Maruyama Kugane - The Invaders of the Large Tomb

The boiling water was poured into wooden bowls. The travel rations placed inside lost their shape and became fragrant soup. After adding hard bread, this was the food that was served to all.

The rest was up to their personal preference.

Although the bowl only had yellow soup—which workers liked for its nutrition and storage life, some people added thin slices of meat, other condiments, or they drank it as it was.

Everyone stopped after having a bowl. Considering the job ahead, this amount was too little.

However, eating something too heavy would definitely affect the mission. Eating nothing would be dangerous as well. No one knew when they could eat again.

The emergency food supply was also limited, since bringing too much would affect their agility.

There was a need to gauge it precisely.

After handing the empty bowls to the adventurers, the workers put on their backpacks.

As the adventurers watched on, the workers started moving together. The adventurers were in charge of the base camp’s security and would not be taking part in the infiltration of the ruins.

After climbing over the hill, they spread out around the ruins. They had already prepared countermeasures if they were discovered during this phase.

A lot of people wore full plate armour, so their movement would be slow and the noise would make covert operation impossible, but that had already been taken into account. For people who could use magic, it was possible to overcome such trivial matters.

First, they would use ‘Silence’, a spell that negated noise within a certain area. Both the sound of armour and footsteps would not be heard.

Next would be ‘Invisibility’, which rendered the target undetectable by normal vision.

As a precaution, an ambusher with the ‘Silence’, ‘Invisibility’ and even the ‘Hawk Eye’ spell cast on him was watching the surroundings from the sky. To quickly deal with problems, he was armed with special arrows that had numbing effects.

After these two preparation phases, the groups reached their destination.

Here was where it officially began.

They descended from the hill onto the ruins several meters below. After exploring the surface, they would meet up at the large mausoleum in the center. And they needed to do so within the effective time of ‘invisibility’.

To minimize the chance of unexpected things happening, there was a need to follow each other’s footsteps. However, it would be difficult to tell everyone’s position when it was dark and everyone was invisible.

However, there was already a way to handle this.

A strange stick 30cm in length suddenly appeared on the ground. It floated in the air as though someone invisible was holding it up, and emitted a faint light after it was bent.

This special stick—a glow stick—was made in such a way that the special alchemical fluids inside would mix when it was bent and emit light. It was dropped because the effect of invisibility also included all the items the user was carrying. In order to be visible to others, it had to leave the user’s possession.

After flickering for a moment, the stick that had accomplished its purpose was destroyed. The glowing alchemical fluid splashed onto the ground, and was gone without a trace after touching the earth.

In such a way, all the teams signaled that they were ready.

It was too far to see the other teams, but four ropes simultaneously dropped down from the surface of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. The ropes had knots tied at fixed interval for easy scaling.

The end of the rope was connected to a piton knocked into the ground, with the other end swaying slightly.

If someone were able to see through invisibility magic, they would be able to spot people climbing down the ropes.

Even someone like Arche, who focused more on magic training and knowledge instead of agility, could accomplish that. Or rather, workers and adventurers needed to go through strength training to complete such tasks.

Thanks to their accumulated training and the effectiveness of the knots, none of the workers fell, and all landed safely in the cemetery.

The first objective of each team were the smaller crypts.

As the duration of invisibility expired, all the members could now be seen. The teams headed toward the crypt they had been assigned to.

Crouching down and keeping close to the tombstones, trees and statues, they ran in the dim cemetery. ‘Silence’ was still in effect so they didn’t make any noise. The warriors wearing full plate armour also did their best to hide themselves. Several shadows moved across the ground.

♦ ♦ ♦

When the leader of Heavy Masher, Greenham, got close to the crypt, his eyes widened slightly. It was even more extravagant than he had imagined.

Even though they referred to this as a small crypt, it was only small in comparison to the large mausoleum in the center. Up close, its size and majestic architecture could be clearly seen.

The white stone walls were smoothly polished. Although a lot of time must have passed since its construction, there was no sign of any damage from the wind and the rain.

Beyond a flight of three steps made of marble was a thick metal door. The door was polished so well that there were no rust at all. Even the black steel was shining.

It was clear how carefully they were maintaining the building.

—Which meant that it was confirmed that the cemetery was occupied.

While Greenham came to this conclusion, his thief comrade went in and slowly investigated, starting from the stairs.

Greenham received a signal to back away—necessary because of ‘Silence’—and retreated slowly.

This was to avoid area-effect traps.

The thief searched patiently for traps. It couldn’t be helped even if he was feeling impatient.

Souls resided within the body of men, and when that body begins to rot, the soul would be summoned away by the will of the gods. That was why the dead had to be buried immediately, with underground burial as the norm, but it was slightly different for those with special status such as the nobles.

If the dead were buried immediately, they would need to dig the corpse up to confirm that the body was decomposing. To see evidence of the decomposition, the corpse would be set aside for a period of time before being buried. However, the corpse would not be placed in the nobles’ home.

What they would use would be a crypt at the cemetery. After placing the bodies there for a period of time, the priest would judge if the body was rotting and the soul had been summoned by god before burying it.

The place where the corpses were laid to rest was the communal space of the crypt. This spacious area had several stone platforms where the bodies lay in state. The scene of several rotting corpses lying in a row was creepy, but that was natural from the common sense of this world.

Things were different for great nobles who had authority and wealth. Instead of the communal crypt, they would use a family crypt passed down from their ancestors. The room where those with authority were summoned by god and their final resting place—crypts like that were owned and passed down the family as symbols of power.

It was normal to find household appliances and treasures as well. This meant the crypts were a treasure vault for tomb raiders. And therefore, it was also a place built with dangerous traps to deter intruders.

That definitely held true for such an extravagant crypt. Greenham’s thief teammate checked the place carefully.

After the thief completed some of the checks and went to the door, the sound suddenly came back.

The duration of ‘Silence’ was over. It was just the right time. The thief silently stepped in front of the door and searched carefully. Finally, he placed something like a stethoscope and listened.