Seeing Rei lightly kick the floor, Elena and Vihera each nodded in understanding.
Asimov, while keeping an eye on the two of them, seemed more interested in the various Magic Items scattered around the shop and was looking around with curiosity.
Byune, perhaps frustrated that she had been outwitted despite being a thief, began examining the floor before Rei could even say anything.
"Well, since there's no escape route in the walls or ceiling, the only place left is underground," Vihera said.
"I suppose so. But... even if they escaped from here, where would they be heading? Based on what you were telling the guards earlier, a significant number of them are mobilized for this incident, right? If so, it'd be tough to hide and flee within Gilm," Elena replied with a puzzled look.
Rei shared the same opinion.
(Did they dig through the ground to get outside of Gilm? Well, it's a possibility, but... Gilm should at least have countermeasures against monsters that burrow through the ground.)
While not as common as flying monsters, there were indeed monsters that dug through the earth to travel.
Given that, Rei couldn't possibly believe that Gilm, a frontier town, would neglect countermeasures against such creatures.
"Mn!"
Byune's voice suddenly rang out through the shop.
Under the gazes of the others, she channeled magic into a pot sitting near the wall.
With a sound like a lock disengaging, the floor beside the pot shifted, revealing a staircase wide enough for two adults to pass through comfortably.
"I see. So this is how they escaped from the shop. I don't know why they'd go to the trouble of building such an elaborate mechanism, though. Could it be that this shop originally belonged to someone from the Bestia Empire? I thought everyone connected to them was thoroughly rooted out in the previous incident," Rei muttered.
"So they couldn't get them all, huh?" Vihera said, then asked, "So what's the plan? Are we pursuing them, or waiting for reinforcements?"
"...We can't just let them get away. It might already be too late, but there's a chance we could still catch up. If so, we should go after them."
"I figured you'd say that. So, who's going?"
Rei pondered the question.
First, since they'd be navigating a hidden passage, Byune's skills as a thief were indispensable. Since they were pursuing an alchemist and a magic item shop owner, Asimov's expertise would also be necessary. And since he himself was the target, he couldn't exactly stay behind.
Furthermore, with no way of knowing what lay ahead at the end of this escape route, Vihera and Elena were the most reliable people to have as combat strength.
He would have brought Set along if it could fit, but given the narrow stairs leading underground, that wasn't feasible.
"Right..."
Perhaps sensing his hesitation from his tone, Elena was about to speak up when—
"Lady Elena, are you safe!?"
A voice suddenly echoed through the shop.
The woman who burst inside was carrying an axe.
Rei immediately recognized who she was.
And of course, Elena needed no time at all to identify the newcomer.
"Ara, you came. I told you to wait at the inn, didn't I?"
"You never came back, and someone at the inn told me you were involved in some kind of trouble, so I hurried over!"
At those words, everyone in the shop—including Rei—wore expressions of understanding.
Elena, who was only supposed to be taking a stroll through town, had somehow gotten caught up in trouble. Hearing that, Ara must have been unable to sit still and rushed out of the inn.
It was a perfect display of her loyalty to Elena.
"Yes. Well, it wasn't quite a massive brawl for Lord Rei or Lady Elena... But I heard they were dealing with an incredibly cunning opponent, so I worried they might escape and cause another incident," Ara explained, clearly worried.
Elena, however, didn't look particularly troubled by this. If anything, she wore a faint smile.
"Don't worry. Just in case, I had Ielo tail that woman. Even if she does escape, Ielo won't lose her."
At Elena's words, Rei realized that Ielo—who had been present when they captured Adria—had vanished from Set's back without him noticing.
(I just assumed it had wandered off after something that caught its interest, but I guess not.)
From what Rei could tell, Ielo was still essentially a child, the type to pounce on anything that sparked its curiosity without a second thought.
Since it hadn't been that long since Elena created it with Dragon Language Magic, that assessment wasn't entirely wrong.
...Of course, the same could be said for Set, who had only been brought into this world by Beast Magic a few years prior.
(That's probably why Set and Ielo get along so well.)
As Rei reflected on their friendship—born from similar mental ages and the shared experience of being created by extraordinary individuals like Rei and Elena—Elena smiled at Ara and spoke.
"More importantly, Ara, you've come at just the right time. We're about to use these stairs to pursue the one who escaped. When the guards arrive, I need you to relay that to them."
"Eh? Um, Lady Elena? What exactly are you doing?"
It was only natural that Ara couldn't make sense of the situation. She had heard that Elena—who had gone out for a stroll—had gotten into trouble, and when she came to find her, Elena was inside a Magic Item shop, about to descend a hidden staircase leading underground.
Rei being there was fine. Elena had originally gone out into town to find him, so that wasn't strange at all.
But the presence of someone with beauty that rivaled Elena's was an entirely different matter.
Though Ara came from a noble family, she had never encountered anyone who could match Elena's looks.
She had seen countless noble daughters and women who prided themselves on their beauty, but the woman standing before her was, quite literally, a beauty equal to—if not greater than—Elena's.
It was her first time seeing such a person, so it was only natural for her to wonder why someone like that was here.
