"I'm opening it."
Rei called out to Elena and Ara behind him, then reached for the door.
"Gururururu!"
From the sky above, Set let out a cry as if cheering Rei on.
...Of course, the only ones who could recognize that as a cheer were those like Rei, Elena, and Ara—people who had known Set long enough. To everyone else, it sounded like nothing more than a gryphon issuing a threat.
In any case, Rei reached for the door while listening to Set's cry.
Judging by the state of the Marquis Seisole's House soldiers and knights outside, it was easy to imagine that countless traps lay beyond this door as well.
(If I could just use magic to handle it like I did with the ground, that'd make things easy, but...)
So he thought. But there should be a large number of documents inside this house that Duke Kerebel's House urgently wanted to obtain. Moreover, hearing that this was the home of the man who led the most powerful organization in Anesis, Rei also held out some hope of finding Magic Items.
Of course, ultimately, his greatest motivation was to find information related to Black Wolf.
"Well then, with that said..."
Saying that much, Rei opened the door.
In that instant, sensing something cutting through the air toward him, he immediately swung Death Scythe in a single flash.
"There were arrow traps outside the house too. A rehash is a bit much, don't you think?"
"...In this situation, the very fact that you can swing Death Scythe like that is already strange in all sorts of ways, I think..."
The one who muttered that with a dumbfounded expression was Ara.
Rei had swung Death Scythe—a weapon with a two-meter shaft—while standing right beside the open door, slashing apart the arrow that had flown at him.
How much skill that required... there was no need to even consider it.
But Rei, receiving Ara's words of admiration, entered the house without paying it any particular mind.
In that moment, a thick scent of blood drifted over.
"This is..."
Rei's gaze fell to the floor right inside the doorway.
What spread across it was blood, blood, and more blood.
It was likely the blood of those who had—whether fortunately or unfortunately—managed to break through the traps set outside this house.
However... Rei felt something off about the drifting scent of blood.
He didn't have any definite proof. He didn't, but...
"Doesn't it seem like this blood scent... is drifting in from somewhere other than this hallway as well?"
Before Rei could voice that dissonance, Elena murmured those words.
At that, Rei also realized the true nature of the dissonance.
"Right. This blood scent is drifting in from elsewhere too. And it doesn't seem like fresh blood that just flowed..."
"Huh? Is that so?"
In response to Elena and Rei's words, Ara replied with a puzzled tone.
For Ara, whether the drifting blood scent was coming from somewhere other than the blood right in front of her, or whether the blood was fresh—those were things she simply couldn't discern.
If the blood scent had been mixed with something like the stench of decay, she might have been able to tell it was old... but at the very least, Ara couldn't detect any such smell.
Still, she didn't doubt Elena's words.
It wasn't that she blindly believed Elena, but she couldn't imagine Elena lying in a situation like this.
Moreover, not only Elena but Rei as well were saying the same thing, so she couldn't bring herself to deny it.
"Yeah... The problem is where exactly this blood scent is drifting from. The fact that it's not fresh blood... gives me nothing but bad premonitions."
"Indeed. Extremely bad premonitions."
That two people with such sharp senses were saying so meant there was undoubtedly something terrible in this house—or so it seemed to Ara.
"Then we need to proceed with even greater caution than before, ready to respond immediately no matter what happens. One fortunate thing is that this house isn't all that large, I suppose."
At Ara's words, Rei and Elena nodded in unison.
This house was reasonably spacious, but still fell within the range of an ordinary home.
It was clearly cramped compared to the Duke Kerebel Mansion, and also compared to the other nobles' mansions in Anesis.
Because of that, searching the interior—and investigating what could be called the root of the dissonance that Rei and Elena had sensed—shouldn't take that much time.
If this were a mansion as large as the Duke Kerebel Mansion, searching inside would have been quite an ordeal.
So in terms of searching a place like this, this incident was by no means a bad one.
"Well, there'll naturally be traps and the like, so we'll need to stay careful about that."
Muttering so, and reasoning that lingering near the entrance would only risk triggering another trap, Rei glanced at Elena and Ara, then pressed deeper inside.
In that instant, Rei pulled Death Scythe close, bringing the shaft in front of himself.
A faint metallic sound reached the ears of Elena and Ara behind him.
"Rei?"
In response to Elena's question, Rei shook his head to indicate there was no problem.
Even as he did so, Rei directed his gaze at the needle that had fallen to the floor.
Rei's B-Rank party, Crimson Lotus Wings. One of its members, Byune, used a weapon called Long Needles, but what Rei had blocked with Death Scythe's shaft was no Long Needle—it was just an utterly ordinary needle.
The kind of needle that wouldn't look out of place being used for sewing.
If this had been a dungeon or a noble's mansion with the spaciousness of the Duke Kerebel Mansion, he could have evaded without bothering to block.
But this was, after all, an ordinary house, and the hallway didn't have that much room to spare.
And above all, right behind Rei were Elena and Ara.
Ara aside, for Elena standing right behind him, dealing with a suddenly flying needle wouldn't have been difficult... but considering the worst case, Rei disposing of the needle here was still the best option.
