“I-I have to…go check on my friends!” he shouted before turning tail and fleeing what felt like a real threat to his life. He practically dived back into the tent he’d been allocated, caring little for pretense.
“Oh dear. He left!” Lefiya mused half-delightedly and half-regretfully, unable to resist, upon the boy’s forced flight before dashing over to where Aiz, Tiona, and Tione still stood side by side.
“I-I, erm…! I-I just wanted to ask, but…you were all fussing over that human so much. Did something happen between you and that adventurer?” she asked, despite already knowing his connection to Aiz, at least.
It was Tiona’s and Tione’s overwhelming interest in the boy, however, that had her scratching her head, as she couldn’t think of a time when the three would have crossed paths. All she had to go on was Finn’s mention of his name down on the fifty-ninth floor. She needed to know.
Tiona and Tione glanced at each other, looking very much like two mirror images.
“Something happened, all right…” Tione began with a wry smile.
“Yeah, a miracle!” Tiona continued next to her, unable to hold back her excited shout. “He took down a minotaur at Level One!”
“All by himself, too.”
Lefiya stopped short. Then she looked to Aiz…
…who only nodded in affirmation.
“He…he…he…”
But Lefiya couldn’t find the words.
“—These brave adventurers were willing to give up their own lives to save those of their companions in order to reach this eighteenth floor. While I’m not asking you to be their best friends, I do ask that you show them at least a shred of respect. We’re all adventurers down here, after all…Now then, shall we get back to the matter at hand?” Finn’s voice cut through the darkness of the forest around them.
The large circle of adventurers surrounding the campfire-like mound of magic stones raised their glasses.
“Cheers!”
Thus, the meager feast began.
They were seated in the large, open space at the base camp’s center. “Night” had settled over the Dungeon; the crystals coating the ceiling far above their branch-sheltered camp were silent.
It was a dinner similar to the one from a night prior, only this time, Aiz had brought Bell and his fellow adventurers, since the young smith and prum girl had recovered to the point where they could walk.
Finn’s speech acted more as an unsaid warning to the group—that they should do their best to avoid any disputes—and the men who’d been harboring their resentment all day could only bow their heads in shame. Self-respect as upper-class adventurers and a need to keep face as the largest familia in Orario both contributed to a decidedly warmer reception of Bell.
After their self-admonition, they were able to enjoy the evening meal wholeheartedly.
And so Loki Familia, together with the small group of Hephaistos Familia smiths, partook in food and drink beneath the watchful gaze of the fluttering Trickster flag. Supper was mushrooms seasoned with what little salt they had left and a soup of sour-tasting fruits, all of which they devoured before washing it down with cool, clean river water that had been chilled with ice magics. Every bit of the meal permeated their fatigued, expedition-weary bodies.
It had taken considerable ingenuity to craft such a supper from the tiny amount of supplies they had left, but the smiles blooming on faces all throughout the circle were worth it.
“…”
That is, except for the face of a certain elven mage, who was currently sitting silently by herself and eating neither soup nor fruits as the cheerful voices echoed around her.
Her eyes were fixated on the small group of adventurers seated a short distance away—a group that consisted of Aiz, Bell, and his two companions.
She watched as the boy took a piece of offered Honey Cloud, eyeing it curiously, taking a tiny nibble, then immediately stiffening, as though he was holding in a sudden urge to vomit.
He took down a minotaur at Level 1…
She couldn’t think about anything but what Tiona and Tione had told her earlier. She couldn’t get Bell out of her head. It was impossible to ignore it.
Lefiya’s mastery of Concurrent Casting under Aiz’s and the others’ tutelage was impressive enough…but now her opponent had gone and defeated an enormous, Level-2-category monster all on his own. And a minotaur, of all things! A symbol of sheer power and endurance. Challenging one head-on was a trying task even for a third-tier adventurer.
To think that a Level 1 could do such a thing was beyond irritating, and Lefiya felt herself losing control of her rancor again.
