WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 20

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Rumors of a Windfall (5)

Kyle said nothing. He just watched the three of them across the fire with a calm, steady gaze.

"......."

Silent pressure. Eric's party swallowed nervously, their expressions tight.

Lena was no different. She had just finished eating and was tidying up in preparation for sleep when she found herself looking down at Kyle's hand, raised as if to block her path.

Had she made a mistake?

She curled her hands tightly in her lap. Shame crept in at how quickly she had been tempted by Eric's offer. Hiring Kyle had been half a gamble, a bet placed on instinct, a feeling that if this man could be trusted then so could the people around him. But that was no guarantee when it came to Eric's party. More members meant better odds of clearing the dungeon and surviving, sure, but it also meant smaller shares and a greater risk of betrayal.

Her hands trembled, just barely. Kyle's hand brushed lightly across the back of hers. She glanced sideways and caught him shaking his head, the smallest possible movement.

"Sorry, but that's going to be difficult," Kyle said.

The first time he had spoken since the heavy silence fell. He hadn't needed to think long. From the moment those strangers had so readily handed over valuable information, he had seen this coming.

"Ah...."

Eric let out a quiet sigh. All the tension he had been holding broke into visible disappointment at Kyle's answer. Bruno and Hanna beside him were no different.

"Is it about splitting the profits?" Eric asked.

"It's not about money. It's about trust."

"What do you mean by that..."

"I'll be straight with you. I can't trust you yet. We've only known each other a few hours."

Fair enough, if nothing else. In the mercenary trade, letting your guard down was as good as signing your own death warrant. Kyle had spent ten years clawing his way through this world, and he knew the truth of it well: the ones who stayed suspicious were the ones who stayed alive.

"Ah... I understand. I wasn't thinking clearly," Eric said.

"......."

"I suppose having the dungeon right in front of us made me anxious. I was out of line. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Whatever else I might say, the information you gave us was genuinely useful. Let me pay you properly. How much?"

Kyle reached for his spatial pouch. The moment his hand went in, Eric waved him off with a startled look.

"N-no, that's alright! We weren't expecting anything in return."

"You put in the work to get that information, though."

"Well, yes, but..."

"Take it. It'll come in handy."

Kyle pulled a single mana tool out of the pouch.

"What's this?"

"A mana compass. It'll be quite useful inside dungeons or ruins."

Eric took it before he quite knew what was happening, turning it over in his palm, eyes curious. It fit neatly in his hand, and even at a glance it looked expensive.

"It detects nearby mana wavelengths and points the way. Range is about fifty meters. Points toward the nearest mana source first. Responds to a knight's mana just as easily as a mage's."

"Isn't this incredibly expensive?" Eric asked, looking uncomfortable.

"Wow... this is from the Arven Mage Tower!"

Hanna, who had been watching from beside him, let out a gasp. Bruno narrowed his eyes and stared at the compass hard before tilting his head.

"Arven? You mean the Arven Mage Tower? Of the Empire?"

"That's the one. Every mana tool out of their workshop has a golden orchid stamped in the corner. I'm certain."

"Good grief..."

"Kyle-ssi, I appreciate the gesture, but something this valuable..."

Eric looked between the compass in his hand and Kyle, visibly ill at ease.

"Don't be shy. It's not that expensive."

Kyle waved his concern away.

"However you got that information, the fact is it helped us."

"......."

"This is fair payment. Keep it. That compass will save your life one day. It's not much use to me anyway."

No lie. Kyle was sensitive to mana wavelengths just as he was to the presence of living things. He had no need to rely on a tool like that.

He had tossed it in the pouch to sell later and promptly forgotten about it. Valuable, yes, but hardly irreplaceable. Kyle had his own rule, one he never broke: whatever he owed another person, he paid back in full. Kindness or grudge, it made no difference.

"Then... I'll accept it with gratitude," Eric said.

He bowed his head and tucked the compass carefully inside his jacket.

