Chapter 163 - Exploration (2)

Allua Raven. Flowing blond hair. Barely over a hundred and fifty centimeters tall. Add her scrawny build, and at first glance she could pass for a little kid...

But nothing is scarier than her getting serious.

Like right now.

"Did you know about this, Mr. Jandel?"

Ah, uh...

"Even I didn't know he was this bad."

My honest answer made Raven's gaze even sharper. I just scratched the back of my neck like a proper barbarian.

We were already in the Labyrinth. What was she going to do about it?

"I'll find the way from now on. Avman, just keep telling me where the portal is."

"... All right."

Apparently Mister Bear was just as intimidated by Raven's glare, because he handed over the reins without another word.

Now, this was the important part.

"Ha, seriously..."

Her expression suggested she'd realized she'd been duped, but Raven was holding her tongue, willing to wait and see for now.

So I had to prove it on this expedition: having a directionally challenged Guide wouldn't seriously interfere with our exploration.

Before that tiny mouth started spewing curses.

"Let's get moving, then."

Using Mister Bear as a compass, I quickly found our way. I could practically feel Raven's distrustful gaze against my back, but I wasn't particularly worried.

This was the first floor, after all. Knowing the cardinal directions was enough to get you to the second.

'He said choosing the wider passage at a fork gets you more than halfway there.'

'And to avoid rises in the ground, since those are likely to lead to dead ends.'

'Once you reach the outskirts, always take the darker paths with fewer crystals.'

All sorts of handy tips I'd picked up by watching Rotmiller, a navigator who relied on sheer hard work. Putting them to use, I kept wasted travel—like backtracking from dead ends—to a minimum.

And as a result...

"Oh, we got here sooner than I expected, nyah!"

We reached the Dark Region at the outermost edge sooner than expected.

And from there, things were much easier. Normally, we'd have had to search the surroundings for a portal rather than rely on a compass...

"That way."

But we had a Guide who could sense the portal's location without doing anything in particular. All we had to do was head in that direction.

Of course, another explorer had opened the portal long before we arrived.

「You have entered the second floor: Goblin Forest.」

Once we reached the second floor, Raven's expression softened considerably.

"Twelve hours to the second floor... Not bad."

Good. I was in the clear.

We'd allotted thirteen hours to clear the first floor when planning the expedition, so she had no grounds to complain.

"So that's why you allowed so much time even though we had a Guide."

Raven shot me a look that said she'd been had, but surprisingly, she didn't hold a grudge.

Was she the type who didn't mind as long as the results were good?

'How rational.'

With that in mind, I worked to keep us on schedule on the second floor as well. Admittedly, clearing it within twenty-four hours was a tight deadline...

"Avman, which way?"

"That way."

There were eight portal monuments in the Goblin Forest. Once one opened, however, the rest became ordinary lumps of stone. The standard approach for teams arriving later was therefore to make a wide circuit around the outermost edge in search of the portal.

For reference, I'd heard that took two or three days on average.

Assuming you didn't have a Guide.

'With a Guide, one day is plenty. You don't have to go all the way around.'

Without even taking out a compass, we headed straight toward the open portal.

"Raven, can you make more light orbs?"

"Three or so won't be a problem."

The lack of a professional Scout wasn't an issue either. A forest full of traps? With our surroundings lit up like broad daylight, they weren't even a threat.

Sure, the light kept drawing goblins to us...

"Grrrk—!!"

But by now, I could handle dozens of goblins attacking at once all by myself.

"We'll stop here for the night."

Around nine in the evening, we prepared to camp on the outskirts of the Goblin Forest, where hobgoblins had begun appearing.

"... Do explorers normally keep up such a grueling pace?"

It must have been a rough day for Raven, who was on her first proper expedition. But you had to adjust your sleep schedule on the first day, while you still had stamina to spare.

"We'll generally be camping around this time, so things should get easier starting tomorrow."

"... Well, it is interesting. It feels like a real expedition."

"Stop talking and get some sleep. We have more traveling to do tomorrow."

"All right. Wake me if anything happens."

