"This is bad, bad, bad!"
"Run!!"
"Get out of there, Mayuri!"
Hinata, Mayuri, Teruya, and the others were fleeing in sheer chaos.
The setting was a windowless, stone-built underground ruin. It bore a resemblance to the Shinjuku Dungeon, with thick candles burning inside recesses carved into the walls.
At a glance, it seemed like a standard underground ruins-type dungeon. However, Hinata and the others had no way of telling whether they were still somewhere within the Sendai Castle Ruins Dungeon or not.
"They're coming from the front again!"
"Don't try to fight them! Use the barrier as a shield and break through!"
"Roger!!"
The corridor was extraordinarily wide—as though built to accommodate creatures far larger than humans.
Then, blocking the path of the sprinting group, monsters emerged.
While their upper bodies resembled beautiful human women, their lower halves were long, thick serpent coils. They were monsters known as Lamias... or rather, undead versions of them.
Not a single trace remained of the enchanting beauty that would normally captivate onlookers. Their well-proportioned upper bodies, which usually would have driven stream viewers wild with excitement, were reduced to bare bone and rotting carrion.
Lamia Skeletons and Lamia Zombies. If one had to name them, those would fit best.
A pack of about ten such monsters stood waiting directly ahead.
Mayuri and her team charged right into them as a tight unit.
"Guh...?! Out of the waaaayyyyyyy!!!"
Leading the charge was Mayuri. Encasing the group in an arrowhead-shaped barrier, she drove forward to pierce straight through the Lamias' formation. Brandishing large scimitars and spears, the Lamias struck out to shatter her barrier.
Each and every blow gouged away at her MP, but Mayuri gritted her teeth and held the line.
From behind her, Teruya and the others unleashed attacks to blast the Lamias aside, but—
"Th-They're so tough?!"
"These guys are crazy strong?!"
"Just hit them with everything we've got!!"
—their strikes barely scratched them.
In a typical dungeon, Lamias only began appearing from Floor 11 onward.
If this happened to be Floor 2 or deeper in the Sendai Castle Ruins Dungeon, their strength would easily be equivalent to Level 50, possibly even Level 60.
Even with Teruya and his comrades—explorers who had already pushed through to Floor 15 of the Shibuya Dungeon—unleashing full-power attacks without regard for MP consumption, they couldn't bring down a single Lamia in one hit. Considering that, the monsters were almost certainly around Level 50 in strength.
"Guh...?! Cow Tits!!"
"Stop calling me that!!"
The Lamias slammed their weapons into Mayuri's barrier, using their own bulk as walls to halt the charge. Unable to blow them back, Mayuri's forward momentum ground to a halt.
In that instant, Mayuri signaled Hinata—and Hinata unleashed a spell toward the swarm barring their path.
Holy Fire Magic—"Holy Explosion."
A fantastical fire—blue flames burning with a radiant white light—swelled in a fraction of a second, engulfing the Lamias. A moment later, the concussive shockwave of the blast sent the staggering monsters flying.
Holy Fire Magic possessed a massive damage multiplier against the undead. Even at Skill Level 1, it dealt double damage, scaling up to an astonishing tenfold increase by Skill Level 5.
However, Hinata's Holy Fire Magic was only Skill Level 1. Even with its high base potency, the multiplier was only 2x, which left her raw damage output lower than that of Teruya and the others attacking at full power.
Even so, the Lamias visibly shrank back from the sacred flames.
Normally, monsters fought heedless of injury, but even Lamia Undead seemed unwilling to endure attacks imbued with a holy attribute tailored to exploit their weakness.
Regardless, an opening was torn through their ranks—
"Now's our chance!"
"Hurry!!"
Mayuri and the others sprinted past the Lamias, fleeing without a single backward glance.
Behind them, refusing to let their prey slip away, the Lamias gave chase.
●◯●
Having been teleported to this underground ruin by Jackson, Hinata and her companions had naturally fallen into disarray.
Where were they? What had just happened? No one had any answers.
Yet they had no time to dwell on their confusion.
Almost immediately, Lamia Zombies and Lamia Skeletons had spotted them and attacked.
Teruya and the party fought back on instinct, but were quickly stunned by the monsters' sheer power.
They were unmistakably on a higher tier than anything the group normally faced—far stronger than the monsters roaming Floor 14 or Floor 15 of the Shibuya Dungeon.
Teruya and the others made a swift call.
The number of Lamias in a single encounter exceeded five, which was normally the upper limit for regular monsters in standard dungeons.
If they fought properly, they might win once or twice. But facing swarms of over ten Lamias at a time was not a battle they could repeat and realistically expect to survive.
Thus, Mayuri, Teruya, the rest of the team, and Hinata chose to run.
They dashed aimlessly through the vast underground passages in search of an exit. Before they had gotten very far, they ran into more Lamias again and again.
The Lamias pursued them relentlessly.
Refusing to be dragged into a direct confrontation, Mayuri's group focused entirely on escape.
It was fortunate that, early in their flight, they discovered Hinata's Holy Fire Magic was effective at driving back the Lamia Undead.
In the few minutes since, the fleeing party had already crossed paths with more than fifty Lamias, and dozens of them were now giving chase from behind.
Hinata, whose Agility stat was lower than the others, looked ahead toward Teruya while running desperately.
