Ch.225Side Story: The Gate of Another World – 2

The gate I stepped into was eerily quiet. I cast a detection spell while surveying my surroundings. Nothing was detected by the magic. I expanded the range further. Still nothing was detected.

“Let’s keep going for now.”

I moved forward but stopped halfway through.

“It’s a fork in the road.”

“Indeed, a fork in the road.”

Before us lay a path that split into four directions. The structure seemed too obviously designed, and when I checked, neither the communication magic tools nor the necklace Elysiere had given me were working.

This meant that unless the paths converged again ahead, there would be no way to contact the rest of the party.

“What do you want to do? Should we all take one path together? Or split up?”

“We should split up. I’ve seen gates with this structure a few times on Earth, and going all together just ends up being a waste of time. It’s not like this gate is too strong for our level anyway.”

“Alright. Then you all can pair up. I’ll go alone. Just be careful because once we split, we won’t be able to communicate.”

“Okay.”

A fleeting look of disappointment crossed her face, as if she had secretly hoped to go with me.

Still, she didn’t seem genuinely disappointed. She probably knew that I was the type to volunteer to go alone rather than send someone else by themselves.

The disappointment was brief. Everyone, accustomed to being guild leaders, chose their partners without discussion. Priscilla with Nika, Rosaria with Leona, and Elysiere with Latina formed the teams.

Only Latina, who had no experience with this sort of thing, stood awkwardly alone until Elysiere grabbed her and positioned her by his side.

“Be careful, my lady.”

“Don’t get hurt unnecessarily, you all. If it seems dangerous, just run away.”

After confirming that the three teams had disappeared down their respective paths, I headed into the last remaining corridor. The path was smooth. It was truly a place with nothing in it. The silence was unsettling.

The detection magic remained quiet, with no signs of monsters jumping out or magical beasts attacking. There weren’t even any creatures hiding to ambush us. I continued forward, leaving my doubts behind.

The silence and questions persisted until I arrived at what appeared to be the dungeon core.

“……”

Faced with an anticlimactic ending, I stared down at the dungeon core. I wondered if this was right. A gate that could be cleared just by walking along the path? Really?

Or perhaps I had chosen the winning path with a 1/4 probability, and the other teams were struggling with traps. That would make more sense.

Just as I was contemplating whether to try breaking the dungeon core—

—Rumble…

There was a sound like the dungeon’s structure changing, and the wall right beside me opened. Priscilla and Nika appeared from inside. When our eyes met, their faces showed confusion.

The confusion didn’t end there. The wall next to that one opened to reveal Rosaria and Leona, and the wall next to that revealed Elysiere and Latina.

“Huh? What’s going on? Why are you all here?”

“That’s what we’d like to ask…?”

“So no matter which path we chose, they all led here? How absurd.”

Everyone wore equally puzzled expressions. There wasn’t the slightest trace of battle on any of them.

“Did you encounter nothing?”

“No. What about you, Mira?”

“Same here.”

The more we explored, the more perplexing this gate became. We gathered around the spherical object presumed to be the dungeon core. With no boss, breaking this would probably clear the gate.

“Can we really just leave like this? For real?”

“The mana flowing from the gate seemed unusual though. Maybe the boss is hiding somewhere?”

“Ugh, I don’t like that. It means we’d have to search every corner of this place.”

Priscilla grimaced.

“……”

Something still felt suspicious. Why hadn’t my detection magic sensed the other teams before the walls opened? They were just behind walls, after all.

My magic isn’t so shoddy that it couldn’t detect people behind walls. Especially not when I’m the one casting it.

“Let’s head back and think about this. Be careful, something might jump out.”

“Yes, mast… er?”

As soon as Nika touched the dungeon core, something strange happened. The floor beneath us began to squirm and transform into crimson flesh-like walls.

Simultaneously, viscous liquid oozed from the flesh walls, overflowing into puddles in the depressions. The yellowish liquid in the puddles rippled with each squirm.

It wasn’t just the floor. The walls, ceiling, and what once looked like cave spaces all transformed into crimson flesh walls. As if we were inside some digestive organ.

My detection magic began to sound alarms frantically. Everything around us was an enemy. I sighed and dispelled the magic.

“…I see what’s going on now. The gate itself is a monster. It deliberately made us walk deep inside to make escape difficult. That thing that looked like a dungeon core was the trigger to awaken it.”

The dungeon core that Nika had dropped was being absorbed into the flesh wall and disappearing. Whether it was real or fake, it was clear that the owner of this digestive system had intentionally hidden it.

“E-eh? Should we have left it alone then?”

“Then it would have stayed that way forever. Before activating the dungeon core trigger, it was classified as a wall, not a magical beast.”

