Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 4 - Chapter 7

Middle Act

Middle Act

When a session drags on, the GM may need to bring the tale to a stopping point with a larger non-boss encounter. These are often treated like other hallway fights, but some GMs elect to award experience or loot to represent the party’s growth over the long adventure.

“To think all this was just underfoot,” Miss Cecilia said in awe.

The Trialist Empire’s infrastructure was far beyond that of the Middle Ages I’d read about in history books; it bore a closer resemblance to the marvels of engineering seen in Classical Rome. Of all the great masterworks in Rhine, though, the gargantuan array of pipes that made up the Berylinian water system was the greatest.

“We’ll struggle to reunite if we end up separated, so please make sure to stay close.”

My chosen escape route had been a trapdoor leading from a storehouse to the sewers. We hadn’t stumbled into a commercial storage unit, but rather one belonging to the crown—explaining why the alleyway entrance had been secured with only deadbolts—and these sorts of buildings always came with passages leading to the facilities below.

The crown couldn’t exactly allow random houses to have access to the underground, nor could inspectors reasonably come and go through private property. These accessways supplemented the manholes dotting various streets throughout town, and spoke to the Empire’s willingness to support systems even after they were already established. This level of commitment drove home just how intelligent the architects of this city were, and reinforced my amazement that Mika was aiming to join their ranks.

“All right, Mika,” I said. “Where are we?”

“Uhh, give me a second. I didn’t bring my map today, so... We shouldn’t be too far from the main eastern passage, so if we can find a sign somewhere, I should be able to figure out where we are.”

The three of us stuck close to one another as we carefully trod down the narrow path. Grooves meant to let rainwater pass lined the floor, and I could hear a trickling sound ring up from below. It hadn’t looked like it was going to rain, so this was probably waste from some home or another.

Mika led the formation, with Miss Cecilia in the middle, and me covering the rear. With two of us lighting the way with magic, we could make out enough to advance without fear of losing our footing.

After walking for a short while, we came upon a wide tunnel. The long, long cylinder had walkways on either side of the deep yet gentle stream in its center. With the brick walls and masoned flooring, it was more a testament to human ingenuity than a creepy hallway—at least, so long as it was well lit.

“Is this...a sewer?” Miss Cecilia asked. “I find it rather peculiar...”

“That it doesn’t smell?” I said.

“Yes, and that the water seems very clean. I haven’t spotted any insects either.”

The priestess leaned over the water without fear and went around carefully inspecting the brick and stone that made up the passage. To a trained eye, this was the solemn manifestation of many a talented architect, but most would shrink away or at least show some distaste for a location as unpalatable as the sewers.

Much to my surprise, she did not show any such aversion; in fact, she seemed delighted to find herself in a place she had never visited before.

“What pretty ornamentation on the walls. Oh, and what’s this? There’s something written here. My, this writing is rather archaic. It says... ‘The superintendent can eat a fat one,’ and, ‘Give us a raise’?”

Seeing her stick her nose into everything she found novel was...well, she reminded me of an elementary schooler on a field trip. She seemed like she was around my age—my physical age, that is—but acted more naively, perhaps on account of her sheltered upbringing.

“Oh, I know where we are. Remember, Erich? We came here around the middle of last month.”

Not to spoil her fun, but the patterns on the wall were for more than entertaining well-to-do ladies. These were unique codes that made different areas of the system distinguishable from one another to the few people who could decipher their meanings. I had a general understanding of them as well, since Mika had taught me the basics on a previous trip.

“This area connects to the tap water system of the city,” I explained to our guest. “The water here only flows to one more cleaning tank before going back up to the surface, so it’s already been treated several times by this point. That’s why it’s so clean.”

“Is that so? I’d once heard compulsory sewer labor to be a punishment for criminal offenses, so I had imagined these tunnels would be quite the fearsome place.”

Had these been the drains of industrial Britain, we would be in a fearsome location indeed. However, this world had the curious phenomenon of magic, and this city was the capital of vanity in such a world. No matter how beautifully manholes were adorned, a terrible odor would instantly undermine any attempt to put on airs. The Empire’s insistence on polishing its infrastructure to perfection bordered on downright petty.

All this to say, the sewers weren’t anything to worry about so long as one knew how to carry themselves—but that was a big if.

“Rats and the like do pop up from time to time,” I continued, “meaning one might be at risk of catching something foul down here. But the capital’s waterways are well maintained, so there’s no need to worry.”

“My, you’re very knowledgeable on the matter. Oh, what is this pattern here?”

Whoa there, you really do have a childlike sense of wonder. That won’t get you killed, per se, but... “Excuse me.”

“Eek!”

Miss Cecilia had been one pace away from letting her curiosity direct her to a large opening with a carving of a relief valve and water droplet at the top before I yanked her back by the arm. Her subsequent shriek was not a product of my haphazard tugging, mind you: the instant she stepped forward, a translucent body had jumped out from the opening onto our walkway.

Yes, yes, run along now. I used a Hand to scoot the soft, jiggly mass back into its den. I’d grown used to this slimy sensation over the course of many a bulletin board quest.

“Wh-What was that?”

“A keeper of the sewers,” I said. “They feed on our waste to produce clean water; you could even consider them the rulers of this domain.”

It was a slime: the College had crafted an artificial life-form that metabolized waste and filtered out impurities to create clear water. Kept in sewers across the Empire, these innocuous fellows were diligent workers whose sole purposes were to clean filth and eat up plague-ridden pests. Their invention was one of the greatest feats known to alchemy.

I ask that the “well-versed” among you remain seated: these slimes did not have any of those functionalities. They couldn’t selectively melt away clothes or armor, nor did they have any reproductive need to assault the living; they simply ate whatever scraps fell their way.

R-rated services notwithstanding, these slimes did a terrific job of bolstering the Empire’s waterworks to astounding levels. Any other system of this scale would have sludge, mud, and dust everywhere, but these little creatures ate it all and even preyed on disease carriers like rats and bugs. While we were still in the posttreatment side of the facility, the water wouldn’t be this clean without them.

Abroad, foreigners joked about the well-known fact that imperial water could be ingested without even boiling it—only true in major cities, obviously—and the industrious workers who made that a reality were trudging about today as they always did.

“The College is in charge of overseeing these slimes,” I explained. “I come down here to give them special feed every so often, so I know a bit about the area.”

My familiarity with the sewers had begun with the remarkable unpopularity of the slime maintenance quest on the College’s job bulletin. Slimes mainly subsisted on random filth that they fermented and broke down into calories, but their metabolic process required magic to function. Feeding them rocks full of mana did wonders to keep them trucking along, so requests to do so showed up on the quest board a few times a month.

Naturally, crawling around the sewers for half a day to earn a single libra wasn’t exactly enticing, and even the poorest students preferred to avoid the creepy underground if possible. As a vulture who could only pick off forgotten requests, it was one of the few tasks I could take without reserve, and I had grown well acquainted with these tunnels as a result.

Mika’s navigational knowledge came in part from accompanying me, but mainly from their classes: oikodomurge hopefuls had to come down here as part of their practical lectures.

Seen in a different light, this dearth of foot traffic made this the perfect hidden route to throw off trackers, especially since I doubted a noble would even think to check here. We mostly knew where we were going, so the only other issue was the uncomfortable humidity that would cling to our hair and clothes; otherwise, this was an ideal route to get anywhere in the city without being stopped.

