Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Seven: Trial’s Notice
“Little Karen… got a minute?”
“What is it?”
Sepl had approached her with a serious expression, and Karen climbed down from the carriage. Since Karen and Licht had taken Lumi with them, the carriage had been left waiting in front of the cave on the sixth floor, where the adamantite deposit was. They tied Lumi to the carriage—which apparently had not been attacked by monsters—and had currently made their way back up to the fifth floor.
“Did something attack you in the sixth-floor cave?”
Apparently, after Karen and Licht sped off on Lumi, the knights had barely managed to make it through the adamantite cave while regularly applying smelling salts.
According to the knights, there had been ghosts inside the cave. As the name suggested, ghosts were spirit-like monsters, though they were said to be monsters rather than the actual souls of the dead. For D-rank monsters, their mental interference with the knights had been unusually strong.
And yet on the way back, there had been almost no effect at all, which had left Karen and her companions somewhat at a loss. They had concluded that the knights must have been hit harder on the way down because the dungeon’s monsters had been more active due to the black dragon having descended all the way to the tenth floor—so had Sepl perhaps suffered some kind of attack after all?
Karen reached for her pouch, wondering whether she should have him bite into one of the curry roux cubes that served as the base for a panacea, when Sepl shook his head.
“It’s not that, Little Karen. There’s just one thing I wanted to ask you.”
Sepl wore an expression serious enough to be called grim. The fifth floor was a snowy mountain slope beneath a clear blue sky. The crevasse that had nearly swallowed a knight during their descent had filled back in—perhaps it had snowed while they were gone. There were likely other hidden crevasses too. Other than that, no monsters seemed to be about—but had he perhaps found something?
Karen swallowed and waited for him to continue.
“You’ve stopped using formal speech with Master Julius… don’t tell me you two did it in the dungeon?!”
Karen silently delivered a low kick to Sepl’s shin.
“Ow!”
Urte followed up with a kick to his backside that sent him flying. There happened to be a crevasse where he landed, and the snow beneath his feet crumbled away. Sepl scrabbled at the edge with a yell.
“Crap! I’m slipping, I can’t climb out! Help!”
Karen looked at the crack of the crevasse Sepl was dangling over, and something clicked.
“Oh… this hole looks like it connects to the tenth floor. The shape of the crack in the ground looks the same as what I saw looking up from the tenth floor.”
But when she had looked up at the vertical shaft from the tenth floor, the crack hadn’t been sealed with snow—she had seen blue sky. Perhaps the dungeon sealed it with snow only when intruders were present. It seemed the crevasse the knight had nearly fallen into last time had not been buried because of snowfall after all.
“Hmm? Is that so? For B-rank adventurers, that could save quite a bit of time when descending to lower floors. A D-rank adventurer like Sepl doing it would be a death sentence, though.”
“Sorry for asking, okay!? But anyone would be curious!?”
Sepl offered something resembling an apology as Urte pulled him out, though he showed no sign whatsoever of having learned anything.
Karen gave Sepl an exasperated look.
“Maybe I should tell Ms. Lily that Uncle Sepl sexually harassed me.”
“I’m so sorry, please spare me!”
Sepl prostrated himself more deeply now than when he had nearly fallen into the crevasse. It seemed he valued Lily more than Karen had realized. She sighed and decided to let it go.
“We ran into a black dragon on the tenth floor. We overcame that kind of ordeal together—of course, it brought us closer. Don’t go saying strange things.”
Of course, the fact that they had opened up to each other about things buried deep inside was also part of it. But that wasn’t something to share with Sepl.
“You see, Mr. Julius—”
“Julius, isn’t it? Karen.”
Julius was suddenly at her back, whispering in her ear, and Karen jumped.
“I’m terribly sorry; I’m still not quite used to it—”
“Just ‘sorry’ is fine. When you use formal speech, it feels like there’s a distance between us, and it makes me sad.”
“Anyway, stop whispering in my ear. It tickles.”
