“H-he really woke up……!”
The Healer muttered in disbelief when the Vice Leader, who had shown no signs of regaining consciousness no matter what they tried, finally opened his eyes.
They had treated him exactly as Jun instructed, and the Vice Leader truly regained consciousness.
It was not because Jun possessed greater medical knowledge than the Healer.
‘It was simply a difference in information. The corrupted Fairy Queen possesses [Healing Block]-type abilities.’
The method of treatment itself was simple.
They had to transfer the power of corruption preventing the wound from healing into something else.
However, ordinary methods would not work.
The power of corruption was highly contagious.
Trying to transfer it carelessly would merely cause it to spread.
That was why they first used Holy Water to purify the ‘Fairy Powder’ that would receive the power of corruption, then sprinkled Holy Water over the wound as well to weaken the corruption within it.
Once the Fairy Powder was placed against the corrupted wound, the power of corruption would naturally migrate into the powder.
“Hey. Can you hear me?”
“C-cough!”
Perhaps because he had lost so much blood, even after opening his eyes, the Vice Leader remained disoriented for some time.
“Potion.”
“Yes!”
Jun slowly poured the potion he received from the Healer into the man’s mouth.
Gradually, focus returned to the Vice Leader’s eyes.
“Y-you are……?”
“A Mage. More importantly, I need to ask you something. The Fairy Queen woke up, didn’t she?”
“H-how do you know that……?”
“Because I already know what you people were trying to do. You were the ones who woke the Fairy Queen, weren’t you?”
“……!”
“Enough looking surprised. Listen to what I’m about to say. Your Leader and the rest of your team might still be alive.”
“What do you mean……?”
Perhaps because hope had appeared in what had seemed like a hopeless situation, the Vice Leader’s gaze sharpened.
“Not everyone in the Assault Force was actually killed by the monsters, were they? You just saw them get surrounded. Right? Am I wrong?”
The Vice Leader stared at Jun as though he had seen a ghost.
Everything Jun said was exactly what had happened.
“……Y-yes. I barely managed to escape the encirclement…… but my companions could not.”
The Vice Leader did not know what had happened afterward.
He had simply assumed that his companions, surrounded by an overwhelming number of monsters, had died.
“You managed to land a blow on the Fairy Queen too, right? But contrary to what you expected, she didn’t die.”
“……That is correct. But how in the world do you know all this?”
At the question, Jun pulled a book from his bag.
“What is that?”
“‘Expedition Log of the Corrupted Forest.’ It’s a journal left behind by ancient Beastfolk who came to this forest. You could consider it a sequel to the ‘Exploration Log of the Corrupted Forest’ that your people found in the Temple of Beasts.”
“……?!”
It was surprising enough that the man before him knew about the Exploration Log.
Learning that a sequel existed was even more astonishing.
“H-how did you……?”
“That’s none of your concern. According to this book, the Fairy Queen restores herself by draining the life force of living creatures. Which means your companions are probably still alive. She’ll need their life force to heal the wounds you inflicted.”
“……!”
That was the reason Jun believed there was still a good chance that the Assault Force had survived.
‘These people must have known at least part of the strategy for fighting the Fairy Queen.’
The Fairy Queen was extremely weakened immediately after awakening.
As long as one knew the proper strategy, she was actually easier to subjugate at that point than the Forest Guardian, the original Raid target.
Azure Cloud had most likely launched an all-out assault immediately after the Fairy Queen awakened, relying on the information contained in the Exploration Log they had discovered.
‘But the Fairy Queen isn’t something you can kill that way.’
The problem was that the ‘Exploration Log’ was not a complete strategy guide.
Unless the fight followed a specific route, the Fairy Queen could be driven to the brink of death, but she would not actually die.
The reason was recorded in the ‘Expedition Log’ Jun now possessed.
‘And these people probably lost because they didn’t know that.’
Unaware of that fact, the Assault Force would have been defeated by the monsters drawn in by the Fairy Queen’s screams.
There would simply have been too many for the Assault Force to handle alone.
“Anyway, this is what I’m trying to tell you. Your companions are probably still alive.”
