WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Wizard's Memoir ◈
Chapter 26: Sewers
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The former adventurer, current healer, certified alchemist, and owner of the Johannes workshop received a warm welcome and joined them.
Compared to when they had come up from Star Valley, Johann looked better in every way. Their expression was more relaxed, and their clothes were neat. When asked how the new business was going, Johann answered with a smile.
“My father always told me that if you learned a trade properly, you'd never have trouble making a living.”
“He never said things like, ‘Friends are your greatest treasure,’ ‘Be generous to your friends and you'll be blessed,’ or ‘Leave your entire fortune to your friends’?”
“He passed away a long time ago, but he never suffered from dementia.”
Johann seemed to have put the events in the mining dungeon behind them to some extent, despite all they had lost, as their empty sleeve showed.
“What brings you to the Guild? Did you come to see us?”
“I've officially opened for business, so I came to spread the word. Adventurers will be my main customers, after all.”
“Using your connections to make money! That's low!”
“Isn't that the foundation of business?”
The halfling, who had never run a business, blinked. Apparently, it worked the opposite way from stealing. Olivia and Rolf, being sensible humans, offered their congratulations.
“Shall we give you your first sale?”
“Give us a discount for being your first customers.”
After a modest reply, the alchemist got to the point.
“My first customer has already come and gone.”
“Really?”
“A very strange customer.”
The claim about coming to advertise at the Guild had either been a joke or a lie. Johann couldn't possibly be unaware of the current mess in the city.
“They introduced themself as an adventurer, but I doubt they were. There's no way I wouldn't know an adventurer working in Northern Ridge.”
Olivia dismissed it with, “Could've been a newcomer,” but Etran and Rolf exchanged a look.
“They looked like an adventurer, but weren't one?”
“No mercenary uses an unusual blade like a shotel, and no hunter carries twenty arrows around. So I suppose they would look like an adventurer.”
Etran pictured this adventurer who wasn't an adventurer.
“When was this?”
“Two days ago.”
“When we were under watch, then.”
It had been while the gates were closed and the adventurers were confined to the Guild Pub. Olivia and Dahlia finally realized there might be something to this.
“Was it a dark elf?”
“A human.”
“Oh, then...”
“What if the dark elf has a party too?”
Etran challenged their assumption. There was no rule that only adventurers could form parties. They could be an organized group, like the thieves who had stolen the Hero's holy relic. The alchemist added another generous helping of suspicion.
“The medicine they wanted was unusual.”
“What kind?”
“An underwater breathing elixir.”
It was a top-quality elixir that allowed someone to breathe underwater like a merman. Even Olivia, an experienced adventurer, had only heard rumors of it and was startled.
“You can make something like that?”
“With the ingredients, yes. But I can't get them here.”
“There's no use for it here, either.”
The only water in the Northern Highlands came from a few trickling streams. There was no reason to need an expensive breathing potion.
“An adventurer visiting some tiny, unknown workshop to ask for a rare elixir?”
“...It's larger than a tiny workshop.”
“They probably didn't know you were one of the elder adventurers, Johann.”
“...I'm not quite an elder.”
“Suspicious. Very suspicious.”
Olivia and the rest of the party exchanged looks. With this many clues handed to them, they didn't need a clever mage to know what to do.
“Tell the branch manager too, just in case. Uh, in about three hours.”
“I have a business to run.”
“We'll share the reward if we get it. Let's help each other out.”
They had said it didn't matter who solved the case, but given the chance, solving it themselves was best.
@
Olivia's party gathered their equipment and set off at once.
They had nothing to go on except the alchemist's suspicions, but adventuring had always meant trying something as long as there was a chance.
“The sewers. Of course.”
Northern Ridge had first been settled during the age of the ancient kingdom, fallen during the period of chaos, and been rebuilt under the new kingdom. That was why the buildings aboveground were wooden, while the underground structures were made of stone that remained solid even after a thousand years.
“Wow. I'm surprised this place never became a dungeon.”
“Maybe it used to be one, but someone already cleared it?”
The sewers of Northern Ridge were deeper, larger, and more complicated than they had expected.
The best-known entrance was the tunnel south of the market, but smaller passages existed all over the city. Some holes were so small that even a halfling would struggle to get through. No one knew the entire layout or where every passage led.
It was a truly amazing structure, but most of it was no longer in use.
Partly, this was because the ancient kingdom's construction techniques had been lost, making repairs impossible. The population had also grown more than tenfold since then, and one or two channels could no longer meet the city's needs. As a result, despite being called the sewers, the place had become a slum inhabited by criminals, vagrants, people with lung disease, and people with leprosy.
Several parties were already searching it. But the residents were hostile to outsiders, and the passages were more complicated than most labyrinths. No one had found a lead.
“If they need an underwater breathing potion, there must be standing water. We're looking for a route out of the city where the passage is flooded.”
“How do we find a place like that?”
That was the difference between making plans at a desk and carrying them out in the field. Etran offered a foolish answer along the lines of, “By... trying hard?” They would have to try very, very hard to find it within three hours.
“I will help.”
The elf mage, who had followed them without a word, finally spoke.
“These friends should be able to do it.”
Merial tapped the ground with the staff. Tap, tap. The mole they had briefly seen at the Guild Pub popped out. Olivia cried, “It's cute!” while Dahlia shouted, “It's disgusting!” Then they looked at each other as though the other were strange.
