VIP Chapter 305: The Hysterm Family’s Vanished Secret Room (3k)
Shuna had never imagined one thing.
That the high-temperature steam she saw in the letter, which surpassed what ordinary dungeon monsters could achieve, could actually be seen with her own eyes in reality… No, experienced firsthand.
Because even though she directly pulled Will through the wall he was facing, without much contact with the steam, her arm on her back hand was slightly scalded by the sudden gas.
“Hoo… this… this damn thing, isn’t it you…”
However, before Shuna could finish speaking, Will lightly placed his index finger between his lips, making a “hush” gesture.
He tilted his head slightly.
“Shhh—”
Shuna quickly closed her mouth.
She stared at the wall.
The wall even seemed to be overflowing with a little steam. Even from such a distance, she could feel the scalding gas emanating from within.
However, the wall seemed to have been treated for moisture and high temperatures, so under these circumstances, even steam this hot didn’t seem to have burned through the wall.
In the darkness, with a slight leakage of light, the two people stood in silence. Shuna gazed into Will’s eyes.
—He had indeed suddenly seemed to understand something.
Shuna thought this as she looked at his eyes.
Beneath his deep blue pupils, which still shone like before, he once again hid his “secrets.” Will seemed to be that kind of person; he possessed a captivating charm only when he carried an unfathomable mystery about him.
Shuna herself felt confused.
Because when she had put a knife to Will’s neck… and her own neck, she hadn’t really thought much. At most, she thought that this decadent and utterly dejected Will, afraid of death, might have a tiny desire to live, and would softly beg her not to kill him.
Mhm, that’s right. She found Will, who had fallen into despair and then slowly stood up, quite interesting.
But…
What was he thinking when he looked at her?!
Why had he become so driven and full of purpose, as if he had been injected with a stimulant?
Could it be…
Could it be…
That he, he actually… still liked her? That her crazy idea of dying together… had instead… motivated him?
Yes, that was it! If Will ever wanted to die with her, she would definitely agree!
*Thump, thump, thump.*
As Shuna was still thinking this, from “upstairs,” a little offset from them, the sound of footsteps coming up could be heard, and then they gradually faded away.
“You guessed right. Even an orc’s nose would have a hard time distinguishing scents after high-temperature steam. She would notice something strange… there’s no scent of me in this room; instead, the scent comes from outside the door you dragged me through.”
Will then lowered his hand and explained.
“Oh, it’s because I taught her… she trusts my scent the most.”
Will seemed exceptionally confident about having Iaar under his control. If Shuna hadn’t just seen him slumped dejectedly on a chair, she would have almost thought that nothing had happened between them.
“Then, how do we get out of here? How did you get in?”
After everything was said, he stood in the room, looking around, showing a rare expression of bewilderment.
“It’s a long story. I… I only knew you were locked in the basement. So… so I kept experimenting with this knife to find a way into the basement, and then… I found a hidden tunnel.”
“The end of the tunnel… is here?”
Shuna nodded.
“Then let’s go out through the tunnel. If we’re a little lucky and don’t run into Iaar, we can get out of here.”
“…You… you, aren’t you going to explain?”
“Explain what? Oh… the principle of steam generation? I designed the room structure and steam outlets myself, and then asked a high-level mage that Carver knew to customize a continuous magic array inside. It’s powered by magic crystals, and I only need to activate it with a spell—Ah, it was a gamble, after all, it had been abandoned for many years, so it might not work.”
Will confidently “explained.”
No one had ever asked him about this in so many years!
This sauna room, which could regulate temperature for Iaar’s training, was his masterpiece. Although he had written to Carver for money and people, and even built the basement, the concept and principle were all his!
That’s why he could replicate it in the capital later.
“As expected of you, Shuna. No one has asked me about my work in so many years, yet you are so keen to understand the principles. You truly are my confidante.”
“Con… confidante… Ah… yes, yes, yes, it looks very, very impressive. Though that’s not what I wanted to ask…”
“Then what?”
“You’ve recovered just like that?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t… feel despair and pain anymore?”
“I don’t feel that way anymore.”
“You no longer feel that it’s good to be loved by them, so you gave up on everything?”
“It is indeed quite good to be loved by them. However… it seems I should get some revenge — and for that very reason, I must ‘disappear’ from their sight for a while.”
“…”
Shuna was not good at psychological analysis, especially when it came to Will.
She felt that he was abnormally excited now, but… she couldn’t say whether this was normal or not.