“……And knowing all of this, you’re still going to help us?”
“What do I gain by killing you people here? What matters right now is surviving.”
Jun was every bit as irritated by the current situation.
But allowing anger to consume his reason and throwing away a chance to survive would be the height of stupidity.
‘And I’m not the only one who’ll think that way. The people outside value their lives too.’
Unless Azure Cloud had murdered their parents or something equally unforgivable, everyone would have to swallow a certain amount of anger if they wanted to survive.
“But you won’t escape punishment under the law. Keep that much in mind.”
“……Understood. Even if I end up rotting in prison, being alive is still better than being dead.”
“Can you move right now?”
“It will be difficult, but not impossible.”
“Good. Then let’s go outside and convince the others.”
The people in the chaotic camp quickly rushed toward the platform when they noticed the Vice Leader standing upon it.
Perhaps because of their fear of death, many looked ready to draw their weapons at any moment.
Indeed, the instant one mercenary began pulling his sword from its scabbard, Colton shouted from nearby.
“Let’s at least hear what happened first! Hey, Vice Leader! What the hell is going on?”
At that, the other mercenaries glared at the Vice Leader as though willing to hear him out for now.
Even if they were going to die, they at least wanted to know why.
“First…… I would like to apologize for the current situation. I am truly sorry.”
“Are you screwing with us?! You think we came here to hear your damn apology?!”
“He’s right! Explain what’s happening first!”
Perhaps intimidated by the killing intent radiating from the enraged mercenaries, the Vice Leader’s already pale face turned even whiter.
“Cough! F-first…… everything happening now began when the sleeping Fairy Queen awakened.”
The Vice Leader then calmly explained everything that had happened.
From the moment the Fairy Queen awakened to the present.
The mercenaries were furious.
Naturally.
Azure Cloud had activated the Hidden Stage without consulting any of them.
Ordinarily, activating a Hidden Stage required submitting a formal application to the Empire, reaching sufficient agreements with all involved parties, and spending a long period preparing.
But given Azure Cloud’s current situation, there was virtually no chance such an application would have been approved.
If anything, they might simply have had their information taken away.
‘Honestly, if they’d sold that information to a higher-ranking organization, they could have made a good amount of money and earned some Reputation too.’
But Azure Cloud had rejected that option.
What followed concerned internal circumstances Jun himself had not known.
‘So it wasn’t that they needed their sponsoring noble’s attention. They were dissatisfied with the sponsor himself.’
According to the Vice Leader, the noble family sponsoring Azure Cloud was a baronial house with a fairly long history.
The problem was the ambition of the Baron who had become head of the family in the current generation.
Seeking the greatest possible return for the smallest possible investment, he had repeatedly ordered Azure Cloud to undertake reckless expeditions.
As a result, they had lost skilled members and also struggled to recruit capable replacements.
The situation had continued for years, and Benjamin Briston, the Leader of Azure Cloud, had grown deeply dissatisfied with their noble sponsor.
Even if they sold their most valuable information, there would be no future for them if things continued that way.
So they had decided to achieve an accomplishment so great that even the baronial house would find them difficult to control.
If they succeeded, finding a new noble sponsor would hardly be difficult.
“Those fucking…….”
One mercenary’s mutter perfectly expressed the mood.
Thick killing intent gleamed in the mercenaries’ eyes.
Even Colton, who had been helping Jun earlier, looked furious beyond measure.
Jun had already given him a rough explanation beforehand, but hearing it directly from the person responsible produced an entirely different reaction.
“I am so ashamed that I can hardly raise my head before all of you.”
The only reason the mercenaries had not already drawn their swords was that the Vice Leader had revealed everything without hiding a single detail.
Had he offered half-hearted excuses instead, the situation would have been completely different.
Only rational judgment powerful enough to overcome their anger could move them now.
Accepting Jun’s advice had therefore produced the best possible outcome for the Vice Leader.
Colton barely swallowed his rage and demanded—
“So! Is there a way out of this situation or not?!”
The other mercenaries also fixed their gazes on the Vice Leader.
They had managed to postpone their anger for the moment.
