A roar thundered through the cave. It shook the air and even rattled the ground, and there was no way a normal creature could make a roar like that.

That thing was absolutely bad news. I didn’t feel like I could win even if I fought it right now... No, wait. Did I maybe have a tiny chance?

It was pathetic to freak out this badly over a single roar, but that was exactly how overwhelming the opponent felt.

I urged the girl to hurry up and drink the potion, then used my ability to prepare for the owner of that roar lurking deeper inside the cave.

“Good Toy Box.”

What materialized was a bicycle. A regular old city bike, basically the kind moms rode around on.

It was the one I used to ride back in sixth grade. The bike was a little small, but if I used it as a barricade, it might slow that thing down for at least a moment.

Why it counted as a toy was a mystery, though.

“A conjuration-type ability user... If it can be materialized within your field of vision, then you’re a range-balanced type. But that manifestation speed is way too fast for that. Is there some kind of limit?”

“Thanks for analyzing my ability!! More importantly, can you move?!”

The girl calmly analyzed my ability, but now was not the time for that. The cave was so dark I could not see ahead, but something ridiculously dangerous was getting pretty damn close.

I finished making a simple city-bike barricade, then looked back at the girl.

The girl staggered, but she somehow managed to stand by leaning against the wall.

“Can you run?”

“No. I was poisoned. It will take a lot of time before the poison is neutralized... Cough.”

The girl covered her mouth and coughed, and blood dripped from her hand. Apparently, she had been poisoned. Did that mean there were monsters that used poison in this cave too?

I did have an antidote potion with me, so I asked if she wanted to drink it, but she told me she did not need it. Depending on the poison, antidote potions could fail to work or take a long time to take effect, so maybe she had already taken one.

“If you can’t run... then I’ll use this.”

After thinking for a moment, I used my ability again. I materialized a handcart and told the girl to get on.

I also materialized wire and fixed the bicycle in place as a petty little obstruction.

Actually, both the bicycle and the handcart counted as “toys,” huh? I did remember playing with them when I was little, so calling them toys was technically fine, but it still felt kind of wrong.

“Can you get on?”

“A conjuration-type ability user who can materialize multiple objects...!! That’s pretty rare. Cough.”

“Yeah, thanks. Now hurry up and get on.”

Once I confirmed that the girl had climbed into the handcart, I immediately started moving.

Whether we lived or died probably depended on how much time that city-bike barricade could buy us.

“...It’s coming.”

“Gwooooooooooo!!”

A third roar.

We were already moving, so I could not tell its exact position, but judging by how loud the roar was, it was really close. It was probably around just in front of the city bike.

I pulled the spare flashlight from my backpack and told the girl to shine it behind us.

“Can you see it?!”

“It’s there. An ogre mutant. Individual name, ‘Red Greed’... Bad luck.”

“This is not the time to sound all enlightened about it!! The barricade—”

Boom!! The sound of the ogre smashing through the city-bike barricade.

Whoosh!! The sound of the remains of the bike flying past right beside me at insane speed.

Crash!! The sound of the city bike’s corpse slamming into the wall.

City bike!! That monster broke through my city-bike barricade in an instant!! This was bad. That thing was dozens of times worse than I imagined!!

I accidentally looked back while running, and the flashlight revealed a monster so terrifying I immediately regretted looking.

It had two horns, vicious fangs, and a body packed with brutal muscle. Its whole body was stained red, giving off a sinister presence, as if it had absorbed the blood of every enemy it had ever killed.

It was probably about three meters tall. It was just the right size to move around freely in this slightly large cave, and the pressure it gave off was so terrifying that every hair on my body stood on end.

“Nope, nope, nope, absolutely nope!!”

I had briefly wondered if I might have a chance to beat it, but there was no way in hell I could win against that thing.

This felt like running into the Dragon King at level 1. The Demon King had sensed the threat early and come to kill me first.

Did nobody teach that thing that opening with the final boss was only allowed in manga and scripted-loss events?! Do not drag that crap into reality!!

I reinforced my entire body and pushed my running speed even higher.

But of course.

This monster, which had no sense of dramatic timing whatsoever, closed the distance between us in no time.

“Gwooooooooooo!!”

Its roar echoed even louder than before. The sound surged so violently that I almost thought my eardrums had burst, as if it were trying to harvest both my life and the girl’s.

“Damn it!!”

I turned around, pulled out the pistol I had tucked at my waist, and fired.

Bang, bang!! With two dry cracks, the magic bullets flew out and struck the ogre squarely between the eyes and in the heart... but apparently, to the ogre, that was no worse than having a pebble thrown at it. It did not even look hurt.

If anything, it was now furious that we had dared to resist.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“That ogre’s skin is harder than iron. Non-military magic bullets won’t work on it... Even military ones would be questionable.”

“I would’ve loved to hear that earlier!! Also, help me out here!!”

“I can’t. I can’t use my ability right now. I can’t fight either, so I’m only good as bait.”

“If I use you as bait, then what was the point of saving you?! Then take this and keep it in check!!”

“Understood.”

I handed the pistol to the girl riding in the back of the handcart, then faced forward and ran as hard as I could.

The enraged ogre let out yet another roar, one I had lost count of by now, and charged toward us at terrifying speed.

I was only looking forward, so I did not see it, but I could tell from the footsteps. This was bad. Too damn scary.

“It’s not even working as a deterrent. Don’t you have anything stronger?”

“If I did, I’d be using it!!”

While fleeing from the ogre at full speed, I desperately tried to figure out whether any card I currently had could get us out of this mess.

What could I use? What could save us right now?

I kept running from the ogre while frantically remembering every toy I had played with up through elementary school, but the difference in speed was too ridiculous, and we were about to enter its attack range.

