Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 13

Since we were in a cave, I couldn’t tell what color the sky was, but going by the time, it had to be around evening by now.

We kept moving forward while looking for a place suitable for setting up camp. Before long, we reached a slightly more open area, and at first glance it looked like the cave dead-ended there.

“Look here.”

Sasha pointed at part of the cave wall.

There was a small stone door there, just wide enough for one person to pass through. Its surface had been polished smooth, so smooth that calling it stone almost felt wrong.

It looked more like some kind of artificial material. At the very least, it was obvious this wasn’t something from the current age. It had to be connected to the ancient civilization that built these ruins.

I called over the researchers working behind us to install magical tools and had them inspect the door too.

According to the results of their investigation, it really was the same kind of door commonly found in the Escher Cave ruins, and there didn’t seem to be any traps on it.

We opened it carefully and went inside right away.

The interior was a cubic space, almost like an auditorium, and at the far wall in front of us sat something that looked like an altar. The surrounding walls were packed with dense, complex patterns carved into them.

I wanted to keep investigating, but it was already getting late, so we decided to stop there for the day and continue our examination tomorrow.

“Now then, what do we do about camp?”

The question was whether to camp inside this altar room or in the cave just outside the door.

If we camped inside the room, we wouldn’t have to worry about monster attacks, but the place still felt creepy as hell when we had no clue what sort of mechanisms or traps might be hidden there.

If we camped in the cave, then traps weren’t the concern—only magical beasts. Besides, this room sat right at the dead end of the cave, so if we camped with our backs to the wall, we’d only need to keep watch in the direction we came from.

And if shit hit the fan, we could always retreat into the altar room.

After discussing it, we decided to camp in the cave.

We put up the tents, installed lighting magic tools, and handled the work efficiently. But when it came time to eat a simple dinner, the memory of that venomous bug swamp flashed through my mind again, and I lost all appetite.

“This is going to turn into trauma…”

In the end, I just drank a potion and decided to rest.

“Let’s decide the watch order for tonight.”

At Sasha-senpai’s suggestion, we settled on the following pairings.

Since Marl and I were first-years on our first dungeon expedition and completely worn out, and since Sasha-senpai had burned through a ton of magic earlier, the three of us would rest first while the guards rotated in pairs.

① Keith and Mr. Wolf-or-whatever
② Azoth and Marl
③ Sasha and Keith
④ Mr. Wolf-or-whatever and Azoth
⑤ Marl and Sasha

With nothing else to do, I crawled into the tent, and maybe because I’d used so much magic that day, I fell asleep almost instantly.

“Azoth, wake up.”

Marl shook me awake.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, crawled out of the tent, and headed to the watch post with her to switch places with Keith-senpai and the others. Lighting magic tools had already been installed along the cave wall, making it easier to watch for magical beasts.

To keep ourselves from getting sleepy, we decided to chat while keeping an eye on the path ahead.

Come to think of it, we’d barely ever had a chance to talk alone.

This might’ve actually been the first time.

At first things were a little awkward, but before long we were talking aimlessly about our territories, our families, childhood memories, and things that had happened at the academy.

“No way. Selene-san is your fiancée?”

“Her family head decided that on the day of my baptism. Said Selene would become the next head, and I was supposed to support her.”

“Huh. Then does Neon have a fiancée?”

“Nope.”

“Then maybe I’ll take her for myself.”

“Uh… sure…”

“Actually…”

At that point, Marl began talking about her family circumstances.

Her family home was a knightly house with territory far away from this Blomark county, and Marl was apparently the third daughter there. She had two older brothers and two older sisters, making her the youngest of five siblings.

But the other four had all been born without magic, so Marl—the only one who possessed mana—was the one expected to inherit the house.

“My parents kept trying for a child with magic and didn’t get one for a long time. I was the fifth one, and I was finally the one who was born with it. So they raised me as the heir and treated me like I was incredibly important. But the more they treasured me, the less close my siblings were willing to be with me. I got stuck right in the middle of that mess.”

