Rune faced palmed his helm as he saw the sandmen rise up from the piles of sand like zombies in their graves. He tilted his head back with his left hand and looked at them with his magic right eye. He raised his gun from his side, already aimed at the sandmen, and fired.

The sandmen exploded and, as each one was blown into a cloud of dust, two more sandmen took their place, but they were half the size of the ones that Rune dispersed. The chunks of metal from the fast sand guard’s sword split up and flew into the sandmen to give them weapons and armor.

Of course, since Rune blew the armor off from the durable one, there was no armor for the sandmen that rose from it and, since Rune broke the fast one’s sword, the sandmen that rose from that pile had no weapons. Even without their weapons or armor, they looked like a formidable foe with the sand that made them up whirling and writhing around their bodies like living veins.

As each sandman split, the armor or weapon also got split. When those were killed, it just kept coming back, harder to kill and faster as well as a smaller target. Even the melted sand piles formed into sandmen, but they were dripping as they were made of liquid instead of sand.

Rune was also getting bored of the sandmen, but didn’t seem to be able to absorb them. This was due to the fact that two souls ruled over the sandmen, like puppet masters, as the two souls came from the two original sand guards. For Rune’s he couldn’t absorb nor store things with souls in them or if they were alive.

Even for flora, he was required to cut it down first or something similar in a way that would make the plant dead. For fauna, he had to either kill them or cut them up. The reason why he couldn’t absorb something alive were due to two simple concepts that the gods chose themselves.

One concept was that he couldn’t absorb anything randomly as some of the gods, mainly the war gods, wanted him to fight beings to gain their power. The second concept would be that, if it had a soul, he would have that soul and its personality travel and enter his mind and then he would either fuse the personalities, which would be bad as he would not be Rune anymore, or have multiple personalities that would randomly take over his body from time to time.

Of course, he didn’t realize this, but, if he was allowed to absorb living things with souls, he still would not unless in dire circumstances when he was about to die to it. It was even possible to gain the personality of something other than a humanoid, like a wolf or such. That would be a fate almost as terrible as death, at least to him.

Rune, as he was holding the sandmen in place with his [Gravity Control], turned to Rouna. He saw that she was busy using her wings to blow back the opposing force.

“Did you see a way to kill these things?!!”

He shouted over the commotion as the rest of he group was either roaring or grunting while killing them. It seemed that everyone, excluding Rune, was tired. Even Rouna was feeling a bit worn out due to the fighting right after using her farsighted skill.

“No!! I just saw a Toratea get murdered here!!”

Rune racked his mind to try and figure out a way to escape this situation. He looked around, but couldn’t see anything other than the stone walls and floor and the light above. Suddenly, he felt a force behind him.

It was a small sandman who had gotten past the hold Rune was using by killing itself. He flew forewords as the sandmen became a pile of sand.

Then they reformed to create double the previous amount and they were smaller. They started to pull Rune in all directions and three managed to pull off his helm. He was now absolutely frustrated as he could now see all around him.

He saw the other group members fighting for their lives and fighting a losing battle. He saw the sandmen explode in a puff of sand each time they died. He saw the light above flicker each time a sandman die.

He knew what to do. He froze the sandmen around him, even though cracks soon appeared, and pulled his helmet back on. Then he dragged out his rifle, aimed at the light, and fired three shots.

One shot would have been enough as the first one reached the light and it exploded. Shards of some strange material rained down around them and the sandmen flopped over and turned into piles of sand.

Rune kicked one just to be sure that it died and then he looked at the rest of he group. They had cuts all over and, even Rouna, collapsed to the ground from exhaustion.

Rune jogged over to them while showing no signs of being tired. Elisa and Rouna were the only two hat were conscious as Hika, Erin, Rena, and Riika fainted. He pulled out the crate of lemons and took six out. He crushed them over their wounds and then healed them.

He sighed as he now had a half empty box of lemons. He put the lemons in his storage, but kept the box out and lit a fire with it. He arranged the group members to be placed around the fire and he headed over to the thing that fell.

It was split into here different parts and used to be something spherical until he broke it. It was no longer glowing and darkness surrounded everything except the fire.

He analyzed one of the chunks to see what it was.

[Dvergur Key]

[Opens designated door and contains large amount of one type of elemental magic.]

He took all three pieces and fused them into the original sphere shape. Obviously, there were still some pieces missing, but he decided to use it as it was anyway.

He looked at the group around the fire. Rouna and Elisa were talking with each other while they were sprawled on the ground. They seemed to have gotten closer throughout the trip through the tunnels so far. They spoke about things in such a quiet voice that Rune couldn’t hear them and the fact that he was extremely far away did not help at all.

