WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Alyo

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◈ Surviving as a Warrior in a TRPG World ◈

Chapter 25: Swarm (2)

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As if he had never been irritated at all, Bruno apologized with a sly, teasing grin. Gerik forced an awkward smile in return.

"...Then may I leave now? My job was only to guide you here, after all."

Gerik had been curious about the skills of Copper Plate adventurers, but the moment he returned to the place where his previous companions had died so horribly, that curiosity vanished completely. Citing the end of his assignment, he tried to say goodbye to Bruno.

"What are you talking about? You're coming with us. Why are you talking about going back already?"

"...I haven't been beyond here either, so I won't be any help."

"But you know the way back better than we do. What if we get lost while exploring and can't find our way back? How are we supposed to return without you?"

"Uh... Well..."

From the expertise they had shown so far, Gerik doubted they would get lost even without him. Still, their reasoning was sound enough that he had no good response.

"We need a witness for the extermination too. Do you think the Guild will just believe us if we say we killed Rat Men until we dropped? The guide the Guild hired needs to testify for us if we want them to acknowledge it."

Jensen, the Gnome who had been quietly listening, cut in and brought up the matter of a witness. It certainly made sense for Gerik to be there for the extermination report, so he eventually agreed.

"Don't worry. Just carry the gear. We're not so short-handed that we'd put a sword in a rookie's hands."

Jensen spoke cynically as he handed Gerik the assorted gear he had been carrying. The other three soon followed, passing over more miscellaneous supplies one by one.

'Damn it... I became a porter just like that.'

Gerik's expression soured as he ended up loaded down with Bruno's party's shared supplies. Still, the die had already been cast.

Since things had turned out this way, he consoled himself by deciding to observe and learn how an experienced adventuring party operated.

'Hmm... Do they have two people with tracking abilities?'

Gerik watched with interest as Jensen examined the Sewer walls while Tarian, the Half-elf, searched the open area in a different way, using blood.

After some time, the two moved in different directions and gestured for the party to follow.

"The blood-related traces and scents point this way."

"But the channel I pointed out has more signs of movement. Mine is right."

Both insisted that their chosen channel would lead them to the Rat Men, each relying on their own evidence.

Neither argument was without merit, and the dispute seemed unlikely to end. Bruno, their leader, stepped in.

"Do we really need to fight over it? It's only natural those rat bastards have been scurrying around everywhere. Let's settle it with a coin toss."

The two seemed mildly irritated by the argument. Apparently, they often settled matters like this with a coin toss, because they stopped bickering and quietly watched Bruno flip a coin.

"Heads is Tarian, tails is Jensen. All right, here it goes."

"..."

"Heads. The goddess has chosen Tarian's opinion. Let's go."

"Tch..."

With heads coming up, Tarian's route was chosen. Jensen looked slightly annoyed, but only for a moment. He soon shut his mouth and obediently followed the group.

'What traces could possibly be there...?'

Gerik tried to imitate Tarian's movements as closely as he could while following her, hoping to find the traces she had noticed.

No matter what he did, though, all he could see was filthy water flowing through the Sewer. He couldn't find a single trace.

'What is he applying...?'

Unable to learn anything from Tarian's tracking methods, Gerik lost interest and looked toward the rear. There, he saw Jensen occasionally applying some kind of paint to the wall.

It was probably to avoid getting lost, but it had no obvious special effect, like glowing in the dark, so Gerik couldn't tell how it helped them find their way.

'Would he tell me if I asked later...?'

Just as Gerik was wondering how he might pry some Copper Plate adventurer know-how out of them, Tarian, who had been tracking the Rat Men up front, gestured and warned her allies.

"What? You found them?"

"Yes."

Perhaps because she thought she had won the tracking contest against Jensen, a smile appeared for the first time on the usually cold-faced Half-elf woman's lips.

Jensen gave a faint snort at the sight and answered by taking out his crossbow.

"Kagosh! Forward!"

"Oh! Kagosh split Rat Man heads!"

Bruno, the heavily armored Warrior, positioned himself slightly left of center. The other frontliner, Kagosh, took up a spot on the right as if supporting him and drew his bastard sword.

The sight reminded Gerik of Olin and himself from before, leaving him with a bitter feeling.

"They're coming."

Not long after Tarian spoke, ominous red eyes began appearing one by one in the distance of the Sewer.

There were clearly quite a few of them. Having recently come within a hair's breadth of death because of Rat Men, Gerik tensed without realizing it and instinctively gripped his longsword tightly, taking up a fighting stance.

Screee! Squeee! Kyaak!

Before long, at least fifteen Rat Men appeared before the two frontliners.

Even when facing enemies several times more numerous than their party, Bruno and his companions didn't look tense in the slightest.

"Uwooooh!! Come at us, you filthy rat bastards!!"

Kagosh, the Half-orc, let out a fierce roar at the enemies before him.

The threatening, low, powerful beastlike cry, unlike that of a human, filled the Sewer. Some of the Rat Men flinched as if they felt threatened by the sound.

'Isn't that a little too bold? What if reinforcements show up...?'

Gerik wanted to shout that Kagosh was insane, but the man he would be addressing was a third-rank Copper Plate adventurer. Knowing his place, he swallowed the words and silently observed them.