We just needed to be a teensy bit careful with where we stepped. The original alchemical inventors had been geniuses to be sure, but even they hadn’t found a way to teach these primal organisms how to differentiate between what was and was not meant to be eaten.

Thanks to the slimes’ hard work, though, the ground was clean enough that we didn’t have to worry about slipping. As long as we kept track of where we were, the trip home was bound to be easy...

Or at least, it had been bound to be easy.

“I, ugh, augh...” I wheezed and tried to catch my breath. “I told...you...not to run off without...”

“Um, I’m very sorry.” Miss Cecilia said. “It’s all just so intriguing.”

This was the most tired I’d been in quite some time. I wrung out breaths like my throat was an empty tube of toothpaste as I held back my desire to shout. Every word oozing from my lips tasted like iron.

Unfazed by the slime incident, the priestess had continued her grade-schooler act on several more occasions, necessitating a rescue each time. I had no idea how long it had taken us to get this far. She wandered down every wayward path with a curious “What’s this?” and all I wanted was for her to stop. Did she even understand that we were on the run?

Imagining this multiplied by thirty, the struggle of educators in my past life sprang to mind. I could never.

“Please,” I heaved, “I’m serious... Please stop, ugh, running off on your own... It’s...dangerous...”

“I’m sorry, Erich,” she said. “But if it’s so dangerous, I really must be the one to—”

“I’m begging you... Just stay behind us... Just follow...me...”

“Blegh,” Mika coughed. “Wait. Erich, wait... Water... I need water...”

Apparently, my old chum was even more exhausted than me, so we decided to take a short break. Unfortunately, we had been on the way home from a normal day at the bazaar, so we didn’t have our usual travel gear. Food and drink hadn’t been more than an arm’s length away at the open-air market, so we hadn’t thought to pack any; after stashing our shopkeeping goods at the storehouse, we were practically empty-handed.

Forget a waterskin—we didn’t even have a cup. This was the pinnacle of inconvenience, but we couldn’t have expected to stumble into an incident this suddenly. I could have avoided this had I been the type of adventurer to always carry my gear on me, but I was just a normal local going about my life.

Left with no alternatives, I summoned an Unseen Hand to catch the water we pulled out of the air.

“Goodness, the water is floating! Is this also magic?”

To a non-mage, the liquid appeared to be suspended midair; Miss Cecilia was too engrossed with poking at it to drink any for herself. Her finger only came into contact with the hand-shaped force field holding it up, but she seemed amused enough by how the sway she introduced caused the water to ripple with every touch.

She was a priestess: a devotee to the gods who invoked miracles with Their power would not know anything of magic. Mysteriously, her reaction was a far cry from the outright hostility most faithful showed. Magecraft was the art of twisting the heavens’ finest creation, and it followed that most clergymen didn’t take kindly to it.

“Magic is so very versatile,” she mumbled. “I suppose I can see why he is so preoccupied with it...”

For a moment, I wondered, Who’s “he”? but thought better of asking and shelved the thought. I’d already decided not to pry, and now wasn’t the time to question her. Judging from how she hadn’t said anything of substance on the long walk here, she wasn’t ready to share, and any undue meddling would just sour her mood. Instead, I chose to focus on the positives: she trusted us enough to let a secret slip in our presence.

“We’re close to the Mage’s Corridor,” Mika said. “What’s the plan?”

“Let’s lay low at my place for the time being, since we’ll be able to duck under any search spells there. My housekeeper is as terrifying as she is kind, after all.”

The dear Ashen Fraulein watching over my lodging was an utter powerhouse that had run out countless tenants who had, in all likelihood, been trained mages. If a spell came flying our way to locate Miss Cecilia, the silkie would refuse such an ill-mannered entity so much as a foot in the door.

Alfar earned their title of living phenomena by manipulating complicated magic with intuitive ease. Few could match them in mystic pursuits, making my house in the low quarter our most realistic safehouse.

“Then we’ll need to stay on our toes,” Mika said.

“Yeah... Maybe one of us should hold her hand.”

The issue was that, in order to approach our safe haven, we needed to traverse the perilous subways of the Mage’s Corridor. This area was legitimately dangerous, so I was ready to tie Miss Cecilia up if that was what it took to keep her still. No matter how many warnings they received, the boneheads of this ward never stopped flushing their failed experiments down the drain.

Our nation’s leaders had sunk massive sums into the construction and upkeep of this facility, and it went without saying that they weren’t going to just forget to place restrictions on what could be disposed of here. Laws proscribed the dumping of certain substances with the threat of severe penalties. But the slothful were ever abundant, and tracing the origins of a contaminant required massive effort; those that couldn’t be bothered to care about their actions’ consequences constantly poured their trash into the sewers.

The location was just too convenient: one could throw away anything without worrying about witnesses, anything left for long enough would be eaten up by slimes, and there were even convenient idiots who’d cover their tracks for them.

You see, cleanup crews hired to dispose of trash were not above breaking the law. Among the contractors tasked with getting rid of dangerous items, every so often a stingy worker would shirk their responsibilities and just come to the sewers to abandon their charges. I’d once stumbled upon a small box stuffed with unglazed earthenware vials full of suspicious chemicals, no doubt left behind to save on disposal costs.

As a result, the subterranean maze around the Mage’s Corridor posed a serious threat to our safety. There was more than just toxic sludge: every so often, an alchemical solution caused any slimes that ingested it to turn rabid and die, so the slightest lapse in alertness in this hellhole could trigger a saving throw.

Just as I was preparing to summon a Hand to keep a permanent hold on Miss Cecilia’s sleeve, I sensed something was off. Realizing that it was a Listening check, I pressed a finger to my lips and turned all my attention to my ears. I extinguished my mystic lantern and Mika dutifully followed suit. Too accustomed to the light, my eyes could see nothing in a world lit only by the fickle shafts of sunset that bounced in from the gutters; I closed them to acclimate them more quickly and shut out distractions.

The constant noise of running water was joined by the faint echo of something else: careful footsteps. They were clearly aware that sound carried well in these tunnels, and each step sounded more like someone was wiping down a stone tile... They have cloth wrapped around their shoes.

While my abilities weren’t enough to accurately discern their numbers, I could tell there were more than one. I knew that the saying warned not to speak of the devil, but wasn’t this a bit soon?

Only lawless rapscallions would ever bother to sneak around a place like this. Whether they were a disposal crew or black-market peddlers, no criminal fancied the idea of giving away their position for free; a good citizen on decent business wouldn’t need to hide their presence like this.

The footsteps were getting closer. Unfortunately, all we could do was retreat to a secluded alleyway and wait for them to pass. I doubted they’d pounce on us just for running into them, but nothing good could come of an unnecessary encounter.

“Excuse me,” Miss Cecilia said, “is something the matter? Why have you turned off the lights?”

The fuck?! Why would she start speaking now, of all—oh, of course! She’d been too busy looking around to notice me putting my finger to my lips!

The footsteps were picking up speed as they closed in on us. What?! Why would you come toward us?!

Before I could find any time to think, I locked eyes with a man rounding the corner.

“Augh!” As he came around, an intense light blinded me. He had a lantern painted black on three sides to serve as a spotlight; I suspected it had been tweaked to bounce around the light and strengthen its beam, because it had managed to rob me of my vision from a considerable distance.

Dammit! My attempt at adjusting to the dark had just left me more vulnerable to the radiance!

