Proofreader: Xemul

The moment Loren saw the face of the man who had fallen, he involuntarily took a couple of steps backward. But he immediately felt a shadow over his head, and he jumped away from the spot.

Almost at the same time that Loren jumped, an old woman fell onto the spot where he had been standing.

It was an old woman who, by all appearances, had slammed head first into the floor, and her neck was bent in a direction that suggested she would not survive. But without much pause, she also rose up with blood flowing profusely from the wounds on her head and broken neck.

Noticing that the old woman’s eyes were also moving like crazy, Loren’s face twitched as he shouted.

“The infected are falling down!”

At Loren’s words, Lapis looked up at the top of the stairs.

The staircase, which must have led from the underground facility to the aboveground facility, had quite a few steps and was as high as the ceiling. There were more figures gathering around the edges of the hole in the ceiling, and some of them were slowly descending from the top of the staircase.

“They are coming from above!”

“What do we do? Do we go back?!”

“That…”

Even though they were infected by parasites, they were just former residents of the town. If they were left alone, they would probably end up being eaten by the centipedes, but Loren’s group had no way to save them. There was no choice but to leave them.

But the next moment, when Loren saw the old woman who had fallen nearby and broken her neck try to approach with her hands outstretched toward him, and he became alarmed.

“Don’t come! But you don’t understand, do you?”

The old woman’s behavior should already be controlled by the parasites; even if he gave her a warning, he was not sure if it would be understood. Even so, the sight of an old woman with a lolling head and bloody clothes silently approaching with outstretched hands was enough to give even Loren a creepy feeling. That was why he gave a warning, but it would mean nothing if the other person did not have the ability to understand it.

It was not that the idea of giving the woman a kick to force her away from himself didn’t occur to Loren, but no matter how bad state she was in, she was still an old woman, and that made Loren hesitant.

As he considered what to do, he backed away as the woman came closer. Then he saw the man who had fallen in front of him moving toward Ivy, stretching out his hand as the old woman was doing.

‘Well, um, I was wondering if you could stay away from…”

Ivy, like Loren, also issued a warning and stepped back as the man approached. But her words didn’t seem to reach the man’s ears, and he was still trying to approach Ivy with the same gait when he suddenly opened his mouth wide and began to make a strange noise that one wouldn’t think was coming from a human throat. He was so loud that Ivy was startled, and at that moment, while still making that noise, the man grabbed her with agile movements as if his movements up until now had just been for show.

Unable to react quickly enough, Ivy was grabbed by both shoulders by the man, and he pushed her straight to the wall, her back slamming against it quite forcefully.

As Ivy uttered a small groan from the impact, from the wide-open mouth of the man, who was still making strange noises, a slimy, white, thumb-sized object peeked out.

“Eh…”

The man approached Ivy, who was taken aback, with mouth opened and teeth bared. Feeling herself being bitten, Ivy tried to push him back only to suddenly realize that the force that was pushing her against the wall had disappeared. She blinked her eyes.

“A bit too spineless, aren’t you? You messed up not just your body but your head too, didn’t you?”

It was Gula who said this with her hands on her hips, as if she was disgusted.

Ivy, who had not yet caught up with what was being done and said, saw that the man had gone missing except from the wrists down, with the hands still holding her shoulders. She hurriedly shook them off, making them fall down to the floor.

Loren, who had seen Gula using her Gluttony powers to devour the body of the man who was about to attack Ivy, also felt a slight cold sweat break out on his forehead as he saw the body of the old woman who was about to approach him disappear from before his eyes in the blink of an eye.

At the same time that the man who was about to attack Ivy let out a strange cry, the old woman had also opened her mouth wide, her teeth missing here and there, and was about to grab onto Loren with a similar strange cry. It seemed like she had also been swallowed up by Gula’s power, this time without even a wrist left.

“Sorry, and thanks.”

Loren’s reaction had been delayed as the old woman suddenly screamed and grabbed him. By the time he was about to ready his sword, she had already gotten well inside his range. Having escaped thanks to Gula’s authority, he thanked Gula as she brushed off the dirt and sand that had gotten on her head and shoulders from the magic explosion.

“I want to say something like ‘You’re taking too much time to judge the situation’, but it can’t be helped. The other party was a grandmother, and given your personality, it’s understandable that you hesitated.”

“I think that’s what’s good about you, Loren.”

Listening to Gula’s words, which contained laughter, and Lapis’ words, which carried a somewhat comforting tone, Loren wondered if he had gotten a little rusty.

If you were a mercenary, you would not be able to survive on the battlefield unless you had the judgment to respond immediately to any kind of hostile actions. Loren feared that since he had been away from the battlefield for so long, he might have lost some of his sense of perception.

“By the way, Gula, is it safe for you to eat those?”

Lapis immediately tried to change the subject, perhaps because she saw that Loren was about to think about it.

If Loren was made to think too much and come to the conclusion that he had to return to the battlefield, it would be very difficult for Lapis, who wanted to continue as an adventurer, to deal with the issue. Even if he had to go to the battlefield, Lapis would still at least try to make him take her along. But for now, she tried to keep Loren’s attention on other topics to prevent him from having strange thoughts.

