Ambush

Renn waved to the others.

Kaylar shouldered her iron hammer, stepped closer, and struck the gaps in the stone slab a few times.

The stone slab shattered, revealing a square shaft extending downward, with a damp, musty odor surging up from within.

“Not bad, Renn.”

“Just a basic skill for a knight.”

“No, why would a knight learn something like this? What kind of knight are you anyway?”

“A Roundtable Knight,”

Renn replied, his expression unchanged.

“I'll go down first.”

With that, he vaulted into the shaft.

A moment later, a short whistle echoed from below, signaling that it was safe.

Esper let the Holy Sword float down first to provide light, then jumped down after it. Her knees bent slightly upon landing, her leather boots hitting the smooth stone bricks.

This wasn't a natural cave; it was a man-made structure.

Kaylar followed immediately after, and Eladia was the last to come down. Once her feet found solid ground, she naturally moved to a position three feet behind Esper.

The corridor extended forward for about ten paces before reaching the first corner.

Renn gestured for the three of them to stop, took out a metal disc shaped like a copper coin from his waist, and flicked it around the corner.

The moment the copper coin arced through the air, the stone bricks on both sides of the wall flipped inward simultaneously, and dozens of rusted iron spears thrust out from the exposed openings in a crisscross pattern. The spearheads clashed against one another, sending off a shower of sparks before retracting.

Kaylar swallowed hard.

“Mm. This place hasn't been touched.”

Renn picked up the copper coin and slipped it back into his pouch, his voice steady.

They encountered even more traps after turning the corner.

Pressure-sensitive slabs, trigger runes, and arrays of poison needles hidden in the gaps between the wall bricks.

Renn spent about an hour systematically disarming every single one of them.

Esper watched him from behind, recalling his expression every time he worked.

No expression whatsoever.

Reliable. Truly reliable.

At the end of the corridor was a half-open stone door, with an extremely faint blue glow filtering through the gap.

Renn pushed the door open. Behind it lay a circular hall. Embedded in the ceiling were several magic ores that still glowed, bathing the entire space in a thin, indigo light.

In the center of the hall sat a complete skeleton, leaning against a mottled stone chair. A thick layer of dust covered the bones, and lying beside the leg bones was an iron hammer with a cracked head, its handle worn down in a distinct groove where it had been held.

“Looks like we found it,”

Esper said.

Renn stood before the remains, placing his hands together as he silently recited a few Roundtable Knight prayers for the dead. Meanwhile, Kaylar stared down at them for a long time.

Then she squatted down too, hovering her hand near the iron hammer for a moment as if sensing something.

“This hammer... there's still a faint magic reaction inside?”

She brushed away the thick dust on the skeleton and discovered a tiny notebook beneath her palm. Flipping through a few pages, her eyes scanned the lines.

“Mm, when his time was drawing near, he planned to modify himself. He wanted to forge his own body into a furnace that could support higher-level blacksmithing techniques to prolong his life. Unfortunately, he failed.”

Kaylar closed the notebook and handed it to Renn. After glancing through it, he passed it to Esper.

Esper didn't flip through the diary immediately. Instead, she walked around the room and stopped in front of a wall.

A row of weapons hung neatly on the wall.

From shortswords to warhammers, poleaxes to rapiers with handguards. The metal surface of each weapon still shimmered with the faint, residual light of runes.

“...So many.”

Kaylar walked over and stood beside her, her eyes shining as if she were looking at a room full of treasure.

Renn took down one of the daggers from the wall, tracing his finger along the spine to feel the pattern.

“The runes are well-preserved. Some have slightly deteriorated due to age, but the vast majority can still be used normally. If you sell them, it'll be enough for you to never work as an adventurer again for the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life... hehehe...”

Kaylar let out a thoroughly embarrassing, silly giggle.

Esper turned her head to look at the Holy Sword floating behind her shoulder.

An idea had been lingering in her mind for a while now, and she felt she could give it a try.

She reached out and gripped the first sword hanging on the wall—a rapier with an extremely thin blade.

The rune engraved on the blade was “Momentum”.

She remembered that Zhong's warhammer also had this rune. Its function was to gather energy and release it in a concentrated burst.

She moved the Holy Sword next to the rapier, closed her eyes, and tried to awaken the power of 『Gluttony』 within it.

————

“『Authority of Gluttony: 26%』”

————

The Holy Sword was speaking gibberish again.

However, 『Gluttony』 indeed slowly awakened within the Holy Sword, reluctant to move like someone who had just eaten their fill and was being forced to get up and work.

“...What are you doing?”