“The hell?! Is that nun the brat we’re after?!”

“Why’s she here?!”

“Who gives a damn?! Nab her!”

The three resounding voices threatened to disorient me aurally as well. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard two sets of footsteps bolt our way. My mind was a mess and I had no idea what was happening, but my body was moving on its own terms. I’d trained my martial responses to the point of second nature, and I leapt into action on sheer reflex.

This must have been the power of one of the traits I’d purchased with my ichor maze payday: Permanent Battlefield. I’d been able to switch gears on the fly before, but this trait brought my constant readiness to new heights. The motions I’d practiced tens of thousands of times now transcended the need for conscious thought, taking the form of an involuntary response to danger. It was an incredible boon: in tabletop terms, I could now roll reactions on unreactable events, and received a bonus when dealing with ambushes.

Blindness wasn’t insurmountable so long as I had a general idea of where they were. Unseen Hands were simple enough to make that I could launch six invisible fists in parallel to mow down the entire space in front of me.

“Grgh?!”

“Agh!”

“Hey! What’s wrong?!”

Four of my virtual fists slammed into something hard, but the other two landed against something duller. It seemed as though I’d only hit two of them; the last was probably waiting behind with the lantern in hand.

I suspected the rigid feedback had come from some kind of armor. I hadn’t gotten a good look before being blinded, but they must have been wearing breastplates or chain mail underneath their clothes.

On the other hand, the dull thumps were the unfamiliar sensation of fist on flesh—probably near a bone. I’d learned a bit of fisticuffs under the umbrella of Hybrid Sword Arts, but truth be told, I hadn’t ever put it into practice. Mostly because I hadn’t needed to, but also because I didn’t want to risk injuring my own body. I couldn’t say this was all that pleasant of a sensation, even as a nicety.

The grunting was followed by the sound of one of the men collapsing. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint where I’d hit them from the tactile feedback alone, but evidently one of my punches had landed in a critical spot. Just as I was feeling confident that things were looking up, a series of painfully shrill noises sliced into my eardrums: they were blowing a whistle.

Dammit, we’ve been had!

I hurriedly set up a Farsight to secure some sort of vision—while its main purpose was to peer into the distance, it could serve as a replacement for my real eyes in a time of need. Seeing myself from a head higher than my usual eye level was awfully disorienting, but I could manage so long as I thought of it as a third-person perspective game. I called up my Hands once more to finish what I’d started.

Now that I could see, I didn’t need to rely on closed fists: I grabbed onto the collars of their filthy clothes—rags, really—and pulled them tight. With six appendages, I could dedicate two to each enemy; the one on the ground was down but not out, so I had to make sure he wouldn’t get up. I choked each out with a judo-style lapel stranglehold. Unseen Hands could approach from any direction, making it trivial for me to get an angle on their collars that would make them dig into their carotids.

“Grbl... Ghgh...”

“Wha... Brlgh...”

A sufficiently powerful enemy could pry them off, since my force fields had a physical presence, but I could make that nigh impossible by using a technique that pitted their own garments against them. As their brains ran out of oxygenated blood, their struggling slowly came to a halt. I held the position for a little while for good measure, and regained my sight by the time they were all out cold.

“Are you all right, Mika?”

“Yeah, other than the stars I’m still seeing. What about Lady Cecilia?”

“M-My eyes have yet to return. Oh, my head...”

I was battle ready again, but that wasn’t enough to let my guard down. That thug had shouted, “Nab her!” when he’d seen Miss Cecilia; they hadn’t come our way to eliminate witnesses to a crime, but specifically to find her.

Whether this was just bad luck or we’d somehow been seen entering the sewers, this was bad news. The sound of a whistle would travel a considerable distance in these tunnels, and the pattern the goon had used had sounded like some sort of code.

Look, see? I heard more footsteps. As it turned out, those crooks hadn’t been the only ones scurrying around the sewers.

Oh, give me a break! This isn’t in the realm of “bad luck” anymore! You drop a campaign in my lap out of nowhere and don’t even give me my armor for a full-on encounter?! What’s wrong with you, GM?!

Had I been fully armed and without a helpless princess to protect, I would have gladly leapt into battle to beat them all down...but I couldn’t let anything happen to Miss Cecilia, and I didn’t know anything about how strong or numerous our enemies were.

“Gods dammit,” I groaned. “I can’t believe they’re already here. Mika, we need to run! Lead the way!”

“Huh?! Agh, wait, where are they coming from?! Uh, let’s double back for now! If we take a wide loop around, we should be able to get home from another path!”

This was our best bet for avoiding a confrontation. Unfortunately, my Listening skill wasn’t enough to echolocate with all this reverb, so the best we could do was run around and hope to throw them off our trail.

Not that I expected it to be easy. We were used to the sewers, but those chasing us were probably even more so. The difference in our familiarity was going to be night and day, especially since they were probably no strangers to the filthy paths we avoided to keep clean, as evidenced by their tattered clothing. Their clean clothes were kept safe in bags and only changed into when surfacing; being equipped to shift between underground dealings and daily life showed that these thugs were well trained.

“Tsk, they’re close,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

The footsteps were fast approaching; their shoes were padded, so they were likely to be even closer than I imagined. I’d wanted to check the unconscious ones for a weapon, but we couldn’t spare the time.

“Th-This is enough!”

“Huh?”

However, the damsel fueling the chase planted her feet just as we were about to run. I whirled around to see her ready to explain herself, but...

“Pardon my rudeness!”

“I cannot allow you two to put yourselves in—eek!”

We didn’t have time to listen to nor convince her. I understood that she felt guilty and wanted us to leave her behind, but it was too late for that now. Besides, if we were going to abandon her at the first sight of conflict, we would have been floating in a bath with an extra few coins in hand by now.

My obsession with adventure needed no repetition, but Mika’s love of heroic sagas was remarkable too. Had they been the type to flee in the face of danger, they would have cut ties with me after our life-threatening journey to Wustrow. For all the minutiae that differentiated us, we were two peas in a pod.

I lifted Miss Cecilia up without waiting—I wanted to keep one hand open, so she would have to live with being hoisted onto my shoulder—and booked it. As soon as I began running away from the footsteps, she stopped talking; maybe she was afraid of biting her tongue.

Ah, how rude of me: I knew from our games that she was an intelligent person. She must have caught on that arguing wasn’t going to change anything.

We ran down the most secluded paths we could find, but the uninterrupted patter of footsteps and the occasional whistle remained persistently within earshot. Even though we couldn’t tell how many of them there were, it should have been impossible for them to have enough men to totally surround us. Why did it feel so impossible to escape?

I swept away our tracks every now and then with a Hand, but I couldn’t find the time to put together a full Clean spell, let alone do anything about our scent. That said, it felt less like the enemy had a talented scout and more like they were reading our next move based on our starting location.

The underground was a sprawling network of pipes, but not all of them were perennially suitable for human travel. Runoff from a storm several days removed could flood certain paths, and others were totally blocked off in service of large-scale repairs.

“Whoa, crap! Turn around, Erich, turn around! There’s a slime!”

“What?! Another one?!”

And, like the one my friend hurriedly abandoned, some paths were occupied by the keepers of the sewers. Still, there shouldn’t have been this many of them: we’d run into three slimes already. Their presence blocked the flow of water, so multiple units weren’t normally meant to be active in the same area at any given time. The piping was designed to be redundant, so that one or two points of blockage wouldn’t escalate into a bigger issue, but this was clearly not right.

