In the river water dyed red like a sunset.
Every time sword and spear clash, a heavy drumming sound echoes, and the blood mist of the undead, spread like smoke, bursts open, swept away by the impact.
The undead pushed back by force retreats smoothly as if swimming backwards, and the spear tip of another undead rushing in as if taking turns pushes my body back, blocked by the armor.
“Grrrrrk…!”
A group of undead rushing at my back as if seeing an opportunity.
I swung my left arm out to the side while turning my body, then brought down my longsword diagonally to pin the nearest undead’s sword to the riverbed along with its body.
Then I headbutted another undead’s swinging axe with my pauldron to deflect it, and cut off the staggering undead’s wrist to take the axe.
As I swung the stolen axe down to the side, the third undead tried to stab my thigh with a spear split like firewood.
Like a squid spewing ink, black rotten blood burst out from between the split cross-section.
How filthy.
“Gaurrr…!”
“Kyaaaak!”
Anyway, after neutralizing three undead like that, soon more than twice as many undead came rushing in like a school of sharks drawn to the smell of blood.
‘Ugh, this is trickier than I thought…!’
My brow furrows involuntarily.
A wave of rusty blades pushing in without pause. Even as I cut them down, their numbers keep growing, reminiscent of the Hydra from old legends.
…This isn’t as easy as I thought. I thought the preliminary skirmish before entering the ‘ruins’ would be nothing special, but…
Not only were the enemy numbers endlessly increasing, but the underwater environment itself was a more annoying constraint than expected.
Every time I swung my arms and sword, my body would rotate as if being dragged along, making it difficult to balance, and while the sword’s speed was slowing down, conversely, stamina consumption was speeding up.
Above all, breathing. Breathing was the problem.
Since Friede and I aren’t fish with gills, we couldn’t breathe underwater.
The ‘drowned undead’ also didn’t have gills, but they were undead, so they didn’t need to breathe in the first place.
So, the longer the battle dragged on, the more overwhelmingly disadvantageous it would become for us.
Perhaps because of training while panting from the recoil of Iron Arm, Brunhilde’s lung capacity was incomparably higher than before the possession, but…
‘This is troublesome. Slowly, my breath…!’
Even so, there was a limit.
When I tested it while crossing the border bridge, my body could hold its breath for about twenty minutes, but that was only when quietly holding my breath.
The battle with the undead was drastically reducing the time limit I could endure. It felt like the oxygen in my lungs and blood vessels was being rapidly depleted with each swing of the sword.
For that reason, I had to feel a sense of crisis even against these undead that I would have annihilated by now if fighting on land.
A sense of crisis that if we kept consuming oxygen like this with no gain, in the worst case, even if we gave up and tried to rise to the surface, we might suffocate before reaching it.
Friede seemed to be in a similar situation, only shooting out amber-colored slashes by swinging her greatsword shortly, not even attempting the rotation-based swordsmanship she usually displayed.
Of course, befitting the hero of the holy sword, she was still easily cutting down the undead like harvest-time crops with just simple long-range slashes.
Chwaaaaak!
Every time the amber-colored crescent extended through the river water, the undead hurriedly retreated in panic like girls seeing a centipede crawling out between pillows.
The dull undead who couldn’t dodge in time were either sliced up and scattered like tofu the moment they touched that light, or turned into black powder and dispersed.
A scene like the god of farmers swinging a giant scythe to harvest all the harvest-time crops.
For me, struggling in the water just to catch one or two undead, it was an enviable skill to the point where I honestly felt like whining. It was reassuring to that extent.
Well done, Friede. Chop up all the undead.
* * *
One minute later.
As the festival of undead that seemed endless no matter how much I cut them down filled my mind with the conviction that at this rate, I would be defeated not by lack of stamina but by oxygen depletion…
Wooooong!
We finally discovered a huge rift located beyond the group of undead.
‘Found it…!’
A spatial rift shining with a faint blue light.
From beyond the rift, split like glass struck by a sword, some kind of eerie-feeling magic was leaking out.
The moment that leaked magic touched the riverbed and seeped into it, bluish-rotten hands popped out with a faint vibration sound.
Yes. The ‘drowned undead’ we had been fighting until now were some kind of summoned beings raised by something beyond that rift.
Though they’re not on the same side as what’s beyond the rift.
Tap tap
Friede lightly tapped my side and pointed at the rift with her greatsword. With a face asking if that was the place where the ‘family secret’ I had explained was sleeping.
I nodded in response, then dashed forward with her with all our might. Cutting, stabbing, striking, and trampling the undead who had returned from the afterlife due to the magic from the rift.
Forty steps. Thirty steps. Twenty steps. Ten steps…!
And finally, the fingertips Friede and I had stretched out touched the center of the rift where magic was flowing out.
Hwaaaaak!
