Ch.69Exploration complete?

It wasn’t just my body that was rising. The entire carriage itself was soaring into the air.

The face of the adventurer who had been shouting to close the window turned dumbfounded. His mind probably couldn’t keep up with the situation.

My legs flailed in midair. My body lurched forward, then my shoulder hit the window, pushing me back.

As this happened, my head must have hit the window frame with a thud, snapping my neck forward. If I had hit it just a bit harder, my neck would have broken.

The ground began to recede. The carriage showed no signs of returning to earth, and accordingly, the adventurers below grew smaller and smaller.

It felt like we had risen more than 20 meters. At this rate, if we crashed to the ground, the carriage would almost certainly shatter.

I looked at Christine. Strangely enough, she was still standing firmly on the carriage floor.

“Christine.”

“Speak, my god.”

“Is this the monster you mentioned?”

“Indeed it is. And this one is not the end. Even at this moment, more than two hundred monsters are converging on this location.”

“Over two hundred? Why?”

“Due to this lamb’s inadequacy, I have not been able to discern that. Please blame me for my shortcomings.”

The carriage tilted sharply, and my back slammed against the wall right behind the driver’s seat. Through the wall, I could hear the driver screaming in terror and the horses neighing with all their might.

I opened the small window connecting to the driver’s seat. The driver was still screaming, not even hearing the window open.

I quickly surveyed the front.

I saw the horses making pitiful kicks and neighs, unable to break free from the lines connecting them to the driver’s seat, and blood soaking the driver’s platform.

‘…Wait, blood?’

Now that I noticed, the area in front of the driver’s seat was extremely dark. We had definitely departed at sunrise, so it should still be morning.

Why was it so dark ahead? Just as I wondered this, something pointed glinted momentarily in the pitch-black darkness.

Teeth.

Teeth as long as two spearheads combined and thicker than a human thigh. Hundreds of them lined the darkness.

Looking closer, the blood soaking the driver’s seat had flowed from one of the horses that had been impaled on those teeth and died instantly.

That explained why it was dark outside. What was visible from the driver’s seat wasn’t the sky but the inside of a massive monster’s mouth.

This unidentified monster had burst from the ground, swallowed the horses, and leaped into the air, taking the carriage along with it.

If this had been a mediocre cheap carriage, the connection would have broken the moment the horses were caught, but this luxury carriage somehow withstood the strong impact, resulting in this disaster.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’

Judging by how the carriage had risen more than 20 meters into the air, this monster must be at least 30 meters in size.

I had never heard of such an enormous, burrowing, colony-type monster that moved in groups of hundreds.

‘Since it seems to be a new type of monster, should I let myself be eaten just to see?’

I generally wasn’t fond of suicide attempts that involved being eaten by monsters.

Basically, their stomachs smelled terribly foul, and if I didn’t die even after dissolving in stomach acid, there wasn’t a good way to escape.

Sometimes my sword couldn’t even pierce through a monster’s stomach.

In those cases, I’d be stuck dissolving and regenerating repeatedly in the stomach, waiting for another adventurer party to kill the monster.

For reference, this is from personal experience. How long did it take to see sunlight again that time? A month? Two months? I nearly went insane.

‘But now Christine is here.’

With a nun who could tear monsters apart like paper with her bare hands or burn them like straw with her holy power by my side, it shouldn’t be a problem.

She wouldn’t just watch if a monster swallowed me and tried to escape.

While I was thinking this, the distance to the densely packed teeth rapidly decreased as the creature began to close its mouth.

The carriage shook violently as the teeth crushed its wheels. The impact sent the driver, who had been screaming in terror, flying from his seat.

The driver flailed his limbs a few times in midair before falling onto the teeth.

The fragile flesh that made up the human body was pierced through all too easily, and that was the end. After a brief moment of rigor mortis, the driver ceased all movement.

His lifeless eyes, now stained with blood, stared blankly into space.

The mouth was closing quickly. The horses’ neighing gradually subsided. It was time to make a decision.

I moved away from the window and grabbed the carriage door handle.

“Christine, you should get out of the carriage first.”

“What will you do, my god?”

“I’m going to let this thing eat me. I’ve never seen this type of monster before. You know, just in case?”

“If that is your will.”

Christine bowed her head.

“If the monster swallows me and tries to escape, kill it. Otherwise, leave it be. It probably won’t take long. About five minutes? By then, I’ll know whether it can kill me or not.”

“What about the unbelievers outside?”

At that question, I paused as I was about to fling open the carriage door and looked back at Christine. In her empty eyes, only I was reflected.

“…Save them if you can.”

“As you wish, my god.”

After answering, Christine broke through the carriage and leaped outside. I kicked the door open with all my might. If I had been a little later, the door would have been too twisted for me to open alone.

With cracking sounds, the teeth repeatedly crushed the carriage. The carriage’s durability was reaching its limit.