Do these thugs have some way of manipulating the slimes?

“I see light! They’re over here!”

“They’re close! Box ’em in!”

Footsteps did not precede these voices; instead, I heard the sound of paddling water. Dammit, do these guys have kayaks or something?! No wonder we can’t get a lead!

I had no longsword, no zweihander, no catalysts, and no projectiles. Mika’s presence kept the situation from being totally hopeless, but this was all but the worst way to fight on the enemy’s home turf.

Schutzwolfe. If only I had Schutzwolfe, I could cut down twenty—no, thirty goons without a problem!

A voice pricked at the corner of my mind: the formless emotion it represented was that of anticipation.

No, simmer down. I don’t plan on using you. I wasn’t about to let a bloodthirsty killer have its way. What was I going to do if the mafia tried to hunt me down as revenge for killing their grunts?

“Damn,” I said with a click of my tongue. “Mika, we need to speed up. Are you good?”

“Just fine,” they answered, “if you ignore how badly I want to hop in a bath right now.”

Hah, I thought. Then let’s get this over with and find a tub.

[Tips] Some sections of the imperial water-transfer network are sealed off for construction for years at a time.

Where there is man, there is sin.

The imperial capital was no exception to this truth, and found itself home to what one might call organized crime. They were, without exception, smaller than their counterparts found in other urban centers; still, these elite gangsters continued to eke out a dishonest living amidst the devoted knights, steadfast guards, and obedient populace that made up Berylin. Wading into a sea of model citizens, they blended into the waters of good intent as their minds spun devising ways to stay afloat.

Among the various groups that made up the capital’s criminal world, one was known to its competitors as Hydra.

Their main business was smuggling: whether one needed help crossing city lines or simply wanted to get their hands on contraband, their services were always in high demand, and at high prices. However, that didn’t mean they shied away from using the secluded nature of their underground home to dip their toes into the felonious realm of kidnapping and torture. These experts of the labyrinthine sewers were head and shoulders above other two-bit smugglers, said to be capable of sneaking a lesser drake into the capital undetected.

They had no true name with which to announce themselves. A label was the first step to discovery, which could herald a catastrophic chain reaction; they relinquished the most basic representation of unity on principle.

The organization was comprised of small cells, led by captains who were in turn led by commanders who steered their nameless gang via council. Their years of experience had morphed into mastery of the imperial waterways, affording them unparalleled mobility in their field.

And so, when a wretched fellow came by with a request fueled by his pathetic greed, they fanned out below the streets as one of many search parties. What reason did they have to refuse? Snatching up a witless noble girl was easy—especially one in eye-catching holy garb.

Their chance discovery in the sewers was a blessing like no other. Over the course of their long history, they had developed an intuition for municipal maintenance schedules—alas, not even they had been able to grease palms within the government—and learned the behavior of slimes. Catching her here was sure to be much, much easier than the aboveground chase they’d braced themselves for.

The only hiccup was the two extras by her side, and their inexplicable understanding of the subway system. Three men were concussed in the blink of an eye, and they continued to run around while avoiding all the dead ends; clearly, these weren’t just everyday brats.

Regardless, the gangsters did not panic. On top of their positional advantage, they also had a secret weapon that would guarantee their success.

The arcane life-forms the College had created to roam the waterways had many behavioral quirks—one of which was their tendency to immediately attempt to purify any substantial filth that piled up in the clean water pipes. Unbeknownst to the average person, there was a special slime that spread itself thin across the entire network to carefully monitor the water quality.

The criminals had discovered this through sheer coincidence. Generations prior, one of the group’s members had done his business in the tunnels and noticed that a slime had been dispatched to a location that hadn’t aligned with any known patrol paths. He’d repeated his experiments on a whim, and his confirmed findings eventually evolved into the strategy they used now.

Slimes filled up the areas they inhabited, so by throwing feces or rotting animal carcasses into clean water, they could block off entire passageways. This was primarily meant to split up the authorities if their allies were being chased, but nothing stopped them from using it to cut off escape routes when they were on the hunt.

While they couldn’t afford to go on the offensive against the city guard—long ago, they’d pushed their luck so hard that the guard had been one step away from establishing a permanent post in the sewers—the tactic was dominant against anyone they were truly willing to fight.

These men were anything but negligent; they had begun plugging up pathways as soon as they’d realized their mark was underground. Their motivation wasn’t in buttering up a meaningless small fry, nor was it for his paltry reward.

The Empire’s pockets were unfathomably deep. With the right intermediary, the crown would pay out no matter who found the girl. A seasoned criminal syndicate could think of anything a shortsighted crooked cop could, and more—including a way to cut him out of the picture for a bigger payday.

Earning the animosity of a nobody meant nothing to them. They kept contact to a bare minimum: a single messenger disguised and under alias had been the only liaison for all their communication, whether that was a briefing or a payout. As soon as they cut the bridge, the corrupt officer would be lost chasing an organization whose name he didn’t know.

Thus, the world dubbed them Hydra, after the infamous dragon who could only be felled by severing all its heads at once.

Their speedy encirclement was nearing its end. Open hallways had been converted to dead ends without their prey’s knowledge, and their remaining path left led straight to their burial chamber: a tiny room meant to store rainwater. The only pipe out that a person could fit through was too high up for a person to reach.

Everything was going according to plan...except for one critical misconception. The beast they hunted was no mere rat; they had cornered a terrible monster with enormous fangs.

[Tips] Hydra is a criminal organization that derives its title from a dragon species of the same name. Though the government has made several forays into the world under the table to stamp them out, they remain active to this day.

Life is full of dead ends: at some point in every person’s journey, they will come across a predicament that can’t be resolved no matter what price they’re willing to pay.

The first time I experienced this myself had been when our family was forced to send Elisa to the capital. Who could have predicted that I would drag myself all this way to join her, only to land hip-deep in the same despair?

“...Damn.”

“They sure got us...”

My curse was met with my friend’s resignation. We’d run and run and run until the final beams of sunlight vanished from the gutters above, and our dramatic escape had reached its pitiful conclusion.

After wading through a terrible path full of knee-high water, we were at a dead end. We’d desperately pressed through countless unnatural blockades, just to end up stuck in a dank tomb: we’d run into a storage unit that distributed clean water to the surface.

They really did get us.

“This is the worst,” I groaned. “Oh, this is just the worst.”

“You said it,” Mika agreed. “I thought we knew this place like the back of my hand, but I guess they one-upped us.”

The loud sloshing of legs trudging through water rang out from the tunnel beyond. They were no longer showing any restraint, and instead used the noise of their impending arrival to kill our morale. At this point, it was a waste of time to try counting their numbers; they easily cleared single digits. With reinforcements sure to come, our position looked pretty grim.

“May I be let down?”

I’d hauled Miss Cecilia around for at least an hour, and she’d held her tongue until now for our sakes. She wriggled in my arm like she really meant it, so I obliged by slowly setting her onto the ground. Without an ounce of hesitation, she sullied her pristine robes and, for some reason, pulled us both into a hug.

“Erich, Mika,” she said, “thank you both so very much. I’m grateful beyond words that you would go so far—that you would do all this just for me...but this is enough. At this rate, I’m sure that you two will find yourselves in terrible danger. You may even lose your lives.”

