* * *
* * *
“...Seriously?” Hajime grimaced and raised one of his legs. As he did so, the tar he had stepped in numerous times since setting foot onto this floor squelched loudly as it dripped off his shoe.
“N-No fire, got it...” He doubted it would ignite that easily since 100 degrees wasn’t so easily reached, but on the off chance it did, it would set off a chain reaction that would literally have this floor engulfed in fires hotter than hell. Even the Ambrosia wouldn’t be able to save him from that.
“That means I can’t use my railgun or Lightning Field, either...” Donner was one of his most powerful weapons. Even without Lightning Field to accelerate his bullets, the combustive power of blastrock alone was still quite formidable.
However, that was only as far as normal monsters were concerned. For example, Traum Soldiers would easily be pulverized with just the power of blastrock. Even the Behemoth would have taken a considerable amount of damage from it. However, the monsters that inhabited this deep abyss were different. They were of a completely different caliber than the monsters on the floors above. Which was why Hajime wasn’t sure blastrock alone would be enough to kill them. Despite this predicament, Hajime still grinned eagerly.
“So what if I can’t use Donner? What I need to do hasn’t changed. I just have to kill and devour my enemies.” He pressed on, even with his Lightning Field and railgun sealed.
Eventually, Hajime found himself at a three-way fork. He marked the wall and began walking down the left-hand path.
But just as he moved forward... Fwoosh!
“Wha—!?” A shark-like monster suddenly leaped out of the tar, countless rows of razor-sharp teeth visible in its mouth. It snapped down, aiming to take Hajime’s head in one huge bite. He managed to duck in time, but a shiver of fear still ran down his spine as that horrifying mouth closed inches from his head.
Sense Presence wasn’t able to pick up on it! Ever since he had acquired it, Hajime had been using Sense Presence constantly. And the skill was supposed to be able to sense anything within 10 meters of him without fail. Despite that, he had been unable to sense that shark until just before it had attacked.
Having failed to take out Hajime with its first bite, the shark plopped back into the sea of tar with a splash.
Shit, I can’t tell where it is at all! He ground his teeth at his lack of information. However, he realized standing still would get him killed, so he quickly used Aerodynamic to keep himself moving.
As if it had predicted his actions, the shark leaped high this time, reaching all the way up to him.
“Don’t underestimate me!” Hajime somersaulted in the air and while hanging suspended upside-down, he fired directly at the shark. The bullet fired from Donner’s muzzle rushed forward, eager for blood. And with perfect aim, hit the shark square in its back. However...
“Tch! It doesn’t have enough power to penetrate!” The bullet created a small dent in the shark’s skin, and then, as if it had encountered a wall of rubber, it bounced off. It appeared the shark’s skin was resistant to physical attacks.
“Guh!” It nimbly leaped past and dived back into the sea of tar. Then, with that same agility, the shark aimed for Hajime’s landing point, jumping at him once more after he finished his somersault.
He managed to twist his body at the last minute, avoiding being torn in half, but the shark still managed to gouge a tiny chunk of flesh from his side. The impact caused Hajime to fall into the sea of tar. His entire body was covered in black goo, but he quickly leaped back to his feet and jumped into the air. A second later, the shark’s jaws opened up where Hajime had just been lying, then closed down with a snap.
Cold sweat ran down Hajime’s back as he kept himself in the air with consecutive uses of Aerodynamic. But his fearless smile never left his face, despite how easily he was getting cornered.
“Bring it!” He kept himself aloft with Aerodynamic, always moving from place to place, while he waited for the shark to attack once more.
His powers of concentration, which he had honed through weeks of relentless transmutation, served him well here. As he focused, his surroundings slowly came into clearer view, and he could even make out colors.
So what if I can’t find it with Sense Presence? To begin with, I handled myself just fine even when I didn’t have it. Even if I can’t see where it is, it has to show itself when it attacks. Focused, Hajime moved to leap into the air once more, but as he did so, his footing grew unstable and he lost his balance as he jumped. The shark wasn’t one to let that opportunity go past. It leaped out from behind Hajime, right where his blind spot was.
“Well, I’m glad you’re so simpleminded!” His supposedly failing balance suddenly recovered, and he jumped to the side, avoiding the shark’s attack. At the same time, he swung his right hand, with Donner still held tightly in it, at the shark.
A huge gash appeared in the shark’s side, and blood sprayed everywhere as it fell back into the tar. It floundered around in the tar, flailing in pain.
Hajime had purposely pretended to lose his balance, in order to lure the shark into attacking from his blind spot. Then he had wrapped the Claw Bear’s special magic, Gale Claw, around Donner as he had swung it.
Hajime swooped onto the flailing shark and swung Donner down at its head. The Gale Claw split its head cleanly in two. Though he had only one claw instead of three, its sharpness was unmatched. It was the perfect skill for close combat.
“Now then, time to find out why I wasn’t able to sense your presence.” Hajime licked his lips in a predatory fashion as he said that.
He stored the shark meat in his bag, then continued searching. He found the exit to the next floor before long, and descended to the level below.