Rune came over to the fire and started pulling out some different items from his storage. The things he took out were some Healing magic crystals and he hauled the heaps of metal to the campfire. Then he set them down and pulled out some sleeping bags made of an insulating fabrics with fur.

The sleeping bags were made to fit a different person and the hoods had fur on the rims. The actual bags were a grey color and also had an effect to rejuvenate someone. He carefully picked each person up and placed them in the sleeping bags with his [Gravity Control] magic as he didn’t want to be accused of any harassment.

The people around the fire soon found themselves asleep, even Rouna and Elisa who were conscious through the fighting. It was pretty obvious that everyone was tired and they wanted to rest. Rune had no qualms with that and just let them do so.

Also, while they were fighting the sand guards, the door that they had come from had resealed and was closed to the point where no light could get through. Rune’s only option was to look for the area where the Dvergur Key would go to see if it opened up an exit.

The room they were in was decently large, at least the size of a high school cafeteria and twice as high. The ground was now covered in sand and Rune had placed a barrier around the fire so that no sand could get in. It would just be a waste of lemons at this point and he really was running out of lemons.

If he started to use limes, he would be in dire straights as the only other thing he could use after that was the acid from his gauntlets and he wasn’t fully used to controlling the acid from it. Also, it would hurt a lot.

He set up some fires by producing flammable fluids from his gauntlets and lighting them on fire. They weren’t placed in any sort of pattern as he didn’t have OCD and he was a slightly messy person. This was another reason why he needed a lot of butlers and maids because he just left things on the floor.

He wasn’t a child or anything, but would be working on something, stop, put it down or throw it, and start working on something else. He was not consistent in his work unless it was something that he was absolutely interested in, like anime and manga.

Since anime and manga were currently unknown to Arborea, Rune knew it would be a success as many people did not have books and, the books in Arborea, were extremely boring and too wordy. Of course, he would write light novels as his hobby, but it would likely be liked as his works were fictional.

There had been fictional stories about different things, but they were just short children’s tales about moral lessons and such. He had no intention of writing something that had a moral lesson and wanted to write something purely about fighting for most of his writings.

The room was now lit up with the flames that burned a strange green as the acid burned as well. The surroundings were shown in the lights and Rune could now see everything around them.

The ceiling was made of obsidian and had a strange property that, when he analyzed it, he found absorbed light. The walls had many scratches on them as well as the hole Rune had broken in it. The grappling hook from the hole was missing as it had flown towards the sandmen when they appeared.

His current focus was now on the ceiling where obsidian was found. He readied his rifle and shot at a part of the ceiling that was not above the group. He had silenced it with his [Quiet], but the sound the bullet made as it broke and shattered the obsidian was amazingly loud.

Pieces crumbled down as the black material was caught in Rune’s storage. He caught them by opening his storage in the general areas where the pieces fell. When an object entered the storage, they lost all their momentum and the dimension inside the storage made it so that they were preserved in the state that it was put in.

It was actually quite convenient for Rune to have on the current expedition as he had to pack, hold, and distribute the food and drinks. He carried no alcohol on him even though he was the legal drinking age in Arborea. He had only drunken some sips of wine from his parents cups when he was young and vomited a bottle of beer in Germany when he was 15. All in all, he did not like alcohol and planned on drinking something like soda or energy drinks, when they were created, instead of alcohol.

Also, he didn’t need anyone getting drunk on a dangerous mission. If something went wrong and alcohol happened to play a part in it, Rune would blame the person for downing the alcohol and ruining the plan. Even if he did not like alcohol, he had no problem with others drinking it as long as they weren’t working for him.

The obsidian that he picked up looked dazzling as the light glinted off of its smooth shape and reflected into Rune’s eyes. He quickly turned it as he was blinded a bit when it shined in his night vision eye. He put it away and started to shoot some more chunks down. If he could, he would strip the entire room bare of the material, but he wanted to have the room keep its structural integrity.

There was also a door on the opposite side of when they came and it was taller than the him, but not as tall as the first door. It had a semi-sphere hole in it that seemed to be the right shape for the Dvergur Key. He was tempted to slot it into the hole, but resisted as he wanted to wait for everyone to wake up first.

It seemed like he was tempted by greed, lust, wrath, and sloth more easily now as those were the seven deadly sins that he committed the most. Wrath due to him killing many things, greed due to him wanting everything that interested him, sloth due to his laziness to want to just lie on a sofa and read manga, and lust due to him being with Sophia. He didn’t really control the first and last ones.

Rena was having a most pleasant dream when she was woken from her deep slumber. She was hanging out with her friends from school and they were having a fun time doing whatever it was teenage girls did for fun, went to cafes and, mainly just at the school, honed their skills.

