By Zephyria Piles of soil and rock fragments poured down, and it was as if there was a haze of yellow dust everywhere, making it impossible to see even an inch ahead. Every time he breathed, sand dust was drawn into his lungs, and Leonardo kept coughing.
He couldn’t even open his eyes properly because of the stinging, and he chuckled at the weight of the huge rock wall pressing down on his back and head. He was barely standing, supporting himself with his trembling arms and body, and his appearance was quite ridiculous.
After a while, Leonardo, who had stopped coughing, muttered towards the empty air beyond the dust in a rather hoarse voice.
“If you were going to come, you should have brought some other guys with you. What are you going to do coming alone….”
His voice scattered into the narrow space under the rock wall. Then, Squad Leader 8, who was also supporting the rock wall with difficulty in a slightly distant place, frowned and said.
“You would have been crushed to death if I hadn’t come, but you have a lot to say.”
“Aren’t we about to be crushed to death together now?”
The two, who threw a word at each other, glared at each other silently with the swirling dust in between.
Kukung―! Kung―!
As if to tell them that their war of nerves was meaningless, the rock wall they were supporting was coming down more and more. As a result, Leonardo, whose upper body was leaning further, swallowed dry saliva as he heard the sound of soil and sand crumbling down.
The upper part of this rock wall was barely stopped, hanging on the edge of the opposite cliff, but it was precarious, as if it would collapse at any moment if either of the two people acting as supports took their hands off. In the meantime, a new recruit and an outsider were lying unconscious near Leonardo’s feet.
They were trying to escape the cave, flying under the rock wall, but they collided with a pile of stones falling from above and failed to avoid it.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem like there was any blood or that they had hit their heads, but it was by no means a good situation. Moreover, it was the worst that Squad Leader 8, who had come to find the new recruit, had become a ridiculous figure who couldn’t do anything with him.
Leonardo felt that his back and shoulders were so numb from the weight pressing down on him that he was losing sensation. Squad Leader 8 said that her squad members would find them soon, but that unreliable word was what the new recruit had been saying all along.
The soil was softened by the rain that had fallen for several days, the ground was shocked by the battle with the Dermokas, and there were even tunnels dug by those guys. Leonardo felt that this mountain was on the verge of collapse.
In this situation, there had been one or two cases of the Council’s delayed response, and it was suicidal to just keep holding on until they came.
After thinking about it for a long time, he came to a conclusion and asked Squad Leader 8 in a voice that he didn’t really like.
“Hey, you can use teleport, right?”
Then, she paused for a moment and answered in a suspicious voice.
“Why are you asking that?”
“Why else? I’m trying to escape.”
Squad Leader 8 regarded it as nonsense and shifted her gaze to the direction he was in. As the dust slowly subsided, she could see that particularly high-chroma golden eyes were staring at her.
She wasn’t very happy with this situation with Leonardo either.
However, the pressure from above was getting stronger and stronger, and although she had said so earlier, she couldn’t be sure that her squad members, who would be busy dealing with the Dermokas, would find this place soon.
And because the golden eyes looking at her seemed quite serious, she decided to change her mind a little from dismissing it as nonsense.
Squad Leader 8 immediately looked around to find an escape route. Then, she found a location where she could avoid even if the rock wall collapsed and roughly calculated the distance. It seemed possible to escape alone.
Soon, her gaze turned to the two people lying at Leonardo’s feet. There was no way she could just leave behind her subordinate and the civilian who had lost consciousness.
“I can do it alone, but it’s impossible to move someone.”
At her words, the corners of Leonardo’s lips lifted slightly.
“Then that’s fine. Can you see the space where the light is coming in at the end over there? When I count to three, we’ll get out of there right away.”
“Wait, what about Kenneth and that guy?”
“Kenneth?”
At the name Kenneth, Leonardo followed her gaze and looked at the people who were lying down. There was no way that a squad leader of the Council would know the name of an outsider, and it seemed that the name of the new recruit who was with them was Kenneth.
Now that he thought about it, he only knew that he was sometimes called ‘Ken’, but he didn’t even know his name properly.
“I’ll take both of them.”
