Well, I am starting to think that every person with me is suicidal. That is the only way that I can explain the type of plans that they are making right now. Well, I certainly expected something like this from John. The man is a genius at making suicidal plans. Heck, the man shouldn't even be alive for the plans that he makes.

  Overall, his plan can be considered to be a pretty sensible plan, if not for one reason. Right now, there are three possible tunnels through which we can go. The searchers have confirmed that each of these tunnels has a roughly equal number of undead in it. They claim that each tunnel has at least forty undead stationed there.

  John claims that the east tunnel is the place where the minotaur would be hidden. Except for me and the sentinels, none of the others believe his words, though. Well, that is not surprising since even the searchers have not confirmed the creature's location. All they can say is that it is in one of these tunnels.

  Still, they have accepted John's commands a bit too quickly for my tastes. I wonder if they are trying to curry favor with him. If they are, it is a waste of time. The man won't notice something like this on a hunt.

  There is no reason that John knows the minotaur is in the eastern tunnel. Well, we know that the man has very sharp instincts when it comes to these things. We have seen him be right about things that he has no way of knowing. So we are not too surprised by the man and his words.

  Well, that might be the case, but there is no way that the others will believe us. At least he has framed his plan in such a way that the searchers can behind it even if they don't believe about the eastern tunnel. He has framed his plan as if he were systematically eliminating the undead in each of the tunnels.

  We are going to treat the crossroad as our base and launch an assault on the undead in each of these tunnels. The majority of the strikeforce will go to attack the tunnels. John and his bunch will attack the undead in the eastern tunnel and destroy them. Then they will retreat to the base. We will repeat this process until the minotaur is found. (Which should be mostly on the first attempt.)

  The Aegis and me will remain to protect our base. The problem with that plan is that we have left Anthony to guard the rear. If they encounter the minotaur, then we who remain are going to be attacked by the undead from the other tunnels. (Well, if the undead come from the third tunnel, we have lost the fight completely.)

  If we fail to hold them back, this will allow the undead to surround John and his bunch. Then they will die. That means that the success of the plan is pretty highly dependent on us holding our line here.

  The thing that makes the plan suicidal is that Anthony is taking his work too lightly. The man feels that John has assigned him to this position to separate him from the action. (And by extension to glory.)

  That is why the man is sulking in the camp. I have no other way of describing the man other than that. Even now, the man is pacing about the camp, muttering something under his breath. I don't need to enhance my senses to know that the man is cursing John.

  Well, he can do that all day if he wants to. That is as long as the man does what he is supposed to do correctly. Well, he is certainly not doing his job correctly.

  It is basic logic that he is supposed to send patrols out there. We have to make sure that we won't be surprised if an attack were to happen. You are supposed to do that even if an attack is not imminent. It is just common sense.

  The man has chosen not to do that. All of his soldiers are sitting in the camp with him. It is almost as if Anthony is scared that some demon will take away his soldiers the moment they leave his sight. That is how protective he is of them.

  At least his underlings are showing more decorum. (compared to their leader at least). They are trying to convince their leader to take the threat more seriously.

  Well, I have managed the task of patrolling at the very least. Not that it has been easy for me. Even now, I can feel myself straining my mana sense to the limit, looking for any signs of attacks. I am tempted to remove the bloody fang and use it to precisely locate the enemy. Things wouldn't be so annoying then.

  I know that I should not be doing that. That is the easiest way for me to permanently damage my soul. Still, the temptation exists in an area beyond logic. I squash that thought completely. Now is not the time to be doing something stupid. There is already an idiot screwing things up.

  I can already feel the strain of using my mana sense like this. I had already strained it with my previous enhancement. Now I am not giving my mana sense the time to settle itself. What else can I do, though? I have tried to talk sense to the man for the last couple of hours. The more that I speak to the man, the more stubborn he is getting. No matter how much I tried to convince him, he did not send out a patrol. Any more and I will end up attacking the idiot.

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  I had also suggested he shift our camp closer to the eastern tunnel. That would have been a more defensible position that would allow us to retreat into the tunnel. That would have made things much easier for us. Well, I might as well have insulted the man's mother for the way that he reacted to this suggestion.