As was customary, Raven was exempt from night watch. Setting up an alarm spell was considered enough of a contribution.

"Um, Bjorn... About Aynar. Will she be okay standing watch alone later, nyah?"

Misha glanced at Aynar, whose shift followed hers, and cautiously voiced her concern. I chuckled and gave her a firm answer.

"She'll be fine. She won't doze off."

Aynar was surprisingly reliable about things like this. Partly because of her distrust of humans, and partly because barbarians considered failing to keep a promise shameful.

She'd done perfectly well on watch when it was just the two of us, too. And she must have been far more tired back then, with four-hour shifts and barely any sleep.

"Hmm, I see, nyah... I guess I was being a little prejudiced."

After eight hours of camping, with the four of us apart from Raven taking two-hour shifts, we resumed our expedition early in the morning.

We found the portal before noon.

「You have entered the third floor: Pilgrim's Passage.」

Things continued smoothly after we reached the third floor. The battles were too easy to count as real combat practice, and navigation posed no problems either.

Mister Bear didn't get lost anywhere that wasn't a maze of paths like the first floor or the city.

「Your character has entered a special area.」

「Field Effect - Witch's Forest has been applied.」

The same held true for the Witch's Forest, which I'd privately been worried about. We tied ourselves together with rope like a string of dried fish and followed Mister Bear, letting us get through it easily.

And now, after all that time...

"Ohhh, a tower! Bjorn! There really is a tower in the middle of the forest!!"

"Hehe, see? Didn't I tell you, nyah? The Labyrinth is full of amazing things."

"VEHELLLAAAAAA!!"

"... Right, you just felt like shouting for some reason, didn't you?"

We'd reached the portal to the fourth floor, and it was only the afternoon of day eight.

'This is almost as fast as when we had Rotmiller.'

I was pleased, but somehow the realization left a bitter taste, too.

Could hard work really never beat talent?

"What are you thinking about, Mr. Jandel?"

"Oh, nothing important."

"Th-then can we hurry inside? The whole forest is thick with sinister mana, and it's making me nauseous."

Was it because of her naturally high sensitivity to mana? Aside from not actually throwing up, Raven was suffering even worse nausea than Dwalki had.

I wanted to get her somewhere comfortable as soon as possible, too, but...

"Wait a little. We can't go in until the portal changes color."

"Oh, right. I've heard about that. It's because another team might already be inside, isn't it?"

"Otherwise, they might mistake us for plunderers and attack."

Given a rational explanation, Raven waited without complaint. Soon, the portal changed color.

"All right, let's head in."

It was time to start climbing in earnest.

* * *

「You have entered the fourth floor: Sky Tower.」

* * *

Sky Tower. A uniquely structured floor where a random assortment of monsters appeared at each stage.

Since I usually called it Training Tower, I'd planned to use this place to really work on our coordination.

But...

'... With this much of a power gap, there's no point.'

After the first battle, I realized that our team's combat power was on an entirely different level from the Outcast Team's.

So much so that it was impossible for us to practice coordinating at full strength on the fourth floor.

「Your character has used [Gigantification].」

My gigantic mace had gained not just size but vastly improved performance through [Unity]. Combined with the offensive skill [Swing], it made rank-seven monsters feel like goblins.

The key point was that someone else was our main damage dealer.

「Avman Urigfried has used [Hazardous Material].」

Mister Bear, a rank-five archer, delivered devastating damage that went beyond one-shot kills to wiping out the whole surrounding area. He also had a top-tier tank summon called Iron Bear.

「Allua Raven has cast the rank-six attack spell [Flame Barrage].」

Then there was the insane utility of Raven, a fully trained mage with attack spells for all four major elements, plus over a hundred curses and support spells.

'That's right. A team should have at least three people who can carry.'

Our team had become vastly more well-rounded. No matter what bizarre combination of monsters appeared, as long as they were rank six or below, we could defeat them in the most appropriate manner within three minutes.

'Aynar and Misha only fall short compared to us three. They're both pulling their weight... As expected, we should be fine on the fifth floor even as we are.'

