It was early morning, but the stars were still visible, and the sun hadn’t risen yet. Everyone was getting ready and preparing to enter the ruin.

 The raid team would enter first, followed by the investigation unit and the collectors.

 Night Ouen, Phantom Dusk, and Crystal Drakes met up with the researchers beforehand.

 There were two investigation units. Although they did the same thing, splitting up to collect data separately was more efficient. And it wouldn’t be very dangerous since the adventurers protected them.

 After a while, once the raid team had entered, it was the investigations unit's turn.

 As Alum entered the ruins, he could instantly feel the difference. He looked around, saw loads of monster corpses, and heard the sounds of an ongoing fight deeper into the ruins.

 The researchers were told to be careful in case something was still alive. And from there, they split up.

 They took many samples and lit the dark areas the raid team hadn't illuminated.

 They heightened their senses and carefully eyed their surroundings and the researchers.

 “Nothing out of the ordinary so far,” Jan commented.

 Jan, Dalen, and Nela acted like scouts. They looked around inside the ruins to ensure the raid team hadn’t left anything alive while also deactivating any traps that might still be active.

 Alum also made sure always to use [Static Field] to prevent anything from getting past him. He had practised many of the spells he'd thought up and was on guard like any other adventurer.

 Since he was already cautious, he knew that his sight, smell, and hearing could easily be fooled with illusions.

 But other adventurers around him seemed more relaxed than he was. Unlike him, they were used to this, having explored the first floor and determining it wasn't something to worry about.

 Looking at the monsters in the first chamber, it was clear why this was a C+ expedition.

 The monsters were all D-rank or higher. In this case, there were many of them, and the team had to be extra careful with non-combatants present, just in case any escaped the raid team.

 …

 …

 …

 After a while, the collector group entered, and they began collecting all the materials left by the raid group. There were many workers and some adventurers among them.

 As they went deeper into the ruins, they came across a chamber that seemed untouched by the raid team. This alerted everyone, and the researchers stayed back with the support mages.

 Two researchers were standing close to Alum, and he felt his eyes drawn to them for some reason. He wasn’t sure why himself and they were beautiful people...

 But he didn’t think too deeply about it.

 Everyone prepared a barrier core as they stepped inside the chamber.

 Since Alum’s [Static Field] could penetrate even behind walls and floors, he found some traps. He signalled to everyone that he'd found traps, and they all stopped moving.

 Jan, Dalen, and Nela went to the locations Alum told them about - to their surprise, he was right.

 Jan took out some disposable daggers they'd purchased from the storage bag Amethely had gifted them and used them to activate the traps.

 Dalen, on the other hand, used shadow magic to pass the trap's activation sensors and disabled the traps from within.

 Alum wasn’t sure what Nela had used, but it seemed to be an artefact that destroyed magic circuits. This intrigued him.

 He knew for sure that those were used in the military, and it was strange to see them in use here since they were so hard to get hold of.

 But he wasn’t going to pry and simply watched.

 “Are there any more traps?” they asked.

 “No physical ones, as far as I can sense.”

 Jan and Dalen nodded, and Nela looked at him a little awkwardly.

 “... What is it?” Alum asked her.

 “No… sorry about yesterday.”

 Looking at her and the other members of Crystal Drakes, he noticed they seemed to have shifted their opinion of him and were genuinely apologetic.

 “Don’t mention it,” Alum replied softly.

 As he said that, he could feel someone pulling on his coat. It was Lyn. Compared to the previous evening, she seemed to have returned to normal.

 “Hey Alum, you seem a little tired….”

 “You’re right. Sorry to worry you.”

 She gave him a soft smile and shook her head.

 “You can afford to let your guard down a little, you know? Constantly using magic like that will mentally exhaust you.”

 She was right. He'd been using [Static Field] since they entered the ruins. Although mana usage wasn’t that high, he had slowly become exhausted due to the constant barrage of information he received from the spell.

 But… Alum shook his head.