  Dealing with the man, I almost wish that I could strangle him. The only thing stopping me is the fact that the man will split me in half before I can even get my hands on his throat. (Those projections of his are no laughing matter.) The position that we are holding right now is very dangerous. We can be attacked from any direction, and there is no way for us to defend ourselves.

  More importantly we don't have any route to retreat from here. If the man had shifted as I had suggested, then we would have been in a better position.

  Well, I can now confidently say that this Anthony has never really gone on a combat mission. Any person with even a bit of experience would have understood my advice on the spot. As if that wasn't enough, the man's troops look like they agree with me as well. Even now, I can see that they are itching to keep an eye on the tunnel.

  They are not doing that, though, due to Anthony and his commands. he has completely restricted his soldiers from leaving the camp. That is another weird thing about all of this. If I were doing something stupid like this, Trevor would have told me on my face about my stupidity. John's troop would have done the same to John.

  He certainly would not have allowed me to go on like this. This man's troop though, doesn't even question the man for a moment. Leave aside questioning. I don't think that I have ever seen these men talk. Leave them talking to us. I haven't seen them talk either to each other or to their leader.

  Well, that is the least weird thing about them. For example, I don't think I have learned the names of anybody from the Aegis except Anthony. Then there is that look in their eyes. There is a weird kind of resoluteness in the eyes of these people. It is almost like they are preparing to throw away their lives at this very moment.

  That is kind of pointless, given that there is a pretty good chance that we are surviving this. Especially if we are smart about it. The troop must know this, so I don't understand why they are being so serious about the stupid command.

  Well, even leaving aside the man's troop, there is Anthony himself. I will be honest, I find Anthony to be one of the brattiest guards that I have ever seen in my life. One who has no presence of mind. That is weird because all the guards that I have seen in my life have always had a presence of mind. They knew how to speak and, more importantly, how to listen. They certainly would have taken the advice that I had given them.

  I think those are the basic skills that you need to have when you are a guard. You, after all, have to enter into a man's house and threaten him in his house. (Where he would be the strongest.) You can't do that without being fast on your feet. To praise him when you need to and to threaten him when you need to.

  That is pretty weird, given all that we had heard about the man. The man is popular even among the legion. (The folks in the legion like to pretend that the guards do not exist. So a guard has to be really good to come into their notice.)

  Well, due to the incompetence of the guards (of their captain at least), I have an ace with me. Something to give us an edge if we are not able to hold back the enemy. There is no way that John would have shown his back to Anthony. (Those two have been fighting each other like a cat and mouse.) The problem with this is that the solution is somehow worse than the problem.

  As I am thinking about this, I remove the sword that I have now tied to the hilt of the rock sword. The rock itself is nothing impressive. It is a piece of rubble that the searcher has picked up randomly from the corner.

  The rune that is on the rock is a different matter, though. I find myself gingerly holding the rock in my hand, though I don't need to. It would take a considerable amount of force to break that rune. I could throw it to the ground and it wouldn't harm the rune.

  Well, this rune is a trigger rune given to me by the searchers. Breaking it will trigger the fireballs that the searchers have cast. (I don't know how exactly they did it.) Each of these spells is present at a structural point of the given structure.

  Damaging these points would be enough to bring the ceiling of the crossroad down on top of us. I will have to take the searcher's word on this. My knowledge of architecture is barebones at best. They claim that this will take five minutes to happen, though. That is enough time for us to run away to the tunnel.

  Now, this is something that we have not told Anthony. If he were to know of this, the man certainly would have become a pain to handle. He might just end up going into the east tunnel and attacking John on the spot. The man has an ego the size of a giant.

  Bringing down the ceiling is also a pretty risky process. The searchers seem to be confident in their work. Sadly I don't share that confidence. For one thing, who is to know if it will take five minutes for the place to come down? It could happen in the instance that I set off the trigger.

  It would also happen much later, which would result in all of us being killed by the undead. (Naturally, I will set off something this risky only when the enemy is overwhelming us.)

  There is also the question of how this would affect the stability of the labyrinth. Destroying the crossroads might lead to destroying the entire place. The searchers didn't have an answer for this. All they did was tell me to trust them.

  Still, seeing how the guard corps is working, though, it is kind of a grim comfort to have that rock in my hand. The rock will at least give us a fighting chance should things go as badly as I expect them to.