“Whoa!”

My darkened vision cleared, and just as a message obscured my sight, I found myself falling again. The pain of my death lingered like a phantom ache, muddling my thoughts, and the message kept me from seeing my surroundings. Even so, I came to my senses at once.

WHOOOOSH!

I was falling fast. I channeled mana into my ears and heard the water rushing toward me. First, I took a deep breath.

‘What comes next? Oh, right.’

I remembered how much trouble my sword had caused me in the water. I hastily pushed mana into my arm, then swung it with all my strength and hurled the sword before I hit.

CRUNCH.

My joints screamed, but I trusted my young body to heal quickly. I saw the sword fly toward the faint light.

SPLASH!

Then I hit the water. A brief shock swept through me as I sank. As I had seen in my previous life, this pool was more like a small reservoir, and it was very deep. This time, though, I didn’t have to worry about its depth. The moment I stopped sinking, I swam for the surface.

“Pah!”

Without the sword weighing me down, I hadn’t sunk very far. I surfaced quickly and looked around. A single light was rising through the dark underground reservoir. As it neared the surface, the Firebird Hunter emerged behind it.

“Pah!”

“Alex?”

The first thing she did on surfacing was look for me.

“Over here.”

“Oh, you’re safe. Thank goodness.” Relief spread across her face when she saw I was all right.

I swam toward where I had thrown my sword, and she followed. Luckily, I hadn’t thrown it toward the opposite shore, so we soon reached dry ground.

“Where’s your sword? Did you leave it underwater?”

“No. It’s over there.”

Fortunately, the sword was stuck in the ground not far from the water. I walked toward it.

“How did it get there?” the Firebird Hunter asked as she followed me.

“I threw it while I was still in the air. The sword would’ve made it hard to swim once I hit the water.”

She looked dumbfounded. “Good grief. You thought of that in such a short time?”

Well, to be honest, I hadn’t thought of all of it in that short time. I kept my mouth shut.

Once I retrieved my sword, she looked up. The lantern at her waist clearly illuminated the dark hole in the ceiling.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the altar would collapse. I was told it would open a passage downward...”

In my previous life, I had brought it up first, but there was no need this time. She was clearly sorry too.

“There were openings farther up, like the ones over there, right?”

I pointed to the caves riddling the walls of the open chamber, and she nodded. “You saw those too? Yes. There were lots of caves opening onto the shaft we fell through.”

So far, events had gone much as they had in my previous life. Our first encounter with the monsters hadn’t posed much of a problem, so I did what I had done then.

I took off my wet outer garment and asked the Firebird Hunter, “After you dry your cloak, could you dry my clothes too?”

“It’s not hard. But how did you know I could do that?”

“I just had a feeling.”

She gave me a curious look, then took off her cloak and pushed mana into it to dry it. She dried my outer garment as well, and I thanked her and put it back on.

“Those caves probably connect to the ones in the shaft above. We should pick one and look for a way up.”

At her words, I raised my sword. “If whatever made those caves is still alive, wouldn’t it still be down here? We made plenty of noise when we fell into the water. If it’s alive, it’ll come looking for us.”

She hurriedly drew her sword. At the same moment, I heard the footsteps I remembered from my previous life.

SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER.

Countless legs scraping across the ground. They belonged to the monsters called Red Mice.

“Were there Red Mice left down here?”

Gray monsters that looked like a cross between rats and insects, despite their name. As in my previous life, three appeared. Or was it three? At any rate, I could see and sense three.

I filled my body with mana and pushed the rest into my sword. Again, I felt as though the mana might burst out of my body and blade. I wanted to hole up somewhere and explore that sensation, but there was no time now.

Seeing me draw on so much mana, the Firebird Hunter spoke.

“No chance of outrunning Red Mice underground, I suppose?”

The pattern engraved on her blade shone brightly.

“More importantly, that’s an absurd amount of mana for someone your age. Could Mana Sensitivity still run in the ducal house?”

Just as before, she looked as though she’d realized she’d said too much and changed the subject. “Anyway, you’re a better partner in a fight than I expected.”

With that, she charged forward, and I ran after her. The monsters rushed to meet us. Perhaps because we had moved the same way, only the monster at the end charged at me, just as it had before.

I drew a low breath as I watched it approach, sharpened my senses, and matched my breathing to its movements. I was doing this all over again, but I had no intention of repeating the same mistake. With every sense alert, I swung my sword at the approaching monster.

WHOOSH.