“Those youngsters are certainly havin’ a good time in spite of it all.” Opposite Lefiya’s building rage, Gareth sat stroking his long beard from atop the seats of honor reserved for Loki Familia’s elites.
“They are, indeed,” Finn responded with a laugh.
Right across from them in their own corner of the circle sat Aiz, Bell, and his companions, the four of them in high spirits as they went about their meal. Apparently, a fight for the fruits had broken out.
The prum girl was red-faced, kicking the back of the young smith as she let out squeals of frustration. The smith, on the other hand, had made clean work of the piece of Honey Cloud in question, the cotton-like fruit nowhere to be found. Bell’s face twitched as he watched the argument play out, while Aiz simply stared on in bewilderment.
The entertaining spectacle was enough to draw snickering out of not only the women but the entire familia.
“Mmph—Tione! Fwe sh—nngulp!—we should go join Little Argonaut!”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full! The food’s not going anywhere, yeah? And I’d rather not see it after it goes into that mouth of yours! You are such a child, ugh! Ah! Captain! Would you like something to drink?”
“Hm? Ah, yes. Thank you.”
But in the end, Loki Familia would not be beaten when it came to being lively.
Already, Tiona was on her umpteenth bowl of soup, and once Tione had finished admonishing her, the elder Amazon sidled up next to Finn with an alluring voice.
She refilled the prum captain’s cup from a calabash-shaped fruit known as the gourd berry. Cutting away the thick-skinned upper tip and pressing on the body of the fruit would squeeze out its jelly-like red flesh. The flesh itself started sour and grew sweeter the more it ripened. If left for too long, the fruit turned bitter. That taste was a sign of fermentation—the alcohol it produced was cherished for its ability to soothe the tongues and throats of upper-class adventurers who were stuck in the Dungeon but longed for the ale of the surface.
Even Riveria, who normally steered clear of all alcohol, was known to partake in the drink of the gourd berry from time to time.
Now, too, the high-elf queen was being recommended it by the other elves in the familia, and she drank the Dungeon fruit spirit (though not to become intoxicated, of course) with a smile on her face.
“M-Miss Tsubaki! Gimme a break, here! I-isn’t this that crazy dwarf liquor…?!”
“Man up, you puppy! It’s only a little dwarven fire drink, yeah? I just felt like opening up a bottle!” Tsubaki responded, undeterred, as she poured Raul a glass of the alcohol she’d traded for in Rivira.
Raul, in turn, flushed a brilliant red all the way to his ears, drunk in an instant thanks to that bottle and its dwarven insignia.
“Hmph. No fun! Oi, Gareth! Show me that liver of steel!” Tsubaki moved on as Raul passed out on the ground, her own cheeks mildly pink.
“As much as I’d like to join ye, lass…I have me position to consider. Be glad t’join ye for one back on the surface,” Gareth explained before noticing the piercing gaze aimed at him from just beside the leaping flames. “…Riveria! No need fer those steely eyes. I know, I know!”
The humorous exchange was enough to make Loki Familia’s lower-level members burst into laughter.
The mood was relaxed, and everyone was hanging loose now that thei
r expedition was close to completion.
It was a moment of celebration, a toast to a battle hard-won, backdropped by nightfall’s dark forest—a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in a picture book. The boy with white hair gazed out over the revelry, lips relaxing into a smile as he eyed the cheerful circle of adventurers.
It was even more spirited than the night before.
“Tsubaki. I’d heard one of your familia’s smiths was among those brought to camp…Would it be that young man over there?” Riveria asked as she threw a watchful glance toward the guards they had surveying the perimeter.
“No mistake about it! Hee-hee…Now that he’s up and at ’em, it’s high time I got over there and pestered him a little!” Tsubaki exclaimed, taking one look at the red-haired boy in question before shooting to her feet with a wide grin. Together with the other high smiths (and a bottle of liquor), she made a beeline for Bell’s group.
The boy himself gave a sudden urk, brows knitting together like a tightly wound hemp basket.
“What’s with the face, Welfy? And here I came all the way over here to see if ya were okay!”
