Copyright
IS IT WRONG TO TRY TO PICK UP GIRLS IN A DUNGEON?
ON THE SIDE: SWORD ORATORIA, Volume 8
FUJINO OMORI
Translation by Liv Sommerlot
Cover art by Kiyotaka Haimura
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
DUNGEON NI DEAI WO MOTOMERU NO WA MACHIGATTEIRUDAROUKA GAIDEN SWORD ORATORIA vol. 8
Copyright © 2017 Fujino Omori
Illustration copyright © Kiyotaka Haimura
Original Character Design © Suzuhito Yasuda
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2017 by SB Creative Corp.
This English edition is published by arrangement with SB Creative Corp., Tokyo, in care of Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2019 by Yen Press, LLC
Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ōmori, Fujino, author. | Haimura, Kiyotaka, 1973– illustrator. | Yasuda, Suzuhito, designer.
Title: Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon? on the side: sword oratoria / story by Fujino Omori; illustration by Kiyotaka Haimura; original design by Suzuhito Yasuda.
Other titles: Danjon ni deai wo motomeru no wa machigatteirudarouka gaiden sword oratoria. English.
Description: New York, NY: Yen On, 2016– | Series: Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon? on the side: sword oratoria
Identifiers: LCCN 2016023729 | ISBN 9780316315333 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316318167 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316318181 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316318228 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316442503 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316442527 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975302863 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975327798 (v. 8 : pbk.)
Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.O54 Isg 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023729
ISBNs: 978-1-9753-2779-8 (paperback)
978-1-9753-2780-4 (ebook)
E3-20190123-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Insert
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue: Scorn of the Strong
Chapter 1: Lonely Wolf
Chapter 2: Did Someone Order a Wolf?
Chapter 3: Unshed Tears
Chapter 4: Lonesome Night
Chapter 5: Battered Wolf
Epilogue: Instead of Good-bye—
Afterword
Yen Newsletter
PROLOGUE
SCORN OF THE STRONG
Myriad stone blocks formed the walls of the underground chamber, far beyond the reach of the sun above. A scream cut through the dank chill.
“I need a healer, now! Gimme something—an item, anything! Just do it quick!”
Over Loki Familia’s panicked shouts came the cries of the catgirl Anakity, body wounded and voice ragged after ceaselessly shrieking orders.
They were in the man-made labyrinth Knossos.
After being drawn into a trap, they quickly fell into chaos and confusion as they struggled to find a way out of the maze. Though the adventurers of Loki Familia’s main party had nearly been annihilated, once Riveria’s group infiltrated Knossos, they had rallied around a solid core consisting of Aiz, Bete, and several others, regrouping before heading back into the labyrinth to rescue the companions they had been forced to leave behind earlier.
Until the sound of that piercing scream, when the world in front of them turned red with blood.
“Ahhh…Ahhhhhhhhh?!”
“This…this can’t be true! T-tell me it’s not true…!”
“Oh, shit, Lloyd! Shit, shit!”
The companions they’d broken bread with, their friends, were splayed out on the ground before them, drenched in blood.
It was a massacre.
The gore covered the walls and floor so completely that calling it a red room would have been appropriate—a nauseating indicator of the slaughter that had transpired. Some of the bodies had been cut while others had been stabbed, but a blade had inflicted every wound. This was no monster attack.
On the wall was a message scrawled in blood: THIS IS YOUR DOING, BRAVER!
Beneath it, the Trickster emblem had fallen to the floor, blood spatters forming red tears flowing from its eyes.
“Over here! Someone’s still alive!”
The shout alerted the newly arrived healer, who darted over in a flash. Soon, the telltale glow of healing magic flickered, but—
“It’s…It’s not working!”
“Aaggghhhhhhh…!!”
The gaping wound simply wouldn’t close. Potions were equally ineffective. No matter what they tried, blood kept flowing from within the armor. They could do nothing but watch, despair welling up inside them, as yet another one of their companions breathed their last.
“It must have been a cursed weapon…Just like what they used to attack the captain…!” Raul clenched his fist, tiny red rivulets squeezing out between his fingers.
An Unhealable Curse. Those cut by the blade of a weapon imbued with this curse couldn’t be treated. Anyone who fell victim to it was as good as dead. Realizing that all their fallen companions’ wounds had been affected by it was enough to dash what little hope the adventurers had left.
“We don’t have anything that can lift it?”
“C-can’t someone go get something?!”
But even as Anakity and Raul shouted their desperate pleas, they knew it was too late. Aiz was dashing around in search of survivors, but she understood as well.
