“Mustarseed Peak. It is indeed quite lengthy.” One Swing nodded to himself, admiring the sight of the volcano as he trudged his way up its precarious paths, his one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot sword slung across his shoulder, trailing fifty meters into the sky. Although the mountain was nowhere near as tall as Mount Kyuri-Cumber, Mustarseed Peak was still a mountain all the same. And One Swing liked mountains. "What do you think, Arrow Grain?”

“…” Walking ahead of him, the purple-haired elf continued to ignore the man at her back.

After departing the capital of Gran Torte and taking Condie’s trolleys across the railway, they had arrived at their destination in only a few hours. Stopping the trolleys before arriving in the dwarven city of Mudkayek, they had then made the trek along the base of the mountain range until making it to the base of Mustarseed Peak. The volcano in which Cayenne of the Wrathful Flame and Harbinger of Hellfire and Destruction was supposed to be, having previously moved on from the frozen peaks of Mount Kyuri-Cumber.

Ever since leaving the trolleys behind, Arrow had refused to talk to the man. Clearly still upset about her unpleasant experience on the rail track. Although, it was due to that unpleasant experience that allowed the six present adventurers to make it to their destination in such a timely fashion. Even the fastest horses would have taken days to make it to Mudkayek all the way from Gran Torte.

Because mountains were very large, it was impossible to know where exactly their target would be. But from the words of the Queen, Kokoro la Peppyseed herself, ‘it probably went somewhere warmer’. And so, with that in mind, the group made for the peak of the volcano, in hopes of finding a way into the boiling bowels of the fiery mountain itself.

The dry stone cracked and crumbled beneath their feet as the party made their way up the mountain. Eventually, the trail up had started to narrow, allowing only enough room for one person at a time. With the rocky mountain at one side, and a sheer drop on the other, the party stepped carefully along the precarious and winding path, knowing that a single misstep would prove fatal.

“Wait.” Barbacoa stopped the group, holding a furry claw out at her back as she poked her nose into the air. “I smell monsters.”

The gruff wolf-woman had decided to take point, leading the way up the mountain.

“What kind?” Shashlik asked from directly behind her, poking his own nose in the air from beneath his hood. “I can’t smell a thing in this shithole. Only smoke, ash, and rotting eggs.”

“Monsters?” Stopping behind the hooded man, Eye-Licker unslung the heavy axe from his back and gave his eye a cautionary lick. “What the hell kinda monsters hang out in a volcano? Not ones I want to fight.”

Grapple nodded in agreement at the lizardman’s back—the next in line up the narrow trail. “Especially not in this situation. If something comes at us, it’s all up to you at the front, sister. There isn’t enough room for us to be of much help.”

“I got you, Barxy,” Arrow replied from behind the moustached man, her bow readied at her side. “Might lose a few arrows off the drop though. I don’t really feel like climbing back down the mountain and hunting for splattered monster corpses so I can retrieve them. I should still have more than enough for the dragon though.”

At the rear of the group, One Swing peered down into the drop at their side. “It truly is quite the long drop…”

Barbacoa scowled. “It’s—!”

“Skreeee—!!” Before she could reply, the garbled shriek of a monster echoed far across the mountain. Soon, another shriek cried out. Followed by another. And very quickly, the entire mountain was filled with the echoing shrieks of a monster they were all familiar with.

“Tch.” Shashlik clicked his tongue from beneath his hood. “Kobolds.”

“A lot of them too.” Barbacoa scowled. Given the precarious situation they were in, it was most likely a genuine one.

Along with the kobold’s shrieks, the sound of many clawed feet scrambling across stone rumbled down the trail, followed by the occasional shower of cascading rocks cracking and crumbling down the mountainside.

“Ah! Up there!” Arrow shouted, pointing across the drop.

On the opposite side of the sheer drop, and further up the mountain, a swarm of the hairy rat-like lizard creatures were scrambling their way across the narrow trail in great numbers. Occasionally, one would slip or be shoved off the trail by another, before plunging down into the abyss at their side.

Though the kobolds and adventurers were separated by the sheer drop between them, it was likely that the winding trail would eventually meet up further up the mountain, and—at the speed the kobolds were moving at—it was clear that they would have to fight them off soon.

“What the hell?!” Eye-Licker complained, too stunned to even lick at his eyeball. “Why the hell are there so many of them?!”

“It’s like my D-Rank exam all over again…” Arrow muttered, nocking an arrow in her bow.

“It’s exactly that,” the wolf-woman replied, readying herself along the narrow ledge. “We seem to have intruded upon another place of worship.”

“What could they possibly be worshipping here?! Don’t tell me there’s some weird metal thing up there too?!”

