Ch. 66: Saving After Grasping the Situation
Doing something about the slimes that were chasing them was top priority for Loren and Klaus.
Even if they were trained or had the power of a Gift, Loren and Klaus were only human, and couldn’t escape the boundaries of fatigue.
Even if they could move for long periods of time, it didn’t last forever, and they knew that they would eventually tire and get swallowed by the slimes chasing them.
“Klaus. Go hack at it for a bit. I’ll carry Ange in the meantime.”
“You want me to go in there and kill myself!?”
“It’s okay. I believe in you.”
“I don’t trust that unfound trust of yours!”
Loren thought maybe he could do it, but seeing how Klaus declined, it seemed that his > ability wasn’t as convenient to be able to upset overwhelming quant.i.ty.
“Not as useful as I thought.”
“The thought of trying to do something about that with just a sword is ridiculous!”
Loren thought that shouting would just make him tire faster and shorten the time for the slimes to catch up, but he did acknowledge the fact that he was the one that made him do so, so he decided not to say anything.
They continued running, but after turning a few corners and running through straight corridors, they realized that the pressure that they couldn’t feel the pressure from behind them anymore.
Slowing down slightly, they looked back and saw that the overwhelming number of slimes had disappeared.
“Are we saved…?”
“What? How? I mean, we should be happy if we’re okay, but…”
The fact that they were saved all too soon and so suddenly without notice, made Klaus suspicious that something worse might come their way, and started looking around.
As Loren braced himself for whatever would come next, not understanding their situation, Shayna appeared in front of him.
‘It’s okay Onii-san. I took care of the slimes.’
Shayna said proudly, wanting to be praised.
Not sure what to do except to appreciate her efforts in his mind, and when Loren asked her for an explanation, apparently Shayna had used her powers as a No Life King to save them from the wave of slimes.
‘I used energy drain on the slimes and weakened them to death.’
Slimes were very inferior and simple creatures.
Of course, if many of them group, they became threats that even Loren and Klaus couldn’t deal with, and they had just experienced it, but individually, they weren’t strong at all.
Shayna had drained the life out of each one of them little by little, so that Lapis wouldn’t notice, and wiped them out.
The effects didn’t show immediately since there were too many of them, so even if a bunch of them had died it didn’t make much of a difference, and because she couldn’t strengthen the powers due to Lapis’ high senses.
‘I can’t do this too often. Onee-san almost noticed.’
If Lapis found out that the astral body of a No Life King was residing within his own, both Loren and Shayna had no idea what sort of actions she would take.
They had a feeling she would try to purge the No Life King as a duty of a priest, or she might follow her curiosity and start to view Loren as a target of observation.
Or it might be something completely different, but in any case, the one thing they did know was that it wouldn’t be anything good, so both Loren and Shayna were being careful not to let her notice and didn’t want her to find out.
After reminding her to be careful, Loren opened his mouth, trying to convince the others otherwise.
“Maybe it found other prey somewhere else?”
“Wouldn’t that be the students? We need to go help…”
“You trying to catch the attentions of the slimes again by moving around recklessly?”
Loren stopped Klaus, who set Ange down and started to wander off, and although he had a worried look on his face, he knew that Loren was right and stopped trying to go off.
“Then what do we do?”
“First of all is our current location. You can find it out with some time and walking, right?”
“Yeah, let’s start with that.”
Klaus and Ange were given a map since they were proctors as well.
Loren followed as Klaus spread out his map and started walking.
Ange didn’t have a problem with her body so she could walk on her own since the threat of the slimes had pa.s.sed.
But Lapis’ limbs, which were prosthetics, were still unmoving so she was still gripping onto Loren’s back, but there was no way they could tell Klaus and Ange that.
“Did your priestess get injured?”
“Don’t worry, I’m just here because I want to.”
Lapis’ response to Klaus was unfriendly.
It might’ve been a reaction to Klaus being careless around women, and while Loren smiled, thinking that this is what meant to be unapproachable, but Ange frowned and glared at him.
As they followed Klaus, who smiled nervously and sped up to escape from Ange’s glare, a moment later he pointed at a spot on the map.
“We’re right here.”
Loren couldn’t help but doubt him at the quick identification of their current location.
He didn’t really think that Klaus would be able to find it.
But when they started moving, the corridors matched what was on the map, which meant that Klaus indeed knew where they were, and Loren looked at him in surprise.
“It’s not a big deal. I’ve been down here many times back when I was a student.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever felt glad that you’re with me.”
“You aren’t really complimenting me, are you.”
When Loren told Klaus that there hadn’t been anything to compliment him about, he seemed to know that, as he shrugged in silence.
In any case, since they knew their location, they didn’t have to fear getting lost, since the location of the stairs were shown on the map.
Loren and Klaus were indeed worried about the students, but if they tried to go look for them it would place themselves in danger, so they aimed for the stairs to the tenth floor, deciding that they should return to the surface and explain the situation to the princ.i.p.al first.