Twang! Twang!

Tarian and Jensen didn't miss the moment when the Rat Men flinched. They fired arrows and quarrels from their longbow and crossbow, launching a ranged attack.

The longbow was especially astonishing. Its arrows pierced through the thick chest muscles of Rat Men and killed them instantly.

Boom...!!

As Gerik marveled at the longbow's power, a quarrel fired by Jensen exploded, releasing an unidentified smoke.

Kiek!! Cough!!

The Rat Men that inhaled the smoke squeezed their eyes shut in pain or began sneezing.

As though she wouldn't waste the opening, Tarian fired arrow after arrow from her longbow, critically wounding two Rat Men.

Kyaak!! Kiek!!

Unable to endure the ranged attacks any longer, the leader Rat Man let out a sharp cry, and the Rat Men charged all at once.

The one fortunate thing was that this was an ordinary Sewer passage rather than an open area. The narrow corridor kept the Rat Men from fully using their numerical advantage.

Bang!!

One Rat Man at the front boldly rammed Bruno's shield, and a thunderous crash echoed through the Sewer.

The creature was quite large, so the impact must have been considerable. Yet Bruno didn't budge an inch.

"You insolent rat bastard!"

Bruno raised his heavy mace and swung it at the Rat Man that had dared ram him.

The Rat Man twisted its body in an attempt to evade, but other Rat Men were packed in on both sides. It failed to dodge properly and took the mace squarely in the shoulder.

"Kiek!!"

The chunk of metal swung by the 190-centimeter giant horribly shattered the Rat Man's shoulder.

As it collapsed in pain, Bruno raised his tower shield and struck the head of another Rat Man that lunged in wildly from the left flank.

Thwack!

Kagosh, the Orc Warrior positioned to the right, also let out a barbaric roar and wildly swung his heavy bastard sword.

It wasn't as sharp as Gerik's Slash, but the bastard sword wielded by the nearly two-meter-tall, green-skinned giant combined with his weight to display destructive force beyond imagination.

Shhk!!

Kagosh's bastard sword mercilessly split a Rat Man open from shoulder to torso, spilling its disgusting entrails.

He hadn't cut all the way through, though, and the bastard sword became lodged in the Rat Man's body. As he strained to pull it free, an opening appeared.

Two other Rat Men immediately spotted it and charged at Kagosh's flank.

Stab!

The moment they attacked, Tarian, who had already switched from her longbow to a spear, drove it into one Rat Man's head.

The Rat Man thrashed with its head pierced, creating a bottleneck. Using that opening, Kagosh pulled his bastard sword free from the dead Rat Man and began swinging it forward again.

Once three or four Rat Men had piled up in front of them like lumps of meat, the bottleneck caused by the corpses grew worse. Unable to use their numerical advantage, the Rat Men began getting picked off one by one.

Watching closely, Gerik realized that Bruno was the key to every advantage in this battle. Standing silently at the very front, he endured the swarm and acted as the anvil.

'No matter how wildly the Rat Men struggle, the heavily armored Warrior blocks one side like an iron wall and doesn't move. That forces them into a bottleneck, where they're picked off one by one.'

In the end, around fifteen Rat Men were slaughtered by only four Copper Plate adventurers without inflicting a single meaningful injury.

Seeing the result, Gerik understood why Ruben, an executive of the Adventurers’ Guild, had confidently claimed that four people would be more than enough.

"Those bastards are running! Let's get them!"

The two Rat Men at the rear seemed frightened after all their companions were massacred. They turned and fled, and Kagosh shouted that they should pursue.

"Forget it. Get yourselves in order first. We can take our time tracking them."

Though the heat of battle should have set his blood racing, Bruno didn't get excited in the slightest and calmly ordered the party to regroup.

Kagosh smacked his lips in disappointment, but he obediently followed his leader's orders and began preparing again.

After lightly cleaning blood and grease from their weapons and checking for injuries to eliminate any variables, Bruno's group once more put Tarian at the front and began moving quickly through the Sewer.

"...Do you know where you're going?"

Unlike during the earlier search, Tarian simply walked without even pretending to look for anything. Curious about what she was basing this on, Gerik asked Jensen, who was beside him.

"She's following the smell of the smoke screen I spread earlier. Tarian's nose and ears are sensitive."

Surprisingly, the prickly Jensen explained without getting annoyed. The smoke screen he had deployed earlier apparently did more than disrupt the enemy's rear. It also left a distinctive scent on them, making them easier to track.

'No wonder they weren't in a hurry at all.'

Gerik understood why they hadn't rushed after the Rat Men and could afford to act so calmly.

Not long after swiftly advancing through the maze-like Sewer, they found the Rat Men that had fled earlier.

Kiek!!

The Rat Men spotted Bruno's party again from farther down the Sewer and let out threatening cries.

Still, they apparently had no intention of confronting adventurers who had slaughtered more than a dozen of their allies when only two of them remained. They immediately turned and began running somewhere.

"...Are those bastards trying to lure us in on purpose?"

Not long after, the two stopped and waited in place as they had before. From their subtle behavior, Tarian the tracker guessed their purpose.

"Hmm... What do we do, then? Should we retreat?"

Footnotes:

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