”

The fierce sea wind whipped against my face.

A few steps ahead lay a cliff.

Whoooosh.

Beyond the sheer drop, the blue sea stretched out below.

The group members following me stopped in confusion.

There was no cover nearby. Only the cliff stood there, all by itself.

“What? It’s a dead end...?”

“Lord Viktor! I think you took a wrong turn!”

They urgently pointed that out, but I only smiled leisurely.

“It’s fine.”

“What?”

“Everyone, please relax. We came to the right place.”

“B-but, there’s nothing around here...?”

“Didn’t I tell you? We’re going beneath the sea.”

““...?””

The others tilted their heads as if asking what the hell that meant.

I pulled something from my pocket, leaving them with that meaningful statement.

It was an item I had received as a quest reward last night.

Ding!

[Sea-Flavored Candy]

-Category: Food

-Rank: B-

-Status: Sweetness, Saltiness

-Description: Blue candy that looks like it was modeled after the sea. Upon consumption, it grants the consumer the [Underwater Breathing] effect for 30 minutes. They say the flavor harmoniously blends sweet and salty notes with the taste of the sea.

Small blue spheres filled a tiny glass bottle.

I swallowed one first, then held the bottle out to the others.

“Everyone, swallow one.”

“Um, what is this...?”

“Candy? Why are you suddenly handing us this...?”

“I have a plan. Please do as I say.”

Question marks practically hovered over their heads, but they couldn’t refuse my firm request.

Without much suspicion, they poured the sea-colored candy into their mouths.

Bluish light flickered around them moments later.

“Hm? My body’s glowing...”

“What? So what did you make us eat? We all ate it, so explain.”

“It’s candy imbued with special magic. It’ll help you breathe comfortably underwater.”

Underwater breathing.

I conveyed the situation as plainly as possible.

“We’re jumping off the cliff.”

“...What?”

Caitlin stared blankly, her brow furrowing.

I nodded as if I understood.

‘She’s probably wondering what kind of bullshit this is.’

A branch of the Cult hidden in the deep sea.

Naturally, that branch of the Cult couldn’t be accessed through any ordinary route.

If it could, the faculty would have discovered it when they came to inspect the area in advance.

Outsiders couldn’t even sense that the place existed.

Even in the original story, no one could enter that field until the incident occurred.

‘Then... I just have to use an unconventional method.’

We were going to take a bizarre route.

Why did we have to jump off a cliff?

Because only by diving here could I perform a perfect Wall Clipping.

I gathered the others’ hands in mine and held them tightly as I slowly walked toward the cliff.

“I’ll lead the way.”

“No, wait! Is this really okay?”

“Of course. I guarantee it.”

“There’s a place to hide down there? Not something like a graveyard?”

“Want to make a bet? If there isn’t a place to hide, I’ll become Miss Caitlin’s slave starting today.”

“No...”

Caitlin was left speechless by my confident answer.

There was no reason to fear a cliff like this.

Alice was one thing, but Ranne and Caitlin were among the academy’s top students.

With the sea below us, they wouldn’t get hurt from a fall off a cliff this small.

‘As for Alice, I can hold her while I jump. The Mask of the Evil God will absorb the impact anyway...’

It was a perfectly fitting plan.

Of course, that didn’t mean I had no concerns.

‘If it’s a branch of the Cult, I might be dragging them into danger...’

It couldn’t be helped.

These girls had to grow stronger if they wanted to survive.

The [Impossible] difficulty storyline in the original work was far from hopeful.

Major and minor characters were cut down like autumn leaves, and toward the end, total-wipeout endings happened all the time.

‘They have to grow strong enough to overcome it.’

Ranne especially had to grow stronger, since she was the protagonist of this world.

There was no point in me protecting everyone by myself.

I didn’t even have the ability to protect them all.

It was better for them to gain experience while remaining under my protection and supervision.

‘As long as they’re in front of me, I’ll never let them die...’

That was what pursuing safe growth meant.

And while I was at it, they could help me clear quests too.

“Trust me.”

“...”

I took another step and led the others toward the cliff.

Soon, all four of us were suspended in midair.

Then gravity took hold, sending us plummeting at terrifying speed.

The blue beneath our feet receded while the blue above our heads rushed closer.

Swoosh.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut. Carmilla was tucked into my front pocket.

I held Alice close, adjusted my mask, and kept Carmilla safe in my pocket.

Before long, a heavy sound reached us.

Splash!

My body pierced the surface.

Keeping that momentum, I sank all the way to the bottom.

Even through the water-tinted view, the status window’s light was clear.

Ding!

[The item ‘Mask of the Evil God’ has activated.]

-Remaining uses: 1/3

-Time until the next use is restored: 35 hours 36 minutes 29 seconds

My vision swayed as I sank.

Soon, my feet touched the seabed.

Thump.

I still had a firm grip on the others’ hands.

Pulling them along, I began shuffling my feet against the ocean floor.

<Whew...>

Thanks to the candy, we had no trouble breathing.

Once I settled into a rhythm, something caught against my shuffling foot.

‘Found it.’

I shoved my leg into that spot.

At the same time, our bodies passed through the floor and were sucked in.

Splat!

The next moment, we were transported somewhere entirely different.

The group tumbled over one another, then stared around with dazed expressions.

