The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 11, page 1
Chapter 1: Surprise Attack
“Our last objective is a luteum golem,” Lorraine said, a wry expression on her face. “Do you think you can manage it?”
In front of her—which meant in front of us too—was a group of the very luteum golems she was talking about. Yep, golems, plural. And not just a few of them either. Several dozen of them were gloopily meandering about. Our misfortune was evident: we’d run into the type that was high in moisture content. Incidentally, the spot they were meandering around was at the bottom of a depression somewhat akin to a basin, though I couldn’t make a guess as to why they were doing so.
Since they had no escape path available, if we’d been here to hunt them and nothing else, we could’ve just had Lorraine clean them all up with one of her magic spells. However, our objective was to gather their materials. The mud or clay of a luteum golem was rich in mana and prized as an alchemical ingredient, but as it was also very malleable, one careless brush with magic could render it useless. In short, we couldn’t count on Lorraine’s help for this; we’d have to use spirit to attack them. Therefore, the job fell to Augurey and me.
“Doesn’t seem like it’ll be too much trouble, so long as we resign ourselves to getting caked in mud,” I said.
Augurey shook his head. “No, it won’t be that easy. If you let your guard down, you’ll find yourself suffocating to dea—” His face lit up in realization, so much so that I could practically read his mind. But you don’t have to breathe, do you, Rentt? How convenient!
And he was right; this body of mine came in exceedingly handy in times like this. My encounter with the tarasque was one such example. Augurey, on the other hand, not being an undead, reaped no such benefits. While I didn’t really mind taking on this fight alone, it would draw Ferrici’s suspicion if Augurey didn’t go too. We needed to act naturally with her around.
“I can handle this alone if you don’t want to get your clothes dirty, Augurey,” I said. “You can just stand by in case I need backup.”
I tried to pass it off with a haphazard excuse, and Augurey nodded. “I appreciate it, but I’d feel bad making you do all the work. Just this once, I’ll make an exception to my personal policy and change my outfit.”
He took off his outer garments and stuffed them into his magic bag, then took out a set of plain clothes and put them on. I was touched by his concern for me, but Ferrici’s faith in him had probably influenced his decision. Augurey was likely thinking that it might bother her if he just sat back and left all the fighting to me. He was a tactful guy when it came to those kinds of subtleties.
With that, we were ready.
“Okay, here goes,” I said, taking the vanguard and sliding down the rim of the basin.
Augurey followed me down. “Try your best not to get us dirty if you can,” he muttered to me. “I do like these clothes, plain as they are.”
When I was midway down the side of the basin, I felt the luteum golems at the bottom focus their attention on us. Their bodies were made of sludge, and I could make out the hollow depressions that served as their eyes and mouths. I still had many doubts about whether those dark eyes could actually see, but currently, they were unmistakably pointed in our direction.
The luteum golems began to advance toward us, oozing across the ground as they did so. By the time we reached the bottom, we were already surrounded and greatly outnumbered.
“They’re a lot gloopier up close,” Augurey said. He looked depressed.
“I did tell you to let me handle this alone,” I replied.
“I figured that I’d lose Ferrici’s trust if I let you do that.”
“I guessed as much. Well, if it looks like you’re about to get dirty... Actually, scratch that. If it looks like they’re about to try to suffocate you, use me as a shield. Not like I need to breathe, after all.”
Although luteum golems attacked in a similar fashion to slimes, they were scarier to deal with. Compared to a slime—a regular slime, at least—they had more brute strength. Additionally, while a slime’s main form of ranged attack was its Acid Blitz, a luteum golem had...
“Those are totally aimed at us, aren’t they?” Augurey pointed at the swarm of earthen arrows that had just formed in midair, summoned by the luteum golems.
The arrows were instances of Gê Bélos, a human spell. However, that didn’t matter to luteum golems, who could use many different kinds of earth magic. For that reason, a basin like this was the perfect place for them; they could attack and defend as they wished. No wonder there were so many of them here.
“Where else would they be aiming?” I said. “First things first, let’s cut their numbers down. You know what to do, right?”
“Of course. Smash their cores, just like they’re slimes. It’ll take some practice to get right, though. Unlike slimes, these golems’ bodies aren’t see-through.”
“You got it. All right, let’s do this!”
“Yeah!”
We took off, weaving our way through the crowd of luteum golems, stabbing and slashing at their buried cores as we went. If I had to praise their species for something, it would be for the fact that they weren’t very fast. They weren’t exactly slow, of course, but their movements were well within our abilities to handle. Nevertheless, that wasn’t to say we could afford to let our guards down.
As I continued to fight, one of the luteum golems split its body wide open and headed straight for me, clearly intending to engulf me whole. Usually, this would be a dangerous situation—if it caught somebody, it would suffocate them to death—but that didn’t matter to me. I leaped straight into the luteum golem and easily located its now-exposed core. After I smashed it to pieces, the monster melted into a regular pile of mud.
Although this method made hunting golems easy, it would be too dangerous for a regular adventurer. If they messed up, they’d die. It was a good thing I was already dead. The usual procedure of stabbing a golem from the outside was tedious, since even if you vaguely knew where the core was, you’d still need to stab several times to score a direct hit. Thankfully, I could ignore that and make use of the best method for me: diving straight in.
