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"Still?" Sona muttered to Rias.
"Still." She whispered back. Koneko had been terrified of becoming like her sister, Kuroneko no Kuroka, ever since she had slain her master and become a Stray Devil. She refused to practice Senjutsu or Yōjutsu and almost never allowed her tail and ears out around others, even Rias. One theory that some devils had floated around was that using actively using Senjutsu in the Underworld, with its negative emotional environment, was what had driven her mad enough to murder her master. Just in case, Koneko consistently and immediately removed herself from any environment that made her ability to sense negative emotions to go into overdrive.
What had caught Rias' ear in what Koneko had said earlier was that she could feel the ratmen. In the previous dens, she hadn't had any problems because the caped man had mostly killed all of the ratmen before they had arrived.
That being the case, had they arrived part-way through his assault on this lair?
Kiba took over Koneko's traditional position in the lead, with Akeno following behind him. Rias, Sona and Saji followed them in that order. Descending down the flight of stairs, which was about the height of a one-story house, they entered the first room of the burrow, which had the expected open chest.
"There's one of these at the entrance to all of these burrows." Rias commented as she looked at the open chest.
"Odd…" Sona frowned.
They moved through the corridor leading out of the room until they reached the next room, which made Saji throw up in a corner. The sight of over fifty dead ratmen sprawled around it almost made Sona nauseous as well, so she didn't blame her newly reincarnated [Pawn] for being unable to prevent himself from throwing up at the scene of such carnage.
"These ratmen suffered from some sort of degenerative mutation when they were alive; their arms and legs are thin and weak and they're somewhat bowlegged as well." She managed to say.
Kiba knelt down and examined a couple of the corpses. "These things never stood a chance against whoever killed them. Despite their numbers, this was a one-sided massacre."
Seeing Kiba's tightly controlled face, Rias winced inside. Being the sole survivor of a massacre himself, whoever did this, likely the red armoured man, had not endeared himself to Kiba.
"Kiba, these ratmen wanted to attack us." She said gently, "They also seem to want to attack the man who did this. They could have run, but they threw themselves at him, from the looks of it. He had little choice…as would we, in his position."
The blond boy looked at her heatedly for a moment before sighing and nodding in acquiescence.
"Kiba-kun, these swords here…" Sona said, pointing at the pair of blades driven into the ground in where Rias would roughly estimate the centre of the room to be, "What do you make of them?"
The [Knight] walked over and inspected them briefly. "They're trash. Cheap steel full of impurities poured into a mould and cooled rapidly. Whoever made this was either completely unconcerned with the quality of the sword that came out or a complete novice at swordsmithing. Whoever left them here made the right choice; they're almost ready to fall apart, and not just because of the shoddy workmanship of the swords. The poison in the air is corroding and dissolving them rapidly. Any metal not protected by magic or forged with magic is going to be eaten alive and fall apart in short order."
Without being ordered, with a snap of her fingers, Akeno cast a magic circle over the group that protected their metallic objects from being corroded.
"Thank you, Akeno." Rias nodded at her old friend, "Now, let us continue on. We have to catch up to the one responsible for this and find out the truth of what he knows."
They advanced on the exit before Kiba waved them to a stop. "Traps." He said, "A lot of them. They're fairly basic pressure switches, but judging by that hunk of rock over there, they'll bring the ceiling down on us if we step on them. Odd…these ones haven't been tripped, but a lot more further down the way have been."
"Probably more complex ones that he couldn't spot." Sona theorised.
Rias and Sona worked their magic to neutralise the traps before the group continued, passing by arrows, destroyed blade traps and even having to fly over the occasional pitfall trap. The defences on this place felt like they had been designed by a paranoiac with limited resources and a lot of free time.
The second room they came to was a smaller repeat of the first. Half as many ratmen as before were piled up in it and there were lumps of rock intermixed with them.
"Hmm? Oh, didn't I tell you? Our mystery man has earth magic." Rias answered when Sona queried her, "He used a rock bullet spell against that ratman flesh golem when last I saw him, which is around about the right size for these piles of loose rock."
Sona raised an eyebrow. Earth magic was not a common field for magicians, be they devils or humans. It lacked versatility and was generally used defensively, if at all. That this man was using it offensively was a surprise, to say the least. Then again, it could be that needs must when demons drive as the old saying goes; ergo, he was using what he had access to because it was all he had. It made sense for someone who had admitted to Rias that he was relatively new to the supernatural world.
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