My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

"Hey! They went that way!!!"

"Kyaaaaaa!!"

"Heal! Heal me!"

Amid my classmates' screams, I sighed. I casually swung my right hand and killed the giant rat-like demonic beast that had been attacking a nearby girl. I think the girl I just saved had a combat-related class.

"These things are completely dead weight, aren't they?"

"...I can't deny that today."

Surrounded by a swarm of demonic beasts, I muttered that, and Vice Captain Zeal, who was helping a classmate next to me, agreed.

I sighed deeply again as I remembered how we ended up like this. It started after we entered the labyrinth and had several fights, beginning to realize its true level.

We progressed smoothly from the first floor up to the 30th floor. Naturally — we were a cheated-up group summoned to another world with enhanced stats. If we couldn't handle that, we'd be in trouble later.

We were each hunting our own beast, and our overall vigilance had started to drop. Even though knights from the knights order were guarding us, our class was larger in number. That naturally left gaps in attention, and the hero squad did something stupid.

I'll explain in advance: "hero squad" doesn't refer to all classmates.

The twenty-eight classmates summoned, including me, were split into four teams of seven. The hero squad was the elite teams Commander Saran selected, excluding me. I had Saran pull me out and put me in a lackluster team after discussing it with him. Why? Because training was a bother, because facing Foolish Hero was painful, and because I feared having my stats revealed. Not because the first two were really that unbearable.

Anyway, one of the non-hero members of the hero squad messed up. It's dangerous to mess around in the labyrinth just because you're feeling relaxed. But he ignored Commander Saran's orders, went forward on his own, and pushed a wall that obviously had something behind it.

It turned out to be some kind of trap in the labyrinth. My danger-sense skill told me it was dangerous, but I didn't expect someone to actively build a death flag and ignore warnings—so I couldn't stop him in time.

"Form up!!!"

As Commander Saran drew his sword and took a stance, the lamp on the wall turned red. Demonic beasts poured out from the wall one after another. They were all the same low-level monsters we'd fought before, but the sheer number was the problem. There were probably ten thousand small ones. Gross.

"Man, that's a killer ambush."

Unlike the knights and me who immediately took combat stances, our classmates, fumbling with their weapons, visibly hesitated. Some girls even slumped down.

And so we return to the beginning.

"...Commander Saran, should we fall back here?"

"Yes. I didn't expect so many to lose the will to fight, but we've come this far, so that's enough."

Commander Saran spoke in clipped phrases, killing ten with each swing, but he was probably starting to tire... though, of course, he was holding back.

"Heroes, I'll make a path with a finishing blow. Retreat to the surface. Help those who have collapsed or are wounded."

With that, Commander Saran raised his sword to the sky.

"My Lord, grant me strength... 'Heavenly Sword.'"

When he swung the radiant blade down, it was as if a shining carpet had been laid; within that space the demonic beasts simply vanished. The classmates rushed through the cleared path and ran toward the stairs to the upper floor. I dispatched the beasts trying to chase them with a hidden weapon.

"We should withdraw too. Akira-kun, odds of many versus one are terrible for you. We're pulling back."

"Yeah, I know."

An assassin is almost unbeatable one-on-one, but when it's many against one, things quickly go badly. There is a solution, but it's still experimental.

"Flames, burn everything... 'Flame Formation.'"

"Wind, lend power to the flames... 'Wind Blade.'"

A knight conjured a wide-area blaze while Vice Captain Zeal's wind magic killed beasts and strengthened the fire's force.

Wind makes fire stronger. A tale passed down a few generations after the first hero. It's hard to control, so it's a high-level combo we couldn't use where classmates were. But Zeal's wind control is superb. He didn't snuff the fire—he simply made it stronger. That kind of control couldn't be achieved by ordinary training.