So rather than going out of our way to practice teamwork, we concentrated on climbing Sky Tower.

Still, we didn't pick up speed as I'd expected. The reason was simple. Although we finished fights incomparably faster than the Outcast Team had...

We didn't have a professional Scout.

'Everything else is great, but it's a shame the Trial of Wisdom takes so long.'

The Trial of Wisdom was a kind of shortcut. In exchange for navigating a maze full of traps and monsters, you could skip five stages at once. Unlike the Stairs of Courage, it also had no four-hour cooldown before you could choose the next stairway...

Rotmiller had taken about an hour to clear it.

We were taking just about five times that long.

"Bjorn, can't we just fight monsters?"

I was as frustrated as Aynar, but we had no choice. Reaching stage one hundred by choosing only Courage would take over sixteen days. We'd never clear the fourth floor before the Labyrinth closed.

"It's too late for today. We'll rest now and continue climbing tomorrow."

We'd only cleared one Trial of Wisdom since entering the tower, but it was already past ten at night, so we prepared to camp.

Of course, this was quite different from our usual camps. There was no need to assign watches. Everyone simply laid out a sleeping bag wherever they liked.

"We're in the Labyrinth, but we don't have to stand watch!! Misha, my head is spinning!!"

"Hehe, I think I know how you feel, nyah. When I first came here, I couldn't get used to it either, so I had trouble sleep—"

SNORRRRRRE!

"Hey, I was talking...!"

Aynar passed out the moment she lay down in her sleeping bag. Misha sighed at the sight, then began getting ready for bed, wiping herself down with a damp cloth.

"Bjorn, why do you keep glancing over here, nyah?"

"I wasn't looking."

"Come on, turn your head, nyah. We're teammates, remember? Teammates! It's too late for regrets now, nyah."

No, seriously, I wasn't looking.

With a sigh, I focused on wiping the blood off my mace. But did that displease her, too?

"Tsk."

Misha clicked her tongue as though making sure I heard it.

This was something that had changed since she moved into our inn. She'd been the one to suggest pretending it had never happened, but now she kept teasingly bringing up that day.

Not that I had any complaints.

'... Maybe this is better.'

Misha had told me how she felt, and I'd drawn a firm line. No matter how much we wanted to pretend otherwise, we couldn't make it unhappen.

She must have thought it over and made her decision, too. This was far less awkward than constantly watching her words because of what had happened.

"I'm going to sleep now, nyah."

"All right."

Soon, Misha climbed into her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. I looked to the side and saw Mister Bear preparing for bed as well, his sleeping bag laid out in a corner.

SNORRRRRRE!

While I was tending to my equipment, I picked up Aynar's greatsword and gave it a quick cleaning, too. As I worked, Raven quietly approached.

"Something you want to say?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead."

"I've done the calculations. At today's pace, we won't have much time to spend on the fifth floor even after we get there."

... So she'd actually calculated it.

Tsk. Mages.

Of course, I could understand her concern. Every hour wasted here meant one less hour we could spend on the fifth floor.

"Our earnings will fall behind other teams' accordingly."

"... Isn't this our first expedition? It's taking time because we don't have a professional Scout, but we'll get faster."

"If you say so."

With that, Raven returned to her sleeping bag without another word. Not because she'd accepted everything I said, though.

If we kept taking five hours to clear each Trial of Wisdom like we had today, she'd probably come to me again.

With a drastic solution.

'... Whatever. Time to sleep.'

I set the cleaned greatsword down beside Aynar and lay down in my sleeping bag.

How long had passed since I closed my eyes?

["Mr. Jandel, just listen. Stay still."]

Raven's voice rang inside my head, waking me.

It was a Voice Transmission spell.

But why had she gone to the trouble of using magic to wake me?

["I had an uneasy feeling while I was washing, so I tried a detection spell..."]

["There's someone else here besides us."]

["So don't move. Whatever you do."]

The reason was quite simple. Honestly, I had no idea how she could sound so calm...

["That person is standing right behind me."]

One wrong move, and our mage was fucking dead.