Ā Chapter 14
**Huji Labyrinth ā Floor 1 (Part 3)**
The undead Labyrinth Rat legion charged at Serena and her party.
Seeing dozens of rats gathered together was already disgusting and repulsive, but with the undead attribute added on top, the effect was tremendous.
*”AAAAAH!”*
The party’s mental fortitude plummeted vertically. It dropped like the price of coins Serena had once bought out of curiosity and lost her emergency funds on.
“Get away, get away!”
Everyone was busy frantically brushing off the undead Labyrinth Rats that were biting and crawling onto their bodies.
But all they could manage was jumping in place or flailing their limbs like inflatable dolls.
While the party wasted time, the rat legion diligently bit any exposed body parts like fingers and faces.
*Squeakā!*
The Leader Undead Labyrinth Rat, which had been silently watching its subordinates ravage Serena’s party, let out another loud cry.
Serena snapped out of her panic at the sound. Until then, she had been crying and flailing just like the others, brushing off rats biting her fingers.
Coming to her senses, Serena saw more rats being summoned from empty corners again. New recruits were being added to the undead Labyrinth Rat legion.
Serena swatted away a rat that had crawled onto her face and was biting her nose, and stomped on the rats that were being stepped on and kicked no matter how she walked.
“Everyone, snap out of it! We have to take down the leader first!”
“Understood!”
“Yes!”
“Eek!”
Hanson and Lavenda came to their senses at Serena’s shout. Chrome didn’t answer and only attacked the rats around her. She still seemed dazed.
“Chrome! You snap out of it too! We have to take down the leader!”
“I heard you!”
Chrome tore off a rat that was biting her ear and dangling, then crushed its neck bone. Even with its neck bone broken, the undead Labyrinth Rat thrashed its limbs and bared its sharp fangs.
“It won’t die even with its neck bone broken!”
Lavenda was horrified at the sight.
“With undead, you have to immobilize them or attack the caster!”
“In our village, we herded them into a pit and set them on fire!”
There are many types of zombies in the world. Walking zombies, running zombies, enhanced zombies, zombies that fall in love better than humans, zombies made by parasites, zombies made by drugs, zombies with bad burial sites, zombies awakened because a hell gate opened, and so on.
In the fiction she’d encountered in her previous life, there were so many different types of zombies that extermination methods varied, but there was one common preference people had:
Destroying the head neutralizes them.
Unfortunately, in this world’s undead, destroying the head didn’t neutralize them. They all moved through mystical power instead.
Instead, they had the weakness of being neutralized if the caster was defeated.
“Ugh, get away!”
Hanson swung his spear diligently and kicked at the rats, but he couldn’t overcome the numerical advantage of the rat legion.
“Waaah, Lady Serena!”
Rats had even invaded Philia’s glossy hairālike a hair essence commercialāand burrowed inside. Philia thrashed about as if nothing could be more horrifying.
Serena pulled the rats off and stomped on them repeatedly with her shoes, shattering their bones into tiny pieces.
“It’s too dangerous here. Let’s get out.”
Philia grabbed Serena and headed toward the door. Serena also wanted to escape, but it was common knowledge in the industry that when a door automatically closed, it was locked.
Going in was easy, but getting out was another matter.
“Hing. The door won’t push open. Then! I’ll protect you!”
Philia pulled Serena into her embrace, saying she would shield her. Her intentions were noble, but Serena would rather stomp even one rat to death than get bitten by one anyway.
“Let go! I can’t see in front of me!”
“Waaah! I’m so scared! Save me!”
When Serena pushed her away, Philia tightened her arms around her master and screamed. Serena’s vision was blocked and her ears hurt.
“You snap out of it too!”
A slightly ditzy and oblivious but pretty and loyal handmaiden. Even after falling into the Labyrinth, she was still oblivious, but she prioritized her master’s safety over her own, so Serena couldn’t get angry at her.
“Philia! Instead of shielding me with your frail body, catching rats is what helps me. Got it?”
“Yes!”
“Even just oneācatch it and break its leg bones so it can’t move. You can even crush them completely.”
“Got it! I’ll do my best!”
