Maruyama Kugane - The Invaders of the Large Tomb

“Damn it! There’s too many of them!”

The warrior holding a shield beside Greenham shouted with a laboured voice. Thanks to his large shield which covered his entire body, he was not injured, but the shield was covered with all kinds of vile fluids. He was smashing skeletons’ skulls with his mace, but he was slowly being pushed back.

“Where did they all come from?”

The warrior’s curiosity was natural.

Greenham’s team had searched several rooms after splitting off from the other teams at the crossroads. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much treasure as the mausoleum, but after finding a sizeable chunk of valuables lying around, they slowly searched further. When they entered this room to have a look, the door suddenly opened and the undead started to pour in.

A zombie or a skeleton by itself wasn’t a difficult opponent, but their numbers were the real problem. Even if they fell or got trampled, they wouldn’t die, but the undead would reach the rear flank. Of course, the rear flank wouldn’t be taken out that easily either, but against this many, it was difficult to say.

With a little bit of bad luck, the front would collapse immediately. Greenham thought this, and decided to use the force he had been conserving.

“We’ll finish this in an instant. I leave it to you.”

The rear guard, which had only been slinging stones so far, started to move.

For Greenham’s “Heavy Masher”, undead like these were not really a threat. But because they weren’t a real threat, he tried to conserve their strength by keeping the rearguard in reserve. If the rear guard attacked as well, the undead wouldn’t be a problem.

“My lord, the god of earth! Please repel the evil ones!”

The cleric holding a holy symbol shouted while exuding divine power. The air filled with negative aura was cleared away and filled with freshness as if a cool breeze had just passed by. A wave of divine power, stronger than usual, swept out from the cleric.

As soon as the ability activated, the undead around the cleric turned to ashes.

Exorcising the undead usually just made them flee, but if there was an absolute difference in strength, it obliterated the undead instead. However, it was extremely difficult to obliterate large numbers of undead because it required a matching amount of strength.

As a result, over twenty undead were extinguished.

“Fly! 「Fireball」!”

A ‘Fireball’ flew from the arcane magic caster and exploded amidst the undead horde. A pillar of flame sprouted for a moment and burned away the undead’s false life within the effect radius.

“Not over yet! 「Fireball」!”

“My lord, the god of earth. Please repel the evil ones!”

The area of effect attacks struck again and the number of undead fell drastically.

“Let’s go!”

“Alright!”

The warrior abandoned his shield, grabbed two maces and jumped into the undead horde along with Greenham. It would have been easy to leave everything to the magic casters, but the reason Greenham rushed in was so that they would conserve as much mana as possible. Especially for the cleric, who could only repel the undead a certain number of times per day. Because it was a job that was especially potent against undead, he would be their hidden card while they were in the tomb.

Greenham swung his axe at the group of zombies. Rather than blood, thick liquid came out from the cut,—it would have spurted if they had hearts—oozing weakly. From the cuts came a disgusting stench, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle.

Rather, their noses were already numb.

Along with the warriors, they attacked, attacked and attacked. They did not think of defense even for a moment. It was the kind of a charge they could do thanks to their sturdy armour supported by magic, not to mention that the undead were weak.

At times, an undead managed to strike Greenham’s head, but the armour absorbed all the shock and there was no strain on his neck. Even when he was struck on his chest or stomach, he barely felt it.

Their opponents were lesser undead. They were only a challenge because of their numbers, but since they had cleared out so many of the undead, they found a bit of breathing room once more. The warrior shouted while still swinging his weapons.

“Until now, we only fought the weakest ones, but considering their numbers, this tomb must have a lot of them!”

“Yea, also it wouldn’t be strange if stronger undead have spawned and are still crawling around somewhere! But I don’t know why they haven’t come out!”

The person who replied was the cleric who picked up the warrior’s shield while keeping an eye on the situation.

“…Perhaps all these undead were summoned. Maybe through some summoning magic or an item.”

Because these undead corpses disintegrated after a certain amount of time, there weren’t enough to fill the entire room with the bodies. These undead corpses also disappeared in a fashion similar to summoned monsters. That’s why the magic caster interjected.

“Some kind of mechanism that mass summons lesser undead? … I don’t want to think about that.

Don’t make me imagine this tomb packed tight with zombies everywhere.”

Greenham replied and looked around the room while blowing away a skeleton’s head as if he was trimming a tree. The number of undead remaining could be counted with two hands, and the wide open doors showed no signs of reinforcements for the undead. The fight would be over soon.

In that moment, he felt a chilling sensation rising from the bottom of his feet.

His sense of danger told him to evacuate, but it would be too late in this situation. Even so—

“Alert! Everyone get out of the room—”

The rogue shouted as if he had the same feeling.

But it was too late. The hard floor suddenly vanished. A floating sensation enveloped their bodies and a few heartbeats later their disoriented bodies hit the ground.

Greenham heard his comrades’ pain filled voices, but stood up with his axe that he had not let go while he was falling and attacked the skeletons rolling around on the floor.

“Exterminate them!”

Since the undead took damage from the fall—the skeletons were especially weak against crushing damage, and thus took significant damage from falling—it was easy to mop them up.

Greenham looked around the room only after cleaning up all the undead.

They had fallen into a magic trap which made the floor disappear. Looking up, the ceiling was far above them. At least twelve meters above. Three meters above the floor was a door, and three meters above, for total of six meters, was the open door through which they had first come in. They had fallen about two floors total.

If describing the overall shape, it was like a long pillar. The bottom was shaped like an inverted pyramid, and the slope was steep enough to make someone fall all the way towards the centre if they slipped. Actually one of their comrades had already fallen down and was pinned in the middle by all the zombies that had fallen down.

It was amazing that nobody was hurt after falling from such height.

The strange thing about the layout was at about three meters up from the bottom where there was a closed door. There were four tunnels on each side, for total of sixteen.

“It’s almost like the room was designed to drown people. Like water would start pouring out in massive quantity from that door. No, even worse, it could be something like slimes.”

“I agree. We should look around that door to see if it’s safe to escape through.”

However, it was difficult to climb two floors up on a smooth surface with nothing to grab onto. The rogue could probably climb without a hitch, but for someone wearing armour like Greenham, it was impossible. Comparatively, the door on the bottom had was an unknown, and possibly dangerous, but it would be easier to reach.