Aiz, Raul, Aki—they’d been part of Loki Familia long enough to have experienced this countless times before. What they hated the most was the smell of death it left on their skin, impossible to wipe off. This stone room deep within the labyrinth’s halls had become nothing more than the tomb of adventurers.
“…”
Amid the chaos of the group, only Bete stood in silence, his gaze glued to the scene in front of him.
His amber eyes were ice-cold, almost like he didn’t even care as he completely suppressed his emotions.
“—! Leene!!”
“…M-Miss…Aiz…”
Aiz flew toward the far corner of the room to where a girl
lay sprawled on the ground. It was none other than Leene Arshe, the young healer, her body bearing the same bloody scores as the rest of her group. Aiz gripped the girl’s shoulders in her fingers in an attempt to lift her, but strength had already drained from Leene’s body.
Jutting from her ribs was the same cursed dagger that had spilled her companions’ blood. It had been left there in what seemed to be a final insult to Loki Familia, like a gravestone marking the resting place of their comrades.
Rage seethed across Aiz’s face, and she wrenched free the blade still disgracing the body of her friend and threw it away.
—It’s no good. We’re too late.
The Sword Princess had seen enough of her friends die to know that this girl was past saving. When Leene saw Aiz’s face twisting in agony, she merely gave a tiny, mirthless smile at how unusual it was for her to make such an expression.
Finally.
“Mister…Bete…”
The werewolf’s shadow was looming over them.
His amber eyes were lowered toward them—toward Aiz, who was glancing up over her shoulder, and toward Leene, whose feeble gaze was rising to meet his.
And then the young werewolf laughed.
“Damn, look at yourself. Just like I’ve always said: Weaklings only get in the way.”
The completely inappropriate comment, coupled with an icy laugh, stunned Aiz.
But Bete didn’t stop there.
His lips pulled back in a derisive grin, leaving his fangs bare.
“And what a pointless death for you and everyone else! Curse how stupid and weak you are until you never forget it. Taste the shame. Make sure you remember this long after you die so pathetically.”
All their fellow familia members, who were weeping or groaning as they clung tightly to the motionless corpses of their friends, now had their eyes on Bete.
Under the tear-stricken gazes of the weak, the strong one continued his speech.
“So long, then. I never wanna see your sorry ass again. Don’t ever come out of this damn hole.”
His mocking laugh echoed off the walls of the stone room.
Both Raul and Anakity glared at him, like he was the very enemy responsible for this atrocity. Many of their companions whose cheeks were still stained with tears scowled in rising anger as well.
Aiz furrowed her own brows as she made to stand—then she froze. She looked at those amber eyes, distorted with contempt, heard the final words he muttered beneath his breath, and let her hand drop, no longer able to strike his cheek.
“…Ngh.”
And then Leene opened her eyes.
The faintest traces of a smile formed on her face before her hand went limp.
A single tear beaded in the corner of her softly closed eye, marbling with blood as it traced a red line down her cheek. Her final expression was peaceful, almost like a young maiden whose love had finally been requited.
The far-off howls of monsters echoed throughout the maze’s chambers.
And from within their stone room, the blood painting the walls seemed disdainful of both the living and dead alike.
Raul, Aki, and the other adventurers trembled as they angrily watched the wolf sneer at those weaker than him. Only Aiz saw something else, the contemptuous smile fall from the young man’s face as he stared at the girl on the ground.
That was four days prior.
CHAPTER 1
LONELY WOLF
“This is the first time since Lefiya and the others joined that we’ve had…casualties.”
Riveria’s heavy sigh echoed in the large room. The three of them were in the captain’s office—Riveria, Gareth, and the owner of the room himself, Finn. Though it was still early, the dizzying events of the last few days necessitated a prompt meeting. The list of things they needed to do loomed like a mountain, with the burial of their fallen companions merely being one of many duties.
In response to the comment Riveria made from her spot at the far wall, both Finn and Gareth offered grave looks of their own.
“The fault is ours. We weren’t able to protect Leene and the others, divided as we were…I’m sorry.”
“A disgrace, we were. Too caught up in our own pride.”
“I’m not blaming either of you, so stop that now. It’s simply…difficult. This is the one thing I’ve never been able to get used to. Losing those whose names and faces I’ve long etched into my heart…”
Finn and Gareth were lamenting how they let their subordinates die while infiltrating the enemy’s hideout, but Riveria shook her head, her jade-colored eyes dropping to the floor in pain.
The only sound in the quiet room was the continuous ticking of the tall grandfather clock.
Almost as though standing in silent prayer, they allowed a few moments to pass with their eyes closed before Finn finally spoke.
