Notebook

"These are Parasitic Demons."

Frieren looked up at the monsters gradually awakening on the vaulted ceiling and explained to Lorenzo:

"They look frightening, but they're actually very fragile."

No sooner had she finished speaking.

A Parasitic Demon released its claws from the stone wall and swooped down from the ceiling.

Its wings had yet to fully unfurl, but they beat furiously, stirring up a nauseating, foul-smelling wind as it opened its mouth full of sharp teeth and lunged straight for Frieren's head.

Without Frieren even raising her staff, a slender beam of mana shot out from beside her.

It pierced straight through the Parasitic Demon, which tumbled to the ground like a bat struck by a stone. It twitched twice, then went still.

"Parasitic Demons themselves aren't strong,"

Frieren said:

"What makes them dangerous is that they implant their young inside living creatures. The young slowly devour the host's internal organs and mana, then burrow out of the corpse once they're fully mature."

"So we just have to keep them from touching us?"

"More or less."

"Sounds simple."

Lorenzo raised his right hand, and pure white light gathered in his palm. Strands of mana intertwined, gradually forming the outline of a hunting bow.

It was the same one he had used earlier.

The bow was slender, its surface flowing with a glow as soft as moonlight. It stood out sharply in the underground stone chamber, which was almost completely shrouded in darkness.

Lorenzo drew the bowstring to a full moon. As mana flowed, a pure white arrow of light gradually took shape on the string, then tore through the darkness and pierced straight through the Parasitic Demon at the front.

Before the monster could even make a sound, a gaping hole was torn through its chest. The arrow did not stop there, however, and continued flying onward with its remaining momentum.

A second.

A third.

Only after piercing seven Parasitic Demons in succession did the arrow of light strike the stone wall behind them and dissolve into countless tiny specks of light.

The pierced monsters fell from the ceiling one after another, their wet corpses slamming into the ground and splattering black slime everywhere.

"They really are fragile,"

Lorenzo said.

They were even more fragile than he had imagined. He hadn't even deliberately increased the power of that last arrow. Against an ordinary monster, an attack of that strength would have pierced its skin and muscles at most.

But a Parasitic Demon's body was like a thin-skinned bag filled with foul water, bursting at the slightest touch.

"But there are a lot of them,"

Frieren said, looking up.

The Parasitic Demons did not retreat at the deaths of their own kind. Instead, the mana fluctuations caused by the arrow of light seemed to have fully awakened the entire chamber.

The faint sounds of crawling came from every direction.

"Have that many people really entered this dungeon?"

There had to be nearly a hundred of them. Lorenzo even felt as though the vaulted ceiling above him had come to life.

"They parasitize small animals too."

"How can the ones that parasitize small animals grow as big as the ones that parasitize humans?"

"True Magic. Amazing, isn't it?"

One Parasitic Demon after another broke free of the black cocoons that had yet to split open completely and unfurled their wet wings. In the blink of an eye, dozens of them left the stone wall at once, crowding densely together.

"It really is amazing, though it's a little disgusting."

Lorenzo drew the bowstring again, and three arrows of light appeared on it at once.

The light shot forward in a fan, splitting into dozens of slender arrows in midair.

The next moment, the Parasitic Demons at the front burst apart one after another, black blood and severed limbs raining down from above. Before any of it could reach Lorenzo, however, a translucent defensive barrier blocked it all.

Lorenzo turned to look and saw Frieren standing beside him with her staff raised.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"But could you put the barrier a little farther away next time?"

Lorenzo looked at the half a claw that was almost pressed against the surface of the defensive barrier.

Although it hadn't touched him, the sight was still quite unpleasant. Besides, could these batlike monsters be carrying some unknown viruses? He would have to wash his hands thoroughly when he got back.

More Parasitic Demons crossed over the corpses of their own kind, closing in on them from both sides.

Lorenzo took half a step back, and the light on his bow grew brighter.

The Parasitic Demons were slow and extremely fragile. The only thing to watch out for was keeping them from getting close.

In other words, they were just a group of targets to be shot down from a distance.

Lorenzo raised his bow, and several arrows of light formed out of thin air beside him, their tips locking onto Parasitic Demons in different directions.

A rain of pure white arrows and beams of mana lit up the entire stone chamber at once.

Not much time passed between the first Parasitic Demon swooping down and the last monster falling to the ground. Soon, silence returned to the chamber, broken only by the sound of black slime slowly trickling down the pillars.

Lorenzo lowered his hunting bow, which dissolved into tiny specks of white light and vanished into the air.

"That was much easier than I expected."

"I told you, they're fragile."

Frieren dispelled her defensive magic.

Once the barrier was gone, a thick stench of rot and blood immediately hit them.

The ease on Lorenzo's face had barely had time to settle before he clapped a hand over his nose. Come to think of it, why could defensive magic block smells too? Could Frieren have treated the smell as an attack?

Seeing Frieren immediately wrinkle her nose after dispelling the defensive magic, Lorenzo felt that his guess was probably correct.

She gently tapped the ground with her staff.

A breeze appeared out of thin air.

The wind flowed outward through the chamber, slowly blowing the lingering stench of rot toward the entrance.

The effect was obvious.

The people standing near the entrance probably wouldn't be very happy, though. Fortunately, they hadn't seen anyone else when they came in, so there was probably no need to worry about that for the time being.

Lorenzo walked around the Parasitic Demon corpses on the ground and went over to the remains left by the adventurers from before.

Broken weapons and backpacks were scattered everywhere. One leather backpack had been torn open, and the items inside had been rummaged through and left in a mess.

There didn't seem to be anything valuable. These adventurers had probably only recently entered the dungeon and hadn't even found the area where the treasures were actually stored before the Parasitic Demons used them as vessels to incubate their young.

In a sense, they really had died before their expedition could get anywhere, and their deaths had been quite undignified.

"In that case, this dungeon probably hasn't been fully explored."

Lorenzo picked up a badly water-damaged notebook. Most of its pages were stuck together, and its cover was smeared with some kind of slime that had already turned black.

The adventurers might have left behind some logs of their dungeon exploration, so he carefully opened the first page.

Only one sentence was written on it.

"Today we discovered a very safe dungeon..."

Well, there was no need to read any further.

Lorenzo silently closed the notebook. Like certain people's diaries that said "nothing happened today," things like this were probably only good as the beginning of a very cautionary tale.

The two of them passed over the corpses on the ground and reached the far end of the stone chamber.

There was a passage extending downward.

Compared to the stone steps at the entrance, the passage here had clearly been finished with greater care. Neat square stone bricks lined the walls on both sides, with an extinguished magic lighting stone set into them at regular intervals.

Frieren raised her staff.

A faint light spread from the tip, and the lighting stones on the walls lit up one after another, slowly illuminating the depths of the passage.

"Let's keep exploring, then."