Just as I jumped out of the carriage, it shattered into pieces.

The mouth, which had been large enough to swallow four horses whole, had now contracted to a size barely big enough for me to lie down in.

My feet were severed the moment they touched the densely packed teeth.

Having lost my balance due to my ankles being completely torn off, I fell forward onto the teeth, and immediately holes were punctured throughout my body. Whatever these teeth were made of, they were disgustingly sharp.

“Is it because it crawls underground? What kind of teeth are these?”

I tried to regenerate my body and jump into the throat, but gave up when even brushing against the teeth tore my limbs apart. If I stayed still, the monster would probably take me into its stomach on its own.

And just as I thought, the flesh between the teeth gradually rose. The teeth, which had been almost the size of my calves, had now shrunk to about a hand span.

Beyond them, I could see a pitch-black abyss opening up where not a speck of light entered. Finally, as the entire mouth filled with mushy flesh, my body tumbled into that abyss.

“Watch your feet! Don’t stay in one place, keep moving!”

“Easier said than done! Ah, shit, really!”

Kane swung his sword at a monster that had just burst through the ground with its jaws wide open. With a clean cut, what appeared to be the head—the part with the mouth—was severed and rolled on the ground.

Red blood dripped down. Sharp teeth were densely packed inside its mouth.

“Why did these things suddenly appear?!”

“I don’t know, damn it! Just keep fighting!”

The monsters attacking them now looked like nothing more than large black worms, but the moment they bit into flesh, chunks of meat were torn away.

Surrounding oneself with mana was completely useless. An A-rank adventurer could normally block even swords and spears with mana, but these worms pierced through it as if it were nothing.

That’s how Ronica had been caught. While trying to cast a spell at the giant monster that had snatched the carriage, she was bitten by smaller ones that emerged beside her. Her scream was brief.

These creatures’ attack method was frustratingly difficult to counter.

They would suddenly burst from the ground, aiming for the face or vital organs, and if they bit you, it was over. If you dodged, they would retreat back into the ground.

Dodging their attacks at the exact moment they lunged and cutting off their heads was challenging even for Kane, an A-rank adventurer.

If he hadn’t been using body enhancement, he would have certainly died long ago.

And they didn’t just emerge from one spot. Practically any place where a human could stand was a potential location for these creatures to burst forth.

‘The carriage… it’s already gone.’

The carriage carrying their employer had been carried up into the mouth of an enormously sized giant worm.

Kane had tried to position himself to catch their employer if they opened the carriage door and jumped out, but there was no sign of such action. Perhaps they were too paralyzed with fear to move.

Well, it was a situation where a giant worm over 30 meters long was about to swallow the entire carriage. It wouldn’t be easy to make rational decisions.

“Aaaagh! Help me!”

“Luke!”

A pain-filled scream from his comrade erupted behind him. Kane quickly ducked to avoid a worm lunging at his face, then rushed toward Luke.

It was already too late.

At least a dozen black worms had attached themselves to Luke’s desperately flailing body and were devouring it.

Wriggling black ropes burrowed into the human’s abdomen. Luke rolled around on the ground, crying out in agony.

The struggle didn’t last long.

With a final choked gasp, Luke’s limbs stiffened. Only the movement of the monsters feasting on his entrails caused his body to twitch here and there.

Kane stared blankly at the sight.

“Kane! Kane! We need to run, right now!”

Heroni, who had cut down several monsters to reach him, shook Kane’s shoulder violently. Kane, who had been almost in a daze, snapped back to reality.

The suggestion to flee was absolutely correct. But where could they flee to? The ground around Kane and Heroni had long been filled with worm monsters.

Dozens of corpses rolled on the ground, yet the surface still teemed with monsters writhing beneath it. The number they had killed so far was nowhere near enough.

Heroni stood back-to-back with Kane. Kane did the same with Heroni.

No words were exchanged between them. They simply took their stances, sensing their impending doom, determined to take as many monsters with them as possible.

Just as Kane gathered his strength, and dozens of black worms simultaneously burst from the ground to attack—

The sun descended upon the earth.

The monsters that had been leaping toward Heroni and Kane writhed in midair. Their skin was burning.

The monsters that fell to the ground perished in the blink of an eye. Their rapidly shriveled corpses looked almost like withered plants.

The monsters that had been about to devour Kane and Heroni fled en masse. The dumbfounded pair lowered their weapons in bewilderment.

This sensation, like the sun itself, was emanating from the nun who had been in the carriage.

The nun gently descended to the ground. Having easily jumped from the mouth of a monster over 30 meters tall, she slowly walked toward Kane and Heroni.

She wasn’t even exerting her full holy power. Just a slight, breath-like emission of holy energy was causing the surrounding monsters to go berserk.

Kane, who had been watching the nun purify the surrounding monsters as if entranced, met her eyes.

In that moment, the light disappeared from her yellow eyes.