I Reincarnated into a Game Filled with Mods – Chapter 157

—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
—————————————————————–

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

 
I stood before the rune stone, placing my hand on its surface and focusing my mind.

Then, a faint green light seeped into me.

A strange sensation started to stir within my body. It was a sensation I had experienced before, but I never seemed to get used to it.

With my eyes closed, I focused my awareness on the back of my left hand.

The power that had been randomly surging through my body gradually gathered in one place. The back of my left hand twitched repeatedly.

I opened my eyes after confirming that my body had returned to its original state. I looked down at my left hand.

A few more lines had been added to the tattoo next to the vitality enhancement rune that had been there at the beginning.

‘That’s it.’

I had obtained the rune, so my work here was done. I removed my hand from the surface of the rune stone.

The name of the rune I had just acquired was ‘Mana Enhancement’.

As its name suggested, it had a simple effect of increasing the maximum mana capacity.

The increase wasn’t that great, so it wasn’t an essential rune, but it wasn’t a bad one to have.

Since using Wingless Nightmare’s special abilities consumed mana, I could use all the help I could get.

The rune stone, having completed its purpose, lost its light and turned into a normal rock, crumbling to the ground.

Unlike last time, no new path appeared when the rune stone crumbled.

Normally, a tunnel that led straight to the surface should appear, but dungeons like this with short lengths could be exited by simply returning the way you came.

I was about to leave the boss room when I paused after seeing the half-destroyed centipede, or rather, the centipede-shaped train’s corpse.

‘……Should I take it as proof of subjugation?’

When I fought the Rock Centipede, I had gone there from the beginning to acquire a rune, so I didn’t need to take the corpse with me, but this time, I had come because of a request, so I might need proof.

Actually, showing the rune on the back of my hand would be sufficient proof, and I could even have them check the rune’s energy, but as far as visual proof went, nothing could beat that monster’s head.

‘I should ask Helga.’

I turned back the way I had come.

Yes. There was no need for me to think about it alone. Helga would know better than me about this.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

“Oh.”

A short exclamation escaped Helga’s lips. It was her first reaction after seeing the Rock Centipede that had a third of its upper body blown away.

The other bunny girls had similar expressions.

Nix, on the other hand, was paying no attention to the Rock Centipede’s corpse and was wandering around me, letting out creepy and strange laughs.

She kept poking at my hand, so I offered my left hand to her, and she grabbed it and placed it on her head and shook her head. It felt like I was looking at a cat.

“So, should we take it as proof?”

At my question, Helga pondered for a moment and then shook her head.

“Hmm… it’s too big. Even if we only took the head, we would need at least four people. And if the Commander acquired a rune, that would be the most solid proof.”

“I guess so?”

“Yes. It’s a little disappointing that there are no other spoils or byproducts…”

Helga’s eyes glanced around.

Cassandra had said that they could take everything that came out of the dungeon, so it was a little disappointing that there wasn’t anything else to take.

I had known from the beginning that there were no other rewards in this dungeon and that my only goal was the rune, so I didn’t care if there was nothing else to take, but it wasn’t the same for them.

“I’ll talk to Cassandra. The only thing we got from here was the rune, so I’m sure she’ll give us additional compensation.”

“That’s a good idea, Commander.”

Helga nodded and walked towards me, and then her eyes turned cold when she saw Nix rubbing her cheek against my left hand.

Her gaze immediately shifted somewhere else. It felt like she wasn’t tolerating Nix’s actions, but rather, just ignoring her.

“Everyone, get ready to go back. You’ve rested enough.”

The bunny girls who had been whispering to each other after seeing the Rock Centipede replied with a drawn out “Yeees~”.

If I were to write it down, there would probably be a tilde after the word.

I wondered if it was because they were Helga’s subordinates, but it felt like they were starting to resemble Helga more and more. They were relaxed, and didn’t mind resting.

We climbed back up the tunnel we had come through in the same formation. Soon, a large cavern appeared.

It was the place where I had left Nix, Helga, and the other regular members.

As if a decent number of centipedes had appeared as they did in the game, the rocky corpses of centipedes were scattered all over the place.

Although there were dozens of centipede corpses, none of our knights had a single scratch on their faces, which meant the knights had one-sidedly annihilated them.

It wasn’t that surprising.

They might not be a match for bosses due to the fundamental stat difference, but conversely, if the stat difference wasn’t that great, or if the knights were actually stronger, then they could exert tremendous power due to the nature of the field mobs who appeared in the late game.

Even in the vanilla game, the knights of the Golden Twilight Knights could take away almost half of the player’s HP with a single normal attack.

If the Dark Lord mode was applied, who knew what they could do.

There was no need to mention the knights of the Silver Dawn Knights, who were treated as even more elite than the Golden Twilight Knights.

“By the way, Commander.”

Helga, who should have been at the very back, was right next to me. I turned my head, wondering what was wrong.

Helga glanced at Nix, who was walking a little further away, swaying her large breasts, and then whispered in my ear.

