The Invaders of the Large Tomb

After lighting the kindling, which was a white, solid material, coal was added into the flames. The light from the flames were concealed by the effect of ‘Darkness’. ‘Darkness’ concealed the brightness, but not the fire itself. In the darkness, the flame boiled water extracted from the Infinite Waterskin.

The boiling water was poured into wooden bowls. The travel rations placed inside lost their shape and became fragrant soup. After adding hard bread, this was the food that was served to all.

The rest was up to their personal preference.

Although the bowl only had yellow soup—which workers liked for its nutrition and storage life, some people added thin slices of meat, other condiments, or they drank it as it was.

Everyone stopped after having a bowl. Considering the job ahead, this amount was too little.

However, eating something too heavy would definitely affect the mission. Eating nothing would be dangerous as well. No one knew when they could eat again.

The emergency food supply was also limited, since bringing too much would affect their agility.

There was a need to gauge it precisely.

After handing the empty bowls to the adventurers, the workers put on their backpacks.

As the adventurers watched on, the workers started moving together. The adventurers were in charge of the base camp’s security and would not be taking part in the infiltration of the ruins.

After climbing over the hill, they spread out around the ruins. They had already prepared countermeasures if they were discovered during this phase.

A lot of people wore full plate armour, so their movement would be slow and the noise would make covert operation impossible, but that had already been taken into account. For people who could use magic, it was possible to overcome such trivial matters.

First, they would use ‘Silence’, a spell that negated noise within a certain area. Both the sound of armour and footsteps would not be heard.

Next would be ‘Invisibility’, which rendered the target undetectable by normal vision.

As a precaution, an ambusher with the ‘Silence’, ‘Invisibility’ and even the ‘Hawk Eye’ spell cast on him was watching the surroundings from the sky. To quickly deal with problems, he was armed with special arrows that had numbing effects.

After these two preparation phases, the groups reached their destination.

Here was where it officially began.

They descended from the hill onto the ruins several meters below. After exploring the surface, they would meet up at the large mausoleum in the center. And they needed to do so within the effective time of ‘invisibility’.

To minimize the chance of unexpected things happening, there was a need to follow each other’s footsteps. However, it would be difficult to tell everyone’s position when it was dark and everyone was invisible.

However, there was already a way to handle this.

A strange stick 30cm in length suddenly appeared on the ground. It floated in the air as though someone invisible was holding it up, and emitted a faint light after it was bent.

This special stick—a glow stick—was made in such a way that the special alchemical fluids inside would mix when it was bent and emit light. It was dropped because the effect of invisibility also included all the items the user was carrying. In order to be visible to others, it had to leave the user’s possession.

After flickering for a moment, the stick that had accomplished its purpose was destroyed. The glowing alchemical fluid splashed onto the ground, and was gone without a trace after touching the earth.

In such a way, all the teams signaled that they were ready.

It was too far to see the other teams, but four ropes simultaneously dropped down from the surface of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. The ropes had knots tied at fixed interval for easy scaling.

The end of the rope was connected to a piton knocked into the ground, with the other end swaying slightly.

If someone were able to see through invisibility magic, they would be able to spot people climbing down the ropes.

Even someone like Arche, who focused more on magic training and knowledge instead of agility, could accomplish that. Or rather, workers and adventurers needed to go through strength training to complete such tasks.

Thanks to their accumulated training and the effectiveness of the knots, none of the workers fell, and all landed safely in the cemetery.

The first objective of each team were the smaller crypts.

As the duration of invisibility expired, all the members could now be seen. The teams headed toward the crypt they had been assigned to.

Crouching down and keeping close to the tombstones, trees and statues, they ran in the dim cemetery. ‘Silence’ was still in effect so they didn’t make any noise. The warriors wearing full plate armour also did their best to hide themselves. Several shadows moved across the ground.

♦ ♦ ♦

When the leader of Heavy Masher, Greenham, got close to the crypt, his eyes widened slightly. It was even more extravagant than he had imagined.