Chapter 57
Rosalie sighed in relief when the man and his demon left. She’d recognized that hood and mask—they were the same as what the person fighting the mannitor had been wearing. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let him go, but the way he was talking, her instincts told her to believe him when he said he wasn’t her main enemy.
Besides, from what she’d seen in the past, and especially from what she felt coming from that demon, it likely wouldn’t have been a good idea to engage them alone, anyway.
If he truly had been evil, it would have been a moral failing to let him go regardless of how powerful he was. It was her duty to kill an enemy like that. But that demon’s fear aura had been incredibly strong. As a Paladin, her Poise Stat was raised quite high, which helped her operate in spite of fear, but even she had been filled with the desire to turn and run at the sight of that wretched thing. It was strong. At the very least, if she had made a mistake in letting that man go, making that mistake probably spared her life from being taken by the monster. If she just waited a day and came after him later, backed up by Alfon and Erza, maybe then they’d be able to do something about it.
But she was still down in these tunnels. He’d said they were owned by a group of other Blood Mages, who were his enemies. At the very least, she needed to see if such a thing was true.
So, holding her hammer out in front of her to illuminate the way, she hesitantly crept forward, keeping an eye out for traps.
But as she went, she didn’t see any. That was unusual, if this place truly was being used as a Blood Mage’s lair, but not impossible. Especially considering these tunnels were kept secret, it could have been that they didn’t want to spend the time managing traps in areas that wouldn’t see intruders. Or there were enough Blood Mages collaborating with each other that they didn’t want to get caught in each other’s Fire Rituals. Those things wouldn’t attack their owners, but anyone else was fair game. If there were a large number of Blood Mages all working down here, it could’ve been for their own safety that there were no traps.
She hoped such a thing wasn’t the case, though. The man she’d just confronted said there were a few colluding with one another, which was common with Classes like these—often three or four of them would work together to make a base and watch each other’s backs. But if it was a whole camp of them, with numbers of seven, eight, nine? That would be a significant problem, especially if the man was also right in saying they had the town guard in their pocket. Her mind went to a more disastrous possibility—what if the number of mages was in the teens? She doubted her little three-person group would ever be capable of handling something like fifteen Blood Mages, even if they were all lower in Level.
She tried to calm herself down. Maybe this hallway was originally trapped, and that man had just cleared them all out already. It certainly looked like something that would only be made for a small number of people. Perhaps this situation wouldn’t be as disastrous as she’d feared.
She arrived at a door with a knob that’d been smeared in wet blood. Seemed like this had been where that man had come from.