“Oh, right. And…”
“What is it?”
Shuna just turned around, and Will gently took her hand.
Then…
He lightly left a kiss on the back of Shuna’s hand.
“Little… Will…?!”
“Mmm… it’s really been a long time since I heard that name.”
He looked up and released her hand.
To be honest, Shuna didn’t find his kissing of her hand very “gentlemanly”; it had more of the air of a dissolute young man about to start his smooth talking in the next second.
“Thank you. Because of you, in those ten seconds, I remembered many things and indeed found a new goal… Although you might think I’m a bit strange… Mmm… let’s just consider it ‘Will’s Blackening’? Anyway, it seems the other three also always become like this after being triggered at a certain point. It conforms to the ‘First Law of Blackening’.”
“…Can you tell me, specifically because of me… what?”
“The reasons are too complex to explain here, but…”
His eyes suddenly became very serious—
“I promise you, when everything is over, we will travel together to the deepest part of the dungeon.”
—See, see? He said something so saccharine again!
—But… forget it. Shuna admitted that she… she did enjoy this kind of thing.
—R-rather, it was precisely because Will was this kind of person that she could barely accept him talking like this.
“Okay, okay. Since… since you want to find a place to talk slowly, let’s hurry.”
“But, to summarize briefly, it’s probably… ‘I fell in love with you since my past life’?”
Will said this in a completely declarative tone, without any shame or hesitation, as if he were often confessing his love in the most plain manner.
*Plop.* Shuna’s footsteps stopped.
*Plop, plop.* Shuna slowly turned around.
*Plop, plop, plop.* Shuna’s face, starting from the base of her ears, turned red all the way to her scalp, seeming hotter than the steam in the next room.
*Plop, plop, plop, plop.*
“—W-w-w-w-what were you just saying?!”
“Mmm. That’s indeed the reason. Oh, it does sound a bit like a confession—Ah, so Shuna is… is the type with high offense, so high she can point a knife at my neck and say ‘I love you,’ but low defense, so low that…”
“S-s-s-s-shut up! Alright, I accept your confession. Even though it’s a bit strange, I’d still rather… I’d rather you say… you like adventuring with me, of course… the description of confidante isn’t bad either.”
“I like adventuring with you!”
“Okay, then… then let’s go.”
“But… wait a moment.”
When Will had first entered, he hadn’t noticed.
After he explained how the sauna room was built, he realized something—the basement construction seemed to have been entirely pushed by Carver.
Before that, the Hysterm Family’s basement had almost no other purpose.
So…
This was the first time even he had discovered that next to that room, beneath the Hysterm Family’s ground, there was such a large… secret room.
Then, the reason Carver was rarely interested in something seemed to have been found.
He wanted to hide this room from him—if Shuna hadn’t taken such an abnormal approach, he might not have discovered this place himself.
He lit a flame at his fingertips, rather than using the dim light from the broken corner of the room to examine it.
“This place seems to have been… used by Carver before, and… at least over ten years ago…”
“How can you tell?”
Shuna, who had just blushed, became energetic as soon as Will started his deduction, especially when it concerned the President of the Adventurer’s Guild.
“Because he hasn’t been here since I was born.”
“…Mmm. I know that too. When I was here before, I looked at the room’s furnishings. It looked like… a typical adventurer’s humble abode, rather unremarkable.”
“Because of the weapon hanging there?”
“And a potion-making table like this. If it were an academic research table, the process would be more complex. This simplified form is clearly made for practical use.”
“…”
Will was curious, but he really didn’t have much time to linger here.
The former Carver was the… captain of the first team. His strength was not weak, and his understanding of dungeons… might even be higher than his.
Will lit the flame and walked past the table. The clean surface seemed to have been tidied up, leaving no paper materials—Carver, being cautious, would not leave any paper materials for him to deduce.
But…
He did see it.
At the corner of the table, two very cute little figures were “carved.”
The way they were drawn bore some resemblance to how he taught Iaar and told Treya about the royal family.
One of them seemed to have long hair tied in a braid, and the other…
Was wearing the glasses he was most familiar with—something like a hereditary trait of the Hysterm Family.
“Let’s go, little~ Will. There should be… no textual information we can find here.”
“Mmm. However, you mentioned a place you thought was safer… you don’t mean…”
“Where else could it be? Of course, it’s…”
“The Tenth Demon City, which is always forgotten and always ‘welcomes us back’!”
