Chapter 254 Giant Scavenger

It was a clear day without a single cloud. A refreshing morning.

Ian naturally opened his eyes at his usual time.

The traces of the cold that had plagued him all day yesterday had vanished without a trace.

However, perhaps because he had been lying down for too long, a dull ache radiated from various parts of his stiffened body.

Still, he could say he was back to normal now.

Ian quietly sat up, loosening his stiff shoulders.

"Captain... Ah."

Tanya, who had come to check on Ian’s condition, opened the door quietly and locked eyes with him.

Seeing that Ian was already awake, Tanya wore a look of slight surprise.

"Y-You’re up."

"Yeah. I think I’m fine now."

For some reason, Tanya was looking at him warily with a tense face, so Ian spoke to her.

"Are you here about breakfast? Go on ahead. I’ll be down soon."

"Ah... Yes!"

Tanya closed the door and practically ran downstairs, her face turning strangely red.

A short while later, once Ian finished preparing and headed downstairs, he saw the three members of the mercenary group already seated at a table.

Mika and Tanya.

And then there was Rin, who usually didn’t wake up at this hour but had been forcibly woken up and dragged along because she shared a room with the other two. She sat at the table yawning.

"Morning."

"Ah, Captain. You look perfectly fine today."

As Ian greeted them and sat at the table, Rin spoke while scanning him up and down.

"Don’t you need to rest a bit more?"

"No. I think I’m all better now."

Upon hearing that Ian had recovered in just one day, Rin puffed out her chest with a triumphant look.

As if it were all thanks to her.

"I guess what we did really helped."

"...What Tanya did was actually the most help."

At Ian’s words, Mika flinched and looked up.

In Mika’s mind, the memory of what Tanya had done to the sleeping Ian yesterday evening surfaced.

...That helped?

Receiving Mika’s gaze, Tanya shook her head frantically, denying that it was like that.

Ian, who was about to elaborate on Tanya’s help, tried to recall the memories of last night, but he only remembered falling asleep after eating the porridge before Tanya returned.

"Ah. Sorry about yesterday. I fell asleep before you got back."

"Y-Ye-Yes?!"

Tanya jumped in surprise, dropping her spoon.

Mika also whipped her head around, glancing back and forth between Tanya and Ian with a suspicious look in her eyes.

Ian felt something strange in Tanya’s attitude and asked:

"...Did something happen last night?"

"N-No!"

Tanya denied it immediately, but while doing so, she oddly kept stealing glances at Mika.

"N-Nothing... happened."

Tanya answered in a voice that grew smaller as she gauged their reactions.

Then, she cautiously asked Ian:

"Um... by any chance, did you notice anything... strange?"

"Like what?"

"There wasn’t anything, right?"

"...Did something really happen?"

"No...."

Something had definitely happened.

Ian looked at Tanya with a doubtful eye, but he couldn’t get anything out of her as she kept her mouth firmly shut.

...It’s Tanya, so it probably wasn’t a big deal.

Thinking that, Ian let it slide without much thought.

Only Mika’s piercing gaze remained quietly fixed on Tanya.

Before long, the innkeeper brought the food to the table himself.

As he set down the breakfast plates, the innkeeper noticed Ian sitting at the table and struck up a conversation.

"I heard you had a cold?"

"Yes. I’m all better now."

"Haha, what kind of man lets a little cold keep him in bed?"

The innkeeper laughed loudly as he put down the plates.

"How can a mercenary do any work when they’re all skin and bones like this? Here, this one’s on the house."

The innkeeper slapped Ian on the back and set down a plate piled with scraps of meat.

It was a dish made from leftover scraps after preparing the main menu.

Ingredients like these were usually put into a stew, but the innkeeper occasionally gave them out to customers like this.

Ian thanked him and slid the plate toward the center of the table.

Everyone’s eyes lit up as they reached for the plate with their forks.

For mercenaries, meat was something they could never have enough of, no matter when or how much they ate.

Watching the members, Ian did a quick check of his physical condition and thought he could go out on a mission tomorrow without any problems.

Ian spoke to everyone.

"Come to my room later."

"...?!

While everyone else nodded, only Tanya looked at Ian with a startle.

"W-What for...?"

"To have a meeting."

"Ah..."

Because of Tanya’s repeatedly suspicious reactions, Ian fell into deep thought, wondering if he had said some strange things in his sleep to her.

***

After breakfast was over, the members immediately gathered in Ian’s cramped room.

