Just before we came under attack again, she snapped out of her daze and looked up from the dagger. “You have to tell me what happened later!”

With that, she charged after the red monster she had knocked back, breathing hard, while I blocked the remaining monster’s path. It growled, but I merely hovered in front of it with my dagger raised. Honestly, I wasn’t confident I could beat it, and my young body was exhausted. I’d already done more than my share. All I needed to do now was keep one monster occupied. Thanks to the bloody wounds she had inflicted, the red monster moved cautiously, and I managed to hold it there without a fight.

A little later, the monster she was fighting fell. Fighting two at once had given her trouble, but one-on-one, she had finished it quickly. “Good work!” I called. Without even stopping to catch her breath, she ran straight toward me. She was short on mana now, and the shimmer rising from her sword had grown faint, but she still looked capable of handling one more monster. As I expected, she brought it down before her mana ran out. It fought fiercely, but my joining in at her side created plenty of openings. When the last monster fell, she sank to the floor, gasping for breath.

“Hah... Hah... What on earth happened?” Neither the relief of defeating the monsters nor the strain of running low on mana could keep her from asking. She looked at me, her whole body heaving with each breath. I scratched my head. How was I supposed to answer when I didn’t know myself?

“I don’t know. I was about to fight with the dagger when I saw a vision of the bird on its emblem. And then...” In the end, I told her what I had just experienced: the vision, the voice I’d heard, and how my mana changed when I answered it. I also told her that after my mana changed, I lost consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, all the monsters were down. “Even now, when I hold the dagger and move my mana, its nature changes.” I showed her the shimmering dagger. She stared at it blankly again. “A vision and a voice? That’s impossible. The inheritance has already been passed on, and now there’s another inheritor?” That was something I hadn’t known. Wasn’t an inherited ability passed down through blood? This sounded nothing like the inheritance I knew.

Her unexpected words made me stare at her, too. As we gazed at each other in a daze, a rumble came from the cave we had climbed through. Water was rising. The sound brought me to my senses. “This isn’t the time. We need to get outside first.” My words brought her back to the present, though she looked as if she’d seen something bizarre. Fortunately, she had recovered at least a little mana and strength.

While she got to her feet, I looked at the fallen monsters. “Are Red Mice really this strong? You said they were common, low-level monsters during the Great War. If there were swarms of creatures like these, how did anyone win?” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t think these are ordinary Red Mice. I’ve never heard of them being this strong, and I’ve never seen gray ones before. Did something change them down here?” Thankfully, she answered me readily.

Her answer made me imagine the lives the monsters lying there might have led. Had they been stranded in these underground caves during the Great War and spent hundreds of years trapped here, waiting for the Demon King to return? Had they bred, grown in number and strength, and waited all that time for their master? Hundreds of years in isolation, with no one knowing they were here... For a moment, the sight of the dead monsters reminded me of myself, and a shiver ran through me. But I shook my head. There was no reason to get sentimental over monsters.

“Still, it’s a shame. If these monsters are from the Great War, merchants would pay well for them.” She sighed. “The problem right now isn’t that we can’t take the monsters with us.” True, water was pouring in. This wasn’t the time to talk about it. “Compared with your inherited ability, a few monster carcasses don’t matter!” Well, I could still mention it if I hated wasting the money. If anything, it was stranger for a mercenary to dismiss talk of money. But she had a point. To think I could gain an inherited ability on top of the one I already had... As she said, this wasn’t something we could simply brush aside. If word got out, there would be trouble, and I was sure I’d made her situation more complicated, too. Yet I felt calm. An ordinary person would have been terrified by what had just happened, but perhaps because I’d died several times already, I wasn’t all that afraid of what might come next. At least my remark had lightened the mood a little.

The two of us opened the iron door, as we had in my previous life, and checked inside the storeroom. It was just as I remembered. A huge hole ran through its center from top to bottom, and nothing intact remained around it. I’d seen it before, and she had expected as much, but she sighed anyway. I checked the heavy pouch and urged her onward.

Above us, the opening stretched upward. She raised the lantern hanging from her waist. By its light, I could make out a ceiling far above: the ceiling of the tomb we had fallen through. But while we were looking up, water began spilling over the edge of the hole below. It was also surging in through the open storeroom door. It had already soaked our shoes and was rising toward our knees. We had no time to marvel at the ceiling.