One Swing readied the grip on his own weapon, the colossal one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot blade trailing fifty meters in the air above him. “Perhaps the dragon itself has become their object of worship. I would understand the sudden arrival of a being of such great length being an exciting event for these creatures.”

“That… actually makes sense, annoyingly,” Arrow said, before turning a quick glance to the swordsman at her back. “And don’t think about swinging that sword of yours up here! It’s too narrow! And if you destroy the trail on the other side of the drop, we won’t be able to climb further up the mountain! Only use it as a last resort if they don’t stop—!”

“Stampeding Maximum Justice—!”

—One Swing swung his sword down in front of him.

Aiming for the kobolds scrambling their way down the trail on the other side of the drop, One Swing had swung his colossal blade across the abyss. Cleaving through the gap in a flash of violet light, the oversized blade struck the rocky surface of the cliff, plunging deep into the stone beneath. Carrying through with the arc of his swing, One Swing dragged the blade down the mountainside, tearing down through the swarm of kobolds and ripping the entire trail away from beneath their clawed feet.

In a noisy shower of crumbling rock, many of the kobolds plunged down into the abyss, their garbled shrieks disappearing down the mountainside as their bloodied and broken bodies tumbled down the rocky cliff.

“Idiot!” Arrow yelled, clearly resisting the urge to kick the smirking man off the ledge and send him to join the kobolds below. “How are we supposed to climb up this way now?!”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Barbacoa interjected from the front of the line, her eyes still pointed ahead of her. “The front of the pack has arrived.”

Though One Swing had taken out a chunk of the swarm and prevented any more from descending after them, the ones who had already made it past were still scrambling their way down the trail, intent on swarming the adventurers below.

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Just as Barbacoa had said, the front of the pack soon arrived.

Clawing their way around the rocky mountainside, the cluster of scraggy creatures tore their way down the crumbling path, screeching and shrieking wildly all the way. Reaching the group of adventurers, the charging kobolds lunged at the wolf-woman leading them—

“Tch. Pathetic.”

—But before they could even reach her, the front of the pack had disappeared in a mist of blood, their remains being whisked away by the warm mountain winds.

“Appreciate it, Ash,” Barbacoa growled, bracing herself for the oncoming attack.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Shashlik snapped back, his weapons at the ready by the woman’s side as he prepared to flick another volley of knives into the approaching horde from beneath the raised arms of her boxing stance. “You’re in my way and I’ll be here all day if I have to wait for you to clean these weaklings out on your own.”

—And then, after a short exchange from the two A-Rank adventurers, the swarm finally descended upon the group.

Both their hands were a blur as the kobolds disappeared in front of them. Barbacoa would swat them away with a hefty swing of her heavy fists, and Shashlik would thin the approaching crowds with a flick of his knives.

The bodies of the dead kobolds began to pile up on the trail, with some slipping off and falling into the abyss below. However, as the bodies grew, the rabid creatures started to claw their way across the heaped corpses of their dead brethren, leaping over the two A-Ranks at the front and attempting to tear into the ones behind.

“What the hell is up with these things?!” Eye-Licker complained, hacking a leaping kobold out of the air and slamming the butt of his axe against another.

Unfortunately for the kobolds, the B-Rank lizardman was no amateur in combat either, and was able to swiftly mop up any stray monsters that made their way past the two at the front.

Occasionally, an arrow would whiz past into the unending swarm, helping to thin the hordes alongside Shashlik’s knives before reaching the heavy hands of the battle-hardened wolf-woman.

With an impressed nod, Grapple turned back towards One Swing at the rear. “Looks like these guys have it all covered, brother! It seems we might not have a part to play in this battle at all!”

One Swing nodded in agreement. It seemed the others were doing fine on their own. And even if he needed to, there wasn’t much he could do on such a narrow path either. After stopping the flow of kobolds, the only thing he could do now was sit and watch the others fight.

“Stop moving!” Arrow complained, standing atop the moustached man’s shoulders to get a better view of the narrow battlefield ahead. “And One Swing’s already played his part! You’re the only one who hasn’t done a single thing! You don’t even have a weapon! What kind of veteran adventurer are you?! And put on a shirt already, dammit!”

Like a finely tuned kobold-killing machine, the adventurers slashed, hacked, stabbed, and punched their way through the onslaught of scraggy creatures. The bodies had been stacked high all across the trail in front of them, and both the path beneath their feet and the cliff face at their side was slick with blood, the thick liquid pooling across the rocks and washing down the side of the mountain like a crimson waterfall.

