Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 11

That afternoon, I switched places with Keith-senpai at the front and took over guarding the left flank. With a club-issued sword and shield in hand, I moved forward at a slow, careful pace.

The weight settled into my hands, and honestly, it felt pretty adventurer-like. Once I get paid, I’m buying my own set.

Before long, the cave turned into a long uphill slope, and we all started watching our footing so we wouldn’t slip. The ground under us gradually changed from hard bedrock to something softer, more like soil, and here and there it turned into patches of slick mud.

“Feels like monsters are about to show up. Stay sharp and don’t let your guard down.”

The second Keith-senpai said that, a group of magical beasts appeared ahead of us. They looked like giant centipedes, writhing as they came our way.

“Those things are weak to fire magic. Azoth, sorry, but can you handle this with magic? Me and the other frontliner will hold them off while you cast. Fall back for now.”

“Got it. But I don’t need to move to the rear.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I switched my sword for my wand and activated Fire.

【Burn to ashes】

The spell fired off instantly. The flames surged forward and exploded right at the head of the centipede pack.

“What the hell?!”

It was only a beginner-level spell, but maybe because it hit their elemental weakness, one shot was enough to burn through the three giant centipedes in front.

The ones behind them recoiled from the flames and couldn’t advance, just wriggling uselessly in place.

【Burn to ashes】

My second shot went straight for the rearmost centipede. Once that one caught fire too, the entire group trapped between the front and the rear started slowly charring alive.

“Unchanted magic…”

Keith-senpai stared at me in stunned silence, while Sasha-senpai shot him a slightly smug look.

“I was shocked too the first time I saw it. But yeah, Azoth’s still damn impressive.”

“So you already knew about this, Sasha?”

“A little. We worked together on a small quest when he registered at the guild.”

“How the hell do you even pull off magic like this?”

“Looks like the secret’s in the incantation.”

“The incantation…”

While the two of them were talking, the centipedes up front finally burned out, and the survivors started crawling toward us again.

But they had clearly taken a ton of damage already, and their movements were sluggish as hell.

“Good. We finish them off in one push.”

I gripped my sword again and charged into the swarm. Most of them were already half-dead, so it didn’t take long before every last centipede was wiped out.

When the fight ended, Keith-senpai checked on the party’s condition. The only magic used in that battle had been my two Fire spells, so everyone else got to conserve their mana. Nobody was injured either, and from that point on, we settled on a plan where I would keep fighting on the front line while using magic as needed.

After that, large bats and insect-type magical beasts kept showing up one after another, so Sasha-senpai and I took the lead with our fire and water magic.

“You’ve burned through a lot of mana, Azoth. Switch with Sasha for a while and move to the rear. Cover us from back there, and recover your mana with a magic potion until then.”

“Understood, Keith-senpai.”

As we kept going, the cave started twisting into a cramped maze. Huge rock pillars jutted up to the ceiling and blocked the view, making it hard as hell to see what lay ahead.

The temperature and humidity both climbed, and fungus-like plants spread across the ground. Since we’d been heading uphill for so long, maybe we were getting closer to the surface. The footing had gotten even muddier too.

Eventually, after curving left through a section with terrible visibility, we found a swamp stretched out in front of us, blocking the way.

Worse, that swamp was crawling with countless venomous bugs.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting.”

Even if I blasted them with Fire, the swamp mud would probably shield them enough that the flames wouldn’t get through properly. And even if I did burn the bugs away, there was no way we could cross that swamp with our current gear.

Ignoring the bugs and filling in the swamp with earth magic seemed like the better option.

I was still thinking through the best way to handle it when the swarm of venomous insects crawled up out of the swamp and started coming toward us.

“Looks like they’re reacting to us. Sneaking past isn’t happening. We’re gonna have to exterminate them.”

“There are too damn many. I can’t think of a way to kill all of them.”

Since we couldn’t reach a conclusion on the spot, we retreated for the moment.

We gathered around Sasha-senpai and held a strategy meeting.

“First, let’s confirm what magic we can use. The best options are my ice spells and Azoth’s fire spells. But the visibility is awful and the terrain’s complicated, so area-of-effect spells won’t be very efficient. Even if we tone down the power and go with single-target attacks, we’d still need to cast a ridiculous number of spells.”

Since we hadn’t been able to confirm how far the swamp extended, we had to assume we might need to cast Ice or Fire more than ten times.

“What if we just bury the whole swamp with earth magic?”

That was Keith-senpai’s suggestion. I’d thought of the same thing, but Sasha-senpai immediately shook her head.

“Earth magic doesn’t create dirt from nothing. It gathers soil from the surrounding ground. If we suddenly pull in enough earth to cover that whole swamp, the cave could collapse and bury us alive.”

“Yeah… figures that won’t work.”

Keith-senpai looked disappointed, but an idea had already popped into my head.

“There’s one spell I want to try. I don’t know if it’ll work, and I have no clue how much force it’ll produce, so honestly, it’s a gamble.”

“What spell?”

“I’m thinking of using the earth-attribute spell Wall after all.”

“I just said that won’t work. If you dump enough earth to fill that swamp, we’ll trigger a landslide.”

“I’m not using it to bury the swamp. I’ve got a different way to use it.”

“Like what?”

“I’m going to use earth magic to burn all those venomous bugs to hell in one shot.”

“…Huh?”

Meanwhile, in the dungeon city of Dangarl, Dan and Neon’s Party C had run into a massive army of minotaurs in a wide area around the dungeon’s middle floors, a place people casually called the boss room.

Standing at the very front of the party, Selene unleashed a grand spell.

【Burn everything down, unleash infinite flame, blast all things to pieces: Advanced Fire Magic—Explosion】

The moment the spell activated, a magic circle appeared far above the monsters’ heads. A small ball of light slowly fell from it and landed almost dead center in the middle of the horde.

In the next instant, a blinding flash erupted, a gigantic fireball swallowed the whole army, and a massive explosion with a shockwave tore through the area.

“Full magic defense shield!”

Azmaiya-senpai’s full-power Magic Barrier wrapped around the entire party, protecting every member from the death embrace Selene had created.

When the smoke, dust, and blast-driven debris finally cleared and visibility returned, what remained was a field of mangled minotaur corpses—completely annihilated.

“Selene-onee-sama! You always go way too damn far! We almost got caught in that blast and wiped out with them! And on top of that, you’ve been hogging all the action this whole time, so us first-years haven’t had a single damn moment to shine!”

“Teheh.”

“Neon, you’re starting to sound kind of onee-ish, you know.”

“Shut it already! You’re just getting in the way! Stop ruining my chance to show what I can do!”

“O-Okay…”

At the same time, Dan’s anguished scream cut through the air.

“Nooooo! The items! The treasure chest got blown to pieces too!”

Dan collapsed in despair.

“Honestly, Selene… Neon’s right. You really need to learn some restraint.”

Her way of getting angry was still fluffy enough that it wasn’t very scary, but it was definitely anger all the same.

Meanwhile, the female warrior they had hired as backup looked at the group and came to the obvious conclusion that these assholes are more dangerous than the monsters.

She had already given up on doing her job and switched fully into self-preservation mode.