However, that topic was also an important one. If a human being who was infected by parasites was eaten by Gula’s power, what would happen to her condition? Loren, who heard Lapis’ words, was also very curious about this.

Gula kept her hands on her hips as if nothing was wrong and made a small snort.

“It’s different from eating with my own mouth. What I eat with my power’s mouths will be finished off in my power’s stomach, and won’t have any effects on me. Even inorganic substances can be digested in the stomach of my power, right? A parasite would be killed in an instant.”

“That’s very encouraging, but… Is it possible to eat all of them?”

Gula looked to where Loren pointed, and saw that similar figures had been gathering one after another at the edge of the hole, and one by one they were beginning to step off the edge of the hole and fall down. The stairs leading to the surface were so crowded with people that they were beginning to push down.

Staring at them for a while, Gula eventually looked at Loren and said in a very offhanded tone.

“A bit too much.”

“I guess so.”

The ones who fell down still didn’t take any defensive stance, and hit the floor unprotected. With injuries that made it seem like a miracle that they were still breathing, they still picked themselves up and began to try to crawl closer to Loren’s group despite all the dripping blood.

Watching their numbers gradually increase, Lapis leaned in toward Loren and asked him in a somewhat strained voice.

“Do we go back?!”

“Would you rather go back and walk through the centipedes and the stench, or would you rather go forward and walk through the crowd?”

There were only two choices.

To be honest, everyone present was tempted to answer that they didn’t want to do either, but if they didn’t choose one or the other, they would be stuck here and would eventually join the ranks of the poor victims.

“Let me vote for the crowd.”

“Me too. Humans are still better no matter what.”

“I’ll be your witness if anything happens.”

Ivy’s words were about the two people that Gula had already taken care of, and the people that they would probably have to take care of in order to escape the city. After all, although they were infected with parasites and deprived of freedom of action and will, they were not criminals or monsters, but mere ordinary people. It was possible to say that they were just dealing with an attack, but it was not a pleasant feeling, and the aftermath was worrisome. Ivy said those words having anticipated all this, and having the Adventurers’ Guild vouch for them wouldn’t be so bad. It lightened Loren’s heart somewhat.

“Let’s go then!”

With a single, motivated shout, Loren stepped onto the stairs leading to the aboveground.

From above them, countless figures were descending the stairs with rather unsteady gait, and some of those in the front suddenly seemed to lose all their strength and tumbled down even though Loren and his companions had not yet done anything. Loren, who was leading the group, immediately kicked them away, but they did not get up from their feet or move at all, and their limbs were flung around limply.

‘Onii-san, I’ll help too.’

From what he heard from Shayna in his mind, Loren understood that this was apparently the result of Shayna using a strong Energy Drain to suck out the lives of the infected. Even if she could not kill only the parasites, it was possible for Shayna to kill both the host and the parasite at once, and she had an advantage similar to Gula using her power in that she could make the person die without touching them.

“We should avoid touching the fallen ones as much as possible. You never know where they are going to come from. The blood and body fluids are most troublesome, I think. Be careful not to get it in your mouth.”

“Easier said than done.”

The number of people on the stairs had been somewhat reduced by Shayna’s Energy Drain. However, since the reduced number of people was quickly replaced by those from aboveground, it did not feel like the overall number of people had decreased. It was not hard to understand why Lapis had said that, but it seemed to Loren that it would be extremely difficult to break through the wall of people blocking his way while doing that.

“As long as the medicine I gave you is working, it won’t be a problem if some of them get into your body. But if the main body of the insect is injected into the body, that would be a problem.”

“I don’t want to imagine that…”

Loren swung his greatsword as he answered. If he swung the sword with the blade up, it would cut his opponents in two and splattered flesh and blood, so he inevitably used the flat of the sword to push them away. Even so, with each swing, Loren’s arm strength swept one off the stairs and onto the floor of the ruins. Together with Gula’s authority and Shena’s Energy Drain, Loren and his team were somehow able to make it to a state where they could climb the stairs, albeit slowly.

‘Onii-san, I’ll give you power! Burn them down!’

At the same time as this thought was conveyed to Loren, the life force and magic power that Shayna had taken with her Energy Drain began to flow into his body. Thinking that it would be difficult to adjust the blast, Loren said the words that were needed as he pictured in his mind the image of pouring the power, which was about to overflow, into the greatsword he held in his hand.

“Burn! Fiamma Ungia!”

Crimson flames erupted from the blade of the sword, which was held at the ready and thrust forward. It filled up the path before their group, engulfed head-on the infected that were trying to grab at them and blasting them to the ground. The infected couldn’t even make a sound.

“Loren, you’ve gotten very good at adjusting it.”

Lapis looked on in admiration as the red flames blew through the air, leaving only a number of charred corpses in their wake.

Having cleared away the obstacles on the staircase, Loren and the others ran up the stairs at a quick pace before the infected still on the ground closed in on the staircase again. As they finally reached the top of the stairs, the infected that were gathering were downed by either Gula’s power or Shayna’s Energy Drain, and they leaped out to the surface.

“Yes, we’re out!”

Loren, wielding his greatsword and trying to buy time for Lapis and the others to reach the surface, tried to check on the town while fighting off the advancing infected. But the sight he was greeted with made him so stunned that he almost dropped the greatsword in his hand.