Unfortunately, since Augurey couldn’t do—or really didn’t want to do—the same, he retreated far back every time a golem opened itself up, whereupon I would jump in from the side and smash its core. It made me feel like I was using Augurey as a decoy, but I figured, hey, whatever works. Besides, this way was just more efficient.
The number of luteum golems dwindled rapidly, and in what felt like no time at all...
“Only one more to go,” I said.
“Looks like it.” Nodding, Augurey stepped up behind the final golem and stabbed his sword into it, finishing the fight. After watching it melt down, we looked at each other, each taking in the other’s appearance. What we saw wasn’t pretty—we were both utterly caked in mud.
“The sooner I get this stuff off me, the better,” I said.
“While I’d love to take a bath,” Augurey began, “it might be best if we go for a dip in the lake. I don’t think the inn would appreciate us getting mud everywhere. Speaking of which, let’s not forget why we came here.”
The basin was now littered with piles of mud, which we still needed to collect. Lorraine and Ferrici were going to work with us, hence the former’s wry expression earlier. She hadn’t had to fight, but she still needed to get dirty. Surprisingly, Ferrici seemed to be taking it well; she looked cheerful as she descended into the basin, holding on to Lorraine for support.
“Playing around in the mud like this really takes me back,” she said, taking a container from Lorraine and happily filling it with mud. “It’s like I’m a kid again!”
That was definitely one way to see it.
And so the three of us, taking Ferrici’s pluckiness as an example, diligently set about scooping mud into containers, all the while convincing ourselves that we were having fun.
◆◇◆◇◆
“And with that, we’ve taken care of all the requests,” I said. I was currently washing myself off in the lake. “That took less time than I expected.”
Augurey, who was in the lake with me, nodded. “You’re right. I thought it’d take us two or three days at least, so I’m glad we finished up sooner. We pretty much owe it all to Ferrici, though.”
The girl in question wasn’t with us, and neither was Lorraine. They were washing themselves off somewhere else. It wasn’t as if they could bathe with us, after all. I figured that if I went and tried to sneak a peek—not that I had any intention of doing so—I’d get a friendly introduction to one of Lorraine’s lightning spells. Seeing as how I was drenched in water, that would probably mark the end of my days in this world. If Lorraine were by herself, she might not have particularly cared about her modesty, but currently, Ferrici was with her. Whatever the case, though, I wasn’t going.
“Still, I’m not sure whether to call us lucky or unlucky,” I said. I was thinking about all the fuss that had occurred back at the village. If none of it had happened, we would never have gotten Ferrici’s help. It was the perfect example of a happy accident.
“You’re right,” Augurey replied, studying my body as he spoke. “And that goes doubly true for you. Aside from being so pale, you look like any regular human. I kind of want to know what you looked like when you were a skeleton.”
Right now, with the exception of our underpants, both Augurey and I were naked, which gave him a full view of my body. However, unlike when I was a skeleton and a ghoul, I didn’t have to worry about someone seeing me anymore. Sure, I was a little pale, but that was it.
I also still had my mask on since, as usual, it wouldn’t come off. I was shifting its shape around to clean out the mud that had gotten underneath it, and at the moment, it was only covering the lower half of my face. I had the feeling that this was the style I’d been using the most recently. It came in handy when going in and out of towns because guards were less suspicious and more willing to let me pass if they could see my eyes.
“Being a skeleton really sucked,” I said. “All I could do was rattle around. Being a ghoul wasn’t much better, but I at least figured out a way to talk, in a sense. It kind of felt like I was getting a new lease on life.”
“If you can call being a ghoul ‘living,’ I guess,” Augurey replied. “Although, I’m not so sure I can say that anymore. Maybe having a human consciousness is enough to qualify it as being a life. You know, because of you, I’ve been thinking recently about whether it might be possible to talk with any ghouls I meet, among other monsters.”
“I think about that too, from time to time, but it’s probably a no go.”
I’d never been able to properly communicate with any of the ghouls I’d met. I wasn’t sure why; I’d had a fairly developed consciousness at that stage. What was the difference between me and them? Was it because I was originally a person? Or was it because a dragon gobbled me up? I had no idea. In the first place, what were monsters, really?
Lorraine was continuing with her research and conducting all kinds of investigations, and I was doing my best in my own way to squeeze something out of my dim-witted brain, but we still hadn’t found an answer for my situation. It was probably no surprise, considering that we were basically looking for an explanation for the existence of monsters, and people had been posing that question since forever.
Lorraine was a genius, but history had many geniuses, and none had ever managed to shed much light on the truth behind monsters—whose origins especially remained a mystery. There were many theories regarding that, but none of them could say anything for certain. I supposed our only option was to keep searching and thinking.
“High-ranked monsters can talk, though,” Augurey said. “Vampires and ancient dragons specifically come to mind. But maybe with ghouls, their communication’s closer to something like humans and monkeys. It’s a real mystery, isn’t it?”
