by Fujino Omori
“…So, uh, Mari? Are Lido or any of the other Xenos on this floor?” I ask, having decided to try to make contact with Wiene.
“Lido and the other ones went up,” she says, looking toward the crystal ceiling.
Up? Does she mean up to the middle levels? Or…up to the surface?
Despite my uncertainty, I don’t pursue the question further. All I know is that I won’t be able to call on Lido and the others for help.
“They always do it.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t fly like Rei or walk like Lido.”
“…”
“So they always leave me here.”
Mari pouts as she haltingly strings together her clumsy words. It’s the particular complaint of a mermaid, who is unable to move around on land. Guessing from her words, she might not have met Wiene yet.
As I stand here thinking, Mari slaps her tail on the ground loudly, presses both hands on the crystal rock, and pulls herself up onto it.
“Bell, let’s talk!”
She’s pestering me as if she’s excited that someone who’s not one of her brethren has accepted her. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s smiling, overjoyed at her first visitor. She’s really just like a spirit.
If the situation was different, I’d be happy to chat with her endlessly, but…
“Mari, listen to me. I want to go back to my friends.”
“…?”
“Will you take me to some places where people might be?”
I look into her eyes as I ask this favor. I’ll never manage to find my party by wandering randomly around the Dungeon. Plus, without a map, it will be hard to find my way back to the room where I was pulled underwater. I desperately want Mari—who I assume knows her way around this floor—to help me.
She lowers her eyebrows sadly and shakes her head.
“You can’t go.”
“Huh…?”
“There is a scary thing in here now.”
I stand there frozen and unbelieving.
“Mari, do you know about the enhanced species? Uh, the one that’s green, and big, and has yellow eyes…?”
“…Yes.”
She nods as I list all its characteristics to make sure we’re talking about the same monster. Mari knows about the moss huge!
“The very scary thing…the one that ate a lot of Bell’s friends…”
“…! I want to do something about that monster! Do you know where it is?”
“No. You can’t. Bell, don’t go.”
“Mari…!”
She just keeps shaking her head as I plead with her. And that’s not all. When I ignore her warning, she tries to hold me back so I can’t leave. She’s gripping my Undine cloth sleeve tightly in her delicate fingers.
“It will eat Bell and me…It’s scary. Everyone is afraid of it…!”
I bite my lip as she lets out a heartrending cry and throws her arms around me.
Drops of water pattered onto the ground from his soaking wet body.
At the same time, he crashed his feet violently down, sending fissures through the crystal ground. He was moving through part of the labyrinth with evident irritation.
He stroked the surface of his body with his fat fingers. Much of his moss had been burned off, and the pain was tormenting him. The pain came from the fire that the human boy with white hair had thrown at him. He, the hunter, had been outwitted by a rabbit and seriously wounded. His body, just now emerged from the stream, trembled with anger.
But that was in the past.
The white-haired boy had fallen over the waterfall. He knew about that. When humans fell over the waterfall, they did not survive. The boy was probably smashed to pieces, his brain spattered across the water. When he thought about that, he felt a little relieved. He wouldn’t have to suffer through that strange, dangerous fire again.
But he needed to be cautious. He realized that. After he walked down the path for a little while, he broke another crystal column and slid into one of the nests he had built inside the labyrinth.
Stinking lumps that had once been humans were scattered on the ground. They were his emergency rations. He pushed them around violently and pulled off the things attached to their bodies. He had been interested for a while now in the gear they wore. He’d seen it protect other humans from the fiery breath of monsters. With his clumsy fat fingers, he attached the cloth to his own body, covering it with the moss that was rapidly growing back, forcefully burying it under his skin. Then, to fill his stomach before he set to work, he ate every last corpse he had set aside as emergency rations. It was almost time to attack the gang of humans.
The seeds told him that the humans had clustered together and were moving in a group. If they had been by themselves, it would have been easy to kick them about, but such a large group was risky. Regardless of the seeds he had planted, he was still outnumbered. The brown female whose presence was as strong as the white-haired boy’s was still in good condition. Last time, they had noticed his trap just before he snapped it shut. He would have to use a more foolproof method this time so they couldn’t escape.
—Yes, that’s it! I’ll use that one I haven’t used recently.
He had been standing still and silent as he thought, but now he began to move.
He did not take any weapons from his mother, the Dungeon. He emerged from the nest and began walking through the crystal cave, his ominous shadow swaying on the walls.
And then, he mercilessly pursued the group of adventurers.
“…?”
Aisha was the first to notice the change.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” asked Welf, who had been peering around warily, as he looked up toward the Amazon at the front of the party.
“…It’s strange how noisy the Dungeon is.”
Aisha tucked her hair behind her ears and listened more closely. The party was in the northwestern section of the floor, in one of the higher portions of the indigo crystal labyrinth in the cliff’s interior. The Level-4 adventurer was sensitively gathering information from the vibrations that reached the wide main route via the many tunnels that crossed it.
“You don’t think it’s a stream trap, do you?”
