Chapter 11 - The Second Floor (1)

["They may have split up by now. If you see a barbarian using a one-handed hammer and a shield, do not approach recklessly. Wait for backup."]

My description was spreading.

It wasn't detailed, but that hardly mattered. I doubted there was another barbarian out there who used a shield.

"Mister..."

Erwin looked up at me anxiously. Her thoughts were so obvious that I chuckled.

"Don't worry. I'm not leaving you behind."

I had already decided to help Erwin.

The reason was simple. I'd always liked helping people in trouble.

Provided it benefited me.

"As I said before, from now on, I get nine shares of the loot and you get one. Understood?"

"Of course. I'll repay your kindness. I promise."

Kindness, huh...

"Good. Make sure you do."

If she insisted on giving me something, I had no reason to turn it down. Not that I was expecting much.

"I will. I promise..."

Watching her clench her fists with determination in her eyes, I tightened my bootlaces and finished getting ready to move.

"So, what are you going to do now?"

"First, we'll travel through the outskirts. Summon your spirit again. I'll explain the rest on the way."

"All right."

As we walked through the darkness with a fist-sized flame for a lantern, I checked a few more things.

"Exactly how long can you keep your spirit summoned?"

"If it's only lighting our surroundings, I can easily manage ten hours."

"How long to recover afterward?"

"About two hours of rest should do it."

"I see."

Things were looking much better than I'd expected.

If everything went according to plan, we would shake our pursuers without much danger. Then I would reap the benefits in proportion to the risk I'd taken on.

"Mister."

Erwin spoke as I was sorting through my thoughts.

"May I ask where we're headed now?"

Oh, right. I hadn't told her.

"The second floor."

"What...?"

Don't look at me like that. You heard me right.

"We're going to the second floor."

"You and me? Just the two of us?"

"Yes. Just you and me."

Actually, this wasn't so much a case of having no choice as something I'd been considering for a while. Moving as a pair on the first floor would only reduce our earnings...

But the second floor was a different story.

"Um... M-Mister? The second floor is completely different from the first. You do know that, right...?"

"I do."

Monsters that appeared in groups of three or four on the first floor came in packs of fifteen or so up there. There were also Mutant varieties, and even monsters of a higher rank altogether.

"But we'll be fine if we stick to the area near the entrance. You and I complement each other pretty well."

"Y-You mean, me and you?"

I didn't know what she found so surprising. A melee tank and a ranged damage dealer made a good combination.

That was why I'd considered going upstairs with her earlier. Up there, even splitting the magic crystals evenly would mean a substantial increase in earnings.

But I'd scrapped the idea because I had no way to get through the darkness.

"N-No matter how I look at it, this feels like escaping g-goblins only to walk into an orc den..."

Well, judging by her reaction, she would probably have shot me down even if I'd known and proposed it...

But things were completely different now.

"Then do you have another way? As you know, those bastards are all over the first floor."

Erwin now had a reason to go to the second floor, and I'd been able to take advantage of that to raise my share to nine out of ten.

Of course, that didn't mean my decision was entirely devoid of emotion.

["Whoever catches the elf bitch gets ten thousand Stone, plus the chance to have the first go at her."]

I disliked men like these.

No, it went beyond dislike. It was closer to disgust.

And I could screw these bastards over, earn rewards greater than the risks, and even enjoy the satisfaction of having done someone a kindness?

Wasn't that efficiency at its finest?

"I'll give you a choice. What will you do?"

"I'll go..."

Erwin nodded with the look of someone swallowing a bitter pill. The transmission we'd just heard through the message stone seemed to have been the deciding factor...

Nice timing.

"Then let's keep moving."

"... But do you know the way to the second floor?"

"Not exactly."

"What?"

"But don't worry. Keep heading north and we'll find it eventually."

That wasn't wishful thinking. It really worked that way.

If we followed the darkness in one direction, we'd reach a portal sooner or later. This darkness was like a route leading upstairs.

The place was such a maze that we were bound to get lost along the way, but that was worth putting up with.

"A goblin trap!"

We spotted a trap as we walked.

It had taken far longer than I'd expected. Normally, we should have run into one ages ago.

... Could there be fewer goblins in the unlit areas? Just like in the game?

If so, the thought made my chest tighten.

Just how unlucky had I been to land in the darkness at the very start and run into a goblin right away?

"I'll handle it! You can rest, Mister!"

Erwin stepped out in front of me, apparently seeing this as a chance to prove herself.

"Just to be clear, don't use your spirit."

"... O-Of course not!"

Looking far too flustered for that to be an "of course," Erwin approached the trap.

And then...

"Grrk!"

The instant the goblin sprang out, she fired her already-nocked arrow at point-blank range.

THUNK!

Oh, that made her look like Legolas.

She was much better than I'd expected. Very agile, too.

"How was that?"

Having dispatched the goblin, Erwin turned to me with a triumphant look.

"Normally, you'd have used your spirit, wouldn't you?"

"Yes..."

"Well done. Judging by your archery, you really are an elf."

Erwin looked bashful but pleased. Did she like getting approval that much? Honestly, that had also been a bit of a backhanded jab.

At her personality, not her skill.

"But I'll handle the fighting from now on. We should save as many arrows as possible."

"Oh, I can just pick them up and use them again. I don't even need to pull them out."

Erwin bent down, retrieved the magic crystal and arrow, and came back. Even at a glance, the arrow was perfectly intact.

"... I see."

Well, that was embarrassing.