Philia nodded with a determined face. She was covered in scratches and her hair was disheveled, but she was still beautiful.
While Serena and Philia performed a tap dance of stomping rats near the door, Hanson, Chrome, and Lavenda worked to approach the leader rat.
It wasn’t easy. The rat swarm would rush toward whoever was closest to the leader rat. And when someone else tried to approach in the meantime, the leader rat wouldn’t stay still eitherāit would dodge or attack.
“If you get bitten, it’s dangerous!”
If bitten by the leader rat’s fangs, the bitten area would be severed like it had been cut by a cleaver. No one had been bitten yet, but everyone had the same expectation.
“Try stabbing it with the spear! What’d you bring the spear for? To boil soup with?!”
In times like this, Hanson should have been attacking the leader rat well with his spear, but his spear thrusts were completely ineffective.
“Kyaaah, Lady Serena!”
Hanson made a troubled expression at the scream coming from behind him. He seemed to have made a decision and reached his hand out to Chrome.
“Give me the sword.”
“A person who can’t even spear properly wants a sword?”
“I’m better with a sword.”
There’s a saying: a hundred days for the spear, a thousand for the halberd, ten thousand for the sword. It refers to the mastery time for each weapon. A spear can be learned in a hundred days, but a sword takes ten thousand.
Swords are the representative weapon, but soldiers don’t carry spears for nothingāthey’re easier to learn and advantageous in battle.
But he wanted to abandon the spear and use a sword? A sword that takes ten thousand days to master?
Even the common sense of an uneducated merchant would go against this. Chrome was flustered.
“Besides, this is a wooden sword!”
Should she indulge a brat who was putting on empty airs? While Chrome hesitated, Hanson moved his hand. Chrome had her wooden sword taken and received the spear instead.
“You’ve never even stabbed anyone with that!”
Hanson gripped the wooden sword, swung it to beat the rats, and put strength into his lower body.
“As I thought, the sword suits me better!”
With those words, Hanson lunged forward. The rat swarm rushed at him, but Hanson didn’t stop. He intended to attack the leader rat with the rat swarm still clinging to his body.
It was a bravery that couldn’t be found in the attitude Hanson had shown so far. Chrome admired it.
“If you’re gonna pull that shit, couldn’t you have charged with the spear too?”
“It’s probably a confidence issue, right?”
To attack while taking hits and charging, confidence had to back you up. Because he was more confident with a sword, he absolutely needed it.
With the undead rat legion clinging all over his body, Hanson moved nimbly. The leader rat dodged the wooden sword aimed at its head to the side. That was Hanson’s trick.
The wooden sword, which had been falling from top to bottom, naturally moved horizontally and struck the leader rat’s cheek. If it had been a real sword, it would have caused a deep wound.
Hanson’s attack didn’t stop there. He withdrew the wooden sword and thrust it deep into the leader rat’s snout. The tip of the wooden sword pierced through the rat’s neck and came out the other side.
If it had been a living animal, it would have died instantly, but they were fighting an undead. The leader rat tried to close its snout and snap the wooden sword in half.
Hanson pulled the sword out faster than the leader rat could close its snout and struck its head. Black, thick blood splattered and the sound of bones breaking was loud.
The leader rat’s eyeballs popped out and flew through the air. Stunned by Hanson’s performance, Serena was blankly following the trajectory of the falling murky eyeballs before she belatedly came to her senses.
“This is no time to be watching!”
Serena stepped forward herself, stomping on the rats gathered around the leader rat, and kicked the leader rat. The others also snapped to attention and attacked the leader rat with their own weapons.
Lavenda used all her strength to pound the leader rat and break its bones, while Chrome diligently stabbed with her spear, separating the tattered parts from the body.
Even after its head was flattened, the rat’s tail twitched and writhed before losing strength and falling to the ground.
Finally, the party had defeated the Leader Undead Labyrinth Rat.
With the leader rat’s second death, the remaining undead Labyrinth Rat legion disappeared.
They vanished without leaving any corpses, as if they had been hallucinations, but the wounds scattered across the party’s bodies proved they had been real.
“The rats disappeared! We won!”
