The beast tamer exiled from the hero’s party and the cat eared girl from the strongest race meet
We slipped into the ruins using a hidden passage.
The inside of the ruins was very dark.
There was no light at all; I couldn’t even see my feet.
There were no signs of enemies nearby, but that didn’t mean using a light was safe — it might reveal us to enemies farther away.
Now then, what should we do?
“Keep the light to a minimum, and then wait for our eyes to adjust… oh?”
“Huh?”
There was a thud — the feeling of something bumping into me.
“I’m sorry. Rain-sama, was that you? I couldn’t see anything and bumped into you.”
“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Hehe, thank you.”
A warm sensation lingered.
Someone was hugging me…?
“Um… Iris?”
“Sorry, Rain-sama. I can’t see anything and I’m nervous — could I lean on you for a bit?”
“If that’s the case…”
“No, you can’t—”
“It’s decided! (It is!)”
“Ah—”
After everyone’s voices, Iris was seemingly pulled away.
“Hey Iris, what are you doing trying to take advantage of the confusion?”
“I think that’s cheating.”
“We need to be serious right now.”
“Hehe, sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
“Ahaha, Rain’s got it rough, huh?”
“…This isn’t a laughing matter.”
I sighed with a weary “good grief.”
“Sora, Luna. Can’t you do something with magic for this darkness? Not a light — some way to see through it?”
“Yes, leave it to us. There’s a spell to see through darkness.”
“However, it will make you see only darkness in a way, so it can be used on only one person.”
“In that case, could you cast that spell on me? I have a fair amount of experience exploring ruins like this. If I can see the path, I can lead.”
“Understood. We’ll put it on Gray. Leave the surrounding watch to us.”
Sora used magic and cleared Gray’s sight.
Gray took the lead while everyone joined hands and followed behind.
We had been exploring for about thirty minutes.
We hadn’t been spotted by any enemies.
However, we still hadn’t found the people being held captive.
We did manage to get out of the pitch-black area.
Our vision wasn’t perfectly restored, but we could see somewhat.
After lifting the night-vision spell from Gray, we stopped to consider our next move.
“This ruin is pretty big. Isn’t it bigger than the place we searched before?”
“Oh? Is that so?”
“We’ll talk about that later. But Tania’s right — it’s larger than we expected.”
From the outside it hadn’t looked that large… but it seemed passages stretched out here and there, centered mostly underground.
It was like an ant nest.
“Still, wouldn’t it be better to split into two teams?”
“Right. Since it’s not a diversion, I don’t think it would be a huge problem… what do you think, Rain?”
“Hmm…”
It was a tough decision…
“Let’s not.”
As I’d said before we infiltrated, this was the enemy’s stronghold.
Even if it’s fine now, there’s no guarantee we won’t encounter a big problem ahead.
If we were split into two teams when that happened, we might not be able to handle it.
Actually, that was the likely scenario.
Rescuing the captured people was, of course, important… but before that, we couldn’t allow ourselves to be wiped out.
Everyone agreed and no one objected.
Still, that left us stuck on what to do next.
“Come on, Rain-sama. Use your ‘tame anything’ ability to break this situation.”
Even Iris said “tame anything” to me…
“Even if you say that…”
“Couldn’t you tame some clever creature to find hostages or something?”
“Wouldn’t taming a dog be good?”
“Surely there aren’t dogs in a place like this… maybe rats instead?”
“Can I say something?”
While we argued back and forth, Yuki raised his hand.
“I have a small idea.”
――――――――――
Thirty minutes later…
We had reached what seemed to be the prison where the hostages were being kept.
“Yuki, you’re amazing.”
“Ahaha… looks like it worked out, thank goodness.”
Yuki’s plan was to deliberately find an enemy and tail them.
Since there were many hostages, there had to be demons assigned to care for them.
First, find such a demon.
If they weren’t combat-oriented and were handling chores, then that was likely the one.
Next, just follow them.
They would eventually lead us straight to the hostages.
It was a pretty simple plan, but the idea of using the enemy like that wasn’t something that usually came to mind.
A blind spot.
As expected of royalty — the son of a king.
Yuki wasn’t just strong, he was quick-thinking too.
That was something I needed to learn from.
“Thanks to Yuki, we were able to find the hostages.”
“So do we charge in?”
“Tania, you’re too reckless…”
“There may be more guards than what we see. First, we should scout the surroundings without being noticed…”
“Achoo!”
A cute sneeze.
But a loud one.
“I’m terribly sorry♪”
I turned around to see Iris sticking out her tongue with a playful “oops” expression.
“Who’s there!?”
“Ah, come on!”
So in the end, it comes to this!
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