Chapter 57 The Wine Cup
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
The houses held no sign of people.
We overturned a few ramshackle huts, but every place was the same — fake furniture carved from stone and wood, nothing living had ever set a foot here. It must have been a monster nest from the start.
In one house a wide table stretched across the room, and atop it sat a few stone bowls filled with a red soup. There were things like stools, but their shapes were nonsense — no one could actually sit on them.
Having checked that the houses yielded nothing of value, Kaede-san and the others made for the church that stood by the central plaza.
”This is the only building that’s real. It’s locked.” Kaede-san shook the big westward double doors. The iron groaned on its hinges, old and rusted. There was a lock on the inside, but she tore the frame apart with pure force.
Still amazing. She didn’t even try to hide it.
”Quick look inside,” she said.
Past the entrance lay a small antechamber. The wreckage of a reception desk blocked sight into the deeper rooms. You had to go round either left or right and work your way in.
Kaede-san leaned close to the swollen face of Natsume-san and said, short and efficient, “High-pressure grenade.”
”Flexible type?” Natsume asked.
”Yeah.”
Natsume-san’s eyes — huge and chipmunk-cute — were bruised a pale blue. From her pack she took out a metal ball the size of a yuzu or an orange, five centimeters across. It didn’t look like a grenade; more like a baseball. An electric capsule, maybe.
Kaede-san stuffed a yellow capsule — the kind they also used to charge guns — into the metal sphere. The device chirped, its surface blinking faintly.
”Kiri and I go in. Natsume, you stay and keep watch. Watch for monsters coming from outside.”
”Got it.” Natsume-san’s face tightened with worry, but she slapped each of their shoulders in a mock blessing the way an old woman might, muttering a litany.
”Misfortune be turned aside; what is crooked be made straight. Kuwabara, Kuwabara. Crane, tortoise. Wait—ah, that’s right, I had an omamori too.”
”Save the charms. If you use the electrode again I’ll put you in the sights of my gun.”
”How mean of you. Be careful, both of you.”
There was no grudge in her tone. With the watch set, leader Kaede-san and Kiri-san — swords and guns at the ready — slipped into the church.
Kaede-san moved with her blade drawn. The interior was dark, but their visors saw through it without trouble. Oddly, in low natural light I could barely make anything out.
The journey through those halls terrified me. Old statues that seemed to stir up fear, dark corridors that felt ready to cough something into motion. Floors and doors creaked; from below, a low, mourning voice groaned up from the cellar.
Kaede-san didn’t care. She smashed locked doors, shoved household debris into basement entrances to block anything inside, and flattened a sink area that reeked of vengeful spirits with a toppled pillar and roofing rubble. If the building suggested traps, she met them head on and destroyed them.
At a courtyard window, a mass of meat like a mangled dog leapt through and attacked. “Kaede-san, watch out!”
”Interference,” she said, and in one sweep cut down two of them. The last one she killed by kicking its snout clean off. She showed not a shred of mercy.
They ducked a monster ambush and a slimy lump of flesh dropped from the next room’s ceiling like slime. Kaede-san took it full on — her body seared, flesh slackening — and tore it away, killing it as she peeled. When a massive bookcase fell, she pushed with superhuman force and smashed it aside.
She looked like the wrong protagonist dropped into some horror game: every trap met head-on, every hazard burned away by sheer will. I thought even with every extra life I wouldn’t last long watching her fight.
She’s strong… Trash-san was like that too, but from my perspective the Exploration Squad feel otherworldly, almost superhuman.
They feel no pain; damage is only numbers. They push their bodies to the limit.
She did all the reckless things I resented, the horizontal rule-breaking I could never bring myself to do. She’d hoist a chest that sheltered a lump of meat and hurl both through a window. When a monster stirred, Kiri-san would shoot it through a wall or door without pause.
Whether monsters had strategy I didn’t know, but Kaede-san refused to play along.
Of course, Kaede-san was human. That kind of excess couldn’t last. And so, when it came, it was abrupt.
The place wasn’t large; the exploration lasted maybe twenty minutes, and then Kaede-san simply slumped to the floor as if someone had pulled out the props beneath her. “My body’s not moving. Why?”
”Probably shift rotation,” Kiri said.
