Chapter 4.5 (1/2)

Chapter 4. And so their story begins. (5)

“Oh good, you did actually come this way.”

…Oh deary me. Can I just get a ghost instead?

“What’s this? You look like you saw a ghost.”

Hoho, If only I was actually looking at a ghost right now…

“Why are you here.”

I looked around, trying to check if there were any a.s.sa.s.sins nearby, but it wasn’t like I could find them in the first place. Most a.s.sa.s.sins used energy to hide their bodies, meaning that they would be invisible to me.

No, before that, the fact that this girl in front of me found this place is a huge problem.

“Oh my, isn’t it obvious that a former disciple would come to visit her teacher~?”

Her grinning face might look extremely charming, but right now it just looks like a face of a G.o.d d.a.m.ned succubus. Before that…

“How did you know about this place?”

This was a path that I created using the dwarven magic tools that I smuggled in here. Do you even realize how much money I spent on making this thing?! I had zero mana, so I had to use extra-expensive magic tools that didn’t cost any mana at all!

And since I couldn’t even activate the magic stones on those tools, I had to make the kids activate it as a “test” and use those stones for several days straight digging the path! It’s a path that’s filled with my blood and sweat! No one was supposed to know about this!

I guess she isn’t running the information department for nothing?! Did she find out all the secret paths already?!

I thought various thoughts like these in panic, but the response I got was pretty dull.

“I found it while digging an escape path?”

“…what.”

I spoke with a slightly surprised tone, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. Well, to be more exact, she seemed to be recalling some past memories of hers, seeing how she was frowning quite harshly.

“Well… after the metal bat came out, I began digging an escape path with the other kids… and found this?”

…She was actually thinking of running.

“Why didn’t you run?”

“…Too many traps. And by the time we managed to get through all of them, you were done with us.”

“Is that it… then why are you here? Is it the organization?”

The kid shook my words away with her hands, and smiled.

“Teacher, do you… no, did we even have loyalty for this organization in the first place? The empire gets destroyed once it loses power, and the kingdom gets disintegrated once it loses its meaning. And an evil organization can get destroyed at any time in history. That was what you said, remember?”

…I said that?

“Sure.”

My mouth says the opposite of my thoughts. The bat mumbled something in my head, but I just ignored it and kept talking.

“But the organization did not get destroyed ye…”

“It did, though?”