Worse, misfortune always happened at times like this.

“Out of bullets...”

“You can still use it if you pour magic into it, right?!”

“Not in my current state. The poison is stopping me from using magic properly. I need at least another full day to recover.”

“Aaaaaah!! Damn it!! Hey, shine the light on the path ahead of me!! And give me the gun!!”

Still running while facing forward, I took the gun from the girl and quickly poured magic into it to generate bullets.

Reloading did not take that long. After about five seconds, the bullets were ready.

“Here, reloaded!! Hurry up and shoot!!”

“Roger that.”

The girl took the gun and started suppressive fire again.

Judging by the fact that the footsteps were getting closer instead of farther away, it did not seem to be working in the slightest, but it was still better than nothing.

“It’s going to catch up.”

“I know!!”

I immediately activated my ability and generated a metal bat right in front of the ogre’s face.

It was practically a gamble based on the idea that if something suddenly appeared right in front of its eyes from nowhere, it might flinch. Actually, I could not think of any other option.

Sad as it was, nobody should expect some revolutionary flash of genius from me when I did not exactly have a high battle IQ.

“Gwo?!”

It was a simple move, but it seemed effective on the ogre. It stopped and watched cautiously.

We were supposed to use that opening to put as much distance between us as possible.

That was how it should have gone.

All we had to do was move through the bad footing inside the cave and return along the path we came from. A simple job. But apparently, heaven had completely abandoned me.

We reached a slightly wider area with a fork in the path. I had a rough idea of where we were, so I should not have gotten lost.

Yes, assuming the path had not changed.

“...Hey, hey, what the hell is going on?”

“This cave is a shifting type. Its paths change depending on the time. I was too focused on suppressive fire, so I forgot about the time... Cough.”

The path we had definitely taken before was sealed off, and no new path had appeared either.

It was a complete dead end.

To get out of the cave, we had to go back the way we came. But the ogre was waiting somewhere down that route. And with my current strength, defeating that ogre was impossible.

“Do you know the way back?”

“I know the way. But unless we do something about that ogre, it won’t matter.”

“I know that already. You— Wait, now that I think about it, what’s your name?”

I had forgotten to ask when I gave her the potion. Only now did I finally ask the girl’s name.

The girl shook her white hair, stained with blood and mud, and gave me her name.

“Lyzvelt Grinia. That is my name.”

“Right, Lyzvelt Grinia? That’s long. Can I call you Lyz? Whatever happens, we’re escaping from that bastard.”

“...? Lyz?”

“It’s like a nickname. You don’t like it?”

The girl who had called herself Lyzvelt smiled quietly and shook her head.

In her eyes, the light of a will to live had returned.

Nice. I liked those pretty eyes much better.

“I don’t dislike it. Lyz… Lyz... Lyz… That's a cute nickname, Grey-chan!"

"Grey-chan? That's a bit... Well, whatever. More importantly, it’s coming!!”

After deepening our bond by the tiniest amount, we turned our eyes toward the depths of the cave, where footsteps carrying pure despair were approaching.

***

Marseille, the second most populated city in FR.

It was a lively city where all kinds of people came and went, but every city had its dark places.

“P-Please, stop... I really don’t know anything.”

“Hah? There are signs she passed through here, and you’re telling me you didn’t see her? Are those eyes in your head just for decoration? Come on, remember!! Squeeze out everything, starting from the memories you had back inside your mama’s belly!!”

“Agah...”

A dark alley with no streetlights. It was a road normally used only by outlaws, and now a large man screamed there while covered in blood.

The area above his eyes was swollen, both of his arms were broken, and the smell of burned flesh was rising from his legs.

“Nii-san. You’re overdoing it. I honestly don’t think this guy knows anything.”

“Hm? You think so?”

“If he still says nothing after all this, then he probably really doesn’t know. We can mess around later. Right now, we still have a job to finish.”

“…Tch. Waste of time.”

The crimson-haired man tossed the larger man aside like garbage, then casually ran a hand through his younger brother’s hair.

The younger brother’s pale blue hair shimmered under the moonlight like the surface of a frozen lake. He looked mildly bothered by the rough treatment while staring down at something resembling a smartphone.

“If you had killed her with the first strike, none of this would’ve happened, Nii-san.”

“Yeah, yeah. That part’s on me. But her survival instincts are ridiculous. She got burned, frozen solid, and stabbed with poison, and she’s still alive. The higher-ups said she wasn’t supposed to have resistance against that toxin.”

“That part surprised me too. Honestly, the fact she’s still alive doesn’t even make sense anymore. But alive is alive. If we don’t finish her now, next time we might be the ones dying.”

“Hah. Like they’d kill one of their precious ‘success cases.’ They can’t do that. That’s why they sent us instead. We’re success cases too.”

“They apparently implanted self-destruct systems in all of us in case we ever rebelled. But both we and she managed to disable them somehow. Unless an S-rank hunter shows up, nobody’s killing us.”

The younger brother raised his gun and calmly fired.

A dry gunshot cracked through the alley.

The large man, who had been desperately trying to crawl away after surviving, collapsed face-first onto the pavement with a bullet hole between his eyes.

“The tracker’s been discovered too. What a hassle…”

“So now we search the whole city one place at a time?”

“Looks that way. Still, there are only so many places she can hide in a city like this.”

“The dungeon?”

“She probably opened a hidden route and escaped through there. She can barely use magic right now, so if her luck runs out, a monster might finish the job for us.”

After that, the crimson-haired older brother and the pale-blue-haired younger brother headed toward Marseille’s only managed dungeon.

Chapter 7: Nope, nope, nope, absolutely nope!!