880: Searching the Tunnel

「I found something!」

「Some kind of old ruin?」

Led by wielders of earth magic, including Fran and Bryne, the adventurers and outlaws dug through the ground for about five minutes.

And we easily found what we were looking for.

We knew exactly what the passage was, but the others had no clue what was in store for them. They had to keep their guards up.

All we could see was what looked like a brown brick wall. Like the adventurer muttered just now, they looked like part of an ancient ruin. We were the only ones who knew this was the outer wall of the underground passage.

The passage was about five meters below ground level.

When we checked the underground passage in the town, it was about ten meters deep, right? It seems to be ascending to the surface as it gets closer to the exit outside town.

It would be unthinkable to destroy recently discovered ruins back on Earth, but this was another world. The men immediately began examining the walls, and even drilled a hole to check the interior.

Light shines through, exposing the inside of the passage.

「It is definitely man-made. Maybe an escape route for one of the city’s bigwigs? Miranleil, have you ever heard anything like this?」

「As if someone like me could get my hands on that kind of info. What about the adventurers?」

「We don’t know either.」

In the end, no one knew what this underground passage was. Some had heard rumors of such a thing, but they never thought it really existed.

「Keh. So they’ll be able to run for their lives if everyone else dies? Disgusting.」

「Isn’t that about what you’d expect from those guys?」

At any rate, we have to lead them to Gazzol next. And for that, we need some way of getting them interested in the tunnel.

I’ll give Fran the instructions from here.

「……Hey. Where does this lead?」

「Where? That’s…… well, I dunno.」

「Don’t ask me. Considering the big organizations, it’s gotta belong to either us, the Dragon King Syndicate, the Sanatorium, or the Adventurers Guild.」

「Then we’ll check.」

「Is that really necessary? It’s not a well-known escape route, right?」

Miranleil tilted her head at Fran’s words. But after that, Bryne seemed to have realized something.

「Wait. Do you think anyone still knows of this passage’s existence?」

「What do you mean?」

「I mean, if everyone’s forgotten the passage’s existence, the antidemons could use it as a way in.」

「But there’s no dust, so it must have been cleaned, right? Isn’t it still in use?」

「It’s possible there’s some kind of magic going on to maintain it.」

「Huh? I see.」

After listening to the conversation between Bryne and Miranleil, the others also grew curious about what was at the end of the tunnel. We decided to scout it out.

「We need to find out where this leads, since it’s definitely headed towards Sendia.」

「I agree. If it’s a forgotten passageway, the antidemons could infiltrate it and enter without resistance.」

「We also need to keep an eye on the entrance, to prevent any antidemons from going in.」

「Well, why don’t we start by looking for the entrance?」

Without any further prompting, Bryne took charge of the search. Now we just need to get them to discover Gazzol.

We started by making a small group to enter the underground passage: Fran, Bryne, Miranleil, and three Rank C adventurers.

With Urushi in the lead, we headed down the underground passage in the opposite direction from town. After about three minutes, we arrived at the entrance.

Well, not exactly the entrance, but a dead end. There was no door, only a large amount of earth and sand blocking our way.

The hole at the top was dug out by Urushi when he escaped from the passage. It had been completely blocked when he first got here.

Whoever used this passage must need to cast earth magic to move the dirt out of the way every time they passed through the entrance.

「What? It’s buried? So I guess no one uses it?」

「No, the quality of the soil is obviously different. Wait a minute.」

Bryne began to dig up the soil with some kind of earth magic. He nodded again and again.

「This is clearly soil that has been tampered with by earth magic. The earth here has been moved at least once in the past few years.」

「So you’re saying someone with earth magic passed through here?」

「Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.」

Bryne was a more capable man than I expected.

After that, Fran and the others moved the dirt out of the way and asked the adventurers to keep an eye on the entrance.

No one refused after being told that it might be a possible route for antidemons to enter the city. They also sent a few people to inform them of the location.

Who did they inform? Adventurers, outlaws, and the guards near the gate, of course. Now everyone knows about the existence of the passage.

「Let’s go.」

「Yeah, sure.」

After completing the minor arrangement details, we finally set out for the back of the passageway. Fran and Bryne were in the lead with their keen senses, and Miranleil the talented archer held the rear.

As we learned from our chats along the way, Bryne was from a badger-like species of beastman, the “Earth Badgers”. That explained his detection ability and talent in earth magic.

Fran also turned around to talk to Miranleil. She found it strange that Miranleil constantly wore a smile on her face. All they were doing was walking, so it didn’t seem particularly interesting.

「Hey. What’s so fun?」

「Heh heh heh. It’s been a while since I’ve done exploring like this.」

She told us about how she, Gephe, and Gazzol used to be members of the same mercenary group operating on a different continent. However, they had to flee to Gordicia after their employers were defeated in battle and blamed them for the loss.

「We only get to fight antidemons, the booze sucks, and there ain’t any dungeons. This place’s just no fun.」

In other words, she welcomed this unusual event.

We kept walking and finally arrived at the end of the tunnel, with a door matching the one leading to Gazzol’s room in the hallucination Urushi had shown me.

「I can’t wait to see what we find!」

「I only hope this doesn’t lead somewhere troublesome.」

No can do, Bryne. There’s plenty of trouble waiting for us up ahead.

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