I Am a Villain, So What?-Chapter 171: Another raid team

I knelt next to the carcass of a giant ape lying at the base of the temple steps. Its skull was completely caved in.

I moved over to check the wounds on a nearby Thorn-Leopard. It had been sliced cleanly in half by a single, massive blade. The edges of the cut were seared shut, meaning the weapon was coated in high-temperature aura or magic.

"They didn’t struggle," I said, wiping my gloves on the grass. "Whoever killed these monsters did it quickly and efficiently. They barely stopped moving."

"A high-ranking raid team," Alicia guessed, keeping her rapier angled forward. "Should we turn back? If they are hunting a specific boss, they might treat us as hostile competitors."

I looked over my shoulder at her. "Are you scared?"

Alicia’s eye twitched. Her pride as a former knight flared instantly. She didn’t dignify that with a response, instead marching right past me and up the cracked stone steps without looking back.

We entered the dark ruins. The air inside the temple was significantly cooler than the humid jungle outside. Thick stone pillars lined a long, rectangular hallway, their surfaces covered in glowing blue moss.

We moved silently, sticking to the shadows. After a few minutes, the faint sound of voices echoed from a chamber ahead. I raised a fist, signaling Alicia to stop.

I peered around the edge of a collapsed pillar.

In a large, sunken courtyard open to the sky, a team of five hunters was resting. They were heavily geared. Two vanguard knights in battered plate armor, a scout wrapping a bandage around his arm, a healer organizing potions, and a mage leaning against a stone altar.

Lying in the center of the room was the corpse of a massive, armored centipede. It was easily forty feet long, its thick carapace cracked open and still smoking.

I heard Alicia take a sharp, disgusted breath behind me at the sight of the giant bug.

"They took down a sub-boss," I whispered.

"They look exhausted," she whispered back, keeping her eyes fixed on the dead centipede to make sure it wasn’t twitching.

She was right. Their armor was dented, and the mage was breathing heavily, clearly drained of mana. They were taking a necessary break before pushing deeper into the ruins.

Sneaking past a team of veteran hunters in a confined space was a bad idea. In the Spire, getting caught sneaking usually led to immediate bloodshed because everyone assumed you were a scavenger trying to steal loot or backstab them.

I decided it was better to announce our presence.

I stepped out from behind the pillar into the open doorway. Alicia followed a half-step behind me.

"Who’s there?!" the scout barked instantly, grabbing a short bow and nocking an arrow.

The rest of the team scrambled to their feet. The vanguard knights drew their heavy broadswords, and the mage raised a glowing staff.

I held my hands up, keeping them away from the Reaver strapped to my back.

"Relax. We aren’t looking for a fight," I said calmly. "We’re just passing through."

The team leader, a tall man with a jagged scar across his jaw and a massive greatsword resting on his shoulder, squinted at us. He looked at my black tactical coat, then at Alicia’s plain gray cloak and rapier.

"Just the two of you?" the leader asked, his tone heavy with suspicion. "You made it to the 20th floor with a two-person party?"

"We move fast and avoid the hordes," I answered.

The scout lowered his bow slightly, but his eyes darted between us. "Captain, they don’t have a guild crest. They look like freelancers. Or scavengers."

"We aren’t scavengers," Alicia said coldly. "We hunt our own prey."

The captain stared at us for a long moment. He evaluated our clean clothes and our lack of visible injuries. Then, he looked at the massive centipede corpse in the center of the room.

"This is our kill," the captain stated firmly. "The core, the carapace, and the mandibles belong to the Steel Vipers. If you try to claim salvage rights, we will kill you."

"Keep it," I said, waving a hand dismissively. "We have no interest in your loot. We just want to access the lower catacombs of this temple. If you let us walk through the courtyard, you won’t see us again."

The captain exchanged a look with his mage. The mage nodded slightly, confirming we weren’t actively channeling offensive magic.

"Fine," the captain grunted, stepping aside. "Walk along the far wall. Keep your hands where I can see them."

I nodded in thanks. Alicia and I walked down the stone steps into the courtyard. We kept our distance from their camp, hugging the perimeter of the room.

The hunters watched us like hawks. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife.

As we passed the massive carcass of the centipede, the healer of their group spoke up.

"You two are crazy," the healer muttered, shaking his head. "Going down into the catacombs alone? The spawn rate down there is broken. We lost two porters just trying to secure the entrance."