Slung over Teruya's left shoulder, beside his own backpack, was another pack. It was Takeo's.
When Jackson teleported them, Takeo's backpack, which had been resting near Hinata's group, had been swept up in the magic. As they fled, Teruya had taken pity on Hinata struggling to carry both and took it off her hands.
—Inside Takeo's backpack were untouched Medium Healing Potions.
—And Hinata, the party's Healer, had been separated from Takeo.
(Takeo-kun...)
She worried for him, even though her own situation was precarious.
(The drone seems to be with Takeo-kun, but... I can't even check until things settle down.)
The "Hinata Channel" drone camera had been filming near Takeo, so it hadn't been teleported with them. That meant she could theoretically check on him by pulling up the "Hinata Channel" stream, but—she couldn't afford a single second to stop and look while running for her life.
(No, first, we have to find a way out of here.)
She worried about Takeo, but securing their own survival came first.
They couldn't keep running forever. They had to escape soon—and just as Hinata steeled her resolve...
"——?!"
"Mayuri?!"
"What's wrong?!"
"We have to keep run—ning..."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...!!"
"Are you kidding me...?!"
"A dead end?!"
It was only natural.
Sprint aimlessly through an unfamiliar, sprawling ruin—a place that seemed more like a grand mausoleum or a mass catacomb—and there was no way they could navigate toward an exit.
—A dead end.
At the terminus of their frantic dash through the corridors, Mayuri and the others ground to a halt before a solid wall with nowhere left to go.
Gasping for breath, everyone spun around.
Behind them, surging down the corridor, was a horde of Lamia Undead so dense it choked the entire passage, rushing straight toward them.
There were no side paths between them and the Lamias to slip through.
There was no way out. They were completely cornered. And breaking through that massive horde to reach the other side was out of the question. Not with their current combat strength.
"D-Dammit...!!"
Mayuri cursed as she glared at the approaching Lamia horde.
"Give me a break...!!"
"What do we do?! Hey, what do we do?!"
"Ah, it's over... We're all gonna die here...!!"
"Teruya, if you're gonna awaken like a protagonist, now's the time, you know...?"
"Motosuke, if I could do that, I'd have done it already."
"Seriously, this is bad!!?"
"What are we gonna do?! How do we get out of this?!"
"Can't someone call for rescue?!"
"J-Just hold on! For now, we have to buy time with Mayuri's barrier!!"
Faced with impending doom, everyone fell into despair.
Every single one of them understood they were utterly checkmated.
(Takeo-kun... Takeo-kun, Takeo-kun, Takeo-kun...!!)
Hinata wished with all her heart that Takeo were here. Or that he would appear to rescue them.
If Takeo were here, he could blow away this entire horde of Lamia Undead and carve a path back. Just like he had done inside the Kobold Fortress.
But realistically speaking, no matter how she looked at it—
(......No, there's no way he'll make it in time... Then... But if I do that, it'll surely... No... But I have to...!!)
She wrestled with the thought.
Gripping the fabric over her chest in distress, Hinata was torn.
It was a deep conflict, a protracted torment. Yet her high Intelligence stat accelerated her thoughts, making it seem as though she had reached her resolve in mere seconds.
She exhaled.
Then, drawing a deep breath—
"Mayu-chan!!"
"—?!"
Hinata's resolute voice snapped Mayuri and the others back to their senses.
"Put up the barrier! Ikegami-san, Tamaki-san, Ashitaba-san, Hondo-san, keep the Lamias at bay with ranged attacks so they can't get close to Mayu-chan's barrier!!"
"—?! Cow Tits?! Wh-What—d-don't go ordering me around!!"
"—?! R-Roger!!"
"G-Got it!!"
"Leave it to me!!"
"—!! Understood!!"
Though bewildered by Hinata's sudden shift in demeanor, Mayuri and the others obeyed her directives.
Anyone could see that buying time was their only viable move right now.
More than that, however, Hinata's voice carried an undeniable authority.
Her commands held no trace of doubt, bearing a commanding confidence that assured them they could do no wrong by following her lead.
It was the voice of someone thoroughly accustomed to commanding and leading others.
"I mean, what the hell do we do after this?! You're not just gonna stand there and watch, are you, Cow Tits?!"
Stepping forward, Mayuri yelled as she erected a barrier between them and the advancing Lamias.
Hinata answered in a calm, steady voice.
"Don't worry. I'm... going to increase our numbers first."
"Huh?!"
Hinata opened her Status.
Currently, she had three Skill Points remaining. She allocated one point into Summoning, raising its Skill Level to 2.
With that, the number of Familiars Hinata could summon at once increased from four to eight.
Then, Hinata activated her spell: Summoning. Her first summon was—
"Monster Summoning—Gobunaga!!"
A glowing summoning circle appeared on the floor, and an instant later, a colossal monster materialized atop it.
It was a muscular, humanoid creature clad in ornate full-body armor, gripping a silver greatsword in its right hand and a gigantic, matching silver kite shield in its left. Standing roughly 3.5 meters tall, it was a colossal figure that could easily pass for a giant.
And upon its head sat a brilliantly shining crown—a Goblin that was—
"Whaaaaattt!!?"
"A Goblin King?!"
"It's a Goblin King!!!"
"A Goblin King summon is hereeeee!!!"
The Goblin King, Gobunaga, glared down at the Lamia Undead with an arrogant sneer.