“W-what? This isn’t underwater...?”

“We were definitely at the bottom of the sea just a few seconds ago...”

A neatly maintained corridor lay before us.

The ceiling was endlessly high, and the hallways twisted into hundreds of maze-like paths.

Considering this place was beneath the deep sea, it was an impossibly vast space.

Ding!

[You have entered the hidden rift ‘Below Even the Deep Sea.’]

[This rift cannot be displayed using coordinates.]

Maybe it was because of the unknown spread out before them?

The others stood there, stunned.

“What happened...? You’re saying this is underwater?”

“Lord Viktor, did you use teleportation magic? But I couldn’t sense any flow of mana at all...”

My group was sprawled out defenselessly.

Then several figures sprang out, as if welcoming the intruders.

Centipedes several meters long, their bodies covered in rows of fangs.

<S-lit s-lit s-lit>

It’s lit.

The mutants were falling toward the others’ heads.

A sudden ambush while they remained unaware.

“Activate. Scythe.”

Stab!

Of course, I had read their move long ago.

I had cleared this section several times in the original story, so the pattern was second nature to me.

A pitch-black scythe skewered the mutants.

The centipedes thrashed violently.

I added a short command.

“Activate. Thorns.”

Crack!

Black thorns erupted from all over their bodies.

The mutants were butchered at once, collapsing into piles of mangled flesh.

Patter.

I casually flicked the gore off my hand.

When I turned around, the group stared at me with trembling eyes.

“Are you all right?”

They remained seated on the floor.

Their gazes were fixed on the corpses.

Demonic energy seeped from them. They were unmistakably Chimeras.

““...””

Their expressions stiffened.

Amid that, only Alice seemed to realize something and asked in a whisper.

“Viktor, could this be...?”

“That’s right. It’s part of the Slayers’ activities.”

“I-I knew it...”

Alice nodded as if that made sense.

She seemed to accept the situation calmly.

Ranne was also looking around.

Both had experienced all sorts of strange phenomena while traveling with me, so they seemed to have built up some resistance.

“What is this...?”

Caitlin was, unsurprisingly, the most flustered member of the group.

Her yellow pupils trembled as though caught in waves.

‘Fair enough.’

We had suddenly been transported to another place.

Before they could even understand what this place was, [those things] attacked us.

On top of that, the demonic energy leaking from them made this look exactly like a Cult hideout.

“Where the hell are we...?”

Caitlin muttered the question.

I answered calmly.

“These... appear to be Chimeras modified with demonic energy. It looks like we entered some branch of the Cult that was hiding away.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? I’m asking why the hell there’s a branch of the Cult underwater!”

“I don’t know either.”

“You don’t know?”

“This is a place the academy must have inspected several times. How could something like this...”

“Hey, didn’t you lead us here? Stop dodging the question and tell us what’s going on properly...!”

Perhaps because of the sudden situation, Caitlin’s temper flared.

She started to raise her voice, then suddenly stopped.

Afterward, she took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself.

“Wait, whew...”

She scrubbed a hand over her face.

She seemed to be trying to control her agitation.

Caitlin might be steeped in envy, jealousy, inferiority, discrimination, and hatred, but at times like this, she could be remarkably levelheaded.

‘What’s done is done.’

Starting conflict with her group after entering a dangerous place had no value whatsoever.

Caitlin must have reached the same conclusion, because she cooled down on her own.

After pressing at her brow for a while, she finally asked one question.

“...I’m asking you. You’re not some spy for the Cult, are you?”

“Regarding the collaborator we caught last time, you haven’t forgotten who apprehended Professor Glinbert, the Cult’s spy, have you?”

“Yeah. Fuck, right...”

Caitlin nodded quietly.

Her temper had cooled, but she still looked confused.

“What the hell is going on...?”

“Miss Caitlin? I understand that you’re flustered, but we don’t have time to waste like this.”

“What now?”

“I said we don’t have time. Just like my parents.”

“Fuck, stop using that line.”

Unfortunately, it was true that we had no time to rest.

Something was flooding in from beyond those endless corridors.

The same mutants as the centipedes from before were rushing toward us.

All sorts of living creatures fused together to form grotesque shapes.

The writhing masses of tentacles drew the eye.

“I wasn’t kidding, was I? We can’t exactly stay here comfortably.”

“Fuck, I think everything I ate for lunch is about to come back up...”

“That’s a hurtful thing to say where the Chimeras can hear you.”

“Can those things even understand us?”

“Who knows?”

Crackle, crackle!

Caitlin drew up electricity with a furrowed brow.

Ranne and Alice, who had been standing behind us, also prepared for battle.

[Viktor.]

[I shall help as well.]

The princess who had been wiggling around in my shirt pocket emerged from her bat form and stepped to the front of the corridor, her silver hair fluttering.

“What? Where did that thing come from?!”

“Good.”

Leaving the startled Caitlin behind, I stepped forward.

The hand rummaging through my pocket soon gripped something tightly.

A multicolored blade emerged.

[Balloon Knife+]

-Category: Growth-Type Weapon

-Rank: D+

-Growth Limit Rank: None

-Status: Colorful, Squishy, Sparkly

-Description: A special balloon knife. It emits a faint light of purification from its blade.

“Shall we go?”