Moderately shorter than us, Miss Cecilia’s face was buried in between our shoulders. I didn’t need to see her expression to know how she was feeling though: the damp heat soaking into my arm was enough.

“But please, no more. Thank you—thank you so much. The kindness you’ve shown me today is all I could ever ask.”

Her voice was trembling and she squeezed us so tightly that I was shocked her frail frame could produce such force. I didn’t know why she was so overcome with emotion, but one thing was clear: she had given up.

“Miss Cecilia,” I said, “I think you’re misunderstanding something.”

“That’s right,” Mika echoed. “And what a terrible misunderstanding it is.”

One didn’t need to be well versed in stories to know what she was going to say. She was about to pull an “I’ll surrender myself so you two can escape unharmed.”

However, that was a naive way of thinking. We were up against a criminal syndicate—and one in the capital, no less. Berylin was a living hell for lawbreakers, and their success here put them in a different league from the part-time ne’er-do-wells in rural cantons. I suspected plugging any information leaks would be their top priority, meaning our lives were already forfeit; why would they bother letting someone run off with even a tiny sliver of knowledge about their business?

We had tried to run because we didn’t want to deal with that. If we could just get away, we could ask Lady Agrippina—sure, she wasn’t around, but the thugs wouldn’t be able to reach us at the College—or Mika’s master to help us mop up these lowly gangsters. That would have been the simplest solution with the lowest chance of blowing up in our faces later; so, we’d run.

Alas, the worst had come to pass: we could no longer run. But while we’d complained about how awful the situation was, no one had said anything about it being hopeless.

“We merely didn’t want to work up any more sweat,” Mika said.

“But they’re the ones who picked this fight,” I jumped in. “Why don’t we give them what they came for?”

We still had one way out. I hadn’t wanted to resort to this, but it was all we had left. Our final means of resolution was that which sat in every adventurer’s back pocket: with a lucky physical “persuasion” check, we could have everything go our way.

“All right, then. Mika, will you join me in this battle?”

“You don’t even need to ask. Compared to the zombies we saw in the ichor maze...they’re nothing.”

“Hah! Likewise, comrade.”

In some ways, this was the perfect location. There was only one entryway, and the room was cramped and relatively short; they wouldn’t be able to fit enough archers to barrage us with projectiles, and we were too close for high-angle fire. My greatest fear had been a stray arrow hitting Miss Cecilia, but now that seemed unlikely. The narrow opening also meant that we wouldn’t need to worry about fighting two-versus-many so long as we controlled the entrance. While the water inhibited movement, that was practically a nonissue for me and my old chum.

“This place is just right.”

I pulled out the fey karambit I always kept on me as my gentleman’s carry and double-checked my grip. Mika had their wand in hand and pressed it to the wall with an indecipherable murmur.

“Please,” they said, “right this way.”

A section of the wall jutted itself out and curved in to make a semispherical hideaway.

“Wow, Mika! I thought you said the bricks down here were hard to manipulate.”

“They’re imbued with conservatory magic that makes them hard to alter, but I’m not the same old me. Besides, I’ll need to learn how to work with other people’s spells without breaking the enchantment if I ever want to do any conservation work.”

“A-Are you two planning to fight?! Stop! Please, I beg of you, don’t risk your lives for me!”

Mika and I gave her a light push on each shoulder and led her into the makeshift cubby. It remained partially open so she wouldn’t suffocate, but it was only just big enough for her to crawl into. With this, we wouldn’t have to worry about her taking collateral damage.

“All right then,” I said. “Let’s do this. Ready?”

“As ever. Let’s give them a show.”

We were fully prepared and our spirits were high. The men grouping up by the entrance were loitering around, no doubt planning to slowly wear us down with demands to yield. But I couldn’t keep them waiting, could I?

“I’m off.”

“Yep. Leave your back to me.”

Mika was the most reassuring support I could ask for as I took my first step. I kicked off the submerged flooring and leapt out of the heavy water, hanging high in the air. My soaking-wet boot landed not on the water’s surface, but on the Unseen Hand laying directly atop it. By summoning pairs of invisible platforms over and over again, I had a dry walkway all to myself.

Freed from my hydraulic yoke, I sprinted forward with full agility, jumping into enemy lines in a single breath. There were more of them than I’d expected, but their gear wasn’t anything notable. Maybe they hadn’t accounted for the possibility that we’d bring the fight to them, but that carelessness made them sitting ducks.

I swiped up my fey knife in a backhand grip and sliced through the closest man’s face. My blade’s intricate arc entered through his chin, cut through his nose, and then crossed up to exit through his forehead. For an instant, the world stood still as the white line of my attack ran its course; not a moment later, a fountain of blood gushed forth.

“Graaah?!”

One down. He could still move, but the sharp pain and torrent of blood blocking his vision would keep him from contributing to the fight. I’d gone deep enough to score bone; he’d need something stronger than superglue to put his face back together.

“Hey there,” I said. “Good evening.”

Greetings are important. Surprise attacks were fair play, but it would be rude of me not to offer a salutation once it was over. Upon landing, I stayed crouched to kick another of the criminals and sent him flying; in the same motion, I pushed myself to my feet and used the upward momentum to elbow another.

The elbow was a staple weapon on the battlefield during hectic scuffles; I was far more familiar with using it than my fists. However, modern martial arts associations on Earth had banned its use for its deadly nature, which was the same reason I didn’t exactly find many opportunities to strike with it. The man I’d just hit stumbled backward from the force of impact and the back of his head slammed against the wall; he probably wasn’t going to be able to eat anything anytime soon.

“You little shit!”

“C’mere, brat, I’ll kill ya!”

“Oh, you’ve done it now!”

It took them a few seconds—time worth its weight in gold in my hands—and three fallen comrades to process what had happened, but they now raised their weapons and swung.

Their reactions were so slow that a Konigstuhl watchman performing at their level could expect Sir Lambert to blow a gasket and put them on a sleepless training schedule for their disgraceful conduct. Equipped with sacks of rocks and heavy sticks just unhazardous enough to not attract the attention of the guard, they attacked without paying any heed to the limited space we had. I hopped back, and they ended up hitting their own allies after failing to rein in their inertia.

Hmm, the first three weren’t that impressive either. Maybe violence isn’t their felony of choice.

At best, they were slightly better than an average person for not balking at the thought of hurting another living being. Their middling skill and my ability to move fast despite the flooded room had led to a good deal of friendly fire.

That’s good! Keep it coming! I was more than happy to chip away at their forces without doing any work.

They tried to regroup for another offensive, but their next attack was taking a while. Ah, of course, I realized. The guys I’d knocked down were blocking the only path toward me, and they were having trouble getting them out of the way. Two adults were enough to pack the corridor tight, and the pipe that lay beyond was barely any wider. This was a textbook example of over-assigning troops.

I’d steeled myself to face the gates of hell, but our situation turned out to be less dire than I’d thought. This gang was so clinical with their wily tricks that they never encountered combat. What a sad bunch; violence was king in this line of work, after all.

“Erich, keep your head down!”

I processed Mika’s command with an internal Sure? and stayed low after landing from my backstep. A split second later, the second wave’s vanguard—they’d finally sorted out their traffic jam—went flying backward.

“...That might have been too strong. Do you think he’s alive?”