“Don’t gimme that! I can smell the alcohol on your breath from a mile away!”
“What were ya thinking, though, huh? Comin’ all the way down here to the eighteenth floor in a party with these other folks?” she continued unfazed, ignoring the boy’s blatant hostility at her drunken state. As her junior smith gritted his teeth and growled (“Why you…!”), she caught a glance of the white-haired boy sitting next to him.
Tsubaki stared. In fact, she looked at him so long that the boy grew rather uncomfortable, fidgeting restlessly.
“Oh?”
She looked back and forth between Aiz and the boy until, finally, she clapped her hands together as if reaching some sort of realization.
“Oh, I know who you are! You’re that Crell Banell fella!!” she bellowed excitedly, remembering the alleged “amazing adventurer” they’d run into on their way to the eighteenth floor whom Tiona had mentioned earlier during their descent into the Dungeon.
“I-I think you have me confused with somebody else,” Bell replied, a drop of sweat running down his temple.
However, Tsubaki didn’t pay much attention to the boy’s denial. Instead, the half-dwarf master smith grabbed his hand with a sturdy grip and gave it a bone-cracking shake along with a smile.
“They call me Tsubaki!”
Meanwhile, the bearer of erroneous info herself was just finishing up her meal. “I’m dooone!” she shouted before shifting her attention away without so much as wiping her mouth. “Little Arrrgonaaaut!” she shouted before she and Tione rose to their feet and leaped toward Bell and his companions.
In the midst of all the excitement, a certain sullen elf finally raised her voice. “…Erm, Lady Riveria? Captain?” Lefiya neared the group of familia elites. “I was just wondering if…if you, too, witnessed Bell Cranell defeating a minotaur?”
Gareth, Riveria, and Finn exchanged glances before the latter two nodded.
“We did.”
“’Fraid I missed it, lass. As ye can probably remember, I was with ye and the others in the rearguard while that young’un was workin’ his miracle on the ninth floor…” Gareth responded with a regretful stroke of his beard.
“Finn and I, however, were there to observe it.”
“As were Aiz, Bete, Tiona, and Tione.”
Riveria and Finn countered respectively, both of them glancing in Bell’s direction.
“I just…Did he really, really take down that beast all by himself? Without any help from you or Miss Aiz?”
“He did. Had he not, he’d not be with us today,” Finn responded with a laugh.
“As a matter of fact, Aiz herself stopped us from helping him,” Riveria continued somewhat playfully, her eyes closed.
It was quite the spectacle, both of them confirmed wholeheartedly, voices steeped in admiration.
Lefiya felt an emotion that could only be described as “intense anguish” filling her up from the inside out upon confirmation of her rival’s feat.
I was not able to take on a minotaur single-handedly until I’d reached Level 3…
She knew it was like comparing apples and oranges. That mages were different from adventurers. That those on the back line were different from those on the front line.
But, all the same, she couldn’t stop herself, simply because she and Bell Cranell were both protégés of her beloved Aiz.
“Nnngh,” she grumbled as she stood before her three superiors.
She peered at Bell, who in the brief moment she’d been looking away, had once again garnered the attention of Aiz, Tiona, and Tione. All of them had encircled him with excited, inquisitive questions about his earlier achievement, and Lefiya even heard them say, “How in the world did you get all your abilities to S?!” as the boy sat there fidgeting awkwardly. Finn and the others, too, turned their gazes toward the scene, but while they exchanged brief sighs, they did nothing to intervene.
H-he’s at it again…!!
Her intense anguish quickly combined with flames of rage, and she immediately charged toward the boy, who had broken out in a cold sweat.
“—Nnnghahh?!”
“?!”
It was at that moment—
—the scream of what seemed to be a young girl reached the camp.
There was a flurry of activity from the direction of the perimeter guards, when the white-haired boy suddenly rose to his feet and took off with nothing but a succinct “Excuse me for a moment!” The others were quick to follow—the prum girl, the smith boy, then Aiz, Tiona, and Tione, as well.
The whole camp was instantly alight with excitement.
