Chapter 166 - Great Demon Realm (1)

The fifth floor, the Great Demon Realm.

A floor where teams gradually reached their limits and clan-sized hunting parties came into their own.

The moment I stepped inside, my chest swelled.

Not figuratively. Literally.

"Huh? Bjorn, did you feel that too? I think my Spirit Status went up!"

Aynar immediately made a fuss, but this wasn't a level-up. My Magic Power had simply increased.

「Achievement Accomplished」

Condition: Reach the fifth floor.

Reward: Magic Power permanently increases by +20.

But if this worked, did that mean I'd also completed all the other achievements whose conditions I'd fulfilled so far?

That seemed likely, but I couldn't be sure. If only I could see my stats window. Mental stats weren't exactly something you could readily feel, either.

"Calm down, Aynar. This isn't an ascension. It's a phenomenon called baptism."

Anyway, Raven, who loved explaining things, kindly filled Aynar in for me. She even tailored her explanation to Aynar's level.

"The Labyrinth bestows a blessing on explorers who make it this far. That's the commonly accepted explanation for baptism, anyway. Mages think a little differently."

"Oh, I see! There's something romantic about that!"

Fond of superstitions as she was, Aynar didn't ask a single question about what mages thought. Misha, however, apparently grew curious as she listened.

"Then isn't baptism pointless for mages, since you can't absorb Essences, nyah?"

"No. Our mana increases. Now that I've experienced it, it's quite a substantial amount. If I'd known, I'd have listened to my seniors and come sooner."

"Oh, I see, nyah..."

Misha trailed off. Somehow, though, I thought I knew what was on her mind.

She was probably thinking of Dwalki, who'd always been short on mana.

"Oh, and I hear priests gain Divine Power. One other thing—"

Before Raven's explanation could drag on forever, I interrupted.

"More importantly, doesn't something seem strange?"

"What?"

Raven tilted her head, not understanding what I meant. Mister Bear, on the other hand, had visited the fifth floor often and nodded in agreement.

"There are a lot of people. It isn't usually this crowded."

Right. So this wasn't normal after all.

I glanced around and swallowed.

The starting point of the fifth floor, the Great Demon Realm, was a safe zone. As such, it always looked like a campground.

But...

'Why are there so many tents?'

At this point, it was practically the size of a village. And judging by the flags planted here and there, more than half the explorers seemed to belong to clans...

'What's going on? Why are they staying here?'

Most explorers who used this place as a base operated in teams. A sort of workaround, you could call it.

Clans had enough people to camp perfectly well on their own, even in the middle of the fifth floor.

And yet...

"Bjorn, I think they're all staring at us... Is everything okay, nyah?"

Fifth-floor explorers. And skilled enough to belong to clans, at that.

They watched us from afar, whispering among themselves. Surely they weren't trying to haze the newcomers.

Seriously, what was going on?

As I pondered that question, someone called out.

"Hey!"

A man waved from the distance and hurried over.

"Avman! That is you, isn't it?"

"... Karal?"

"Good to see you. Finally changed your mind and found yourself a team?"

"We happened to cross paths. Anyway, are you still with that lot?"

"A man's got to be loyal. I'll be with them till I die."

Mister Bear greeted him warmly, as if they knew each other quite well. Then he noticed me looking and offered an explanation.

"Oh, this is Karal Larveger. We used to be companions. Before he abandoned me and went off to join a clan by himself."

"When did I ever abandon you? I begged you to come with me, but weren't you the one who ignored me?"

Judging by how much more casually Mister Bear spoke to him than to us, they really did seem close.

Perfect timing.

"I am Bjorn, son of Jandel."

"... Oh? So you're the one?"

Karal gave me an interested look, perhaps having heard the epithet Little Valcan.

"I heard it hasn't even been a year for you yet, and you've already made it this far... Somehow, I'm feeling awfully insignificant today."

"I was just lucky. More importantly, there's something I'd like to ask."

"I think I know what you're wondering. You want to know why we're still here when we ought to be well on our way up, right?"

Well, to be precise, I was most curious about why they were glaring at us from afar...

But I nodded for now.

"It's simple. In our case alone, more than half the people who were supposed to join us haven't made it up. Our entire schedule has effectively ground to a halt."

Half hadn't made it up?

How was that possible?

I was just beginning to sense instinctively how serious this was.

"So, I'd like to ask..."

Karal posed his question cautiously, bringing up something I'd never expected.

"Were you attacked on the fourth floor too, by any chance?"

That masked bastard...

We weren't the only ones he'd come after.

* * *

After a moment's consideration, I admitted honestly that we'd been attacked.

Karal then asked several questions about what had happened. We answered truthfully and obtained the information we needed in return.

"I see. You found him with detection magic..."

"It was pure coincidence. The first time I cast the detection spell, it showed nothing."

When we went on to tell him that the masked man had killed himself after being exposed, Karal's expression grew grave.

"Good grief. Suicide? What in the world..."

"Any idea who might be behind it?"

"All we know so far is that it was meticulously planned. Anyway, thank you for telling me. If we learn anything... I'll send word through Avman."

Karal soon left to report the news to his clan, leaving us to talk among ourselves.

"... So he really wasn't just an ordinary plunderer."

There had been multiple masked men, and they'd carried out indiscriminate terrorist attacks on explorers from the fourth floor and above. Apparently, we were the third team to survive an attack and make it up here.

It wasn't hard to understand why.

Nobody posted a night watch in the Sky Tower.

"We really were lucky, nyah..."

Even the survivors had reportedly only just managed to kill their attackers, with team members dead or badly injured. We were the first to discover one in advance and drive him to suicide.

Now I understood the looks we'd received.