The perpetrator in this case was obvious: Mika had woven a spell near the exit to catapult a clump of brick with tremendous force. Shooting a stone was a classic offensive spell, every bit as recognizable as fire or lightning, but fit their oikodomurgy to a tee.

Their cantrip had shot a fist-sized rock at speeds so blistering that it still appeared blurry with my Lightning Reflexes at full drive. Judging from its stability in the air, they’d tweaked the projectile to be conical or otherwise aerodynamic. Mika’s newfound ability to directly contribute as opposed to playing a pure support role had probably been why they’d been so confident; I would go so far as to say they’d been waiting for a chance to show the spell off.

“Glragh! Blerrr, gfhgh...”

“Holy fuck, that’s bad! Get a grip, man! Come on!”

I could hear the victim’s disgusting glossolalia from the other side of the doorway amidst the panicked screams of whoever had fished him up. The water came up just below my knees, so he was at risk of dying if left alone; thankfully, our enemies were ready to clean up after us.

“Mika,” I called. “Good news! He’s not dead!”

“That’s nice to hear,” they responded. “I tried it out on test targets, but I was still a bit worried. I made sure to set it to shatter on impact so it wouldn’t be completely overpowering, but this is the first time I’ve used it on a real person.”

“Don’t fuck with us, you brats! You better get your asses over here, or I’ll kill your parents, your brothers, your sisters, and your whole family tree!”

“‘Good news,’ my ass! We’re gonna rip out your guts and feed ’em to the slimes when we’re through with you!”

Whoa there, I didn’t realize you still had the will to bark. Unfortunately for them, our hometowns were too far to reach, and making good on their word to our ties in the capital would prove physically impossible. If these crooks were willing to take a stab at Lady Agrippina, I’d like to see them try.

But even so...they’d chosen the worst possible threat to make.

“Ursula.”

“Right here.”

I whispered under my breath so Mika wouldn’t hear, and the svartalf appeared with a singsong greeting. Her true power shone when the Sun God finished his daily reign, and the darkness of night was not limited to the surface. The lightless underground unseen to the moon was but another part of her domain.

“Would you kindly teach them what a precious thing light is? No need to hold back.”

“Oh my,” she hummed, “how frightful you are, Beloved One. But how could I possibly refuse a request from you?”

Ursula left her perch behind my ear and fluttered out of sight. She made off with the last vestiges of perceivable radiance with all haste, as evidenced by the chorus of panicked wails echoing down the pipe; the men’s vision had been pilfered by the dreadful fairy of the night.

They’d threatened my family: my brothers and parents back home, and Elisa here. I was rapidly losing any reservations about going all out. Don’t get too attached to those faces of yours, punks.

“Mika!” I shouted. “I’m pushing up! Cover me!”

“What?! Wait! Why are you leaving our safe zone?!”

I no longer had any reason to tread lightly. As numerous as they were, a blind opponent was hardly a threat, and I doubted any of them were strong enough to refuse alfish bewitchment. If I laid back and waited around now, it would take us years to get our well-deserved bath.

Throwing yourself into the fray without any chance of victory is reckless; lunging in to exploit a momentary weakness is bravery. I ran out of our room into the tunnel and swiftly checked both sides. There were more thugs grouped up on the left, so I instantly turned my invisible footholds their way, twirling in a mad dance to cut them down.

I sliced through eyes to guarantee blindness, chopped off fingers to disarm them, and grabbed a loose bludgeon out of midair to knock one out cold. A few of them had resisted Ursula’s invitation into the dark to some degree, but none could claim full command of their sight; combined with their companions plugging up space, their haphazard swings amounted to nothing worth mentioning.

“Jeez!” Mika shouted. “Don’t push yourself!”

I heard a series of low thuds on the right side. Using the angular momentum of an uppercut, I took a peek behind me and saw countless protrusions in the wall reach out to punch our foes with astounding power. The sideways pillars were too skinny to knock a grown adult out with a single strike, and stronger races or highly armored opponents could probably eat a handful without falling. However, the lightly armored rogues were mostly mensch, and even those that weren’t were still writhing in pain despite their continued consciousness. Teeth flew everywhere, landing in water bloodied by crushed noses—Mika’s side looked like it had caused more pain than mine.

“Whoa!” My persistent alertness allowed me to just barely react to the dull, heavy bloodlust I sensed beneath the water. A short spear shot sideways toward my midsection; I twisted clear and sandwiched the shaft between my arm and chest. Employing all my extra Hands, I yanked up the weapon to come face-to-face with a strange hybrid between mensch and fish.

He was a merfolk. These amphibious demihumans had both lungs and gills, switching between the two breathing apparatuses with a specialized muscle. This fellow in particular closely resembled a catfish, and his ancestral ability to survive in muddy bogs meant he was perfectly capable of swimming in the sewers. As amazing as his talents were, I couldn’t bring myself to marvel when he was putting them to use in crime.

Both of us held on to the spear and vied for position as we waged a battle to win superiority in balance. Although our bout only lasted an instant, it was plenty to discern his wealth of experience as a fighter.

Unwilling to unhand his weapon for free, he held on viciously. Fixating on a tool to the point of missing an opportunity was perhaps the most cardinal of battlefield sins, but in this specific scenario, the game of tug-of-war was a reasonable gamble to net him my head.

The merman was too strong for me to overpower with my childish build, and he knew his way around a spear well enough to grasp the nuance of how to combat me after I caught his weapon: he wanted to turn the situation around by toppling my center of gravity and drowning me.

I took him to be a savvy warrior—at worst, he was still the strongest of all the men I’d fought today. I couldn’t understand why a man of his talents had cast his lot with a gang. With skills this refined, he could easily have made a living under the sun.

My mensch sensibilities made reading his fishlike expressions impossible, but a chill ran up my spine as he opened his mouth ajar. I immediately tilted my head to one side and an invisible something whizzed by the spot my eyes had just been in.

The merman had spat a needle at me. One wouldn’t spot them on an open battlefield, but needles were a sidearm—generally categorized as such because they were ill fit for warfare outside of ambushes—that were as effective as they were heinous. They were especially potent in swordlocked states or tugs-of-war as a means of creating an exploitable opening—perhaps even more so than standard magic.

My thanks went out to Sir Lambert for having taught me about these underhanded tactics. Without the proper knowledge, my ill omen would have stayed a funny feeling, and I wouldn’t have been able to take the proper course of action to counter it. Had it not been for those lessons, I would probably be squirming around for air with a hand on a bloodied eye by now.

Not wanting to stay in this position all day, I decided to join my opponent in thinking outside of the box. At this point I’m sure it sounds done to death, but I used my full fleet of Hands to pull him at maximum power.

Each of my six Unseen Hands was stronger than I was. No matter how well-built or beefy the enemy, they wouldn’t be able to fight this. I used my brute force to lift him up and flung him at the wall.

For his part, he realized my intention and tried to let go, but it was too late. I’d grabbed onto more than just his spear: I had a grip on both of his hands and an armpit. I knew a seasoned fighter would notice the extra Hands despite their invisibility; I’d accounted for that from the start.

The merman’s body struck the wall with an awful squelching sound before slowly sliding into the water. At times, the environment made for the perfect blunt weapon: his face was crushed, and crimson oozed from his nose—I’d forgotten that fish also had red blood—at an alarming rate. He wasn’t getting up anytime soon, but thanks to his gills, I could leave him be without worrying about him drowning on me.

