Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 602
Chapter 602: Third Record (5)
Boom!
The moment I clutched Erwen close to me and prepared for the fall, the ground beneath us fell away, sending my body freefalling. However, the usual feeling of plunging with gravity didn’t come.
Vwoong!
My body floated above the ground falling away as if defiant against that gravity. It was float magic.
“Are you all a-alright?” a voice called.
I hurriedly looked around, only to see the village chief and Gahuin floating in the air as well. I gave the latter a truly genuine compliment this time.
“We’re alive thanks to you. Good work.”
I hadn’t been able to give an order in the chaos, so I didn’t expect him to be able to respond so effectively.
“…It’s not something to compliment me for.”
He was pretty shy for an old man. Maybe his response was a little awkward because we had just been fighting each other not long ago.
I decided to focus on what needed to be checked first. “How long can you maintain the spell?”
“I should be able to maintain it long enough until we land on the ground.”
Alright, if that was the case…
“That’s a relief. Then from now on, slowly… No, get us down as quickly as possible without getting us injured,” I decided, concluding that we wouldn’t be able to respond properly if something were to happen while we were still floating. The order brought Gahuin to his senses, and he began to slowly lower us off the cliff.
Boom! Crackle! Rumble…
Our surroundings were quite literally hell. Everything we could see was crumbling down into the darkness, and huge stones fell from above, narrowly missing us.
“Now it feels like we’re doing some adventuring.”
Even while falling, the village chief looked around with open curiosity. It was the first time I had seen him so lively. I got a feeling that he might just have a screw loose in his head at this point too, but I didn’t have time to be focusing on him.
What was that before?
Right before the archbishop exploded, the Lord of the Floor had consumed him before jumping down into the darkness. The one we thought was our enemy acted In a way that was beneficial to us.
“Erwen, did you perhaps control that guy? Did you tell it to grab the archbishop and jump down?” I checked the possibility that came to my mind first, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the answer.
“No. I tried to, but it didn’t work.”
Hoh, then did the Lord of the Floor do it of its own volition?
“Maybe that monster wasn’t our enemy.” The village chief seemed to have heard our conversation, as he gave his opinion on the matter.
Honestly, he wasn’t wrong to think so. As soon as I saw the Lord of the Floor, I immediately thought that it would be the boss monster.
Thinking about it now, though, maybe it’s supposed to be our helper.
It gave off the same feeling as Hamsick did when we met it in chapter two. Most importantly, it also gave us the hint that high-ranking beings would try to be helpful to Erwen.
Boom! Rumble! Crash!
Out of nowhere, a huge piece of rubble fell directly onto Gahuin’s head.
It was a dangerous situation, but thanks to the barrier he had created beforehand just for this scenario, he wasn’t hurt that much.
“Ah…”
I heard that ominous he made. And as expected, my intuition didn’t fail me.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Th-that rock…disturbed the float magic’s spell calculation.”
“Disturbed the calculation? What do you mean by—” that?
It happened before I could finish my sentence.
“Ah…”
Our descent stopped, and we floated in the air for a moment.
“Kyaaaaak!”
And then, we began freefalling.
***
My head hurt, my lungs felt starved for air as if they had been pierced by something, and my spine didn’t move properly.
But I survived.
Then what about the others?
The last thing I remembered while falling helplessly was grabbing Erwen tighter into myself and landing on my back after seeing the ground quickly approaching me.
“M… M…ter! Mi…ter! Can you… me…?”
I could hear Erwen’s panicked voice through the ringing in my ear. She sounded like a broken radio.
I also heard the village chief’s voice.
“Don’t shake… ju… wait… he drank… potion… soon…”
“…Mister!”
“He can’t hear us…
Feeling my hearing slowly return, I slowly opened my eyes as well.
“Mister…!”
Gasping for air, I panted, “I’m…fine…so…stop.”
“Ah, ah! Sorry!” Only then did Erwen get off of my body and that helped me breathe better. “Hold on just a moment. You’re slowly healing up, and you’ll be able to move soon.”