”It doesn’t hurt, so it’s weird.”
”We’re already gone off the rails. The alarm in our heads might be broken, but the body won’t follow. Go figure.”
Kiri-san reloaded the gun capsule, then left Kaede-san sitting on the floor. She drew her sword and went ahead down the corridor.
Kaede-san flung herself out on the floor, eyes turned up at the ceiling, not even propping herself against a wall. Dust and grime scattered everywhere; she stared at the rafters with the unblinking calm of a soldier waiting for his last moment on the battlefield. She didn’t blink.
”Recovery time: yahan-toki,” she muttered. (yahan-toki — an old time-term; roughly about an hour.)
Light in fragments fell through the tall windows of the inner hallway and painted the floor with colored shards. The place hushed; the slow rise and fall of her chest was the only proof she still existed. Her posture, abandoned and ruined like a discarded work of art, struck me as oddly beautiful. For a moment I felt like I was at the bottom of the sea — she the goddess of a sunken ship, trembling with prisms from above.
I sat beside her, dirty and stained like a cast-off relic.
Too reckless. Taking every blow without guarding herself, collapsing as a matter of course — an exploration style that would break anyone eventually. And she was left alone like that.
Invisible, I stroked her melting bangs. My fingertips tingled; they hurt a little.
She must have been soaked in that monster’s dissolving ichor. It doesn’t work on me, but through her it had a faint effect. My fingers still prickled.
”Any sign of men?” I asked.
She blinked, looking blank. Realizing she’d been touched was dangerous, so I stopped.
”Hey, it’s the meeting hall,” Kiri called from further down. She returned after a short while. Unlike Kaede-san, she had only splatters of blood at her feet — she’d fought cleanly, efficiently. Not unscathed, but the worst were small areas eaten raw by maggots.
”The main room of the chapel. Chairs lined up in front of colored glass, and there’s a crowd — a whole lot of them.”
”I see.”
”Shall we call it? Killing monsters won’t get us a single coin. There’s nothing worth taking. Let’s pull out.”
”You could at least buy pickles with a single coin.”
”That’s not the point.”
Kaede-san forced her broken body upright. Bits of stone and dust slid from her clothes.
”Was there a mystical object?”
She tilted her head. Catching her breath, Kiri-san answered, “Yeah. There was, all right. They were worshipping it, so I’d bet that’s the one. You could tell by the way it was set up.”
”Its effect?”
”No clue. You planning to recover it?”
”I’ll count it as results.”
Kiri-san laughed — a dry, ugly laugh, like an old man clearing phlegm from his throat. “What’s so funny?” Kaede asked.
”Sorry. Just thought you might actually plan to live through this. You’re serious to a fault. But if that’s what you want, then sure — let’s do it.”
Her mouth still twisted with amusement, she covered it with a hand and nodded.
The two crept deeper until they crouched before a small service door. Through the crack they could see a large chamber — the chapel proper.
Rows of long benches stood in neat lines. At the far end, an altar spread out in a fan shape, and beyond it rose a tall stained glass window like a slab of sacred stone. The ceiling arched high, painted with winged human forms, and though the place had decayed, the space still held a solemn air — more chapel than church, now half in ruin, like a wedding hall left to rot.
On the benches sat more than a dozen lumps of flesh — some perched, some slumped, all facing the pulpit with eerie decorum. One smaller mass sprawled lazily across a seat, as though bored with the ritual.
At intervals the large red mass standing at the pulpit would tremble, and the ones on the benches responded, their movements looping endlessly like a grotesque liturgy.
On the dais rested a small silver chalice.
We watched through the narrow gap in the door. The monsters hadn’t noticed us — though how they could, without eyes or ears, I couldn’t imagine.
Then Kaede-san shifted and stepped on something. A soft crunch rose underfoot. She bent and picked up a filthy scrap of paper, its black-and-white surface wrinkled and torn.
”…A printed sheet?”
”You can read that?” Kiri asked.
”It says… ‘Year 17 of Eikō. Fatal traffic accident… failed development of vision meat… containment of mist… loss… antibody research… destroyed.’”
She traced the words for a moment, then gave up. “Half the text is nonsense, the rest’s torn. And I’ve never heard of that era name.”