Not only had I cleaned up the enemies’ champion, but I’d picked up his weapon to boot. I’d been eyeing his spear, since it was well suited to the narrow passageway we found ourselves in.

I jabbed enemy after enemy with the stone tip of my spear from outside their meager weapons’ ranges. This one-sided beatdown meant my victory rate was finally ramping up, and I was closing in on twenty crooks subdued...when it came.

Dozens of people were sloshing around in the water in a frenzy, but a deep rumbling echoed into the pipe from a distance.

“AAAHHH!!!”

That was when I heard the screams on the other end of the tunnel.

“Oh, gods, it’s a slime!”

“Fuck! There’s too much blood!”

“Make a break for it! We still have a chance! Run!”

All the gangsters abandoned the battle. They picked up any wounded near them and all ran off.

Uh, wait. What did they just say?

The noise of viscous fluid rubbing against the walls of the chamber gradually grew louder. It was only as I watched the gangsters toss away their pride in a mad dash to escape did it click: it was coming. The harbinger of purgation that saw no good or evil on its path to purification was on its way.

“Oh, oh—oh no! Mika, we need to run!”

“R-Run?! But where?!”

“Wherever it is, we need to grab Miss Cecilia!”

That thing was bad news—we couldn’t do anything to fight it. It was an enormous mass of pure superheated monstrosity that we couldn’t do anything to. Even if I were fully armored and had all my catalysts, I doubted I’d get through more than a hundredth of its mass before it melted me in its bubbling bulk.

The slimes were akin to a stage gimmick that wasn’t designed to be fought. Any attempt to interact with it would force the GM to try and intervene, and a party foolhardy enough to do it anyway would be met with a sigh and a folded up master screen.

Our only recourse was to flee like headless chickens. We sprinted on my Hands in utter hysterics, and by the time we got back to the rainwater storage room, we could no longer hear the splashing footsteps of the fleeing crooks. Miss Cecilia was poking her head out of the cubby, probably because the silence had her worried; while we normally would have been obliged to scold her, the matter at hand made her proactive approach worthy of the highest praise.

“Come out, please! We need to run!”

“U-Um! What happened?! What in the world is happening?!”

“We, uh, don’t have time to explain! Please, just hurry—” As I pulled her out by the hand, we heard a tremendous mass slam into the wall behind us.

Oh gods. It’s already here.

“Oh, oh, n-not good!” Mika yelled. “E-Erich, what do we do?! Should I try making a full pocket in the wall to shield us?! These bricks are impervious to them!”

“I don’t think we’ll have enough air to survive until it passes! Can you block off the entrance instead?!”

“No way! I can’t fill a gap like that all at once, and the slime will probably tear straight through a thin wall!”

Crap, we’re running out of time! I could practically see the sadistic smirk of the GM as he turned over an hourglass. Wait, no, what do we do?! Are we done for?! Come on, there has to be something—maybe I can lift us up with Unseen Hands and keep us airborne until it... No, even the wall pocket is better than that!

Ursula couldn’t save us now, and Lottie’s wind shield meant nothing if I couldn’t summon her. While I could have called for her earlier and brought her down with us, speaking her name did nothing when we were cut off from the outside air.

Uh... Um...

“Excuse me!”

Mika and I were panicking over the few cards we had left in play when a piercing cry stopped us in our tracks. I whirled around, surprised by Miss Cecilia raising her voice for the first time, and saw her pointing to the ceiling. She was gesturing into pitch darkness.

“There! I spy an opening on the upper wall!”

“Huh? I don’t see—”

“No, she’s right! Look, Erich!” Mika flashed a mystic ray of light toward the heavens to reveal a hole: it was a pipe meant to redirect rainwater from above!

“Woo!” I yelped. “That’s incredible! Miss Cecilia, you’re a saint—a bona fide messenger of the Goddess!”

“O-Okay,” Mika said, “I should be able to make stairs leading up to it! We’re going to make it!”

My old chum poured all of their mana into their wand and smacked the floor, summoning a single pillar that towered upward, with steps jutting out from the core at regular intervals. Its threadbare nature made it feel a bit sketchy to traverse, but it was a proper spiral staircase that reached the ceiling.

“Yeaaah! You did it, Mika! I love you!”

“L-Love?! Uh, um, er, I’m glad to hear that, but let’s hurry, Erich!”

Y-Yeah, probably not the time. We had Miss Cecilia go up first—having the slowest lead the way would cause the least confusion—with Mika following and me taking the rear. Climbing these steps without a handrail in the dark was stressful beyond belief, but I could always catch someone with a Hand if the worst came to pass.

“Wh-Whoa!” Mika exclaimed. “The water’s rising!”

“Huh?! Oh, um, shall I run?!”

“Slowly! Please walk up slowly!”

Slimes were far more dense than water, and the keeper of the sewers naturally pushed water along with it as it moved. The excess was rapidly filling up this storage tank, but I made sure to calm Miss Cecilia down and have her ascend at a sensible pace.

We were fine: the water was rising, but now that I was looking closely, I saw other barred outlets meant to let it escape to lower areas of the underground dotting the walls. These had probably been fitted specifically to counteract flooding in the case of a slime pushing along too much water.

“Oh... There are metal rods here.”

Miss Cecilia managed to complete her precarious climb, and now realized that our escape pipe was blocked by a set of bars. The water was closing in and had grown darker to herald the slime’s arrival, but we had nothing to fear. Mika could remove the barrier and get us to safety in the blink of—

“I-I shall remove them! Hrng...ah!”

The terrifying sound of metal being warped out of shape was followed by a short silence and then the resounding splash of something heavy sinking into the water.

Huh? Hold on... What?

“Did... Did you just pry the bars off?!”

“Hurry!” she replied. “Do you think the water will reach us here?!”

“Uh... Well... I don’t think it’ll rise past a certain point to prevent backflooding in the streets...”

Mika and I looked at one another in bewilderment. I silently questioned whether the barrier was something a skinny girl could brute-force, and they violently shook their head.

I’d figured as much. These things were built to withstand the literal tons of water that flowed in after a big storm, and I doubted they were flimsy enough for a normal human being to lift, let alone bend. I don’t think I could so much as make them creak with all six of my Unseen Hands.

“Wah?!” Just as Mika tried to join Miss Cecilia in the pipe, they totally lost their footing. They’d left one leg on the last step of the stairs, and it had crumbled underfoot.

As they had said earlier, these bricks mystically defied change; perhaps a tiny slipup in casting had been all it took to lose stability after supporting the weight of two people. More likely, however, was that its use as a foothold in the monstrous task of bending steel had been too much strain for the thin slab of rock to bear. For all my grumbling about my share of bad luck, Mika was right there with me.

“Gotcha!”

At any rate, I wasn’t going to just let my pal fall; I had to help Miss Cecilia too, since she’d tipped herself over in a knee-jerk attempt to save Mika. I allotted three Hands each to prevent their falls. Mika got one as a foothold and two to prop them up; Miss Cecilia was about to fall face-first because she’d jumped forward despite knowing she wouldn’t make it, so I gently pushed her back by the shoulders and stomach.

Phew, that should be enough...

Our moment of peril had subsided, and frankly, I was being negligent: it took me an extra beat to notice the wet footsteps blending into the echoing sounds of water.