Julius smiled and slowly drew back. Then he turned his gaze to Sepl, who had gotten to his feet.
“Sepl, I understand you’re something like a relative to Karen. Even so, wouldn’t you agree there are things one simply shouldn’t ask a woman?”
“Yessir.”
“Unfortunately, Karen and I are not yet intimate to that degree—but even if we were, I would not wish you to know the precise details. Do you understand?”
“Yessir.”
Sepl kept nodding while breaking into a cold sweat.
Karen had been watching, waiting for the right moment to step in, when a girl’s high voice reached her ears—a voice that had no business being here.
“Karen! You’re back! …What is that monster?! Is that a giant lizard?! Wait—a black dragon?!”
Running up the snowy slope came Petra. Her light outfit gave no indication of it, but she moved with a remarkable lightness of foot, twin tails swaying as she climbed—and then stopped dead in astonishment at the monster carcasses the knights were carrying.
“Lady Petra, what are you doing here? Even as strong as you are, it’s dangerous to enter a dungeon alone.”
“There’s a reason for it! So you’re not going to say you won’t give me the cosmetics just because I wasn’t guarding the dungeon entrance, right?”
“Yes, yes, I won’t say that. …So what’s the reason?”
The first thing Petra had rushed to confirm was the matter of the cosmetics, and Karen deflated somewhat. It seemed the most pressing concern for Petra was whether or not she would receive the Princess Waltride cosmetic set Karen had promised as compensation for guarding the entrance. Karen gave a wry smile, half-expecting whatever had happened to be nothing too serious, and asked.
“Well, monsters have been pouring out of the deep forest one after another, and things on the surface have gotten quite serious. At the rate they’re going, they could wipe out every town in the area, so the Earl took charge and called on everyone gathered for the hunting festival to help, and they’re barely managing to hold back the flood of monsters from the forest.”
“What?! That’s an extremely serious situation!”
“That’s why I told you I had a reason.”
Petra said it with perfect composure. Compared to the cosmetics set, the crisis occurring outside apparently did not rank very high in Petra’s priorities.
“And apparently it’s not just here—the same thing is happening in other places too, so hunting festival participants are leaving one after another as word reaches them. There was some talk that an evacuation might be necessary, so while Master Julius can certainly take care of himself, they thought the rest of you should come back—that’s why I came to get you.”
“In other places too… the same thing…?”
What flashed through Karen’s mind was what the black dragon had told her. Something that should never have been born was trying to hatch. The black dragon had forced its way to the surface to kill it before it could. And the surrounding monsters were apparently all converging on the same place, trying to kill it too.
“Yes. For now, only news from within the Ehlertt territory has come in, but a priest who brought the report said it might be happening in other territories too. He called it the goddess’ trial.”
“…Does that mean something is trying to be born in multiple places?”
“What are you talking about?”
Karen brushed Petra off with a smile and turned back toward Julius.
“Mr. Julius, maybe you really should carry me and get us to the surface faster than anyone else?”
“Julius. Karen.”
Julius corrected her with a pleasant smile. Karen glared at him.
“Julius! Lord Helfried and Lady Alise and Master Sieg might be in danger—this is not the time for that!”
“I know. But what concerns you and me is important to me as well.”
“Oh, fine! I get it, so just take me already!”
Karen held out both arms to Julius like a child asking to be picked up, and Julius scooped her up without hesitation.
“Licht, carry Karen’s luggage and follow us.”
“Little Karen’s luggage—Urte and I can—”
“You two are slower than Licht.”
Julius turned down Sepl’s offer and gave the instruction. Licht nodded.
“I’ll explain the situation to the Captain and then catch up with Karen’s bags.”
“I’m counting on you.”
Licht nodded with a smile at Julius’s words.
“Leave it to me!”
The words had barely left Licht’s mouth before Julius broke into a run. Held in Julius’s arms—far more comfortable than Lumi’s back or even being supported by Licht—Karen emerged from the forest edge dungeon in no time at all.
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