Squad Leader 8 said with a dumbfounded expression at Leonardo’s somewhat reckless words.
“This rock wall will collapse the moment either you or I take our hands off. But you’re saying that you can take those two out in that short amount of time?”
“…I have to try it first. We can’t just keep doing this.”
‘I don’t have much magic power left, though.’
Squad Leader 8 made a very unreliable expression when she heard Leonardo’s reckless answer. It was because she knew that the magic power he was feeling now was different from usual.
But the situation was what it was, and she knew that he was strong, so she didn’t add any more to it.
“Okay. There’s no other way, so I’ll follow your words for now.”
Leonardo looked at her with surprised eyes at her quick decision. Then, after checking the two burdens lying in front of him and the location he had to move to, he conveyed it clearly in a low voice.
“From one to three, we’ll let go at the same time and move to our positions. Hesitate for even a moment, and you’ll be crushed to death.”
Hearing Leonardo’s words, Squad Leader 8 stared sharply at the direction the light was coming from and replied.
“Alright, I’m ready.”
He lightly pictured in his mind the scenario of immediately picking up the two unconscious people and teleporting away, then licked his dry lips.
“…Ready.”
He was about to slightly open his mouth to count ‘one’ when it happened.
Kugugung—!
The ground shook, and earth and sand poured down like a flood. The rock face they were supporting tilted and looked as if it would collapse under the force, and Leonardo and Squad Leader 8 looked at each other with urgent expressions and shouted.
“Three—!”
The two let go of the rock face almost simultaneously with their shout.
Squad Leader 8 immediately used teleportation to move to the space at the end of the rock face that they had discussed beforehand. Leonardo quickly lowered his body, grabbed the two sprawled figures with both hands, and similarly used teleportation towards the space in front of him.
However, he realized he had made a mistake.
The amount of mana consumed when teleporting alone was on a completely different level compared to when teleporting with two additional people. On top of that, he had used up almost all of his remaining mana searching for Kenneth and was extremely exhausted, so the teleportation distance was slightly shorter than expected.
As he abruptly stopped midway, the rock face loomed over his head.
Feeling a terrifying pressure on his back, Leonardo became desperate. He planted his feet on the ground, expanded the air, and threw his body with all his might towards the intended space. Squad Leader 8 launched an attack at the collapsing rock face to cover him.
Kwaaaang—!
The attack shattered the rock, creating a very small gap. Thanks to that, he managed to slip out nimbly, but Leonardo couldn’t control his momentum and tumbled onto the ground with the two men he was carrying.
Perhaps he had swallowed some dirt, but a gritty feeling in his mouth made him want to vomit.
Shaking his head to clear his mind, he roughly kicked Kenneth, who was sprawled on top of him, and got up, spitting out the foreign matter a few times.
Having narrowly escaped being crushed to death, the sight of the rock debris collapsing fiercely before his eyes felt even more chilling. However, the relief of being alive was short-lived. The impact of the previous event had triggered a full-scale collapse, and he jumped up, pushed Squad Leader 8’s back, and shouted.
“Get out quickly, quickly!”
“I’m going!”
Squad Leader 8, unusually raising her voice, grabbed the outsider by the scruff of the neck from among the two burdens lying on the ground and moved out. Leonardo slung Kenneth, whom he had kicked earlier, back over his right shoulder and immediately followed her.
Squad Leader 8 continued to create explosions of air, causing the boulders falling from above to scatter around them. However, it only created temporary space, and it was realistically impossible to block all the rocks pouring down from above.
Leonardo wanted to help her, but the use of teleportation earlier had pushed his mana and stamina almost to their limit. He was now struggling just to put up a barrier and follow her up the wall.
Leonardo readjusted Kenneth, who kept slipping, and clung to the cliff with only his left arm. As he strained his left arm to the point where his veins bulged, the tingling sensation intensified.
However, the cliff they had to climb was so high that it felt as if the terrible memories of his grueling training were reviving through the sensations in his body.
He gripped the edge of the cliff with all his might, drawing blood to his fingertips, but he didn’t notice. As he desperately held on, a powerful aura of mana that he couldn’t possibly have waited for brushed against his skin.