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Chapter 254: Reason for the Glasses’s Presence

Oooh, Glasses is staring at Khan, he’s staring really hard.
Butler and Ash pretended not to see anything, while Dinosso only raised a brow after glancing at Khan before turning away and wordlessly continued walking.

『You can disperse them now. 』
『Yes, yes. 』

The spirits slowly scattered. 「W-What!? There’s no more monsters here!? 」 — I thought there’s gonna be a skit like that, but Khan didn’t do anything in particular. Seems like he’s gonna leak the information quietly during breaktime?

Even if there were still monsters hanging around here, we’re too huge of a group so there’s no way they’ll appear before us. It is a relatively peaceful trek. Ahhh, I wanted to hunt fowl and wild boar monsters midway! And yet I have to come here straight away riding on a carriage. Remember this, you Glasses guy!!

Ah, no, Glasses doesn’t have anything to do with the carriage, huh.

Only half of our original group of adventurers remained by the time we reached the designated rest area. I guess the guys who are gone are those who went on a day trip here. The second and third level has medicinal moss growing, so many people also stayed there to gather them.

Part of the adventurer’s guild commission is the installation of torches at several places up to the third level. It’s not to illuminate the area, but to serve as resting places for the light spirits. Several light spirit users are stationed in different areas up to the third level, and the lights are evenly spaced, softly illuminating the entire place..

There are many light, darkness and wind spirits here, but there are also a lot of folks who use magic with those attributes. Ah, but when it comes to offensive magic, it’s mostly the fire spirits who cooperate with the users.

Right now we’re at the end of the third level, just before the start of the 4th level. Actually, the Labyrinth isn’t clearly divided into “levels”, and there’s more than one path leading to the underground levels. There’s a gentle sloping path, a steep decline like a slide, a path where you have to scale down the cliffs in the grotto, and many more. Not only that, the destination isn’t limited to one place too.

They probably named them by levels for convenience when sharing information and drawing maps, like, first level route A, route B and so on. By the way, the path we chose to traverse leads to the cliffs. In simpler terms used to trick the noob labyrinth trekkers — it’s the shortcut route from 4th to 12th level. As for the noob guy who got tricked — yep, that’s me.

Everyone dispersed and settled down on their chosen spots to take a break, but we didn’t venture too far so that it’s easier to regroup in case a monster attacked. Picture the couples sitting by the Kanagawa river and you got it. I’m the only solo one here, though!

I sit down near the very edge, sipping water while eating bits of jerky once in a while. The unsalted jerky is harder than usual, making me salivate and consequently easing my thirst. The water stations within the labyrinth are extremely few, so it’s not like I could just guzzle water, as much as I want to.

Glasses is talking to Khan. I suddenly recall that Retze and the others aren’t supposed to look at me and it’ll be weird if I’m the only one staring at them, so I tried to look around. The other adventurers seemed to be interested in Glasses and Khan. And in Dinosso, too.

Seems like I won’t stand out even if I look at them, so I decided to just openly stare.

Their voices are gradually getting lower and lower until they’re barely whispering, kinda like having a secret chat. Lots of folks seem to be straining their ears trying to eavesdrop, but they can’t catch what the duo is talking about. Actually no, it’s more like they can’t hear anything because the spirit that Glasses summoned keeps on singing.

As I continue watching them, Khan is speaking less and it’s Glasses that is talking endlessly. Dinosso also interjects a few words from time to time, but it seems like he’s more into listening too.

Hoh, so less talk about yourself, and just letting the other person do all the talking, huh? Or is Khan making it seem like he’s getting the information that he wants rather than sharing what he wants the other party to know? If it were me, I’d probably just blurt out everything; I even thought Khan would just put a show or something.

『Ou, Deputy Guild Master is done explaining. 』
Khan suddenly spoke to me while I stared.

『What’s up? 』
『First, Iscal, the Deputy Guild Master, originally tagged along to investigate the Labyrinth. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that he’s here to gather information about the Hero Jin. It seems they’ve been warned to handle this issue with care, so in order not to make Jin suspect a thing, both Wolf King-dono and our shady looking group became the cover so he can enter the Labyrinth. 』
Fake-kun, you need to be handled with care? Are you fragile? Or is it because you’re the 18 year old me with the glass heart?

『Dean and Chris will have the final say on what our next moves will be for now. We are currently discussing what to do with both of them. He wants Dinosso and me to tag along since we can See. There’s another party that will check the 20th level’s pathways, and they’re just doing it moderately before going back to the report to the Guild. 』
If it becomes dangerous then Dean’s group will also have to go up, or so they discuss.

Seems like the guild wants to make it look like they accidentally stumbled upon the evidence in the Labyrinth rather than going there to investigate Hero Jin. Shrum has been expanding their territory for over a year since they got their hands on the heroes, and they recently conquered and annexed another small country in the Central Plains. They’ve done it so cunningly and brutally that it made the guild wary, apparently.

In the past, the Central Plains was a fertile continent, and there was a large country with abundant harvests of wheat on it. After the blessings of the Wind Spirit disappeared, that country collapsed and several powerful countries, including Shurm, divided it up as they pleased without any regard for culture or tribes.

The resulting borders, drawn only with their own interests in mind, led to conflicts naturally – with fewer kin of the Wind Spirit, the land was ravaged by wars and the wheat harvests suffered. As a result, the powerful countries withdrew from the Central Plains.

From then on, the land was perpetually in war, which was also a result of the past wars. With a shortage of food, they started attacking their neighbors, further dividing the land into smaller countries or else merging them. It was utter chaos. The powerful countries at the time probably didn’t expect the chaos to last for hundreds of years. Additionally, Shurm has a grudge against the Central Plains because the Wind Hero they summoned fled to another country over there.

Now that Shrum got its hands on a new set of heroes, it started to meddle with the countries in the Central Plains, and also began putting pressure on the other countries.

『Why are we being so vigilant even though we’re literally on the other side of the continent? 』
I asked. It’s way too early. It’ll take time for Shrum to move while pacifying the other kingdoms in Central Plains after all.

『This is coming from Retze’s second hand information, but it’s said that there are many times when the powerful nations backed the smaller countries conflict, even fighting for them as proxies. Shrum wanted to subjugate Teorall back then. 』
『Eh, even so, it’s still far, isn’t it? 』
If the Hero has【Teleport】magic circles then it’ll be scary.

『Wolf King-dono also asked the same thing. Apparently, there’s an entrance to a Fae’s Path that’s located at a place that is 10 days away from the fortress city. 』
『Alright, I’m gonna block that. 』
Right, considering Gold and Silver, there’s also one near Nalluahdid, apparently. Thank goodness he did not 【Teleport】.
I have to confirm whether it’s true that absolutely only changelings and spirits can pass through the Fae’s Path. Fake-kun is a Changeling after all, so he probably can use it normally. I have to check if Sis, or Sis, or maybe Sis can pass through it.

『…Well, then just block it if you can. 』
『I’ll start looking for the method first, you know. By the way, your voices suddenly became unintelligible, did Glasses do something? 』
『Glasses — Iscal, huh. He used an eavesdropping blocking spell apparently; it’s an easy wind-attribute magic. 』

…So that was magic, huh. I wanna ask if it sang out of tune deliberately? Even I could recognize the tone deafness.