”Impressive, though,” Kiri said.
It was a remnant of an old newspaper — full of holes, maggot-eaten and far too ancient to make sense of.
Kaede-san looked at Kiri’s oddly impressed face. “What?”
”Didn’t know you could read,” Kiri said. “Surprised me.”
”Imperial Guard training. You can’t?”
”Forgot long ago.”
They were perfectly serious about it. Maybe after years of life like this, an explorer rarely touched documents anymore. Or maybe Kiri had just never cared to learn.
”So, learn anything?”
”Nothing.”
”Figures. Words are useless.”
”Not even fit for toilet paper.”
Kaede-san tossed the scrap to the floor. It landed face-down — unlucky. I couldn’t see the rest.
They didn’t care, but the writings here were readable to me. Maybe salvaging even one book would have been worthwhile.
The darkness of ignorance, I thought. Trash-san always warned about that.
The strangeness of this dungeon wasn’t lost on me either. Monsters living in human houses, mimicking human behavior — faint traces that people once lived here.
Never dig too deep into dungeon mysteries, Trash-san had said. Focus on real threats. Research can wait until you’re home.
Still, odd relics and hints like this weren’t uncommon inside dungeons. They dangled something — something that tugged at human curiosity. Sometimes it led to breakthroughs, sometimes to nothing. Sometimes the dungeon itself used such illusions to lure explorers. And while illusions don’t affect me, the fact that the paper was written in Japanese — and conveniently lay at our feet — was reason enough to distrust it.
In short: Don’t waste time on what you can’t know. That was Trash-san’s teaching. Trying to make sense of bait like this only gets you caught.
I wasn’t a dungeon fanatic, and though these two were professionals, they weren’t researchers. Explorers, yes — but long divorced from curiosity itself.
”Throw in the high-pressure,” Kaede said. “After the blast, we rush in and finish it.”
She pulled out the same metal ball from before and hurled it through the door toward the chapel’s center.
Clang. Clank-clank.
The glowing sphere rolled across the floor, chiming against the stone.
Without checking the result, they closed the door and moved away — ten meters down the hall and around a corner, backs to the wall, not quite touching it.
”If we could avoid fighting, fine by me,” Kiri muttered. “But what if that mystical object breaks?”
”…”
”Kaede, you idiot,” she added.
Kaede-san said nothing.
A second later, a dry crack split the air — like wood bursting in fire, or ice shattering under pressure. Then came a faint zzzt, zzzt, like maggots sizzling.
A tremor crept up from the floor, brushed over me like winter static, and vanished through my head. It didn’t affect me, but both Kaede and Kiri froze for a second, hair lifting in soft static halos. They looked like mischievous schoolgirls rubbed by plastic sheets — strangely cute, in a grim way.
”Go. Clean up,” Kaede said.
”Right.”
They advanced down the corridor again, blades drawn.
The chapel was a scene of ruin.
What the hell…?
Every lump of flesh had been boiled alive. Steam rose from them, filling the air with a stench that burned the nose. They had died without a sound. The red meat had turned gray, the thin ends blackened to ash.
It looked as though the whole room had been microwaved. Whatever that pulse was, it targeted organic matter only — the stonework was untouched.
”Boiled octopus,” Kiri muttered. “What a stench.”
”Confirm they’re dead.”
”Yeah, yeah. Always the boring part.”
They split up to check the corpses. I glanced at the floor.
Because of that ball she threw, I thought.
The metal sphere had unfolded into a larger orb, expanding like one of those plastic toy balls that grow when you pull them apart.
Notes:
• Kaede – A female psionic explorer known as Necksplitter, is a veteran assassin and messenger of Lord Ichimatsu. Her appearance is both young and old, with gray hair streaked through black and vibrant, unlined skin. She is graceful yet carries the fatigue of a long life in war, resembling an old hunting dog. Her psionic ability is mysterious and potentially dangerous.
• Natsume – A female companion and younger sister of Kaede-san, cared for by Kaede-san during their journey through the dangerous valley, at risk of infection from the parasitic creatures.
• Kiri – A female sniper and member of Kaede-san’s team, white-haired with sleepy eyes, wielding a disguised sniper rifle, known for her quick hands and slow speech, often joking in dire situations.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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