* * *
* * *
Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 24
Job: Synergist
Strength: 450
Vitality: 550
Defense: 400
Agility: 550
Magic: 500
Magic Defense: 500
Skills: Transmute [+Ore Appraisal] [+Precision Transmutation] [+Ore Perception] [+Ore Desynthesis] [+Ore Synthesis] — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Air Dance [+Aerodynamic] [+Supersonic Step] — Gale Claw — Night Vision — Sense Presence — Hide Presence — Petrification Resistance — Language Comprehension
* * *
* * *
Hajime continued conquering the labyrinth.
He descended down floor after floor, until he had gone another 50 floors past the one that had the Tar Shark. He had lost all sense of time down in the dungeon, and had no way of guessing how many days had passed. Though it still took time, it was clear he was progressing through the labyrinth at a ridiculously fast pace.
While progressing, he had countless brushes with death and had to fight all sorts of unbelievably powerful monsters.
Among them were a huge rainbow colored frog that could spit poison and a giant moth that, oddly enough, looked a lot like Butterfree. The frog he had encountered on a floor that had a faint poisonous mist spread throughout it, and the moth had the ability to spread its scales through the air. Scales that paralyzed anything they touched. Had it not been for the Ambrosia he was constantly drinking, Hajime would have died countless times searching through the labyrinth.
The poison spit by the frog had assaulted his nervous system and hurt almost as bad as the first time he had eaten monster meat. It was only the tiny Ambrosia vial he kept attached to his back teeth that had saved him. The vial he had attached there was crafted from a weak rock that would easily break with a single bite. He was eternally thankful that he had prepared that as a last resort for emergency situations.
He had, of course, eaten both the moth and the frog. There had been some reservation to eating the moth, but he reminded himself it was to make him stronger, which helped him power through that meal. Hajime had remembered feeling somewhat vexed when he’d discovered that
the frog had actually tasted better than all the other monsters so far.
And though he was deep underground, he had even gone through a floor that resembled the Amazon Jungle. It had been incredibly humid and the air hung thick around him. That had been by far the worst floor he had traversed. The monsters he had faced on that floor had been giant centipedes and living trees.
Hardened as he was to most things, even Hajime had been completely creeped out when a giant centipede had come crashing down from a high up tree branch. It was the most disgusting sight he’d ever laid his eyes on. And the centipede had split itself into various segments to attack him, too. What he had thought was just one enemy suddenly split into thirty, like an army of cockroaches coming out of a particularly disgusting kitchen.
Hajime had fired Donner as fast he could to destroy them, but sadly there had been too many. As reloading would have taken far too long, he resigned himself to butchering them with his Gale Claw. But even that wasn’t enough to take them all out, so he had to resort to kicking, which was not his forte at all. When that battle had finally finished, Hajime had sworn to himself that he would work on improving his reload times and kicking skills. He was tired of being bathed in the centipede’s purple, disgusting blood.
The tree monsters of that floor were basically the Treants he had seen in RPGs. They used their roots to attack from underground, while also flinging their branches around like whips.
Though the real strength of those fake Treants didn’t lie in such simple skills. When they were in trouble, they would start shaking their heads wildly, flinging crimson fruit at their enemies. The fruit they threw didn’t hurt, and just to test it, Hajime had tried eating one. When he had, he had stood rooted to the spot for almost an hour. The fruit had contained no poison. In fact, it had tasted delicious. It was sweet and refreshing, like watermelon. Despite expectations, it was nothing like an apple.
The fact that the floor was the most unpleasant one he had encountered yet completely flew out of Hajime’s head. Even his resolve to conquer the labyrinth temporarily left his mind. It was the first time he had eaten anything aside from monster meat in months. His eyes became that of a hunter, and he spent a great deal of time hunting down the fake Treants. By the time his craving for their fruit had finally been sated, the Treants had been hunted to near extinction.
And so, he continued progressing through the floors until he had passed 50 of them before he knew it. And still the labyrinth continued endlessly downward. For the record, Hajime’s current stats looked like this.
* * *
* * *
Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 24
Job: Synergist
Strength: 880
Vitality: 970
Defense: 860
Agility: 1040
Magic: 760
Magic Defense: 760
Skills: Transmute [+Ore Appraisal] [+Precision Transmutation] [+Ore Perception] [+Ore Desynthesis] [+Ore Synthesis] [+Duplicate Transmutation] — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Air Dance [+Aerodynamic] [+Supersonic Step] [+Steel Legs] — Gale Claw — Night Vision — Farsight — Sense Presence — Detect Magic — Hide Presence — Poison Resistance — Paralysis Resistance — Petrification Resistance — Language Comprehension
* * *
* * *
He spent some time in the base he had created for this floor, the fiftieth since the Tar Shark, training his shooting, kicking, and transmutation skills. He had already discovered the stairs leading to the next floor, but there was a location on this floor that seemed distinctly different to him. An ominous atmosphere seemed to pervade the space around it.
At the very end of one of the side passages was a room which contained a set of majestic double doors, each three meters tall. On each side of the door was a statue of a cyclops sunk deep into the recesses of the wall.