"We’ll manage," I replied without stopping.

"Suit yourselves," the captain said, spitting on the stone floor. "Just don’t come running back here dragging a horde behind you. We won’t open the barricades for you."

"Understood."

We reached the heavy stone doors at the opposite end of the courtyard. I pushed them open, revealing a dark, spiraling staircase leading deep underground.

I stepped into the darkness, Alicia right behind me. The heavy doors slammed shut, cutting off the light from the courtyard and leaving us in absolute pitch black.

"Friendly people," Alicia remarked dryly. She snapped her fingers, conjuring a small sphere of fire that floated above her shoulder to light the stairwell.

"They weren’t being friendly. They just let us pass because they were exhausted," I said, drawing the Reaver from its holster and checking the chamber. "They didn’t want to risk a fight they weren’t sure they could win without their mage at full strength."

I started down the stairs, keeping my voice low.

"We will have to be careful on the way back up. If they finish their hunt and decide they want our loot, they won’t hesitate to ambush us. Hunters who kill for a living are always more dangerous than the monsters."

*****

The air grew colder with every step we took down the spiral staircase.

Alicia’s floating sphere of fire cast long, dancing shadows against the curved stone walls. The descent felt endless. The sounds of the jungle and the resting hunter team above faded completely, replaced by the hollow dripping of water and our own echoing footsteps.

"It smells like old blood and dust," Alicia whispered, keeping her rapier drawn.

"Catacombs usually do," I replied.

We finally hit the bottom. The narrow staircase opened into a massive, rectangular stone corridor. Alcoves lined both sides of the walls, filled with ancient, crumbling statues and piles of bones. Some of the bones were human, mixed with shattered armor and rusted weapons.

The healer upstairs wasn’t exaggerating. This place was a graveyard for porters and low-ranking hunters.

I stepped into the corridor. My senses instantly picked up movement in the dark.

"Narrow space," I said, drawing my combat knife with my left hand while keeping the Reaver in my right. "Alicia, no wide-area spells. If you use a firestorm in a sealed tunnel, you’ll burn up all the oxygen and suffocate us."

"Understood," Alicia said. The sphere of fire above her shoulder shifted, condensing into a tight, incredibly bright point of light. "Piercing attacks only."

Scratch. Scrape.

The noise came from the ceiling.

I looked up. Clinging to the stone arches directly above us were half a dozen Crypt-Stalkers. They were gaunt, humanoid beasts with elongated, multi-jointed limbs and pale, stone-like skin. Their eyes glowed a sickly yellow in the dark.

They didn’t roar. They simply dropped from the ceiling like spiders.

I sidestepped the first one that lunged for my shoulders. I grabbed it by the back of its elongated neck, drove its face directly into the stone wall, and drove my combat knife up through the base of its skull. The blade pierced the tough skin with a harsh crunch. I yanked the knife out and let the body drop.

Two more rushed me from the front.

I holstered the knife, gripped the Reaver with both hands, and swung the heavy steel stock into the jaw of the monster on the right. The bone shattered on impact. I pivoted smoothly, aimed the barrel at the second monster’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

BANG! The buckshot tore a massive hole through its torso, throwing it backward into the dark.

A sharp hiss sounded to my left. A Stalker had bypassed me and lunged for Alicia.

She didn’t flinch. She thrust her rapier forward in a perfect fencing lunge. A compressed needle of white-hot fire shot from the tip of her blade, piercing straight through the monster’s glowing yellow eye and out the back of its head. The beast collapsed instantly, the edges of the wound cauterized shut.

"Three more down the hall," Alicia called out, pulling her blade back.

"I see them."

I holstered the shotgun. I needed to keep pushing my physical conditioning.

I sprinted down the corridor to meet them. The physical training I had forced my body through was paying off. My footing was solid, and my reaction time was sharp.

The leading Stalker swiped at my chest with razor-sharp, stone-like claws. I ducked under the swing, stepped into its guard, and delivered a devastating uppercut to its ribs. The force of the punch cracked its ribcage and lifted it off the ground. I grabbed its leg before it flew back and slammed it into the adjacent wall.

The remaining two charged simultaneously. One managed to rake its claws across my left forearm, tearing through the sleeve of my coat.

The pain flared, but the Rune of Vitality in my chest pulsed immediately. The bleeding stopped before the blood could even hit the floor, the torn muscle fibers stitching themselves back together.