"What’s this about? You didn’t do it while we were eating."

It wasn’t a great place for a discussion since there wasn’t even a proper table, but in an inn like this, there wasn’t really a suitable place for a meeting to begin with.

Usually, Ian would just talk while eating breakfast at the first-floor table, but this time there was something difficult to show to others, so he had no choice.

"It’s because of this."

Ian spread a piece of paper on the bed. It was the map of the underground sewers he had been drawing.

Everyone huddled together on the bed to peer at the map Ian showed them.

"Wow.... You’ve done a lot. Isn’t it almost finished?"

"Yeah. It’s almost done. Except for a few places."

Ian pointed to a specific spot.

The map showed numerous passages intricately intertwined, but the location Ian pointed to had a conspicuously empty space.

"Look here."

"What is this?"

To Rin, it looked like just a wall, but if you looked closely, it was an unusual spot.

However, that was all one could tell from a map, so Rin asked Ian with a puzzled face.

"Is there something here?"

"Yeah. There’s likely a secret room here."

"...Why would something like that be there?"

"A secret...!"

Rin wore an expression of disbelief, but conversely, Mika’s eyes began to shine.

No matter where it was attached, the word "secret" always stimulated a mage’s curiosity.

"Labyrinth is a very old city. The underground sewers were also built a long time ago. Especially back then, there were no guilds, so places like this weren’t managed well."

According to that lore.

In the underground of this city, a secret room was hidden as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

An underground without secrets? How could such a space exist in an RPG?

"Then is there... a secret warehouse here?"

"Yeah. We won’t know exactly what it is until we open it."

For example, it could be a place used as a hideout for smugglers, or a place to store black market goods.

If it was a place hidden in a location like the sewers, it was bound to have an illegal or secretive purpose that shouldn’t be seen by others.

He explained it that way to the members, but Ian already anticipated what had been generated there based on the room’s shape on the map.

"There are things to prepare before we go in. Let’s all head to the shops."

The hidden location in the underground sewers... was a Warlock’s Lab.

***

"Everyone has everything, right?"

"Yes."

The next day. Everyone packed their equipment and items more thoroughly than usual.

The expressions of everyone heading to the sewers were stiff with a tension higher than usual.

It was because Ian had mentioned beforehand that they would look for that secret place in the sewers today.

Everyone walked through the sewers, scouting the surroundings with much more nervous faces than usual, and before long, they arrived at the suspicious area marked on the map.

Ian spoke while examining the nearby wall for a moment.

"It’s this way. Everyone, look for anything suspicious on the wall."

"Something suspicious?"

"Cracks, protruding bricks... that sort of thing."

He could estimate the room’s location, but since the direction of the entrance was randomized, they had to search the area themselves.

After safely clearing out the nearby monsters, everyone scattered according to Ian’s instructions and began feeling the walls for anything suspicious.

"I found it!"

"Again?"

"This time it feels like the real thing!"

After about three wild goose chases.

This time, Tanya found the real switch.

As Ian carefully pulled out a brick, the switch to open the door was revealed inside.

Ian, placing his hand on the switch, looked back at the three of them and said:

"Everyone ready?"

The three nodded with tense faces.

While preparing yesterday, Ian had mentioned beforehand that there was a high possibility of monsters being inside the secret room.

Of course, they would think it was strange if he knew the interior of a secret room he had never entered, so he had just phrased it as a possibility. But monsters appearing was a certainty.

In the ’Warlock’s Lab,’ a ’Giant Scavenger’ appears as the boss monster.

A giant rat mutated by chemicals inside the abandoned lab.

It is the strongest boss monster in these underground sewers.

Yesterday, Ian spent the day teaching the members how to deal with large monsters and came prepared with enough items to take down the Giant Scavenger.

It was the type whose HP increased upon giantification, but the Scavenger’s unique evasion disappeared, so its strengths were actually neutralized. Since it followed the simple patterns of the original Scavenger, it wasn’t that difficult of a boss.

Signaling the mercenaries, Ian pressed the switch. Dust swirled as the wall opened, revealing a hidden passage.

Ian quickly tossed a light-generating orb into the passage.

"...."

Instead of an ear-piercing monster’s screech... there was quiet silence.

Thick dust reflected in the light illuminating the room, floating turbulently in the air.

"...There’s nothing here?"

The interior was slightly visible through the light of the orb that had rolled inside.

The inside wasn’t a ruin, but a perfectly intact research lab that was just a bit old and dusty.