But if there was no solution, they fully intended to draw their swords and hang the Vice Leader’s head from the camp palisade.
Fortunately for the Vice Leader, there was a way.
“From this point onward, this man will explain instead of me.”
The Vice Leader stepped back.
Jun climbed onto the platform.
When the shabbily dressed Mage appeared before them, several mercenaries immediately recognized him.
They had seen Jun during the strategy meeting before the Conquest Operation began, and his appearance had been memorable for several reasons.
“The freeloader?”
“You’re telling me that freeloader Mage knows how to solve this?”
“Did they bring him up there to use as a human shield?”
Jun’s head was rapidly finding its way onto the mercenaries’ imaginary list of decorations for the palisade.
He immediately read their expressions.
‘They’re practically dripping with killing intent.’
But Jun had already spent a full year surviving in this world.
He had studied the behavior of mercenaries more diligently than almost anyone for the sake of his own survival.
And he knew exactly how to reverse the current atmosphere.
‘Ready.’
He raised an arm toward the sky.
‘Fire.’
He unleashed the spell he had been preparing long before he climbed onto the platform.
[Lightning Whip]
The Lightning-Type Magic he had already used several times inside the dungeon.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK——!
The whip erupted upward like a bolt of lightning, unleashing an enormous roar.
The mercenaries’ eyes widened.
There was no way they could believe such power came from a Low-Rank Mage.
When dealing with mercenaries overflowing with distrust, the most effective method was to establish dominance first.
“You all have plenty of questions, so I’ll introduce myself properly later. For now, look at this.”
The mercenaries had barely finished staring at the lingering traces of the lightning when Jun’s voice caught their attention.
“This is an ancient text called the ‘Expedition Log of the Corrupted Forest,’ discovered within the Black Forest Conquest Operation. You can think of it as a kind of strategy guide.”
A strategy guide.
Whatever prejudice they held against Jun, those words immediately caused the mercenaries to murmur.
“Is it similar to the ‘Exploration Log of the Corrupted Forest’ that Vice Leader mentioned?”
“From the sound of it, maybe they were separated into a first and second volume…….”
“Does that book contain a way for us to survive?”
Just as they guessed, Jun pointed toward the book.
“The reason we can’t escape is the Barrier surrounding the Conquest Operation. This book records how to break that Barrier. We have to subjugate the Forest Guardian. More precisely, we have to destroy the Forest Essence contained within it.”
Technically speaking, that was no different from the original Conquest Operation.
Under normal circumstances, the Forest Guardian was the target of the Raid.
However, none of the people gathered here knew the exact origin of the Barrier sealing the entrance.
Naturally, they had assumed that defeating the Fairy Queen was their only means of escape.
And because defeating the Fairy Queen was impossible for people of their current level, they had believed themselves doomed to die.
“Th-then if we defeat the Forest Guardian like we were originally supposed to, we can survive?”
“That’s right. But this won’t be easy either. The people gathered here probably aren’t enough to subjugate the Forest Guardian by ourselves.”
Having regained at least some composure, the mercenaries calmly reassessed their situation.
As Jun said, defeating the Forest Guardian with only the people currently at the camp was nearly impossible.
Worse, the Forest Guardian had now been strengthened by the Fairy Queen.
“……But we heard the Assault Force was annihilated. Then what are we supposed to do?”
“That’s actually the one piece of good news we have. There’s a chance the Assault Force is still alive.”
“Is that really true?”
Jun repeated the same explanation he had given the Vice Leader.
Once the mercenaries heard the whole story, the expressions on their faces were more conflicted than hopeful.
They had gained hope that survival was possible.
But to survive, they now had to rescue the very people responsible for placing them in this danger.
For hot-tempered mercenaries, it was only natural to find that distasteful.
“But we can’t just sit here and die together, can we? I understand why you’re angry, but even rolling through a field of shit is better than being dead. Or would you rather die here?”
Those words from Jun proved decisive.
No matter how furious they were, all of them made their living with their own bodies.
They valued their lives above almost anything else.
If there was a way to survive, there was no reason not to take it.