Chapter 200: What matters is we’re through it, I guess

There was a series of symbols written on the wall adjacent to the metal fence.

[□　→　×　→　△　→　〇]

“We’ve seen switches with those symbols before, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, we have seen them… It looks like we have to activate those to pass through…”

Kamuru-san was joyous earlier in guiding us, but all of a sudden, he has turned quite apologetic.

He was probably thinking that if he had thought about it beforehand, we could have proceeded without doing any backtracking.

“Yeah, but the order in activating them seems to be also important.”

“Ahh, I see…”

“So, we would have needed to come here anyway to know that order.”

It was quite the mischievous contraption.

To which, Raul immediately spouted “what a drag”.

“Yeah, normally, it would have been quite a drag to backtrack all the way there.”

I said so while grinning.

“But of course, I can just teleport back to press them.”

I have been using Territory Takeover the entire time, making each point we passed a part of the village.

Thanks to that, I could use teleport even here.

“Y-you can do even that…?”

“Luke-sama’s so amazing, isn’t he?”

Alec-san and his party’s faces looked as though they were about to cry foul.

“You know what, why bother doing that.”

I grabbed the arms of the nearby Selen and Selius-kun, and then used teleportation.

In the next moment, we were on the other side of the fence.

“I feel like we’ve cheated somehow, but what matters is we’re through it, I guess.”

“““……”””

No one replied, but I continued to teleport everyone pair by pair.

Like this, we passed through the fence without bothering to solve its gimmick.

　　　　◇　◇　◇

Much like a dungeon, the ruins we were exploring seemed to be divided by floors.

And the deeper we go, the more wicked the monsters we faced.

“Ghh! This guy’s a bit strong, ain’t he?”

“They move well, I’ll give them that.”

Alec-san and Selen were currently in a fierce fight against skeleton swordsmen.

Unlike the skeletons we encountered at the beginning, these ones’ movements and sword skills were on another level.

That being said, they were still no match against the best of the best of the village.

When Alec-san found an opening, he immediately swung down his large sword against the skull of one of the skeletons and smashed it.

Meanwhile, Selen used her ice magic to immobilize the skeletons she was facing and then quickly chopped off their heads.

While they were busy like that though, skeleton swordsmen rushed toward us who were in the middle of our formation.

Philia-san fired arrows that shattered some bones, but for the most part, the skeletons were unperturbed.

“…*sigh*. Yeah, arrows really don’t work well against skeletons, does it?”

“L-leave it to me!”

Without wasting a moment, Selius-kun jumped up front and crossed swords with the skeleton swordsmen.

That’s it, that’s it, Selius-kun! You have to make yourself look good in front of Philia-san.

“UAaaa”

Stronger zombies also showed up.

This time, the zombies were on all fours and were even crawling on the walls as they rushed towards us.

“These ones are so scary!”

“Well, they are undead.”

Even after Hazena-san tried to burn them down, a few still marched forward. As such, Gai-san joined in and whacked a few with his staff.

I then looked behind us and saw that there was another group of zombies there. After Raul decapitated one of those zombies…

“Raul-sama!”

“What!?”

A severed head of a zombie tried to bite Raul at his legs, but Marin-san quickly stabbed it with her spear to finish it off.

“Ha, you here to make things a little interesting?”

The next monster to appear wasn’t simply a stronger version of a skeleton or a zombie.

It was a moving full-body armor that made a loud clanking sound with each step it took.

It was a kind of undead monster called Living Armor. It was the spirit of a fallen soldier who dwelled inside their armor because they still wanted to continue fighting,

Because it was a monster that was basically an armor, its defenses were pretty high.

Alec-san managed to land a direct hit on its helm and dented it there, but the monster simply attacked back as though nothing happened.

Hazena-san also tried to burn it, but her magic didn’t have much effect.

“Then, how about this!”

Gai-san shouted so as he thrusted his light-enveloped staff into the Living Armor.

His attack didn’t seem to be an overly powerful blow, but for some reason, the enemy suddenly stopped moving and its armor pieces scattered into the floor.

“It was purification magic. It’s particularly effective against the undead.”