Kaylar leaned in to take a look.

“Oh, you're using Gluttony...”

Then she quickly backed away several paces.

Starting from the tip, the rapier began to disintegrate, turning inch by inch into tiny motes of light that flowed into the Holy Sword.

The entire process lasted for about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea. Once the last metal fragment was swallowed, Esper took a deep breath.

She could feel that the rune of “Momentum” was now resting inside the Holy Sword.

“The first one.”

Then she walked to the next one. It was a short-handled hammer, the face of which was engraved with “Rigidity”.

The absorption lasted even longer, and by the time it finished, a thin layer of sweat had beaded on Esper's forehead.

Without stopping, she walked to the third one—a wide-bladed dagger with the rune of “Compression”.

This one was absorbed the slowest. Toward the latter half, 『Gluttony』 clearly grew heavy and began refusing to absorb any more.

Esper gritted her teeth and forced it through. When the final fragment of light from the dagger's guard vanished into her wrist, she stumbled, her back hitting the wall.

Eladia reflexively took a step forward, wanting to support Esper. But she immediately realized what she had almost done and stepped back a few paces, looking a bit downcast.

Kaylar poked half her head out from a corner.

“Are you still alive?”

“...Duh.”

Esper panted for a few breaths and stood up straight.

Three was her limit. She could feel 『Gluttony』 shrinking inside her body like a piece of chewing gum that had been chewed for too long.

“Aha.”

Kaylar walked over to her, rubbing her chin in thought, her mind spinning rapidly.

“Momentum, Rigidity, Compression... they're all purely stat-based runes. No special mechanisms, just very straightforward effects. But the fusion mechanism of 『Gluttony』 can stack multiple different rune effects. Using them together is probably...”

“Stop talking for a second.”

Esper held her forehead, her other hand propping herself against the stone wall.

After using 『Gluttony』, she felt a sense of mental exhaustion, as if a part of her brain had been hollowed out.

“Oh, that's the side effect of 『Gluttony』.”

Kaylar shrugged.

“The more you use it, the hungrier you get. And it's not a physical hunger; it's the void in your heart growing larger. That's why almost all the previous wielders ended up going mad.”

“Isn't it a bit too late to be telling me this now?”

“You didn't ask.”

While the two of them bickered, Renn found a few yellowed pieces of parchment nearby.

The handwriting had faded to the point of being nearly illegible. He leaned closer to the phosphorescent light on the stone wall, deciphering it line by line.

“I can't read the script. Kaylar, take a look and see if this is the blacksmithing technique you wanted.”

“On it!”

Kaylar hopped over in a few strides, practically snatching the parchment from Renn's hand. Her eyes swept down the page twice, and then the corners of her mouth slowly curved upward.

“This is it! It can temporarily boost a weapon's effect to its absolute limit, but the cost is that it needs to cool down afterward! It's an advanced application of Blacksmithing Techniques!”

“A one-time burst, huh...”

Esper rubbed her temples.

Having obtained both the loot and the technique, they covered the blacksmith's remains with a stone slab. Then, Esper walked back to the weapon wall.

Nearly twenty weapons remained on the wall. She couldn't take them all, but she didn't want to leave them here to gather dust either.

In the end, she picked out a few of the best-looking ones to pack into her bag, leaving the rest on the wall for now, planning to commission the guild to retrieve them once they made it out.

After completing all this, the four of them headed back up the way they had come.

Renn led the way, maintaining his usual steady marching pace.

Kaylar shouldered her hammer, changing her breathing rhythm as if adjusting to something.

Eladia followed behind her, occasionally looking down at the booklet in her hands, which was filled with Greek annotations.

Esper brought up the rear.

She flipped through the diary pages. On the last few pages, the blacksmith had mentioned something unrelated to himself.

On the Plains of Holy Remains, where the Wild Hunt King and the Storm King fought their decisive battle, a bare-fisted man had once appeared.

Carrying no weapons and wearing no armor, using only his fists, he had launched a surprise attack on the Wild Hunt King. He dragged out the fight against the hunter, who rode a crimson thunder dragon, forcibly stalling him for a period of time before vanishing into the smoke and dust of the battlefield.

His name was not written in the diary; there was only a single line:

【Bearing Greed】

He had fought the Wild Hunt King and then vanished. The blacksmith added in his diary that only after he left did the Storm Army break through the Wild Hunt Army's flank.

In other words, if not for him, that war might have dragged on for several more years.

So who was this guy? And where was he now?

Kaylar sidled over at some point, scratching the bridge of her nose as she looked at the text in the diary.