As it turned out, Vihera was equally curious about Ara—but for different reasons. What caught Vihera's attention wasn't Ara's appearance, but her raw strength.
In the midst of what could have blossomed into a complicated dynamic on multiple fronts, it was Rei who broke the silence.
"Sorry, Ara. I've got some things to take care of right now. There's plenty I should introduce and explain, but that'll have to wait. Elena, Vihera, Byune, Asimov—let's go."
With that, Rei headed for the stairs, deciding that their priority was to pursue the shop owner.
"Wait, Lady Elena!?"
"Sorry, Ara. I'll explain everything once this is settled."
Elena said only that and descended the stairs, leaving Ara behind.
Left alone in the shop, Ara moved toward the door without any real understanding of what was happening.
She didn't step outside, however—likely because she understood that something might happen in the shop, and if it did, she would need to handle it.
Despite her complaints, she held such deep affection for Elena that she fundamentally couldn't refuse a direct request from her.
"Still... who was that shamelessly dressed woman? Could she be Lord Rei's second lover? But they didn't seem to be on bad terms with Lady Elena... Hey, what do you think?"
Ara's gaze settled on Set, who was keeping watch just outside the shop.
"Guruu?"
Set tilted its head, round eyes blinking in confusion as if to ask what she meant. Ara smiled and reached out to pet it.
At the bottom of the stairs lay a single room.
But it was far from an ordinary one.
"This is... someone with quite advanced alchemy skills, it seems," Asimov muttered, glancing around the room in admiration.
Numerous experimental apparatuses and materials were scattered about inside.
Among them were extremely rare materials from high-rank monsters that required advanced techniques to handle. That alone was enough for Asimov to gauge just how skilled the alchemist who worked here was.
There were always those who used expensive materials without the skill to match, but one look at this room made it clear that whoever had been here was not that type of person.
"That much?" Rei asked.
He could tell that the items spread across the room were related to alchemy, but he wasn't familiar enough with the craft to judge a practitioner's skill level just by looking at their tools.
Elena and Vihera were in the same boat, directing questioning gazes at Asimov.
Asimov met their looks with a grave nod.
"Yeah. If we're talking purely about skill as an alchemist, they're almost certainly above me. Besides, look at all the materials they left behind."
He gestured toward the various materials placed throughout the room.
"When they fled, they must have taken the truly rare materials with them. In other words, what's left here isn't important enough for this alchemist to prioritize. ...And even by normal standards, these are all undeniably first-class materials."
"So the alchemist who escaped from here took even rarer materials with them?" Rei asked, his expression souring.
Asimov nodded.
"But isn't it also possible that there was no alchemist here at all? Maybe this is just a workspace, and by coincidence, they happened to be absent today," Vihera suggested.
"No, look over there."
Asimov pointed to a glass bottle on the table.
Inside was a green liquid.
"That green liquid is something called Pania's Dream. If you don't keep stirring it while infusing it with magic at a constant rate, it turns brown and becomes useless in under an hour."
"...It's green," Elena observed.
Just as she said, the liquid called Pania's Dream remained green, with no trace of brown anywhere.
That meant someone had been here until just moments ago. Given the current situation, it was highly likely that someone was the alchemist behind this incident.
"That's right. And the magic infusion adjustment for Pania's Dream is quite difficult, too," Asimov added.
"Mn!"
Just as Asimov spoke in admiration, Byune let out a short but clear cry to draw everyone's attention.
She was pointing at a section of the wall.
With all eyes on her, she tapped the wall in a regular pattern. Eventually, with a click of something disengaging, a portion of the wall shifted, revealing a passage leading deeper inside.
"A hidden passage, huh. A hidden passage on top of a hidden staircase... They certainly were well-prepared," Elena murmured with a hint of admiration.
For Rei and the others, though, the more fitting sentiment was that the alchemist had made things needlessly complicated.
"Byune, can you take the lead?"
"Mn!"
Byune gave a quick nod at Rei's words and stepped through to the other side of the hidden door.
The rest of the group naturally followed.
Beyond the door was a single straight corridor.
It seemed that even when building an underground escape route, there wasn't enough space to turn it into a maze.
As they ran straight through the underground passage—its dirt floor packed hard underfoot—
"Mn!"
Byune, running at the front, let out a sharp cry and came to a halt.
Rei and the others behind her stopped just as quickly.
Once everyone had stopped, Byune fixed her gaze on the nearby wall and carefully reached out to it.
Since the passage had been dug from earth, the walls were likewise made of compacted dirt.
Byune pressed her hand firmly yet carefully against the wall, then began performing some kind of work on it—though in truth, all she did was pull out the long needle she used as a weapon and stab it into the wall repeatedly.
"...What is she doing?" Rei asked.
"Probably disabling a trap that would've fired arrows, needles, or maybe poison from the wall. I've seen her do something similar back in the Exil Dungeon," Vihera explained.
Sure enough, once she finished, Byune gave a small nod.
With that, they resumed running through the underground passage. After that, they encountered no further traps, and eventually arrived at a spot where a ladder extended upward.