She looked me up and down. “Judging by what you’ve done so far, you should be able to, but... can you climb up?” “Yes.” I drew the greatsword from my back as I answered. With the dagger in one hand and the greatsword in the other, I focused on the greatsword. My mana, which had been moving so violently, eased back to normal. When the shimmer around the dagger vanished, the Firebird Hunter gave me another look of wonder.

I waded through the rising water to the storeroom wall. Its solid stone looked as though an ordinary hammer couldn’t leave a scratch on it. Rock climbing underground with swords—back in my previous life, I would have insisted it was impossible. It still would have been impossible without mana. But mana was a cheat code that let me do the impossible.

I focused on the dagger again to change my mana, then drove the shimmering greatsword into the wall as high as I could. The wall opened in the shape of a blade before the greatsword even touched it, and I slid the sword easily into the opening. It was impressive even to me, but it was consuming great chunks of my mana. “Oh, no.” I immediately returned my mana to normal and stepped onto the greatsword. My mana began replenishing rapidly.

This time, I pushed the dagger into the wall in the same way, hung from it, and pulled the greatsword free. Once I’d climbed onto the dagger, I returned my mana to normal again. Fortunately, it worked as I’d hoped, so I didn’t think I’d run out of mana on the way up. 'But will the Firebird Hunter be all right...?' I could change my mana and replenish it, but she couldn’t. And she’d barely had a chance to rest. Worried, I looked over at her and remembered a saying from my previous life. “Wasn’t it something like, don’t waste your time worrying about people who have it made...?” I thought the original was about worrying over celebrities, but either way, I felt like a fool for worrying about her.

She had already passed the ceiling and was climbing into the opening. Her method was completely different from mine. While I labored to make footholds with my swords, she swept her shimmering blade across the wall, carving grooves, then stepped into them to climb higher. It was an excellent use of mana—and proper rock climbing. Clearly, it was too soon for me to show off. Feeling sheepish, I drove my sword into the wall again and resumed my climb. I wanted to do it her way, but I couldn’t project my mana blade that far or use it that quickly. Besides, I’d never learned to rock climb. If I tried to copy her and fell into the water, I’d be in trouble. Between the greatsword and the gold coins in my pouch, I’d be liable to drown. I worked my hands and feet as fast as I could to stay ahead of the rising water.

Once I got past the difficult stretch at the ceiling and into the opening, I kept climbing. She had left the lantern hanging partway up the vertical shaft, so I had no trouble seeing where to go. But the water kept rising after me. “Just how high is it going to get?” I grumbled at the churning water and kept my hands and feet moving until I finally reached the top.

I put my hands on the edge and retrieved the dagger from beneath my feet. Then, just as I hauled myself up for the final time, a huge greatsword came swinging down at my head. “Whoa!” Startled, I jerked out of its path and found myself suspended in midair. From there, I could see my attacker: a handsome middle-aged knight with a greatsword. What was a knight doing here? And why was he attacking me?

The Firebird Hunter, who had climbed up ahead of me, was beside him. She sat there panting, but she didn’t appear injured. She still had her weapons, too, and didn’t seem to have been subdued. Were she and the knight working together? She really wasn’t an ordinary mercenary. But had she deceived me? Honestly, after seeing these ruins and the inheritance she had found, I’d thought she might kill someone to keep it secret. And my gaining her inherited ability might pose a far greater danger to her or her family than I realized. Yet that didn’t fit the character I’d seen in her over the many times I’d died. More importantly, hadn’t I taken out insurance against exactly this? We’d made a contract at the temple. Was there a loophole? Some way around it? All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind. Then I saw her expression change. “Stop! That child is my companion!” The knight’s expression changed strangely at her words, too. And I fell.

SPLASH!

What the hell was going on? As expected, I sank quickly. I could only stare in disbelief as I went under. If it ended like this, I had no idea how I was supposed to go through it all again. The situation had become a mess, and I didn’t even know whether I could trust my companion. Why had the knight appeared, and what had happened to the soldier guarding the well? After everything it had taken to get this far! I couldn’t help swearing. Then I saw someone fall from above.

SPLASH!

The person who plunged into the water came toward me at speed. Thanks to the lantern floating in the water, I could make him out. The handsome middle-aged knight was approaching rapidly, still wearing his armor.