 “I can still manage,” he replied.

 “...Okay.”

 …

  …..

 …

 While Jan, Dalen, and Nela slowly disarmed the magic traps Alum couldn’t detect, they all wandered where the traps had been disabled.

 The chamber was relatively large and well-lit, and the pillars and walls had a bunch of depictions on them.

 Looking around, they could also see treasure and weapons….

 And walking further in, there was a hall of giant statues.

 Sarie was the first to stop everyone from moving forward. And rightfully so, the statues were awfully suspicious.

 The statues came to life and were of many sizes larger than them. They also wielded different weapons; the path behind them had also been blocked, and they had no choice but to fight.

 One of the statues that held a spear stomped on the floor so hard it shook the whole hall, and a spear made out of unknown metal flew towards them all.

 The support mages cast a strong barrier around everybody, and Turen, Keelen, and Enio were ready with their shields.

 But before the spear could come close to them, Sarie jumped toward the projectile and disintegrated it with her powerful lightning magic.

 Following behind her, a strong gust of wind followed as Sarah dashed toward the statues and activated the magic traps in the hall.

 Keelen and Dalen, as well as Lyn, clicked their tongues.

 As they followed her, Lyn gave her a protective barrier and more strength enhancements. Dalen covered her blind spots and tied the statues down with [Shadow Bind].

 Keelen tried to keep up with her tempo, acting as her shield as she dashed freely between the statues and sliced through them with her glowing red blade.

 Unfortunately, the magic traps Sarah had activated earlier made the hall much broader, and many more statues appeared as a result.

 They were now surrounded from all directions.

 The members of Crystal Drakes fired spells, and their tank, Enio, stood by the mages in case of an emergency.

 The only melee fighter in their party seemed to be Sarie, who was cutting down the statues like it was child's play.

 Phantom Dusk took care of the north, and Sarie handled the ones from the east by herself.

 Crystal Drakes fired high-powered rounds of magic and arrows to the west. This left the South for Night Ouen.

 Turen was in the middle of the fight, drawing the statues toward him. Jan dashed around between them and planted magic traps on them by infusing the disposable daggers with wind magic. He waited for the statues to wear down so he could activate the magic circles.

 As long as the statues were destroyed before they could activate any magic, they would be okay.

 Although the statues were awfully durable, it wasn’t a huge issue since they had so many members capable of dealing significant damage before the metallic statues could become a threat.

 But without this kind of firepower, the adventurers would be dead.

 Jua covered Turen and Jan by firing magic arrows that penetrated the statues while also exploding upon breaking.

 Nuli shielded them from all the explosions created by Jua’s arrows, and it didn’t seem like they needed Alum at all.

 But that didn’t mean he didn’t do anything. He froze the legs of the statues, which, of course, didn’t completely stop them. His goal was to spread the frost effect, which significantly slowed their movements.

 Not only did it slow them down, but it also cracked their armour, leaving them more vulnerable. This was enough for Jan’s magic trap to finish them off with a bang.

 He'd also created four giant walls of ice, splitting up the battlefield so the statues wouldn’t group together.

 Unfortunately, some dropped down from above and morphed into flying beasts.

 Sarie and Alum noticed this first. She signalled him that she’d take care of the ones above while he bought her time.

 Switching his attention to the east, he cast a large AoE spell that froze the ground.

 When the statues walked onto that crystallised mana, they began to freeze completely. They'd crack and break as the radius of the spell grew.

 It was a spell he'd designed to utilise his mana skills fully.

 First, it converted the mana from the source that stepped into the ice field into Alum’s mana, draining their mana while fueling the spell further.

 Realising this, the statues stopped advancing, and their weapons morphed into bows. Behind the statues, a gate opened on the east side, and elemental golems came out from it.

 They infused the statues' arrows with elemental magic, and the arrows were fired.

 Everyone at the centre realised they were in deep trouble. They cast a protective barrier, which stopped the first rounds of magic arrows.

