I was pretty mentally drained from everything, so we decided to take a bit of a break.
While we rested, I heard about what had happened. First off, turns out we were inside a stone sarcophagus. Part of one, anyway.
They'd entered through a broken section and found nothing inside.
I'd defeated that Saturnus. But Saturnus wasn't the only one.
There were several more deeper in, and they came swarming out.
Agaro took down about two of them, and the witch killed one.
In the meantime, Juicy carried me.
They were too busy saving me to know what happened to the hired hands from the Kuun Hunt.
But when Agaro went to check, there were no bodies that looked like theirs.
They probably escaped safely. I want to believe so, at least.
Also, the Saturnus I defeated had been carrying a treasure chest.
Inside that chest was the usual triangular prism.
It was silver. Since there are different colors, there must be multiple — ah, I haven't been collecting these.
Not like I'm interested in collecting them, obviously. The witch hasn't brought it up a single time, which is proof enough.
Besides, given her personality, she's probably not inclined to collect them either.
I don't want to do it either. The whole "collect the keys" thing. Not my thing at all.
But the witch looked satisfied.
"This is enough. More than enough," she said.
Holding the two triangular prisms, she had some kind of wicked grin on her face.
What exactly is going to be okay? I'm worried.
Speaking of worrying, there's one disappointing thing.
The elixir knife was broken. I'll say that again — the elixir knife was broken.
I had gripped the elixir knife so tightly that the blade was practically gone.
It wasn't a clean break in half or a snap somewhere in the middle.
It had fractured diagonally from the base, a huge chunk of the blade simply missing.
I couldn't believe my eyes. I never thought something like this could break.
The elixir knife was coated in elixir.
It was coated with the highest-grade legendary elixir.
That's why I'd always assumed it could never break. I truly believed that.
No — it can break. It can, and it did. It's a knife, of course it breaks.
You mustn't be overconfident. It can break.
Now that I think about it, back when I used Silent Move…
I vaguely remembered hearing something snap deep in the back of my consciousness.
That must have been the elixir knife.
It almost certainly was. No question about it.
"………………"
I quietly placed the broken elixir knife into the empty stone coffin.
I felt vaguely grateful that this was the burial site.
Elixier knife. Rest in peace.
After the break, we climbed out of the stone coffin and set about exploring the Giants' Burial Ground.
Along the way, we fought the wretched remains of Yomido's followers and took on Saturnus. This time, we brought them down together.
We also ran into a necromancer with a black three-eyed dog, and had battles with grave keepers and the like too.
Then I spotted the floating woman. Was that the one from the corridor? No way… Creepy.
And so we reached the depths of the Giants' Burial Ground.
It was the Tomb of the Death King.
An enormous pure-white stone coffin presided over the chamber.
Of all the coffins, only this one bore a crest carved into its surface.
An ominous crest — a skull with horns and eight eyes.
At the center of the coffin's lid, eight pedestals were arranged around the middle of the crest, forming an octagon.
Each pedestal had a triangular indentation. They were clearly slots meant to hold triangular prisms.
We were standing at the very center of the crest. There was nowhere else to be.
"Hey. We've only got two."
"Um, uh, um, that's not enough."
"Witch. What do we do?"
We looked at the witch.
The witch first pressed the triangular prism she was holding into one of the pedestals.
Naturally, with so few, the pedestal didn't react at all. She turned back to look at us.
"Well now, Agaro — you should understand this sort of thing. Dungeons do have contraptions like this every so often."
"Yeah, they do. And they're always nothing but a pain."
"That's right, that's right. First off, why collecting things activates these mechanisms, why the contraption triggers — the principle behind it's the same, y'see. And the conditions for matching that principle fall roughly into two categories: wavelength and weight."
We all tilted our heads at the same time. Dagaa tilted his head too.
Agaro took a swig from his gourd flask.
"Well then, well then — let me start with weight since that's the easier one to understand. There's a set weight that triggers the mechanism, and when the weight matches, the contraption activates. That's how it works, y'see."
"So basically, if the total weight matches up, it moves."
Agaro said it without much confidence.
"Mm-hm. That's exactly right."
"Oh, seriously?"
"Um, um, Agaro, that's amazing!"
"Well, yeah."
"By the way, is this place one of those weight-based mechanisms?"
When I asked, the witch grinned.
"Mm-hm. This is a weight-based mechanism too, y'see."
"It is?"
"Wah!"
"Huh?"
"What?"
We tilted our heads.
Agaro took another swig from his gourd flask. He sure drinks a lot.
