The broken blade clattered to the floor.
The sun's power had already dissipated, and the blade had returned to its obsidian form.
Osian slowly turned around.
The Guardian was staring down at the broken blade with a dazed expression, as if he hadn't thought he would lose.
In the end, it was Osian who had won the final hand-to-hand combat.
Despite having the advantage of the high ground, Osian fought on, throwing himself into the fray.
It was a foolhardy move, to say the least.
Nevertheless, the Guardian was defeated.
Osian stared at the back of the guardian's head.
It was wounded, and if left to its own devices, it would kill itself.There's no point in wielding another blade against a guardian who will die without even touching him.
'And if he is a knight, he knows that defeat means death. He will accept that as a matter of course.’
Sharing a sword sometimes made you realize things you couldn't feel through conversation.
-Thud.
Osian sheathed his sword again at his waist.
He was about to see the Guardian's last stand.
The Guardian leapt from his seat, slammed into the wall, and disappeared beyond the crumbling ceiling of the ruins.
“......?”
It was unthinkable to Osian.
The guardian of the ruins had fled in the face of an intruder but what shocked Osian even more was that the knight hadn't been able to fight back, leaving his weapon behind.
‘A knight ran away?’
The words failed to come out of his mouth.
Osian was not one to show surprise under most circumstances, but this was different.
“Huh.”
That one word, uttered in disbelief, summed up the complexity of Osian's feelings.
At that moment, Terence and Balud, who had been watching the fight from afar, approached.
“Did you really take down the Guardian, that monster?”
Terence asked in amazement as he looked at Osian, who was still standing.
“Didn't I tell you to stay back? You should have gotten as far away as you could.”
“If you're dead, we'll be next, so what's the point of running away?”
Balud retorted nonchalantly, staring at a section of the collapsed ceiling.
“More than that, the......guardian has fled?”
“It seems so.”
“That's the first I've heard of that being possible. I thought a guardian usually guarded a ruin or dungeon to the death.”
That was something Osian agreed with.
Guardians are supposed to protect ruins, and why would they flee for their lives when they've been defeated?
It's hard to imagine that something has changed over the years.
'I knew he had intelligence,' I thought, 'but has he developed an ego that overrides his guardian duties?’
Perhaps what he wanted most at this moment was to survive.
‘In that case, he is no longer a Guardian, but a living intelligent being.’
It was unintentional.
A being with the opposite knight power of his own was born.
*
There was no point in arguing with a Guardian who had already fled, so Osian decided to focus on the task at hand.
‘Still, there are things to be gained from fighting.’
First of all, he was able to use both [Starlight] and [Moonlight] at the same time.
Before, when using only the Starlight, only the Starlight was used, and when using Moonlight, only Moonlight was used.
In the game, it was impossible to unleash skills of different attributes at the same time, but now that it's a reality, it's different.
'I don't have to be limited to the knowledge of the game. I need a broader, more colorful way of thinking.’
Depending on how he thinks, that alone opens up a wide variety of skills that he can utilize.
The last technique used was the same.
He used the skill without realizing it, thinking that he could wield a sword that had been compressed to the extreme through the Moonlight.
Instead of waiting for a given skill to be unlocked, he created a new skill on the fly.
‘Unbridled imagination.’
A key that will open new doors for him in the future.
‘At least I got something out of it, so it's not so bad.’
When Osian rejoined the group, the way they looked at him had changed.
Whereas before, they had merely treated him as a party member as a formality, now their eyes were filled with awe.
The cadets of the Grand Cloister Academy couldn't even make eye contact with Osian, especially when they realized that he had defeated a Guardian they couldn't even hope to defeat.
It reminded them of the way they had looked down on him before, as a sneaky fixer.
They didn't want to believe it, but Terence had testified to it himself.
This made Osian an aristocrat within the party, which naturally elevated his employer, Illua.
“Uh, something doesn't feel right.”
Illua was puzzled by the reaction of the people who had suddenly become so friendly to her.
It wasn't bad before, but now it was overwhelming to be treated like a prize.
“I've never been treated like this before.”
“Get used to it. There will be more of it.”
Osian's defeat of the guardian was a blessing in disguise.
Illua's share of the artifacts and rewards to come from the ruins was now nearly half.
All she had done was hire Osian.
Hiring good people was one of her virtues and abilities as an employer.
Besides, it wasn't as if Illua was doing nothing.
With her wealth of archaeological knowledge and various books and treatises, she had helped to find the traps, paths, and hidden spaces in the ruins.
A wizard would have to have magic to do this, but for Illua, who had no magic, to be able to do it was a testament to her abilities.
The search continued.
The tension that had been high at the beginning had now eased considerably.
It was a natural reaction to the disappearance of the Guardian.
With such a powerful guardian gone, it was safe to assume that there was nothing inside the ruins that would threaten their lives.