“How long…was I out?”
“Around five minutes.”
“And Gahuin…?” I questioned, trying to get a grasp of our situation.
The village chief used his finger to point in response.
I forced my tense neck to move and I could see Gahuin collapsed next to me with a broken leg.
“He hasn’t died,” the village chief explained. “It seems that he used magic at the last moment to try and slow our fall as much as possible. I’ve given a potion to him…but I don’t know when he will awake.”
Alright, so that was where we were at.
“What about you?” I asked him.
“I’m fine. I kept myself awake until the very end and decreased the shock as much as I could.”
How enviable. If my defense stats were normal, my body wouldn’t have broken like this.
“…What about enemies?”
“There’s nothing around us for the moment, so sit tight and focus on healing.”
“Got it. But the way you’re talking…”
“Am I not your superior in both age and nobility anyway? We’ve gone through a life-or-death situation together, so I’ll just talk more freely with you.”
Well, that was fine. Even with this sudden change in the way he spoke, no one around us would suspect otherwise.
“Then I’ll…rest for a bit longer…” I laid back down and closed my eyes, and my body soon recovered enough to the point where I could move by myself.
“Do you want water?”
“Ah, thanks.”
After receiving water from Erwen, I got up, and the village chief asked me as if he had been waiting for me, “Then what are you going to do now?”
From when I was in Team Half-Wit to the Anabada Clan, this was a phrase I had always heard whenever something happened. People always asked for answers from me. At some point, I became frustrated with this fact, but now I took it as my destiny. I wouldn’t like the flipside of this either, where I would need to give up all my responsibilities to someone else and only carry out the orders they gave to me.
“Are we going to wait until Sir Versilus wakes up?”
Well, I wasn’t sure what the best option here was. This was my first time being in this rift. It was proceeding peculiarly, we had seen the Lord of the Floor, and now, we even had a priest of Karui…
To be honest, this was hurting my brain.
“No, we’ll carry Gahuin with us and survey our surroundings.”
We should do what we could for now. Things might take a turn for the worse if we just waited.
“I’ll take Erwen and Gahuin, so Count Saintred, you stand at the front.”
“Sure.”
I was giving him the most dangerous position, but the village chief accepted it without a problem. It wasn’t simply because he knew he was the most suited for the role.
“You must keep your promise.”
For him putting his body on the line in this rift, I had promised him that I would deliver the Heart of Karui to him in the city.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured. “I don’t plan on going back on it.”
“That’s good to hear. Ah, and if things go wrong later, look at the notebook I gave you.”
“Notebook?”
“I put it in the bag I gave to you. I’ve written down everything you might be interested in, so it’ll be helpful to you after this.”
I didn’t know he had given me his notebook. I had received the bag right before we entered the rift and the village chief had even told me to leave it behind outside just in case.
I’ll need to check the notebook as soon as I get out of here…
We continued to wade through the crumbling debris and move through the area, and at some point, sound disappeared and silence found us. Everyone knew what this meant by now.
[You have entered the area of Nullification. All essence skills are sealed.]
The Lord of the Floor was near us.
Then should we try to avoid it?
I didn’t know what the answer was, but I signaled to the village chief who seemed to be waiting for an order from me.
Continue on.
Since there was nothing we knew about this chapter, we needed to keep pushing ahead to acquire more information.
And I can’t ignore the possibility that the boss is a helpful NPC.
Even if it was only a theory, the proof of it pulling the archbishop into itself and jumping down the cliff before he exploded was enough to make at least me consider the possibility.
And so, after continuing to move forward, we ended up meeting the Lord of Silence, Siliut, again. In the suffocating silence, we saw it buried halfway under some rocks.
As I expected, it didn’t seem to be doing well. Among the three arms exposed to the air, two of them had bones protruding out of them. It merely blinked its eye at us, apparently devoid of the strength to even move out of the rubble.