“I see… that had to be rough.”

“Yeah. Home started feeling kind of uncomfortable, so I enrolled in the knight academy planning to live away from my family for a while.”

Marl spoke slowly, like every word had weight behind it.

“My parents were really worried about me leaving home, and at first they were against me enrolling in a faraway place like Blomark Knight Academy. They said they’d just find me a good marriage partner, have him command the knights, and I wouldn’t need to become a knight myself.”

“You were their only heir. No wonder they treasured you that much.”

“Yeah. But they also understood it wasn’t going to be easy to find a guy like that. So I convinced them by saying, ‘I’ll go to the famous Blomark school for magic and find a good mana-holder there,’ and only then did they finally let me enroll.”

“Some high-ranking nobles come here for that exact reason too.”

“Right. …Honestly, I really just wanted to leave home so I wouldn’t have to keep living while reading everyone’s moods all the time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about my family. Eventually I think I’ll take a husband into the house and inherit it, and until then, I just want to live the way I want for once.”

“Marl…”

“Even after graduation, it’s not like I have to get married right away. Until then, I want to join a knight order somewhere and actually do something with my life. Since I have light magic, I want to help people as a healer.”

“I think you’d be in huge demand as a healer, Marl.”

“But once I got into the academy, I met people like you and Neon, who have insane talent for magic, and people like Dan, who has both mana and the strength to back it up as a knight. Cain doesn’t have mana, but as a knight he’s probably one of the best in the whole year. I’m happy I got to become friends with people like that… but at the same time, I’m the only ordinary one. I don’t have anything special. Sometimes I wonder whether someone like me even belongs here at all.”

Marl stopped there and stared blankly into the darkness deeper in the cave.

Silence settled around us.

“I…”

I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out, so I took a breath and steadied myself first. I didn’t know what the right answer was.

But I wanted to at least tell her what I honestly felt, so I started piecing the words together slowly, one by one.

“I think… you’ve been carrying a lot because of your family. You say you ran from your situation, but that’s not what it looks like to me. What I see is that you thought hard about every single person in your family and came to one conclusion after weighing all of it.”

Conflicts between siblings like that were common enough in noble houses, but Marl was too sensitive and too kind for her own good.

“Maybe this wasn’t a school you originally wanted to enter, but I think the part of you that wants to become a knight now is real. I could really feel how badly you want to do something with your life, and, uh… I’ve been working hard because I want to get stronger too, so… if I can keep doing things together with you and everyone else from here on, then maybe we can do something amazing. …Wait, what the hell am I even saying?”

Seriously, what the hell am I saying?

I wasn’t getting my thoughts across right at all. I was just blurting out some vague, embarrassing declaration.

Shit, did I try too hard to sound cool and completely screw this up?

My face burned red from sheer embarrassment as I carefully looked over at Marl.

She was still staring into the cave ahead, but she had listened to everything I said in silence. Her expression looked a little softer than before.

“…Yeah.”

That was all Marl said, and after that, neither of us spoke another word.

We switched watch with Keith and Sasha, then lay down again to get some sleep until the next rotation.

The conversation with Marl kept replaying in my head, and I couldn’t fall asleep, so I just lay there in my sleeping bag, staring blankly into the dark.

At some point I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, Mr. Wolf-or-whatever was waking me up.

“It’s our turn for watch.”

It was still the middle of the night.

The two of us sat at the watch post, staring toward the depths of the cave. I tried to think of something to talk about so I wouldn’t fall asleep.

I’d barely spoken with this guy all day. Since he was a veteran adventurer, he’d probably stayed quiet and focused on support because he didn’t want to interfere too much with our club’s expedition.

But sitting there in silence felt awkward as hell, and just as I was about to throw out some harmless topic, he spoke first.

“Azoth-kun. You’re a reincarnator from Japan, aren’t you?”