Klaus suddenly stopped, put his hand to his ear, and started listening carefully.
As Ange asked Klaus what he was doing, Loren and Lapis heard what Klaus seemed to have heard.
“Did you hear that?”
“It sounds like a person’s voice…but we’re the only ones down here, right?”
“Yeah, so that means its most likely one of the students. So…”
“You’re going to go check, aren’t you? Go ahead, but keep your eyes on the map, alright?”
Klaus was a good person in general.
That was why dishonesty angered him and he couldn’t be cold to those who were attached to him.
But then again, if he kept putting his hands on whoever became attached to him, he was nothing but an unprincipled b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but if Ange could do something about that part of him, Loren had started to believe that he could become quite a decent person.
In this situation, Loren wanted to get out of the dungeon as soon as possible, but he knew that since Klaus heard someone that could be one of the students, he couldn’t just leave.
“Thanks. My hands are pretty full just trying to protect Ange.”
“I’m busy enough with Lapis alone, so don’t expect much.”
“Won’t we be able to manage one or two more if we work together?”
“You do realize that you’re basically saying that you’re willing to leave behind five, six of the students out of seven, right?”
“That’s…”
Klaus started pondering Loren’s words, but Loren was already thinking that leaving some of them behind couldn’t be helped.
He would help if he could, but helping others was meaningless if it meant posing danger to himself.
“How about you worry about it later and go check on the voice…”
Pinpointing the location of a sound within a dungeon was a difficult thing to do.
On top of being unsure of which direction the sound was coming from due to echoing off the walls, the corridors themselves reflected the aspect of a dungeon, where even if you heard a sound, it could be coming from the other side of the wall.
But as they moved relying on the cries they heard intermittently, they managed to reach the location where the sounds originated.
There, Loren and the group saw Parme on the verge of tears, stuck inside a transparent wall all the way under her arms.
Her blonde roll pigtails were messy, and tentacles that had spouted from the transparent wall were trying to pull her completely in.
Parme tried to resist but since she had nothing to hold onto, her struggles were in vain and she was slowly getting pulled into the wall.
“Parme!”
When Klaus called out, Parme’s face, covered in tears, brightened for a moment but she immediately shook her head and stopped him from coming closer.
“Please don’t Master Klaus! Just leave me and save yourself!”
“I can’t do that!”
“I’m beyond saving. Once I’m swallowed, there’s no way to escape. The parts that are already swallowed are being eaten away at…If you will show me mercy, please burn these slimes along with myself!”
“But…”
In the case that it was apparent that the victim couldn’t be saved, burning them along with the slimes could be considered as an act of mercy.
Feeling yourself slowly melt away and eventually suffocating to death was a harsh way to die, and Parme didn’t want to die that way, but Klaus didn’t have the determination to burn her while she was still conscious.
“If you can’t, please walk away. I don’t want to show myself getting eaten by these slimes.”
Parme said so because she knew she would cry and wail and plead for her life disgracefully, but with Klaus’ personality, he couldn’t choose the option of leaving her.
When he walked up to try to pull her out, more tentacles emerged from the wall and started reaching for him.
“d.a.m.n…I can’t even get close…”
“Hey Klaus, watch Lapis for a minute.”
Deciding that she could at least stand in place, he lowered her down and gave her the torch he was holding, and tapped Klaus’ shoulder, telling him to stand back. He then walked towards where Parme was stuck.
Of course, the tentacles reached for him as they did for Klaus, but Loren didn’t even try to dodge them and let them wrap around him. He slowly reached over Parme, who was watching him dumbfounded, and grabbed the base of her neck.
“What? Excuse me…?”
“One, two…!”
Along with a shout, Loren mustered up the strength in his arms and forcefully pulled Parme’s body out from the wall.
Some ripping noise reached his ears in that moment, but he paid no attention to it and threw her behind him, towards the others, then calmly ripped the tentacles that were wrapped around his body, and leisurely walked back towards them.
“I knew you were strong since you used that great sword but…incredible.”
“Anyone can do this if they train long enough.”
As Klaus shook his head rapidly, telling him there was no way, Loren wondered if it really wasn’t.
As Klaus started rejoicing that they had saved one of the students, Parme, who had been thrown on the ground, let out a sharp scream.
When Loren and Klaus looked towards her, wondering what was wrong, they saw Parme on the floor, her face bright red with tears in her eyes, and covering her chest with her arms.
She was almost completely naked.
The two of them looked back towards the wall where Parme had been captured, saw her ripped up clothing and undergarments floating inside, and understood the situation.
“So that was the ripping noise I heard before.”
“It was already melting, so it wasn’t your fault.”
As they finished up their conversation, they looked towards the girls, as if they were looking for agreement, but as soon as Loren turned, a lit torch flew towards him.
Ange’s staff was thrown towards Klaus and hit him straight in the face, causing him to bend over in pain, while Loren managed to catch the torch, turned away from the girls, and started burning the wall of slimes.