Not that they weren't worried about another Guardian coming out, but who cares?
There's a man here who just defeated a Guardian alone.
Of course, Osian wasn't too worried either.
'The main boss of this ruin is a mutant doppelganger anyway. It's not like there aren't other boss monsters at the core, but they're nothing compared to the doppelganger.’
Besides, the Mutant Doppelganger was in hibernation until someone came along, so it's lost a lot of time.
In the case of the boss at the heart of these ruins, that seemed far less likely.
‘It's probably still there, but at least it's weakened.’
The party finally reached the entrance to the deepest part and a large stone door stood in their way.
Normally, the levers on either side of the door would have to be activated to open it, but they had been cut and wouldn't work.
“We'll have to break it down.”
Terence started to use his magic, but the other explorers stopped him.
“What if we make a mistake and break the artifacts inside?”
“Besides, this door itself is of considerable archaeological value, so why break it?”
It's not that Terence doesn't understand the sentiment, but if that's the case, how can the door be opened?
The question was answered more easily than he thought.
Osian and Balud stepped forward.
“You came all this way to show off your strength.”
“We have to show off our strength if we want to eat something.”
Osian and Balud each took a side of the stone door and pushed with all their might.
-Dud, dud, dud.
The old stone gate creaked and slowly slid inward.
The mages and explorers stared in amazement at the sight.
They knew Osian was strong, but they just couldn't get used to his physical abilities. And what about Balud, whose strength rivaled Osian's?
If pushing through a ton of stone is any indication, Balud is no ordinary strong man.
They had dismissed the North Blinders as a criminal organization, but now they saw them in a new light.
Old dust drifted down and settled around the door but Terence blew it away with a Ventus School wind spell.
The dust settled, revealing a vast corridor.
“Wow. Such architecture.”
“I can't believe they built this underground and it's still intact. The building skills of the ancients are nothing to sneeze at.”
The archaeologists' eyes rolled, and so did Illua's.
“Uh, I can't wait to investigate!”
The old corridors were littered with dried tree roots and trunks. I wonder if they only grow underground.
Even the musty odor was sweeter than any perfume.
Illua couldn't contain her joy at the vividness of the scene, which she had never experienced in a book.
This would surely make her father happy.
“Everyone, stay alert. There may be other dangers here.”
At Osian's words, the mages immediately activated their detection spells.
A wave of magic spread throughout the corridor and soon, the mages sensed the presence of something beyond the darkness of the corridor.
“There's something.”
Terence's words brought everyone to attention.
So did the explorers of the Archaeological League.
They had traveled far enough to know the dangers of the ruins to know right from wrong.
-Drizzle.
With the sound of something guiding its body, the last guardian of the ruins moved.
The de facto boss monster had long since realized the intruder's presence in these corridors.
Something made of wood loomed faintly in the darkness.
“Why in the world would a subterranean ruin be guarded by something like that if it's supposed to have plants growing in it?”
Thalia muttered in surprise at the sight of the animated tree.
The creature's body was made of wood, but it also looked like a man in armor.
Where his arms could be called arms, he held large blunt weapons made of the same wood.
There were no eyes in the roughly shaped mass of stalks that was supposed to be its head but they could tell it was aware of them by the way it was slowly but surely approaching.
'So it's him, the incarnation of the Underground Root.’
The Underground Root was the last guardian of the ruins and the boss monster, born from the roots of the ruins.
'At least it's a plant, so it's less affected by time. But judging by its condition, it's not completely intact.’
The moment it spotted the enemy, the Underground Root Incarnation lunged at it, clutching its blunt weapon with both hands.
However, the creature was walking slowly, holding the blunt weapon in one hand.
A closer look at his body revealed that the wood that made up his flesh had been cut all over, and with each movement, shattered pieces scattered with the dust.
It had been so long since it had moved that its body decayed.
‘Come to think of it, what do they give you when you catch them?’
From what I remember roughly, they gave me a small amount of money and materials to strengthen the potion bottle.
However, since potion bottles don't exist in the current world, I wondered what the use of such an item would be.
'It's almost like they don't give you anything for capturing them.’
There was no need for Osian to take on the Incarnation.
The mages were already preparing to fire their magic at the first sight of him.
Fire magic painted the dark corridor scarlet.
The searing heat engulfed the creature, burning away the trunk and roots of the pillar.
The Incarnation's wooden body made it extremely vulnerable to the fire element.
Moreover, there were a handful of mages gathered here.
The heat they unleashed upon it was too much for it to resist, and it collapsed.
It had somehow managed to hold its ground, but in its weakened state it was powerless to fight.
After disposing of it, the group surveyed the corridor and found that there were no more guardians or monsters left.
Their eyes lit up at the news.
It meant it was time to claim the artifacts and rewards hidden in the ruins.
‘Treasure.’
Osian stroked his chin with his hand.
‘Is there any of that left?’