After a bit of idle chatter, the five of them settled near the campfire and began to ready themselves for sleep.

Just as Kyle was closing his eyes, Eric spoke up. "We can't go in together, but if we happen to meet inside, a temporary alliance wouldn't be out of the question, right?"

"Depends on the situation."

A noncommittal answer. Eric seemed satisfied with it; he asked nothing more and drifted off. Kyle watched the fire flicker in the silence of the night for a while, then slowly let his eyes fall shut. The weight of sleep rolled in, and his consciousness sank, quietly, beneath the surface.

***

Lena woke to sunlight stabbing at her eyes.

It felt like she had barely closed them, yet the day had already broken. She wrestled her foggy mind into something resembling alertness and forced herself upright. She had thought she had grown used to sleeping rough after leaving the tower, but the ache from a cold, bare floor was apparently something her body refused to accept.

"Sleep more if you're tired. Starting today, there'll be plenty of times you'll want to rest and can't," came a voice beside her ear.

Familiar. Kyle's voice, which had grown less foreign over these past days. He had already been up for some time, feeding logs into the campfire with practiced ease. Above it, a small pot of tea simmered quietly.

"Kyle-ssi...?"

"Sleep well?"

"More or less. What about Eric-ssi's group?"

"They left ahead of us. An hour ago."

"Oh."

A small sound of disappointment. Brief as it was, Eric's group had a way of putting people at ease. Eric himself with his easygoing charm and ready smile. The comfortable warmth that only came from a group of childhood friends who had known each other long enough to stop pretending. Gone now, all the same.

"Um, Kyle-ssi."

"Go ahead."

"About Eric-ssi's proposal yesterday. Was there a specific reason you turned him down? Not that I'm complaining, I'm just curious. You said you couldn't trust them, but they seemed like genuinely decent people to me..."

Kyle didn't disagree. A small nod was all it took to confirm her point.

"They're not the type to stab you in the back first, at least."

"Then why..."

"Because they're useless."

Lena's mouth fell open.

"Didn't you say you needed money?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"I don't know what your circumstances are. But I know one thing, because you said it yourself: you need money, or a divine power relic."

"......."

"The loot inside a dungeon is finite. If your real goal is money and relics, those three are competition, plain and simple. In there, the line between ally and enemy doesn't mean much. People might not go in with that intention, but put enough gold in front of them and human nature takes over."

Conflict inside a dungeon was inevitable. Everyone in there was a competitor. Eric's party or otherwise, it made no difference. Kyle had been hired, bound to her by contract. They hadn't. Which meant they could turn on her at any moment.

"Most of them are going to die. The few who clear it are the exception."

"......."

"Getting attached only makes things harder later. Everything I said last night about trust, all of that was a lie. There's no point adding mediocre fighters to the party just to split the take further. Does that answer your question?"

Lena said nothing. She pressed her lips tight and stared at the ground.

Kyle held out a cup of tea. The same fog tea he had brewed every morning for the past three days. She hesitated a moment, then drank it slowly, sip by sip. By the time the cup was empty, Kyle had risen to his feet, unhurried.

"Drink up and get moving. We should head out soon."

They broke camp and set off immediately. Same destination as the day before: the dungeon entrance.

Birds called from every direction. Cold air, clean in the morning light, bit into the lungs. Between the dense trees, Kyle and Lena walked at a brisk pace. Now and then, a squirrel or a rabbit darted past them.

"Hm? Is this not the right way?"

"The map said it was somewhere around here..."

Lena squinted at the crudely drawn map, making no headway. Kyle crouched down and studied the ground. Faint marks in the loose dirt, easy to miss.

"This is the right direction."

"What?"

"There's a spot where the footprints converge the most. Factor in the brush and the trees... this way. Come on."

He took the lead. Lena shoved the map haphazardly into her spatial pouch and followed. By midday, the two of them had found a small cave halfway up the mountainside. Countless footprints tracked in and out of the opening, clear and dense.