Her exhaustion was understandable as she was fighting an opponent that would have been impossible to defeat if Rune had not been there. She was grateful for everything Rune had done for her and she wanted to repay him back by following his orders, but she was definitely having second thoughts about why she went on the trip to Hell’s Gate in the first place.

In fact, many of them were wondering why they had been brought along. It seemed like Rune could do everything himself as he was wonderful at fighting and traveled quickly, not even taking in account his Cursed Armor form that had no fatigue. The truth was, Rune had many blind spots. He was garbage at navigating, he couldn’t see in the past, he couldn’t be in two places at once, he wasn’t very strategic, and was mainly focused on killing and not on peace treaties.

These were just some of the reasons why he brought them along. The other thing was that he would be lonely without other people to be near him and he couldn’t bring Sophia along as she was not good when it came to fighting. He was better than most when it came to shooting a pistol, but that was pretty much it.

Just the sheer amount of people in his group other than him, six people, was an accomplishment as he trusted six more people. Including Sophia, Roxana, and Ulf, that was four more people than he trusted when he was on Earth as Tyler had been one of them and he was still around.

It seemed that only Rouna knew why he had brought the others along as she was able to process why Rune wasd bringing them along as well as Riika who was told that her strategic mind was better than Rune’s. It was pretty obvious that, while it seemed that Rune was amazing in combat, he was not able to do everything.

Rena opened her eyes and found that she was in a comfortable place. She did a little wiggle in it and was satisfied by how warm it was. Her body heat as well as the fire that was still burning nearby allowed her to keep warm throughout her sleep. The fire crackled as Ruen dripped some more acid onto the fire as he had no more wood left and the metal sand didn’t seem to burn as well as he had hoped.

Rena sat up only to find that she was confined in the fluffy sleeping bag. She struggled as she wanted to leave and Rune noticed her. He made a sigh-like sound from his speakers and moved towards her. He removed the acid gauntlet on his right arm and reached for the zipper on the side of the sleeping bag.

He unzipped the bag and looked as she tumbled out of the bag.

“There is a zipper on the side of the bag and you can also open it from the inside as the zipper is double sided. This sleeping bag is yours, but, if you want, I’ll put it in my storage for now.”

“Hmm? Sure.”

She handed him the bag and he started to fold it in half so that the width was halved and the length was kept. Then he rolled it from the feet up after he zipped it back up. Finally, he tied some rope around it and dropped it into his storage.

He had already done the same for Hika as she was an early riser, even underground. The others were still sleeping in their sleeping bags while Hika was munching on some food. It was a small sack of beef jerky that actually tasted good.

The world already had beef jerky, but it tasted awful as it had no seasonings on it. The world only used a small amount of seasonings for the nobles. The food in Arborea was ok when compared to Earth’s cuisine and Rune decided to make the food better, even if just by a little bit. This made him decide to have four chefs research, taste, and test what foods tasted good and how to improve upon them.

The beef she was munching on was a prototype developed by the four chefs and Ms. Flustern as she usually cooked for herself. Hika was amazed at how tasty it was and took the entire bag that Rune was holding in his hand. The key word was as she took the bag from him when he was distracted by Rena who was doing a wiggle.

Rune had no problem with this as he had several more bags, but he was worried that Rouna’s appetite would not be sated by the small pieces of succulent meat. When Rena finally became fully awake, she soon realized that she was starving and Rune gave her a bag of beef jerky as well as a canteen of water.

She guzzled the water down and munched on the beef feverishly as if she hadn’t eaten food in a week. Hika already drank her fill and was now a bit worried as she had to go to the bathroom. This was how the location the fire was in was useful as it wasn’t in the center of the room, but on one side. The other side was where they could go to do their business and no one would likely bother them.

She hopped up and bounded over towards the other side of the room. Rune made sure that the room was safe as he had cased it for several hours while everyone was asleep. He had put the Dvergur Key in his storage as he didn’t want it to get broken and he wielded his katana.

When everyone was sleeping, he had cursed his katan so that it now glowed a light purple aura and several blue flames appeared around it. The fires around the sword were frost fires that froze enemies on contact and could reappear around the blade as they disappeared when they came in contact with an enemy or when it was sheathed.

The process to curse something didn’t take too long, but, what took a while, the process of imagining what kind of things the weapon could do took a while.

The rest of the group woke up several minutes later starting with Rouna and ending with Erin. They woke up to the sight of Hika and Rena munching on meat while sitting next to the fire. It was unusual as they seemed to be relaxed in the current deadly environment and were busy talking to each other.