“The door is open too! Look, Lady Serena!”
“It’s really dead, right? Right?”
The battle was over. The party, who had struggled and sweated, were rejoicing, and Hanson clenched both fists and cheered.
“WOOOOOH!”
Normally someone would have scolded him for suddenly doing that, but no one did. He had made the greatest contribution in this battle. Hanson deserved to celebrate.
“I didn’t know you could fight this well! Why were you messing around with the spear?!”
“Sir Soldier, that was truly amazing!”
“Once we get out of here, I’ll call the best blacksmith in Huji to make you a sword!”
“Hanson, your contribution is great. You really fought well.”
Hanson, who had been unreliable but was their only combat-class member they had to rely on, was showered with endless praise.
Hanson grinned, baring his teeth, and wiggled his fingers.
“Actually… I have a confession to make to everyone.”
“A confession?”
“The truth is, I’m not a capital guard.”
“Then are you from the Kizen Guard?”
Serena asked if he was a soldier from the place he’d mentioned before. She never thought he might have been impersonating a soldier.
Impersonating a soldier? That’s a capital offense. In a class-based society, impersonating public authority figures is treated harshly.
*’Maybe the capital guard was so busy they pulled in nearby security forces…’*
She was generously making positive speculations, but Hanson shook his head.
“I’m not a soldier either.”
“What?”
“The soldier isn’t a soldier?”
“Impersonating a soldier is punishable by death, isn’t it, Lady Serena?”
“That’s not it! I had no bad intentions! My older brother is a capital guard!”
“Did you decide to substitute for him because he was overworked?”
During the founding festival period, the Huji guards had reportedly worked extreme shifts without rotation, day and night. Had the younger brother, unable to watch, stepped in to take over the work?
“The truth is…”
What came out of Hanson’s mouth was this:
*Double Hanson*āthat was actually his older brother’s name. Serena silently offered condolences for the fact that “Hanson Hanson” was a real existing name.
The soldier impersonator’s name was *Ralph Hanson*.
Ralph Hanson’s older brother, Double Hanson, had worked as a guard in Huji, met his destined partner, married, and started a family.
“You said you had a nephew under a hundred days old.”
“Yes. He’s incredibly cute. But…”
A hint of sorrow mixed into Ralph’s eyes.
“They’re quadruplets.”
“Oh dear.”
Everyone let out a groan. Quadrupletsāthat was more than enough.
Fortunately, Ralph’s sister-in-law had given birth to the quadruplets healthily and was also healthy herself. But raising quadruplets was a warāa total war that required all-out effort.
Since she had been carrying quadruplets, even if she was healthy, her body wasn’t normal. The doctor recommended she rest as much as possible.
Ralph’s parents naturally helped, and from his sister-in-law’s family, the in-laws also came to assist. Ralph? He was naturally drafted into the childcare war.
With help from grandparents and uncles, the quadruplet childcare war seemed to be progressing smoothly enough.
Howeverā
“Mother threw out her back while holding one of the nephews.”
Dark clouds loomed over the peaceful Hanson household.
“The in-laws were older than my mother, and they overexerted themselvesāthey sprained their wrist ligaments.”
The children kept growing, but suddenly two people who could work were gone.
“Fortunately, the royal family and the lord gave us congratulatory money, so we could hire help, but they commute, you see. When there’s no helper, the remaining family members had to pitch in. The nephews are cute, but it was really tough. Tougher than squire training.”
“Squire?”
“I’ve been training as a squire under Sir Haro of the Kizen territory. I took a short leave because of the nephews, but this isn’t a vacation… Honestly, I wanted to return to the castle and resume training.”
*’So he was receiving knight training. No wonder he was good with a sword.’*
Quadruplet childcareātougher than harsh squire training. It was horribly grueling and exhausting, but seeing the nephews’ smiling faces made all the hardship vanish. Ralph had been working hard at childcare and housework.
“But then my brother saidāright in front of my sister-in-lawāthat the guard work was so busy and exhausting he was about to die, and that watching the kids would be easier!”
“What a shitty guy.”
That was exactly what Serena wanted to say.