“No, it’s not that. This is…”
If you sense a change, escape. Even if you don’t know exactly what it is, get away from it. That was an ironclad rule among adventurers.
Aisha drew her eyebrows together as her intuition throbbed. She was about to issue instructions to the group when Mikoto shouted out.
“—! Monsters are coming!”
Just as her detection skill had swiftly warned her, a large number of monsters appeared in the passage in front of them.
“A pack of monsters…! At a time like this!” Ouka shouted.
“I have no choice; I’m gonna use the magic sword!” Welf, who was standing next to him, answered. He leaped forward, gripping the hilt of the crimson sword. Moving up next to Aisha, he prepared to draw it from the belt on his back.
“—”
Ignoring their actions, Mikoto once again reacted to something. Her beautiful face froze.
“Mikoto?” Lilly asked suspiciously.
“…They’re coming from behind, too—”
Hearing this response, Lilly stiffened. She glanced behind her. A pack of monsters as numerous as the one in front was pressing toward them, their roars and countless footsteps thundering down the passage.
“What the…?!”
“W-wait a second! They’re coming from the right and left, too!!”
“And from a diagonal!”
Daphne’s and Haruhime’s screams echoed the sound of their enemy’s advance, which was like a nightmare roaring with laughter. Welf, who had been on the verge of drawing his magic sword, was in shock. Both he and the gaping Ouka stood frozen, looking back. The elves and dwarves tormented by parasitic vines went pale, too.
“Shit! What the fuck is happening?!” Aisha cursed as masses of monsters invaded the main route from eve
ry direction. Then, as she scanned their surroundings, podao at the ready, she saw it.
“Crap—”
It was far down the passageway.
Way beyond the pack of approaching monsters, the hideous dark-green giant was slowly emerging from a tunnel.
Its hands were stained red. Not with the blood of adventurers but with the blood of monsters.
The awful truth dawned on Aisha. The screams of the monsters rushing toward them were not threats. They were screams of terror. Some of them even had parasitic vines growing from them. They were racing into the main route as if they were being herded from the other passages.
“…You’re fucking kidding me.”
Aisha’s eyes met the yellow eyes of the moss huge. As the monster’s emotionless gaze pierced the Amazon, she shouted a jeer.
“What kind of monster does a pass parade?!”
The Dungeon is thundering.
That sound is either many monsters roaring at once or monsters marching.
The vibrations barely—but unmistakably—reach the room Mari and I are in. We look up at the ceiling in surprise.
Fragments of crystal fall like a dusting of light onto the spring, sending out small ripples.
“…Mari, listen to me.”
I put my hands on the fragile shoulders of the mermaid, who is hugging my chest, and gently peel her away. She looks up at me with an anxious expression.
“I will kill them. Definitely.”
Her eyes widen.
As if I am reasoning with a child or imploring a spirit, I beg the monster girl.
“I promise I won’t let them scare you, Mari. I’ll kill all the scary things. So…please take me there.”
My little speech sets my teeth on edge. The ordinary me would probably be blushing and unable to say words like that. Now, though, I’m able to speak them easily.
I speak them in order to save my companions and soothe these trembling little shoulders.
I gaze into the wavering jade eyes.
“…Will you…protect me?”
The mermaid speaks slowly, her head tilted.
“Yes, I will protect you.”
“Will you…help me?”
“—Yes! I’ll help you!”
I make a promise to Wiene’s kin, just like I did with Wiene herself.
She looks at me as I nod enthusiastically, then suddenly she smiles.
“Okay! I’ll show you! I’ll take you there!”
She looks up at the ceiling, still smiling brightly. Then she shuts her eyes, puts her hands to her chest, and begins to sing.
“LAAA…”
“?!”
I slap my hands onto my ears despite myself.
She is singing the type of discordant notes that can harm human ears. And she is belting them out so loudly I’m sure they’ll echo through every corner of the Dungeon.
The song is different from the strange sound waves of a siren, or from the ruinous melody of a mermaid, or from the beautiful melody she sang earlier to guide me to her.
As I look at her in surprise, monsters’ howls begin to echo toward us from deep in the labyrinth, one after the next.
“She’s…”
“—I found them!”
She stops singing and opens her eyes.
“They say your friends are over there.”
As she smiles at me, I guess what’s just happened, and astonishment washes over me.
—She’s just charmed the monsters?!
I can’t believe it. But it’s the only explanation.
Her song was not meant to seduce adventurers. It was a ballad to seduce monsters.
“The ones who are more obedient told me.”
In other words, she’s charmed monsters with lower ability than herself.
She dives into the spring and swims underwater in a gentle arc, popping up again in the center. Her hair and skin glistening, she looks at me and smiles.
“…”
Behind her is a stream that connects the spring to the waterways outside the room. A path follows along beside it.
There’s no need for words. I nod at her and start running. She flips over, and together we fly out of the room.
“Let’s go!”
To find my friends, I race across the crystal labyrinth as the mermaid cuts through the water beside me.
