WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 21

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The Forgotten City (1)

"I'm really sorry. Because of me..."

Kyle stayed silent for a moment. Lena, who had been fidgeting and watching his face, lowered her gaze. Unlike before, her voice had lost all strength.

"It wasn't your fault."

"But..."

"Even if I'd been alone, the result would've been the same. I didn't notice anything until right before it happened."

It was not empty comfort.

Kyle really had sensed nothing until Lena touched the door. Only after the magic activated did he feel the flow of mana and realize what had happened. The teleport spell was that advanced.

For a trigger to activate from simple contact, with no warning at all, and for someone to embed a spatial spell formation, one of the hardest branches of magic, he could not even imagine what level that mage had to be. The teleport carved into that door was that high-level.

"The ones who came before us were probably transferred the same way."

Kyle looked down at the Magic Stone in his hand. Even when he used the small amount of mana left in it to stretch his senses upward again, he caught nothing.

That was clear proof this was not the cave they had first entered. If this were not spatial transfer, his mana should have reached the surface by now.

In other words, they had no information about this place at all. He did not even know whether they were still inside the Kingdom of Brendel.

"A labyrinth..."

"Huh? A labyrinth?"

Lena, still reading his mood, asked carefully.

"Do you know where we are right now?"

"No. Not at all..."

"Didn't think so. Looks like we're at least several hundred meters underground."

"Several hundred meters down?"

Lena's eyes went wide. She still seemed unable to grasp how serious their situation was.

"B-but the cave we came down wasn't anywhere near that deep!"

"We were forcibly transferred by Teleport Magic."

"Was the information wrong? They said it was a dungeon..."

"I told you before, dungeons come in many forms. And the boundaries between dungeons, labyrinths, and ruins are blurry. You can't divide them cleanly."

Dungeon, labyrinth, ruin. On the surface they were split into three categories, but there was no huge difference.

Many places were both dungeon and labyrinth. Many were labyrinth and ruin. Some were all three at once. In Kyle's eyes, this one was a textbook labyrinth-type dungeon. And if his guess was right, it was terrifyingly difficult.

"We need information."

Kyle turned his head.

The two of them were standing in the middle of a long corridor made of neat brick.

It was roughly three meters wide and three meters high. Kyle narrowed his eyes, scanned the area, then walked toward a lamp on the wall. The lamp lit the corridor with a soft reddish glow. There was no flame inside.

Only one small Magic Stone.

"This is..."

"As you can see, a Magic Stone lamp. It's even running semi-permanently."

"No way. Is that even possible? Once a Magic Stone is used, it can't be recharged. Common sense says..."

"Impossible outside. But this is a dungeon. Outside common sense means nothing here."

And there was not just one lamp. He could already see more than ten in view.

He did not know exactly how big this labyrinth was, but just the nearby area he could grasp was already far beyond normal scale.

If there was one on every wall, how many lamps existed in this labyrinth?

Kyle gave up trying to estimate.

He briefly considered pulling out the stones inside, but did not act on it.

"It absorbs nearby mana."

"..."

"Which means smashing the lamp to pull the stone out would be pointless. The lamp itself is the Magic Tool, and the stone isn't special. It's fixed too tightly to remove anyway."

Magic Stones were valuable because airborne mana condensed inside the mineral. Mana itself was everywhere. The limit was human mental strength, refining and using it inside the body.

"Kyle-ssi."

Lena spoke beside him, her voice trembling slightly.

"So in this dungeon... no, this labyrinth, we're not the only ones here, right?"

"Probably not. There wasn't just one set of traces outside the cave."

Some were old, some recent. There were too many to count. Countless people had likely stepped in here, drawn by rumors of striking it rich.

"Then Erik-ssi's group too..."

"They might be wandering this labyrinth right now."

Kyle thought to himself.

How many living people were inside this labyrinth?

At least not just dozens. A minimum of hundreds. Maybe more. This labyrinth wearing the mask of a dungeon had been here for three months. No...

"Let's move first. We'll learn nothing standing still."

***

The inside of the labyrinth was far more complex than expected. The corridors did not run in simple straight lines.

Not long after every turn, there was another split. Doors linking to side passages were common. There were even stairways leading down or up. At that point, even Kyle had to hold back his earlier judgment of this place.

"Are labyrinths usually like this?"

"No."

"It feels like a huge underground city."

"You're not wrong."

Lena gave her short impression. Kyle quietly agreed.

For a moment, a Teleport Scroll came to mind. It was a pointless thought, so he let it go. In its place came memories of Earth. His life in high school, before entering university.

Kyle had liked games. Once he reached third year, he had little free time because of college entrance exam prep, but before that he had spent a lot of time gaming. Of all of them, what he had enjoyed most were roguelike dungeon games. Their dark atmosphere and the system where one death made you lose everything had drawn him in deeply.

Was the only difference now that the character on the screen had become his real self? Even if this was not actually a game world.

His high school memories felt especially distant, likely because the ten years he had spent in this world were that intense. Those ten years here carried more weight than his twenty on Earth.

"Wait."

Kyle, walking a little ahead, raised his hand. Lena, right behind him, flinched and stopped.

At that point in the corridor there was a wide open space, about ten meters by ten meters. Ahead were three branching paths, one right, one left, one straight. Just like the routes they had already taken, lamps were mounted at regular intervals.

Kyle's gaze passed the branches, then returned to the center of the square space.

Something shaped like a human stood there.

Those figures, made entirely of white bones, sensed their presence and turned toward Kyle all at once.

Creak, creak.

"U-undead...!"

Lena recoiled in shock and drew up mana.

"Stay still."

Kyle stepped forward.