 Meanwhile, Sarie was leaping through the air between the statues, ultimately destroying them so that there would be nothing left.

 After climbing a long way up, she finally struck the ceiling with powerful electrical energy, breaking the mechanism that summoned the statues.

 Alum, on the other hand, was in a bind.

 There were so many golems that had come out from his side, and the statues had switched to ranged attacks.

 Alum decided to use his mana for offence and released a toned-down version of [Droplet Bomb] called [Scattered Drops]. He covered the east side with [Abyssal Depth].

 As soon as [Scattered Drops] exploded, tiny condensed water droplets bounced everywhere within the barrier. Each bounce gave them more energy, tearing everything inside to pieces.

 This drained his mana very rapidly since he had to keep feeding the barrier more mana so that it didn’t break and send the droplets everywhere.

 When everything inside was gone, he released the mana that condensed the droplets. They exploded, filling the barrier with water.

 He froze all the water inside the barrier, completely sealing off the east side with ice. Alum fell to his knees, panting profusely from mana overuse.

 From the looks of it, every side had finished their work. They sighed with relief as they all could finally relax a little.

 Alum was about to faint and pulled out Depth Cutter to drain some mana he had stored.

 He managed to stay conscious but was still exhausted from the overuse of spells.

 …

  …..

 …

 After the fight, everyone was tired and set up camp inside the chamber.

 At first, they were planning on heading back, but there wasn’t any way back, and they soon realised why this place was untouched by the raid team.

 As it turns out, they had walked into a shifting corridor that led them here.

 No one had realised this, and was frustrated by the fact that they had been so careless.

 The researchers took a closer look at the golems and statues and found their broken operation cores.

 Alum overheard their conversation a little about being able to reverse engineer them. They also collected unknown metals in the hopes of making better golems or weapons that could change forms.

 Lyn and the rest of the support mages were taking a nap since they were the ones protecting everyone.

 And except for Alum, they had used more mana than anyone.

 Alum was half asleep in a sitting position and had recovered more than half his mana in the past hours.

 Sarie sat beside him, looking at him with a soft smile on her face. This shocked everyone, especially her party members. They had never seen their leader with such a gentle smile on her face.

 She was usually very expressionless. This was a rare sight, so they said nothing.

 Alum felt a little awkward since he was being stared at.

 ”… Is there something on my face?”

 Sarie shook her head.

 ”No, there isn’t….”

 She then took out a pendant and handed it to him. He carefully opened it, and his eyes widened.

 Sarie looked a little embarrassed and fidgeted.

 ”You see… I’m… not very good at expressing myself.”

 Alum waited for her to continue since he didn’t know what to say himself.

 “My sister… is really grateful to you, and so am I. And I want to thank you sincerely… so….”

 She looked at the floor, which had turned beet red.

 “...So… you saved her in that town… I-I will do anything… you ask.” 
 “.....” 
 “.....” 
 At first, Alum didn’t know what he reffered to, but he suspected that she reffered to when he saved a girl named Ameth.

 “Then… how about you tell me what happened to the boy she was with?” 

 “... Huh? Are you sure that’s all you want?”

 “Yeah. You said anything, right?” Alum replied with a smile.

 Sarie seemed relieved by his answer and returned to her usual self. She mumbled something in a low voice he couldn't hear.

 “I thought men were more….”

 But then she shook her head and faced Alum.

 “Since that day, Dhel… oh, that is the boy's name.”

 “I see,” Alum nodded.

 “Anyhow, Ameth and Dhel have gotten quite attached after the incident…. Since he was an orphan and I didn’t want to split them apart… I decided to take him in.”

 Alum was glad and chuckled a little.

 “I’m glad,” he said with a smile.

 Sarie giggled as well and had a soft expression on her face.

 “He also gets along well with Landen… oh, that's my brother.”

 The two chatted for a little while. And at some distance away, Lyn looked at Sarie with a concerned face.

 (I hope he doesn’t create another victim…)