When he had tried to step into the room, Hajime had felt chills run down his spine, and had beat a hasty retreat, deciding that room was dangerous. Of course, the retreat was only temporary. He was going back to prepare, and had no intention of skipping past that room. After all, it was the first thing he had run into these past 50 floors that was “different.” There was no way he wasn’t going to check it out.
He was filled with both expectation and trepidation as he thought about the door. However, once he opened it, he knew some kind of disaster awaited. Still, it was also an opportunity to call forth the winds of change in this never-ending hell.
“It’s just like Pandora’s Box... Now then, I wonder what kind of hope awaits me when I open it?” He mentally ran through his abilities, his weapons, and his skills. He checked over each one of them, making sure he was in peak condition.
When all his preparations were complete, Hajime slowly pulled Donner out of its holster, then slowly pressed it against his forehead as he closed his eyes. He had already steeled his resolve long ago, but there was no harm in spending a few minutes to steel it some more. Hajime searched deep within himself, giving voice to his dearest desire once more.
“I want to survive and make it back home. Back home... to Japan. Anything getting in the way of that goal is my enemy. And enemies are to be... killed!” He opened his eyes, and with his ever-present fearless smile, set off toward the unknown.
Hajime’s footsteps grew steadily more wary as he attempted to enter the room with the double doors. He made it all the way to the door without encountering anyone.
Upon taking a closer look at it, Hajime realized the craftsmanship of the doors was even more impressive than he had initially thought. And that there was a magic circle carved into a tiny hollow on each of the two.
“Huh? That’s odd. I studied quite a bit back at the castle... but I still don’t recognize this inscription.” Back when he had still been ridiculed as worthless, Hajime had spent all his time studying to compensate for his lack of combat ability. Of course, he hadn’t had enough time to learn everything there was to know about this world, but it was still unsettling that he couldn’t recognize a single symbol on the circles.
“Does that just mean this spell’s really old?” Hajime pondered over the magic circles as he investigated the doors, but he was unable to discover anything of note. The conspicuous placement of the circles just screamed “trap” to Hajime, but he didn’t have enough knowledge to derive any hints from his investigation.
“Guess my only option is to transmute it like always.” He had already tried pushing and pulling on the doors, but they hadn’t budged. And so, he had turned to his trusty transmutation skill. He placed his right hand on the door’s surface and began transmuting.
But the moment he started pouring mana into his hand... Zap!
“Uwaah!?” A bolt of red lightning ran down the door, blasting Hajime’s hand away. Tendrils of smoke rose up from his hand. Cursing, he drank some Ambrosia to heal himself. A second later, he heard a deep roar.
“Uoooooooooooooooh!!!” It reverberated throughout the entire room.
Hajime backpedaled away from the door and lowered himself into a crouch with his hand on his holster, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. While waiting he heard the sounds of something moving mixed in with the roar.
“Wow, this is a cliched as it gets.” Hajime smiled sardonically as he watched the two cyclops statues suddenly spring to life and start destroying the wall that held them. Their petrified skin rapidly regained its color, going from gray to dark green.
The cyclopes fit the fantasy description for them to a T. They each wielded swords nearly four meters long that they had pulled from god knows where. Currently, they were struggling to free their still–entombed lower halves, determined to eliminate the unwelcome intruder.
Hajime fired Donner directly at the right cyclops’ glaring eye. With a ferocious bang, the electrically accelerated taur bullet pierced through its eye, made mincemeat out of its brains, and pulverized the wall behind it as it exited the back of its head.
The cyclops on the left sta
red blankly at its now deceased companion. On the other hand, the dead one twitched for a few seconds before collapsing forward, which made the entire room shake as its huge frame crashed into the ground, raising a massive cloud of dust.
“Sorry, but I’m not a nice enough guy to wait for you to break free.” The dead cyclops hadn’t seen that coming, in more ways than one. For Hajime, who had survived through countless life and death struggles, it was merely a natural course of action to take. Yet... he still felt a twinge of pity for the cyclops.
It probably wasn’t anything more than a humble guardian that had been sealed and tasked with protecting the doors. It must have spent an eternity waiting for someone, anyone, to pass by.
Then finally, someone capable enough of surviving so long in the pits of hell and looking to delve even deeper had appeared before it. It’s quite possible he(?) had been overjoyed to finally have a purpose. But then, before he could even begin to fight, his opponent crushed his prized eye and killed him instantly. If that’s not pitiful, then I don’t know what is.
The remaining cyclops had a bloodcurdling expression on its face as it turned to look at Hajime. Though it didn’t speak, its face was clearly screaming, “How dare you, you bastard!”
Hajime stared at the remaining cyclops, completely unmoving as he met its gaze. It was acting cautious due to his unfamiliar weapon and crouched low to the ground, ready to dodge in any direction, as it glared at him. Ten seconds passed, then twenty... Eventually, it grew tired of the staring contest and with a deafening roar, the remaining cyclops charged Hajime.
But before it even made five paces, it faceplanted into the ground.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 1 (Premium) Page 16