In the game, arrows were consumables that disappeared after one shot. Though you could carry a thousand of them in one inventory slot.

"Here you go!"

Erwin held out her little hand.

"Take it! I get one for every nine you get, right? I'll work hard! Then I'll be able to earn a little too, won't I? I promised my younger sibling I'd buy something when I got back!"

Uh, ah, um...

"Right. Keep up the good work..."

What was this? Was she taking a backhanded jab at me?

* * *

We were making swift progress north through the darkness, killing the occasional goblin, when a voice emerged from the message stone after a long silence.

["An additional announcement. Hartz Young, the man the elf got, says he's raising the bounty to twenty thousand Stone. Dead or alive."]

That meant some of them were within three hundred meters.

Perhaps out of instinct, Erwin sidled up close to me.

"Relax. No one's going to go so far as to use torches to look for us."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

In fact, I was nearly certain.

Listening in on their conversations through the message stone, I'd come to realize that, for all their talk of being an organization, they were little more than a bunch of street thugs.

They didn't seem particularly united, either.

My guess was that, at most, the group served as a convenient little community for its members. After all, the first floor wasn't a place where you could operate in groups larger than five.

["I'm planning to move to the razor mane wolf area to hunt. Anyone want to come along? No need to relay this."]

["I'm tired and looking for someone to rest with. Come to the pond beside the big rock. No need to relay this."]

In fact, we'd heard transmissions like these here and there on the way. Some of them didn't care much whether there was a bounty or not.

Still, I didn't let my guard down.

Not because things had gone wrong, but because everything was going far too smoothly according to plan.

Damn it...

With my luck, something bad should have happened around now. The quiet only made me more anxious.

"Mister!"

What now?

"Over there! Ghouls!"

I couldn't see them. When I tilted my head, Erwin moved the flame forward.

... Your eyesight really is amazing.

Only then could I make out the ghouls.

Rotten skin, empty eye sockets, long, sharp, clawlike nails, and humanlike bodies that moved on all fours.

They looked exactly like the illustration I'd seen on the loading screen.

There was just one problem...

'What the hell? Why are there ghouls here?'

The monsters that appeared on the first floor differed depending on the cardinal direction. Ghouls appeared in the western area.

Had we wandered all the way to the boundary?

Well, that was possible. We'd been heading north, but we'd had to circle around here and there whenever we hit a dead end.

I'd think about that later.

"... Am I fighting alone again?"

Erwin, who'd been so eager to fight the goblins, made her reluctance painfully obvious.

Was she scared because this was a monster she'd never seen before?

She really did have her peculiarities.

"I'll take the lead. You just focus on the one furthest back."

"All right!"

With the broad strokes of our strategy agreed on, I slowly advanced.

Three ghouls blocked the passage, all sitting like dogs.

STEP.

They didn't so much as twitch, even though I'd come fairly close.

Hmm. In the game, they only attacked once you came within a certain range. Was that the same here, too?

STEP.

I cautiously took another step, and all three ghouls lunged at once.

"Grrrrk!"

They sounded much like goblins.

Was that because they were rank-nine monsters? Not much individuality there.

"Hyaaah!"

Rather than retreating, I took another step forward and brought my hammer down on the lead ghoul's head.

I called it Hammer Smash.

CRUNCH!

The moment I crushed one ghoul's skull, an arrow shot past me from behind and struck another.

THUNK!

She really seemed to like hitting them between the eyes.

I shoved the last charging ghoul back with my shield, then finished it with a Hammer Smash, bringing the fight to an anticlimactic end.

「You have slain a ghoul. EXP +1」

The fight had ended in an instant, but I took a moment to review it.

In terms of combat strength, ghouls were above goblins. They were much stronger and faster.

Well, goblins did have traps...

But any dumbass who fell for those was an idiot.

... Assuming there was light around, of course.

"Still, these are much better than goblins."

"Huh? Why?"

"Because goblins take time to kill."

As long as you could handle them in a head-on fight, hunting ghouls seemed more efficient than hunting goblins in several ways.

At least these things didn't set a single trap and then camp nearby.

The fact that they wouldn't attack until you got close was another huge advantage.

"Next time, it'll be more efficient to kill one with an arrow before we start."

"Yes. That sounds good."

After briefly discussing our plan for future fights, I gathered the magic crystals off the ground and put them in my pouch.

"Um, Mister...?"

"What is it?"

"Um, well, it's my turn to get one now..."

"Oh, right."

We continued down the passage.

* * *

My guess that we were near the boundary proved correct.

For a while, we encountered ghouls and goblins in turn. As we continued north, we started seeing only goblins again.

How much time had passed since then?

[22 : 47]

Before we knew it, day three was nearing its end.

We'd kept heading north, even after stopping for about four hours of rest along the way, when we found it.

A dark red line drawn across the ground.

"Oh, a blood trail? It doesn't look like a goblin's. Whose could it be?"

... Somehow, I thought I knew exactly whose it was.

I followed it and found a piece of bread on the ground. Then more, at regular intervals.

Now certain, I continued following the blood trail.

"Um, you've been awfully quiet for a while..."

Ten minutes.

"Are you angry with me about something?"

Thirty minutes.

"Hello? Mister?"

Two hours.

"..."

After walking that long distance, I finally found a sandal abandoned on the ground.

A curse slipped out before I could stop it.

"Um..."

"Fuck. You've got to be kidding me."

"I-I'm sorry! Whatever I did!"

The portal was right there, a stone's throw away.