"K-Kyle-ssi!"

Lena shouted.

At the same time, the skeletal undead rushed him. Every one of them held a blade.

Kyle did not even blink. He kept advancing. The distance vanished in an instant. The first undead raised its right hand. Kyle gripped the hilt at his waist.

Clang!

A clear metallic ring split the air. A silver flash shot forward and cleanly severed the undead's arm. Its feet faltered for a moment. His second strike skimmed the back of its neck.

The others were no different. The undead poured in, and Kyle handled them one after another. Maybe "one after another" was not even the right phrase. Every time his blade, too fast for the eye to follow, swept once through the air, another skeletal undead dropped like cut reeds.

"Ah..."

As Lena let out a small gasp, Kyle smoothly sheathed his sword.

"You okay?"

"Y-yes... I didn't even do anything."

"Save as much mana as you can. The mental strength you spend casting magic also affects fatigue."

"I'll remember."

Lena gripped the wand inside her robe and nodded hard. Soon she crouched before the fallen undead and frowned at the broken remains.

"Where did these undead come from?"

"Corpses that were here before the dungeon appeared. They probably looted those weapons from dead mercenaries."

"Can that even..."

Lena started to question it, then closed her mouth. This was a dungeon. Nothing was impossible. She herself had touched one door, and with no warning Teleport Magic had activated and moved her into this underground labyrinth.

"Undead are tough, but that's all."

"..."

"Target their joints or neck bones and they collapse easily. If you'd tried to take them down with magic, you would've burned a lot of mana. I can handle most monsters alone, so don't step in until I tell you."

"Understood. Where do we go now?"

Lena rose from her crouch and asked. The undead were all down, but they still stood before a three-way split.

"...Right."

Kyle closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and answered. Lena did not question him and followed.

She knew the gap between herself and Kyle in strength and experience was sky and earth. Of course it was. No matter that she was an official mage of the Lenore Magic Tower, Lena was still a girl with little life experience, while Kyle was a Silver Rank mercenary who had been through every kind of hardship.

"Stop."

So when Kyle, walking ahead, raised a hand and gave the command, Lena stopped immediately. Then she glanced around on reflex.

"Is there a monster nearby?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Instead of answering, Kyle felt along the wall. The moment his fingers reached a brick three spaces from the first one he had touched, the brick sank inward, and something clicked.

Rumble.

The wall shifted with a small tremor. An opening just large enough for one person appeared, revealing a small stone chamber inside.

Unlike outside, there were no Magic Stone lamps within. The corridor's reddish glow barely reached the chamber's deep darkness.

"Kyle-ssi, someone in there..."

Lena narrowed her eyes and peered into the corner.

"E-ek!"

"Already dead."

A human corpse reduced to bones lay there. Lena made a sharp choking sound.

"First time seeing a dead body?"

"...Yes."

"You'll get used to it. You'll be seeing a lot more from now on."

Kyle walked closer to the corpse. Lena glanced back once, then stepped in after him.

"Light magic. Can you cast it?"

"J-just a second."

She murmured a short spell. The same blue glow that had appeared in the cave floated into the air. Kyle quickly scanned the chamber. It was clean to the point of being barren.

No real furniture, no chest, no treasure. The only thing there was a skeletal corpse in clothes, leaning against the wall.

...A skeletal corpse in clothes? A mercenary who came in before us? For this much decay, it'd need at least a year.

"No way."

Kyle's face hardened. He crouched quickly and started searching the corpse's clothes.

"Uh, Kyle-ssi...?"

Lena called from beside him, restless. Kyle did not answer. He kept searching, and then his hand caught on something hard. He pulled it out: a silver Mercenary Badge.

"...Ha."

Kyle examined the badge and let out a dry laugh.

"That is..."

"See for yourself."

Kyle handed it over. Lena checked the silver Mercenary Badge, and her face went pale.

"Kingdom of Brendel Mercenary Badge. First issue date... Continental Year 746..."

"Yeah. More than a hundred years ago."

"N-no way! We heard this dungeon only opened three, maybe four months ago..."

"Can you be sure of that?"

Kyle took his eyes off the corpse and looked at Lena. His black eyes, deep as an abyss, cut off her words.

"Then did we go back to the past..."

"Get a grip. That can't happen."

Magic was not all-powerful. If spatial magic was the hardest, time magic was truly dream magic. Countless people had tried from ancient times to now, and no one had ever succeeded. No one had even found a clue. From the start, it was a fantasy that could not exist.

"Then how is a hundred-year-old corpse here?"

"Because this dungeon has been open for over a hundred years."

"..."

"It was never conquered even once. And it kept swallowing people."

The clues in his head came together one by one. At last he could roughly see what was going on.

A dungeon wearing the face of a labyrinth. It might not have only one entrance. The Teleport Magic on that door in the cave. With mystery at that level, it would not be strange if the entrances into this dungeon changed location periodically.

Sometimes it stayed buried, undiscovered. Then the location shifted again and someone found it, and so on.

"And..."

Kyle searched the corpse's clothes again. Soon, under the faint blue light, a gold coin appeared.

"A gold coin from the Kingdom of Alenos. Looks like he got it in this dungeon."

"The Kingdom of Alenos was..."

"A magic kingdom that fell three hundred years ago. The land split after that, and the Kingdom of Kirian and the Kingdom of Brendel were born from it."

"Then you mean...?"

"Yeah."

Kyle stood up in front of the corpse.

"This place is a ruin of the Kingdom of Alenos, which fell three hundred years ago."

A dungeon, a ruin, and a labyrinth all at once. An unknown space where all three overlapped, never conquered even once.

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