“Is it possible that the witch has some kind of special ritualistic meaning in crushing corpses?”

“Ritualistic meaning? What are you talking about?”

Without exaggerating, that was something I was hearing for the first time.

I had never seen a document that mentioned that black magic users tore apart corpses to find some meaning. I had never heard of such a conversation either.

“No, that witch did that earlier. Do you see the pile of pebbles on your right? That used to be a centipede. That witch did that.”

Helga’s finger pointed at the pile of pebbles that was scattered on my right.

It was in such a state that no one could imagine it had once been a centipede. It looked like just a pile of rocks.

“……That used to be a monster?”

“Yes. She was crushing them by herself after the fight.”

“Hmm……”

I tried to recall, but nothing came to mind.

The closest thing I could think of was a document that mentioned that a few black magic users enjoyed biological experiments, but even they did it for the sake of experiments, and not to pointlessly destroy corpses.

“Oh, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she gave me a strange answer.”

“A strange answer? What did she say?”

“When I asked her what the meaning of that action was, she said that it didn’t have any meaning ‘here’. It could have just been a random thing to make herself look better, but you never know.”

It didn’t mean anything ‘here’, huh.

That was a baffling statement.

The fact that she had emphasized the word ‘here’ meant that it had meaning somewhere else.

It was hard for me to understand Nix’s personality, so I had no idea what that meant.

“Well, I don’t know either. I’ll ask her about it once we get out. Maybe she’ll give me a proper answer if I ask.”

“Ah, I guess so. She might give you a proper answer if you ask, Commander.”

Helga nodded, seemingly convinced, and stepped back, probably remembering that Nix was unusually obedient to me.

I was also a little curious about that.

What did it mean when she said it had no meaning here, and why did she say that?

Maybe it really was just a random thing to make herself look better, but it seemed worth asking about.

Nix, whether she had heard the conversation between Helga and me or not, was still following me closely with a creepy smile.

In return, her distance from the surrounding knights was a little wider than before.

It seemed that her action of tearing apart the corpses had had a slightly larger effect.

“Ah…! You’re finally out!”

As soon as we took the armor that had been piled up in one place and exited the dungeon, I saw Cassandra standing right next to the exit with a knight.

Cassandra had an anxious expression, but her face immediately brightened when she saw me.

The knight standing behind her also had a noticeably bright expression the moment they saw us.

Their eyes, filled with relief, were directed at us.

The knights behind me were surprised that the lord had come here herself, but I wasn’t surprised at all, since I had experienced it countless times in the game.

‘Things are quite different in a lot of ways, though.’

In the game, there were only three people at this spot: the lord herself, the lord’s most trusted knight, and the player, so it felt like they were keeping a really big secret.

But it wasn’t like that now.

Not only Helga, but also her regular subordinates had entered the dungeon, so there was a lot of commotion.

Even Nix, who was practically an outsider, was with us, so it didn’t feel like there was a secret to be kept.

‘Well, it’s not like they’re the type to go around telling people.’

Unless Cecilia directly questioned them about what had happened, we wouldn’t be the ones to go around saying that we had gone to a Rune Dungeon.

If they were that loose-lipped, they wouldn’t have been able to work at the Imperial Palace in the first place.

I could only hope that Cecilia wouldn’t catch on.

“How did it go?”

“You can rest easy now. It’s all been taken care of.”

“……That’s a relief.”

Cassandra’s body swayed as if she had relaxed. The knight behind her quickly supported her shoulder.

Cassandra wiped the beads of sweat that had formed on her forehead with a handkerchief and said.

“Were you under that much stress? You don’t look well.”

Cassandra shook her head slightly.

“That’s not the reason. Just a few moments ago, I was suddenly overcome with an inexplicable fear that made my whole body tremble, and it was hard for me to even stand properly, but strangely, the moment I saw you come out, my mind calmed down. My poor complexion must be the result of that.”

‘Oh? Now that I think about it…….’

Nix was nearby, so Cassandra was supposed to be terrified, but I looked around with that thought in mind.

The short witch with her half-purple, half-green hair was nowhere to be seen.

Seeing me look around, the knight behind me crossed her index fingers into an X. I understood what that meant and nodded inwardly.

It seemed that she had teleported away as soon as she saw Cassandra, because she knew that it would be difficult to have a conversation with her there. It seemed like she was more considerate than I had thought.

Because of the timing, Cassandra seemed to have misunderstood that her mind calmed down because she had seen me.

‘Well, what’s going to happen now?’

I calmly waited for what Cassandra was going to say next. The way the mid-game main story was going to unfold depended on what Cassandra said here.

To be precise, it depended on what the player had done from the beginning until now, and Cassandra was simply the one who was going to tell us about it, but I had skipped over the mid-game, so I had no idea what would happen now.

The story afterwards was entirely up to Cassandra.

Well, it was a bit ridiculous to be trying to find out the story at this point, but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.

“I……”

Cassandra moved her lips.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

[Your Text Here]