“We’ve no choice but to accept our loss. The one question now is, how do we reclaim our honor?” he posed, resting his elbows on the desk. There was an unusual strength to his words. At the moment, more than self-vindication and guilt, his narrowed green eyes burned with the thought of a rematch—almost like an unspoken pledge to those who’d lost their lives.
The time to mourn the dead was over.
They hadn’t a single moment to waste. The three familia leaders began reviewing what they knew.
“Not that it does us much good now, but…We really underestimated those Evils blokes. That much we can say for sure.”
“Indeed. If we can believe Valletta, the official name for that labyrinth is ‘Knossos’…”
“A second dungeon right beneath our feet…I know the floor I reached doesn’t compare to the depths you two descended to, but I can already say now—we should leave this place alone.”
Gareth, Finn, then Riveria spoke in turn, shifting the topic to the maze that served as their enemy’s hideout.
The man-made labyrinth Knossos.
Residing deep beneath the winding roads of Daedalus Street, the Evils had made it their lair, an underground maze that boasted a size and depth that was far beyond anything they knew. Finn believed it was as large as the entire city of Orario, while its depth was reached near the middle levels of the Dungeon, at least. Even for the goddess Loki, this was a discovery that defied common sense.
“And that convoluted snarl of a dungeon wasn’t the only thing we had on our plates, either. Orichalcum doors, cursed weapons, creatures, demi-spirits…And to top it all off, that demon witch Valletta was still alive,” Gareth muttered.
“I will say that I could hardly believe she was dead when I heard her corpse had been found after the Twenty-Seventh-Floor Nightmare six years ago…”
The face of Gareth and Riveria’s longtime enemy wasn’t one they’d soon forget. Both of them had fought tooth and nail against the agents of the evil gods and their attempt to upset the order of Orario fifteen years ago during a period in the city’s history known as the Dark Ages. Their expressions clouded before Gareth continued.
“The lot of ’em already packed a punch, but more important was the overwhelming advantage they had in that maze. No way they’d pick a fight outside it. Actually, there’s no point in the first place.”
“Right. According to Aiz, there are already seven crystal orb fetuses…demi-spirits…on their way to the surface. At this point, they’re just waiting. Why plan their own strike when they can simply wait?” Riveria nodded, relaying what Aiz had reported earlier.
After the group split up, Aiz had found tanks in Knossos’s abandoned lab.
Though they’d been empty, she was sure the dregs still coating the broken glass had come from the spirits. Which meant the crystal orb fetuses were somewhere in that labyrinth, already evolving into the frighteningly powerful demi-spirits, just like the power bull femanoid Gareth, Tiona, and Tione had struggled against.
“I will destroy Orario.”
That was the ultimate goal of the creature forces belowground and the remnants of the Evils.
An
d they would accomplish it, too, if all those demi-spirits fully matured—it would spell both the end of Loki Familia and the rest of Orario.
“At any rate, we need to come up with a plan right away. We have to get back inside Knossos.”
“That we do. Just talkin’ ain’t gonna get us anywhere.”
The two first-tier adventurers had had their fill of grief; the melancholy had left their voices. They immediately began consolidating their ideas, Finn taking the lead.
Once the prum captain had issued his orders to the dwarf and high elf respectively, he brought up a new topic.
“Now that Ishtar Familia has been completely annihilated by Freya Familia…what’s the situation like?”
“What’s there to say? Not even sure I’d know where to start. At least we know that its members have scattered to the wind…”
“They don’t have much choice given how the person we suspected of being connected to the Evils, Ishtar herself, was sent back to Heaven. There was a high chance she had info that would’ve benefited us greatly, but…”
It had been only three days ago that Freya Familia had attacked and destroyed Ishtar Familia. Sorting through the convoluted morass of info they’d received about this major event was merely another reason the three of them had met so early for the day’s meeting.
“We still haven’t figured out the reason Freya Familia chose this particular moment to attack Ishtar and her people. At least from our perspective, it seems a bit more than simple bad luck.”
“I’ve gotten a whiff of a rumor Ishtar had her hands on Freya’s man,” Gareth piped up, having been in charge of gathering info the last few days.
“To think it would come down to something so inane…” Riveria brought a hand to her head as though sensing the approach of a headache.
Finn, meanwhile, seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Hmm…”
All of a sudden, Riveria came back to her senses with a start.
“There’s one more thing, Finn. Though it has nothing to do with Knossos…”
“And yet it must be important if your face is anything to go by. What is it?”
Riveria’s fine brows were drawn together, creating a frown on a face beautiful enough to make the goddesses jealous, as Finn prompted her to explain.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 8 Page 1