“A spirit.”
It was Etran's first time seeing one up close, too. Since spirits were formless creatures to begin with, their appearance didn't matter.
“What kind of spirit is it? An earth spirit? A wind spirit?”
“...How outdated is your theory of the elements?”
“Huh? They're not elements?”
“You don't believe in humoral theory too, do you? That outdated medical theory that says washing makes you sick and draining blood makes you healthy?”
“Huh? That's wrong too?”
Etran pressed a hand to their forehead. This brought to mind the radical professors who insisted that what the public knew had to be controlled.
“A spirit is just a spirit. Think about it. Fire and wind are energy at work, while water and earth are physical matter. How can they all be the same kind of ‘element’?”
“...Huh?”
“Some scholars do argue that the aether within water and earth is an element. Things sprout and rot when you water them and cover them with soil, after all. But the water and earth themselves don't change, do they? Even if aether exists, shouldn't we consider it a separate form of energy?”
“...Huh?”
Etran talked eagerly, but no one was listening. To sum it up in one line, a spirit was just a spirit.
“Impressive knowledge, but I don't think we need it right now.”
Rolf chided Olivia for listening to all that. Coming to their senses, the warrior asked Merial to get started. The elf, whose different sense of time meant there was never any hurry, leisurely used the staff. Tap!
The moles scattered in every direction. They were so fast that they had all vanished into the depths of the sewers before anyone could even gasp.
“If they're that fast, couldn't they find the dark elf in no time?”
“Spirits cannot tell living people apart.”
“Why? Are they stupid?”
“You are clever. Can you remember every individual bird in a migrating flock?”
It seemed they could earn piles of dena just by taking jobs to find people, but reality wasn't that simple.
Merial closed both eyes and called the spirits together. They couldn't find a person, but they could find the kind of terrain Etran had described. There was one flooded area where water had collected.
“That way.”
Olivia raised mace and shield and took the lead. With the role of guide taken away, Dahlia pouted and moved to the rear.
“One human. One elf. At least two of them, right?”
“Dark elf. Dark elf.”
“They're heavily armed, so don't let your guard down. And don't hesitate just because they're human.”
Etran moistened their dry lips. Rolf reassured them that there probably wouldn't be more than ten, since these people were sneaking around in hiding.
Merial kept sending spirits out to check the location of the flooded area. The process had to be repeated several times to find passages large enough for humans.
After about fifteen minutes, they began to hear water in the dry channel. It didn't seem to be flowing down from above. Groundwater was probably seeping in. The sound grew louder as they walked.
“Watch out!”
Dahlia shouted. Olivia covered their head with the round shield. Thud! A piece of metal pierced the wooden boards and stuck through. It wasn't the crude stone or wooden weapon a monster might use. It was a finely cast arrowhead.
“An ambush!”
Etran sent a Light Orb forward, and Rolf loaded a quarrel and returned fire. Having worked together in combat several times, they moved quickly. The “attacker,” who was drawing another arrow and setting it to the bowstring, was pierced before there was time to take cover.
“Take them alive if possible!”
“There's more than one!”
Etran bit their lower lip at the sudden killing. It felt different from fighting monsters. But there was no time to freeze in shock. As Rolf had said, there was more than one enemy.
Dahlia threw a dagger from each hand. Left, then right, both flew accurately with a slight delay between them. But the opponent was a heavily armored human. The daggers bounced off the breastplate without doing any damage.
Olivia clashed with a human warrior wielding twin axes. Block, block, block, then a shove with all their weight behind it. If the tanker was pushed back, the entire party would be in danger. Olivia had to hold this position at all costs.
‘Three? No, four!’
Including the archer Rolf had shot, there were five in total. The dark elf wasn't even among them. Whether these were the people who had assassinated the margrave remained unclear, but this was certainly a sizable group.
“Etran!”
They needed firepower. Something big and powerful enough to turn the tables after the ambush.
Homing Arrow was precise, but lacked force. Its penetrating power was weaker than that of a real arrow, making it difficult to deal a fatal wound to someone wearing metal armor.
Of course, Etran's Homing Arrow offered overwhelming numbers. Concentrating a whole volley on a target, as Etran had done against the demon Sorcerer, could probably wipe out a couple of them.
Olivia clenched their teeth at the sight of three men drawing longswords and joining the fight. It was fortunate that the passage was narrow. If Olivia could hold out until Etran cast the spell, they had a chance of winning. A much better chance than expected, in fact.
“Get down!”
Etran had finished casting. With complete trust in the artillery, the tanker immediately dropped down. Olivia even glanced back out of the corner of their eye.
A volley of arrows pouring all at once from multiple magic circles floating in the air... was nowhere to be seen.
Etran had created multiple magic circles using disks. But unlike usual, they were arranged in a straight line in front of the mage.
‘What's that?’
Anyone with a sharp eye would have noticed that the designs of the magic circles were different, too. This wasn't Homing Arrow. The structure was far simpler.
“Flamma.”
Etran lit a flame on one finger. It was small and weak, like a candle flame that might go out at any moment.
Until Etran brought it to the magic circles lined up in a row.
“Egredior.”
Flamma Egredior. Loosely translated into modern language, it meant Flame March.
A stream of fire shot straight ahead, warming the sewers.
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