I ignored the cut, grabbed the monster by its throat, and crushed its windpipe with my bare hand. I threw the choking beast into the path of the final Stalker, tripping it.

Before it could recover, a concentrated bolt of fire shot past my shoulder and blew the monster’s head off.

"You’re getting reckless, Master," Alicia said, walking up behind me. The floating light illuminated the corridor filled with corpses. "You let it scratch you."

"I needed to test the healing response under continuous stress," I said, inspecting my repaired forearm. The coat was ruined, but the skin was flawless. "It works."

I pulled my knife back out and started digging into the chests of the dead Stalkers. I extracted five gray, dense mana cores and tossed them into my pouch.

"The spawn rate is heavy," I noted, looking down the seemingly endless corridor. More yellow eyes were already gathering in the darkness ahead. "But the core quality down here is excellent."

"Are we just going to fight our way through this entire maze?" Alicia asked, stepping carefully over a puddle of dark blood.

"No. We’re looking for a vault," I said, wiping my knife clean. "The catacombs on this floor were designed as an ancient armory. There are resource caches hidden behind sealed stone doors. We find one, break it open, mine the high-grade ores inside, and leave."

"And if the Steel Vipers team from upstairs comes down while we’re mining?"

"Then we’ll have a disagreement over salvage rights," I said flatly. "Stay close. We’re pushing through."

We moved deeper into the catacombs. The Stalkers kept coming in waves of five or six. We fell into a brutal, efficient rhythm. I handled the close-quarters brawling, using my fists, my knife, and the Reaver when things got crowded. I took a few hits, but the auto-healing kept me in the fight without missing a beat. Alicia provided pinpoint cover fire, sniping any monster that tried to flank us with highly compressed fire lances.

After an hour of continuous fighting, the narrow corridor finally opened into a circular antechamber.

There were no alcoves here. Instead, the far wall was dominated by a massive, perfectly smooth pair of obsidian doors. Strange, geometric runes were carved into the stone, glowing with a faint red light.

"Found it," I said, walking up to the doors.

"It’s sealed with a mana lock," Alicia observed, studying the runes. "We don’t have a key. Should I try melting the hinges?"

"Obsidian is heavily resistant to heat. It would take you hours to melt through this much mass without using an explosion that would collapse the ceiling on our heads," I explained.

I pulled off my right glove and pressed my bare hand against the center of the heavy doors.

"I’ll handle the lock."

I channeled my mana, forcing it into the dark, corrosive structure I had purchased from the System. A thick, oily black mist seeped from my palm, spreading across the obsidian surface.

[Skill: Mana Corrosion]

The black mist latched onto the glowing red runes. The magical lock hissed violently, like water thrown onto a hot skillet. The dark energy rapidly destabilized the ancient mana structures holding the door shut. The red glow flickered, turned grey, and died completely.

A loud, mechanical clack echoed from deep within the stone.

I pushed. The massive obsidian doors groaned and slowly swung inward.

The air inside the vault rushed out. It didn’t smell like dust or blood. It smelled like pure, concentrated ozone.

Alicia directed her sphere of fire into the room.

The vault was massive. The walls, ceiling, and floor were completely covered in jagged, highly refined mana crystals. Veins of pure Mithril and Orichalcum ore snaked through the stone, glittering brilliantly in the firelight. Piles of ancient, degraded weapons lay in the corners, their enchanted cores still humming faintly.

"We hit the jackpot," I said, pulling a heavy canvas sack from my inventory. "Start mining the blue crystals and the silver veins. Only take the highest density materials."

"Understood," Alicia said, her eyes wide at the sheer wealth lining the walls.

I walked over to a thick vein of Orichalcum and pulled out a specialized mining pick. Upgrading Merle’s workshop and forging the weapons we needed for the upcoming disasters would cost an astronomical amount of resources.

This vault was going to pay for all of it.

CRASH.

A loud, echoing boom suddenly reverberated through the catacombs outside the vault. It wasn’t the sound of a monster. It was the distinct, heavy sound of an explosion caused by a high-tier spell.

I stopped swinging the pick. Alicia froze, her rapier instantly appearing in her hand.

"That came from the corridor we just cleared," Alicia whispered.

"The Steel Vipers," I said, my eyes narrowing. "They finished resting."