Pioneering the Apocalyptic World - Chapter 52
Chapter 22: To the surface
“An urn… That is that thing, right? A container to put the bones left after cremation at a funeral.”*
“Yes. In Alness Village, we put it together with the burial goods and bury it at the base of a large tree.”
Since they are elves who lives with the forest, I wonder if it could be called a tombtree instead of a tombstone?
Cremation is almost exclusively done in Japan, but I’ve heard that in other countries that burials are the standard, but… Well, in this world, undead occur normally, so I guess they can’t just bury the bodies.
But… The fact that this urn is here means.
“… This is from that miko?”
“I can’t say for certain, but it’s highly possible.”
When I gently dug out the urn, I found that the bottom half had cracked and the contents had spilled out, leaving only a few white fragments that looked like bones.
The name of the item is simply [Hyuman’s bones], but the individual name is not displayed. Well, the bones from monsters are also described with only their racial names……. I wonder if it means that identification of an individual is not possible.
……I’m not very keen on it, but it feels wrong to just leave it as it is, so let’s put it in my item box for the time being.
So I suppose that the cause of this turmoil is the dungeon core that was buried as part of the burial goods along with the remains of the miko, and after a long period of time, malevolent thoughts had accumulated, or because the erosion from God of Destruction’s power, It became a monster?
If that was the case, I wonder why it still have the conscious of that miko…?
Well, there’s no way I can figure it out by just thinking about it here. So I stood up and thought about what to do when…
Gan! Gan!
A sound suddenly came from the side. Do the roots began to move! ? When I put a fighting stance in hurry.
“Rion, were you here after all?”
“Uru!”
While breaking the surrounding soil by hitting, Uru suddenly showed her face from a hole in the wall.
Was it the effects of the explosives arrows, she had a lot of sooty spots, but she doesn’t look like she was seriously injured.
She seemed to be in cheerful state and that made me let out a big sigh of relief, and I lost my strength in my legs and sat down.
“Rion, are you tired?”
“That’s part of it, but…… I’m relieved that you’re safe.”
“Mu… I see…”
Haa, after all, it’s hard not to be able to contact her when we get separated. I want to develop a communication device, or at least a transmitter fast… I need to research if I can do something like that with magic stones.
“Did Uru also aimed for the core?”
“That’s part of it too… But for some reason I felt Rion’s presence from here.”
… Am I a transmitter? A Uru’s exclusive one though.
Uru then turned her face to Fricka, and inclined her head saying “Hmm?” and blinked her eyes several times in confusion.
“Fricka, did something good happen?”
“Eh… Why are you asking?”
“You are clearly less gloomy than you was before we got separated. Well, I guess Rion did something again.”
No, it’s true that I did something, but what exactly you mean with the expression “She did something again.”…?
Next time, I’ll ask you about what you think about me for an hout … Ah, no, that’s fine. I’m afraid to what I gonna hear about.
While I was thinking about futile things like that, Fricka was explaining what had happened earlier.
Then, as expected, Uru’s anger was about to explode.
“Is that so… Not only Fricka’s, but also Rion’s life… That guy, he seems like he doesn’t value his own life that much, does he?”
She made a very scary smile. It scared me a little too…
…… I understand the feeling of wanting to get angry, but let’s leave the explosion part to later.
In any case, we were able to join Uru, so now began the consultation about what to do after this.
“It was considerably weakened by the third explosion, so wouldn’t it be better to just attack it again?”
That was Uru’s opinion.
She seems to think that the reason why he doesn’t attack us even though he’s that nearby is because he doesn’t have spare energy to attack us and is concentrating on regenerating.
If that’s the case, the more time we leave it alone, the more he will be able to restore his advantage over us. And the damage to the surroundings will increase because of the regeneration, so should we attack it all at once before that happens?
“Anyway, if we stay here like this, we don’t know when we will be buried alive. I think we should go out to the surface.”
Uru’s face is frowning slightly. I wonder if she remembered the time when we were almost buried.
Because how tough Uru is, I have the image that she won’t be crushed to death that easily, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything that she can do about the lack of oxygen…
I checked the number of recovery items, created additional explosive arrows, and prepared myself for a rematch as much as possible.
Oops, that’s right.
“Let’s harass him the most before we leave.”
“……Harass him?”
“I wonder if I should sprinkle this here.”
I took out holy water.
……Well, a slightly higher rank one than the usual one. It’s the one that I have enhanced Its effects by adding our every time friend, the sacred flower.
It looks that here is just exactly below the roots of that Evil Treant, so suck it as much as you like and suffer… Fufufufufu…
I sprinkled in large quantity, about half of the holy water that I have, then I decided that is about the time to start digging upwards when??
??Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaa
As soon as I heard a muffled scream, the roots began to move… And the ceiling began to crumble along with their moviment.
…… Ah, Oh no.
At situation that would be caused from now on. As expected even Uru-san, who is mild-mannered (?), yelled at me.
“Rion you fool!”
“S-S-Sorry! Immediately take the stone blocks??”
“No that’s is not necessary, just give me an explosive arrow!”
While tilting my head in my mind, I hand over the arrow to Uru, and prepared myself so that I can make a stone block shelter at any time.
Uru took a stance like she had took before, the spear thrower?or I should say harpoon thrower?stance, but the crucial difference is that this time she aims upward instead of forward.
And then, she threw it as hard as she could.
“Break throuuugh!!!”
Dogagagagagaga! ! ! Dogan!
“Uhyaah!?”
“…!”
It hit the ceiling with much more speed than I could shoot a arrow with a bow.
And not only did it open a large hole to the surface, but it also ripped out the branches and leaves of Evil Treant that were covering our overhead.
And we for the first time since leaving the village, saw the sky.
I narrowed my eyes at the falling sand and the bright light that I see for the first time in a long time and whispered “As expected…”. Fricka seems to became speechless at her feat.
“Its not the time for being dumbfounded! Rion, put some foothold!”
T-That’s right.
I stack up some stone blocks in a spiral staircase so that everyone can go out to the surface. I’m worried that the roots will start to rampage and make someone fall off, but I can’t afford the time to add a railing.
And by being luckily or unluckily, the position where we got out was right in front of the core. In others words, in front of the face of the Evil Treant.
The black haze, which should have been suddenly confused at the situation, whether by chance or by obsession, suddenly meet my eyes.
??RETURN IT TO ME, RETURN IT!
“There’s no way I’ll give her to you!”
“In the first place, she is not your thing!”
Uru punches away the roots that are relentlessly aiming at Fricka as usual, and I shoot an arrow through the gap.
While blocking his view while doing damage with the explosion, we… Didn’t take a distance, but instead approached him.
I created a stone block staircase again and ran up towards the core.
“I’ll be his opponent! Uru and Fricka, please take care of the rest!”
“… Be careful!”
“I-I understand.”
After building a firm foothold for the two to move easily, I confronted the black mist??the ghost of the Miko.
“Well, my predecessor… Are you prepared, right?”
*Translator note: Okay in my contry cremation is not the standard funeral method, so this part led me to a rabbit hole about how cremation works and how it differs in various parts of the world and the diferences about how the remains are treated after the cremation. So to put it shortly : In japanese culture, they cremate the body, and after that, they pick up the bones that remains (Yes, the bones usually don’t became ashes) and put them into an urn, that is then buried. To more information please visit the wiki page about japanese funeral.