With the sensation of my whole body being sucked into somewhere, a flash burst out for an instant, dyeing my vision entirely blue―
“Haa…! Haaaak…!”
The next moment, a cold wind that seemed to welcome visitors filled my empty chest with cool air.
I collapsed forward and gasped for breath. Friede also panted breathlessly beside me.
Water droplets flowing down my hanging hair formed small puddles on the stone floor.
No, not just my hair, but water was pouring down from my whole body like rain. Like a diver who had kicked off the surface to come up on land.
Of course, we hadn’t come up to the surface. We hadn’t been running towards the top but forward in the first place. This place was still inside the waters of the Rhine River.
It’s just that it was filled with cool air instead of water.
“Huu, haa, huaaa…! Have we, have we arrived…?”
Friede, who had been taking deep breaths while lying down, turned her head to look at me and asked. Her messy black hair was soaking wet and sticking to her face like seaweed.
“Huuu… Yes, for now.”
I got up and reached out to lift the hair sticking to Friede’s face. It looked so stifling just to see it.
“The important part starts now… but anyway, we really have arrived. Come on, get up and look. This is the place I told you about.”
“This is….”
Friede, who had slightly blushed at my touch, got up and looked around.
“…Wow.”
Then, she let out a quiet exclamation with her mouth slightly open.
“This, this is…?”
A gaze mixed with admiration, wonder, and anticipation. Her golden eyes sparkled like stars.
A face like a child seeing the aurora spread across the night sky for the first time in their life.
On the face of the small and cute girl, heart-throbbing surprise and overwhelming awe were so clear as if someone had engraved them there.
“How is it, amazing, right?”
Seeing that expression made my chest feel strangely ticklish, so I smiled smugly and spread both arms wide.
“This is the ruins under the river, ‘Banaditsa’, that I told you about. Actually, it’s my first time seeing it in person too.”
The ruins under the river, Banaditsa.
That was the name of the hidden dungeon I had set foot in for the first time.
* * *
Friede looked around everywhere with a face full of curiosity.
I wrung out my soaking wet hair to shake off the moisture and slowly looked around like her.
Woooong…!
A faint vibration sound echoes. From beyond the translucent veil covering everything from the ground beneath our feet to the ceiling above our head.
The magic barrier covering a village-sized area in a hemispherical shape hums, literally blocking the waters of the Rhine River without a single gap.
The river water, curving as if deflected unable to penetrate the veil, was beautifully rippling as if a blue veil had been spread in the air.
A magic veil spread to hide and protect this ruin, and for several other purposes.
The fact that we could breathe normally while still standing on the bottom of the river was all thanks to that magic veil.
Thanks to it blocking the river water, the inside was filled with fresh air instead of water, though it was a bit humid.
In other words, the moment that barrier breaks, this ruin would be swept away without a single foundation stone left by the river water rushing in like a tsunami.
Pitter-patter.
After roughly removing the moisture from my hair while looking up at the magic barrier that was like our lifeline, I approached Friede and turned my gaze forward.
The place we were standing was like a flat hill paved with neat stones, and in front of it stretched a long bridge made of rock.
And beyond the bridge―
“…This is, how should I say… a fortress? It feels like a fortress or an outpost.”
“That’s right. Banaditsa was originally one of the defensive strongholds built by my ancestors. As you can see, it’s collapsed here and there though.”
Banaditsa was a stone fortress with the lord’s inner castle and walls built on a high hill, and another wall encircling the flatland below.
Inside the walls on the flatland were military facilities like watchtowers, blacksmiths, and barracks, and outside the walls was a moat with an invisible bottom.
The bridge in front of us connected over that moat to the gate on the flatland side.
Of course, befitting its name as ‘ruins’ under the river, it was hard to find an intact building even looking from beyond the bridge.
The walls were shattered and collapsed here and there as if hit by some kind of shell, and the gate had fallen off completely.
The buildings glimpsed inside were all reduced to piles of collapsed stones, fitting for ruins.
In a word, it could be described as a fortress abandoned after being conquered at the end of a war.
Though it’s a metaphor somewhat distant from the actual truth, at least in outward appearance, it looked exactly like that.
Woong…! Woooong!
Of course, this is excluding the magic barrier covering the entire fortress, and the watchtowers and inner castle that were still standing despite being half-destroyed.
“Hey, Miss Hilde. That. What is that…?”
Just then, Friede raised her finger to point at the inner castle on the hill. No, more precisely, at the enormously huge purple amethyst crystal floating above it.
“Something that will inevitably kill you if you get close… how should I put it, like a trap. There’s no problem if you don’t approach it.”
Instead of a detailed explanation, I gave an appropriate warning while grabbing Friede’s hair with both hands to wring out the moisture.
I thought she would be embarrassed like when I smelled her hair, but she was unexpectedly docile.
Maybe because she was distracted by sightseeing, or perhaps she thought it was clean now thanks to the river water. I’m not sure about that.