by Fujino Omori
“Miss Lyu…!”
But as soon as joy flooded his face—
A monster howled, crushing his hopes.
“—”
Yanked back to reality, Bell slowly raised his head.
They were in a vast room. It was inconceivably enormous. Just too huge.
Peering nervously around his dim surroundings, Bell tried to comfort himself with the thought that he did not see any monsters nearby, but he could not feel at ease.
If we’re attacked by a monster now, this will all end.
No, that’s wrong.
Where are we?
What floor are we on?
He knew that wormwells could move between floors. He had been repeatedly jolted back and forth in the pitch-black of its stomach and tossed about by the impact of its digging. However, he had no way of knowing just how far the monster that now lay dead beside him had burrowed.
Most likely, he was somewhere below the twenty-seventh floor.
As he dug his fingers into Lyu’s shoulders and held her tightly to protect her from harm, he tried to beat back the terror long enough to figure out what was going on.
The ground was made of dirt and stone. Far in the distance, he could see that the same was true of the walls. The open space above his head was exceedingly high, so much so that he could not see the ceiling even with his Level Four eyesight.
He was trapped in a vast darkness.
The only source of light was the luminescence glowing at even intervals along the walls. The ground, the walls, and the floor itself were all cloudy white.
An icy draft blew past Bell, assaulting his neck as if to whisper, Finally figured it out, have you?
The gloomy darkness that sat heavily on his shoulders began to laugh into his ears.
His heart was pounding deafeningly. He felt like it was going to burst through his ribs and come flying out of his body.
It took him several seconds to realize that the continuous rasping sound, like someone blowing a hoarse whistle, was actually his own uneven breath.
No way. No way. No. Way.
His instincts were screaming at him, but his rational mind wanted to deny the truth.
The knowledge he had stocked away in his memory during his time studying with Eina told him that his current surroundings were a cruelly perfect fit for the description of a certain floor.
The structure of the space was overwhelmingly gargantuan. The scale was so different it made him want to cry.
This was not the scale of the upper levels, or the middle ones, or even the lower levels.
Despair gripped Bell’s heart as he arrived at the answer to his own question.
The cruel identity of his current location was—the thirty-seventh floor.
His trembling lips shaped a whisper.
“The deep levels…”
Afterword
I’m afraid I’m giving away all my secrets up front, but my model for the catastrophe was a certain alien queen.
The afterword to this volume is something of a confession of sins.
I offer my sincerest apologies for not managing to finish this episode in a single volume. I had planned to tell the whole story of the elven tavern waitress by the end of the book, but as usual, I found myself several hundred pages beyond the planned length, and therefore I decided to split the story into a first and second volume (plus, I thought readers might get worn out if they had to go straight through all the tight spots and bloody battles that continue after Chapter 6 without a break). I’m terribly sorry about that…
There was an omen this might happen. The main heroine this time around was supposed to be the tavern elf, but instead, the prophetess of tragedy shoved her out of the way and claimed center stage for herself. Seems she wanted to escape the shadows she had been confined to so far.
I’d thought up the “prophecies” as a sort of gimmick for the plotline early on, but once I got started, the deliverer of the prophecies just wouldn’t stay still. Her despair, inner struggles, and determination went far beyond what I had initially planned, and in the end, she escaped my control for fifty pages or so. It may have been the first time words flowed so smoothly onto the page. In the end, she was promoted to quite the heroine (at least in my opinion). It was such a shock to me that I kept on mumbling to myself that it must be a mistake.
While I was bending backward to accommodate this unexpected turn of events, however, I was also a bit pleased. I suspect that it’s a good thing for both the author and the book when the characters who live within the story betray the author’s original plans or shoot to the forefront of their own accord. My apologies to those readers who were expecting to see more of the elven heroine, however. She’ll have a larger role to play in the next volume (I think), so please hold on a little longer.
With that, I’d like to move on to acknowledgments.
To Matsumoto-sama, who is newly in charge of the series, I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future. To Editor in Chief Kitamura, I thank you for supporting me numerous times when I thought all was at an end and apologize for once again causing you so much trouble. Suzuhito Yasuda-sensei, I am deeply appreciative and impressed by the wonderful illustrations you have provided, which truly spice up the story. I especially love the illustrations of the battle rush. My thanks, as well, to everyone else involved in the production of this book. Most of all, I extend my sincerest gratitude to all the readers who decided to pick up this book.
I will do my utmost to deliver the second half of this episode as quickly as possible. I hope we meet again, and I thank you for reading this far. With that, I take my leave.
Fujino Omori
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