Though relieved that it would not be a threat to us, I also felt a chill go down my spine. I knew of the skill’s power, but I never thought it would be so strong that it could reduce a Lord of the Floor into this state. What would have happened if we were hit by that explosion head-on?
The archbishop…is nowhere to be seen.
After taking a glance at the surroundings, I let Erwen down before slowly approaching the monster.
Lord of Silence, Siliut.
Even as I approached it, it didn’t move, not even a little bit. It only looked at me with exhaustion in its eye.
After getting close enough to touch it, I carefully extended my arm toward its face. When I made contact, it remained silent, as if to say there was no need for it to fight us.
Why did you help us?
I wanted to ask, but my voice refused to make a sound. Well, even if I could talk, I didn’t expect this guy to respond to me either. That was why I just came to my own conclusion.
…Sure, you must have your reasons as well.
I now knew something more about this labyrinth. The Guardians of the Rift, and the Lords of the Floor were beings who truly existed, and who had their own histories and motives. Maybe not just them either, but all the monsters in the labyrinth as well. In a sense, they were more pitiful than me who had been dragged from another world to suffer here.
As I pulled my hand away from its face and walked away, the village chief looked at me and gave a signal with his hands.
Let’s kill it.
It was a simple hand movement, but I just quietly shook my head and gestured to him to move back. Although skeptical, he complied for now because of our promise.
As soon as we left its area, the village chief asked, “Why didn’t you kill it? Considering the state it was in, it didn’t seem all that dangerous to fight.”
Well, I didn’t know. Why did I make that decision?
“Even so, it’s a creature that helped us. I got a feeling that something might go wrong if we kill it. We can…” I hesitated. “We can kill it after getting a bit more information.”
What I told the village chief wasn’t a lie.
“Hmm, I suppose that is an option.”
Despite his easy acceptance, I was still confused.
The reason I gave might not have been the only reason.
The essence of the Lord of the Floor, the floor treasure, and even the Floor Stone used to open a rift—I wasn’t sure of it, but there was a chance that we could obtain these rewards easily just by killing it here. However, I also got the sense that it wouldn’t be the case.
It’s…definitely not something like sympathy…
It was difficult for me to explain. I could only say that it was an impulsive decision—
[Come here…]
At that moment, the unknown voice was heard again, and I froze. The direction of the sound was directly opposite to where the Lord of the Floor was. As a result, I became sure of one thing.
So it wasn’t what created that sound…
It wasn’t the Lord of the Floor who had called to us like a pervert with those words and tried to lure us. I mean, I was also a little suspicious of it because it never appeared in the base game.
“Then do you want me to stand at the front as we approach that voice?”
When I nodded, the village chief walked in front of us, and after I walked some distance behind him with Erwen, we saw whose voice it was.
[Good…]
[Yes, come here and enter my arms…]
It was something completely unexpected.
“A Soul Eater…?”
A rare, rank 5 monster. Whenever the labyrinth opened, exactly one of these would appear on the Great Demon Realm, and when defeated, it would give a random amount of experience between 100 and 200.
“I will grant you the wish you desire…”
What was this? Wasn’t a boss monster supposed to come out here?
[Soul Eater has summoned Soul Cavalry.]
And the skills it used seemed to be the same as usual.
“Kiyaaaaak!”
When the village chief just slashed at it, the Soul Eater was cleaved by his sword and was instantly defeated.
[You have defeated a Soul Eater.]
It was quite confusing, but I wasn’t going to complain. If this were a novel, that would be a random MacGuffin that just so happened to be here. A regular mob that looked like it was something good, but was actually nothing at all. Such was one possible interpretation of this monster.
But what the hell is this now?
I couldn’t help but space out at what I saw next.
[Guardian defeat bonus. EXP +3]
A rainbow essence appeared from where it was, signifying that it was a Guardian…
Vwoong!
And a portal appeared to signal that the rift had been cleared-a blue portal, and also a red one.
Two portals?
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