It would seem the number of unexpected guests was about to rise yet again.
INTERLUDE
FLIP SIDE OF THE COMPROMISE
“So sorry for dropping by unannounced like this, but consider my surprise. Loki Familia…saving Bell of all people. Color me shocked!” The gentlemanly god smiled coyly as he spoke to them with deliciously clear enunciation.
There was an almost collective sigh from his followers behind him. The passing visitors were gathered in Loki Familia’s main tent for a meeting with Finn and the other elites.
The feminine scream that had pierced the air of the camp during their feast had been none other than Bell Cranell’s patron deity, Hestia, on her way down from the seventeenth floor.
She had intentionally descended into the Dungeon in an attempt to save her dear follower and his companions—willfully defying the statutes set by the Guild—only to find herself suddenly unable to escape. Even for Finn and Gareth, who’d been adventurers of Orario for a long time, this was a first, and seeing her within the Dungeon’s confines was enough for their smiles to turn very troubled.
It hadn’t been just Hestia, though, as evidenced by the well-mannered god standing before them now together with his followers and other adventurers.
“Pardon me, God Hermes, while I try to wrap my head around this, but…you’re saying that you came all the way down here to the eighteenth floor…to save Bell Cranell and his party?”
“You would be most correct, my dear Braver. As part of a request from Hestia. I even have the official quest form here, see?” Hermes replied as Loki Familia’s leaders, Finn, Riveria, and Gareth, looked on.
Joining them in the main tent were the other Loki Familia elites—except Bete—as well as non-elite Raul (who would report the details of the meeting later to Lefiya and everyone else still currently cleaning up the dinner area).
Aiz and the others watched on as Hermes pulled out the aforementioned request form. On the parchment, the approving seal of the Guild, as well as the reward of four hundred thousand valis, was clearly present.
Hey there.
…Hello.
From behind Hermes, his follower Asfi greeted her with a smile so slight only Aiz would notice it. Aiz had fought alongside the Hermes Familia captain, Asfi Al
Andromeda, during the incident in the twenty-fourth-floor pantry. Their short time in the same party made them what other adventurers referred to as “floor buddies.”
Responding to the aqua-blue-eyed girl, Aiz returned the smile with one of her own.
“Though I am highly curious as to why your party’s simply camped out here on the eighteenth floor…let’s keep to the matter at hand, shall we?” Hermes continued, acting as the rescue party’s ambassador.
Hestia, on the other hand, had been moved to the tent Bell was currently borrowing. Though Aiz was curious about the apparent discord she sensed between Bell’s goddess and the adventurers dressed in Far Eastern garb, she felt her duty as one of the familia’s elites was to hear out the “part explanation, part negotiation” Hermes had promised in his meeting.
“We’d like permission to stay here. With all of you. Also, if it’s at all possible, we were hoping to join you on your return to the surface.”
“So you’re not killed along the way?” Finn mused.
Hermes nodded with a little grin. “Glad we’re both on the same page.”
Bell and his companions had originally fled to the eighteenth floor in hopes of banding together with higher-class adventurers in order to escape the danger zone of the middle levels. Now Hermes aimed to do the same. Though his rescue party didn’t lack in combat power, there wasn’t much meaning in taking unnecessary risks. After all, Goliath still prowled the seventeenth floor.
Allowing Loki Familia to act as a spear carving its way toward the surface and simply following in their wake was the safest choice by far.
“We were in such a hurry to get down here and rescue Bell that we didn’t think about bringing camping provisions. Of course, we could always stay in that cesspool they call the ‘Rogue Town’…”
“And of couuuurse Little Argonaut and his friends would have a terrible time there,” Tiona grumbled softly, hands laced behind her head.
“Quiet,” Tione said as she jabbed her sister with her elbow.
“Food-wise, we’ll figure something out ourselves. If our presence should lead to any sort of incurred expenses, my familia will foot the bill upon arrival on the surface. Of course, if you’d so wish it, I can also provide some sort of remuneration.”
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 5 Page 8