CHAPTER 6
THE HERO’S SACRED FLAME
Roars gushed through the passages, accompanied by an unending thunder of footsteps.
Plagued by the parasitic vines, the monsters howled in rage and charged forward toward their prey.
The adventurers stood paralyzed before this terrifying scene.
“A monster’s pass parade…?!”
“Stop joking around! It’s not funny.”
As Lilly and Welf watched this artificially created—no, monster-created—event unfold, their panic mounted.
A pass parade induced by a monster. It was unheard of. This time the enhanced species wasn’t using itself as a decoy—it was using its superhuman strength and seed bullets to route other monsters from their lairs and drive them into the main route. They appeared from one passageway after the next like clockwork, cutting off the adventurers’ retreat.
“OOO…”
Aisha gritted her teeth and glared straight ahead. The enhanced species had disappeared from her field of view when it crossed the main route into another tunnel. The hideous, intelligent giant was hopping about deep in the labyrinth precisely as if to prepare a new assassination attempt.
“Run, you guys! Escape!”
The second-tier adventurer’s decision was instantaneous. She turned toward the party behind her and, with an urgent expression on her face, ordered them to flee.
“That enhanced species is planning to use the other monsters to destroy this area! There’s no way we can fight them with magic swords!”
Welf and the others were astonished by Aisha’s ability to accurately read the monster’s intentions. No matter how fierce the firepower of the Crozzo Magic Swords, they worked in only one direction at a time. Attempting to take down the monsters pressing in from every side would simply take too much time. The moment they succumbed to the enemies’ superior numbers and were overtaken by the horde of monsters, it was over. As friend and foe mingled pell-mell, the battle would descend into chaos, and most likely all that would remain in the end would be the mercilessly trampled corpses of the adventurers.
But more than anything, the life span of the magic swords would do them in.
If the parade of monsters set upon them again after their blades had crumbled—
“Shit!” Welf spat out, even as he obeyed Aisha’s command. Returning his magic sword to its sheath, he took off running at full speed alongside Ouka. With them leading, the party dove into a passageway that branched off from the main route.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
The howling monsters pursued them. Haruhime didn’t even have time to use the trick she had been holding back, her Level Boost. In the middle rank, the dwarves ran desperately, dripping sweat as they struggled to stay ahead of the nightmare barreling down on them. The elves on their backs, too, were hot with a fear unconnected to the parasitic vines wrapped around them.
“Huff, puff…Curses, I’m falling over my own feet!”
“Damn slow-footed dwarf…Run faster!”
“What?! Some nerve ye have when I’m carrying ye on my back!!”
As Dormul cursed the vines that were robbing his strength, Luvis whispered insults into his ear. Fueled by a spurt of rage, the dwarf increased his speed once again. Lilly watched from behind, her backpack swaying as she ran.
“I can’t tell if they’re friends or enemies…”
Luvis’s words certainly weren’t the equivalent of a carrot dangled in front of a horse’s nose. The same dynamic was playing out between the other dwarf-and-elf pairs.
As the injured adventurers desperately whipped themselves on in an attempt to keep the
party’s speed up, Welf and Ouka launched into intercepting enemies.
“Get out of the way, Big Guy!”
“Oof!”
“GWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
Welf brandished his magic sword as he ran toward the scattering of blue crabs blocking their way forward. His magic dagger—which he was carrying in addition to the crimson sword—released a streak of lightning. The monster’s flesh fried.
Ouka used his huge battle-ax to bat any enemies that got past Welf into the stream next to them. Their priority was to clear the path in front of them, not to pointlessly crush their opponents.
Aisha had fallen back to the rear guard to take on the horrendous pass parade. That inevitably left Welf and Ouka to defend the vanguard.
“…Crap!”
Welf’s magic dagger crumbled noisily in his hand. Kicking aside the fragments of blade with a combination of distress and regret, he drew his greatsword from his back. In order to preserve his remaining magic sword for later, he would have to engage in hand-to-hand combat without the benefit of any tricks.
“Here I go, smith!”
“I’m right here by your side!!”
With the ax-wielding Ouka next to him, the young High Smith charged forward toward his enemies.
“Bell, this way!”
Mari’s voice leads me forward.
We’re inside the labyrinth on the twenty-fifth floor. I’m pumping my arms as I run while Mari swims forward, beating her tail against the water. The dryland path parallels the water, so we’re able to move ahead side by side. Again and again, I follow her pointing finger and turn into small passages that branch off one another.
“Bell’s friends are far over there! Many of my kind are there, too!”
Again and again, she urges me to hurry toward the adventurers, whose location she has determined by using her song. She seems to think the enhanced species is there, too. Sweat dripping down my cheeks, I kick off the crystal path to increase my speed.
“—GUAAAAAA!”
“An aqua serpent! Again?!”
The immense monster breaks the water’s surface with a tremendous splash, undulating its long light-green body so it is stretched across the stream. It’s aiming not for me but for Mari, who’s right below me.
