Vol 1 Chapter 18 (1/2)
LEVEL 1: A Whisper, an Aria, a Prayer, an Awakening
Chapter 18: Her Reasons
“…Mary and I were friends in the same party ere still Crimson Moon trainees Me and Michiki were Warriors, Mutsus went relatively well for us at the start
Like you guys, we started by hunting goblins in Damro’s Old Town area We saved up our ht our Criraded our equip after kobolds in the Siren Mines around five miles north of Altana Even then, we had an easy tihts Back then, I never realized how unusual that was
Without a doubt, Mary was the one who brought stability to our fights In one regard, she’s still the saet to her head And back then she was always shed all the time With her around, there was no time for the rest of us ever to be in bad moods
She didn’t just ic spells She learned self-defense skills, too, to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with lected her duties as the party’s healer; she would treat us i with ot hurt, backing up Mutsu when they looked like they were in trouble… it was like she was three people in one
Our party was only five people, but it really felt hts were easy Way too easy
We didn’t really get h A lot of people arrived at the same time we did, and soht, the ot
At that time, we didn’t know about fear We had never encountered anything that’d give us even a seuess that was to be expected I kno though But Mary… surely, it was different for her, back then She must have been afraid for us every tiht away
Maybe she was afraid of the one little tear that could unravel the entire tapestry, and so she prevented it any way she could I think she knew it all along She knew that in reality, inning our fights by only paper-thin ins It was the rest of us that didn’t realize it We had becoant Overconfident
Other parties were also operating in the Siren Mines, and we didn’t want them to outstrip us So, confident that ere better than them, deeper ent Deeper, deeper into the mines There, in the fifth stratuet
You may already know, but kobolds are hairy hu heads They’re usually a little shorter than the average person, but in the lower depths of the Siren Mines, kobolds larger than 5’6″ are very coh they’re not as shly hierarchical and they have the technology to work ic, as well
Kobolds specialize inas many-person units, and at least a portion of their society consists of audacious fighters, afraid of nothing We had gotten used todown those kinds of kobolds on our way down to the fifth stratuer, superior to the as we didn’t let ourselves get caught off guard, then certainly, ay more capable than any usual kobold
He’s called Deathpatch for his black and white patches of hair and for how he’s killed numerous Crimson Moon warriors We heard that he and a few of his underlings are always prowling the mines, and if ere to encounter them, we should run without hesitation He’s been spotted as far up as the mine entrance, so there was need for caution even in the upper strata
We knew of Deathpatch, but until then, we never saw so much as a sliver of his shadow, no silhouettes of his form We didn’t really see any need to be careful
WhenDeathpatch’s hu at us, eren’t so ie him and win But ere on the fifth stratum The exit was levels and levels far above us, and there was no e could easily escape We thought we didn’t have a choice but to fight
We decided on a battle plan where Michiki and I took turns keeping Deathpatch occupied while Mary, Ogg, and Mutsus At first it went sh as the rumors said, but between me and Michiki, ere able to take him on Mary and the others steadily whittled away at the others And whenever one of us got hurt, Mary would heal us right away