"Next up, next up — wavelength. Same deal as weight: when the wavelength matches, the contraption activates, y'see. Wavelength means waves. Hmm. To put it simply — the periodic length of things like sound or impact, that sort of frequency — that's what wavelength means, y'see."
"......?"
"Hmm? Hm?"
"Wafu."
"Na?"
We all tilted our heads at the same time. Agaro tilted his head too.
Well, actually, I sort of knew from my past life's memories.
The witch's terrible explanations had made me tilt my head involuntarily.
"Anyway, anyway. This kind of mechanism activates when the conditions are met and align, you see. Once you understand that, you can make it work, you see."
"I see."
"I get how it works, but what do we actually do?"
"Right, right. First, you put these into each of the grooves, you see."
With that, the witch placed something round and black into the groove on every pedestal.
What is that? It's kind of squishy.
The color of coffee jelly. Actually, I feel like I've seen this somewhere before.
"So what do we do next?"
"Tch, tch. Don't rush, you see. You have to wait, you see."
"Um, um, uh, what is this?"
"Mm-hmm. That's a slime, you see."
"Slime?"
It hit me all of a sudden. This is the color of a curse slime. No, but it doesn't have any cursed writing on it.
"Um, um, um, Miss Witch— could this be a piece of the curse slime?"
"Mm-hmm. That's right."
"So that's what you picked up back then."
"Um, um, um, it's a slime?"
"Erm, so, um, why are you putting that slime fragment in there?"
Then the black, quivering slime sitting in the hollow stretched out and took on a triangular shape.
It became a black triangular prism. This is—!
"Whoa! Um, um, it changed!"
"Oh!"
"Wha!?"
"That's right, that's right. Slime is amorphous, you see—it has this fascinating property. When you fill it into a mold, it conforms perfectly to that shape. And if you've adjusted the weight and wavelength in advance…"
That was when it happened.
That eerie emblem blazed with blue-green light, and our figures vanished without a trace.
So that's how it was going to be.
That must have been a teleportation circle.
When the blue-green light faded, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar place.
"So this is the deepest level."
Agaro murmured.
Juusii was flustered, the witch gazed on with interest, and I looked around.
The ceiling and the floor were both the same rough, rocky surface. That's how I could tell this was a cave.
But the height from floor to ceiling was enormous.
The space stretched out endlessly, and while it was strangely bright, the distance was pitch-black and impossible to see into.
What a strange space. Broken swords, broken axes, broken spears — weapons of all kinds lay scattered across the ground.
Shattered armor, cracked helmets, rusted gauntlets were strewn about as well.
Beyond those, all manner of other things were scattered too. They covered every inch of the visible area.
"Um, um, what are all these things?"
"Hmm, hmm. Looks like the aftermath of a battle, don't it."
"Um, Waf. A battle..."
"...The remains of a battlefield?"
To me, it looked like someone had dumped the entire Junkyard's mountain of junk out here.
The witch suddenly crouched and plucked something off the ground at her feet.
"Hmm, hmm. Hmm hmm. Hmm hmm. I see, I see."
She'd picked up a tag? It was pretty badly charred. The witch tossed it aside.
"What was that?"
"Hmm, hmm. So now we know what these are."
"Um, um, what... what was that, Witch?"
"That, that was simply an identification tag."
So it was a tag after all.
"What about it?"
"Waf!"
"What?"
"Mm, mm. It looks familiar from the records. That ID tag is quite old-fashioned, and it belonged to a soldier who took part in a large-scale subjugation battle. Looks like this was a battlefield from one of those."
A large-scale subjugation battle— I scanned the surroundings and caught a fleeting glimpse of red light in the darkness.
What was that, exactly?
"Um, um, uh, there's a red light straight ahead!"
"Yeah. I saw it too."
"Oh my, seems like the end of the line is over there."
We headed toward the red light. There were no enemies.
Just the quiet remnants of the battlefield, left behind in silence.
"Um, um, uh, this is kind of creepy and scary..."
"No enemies around is what makes it creepier, honestly."
"Well well, the calm before the storm, huh?"
"..."
Beyond the red light, we found a graveyard.
Pure white flowers blanketed the entire field.
The wind swept through and white petals danced and scattered. Beautiful, but.
"..."
Ash flowers. It reminds me.
Row upon row of crude graves lined the hill among the white flowers, and there stood a church.
I cried out without thinking.
"The church in that forest!?"
That's right. It was the church in the abandoned village beyond the bridge in that forest.