Escape

It was a mountain choked with dense, overgrown trees.

It harbored a mithril mine, now abandoned. The village at its foot must once have prospered, but miners no longer came near, and not even the shapes of beasts could be glimpsed.

At night, the moonlight was blocked by the leaves of the trees, making it difficult even to make out the ground.

In that gloom, rough breathing rang out, unusually loud.

Not many. Just two.

Two women were running, scraps of the armor that had once clothed them clinging to their limbs, their garments in disarray.

One had purple hair, the shade of it seeming to melt into the darkness of the night. Her beautiful hair flew about wildly, and her right hand clutched the front of her clothes as though to suppress the trembling of her ample bosom. Her other hand kept its grip on a pair of plain, thick trousers so they would not slip down.

The other had silver hair that shone beautifully, throwing back the moonlight filtering between the trees. In contrast to her companion, she wore a white robe, and in the dark forest she seemed to glow a pale blue.

They were knights who had come to investigate the cause behind the adventurers gone missing in the abandoned mithril mine on this mountain.

There ought to have been more than a dozen other knights with them, yet not one of their figures was here.

—Every last one of them had been devoured by the abandoned mine.

To put it that way would not be wrong. A slime that mimicked the walls of the abandoned mine. A slime so vast it coated every surface of the cavern at the mine's deepest reach.

It ate the men. It violated the women.

That was the cause behind the adventurers' disappearance.

On the faces of the two women running desperately, breath growing ragged, regret and humiliation—and the relief of having escaped—began, bit by bit, to take on the color of fear.

How long, how far had they run?

When the trees of the mountain thinned and moonlight at last began to light the path, the two finally came to a stop.

Their own ragged breathing, and a ringing in their ears from mild oxygen deprivation. Their hammering hearts ached, and their clothing, fouled by the slime's mucus and struck by the wind, mercilessly stole their body heat away.

… It felt disgusting.

The two of them, judging even the strength to voice it a waste, only murmured it within their hearts.

"Alfira, can you still run?"

The white-robed knight asked as she steadied her breathing. When she swept up her silver hair, which, like her garments, had been fouled by the slime's mucus, from beneath it peeked—long ears, far too large and pointed to be called human.

An elf.

A people of the forest, a race superior to humans in mana. The proof of it stood illuminated by the moonlight. Like her silver hair, her pale skin floated faintly in the dim darkness.

"Yes… Fiana-sama."

After a beat's pause, the knight in black called Alfira opened her mouth.

Unlike the elven knight Fiana, she was at the end of her breath. The bluff was obvious.

After studying Alfira for a moment, Fiana began to walk. Running was out of the question, but they did not have enough leeway to sit down and rest.

Knowing as much, Alfira said nothing and followed after her.

"We will rest once we have returned to the village at the foot of the mountain."

"Yes."

In the daytime, it had taken half a day to reach the abandoned mine from that village at the foot of the mountain. However much the path back was downhill, the distance was still daunting… but she could not let out a complaint.

The depths of the abandoned mine. That carnage… if the alternative was returning to that hell, she would crawl back on her hands and knees. So Alfira thought.

After walking for a while, her breathing settled, and her thoughts grew sharper along with it. Then Alfira noticed that she had been walking with a hand gripping her trousers so they would not fall.

To think she had been fleeing so desperately that she had not even noticed this much—in the gloom, a flush ran across her cheeks for a different reason than before. The front of her clothes hung wide open, exposing a deep cleavage, and the trousers that had slipped down as she ran let a portion of her undergarment peek out at the hem.

Now that she had stopped, she at least tidied her appearance to a minimum. She fastened the front of her clothes properly and pulled the cord of her trousers tight.

Watching this, Fiana also stopped and looked over her own clothes. The mucus-smeared robe clung to her voluptuous body, its outline traced by the blue moonlight.

Though she was shorter than Alfira, her bosom was even more ample. Thighs to which the front panel of the robe clung. Buttocks across which the line of her undergarment stood out in relief. The stockings that hung from her garter belt had been rendered sheer to the point of transparency.

Had there been a man in this place, he would not have left so lascivious a sight as these two beauties alone.

"Haa…"

From neither of them in particular, a sigh slipped out.

It was not because their own figures were pathetic.

It was because of thinking about what to do from here—and what would become of them from here.

The failure of the mission… that, at least, was still bearable. There existed no perfect being in this world. Even Fiana, one of the country's foremost knights, was no exception. She had received royal commands from the queen and still known the failure of a mission before.

But—.

She remembered. She could not help but remember.

As she walked toward the village at the foot of the mountain in silence, the memories came rushing back. What had happened in the depths of the abandoned mine. The hell she had been put through in those innermost reaches. The seed that had been spilled into her still lay inside her womb. That awful feeling. That heat.

The moment she remembered, a revulsion strong enough to send stomach acid surging back up tore through her body.

What would have become of them, had they remained in the depths of the abandoned mine? She put the question to herself.

She knew the answer. Frederica Rene and Satia. Those two mages were the proof. The women were violated, the men killed. What that meant… Fiana and Alfira were not so ignorant as to not know.

And so, after walking on for a while, they looked up at the sky as if enduring something. Reflected in their eyes was the white moon.

… Fiana and Alfira, so the other would not notice, swallowed back their sobs and forced their feet onward. There was no presence behind them. There was no sound either.

And yet they moved as if driven by the fear that the darkness itself was in pursuit.

They wanted to cleanse themselves, and quickly. With that single thought, the two descended the mountain.

The queen's sword meant to subjugate monsters—the knights had fled from the monster.