(Oh, wait. It wasn't aiming for my face or anything, so would it have been fine if I just let the Dragon Robe take it?)
The Dragon Robe Rei possessed was, as the name suggested, an item made from dragon materials.
Moreover, it wasn't something made by some run-of-the-mill alchemist or craftsman, but a work of Esta Nor, who was often regarded as the greatest alchemist in history.
Lately he had been making maximum use of its simplified air conditioner-like function to stay comfortable in both winter and summer, but even purely as armor, it was top-tier equipment worthy of the highest praise.
So much so that Rei could confidently declare that something like a needle strike would never be able to pierce the robe.
But that was something only Rei Wearing a Dragon Robe could say.
"Watch out. It wasn't just arrows—a needle came flying too. It's coated with something... probably poison."
At Rei's words, the one who grimaced was Ara rather than Elena.
Elena was equipped with excellent gear, but Ara's equipment was a tier or two below hers.
Even so, as the commander of Elena's Escort Knight Order, she possessed first-rate equipment... but staying alert for needles flying from who knows where was still difficult.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes. I can handle attacks of this level."
In response to Elena's words, Ara answered immediately.
Elena noticed that those words carried a slight hint of bravado.
But considering Ara's abilities, Elena also believed she wouldn't be unable to cope if it actually came to that.
Perhaps because Ara spent so much time with Elena, she inevitably tended to measure herself against Elena as her standard.
When she did, she naturally felt inferior.
...The very act of comparing her abilities to Elena's was already a mistake, though.
Of course, not everything about Ara was inferior to Elena.
For example, when it came to brewing tea, it was without question that Ara was far superior.
"Alright then, let's go."
Rei announced, and led Elena and Ara down the hallway.
Naturally, advancing down the hallway triggered traps, but rather than disarming them, Rei forced his way through.
Fortunately, since the house wasn't large enough to be called a mansion, walking down the hallway led to finding doors quickly.
"What do we do? There are several doors, but it's safe to assume every one of them has a trap."
If they were traps set on the ground like before, Rei could somewhat sense them... though only the simple ones, naturally.
But discerning traps set on doors was something Rei couldn't possibly manage.
In other words, opening a door required doing so with the assumption that a trap would be triggered.
...The one to take on that role would be Rei, wearing the highly defensive Dragon Robe, but that didn't mean he wanted to get caught in traps over and over again willingly.
After all, even with the Dragon Robe, there were traps it couldn't block—it wouldn't be strange for something like a liquid or gas to spray out.
"In a case like this... I think the innermost one is the most suspicious."
Saying that, Elena looked at the door at the very end of the hallway.
Following her gaze, Rei nodded in understanding at her words.
In fact, in the manga and novels Rei had read when he was in Japan, most bosses were depicted as being in the deepest room.
He couldn't treat this world the same as the manga and novels he knew, but still, he somehow felt Elena's observation was correct.
Thus, with Rei agreeing with Elena's opinion, and Ara having no particular thoughts of her own, she had no intention of objecting to Elena's words.
"Then it's that door. Let's go."
Rei muttered, and started down the hallway again...
"Hm? This is... there are no traps?"
The moment he began walking toward that door, he noticed that the traps had completely vanished, and a strange sound escaped Rei's lips.
Up until this point, traps had activated and attacked Rei after just a few steps—or in some cases, a single step—but for some reason, they had suddenly stopped triggering.
"Rei? What is it?"
Perhaps finding Rei's behavior strange, Elena asked.
"It seems like there are no traps from here on. I don't know if there were never any traps set beyond this point to begin with, or if they were deactivated because we decided to go to that door, though."
Normally, one might wonder if something could really pull off such a clever trick.
But the traps that had already activated or been deactivated turned into entirely different traps the next moment, existing right there once again.
How exactly something like that could be done was beyond even Rei's understanding.
He could guess that it was likely the power of some Magic Item or something similar, but conversely, that was all he could guess.
Therefore, no matter what unreasonable events occurred inside this house, he could only accept them as simply being that kind of place.
"No traps, huh... I'd like to say there's nothing to worry about then, but I suppose it's not that simple."
Perhaps there were no traps because there was no need to set any.
That was the question that crossed Rei and the others' minds, but they couldn't just stay here regardless.
Originally, they had come to find the master of this estate, obtain documents related to the Black Wolf incident, and also serve as sanction for laying hands on Rei—who existed as a guest of Duke Kerebel's House—and damaging their prestige.
"Right... Let's go, then. Make absolutely sure not to let your guard down."
Though it went without saying, he said it as a formality, and Rei proceeded down the hallway... before long arriving at the door at the far end.
Naturally, no traps activated while walking down the hallway.
Reaching the door, Rei looked at Elena and Ara, and after seeing them nod, reached for it.
Rei opened the door while remaining ready to respond immediately to any trap, but—whether it should be called predictable or natural—no trap activated here either, and the door swung open.
What they saw then was... a grand room, with several pieces of furniture that looked expensive at a glance, yet completely empty with no one inside.