To explain it in Earth terms, until the dungeon core trigger was activated, it wasn’t a magical beast but just a normal gate interior. This was evident from the change in the detection magic.

It’s quite a malicious design. It means that to clear the gate, we ultimately have to fight while being eaten by this thing.

Priscilla quickly cast a protection spell. A translucent sphere enveloped our surroundings. Beyond the sphere, the yellowish liquid presumed to be digestive fluid sloshed around.

“Ugh. What is that?”

Rosaria retched at the sight.

“Everyone get behind me. I need to blast a hole through this first.”

I gripped a holy spear in my left hand. This wasn’t something that could be resolved with just Eternity. As golden radiance began to burst forth, the squirming of the flesh walls intensified. Ignoring the movement, I drew upon divine power.

Realizing my intention, the six quickly retreated behind me. The holy spear flashed with light.

“There are gates like that too. We should prepare countermeasures in case they appear on Earth.”

The next day, I explained to Laura, who had returned from Earth, about the gate we had entered.

Laura looked extremely tired upon hearing that the entire gate was a kind of monster, and that we had to fight after activating a trigger deep inside.

“I’ll relay this information. What a troublesome creature. One could easily be digested alive if not careful.”

“Indeed. Even A-rank hunters on Earth would find it difficult to defeat once it transforms into a monster. By the way, what business did you have?”

“It was related to the Sword Saint… I mean, Rachel. While she was out adapting to Earth, she got into a dispute with hunters from another organization.”

Everyone in the Eternal Guild knew about Rachel. Thanks to Priscilla’s prior notification. Her skills had also been proven against the A-rank hunters within the guild, so there were no particular complaints.

Although her identity was unclear, cases of physical appearance changes due to mana spreading in the atmosphere after the gate incident were numerous, so it wasn’t a major flaw.

The guild leader vouched for her identity, and the seven members of the Eternal Guild were also introduced as cases of appearance changes due to atmospheric mana. There were only minor complaints here and there.

“There are people who would mess with someone from the Eternal Guild? That’s impressive.”

“She’s missing an arm, missing an eye, and looks like an ordinary woman on the outside, so how threatening could she seem? And then we suddenly recruited her as a hunter, so they thought we were just protecting our own. Especially after they’d been drinking, they couldn’t see straight.”

In a world where healing magic exists and severed limbs can be reattached with the right magic, they didn’t consider what kind of person would walk around missing an eye and an arm.

Those guys must be quite something.

“What was the result?”

“They all ended up with severed limbs and laid out on the ground. Three A-ranks and six B-ranks all at once, so there’s an uproar about excessive force, but don’t worry. Given what they did, we might even be able to extract money from them. Would you like to hear about it?”

“No thanks. I’d just confirm how hopeless those guys are, so what’s the point?”

“A wise choice. So…”

His red eyes turned to my left.

Rosaria stood there with a tearful expression, wearing not her usual nun’s habit woven from starlight threads, but a flowing gold and silver dress. She even wore a crown on her head.

“How is this fair?! It was just a joke!”

“Would you betray the hearts of those who came to hear a lecture directly from the Holy Maiden? If you wish, I can tell them that the Holy Maiden said she refuses to teach the likes of you, so get lost.”

“Hey! When did I ever say that?!”

“Amazing, Holy Maiden. To receive revelations from the goddess herself, you truly deserve to be called a miracle worker. You are truly the Holy Maiden of this era. It seems you should continue being the Holy Maiden from now on.”

“Are you making fun of me?! You people…”

“We wrote the script for you and told you all the lecture content. You just have to go and say it, what’s so hard about that?”

“If it’s not hard, you do it! Why make me do it?!”

Rosaria growled at Elysiere, Latina, and Priscilla who were chiming in from the side, but having nothing she could do, she trembled in frustration before having to enter the lecture hall.

Laura, who had been watching this scene with amusement, continued speaking.

“…The first lecture on how to respond to gates has been created in the Empire, and the Holy Maiden is in charge of it, but where has Erestica gone?”

“I heard she’s holed up in the director’s office.”

“Still? She even refused my father’s summons in this world, claiming illness. I don’t understand why.”

Laura tilted her head in confusion. Since being humiliated by Nika and spraying breast milk, Erestica had been secluded in the director’s office, refusing to come out.

She ignored the Emperor’s summons and didn’t even attend the establishment of the new lecture.

“You should probably go see her.”

“I was planning to. If someone asks where I went, could you tell them I went to see the director?”

“Don’t worry and go ahead.”

With Laura seeing me off, I headed to the director’s office at the top floor of the main building. The corridor was still quiet. I rubbed my arms against an inexplicable chill as I stopped in front of the door.

“……”

As if to prove that the chill running down my spine wasn’t for nothing, a faint smell of milk was seeping through the tightly closed door.