I whirled around as Permanent Battlefield combined with my usual alertness sounded the alarm, but all that did was turn my fatal lag into critical lag. My whole field of view was taken up by the face of a catfish: the merman’s lidless eyes were opened wide in unconcealed spite as he pounced from the water and tackled me.

Why are you here, you bastard?!

“Argh!”

“Erich!”

My reaction was late, my footing unstable, and I’d been in the middle of shifting my balance from the staircase to the pipe. All together, these factors left me with no means of resistance as the merman dragged me into the water with him. The only saving grace was that I managed to take a massive breath, knowing that I was going under.

“Mmrgh...”

Once again, these dice of mine had failed me with their accursed numbers at the end of the line. I still didn’t understand why he was here. Had his friends forgotten to save him because he was underwater? Left behind in a hopeless situation, had he let the flowing tides wash him here? What kind of bullshit was this?! I couldn’t even tell if this was my misfortune or the GM’s corrupt personality at this point!

I clawed at him to peel off his stranglehold, but his moisturizing outer coating of mucus kept me from getting a grip. His wrists were structured differently from a mensch’s, so I couldn’t even tell where to grab him to inflict the most pain. Worse still, his neck was too girthy to choke him out in return.

Urgh, I can’t focus for long enough to churn out a spell! The lack of air was dulling my brain to the point where I couldn’t summon the Unseen Hands I’d casually thrown around like real appendages... No, I’ll make one through sheer grit, dammit!

If I didn’t get this guy off of me, the slime would catch us and melt us to the bone. I’d probably drown before then, but I refused to die like this. Wait a second. This asshole is trying to cut corners by pushing me down into the slime!

As if I’d let you! I racked my brain for the most painful place I could target... Here!

A transient moment of concentration let me scramble together a single Unseen Hand that cut through the water and plunged into the merman’s body. I jammed my arcane fingers into his gills before clamping down and twisting with all my might.

His grip loosened up. Knowing that this was my last chance, I frantically squirmed free as he put a hand up to his neck in pain. I fled from the slime now nipping at my toes and breached the surface.

The air was delicious—as sublime as the first gulp of water I’d taken after conquering the undead swordsman’s ichor maze.

“Erich, hurry!”

“Please make haste! It’s almost here!”

I didn’t even get a moment to savor the taste of air; I paddled toward them like mad. Grabbing on to the staircase, I dredged my heavy, breathless body out of the water. My soaked hair clinging to my face was an infuriating distraction.

I thanked the heavens that the water could only rise so high. Climbing stairs was exhausting, but it was better than having to climb up the pipes in a panic.

Just as I rose onto the final step, I heard another splash; this time, I was ready to react. The merman shot out of the water like a flying fish, aiming to land a hit right in my side. His eyes were bloodshot and the injury in his gill left him drooling red.

Why?! Why do you insist on trying to kill me?! You could’ve just waited for us to get to safety and sneaked out before the slime got here to survive!

Mika started preparing something with the walls around the same time I began weaving a Hand to intercept him...but there was someone else who’d started moving before us.

“No!”

Miss Cecilia threw herself from the alcove and sacked the merman out of the air on his path to me.

“What?!”

“No way!”

Tangled together, the two of them tumbled through the air and dove into the water. They did not instantly melt, but their shadows sank, pulled down by gravity, until they disappeared into the deeper layer that sat beneath. One last bubble floated to the surface and popped, leaving its originator behind.

“Why...”

Strength abandoned me, and I couldn’t so much as tell if I was actually standing on the stairs. I mechanically moved my numb legs and took a seat at the edge of the pipe, turning to face the water; Miss Cecilia was not there.

I thought it had to be some sort of mistake—an illusion. Mika and I could have handled it; surely, we would have.

Though, to tell the truth, my lack of breath had left my spellcasting shaky, and Mika’s sideways wall-pillar probably wouldn’t have caught the full-speed merman in time. I knew that, but... But this?

Mika collapsed onto their knees and punched the ground. They stared into the water with dilated pupils, unblinking, with drool dripping from their agape mouth. Their disbelief was as terrible as mine.

We had met her today; saved her on a whimsical conviction; and ran off with her without knowing a single detail. Yet the fact that we had failed to save her was unbelievable.

I was stupefied—there was no other word for it. I cradled my head and asked myself why, over and over again. We were at the end of the end—the final step of the final hurdle—so why? Why?! How did this...

A sloshing sound interrupted my thoughts. Someone had stepped on a stair.

Could it be? No, that’s preposterous.

I couldn’t so much as convince myself to look up, but then the second footstep, and the third, rang out in succession. I was not imagining the sounds.

Very slowly, I began to raise my head. First, I saw feet: they had been thoroughly charred, exposing raw bone to the air. My gaze continued to rise and I saw tattered cloth, more hole than not, barely clinging to whatever flesh was left. Her abdomen was all but gone, and I had a clear, painful view of her internal organs.

Her beautiful chestnut hair and deep burgundy eyes had melted away. She was too horrific to cast eyes upon, and I wouldn’t have even recognized her had the Night Goddess’s medallion not survived to hang from her neck.

“Ce...cilia...?”

In kind terms, her current state was an atrocity. I only managed to squeak out her name; Mika swallowed their breath and had collapsed once more from their knees onto their rear.

“Oh... Oh no... No, this is terrible. W-We need to find a healer...” Mika put their hands on the floor in an attempt to push themselves to their feet. I didn’t know whether it was the slick ground or a general state of shock, but they failed and crashed hard into the metal. They made another attempt, but their inability to process the reality we faced had robbed them of their motor functions.

“Ehh...righ...”

The meat of her neck had been torn away to the brink of severing, and the sounds leaking out from it were... I think it was my name. She was calling for help: pleading for me to save her—to not let her die.

Oh, what do I do? Lady Agrippina—where is Lady Agrippina? If anyone, maybe she can do something...

“Aghhm... Ohhh... Khay...”

She reached me before I could make a single mindful movement. Her fingers had been reduced to exposed bone with gooey flesh stubbornly clinging on, but she still raised her hand to run them across my cheek.

“Aghm... Aye... I’m...okay.”

The damage should have been fatal, but my desires must have conjured up a hallucination, because her indecipherable groaning was turning back into regular speech. The gluey bones brushing against my face gained definition and rediscovered their heat.

At last, I realized that I was not dreaming. Her disfigured flesh fell off before my eyes, and her crimson wounds bubbled with muscles that knit her body back together, packaged under a new layer of vivacious skin. She had already been so fair that I had wondered if she’d ever set foot in the sun, but now her complexion was paler still, bordering on a bluish-white that made me question whether she was alive at all.

Fresh eyeballs pushed out their crumbling predecessors; the brilliant red of pigeon blood stared right back at me.

As her skin reclaimed territory on her charmingly round face, a full head of hair sprouted: not chestnut, but rather the hue of the gentle darkness that surely coated the skies fathoms above us. Her locks had more luster than when they’d been brown, and they shimmered under our mystic lanterns like the starry night.

Yet for all her beauty, her most striking feature remained those unchanging lips—a more brilliant scarlet than any rouge. And peeking out from the gap in between them were a pair of long, pearly fangs.

“Erich, I’m okay. I’m so glad to see you’re safe.”

The priestess had returned from the void of death, and as she wiped away my tears with her thumb, she smiled.

[Tips] Miracle and curse are two sides of the same coin; both are assignments of the divine.

The tale that follows is not from the time line we know—but it might have been, had the dice fallen differently...