The timing of my strike was perfect. But I knew full well it wouldn’t connect. Sure enough, the instant my sword swept toward it, the monster sprang upward in a movement that seemed to defy inertia. In a heartbeat, it had soared several meters into the air. No wonder I’d lost sight of it last time.

This time, though, I had no reason to lose it. Better yet, while it was airborne, I had my chance. I used the momentum of my swing to spin my body around, then kept turning as I leaped upward!

Hero Carlos Sword Style, Supplementary Chapter Four.

‘Soaring Dragon!’

Damn it. Just like last time, the name of the technique made me want to blush. I was never going to say one aloud. Repeating it only in my head, I raised my sword toward the falling monster.

SLICE.

THUD!

Even a clever monster couldn’t cope with an attack it hadn’t expected. It tumbled to the ground with two legs severed on one side. Those weren’t the two front limbs it used like arms, but legs that supported its body.

There. That put an end to its ridiculous speed. I spun as I landed and charged it again. In my previous life, I’d have been too dizzy even to land properly. But with mana protecting my ears, my sense of balance was better than a figure skater’s!

I ran at the monster before it could get up and kept swinging. By the time it recovered its wits, another leg was gone. By the time it managed to block my sword with its claws, I had cut off the front limb on its other side.

The outcome was already decided. I stayed calm and finished it methodically. I cut away its remaining claws, severed its front limb, climbed onto its back, and drove my sword in.

GRRRR!

But even with the sword buried deep in its back, the monster thrashed wildly.

“That should’ve been where its heart is... Is it built differently?”

I considered testing a little more, but I didn’t know what might happen. I pulled out my sword and cut off its head.

THUD.

As before, severing its neck killed it.

‘Cutting off its legs stops it moving at high speed. Cutting off its head definitely kills it. And its heart isn’t where I expected...’

Once I was sure the fallen monster showed no sign of life, I checked on my companion. She was still fighting two monsters. Last time, only one had been left by the time I finished. Had I dealt with mine faster this time?

There was no need to worry about her, though. One monster had few legs left and was covered in wounds; it looked close to death. The other wasn’t in much better shape, while she didn’t have a scratch on her. As before, the wavering energy at the tip of her sword was cutting into the monsters.

I turned my attention away from her and began dissecting the one I’d killed. Now that it was dead, I could cut through it easily even without coating my sword in mana. I opened its belly to examine its insides, then cut into a severed leg to inspect the muscle.

“Damn, what’s going on inside this thing?” I couldn’t help grimacing at what I found.

“That’s why most monsters are practically inedible,” she said. “Alchemists and blacksmiths can use them for all sorts of materials, but eating them is out of the question.”

She must have finished her fight while I was dissecting mine. She had come over and was looking at the remains beside me.

Of course, undead monsters couldn’t be eaten because their bodies were rotting. But these monsters had definitely been alive and healthy. Even so, their insides didn’t look like those of living creatures.

I hadn’t studied biology in my previous life, but the only digestive organ I could find was one large stomach, and there was nothing that looked like a heart. Blood vessels wrapped around the stomach and extended throughout the body, while the muscles were twisted into shapes I’d never seen before. It wasn’t built like an insect, or like an animal either.

Since coming to this world, I’d found its living creatures weren’t so different from those of my previous life. But this monster’s insides looked like something from a fantasy movie—or rather, a horror or science-fiction movie.

“Tch. They say most monsters came from another world with the demons. I guess they’re more like aliens than they look.”

In the end, my meager knowledge of biology wasn’t enough to find a weakness, even by dissecting one.

“More importantly, you fought really well. You could take down most knights in no time!”

She seemed to think more highly of me than she had last time. Probably because I’d killed my monster faster. Of course, I’d only managed it because I’d fought one before, but her praise still felt good.

“So, can we get moving now? There might be more of these things. Let’s get out of here quickly.”

Unlike last time, she asked for my opinion. Perhaps the fight had changed how she saw me.

‘Now, what should we do?’

In my previous life, we had entered a cave at random, been surrounded from both front and back, and died. There had been well over ten monsters. Far too many to beat all at once.

I looked around. We were in a large underground chamber, its walls riddled with openings. A sizable reservoir occupied the center, and the rest was flat ground.

‘Would it be better to enter a cave and take them down one at a time, or make a stand with the water at our backs?’

But the monsters surely knew the layout of the caves hundreds of times better than we did. Picking them off one by one wasn’t feasible right now. I looked at the reservoir, then examined the dissected monster again. I couldn’t see any webbing on its feet, and it didn’t seem light.

I asked the Firebird Hunter, “Do you think these monsters can swim?”