He couldn’t help raising his voice a little.

After all, Roberdyck had become a worker in order to help the weak.

“This has nothing to do with the request this time, so let’s stop the baseless assumptions. Anyway, Arche’s investigation concluded that the client is fine, right?”

Arche mumbled that the investigation might not have been thorough enough to dig up anything carefully hidden, but agreed.

“Everyone, you all understand right?”

“Of course. I won’t say it before the other teams. After all, the workers might have accepted a secret request from the Eight Fingers. The other teams might be related to that organization, but we can’t make baseless accusations. At least, not before this request is completed.”

“I don’t know how much blood and tears our money’s been stained with.”

“—No matter how dirty it is, money is money and we have to live off it.”

After glancing at Roberdyck, Arche breathed in deeply to cool herself off.

“—Sorry, I said something rude.”

“No, I am the one who almost blurted out something impolite, I beg your pardon.”

“—Please don’t mind me. You didn’t say anything after all. Please keep it in your heart. I value money more than my conscience, but—” Arche raised her hand to emphasize what she was going to say next. “I won’t let my comrades do anything unethical. I’ve already witnessed several people die because of their greed.”

“I believe you, Arche.”

Arche nodded and no one said anything else. They could communicate their thoughts without words. It was because they had quarreled like this several times before, that they had come to trust each other.

“So what do you think? My gut feeling is that the possibility of that cemetery being under the control of something is high.”

Hekkeran stared at the grass that had been neatly trimmed. The statues of angels and goddesses could only be described as beautiful, and were obviously maintained regularly.

On the other hand, the trees sprouting everywhere gave it a gloomy atmosphere.

The arrangement of the cemetery wasn’t orderly, but scattered messily like the teeth of an ugly witch, which contrasted strongly with the cleanliness of this place.

Something was taking care of this area. And it was not a normal being. An ominous chill gnawed at their stomachs.

Hekkeran waved away the chill and focused on the gigantic structure. There were four crypts at each point of the compass, with a large and elegant mausoleum sitting right in the middle. The eight warrior statues around the crypts were large, giving off a menacing feeling that anyone who came near and desecrated this place would be executed.

“The landscape around here is very well kept. I don’t even see any moss. Someone is performing his duties seriously here, but what kind of person is he?”

All the teams—except Tenmu—thought it was strange when they read the request description.

Now that they were here and confirmed that there was nothing but plains around the area, it didn’t make sense for a cemetery to be built here.

The first thing would be the cemetery’s location. Building such a luxurious cemetery in such a far off place was baffling. It was too inconvenient.

If this was not a place to mourn the dead but to monument to immortalize the legend of great man, it would be understandable. That had been done before after all.

However, if that was the case, it felt unnatural for the historical facts and legends pertaining to the tomb to be lost. After comparing the research of all the teams, nothing related had been found, meaning there was a high chance it had been scrubbed from the history books.

That was too unnatural.

The feeling that something was out of place here stuck in their throats, becoming the reason why they were furrowing their brows.

“If there is someone here, it could become a grave matter. What should we do then?”

“...It would be annoying to drag innocent people into this.”

“—The team representatives discussed this earlier. There are no records of ruins situated around this area. Since the nearest village is far away, the possibility that normal people are living here are low. Most likely, they’re either illegal squatters or monsters. Considering the lack of footprints, they probably don’t require food, or they can provide for themselves from within the ruins. We have insufficient intelligence on hand, speculating further would lock ourselves into a fixed perspective and limit our minds. So let’s stop the speculations here.”

Normally, the discovery of ruins would be reported to the administration of the country through the Adventurer’s Guild. The discoverer was granted a limited amount of time to explore it. Due to this rule, in ruins not discovered by a national body or the Adventurer’s Guild, killing illegal squatters was tolerated.

This was in accordance with the saying of rather letting a thousands innocent die than letting a single guilty person go free.

It might be an overly brutal policy, but humans were fragile beings in this world. That’s why it was troubling for unknown things to build a nest near humans.

In fact, twenty years ago, a group known as Zuranon occupied a ruin and conducted horrifying experiments, which led to catastrophic results. The information about this was scant, but a small city was destroyed.

This was a rule to prevent something like that from ever happening again.

“Well, it should be undead as usual. If this place is occupied by the undead, it will be bad if we don’t wipe them out and drive away the negative energy with holy power.”

“It is worse than you think. If we leave the undead alone, there is a chance of a more powerful undead rising. That is the reason why there are powerful undead in ruins.”

“If an abandoned golem is carrying out the last order of its master and tidying the place up, that would be a godsend. One less thing to worry about. What is the plan after that?”

“—I think Hekkeran should have gone in my stead.”

“Don’t worry about it. The other leaders didn’t go either right? Send the best person for the job, right?”

Arche sighed in response to the winking Hekkeran.

“—Anyways, once night falls, all the teams will move together. We will go in from the four sides and gather at the large mausoleum in the center.”

“I see, we will be spotted easily if we do it in broad daylight.”