Sepakai (GXG) (GIRLXGIRL) (GL)

142

Chapter 14
Section 6: Authority
Heading out of the dungeon, we made our way straight to where Litzreich was waiting for us inside the school.

The sun had already set and the time for students to head home had long passed.

Despite there being no students at the school, Litzreich was still in her office, banging some kind of weird tool against a couple of parts resting in front of her.

[Toslin]: “What are you doing?”

Toslin was the first of us to say anything as we all watched the smoke wafting off those parts.

[Litzreich]: “Oh ho, back already? I thought for sure I wouldn’t be seeing you for at least a day, but I suppose this is what I should’ve expected from the party that slew a dragon.”

Litzreich pulled off her lab coat, darkened black with soot and dirt, replacing it with the frilled jacket she usually like to wear.

[Litzreich]: “No need to worry about any of that. It’s a failure anyway. So? I take it your investigation bore fruit?”

[Toslin]: “Yeah, we think so. Rose, could you set it there?”

[Rose]: “Yes, just a moment.”

After Toslin pointed at the table, Rose-san walked up from behind and dropped the pieces of the gnome golem we had brought with us. Everything from the lens, to the larger bits of armor we scavenged together, to the core-like crystal fragments we found inside.

[Litzreich]: “Ooh!? What is this? A lens? No, it’s somehow……some kind of transparent stone…….and is this the core to a golem? It has crumbled a bit, but where did you get your hands on something like this?”

[Toslin]: “This, of course we got it from the dungeon. It was…….um”

[Rose]: “The 35th floor. It was right here on the map.”

Rose-san spread out our map across the little empty space left on the table. Litzreich’s gaze continued to move between it and the pieces we brought back before stifling a groan.

[Litzreich]: “……so in other words, this is what remains from that new type of monsters our knights had reported…….is this all that’s left?”

[Carol]: “We did what we could. They were tough, so we broke ’em.”

Carol gave a brief summary of what exactly happened down there.

[Litzreich]: “Hoh, I see…… Gnomes? You’re telling me they were riding inside this golem…….”

[Carol]: “Yep. And there were a couple of bold loire before that? They were these statues of knights that could move and attacked us. What floor was that again?”

[Litzreich]: “Why are you asking me? I’m the one who asked you to investigate.”

[Saluena]: “Those gnomes probably created the bold loire as well. They then told them to attack any intruders…….”

[Litzreich]: “Wait wait wait. When you say gnomes, you mean the spirits beaten during the Illyarian War right? But the curse placed on them afterwards…….er, and by that I of course mean the blessing, I mean, they shouldn’t be able to attack people right?”

[Rose]: “The Goddess’s blessing certainly prevent spirits from becoming hostile against others, but there are cases where some regain their primordial power and attack.”

[Litzreich]: “Sure, I heard that things like that happen from time to time, but…….why? Why are these gnomes rampaging now? I have examined every abnormal incident ever recorded that has happened in that dungeon, yet not once has the word ‘gnome’ ever appeared. Let alone one of them having gone wild like this.”