“How troublesome.”

She walked away, and Esper handed the diary back to Renn.

The four of them filed out of the shaft. The afternoon sunlight filtering through the gaps in the canopy was incomparably warmer than the glowing ores underground.

Esper squinted her eyes, brushing off the stone dust clinging to her shoulders.

Kaylar was the last to climb out, her hammer clinking against the stone slab at the entrance and kicking up a shower of sparks.

She stretched thoroughly, her joints popping with several sharp cracks.

Renn stood beside the old oak tree, first scanning the surrounding tree line before turning his gaze to the three behind him.

“I'll go look for some wild game nearby.”

He spoke casually, but as his eyes swept over several barely visible animal trails at the edge of the woods, he was already calculating his moves.

“Sure. Don't go too far.”

Esper nodded.

Renn grunted in response and walked into the depths of the forest, his hand resting on his sword hilt.

His footsteps quickly became nearly inaudible, completely absorbed by the shrubs and fallen leaves.

The remaining three waited in place for a while.

Kaylar amused herself by slamming her hammer to make craters in the ground, while Eladia sat on a stone flipping through her Greek booklet, silently memorizing the pronunciations.

Esper leaned against a tree trunk, idly counting the seconds.

Time ticked away.

Kaylar put her hammer away and stood up, peering in the direction Renn had gone.

“What's taking him so long?”

There was unconcealed worry in her voice.

“Could he have gotten lost...?”

Eladia gently closed her booklet and asked in a small voice.

“...Don't make bad jokes. If Renn got lost, I'd eat my hammer on the spot.”

Despite her words, Kaylar's expression tensed slightly.

Esper also sensed that something was off.

Given Renn's habits, he wouldn't stay away for too long. Even if he couldn't find any game, he would have returned to let them know before expanding his search.

“I'll go check.”

She gripped the Holy Sword and stood up straight.

Suddenly, a beam of light shot toward them.

It rushed toward Eladia with an incredibly sharp, wind-breaking screech.

It was so fast that Esper's pupils didn't even have time to contract.

Eladia's eyes weren't even fully open. She was still quietly staring at Esper's back, her lips slightly parted as if she were about to say something like, “Be careful.”

Esper's hand had already clenched around her sword, but just as she turned her body, she caught sight of a streak of dark iron-blue arriving even faster.

Kaylar's reaction was faster than the light.

“—!”

She didn't even have time to scream. Her iron hammer was already held horizontally in front of her, her entire body throwing itself sideways to shield Eladia.

The moment the flash collided with the hammer, a heavily muffled explosion boomed in the air.

A visible shockwave rippled across the surface of the iron hammer, nearly denting the entire thing, while the fallen leaves on the ground were blown outward in a perfect circle.

But the instant the hammer dented, a crimson light flashed, and the dented hammer immediately restored itself to its original shape.

Yet the impact force remained.

Both Kaylar and Eladia were blown backward by the force, crashing heavily into the low bushes nearby.

“Cough...!”

Kaylar still gripped the hammer handle tightly as she hit the ground, refusing to let go. Eladia, shielded behind her, clutched her booklet tightly, looking dazed but unhurt.

The flash didn't dissipate. It paused in place for a fraction of a second, then rushed toward Kaylar and Eladia once more.

Esper didn't even have time to make out the figure's silhouette.

But she did see another person.

A man walking out from the depths of the forest.

In his hand, he held a mask with sealed features.

Gray, shoulder-length hair draped over the left side of his face, leaving only a deep purple eye visible on the right.

A cold, long-suppressed flame burned within that pupil.

There was hatred, malice, and other far more complex emotions.

Esper's hand froze on her hilt.

She saw the sword hanging from his waist.

Its hilt was twisted from pale, fragmented bone-like material, looking as if many finger bones of various sizes had been pressed and molded together into a single shaft.

『Cardinal Sword: Skeletal Crown』.

Gloom's personal sword. The strongest sword in the Demon Realm. The symbol of the Demon King's throne.

This sword shouldn't be hanging from his waist.

Esper recognized this person.

He had never attended the Ten Courts banquets, never actively spoke to anyone, and simply stood silently in the distance, watching everyone.

“...Louis.”

“Ha... You actually remember my name... Haha...”

The Demon Court Head stood before her, uttering the name she had already discarded.

“Long time no see, Lonia Catori.”

His voice was as raspy as a saw cutting through wood.

“No, actually. Let's put it this way.”

He raised his head, staring straight at her with eyes burning with purple flames.

“Nice to meet you, Lady Esper.”