"It's really here."

"......."

"So that's an uncleared dungeon..."

Lena's eyes lit up with excitement at finding their destination. Kyle's didn't.

"Something's off."

"What?"

"Plenty of tracks, but no sign of anyone. Same for inside the cave."

He stared into the dark past the mouth of the cave. Like a beast's open jaw, the interior gave off nothing, no breath, no presence, despite all those tracks. Like staring into a bottomless pit.

"Then what do we do?"

Lena looked at Kyle, her face worried.

"We go in and see for ourselves. Can you cast light magic?"

"Oh, yes!"

Lena murmured something under her breath, and a small flame bloomed in her palm, soft and blue. Kyle's eyes narrowed at the sight of it. Where even a minor spell required him to depend on a high-grade mana stone, Lena could call up light magic with a short incantation and nothing more.

"Having a mage really does make things easier."

"Doesn't it?"

"Let's go. Stay close."

He stepped into the cave. Lena followed a beat behind, sending the light ahead and falling in beside him.

The interior sloped downward at a gentle angle. They followed it deeper, the air growing cooler against their skin with every step. Still no trace of another person's presence. Only the footprints beneath them, like a message left by the dead.

"People really did come through here in droves. You can see the marks plain as day."

"......."

"Eric-ssi's group left before us, so they might already be further down?"

"Probably."

"I don't really know much about this sort of thing, but are all dungeons cave-shaped like this?"

An honest question.

"No. Cave dungeons are common, but they're not all the same."

"Then what are they like?"

"All sorts. If it's true this one's gone uncleared for more than three months, it's probably far from ordinary."

Might show them something beyond what they could imagine.

He kept that to himself. They walked in silence.

How long had they been walking?

Thirty minutes, by feel. The slope leveled out, and ahead of them stood a large door. Lena raised the blue light high. Carved across its entire surface were countless geometric patterns, intricate and dense. The door blocked the passage completely, like the entrance to somewhere far larger on the other side.

"Kyle-ssi. What do we do now?"

"......."

"There are so many patterns... they almost look like a picture."

With the curiosity particular to mages, Lena frowned and began to drift toward the door. It was around then that Kyle noticed something was wrong.

"Wait, Lena! Stop!"

He shouted on instinct. Too late. He realized it the moment the words left his mouth.

"Wh-what?"

Where Lena's hand touched the door, white light erupted from the patterns, here, there, everywhere at once. It swallowed the blue glow in an instant and flooded every corner of the cave.

***

Vision flashing in and out. Balance shot. His stomach lurched like he was about to be sick.

Only after the white light faded did Kyle manage to find his footing.

His flickering vision slowly pulled the surroundings into focus. He was leaning against a wall. Not the rough earth and stone of the cave.

"Ugh... my head..."

Not far away, a familiar voice. Lena. She had her back to a wall as well, her face screwed up in pain.

"Kyle-ssi...?"

"......."

"There you are. Thank goodness..."

She had been looking around frantically. Finding him, she let out a breath.

Her voice dropped to almost nothing.

"I'm sorry. I just touched the door without thinking..."

Kyle didn't accept the apology. Couldn't. His attention was somewhere else entirely.

He looked around, expression gone hard. They were standing in the middle of a long corridor.

Not a natural cave. Man-made. The wall he had been leaning on was built from even, neatly laid bricks, not earth and stone.

Lamps hung at regular intervals along the walls. A faint amber glow spread in every direction. Like the inside of a labyrinth.

...A labyrinth?

"Kyle-ssi?"

Kyle drew a mana stone from his chest pocket. Crushed it slightly between his fingers and let his senses spread wide. A short, humorless laugh escaped him.

"Teleport magic... so that's why there were no survivors."

Upward, he felt nothing. He had extended his senses several hundred meters up and still nothing. He turned them sideways instead. A web of corridors and chambers spread out around them, stretching in every direction. Only then did it become clear.

This place was somewhere entirely different from the cave they had just left.

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