As the numbers of the kobolds began to dwindle, and each oncoming wave became noticeably less dense, it seemed as though the threat had almost been resolved. However—

“—!” Barbacoa breathed a sharp exhale of air in surprise as she suddenly found her foot slipping off the edge of the trail. With the path completely obscured by the blood, hair, and innards of the rabid monsters, she wasn’t able to properly judge the stability of her footing after attempting to shift her stance. And thus, found herself falling from the trail and towards the abyss below.

“No you don’t.” Ducking beneath a leaping kobold, Shashlik dived from the trail and snatched the woman’s tail out of the air. Slamming one of his daggers into the side of the cliff as an anchor with his other hand, the two of them came to a grinding stop against the side of the mountain.

“A careless mistake…” Barbacoa growled, hanging upside-down from Shashlik’s grip on her tail. “Thanks, Ash.”

“D-don’t get me wrong, loser!” the hooded man snapped back, straining from the weight of the large wolf-woman in one hand while trying to pull himself back up the cliff with the other. “The only reason I’m saving you is because it’ll only mean more work for me with one less A-Rank around!”

“Quick!” Eye-Licker shouted, reaching his axe down towards the two. “Grab hold, Shashlik! We’ll pull you up! Arrow, can you keep these kobolds off me?”

“On it!”

Shashlik clicked his tongue. “I don’t need a weakling like you to pull me back up! The only reason I’m grabbing your axe is because it’s annoying having you wave it in my face like that, but it’s not like I need your help or—!”

“Just grab the damn axe already!” the elf snapped in annoyance, unloading a constant volley of projectiles into the attacking monsters. “I don’t have enough arrows for this stupid back-and-forth routine!”

“Tch. F-fine…”

Unhanding his dagger, Shashlik quickly switched his grasp to the long shaft of Eye-Licker’s axe. However, digging the claws of his scaly feet into the rocky mountain path, the lizardman quickly found himself being pulled off the edge as well, straining under the unexpected weight of two grown adventurers.

“W-what the hell?” said Eye-Licker, grinding his clawed toes closer to the edge as he struggled to pull the others up. “Why the hell are you two so heavy?”

“It’s not me!” Shashlik snapped back. “This furry musclehead weighs a ton!”

“You know…” Still hanging upside-down by her tail, the furry musclehead in question mumbled out an oddly timid retort. “Despite how I look, even I get self-conscious about things like that…”

“S-sorry…” Both the knife-wielder and lizardman were forced to apologize when faced with such an uncharacteristically disheartened reply.

As Eye-Licker found himself toppling over the edge of the cliff along with the other two, he felt the rough grasp of a large hand grip his own tail.

Swooping over to the edge, Grapple Krumble had grabbed the lizardman, and was now holding the three dangling adventurers in his muscular grip.

One Swing still wasn’t sure if Grapple was actually able to fight or not, but it was at least clear from the rippling muscles the man always had on display that Grapple Krumble was physically strong, if nothing else.

“Haha! Don’t worry, brother!” the moustached man laughed. “I’ll pull the three of you out of—!”

—And then he himself slipped off the edge of the trail along with the others. As strong as Grapple appeared to be, carrying three grown adventurers seemed to be a feat currently beyond him.

“Why are you so useless?!” Arrow complained. Having leapt off the man’s shoulders, she was now forced to single-handedly repel the remaining horde of kobolds on her own. “That was your one chance to finally prove your skill as a ‘veteran adventurer’ and you blew it! You didn’t even last two seconds! I’m running out of arrows here, dammit!”

Of course, before the four of them could plunge into the abyss, another hand had reached down, grabbing Grapple by the leg.

“Haha! I knew you’d be the one to save the day, brother!”

“W-what the hell took you so long? Hurry and pull us back up there.”

“I don’t need help from some C-Rank weakling! It’s these other three that do! Not me!”

“… kind of weight is from diligent training of my body. It’s not strange for a woman of my physique to be a little on the heavier side…”

It was, of course, One Swing himself.

With his grip on the man’s leg and the continued stream of kobolds still clawing their way over the corpses of their own kind—

One Swing smirked.

“O-okay, brother, it’s time to lift us up now. I don’t really like the look you’re giving us there…”

“W-what the hell is he doing up there? What the hell is he smirking for?”

“I know that smirk, C-Rank! You better not do it! Just hurry up and pull us out of here already, loser!”

“… dieting would, of course, have little effect when I have very little body fat to begin with. In fact, it would only be a detriment to the hard work I’ve been putting into my training…”

With the smirk still on his face and the threat of the kobolds looming in—

“Justice Dealing Judgment Fusion—!”

—One Swing swung his companions up in front of him.

The group of adventurers were launched up into the sky, before descending on the unsuspecting kobolds from above, their weapons at the ready, and a look of sheer annoyance on their faces.