I had no answer for him. I hoped that I would, one day...but I didn’t know if that day would ever come.
“Sorry,” Augurey said. Maybe he’d seen that he’d thrown me off a little. “Didn’t mean to make you brood over it. I was just making small talk.”
He was right that I’d been brooding somewhat, but it wasn’t as though it had made me depressed or disillusioned with life or anything. I’d just been pondering what it meant to be alive.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I think about this stuff all the time anyway. You just had me reconsidering what a mystery it all is.”
“Yeah? That’s good then. Well, it’s about time we should be going. Did I get all the mud off?”
Augurey spun around, giving me a clear view of his body. It was slender but well proportioned—the very figure of an adventurer. He looked clean to me, so after asking him to check my cleanliness, we dressed ourselves and headed for the meeting point we’d decided on with Lorraine.
◆◇◆◇◆
“Looks like we’re all clean,” Lorraine said upon meeting up. Maybe it was because we’d all been caked in mud only a short while ago, but she almost looked like a new person. “The innkeeper shouldn’t have any complaints now. Shall we?”
Our return trip was very comfortable. The difference from our journey here was especially notable when we passed through the mime wyvern breeding grounds, since now we were far less worried about them attacking us. We couldn’t completely let our guards down, but neither did we have to stay on tenterhooks all the time. We really owed Ferrici a lot.
Unfortunately, while it would have been lovely to simply finish our carefree trip back, sometimes life just throws lemons at you. We were only a straight shot away from the village when we caught sight of something strange.
“Is that...a person?” Ferrici asked.
The rest of us had already noticed long before she’d asked her question. My eyes could see pretty far, and Lorraine and Augurey knew that something was up from the silent glances I’d been sending their way. The three of us had subtly changed our route as a result, but it didn’t take long for the figure in the distance to adjust for that and cut us off.
Whoever they were, they were clearly suspicious. That being said, we had to go past them if we wanted to reach the village. Left with no choice, we headed in their direction. Having to keep Ferrici safe meant that if anything happened, we’d be fighting an uphill battle, but sending her off to take another route alone was also a scary prospect. It was safest that we all stayed together.
We continued walking, and before long, the suspicious “person” was right in front of us. There was only one way to go about this, really, and that was to approach them and talk. They were clad in a cloak, from out of which protruded a pair of skinny arms, and looked to be an old man.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse me, sir? Is something wrong? We’d be happy to hear you out if—”
Before I had the chance to finish, something massive and heavy crashed into my stomach.
◆◇◆◇◆
What just happened? Lorraine couldn’t make head or tail of it. That wasn’t surprising, of course, because when all was said and done, she was a mage. Though her combat ability was fearsome, the way she fought was fundamentally different from that of other professions, like swordsmen. Her physical ability still far exceeded any average person’s, but even so, she hadn’t been able to catch exactly what had just happened.
Nevertheless, she was capable of making an instantaneous judgment. This stranger is dangerous. Whoever this old man was, he had just sent Rentt flying.
The moment Rentt had approached and began talking, some kind of massive object had slammed straight into his stomach, blowing him far away in the blink of an eye in the direction of the forest and causing him to knock down several trees in his flight path. If it had been a regular person instead of Rentt, they would have died. There was no way they could have survived. An adventurer might have stood a chance of coming away with only grievous injuries, but they wouldn’t have been able to make their way back any time soon.
Rentt, however, was different. His body wasn’t that of an ordinary human, but a monster. His physical ability was incomparable to an average person’s, and so was his durability. In addition, he had Division up his sleeve, which helped him recover from serious injuries in a heartbeat.
All of this reassured Lorraine that there was no chance Rentt could’ve died from a strike of that degree and that he’d be making his way back shortly. Maintaining her composure, she pulled Ferrici in close and cast the strongest instantaneous shield spells she could manage around herself, Ferrici, and Augurey. She knew that their first priority was to make some distance, so she readied herself to do just that—
“You’re slow.”
By the time Lorraine’s senses caught up, the old man was already right in front of her, his cloak fluttering around him. He had closed the gap in an instant. The old man raised his arm, clearly intending to do something with it—something that was obviously connected to the strike that had sent Rentt flying. Even with danger backing her into a corner, Lorraine didn’t miss it, and she knew the next strike would be coming at her, Ferrici, and Augurey. Pointing her wand out, she chanted a spell.
“Ard Harba!”
Even among other earth magic spells, Ard Harba was notable for the sheer amount of mass it summoned. It created a gigantic, sharpened, spear-like shard of rock and sent it flying at the opponent. As spells went, it was exceedingly simple, but that was precisely why it was so hard to defend against. While water, fire, and other such spells could usually be neutralized with their opposing element, throwing a wind spell at Ard Harba would do nothing to get rid of it.
That said, methods to counter it still existed. The reason Lorraine had chosen Ard Harba was because it provided the best means of escape from their current predicament. Naturally, it wasn’t the kind of spell a person could easily fire at will without chanting the full incantation. That is, unless that person was Lorraine. Moreover, she managed to cast it while simultaneously maintaining three shield spells—a truly impressive feat.