At first, they'd probably watched us in the hope that we were the members they'd been desperately waiting for. Then they'd have wondered whether we'd been attacked too.

"Mr. Jandel, do you think what he said earlier is true? That at least three hundred people must have died in these attacks..."

"Who knows? We'll only know for sure once we're back in the city. Some might have survived but stayed on the fourth floor because their Scout or Guide died."

"Oh, right..."

Of course, despite what I'd said, it didn't make much difference.

Hundreds of explorers were dead. That much was certain. And not low-level explorers hunting on the first or second floor, but veterans who'd been climbing the tower for well over a decade.

"Whew..."

As frightening as this enormous spark of trouble was, I also felt a little relieved.

At least the Dragonslayer hadn't sent him. I'd even entertained paranoid notions that he might be an assassin sent by that district manager bastard or the draconic humans.

"Who on earth would be brazen enough to commit something this atrocious...?"

At that point, I held my tongue.

The royal family's plan to launch a punitive expedition against Noark hadn't been made public yet.

'This must be their declaration of war in response.'

Privately, I was convinced that Noark's explorers were behind these terrorist attacks.

'This is going to turn into something big.'

A headache began to build.

War would break out between the royal family and Noark. No, it was fair to say it had already begun.

But the biggest problem was...

'If the punitive expedition fails.'

If Noark sealed its gates and the war dragged on, I'd be fucked too.

Because the next battlefield would undoubtedly be the Labyrinth.

'Whether it's Noark or Raphdonia, they need magic crystals to keep their cities running.'

God fucking damn it.

Why did I have to get dragged into the game at a time like this? If I'd arrived just a year earlier, I'd have had more time to prepare.

'Uh... But if I hadn't delivered that old high priest's letter to the temple, wouldn't there have been no war?'

The thought suddenly occurred to me, but I shook it off.

How was this my fault?

It was all that Dragonslayer bastard's fault. All three major religions had originally stayed neutral to keep the royal family in check, hadn't they? Who told him to kidnap a high priest and work him like a slave?

"Bjorn?"

"Oh, I was just thinking."

"So what do we do now, nyah?"

When I came out of my thoughts, the whole team was looking at me. Of course, they still saw this as nothing more than a terrorist attack. Their heads wouldn't be nearly as full as mine.

"No change of plans. We resume exploring."

Once I'd made my decision, Raven cautiously voiced her concerns.

"Will we be all right with people like that in the Labyrinth?"

"We should be fine. With this many clans gathered here, they won't try anything if they have any sense."

If anything, now was the safest time.

Next month, those tunnel-dwelling bastards might be running rampant even on the fifth floor... And it was possible that entry to the Labyrinth might be blocked entirely.

"Come on. Enough thinking. Let's go make some money."

The fifth floor would close at the end of day thirty, so we needed to earn as much as we could.

Who knew how many months we'd be forced to take off afterward?

* * *

The layout of the fifth floor, the Great Demon Realm, was simple.

Picture a wide, tray-shaped rock, then imagine slides extending from it in four directions.

The problem was that those slides split into dozens of branches, broke off partway to connect to other routes, and all sorts of other bullshit.

WHOOSH.

As we left the starting point, bathed in red light like a butcher's shop, the Labyrinth's darkness and sweltering heat greeted us.

Not all four routes were like this. It was a feature of the route we'd chosen.

「The character has entered a special area.」

「Field Effect - Hellfire Rift is applied.」

「Status condition [Ash Fire Branding] is applied.」

「All resource costs increase to 1.5 times their normal values, and Fire Tolerance decreases by -30.」

All resource costs.

Put simply, whether it was Magic Power, mana, Divine Power, or stamina, we'd consume one and a half times as much as usual.

Still, it wasn't bad. Compared to the other routes, this was mild.

「Allua Raven has cast the rank-eight enchantment [Ice Blood].」

「The character's Fire Tolerance increases significantly.」

Cold mana seeped into my blood vessels, cooling my overheated body.

With that, we slowly continued exploring. We hadn't encountered any monsters yet, but just walking was far more stressful than I'd expected.

'What is this, a suspension bridge?'

A path roughly ten meters wide. The Labyrinth's darkness obstructing our vision. And sheer drops radiating intense heat.

"Aynar, stop looking down."

"I-I was just wondering what was down there..."

"I hear there's lava flowing below."

"Lava? What's that?"

"Uh, it's hard to explain..."

Once again, Raven patiently answered Aynar's questions. Aynar frowned whenever a difficult word came up, but still listened attentively.

'They do seem to get along in that respect.'

As team leader, I found the sight rather heartwarming, but I couldn't simply watch.

"Aynar, stop bothering Raven and keep your eyes ahead."

"G-got it!"

Having tightened our slackening vigilance once more, we descended the slope. When we came to a fork, I took out my notebook and drew a map with no regard for scale.

I had absolutely no intention of using the safe zone as a base and poking around nearby, but... I figured we still needed to be able to find our way back if something happened.

We'd passed three forks, and I was coming to appreciate Rotmiller's greatness firsthand, when it happened.

BOOOOM!

The ground shook with an explosion. A swirling pillar of fire shot up and swept past us.

Then...

PATTER-PATTER.

Small embers scattered and fell ahead of us, clustering together to take shape.

Beasts covered from head to toe in blazing flames.

"Ifrits."

"Two rank-five monsters right off the bat."

As combat began, Raven cast Frost Enchantment on us. Ifrits were spirit-type monsters, so they were immune to physical damage.

「Cold damage is added to the character's weapon.」

A frosty glow wreathed my mace.

With Gigantification active, I charged forward and smashed one of them with it. The impact felt underwhelming.

THWACK!

This was the same mace that had smashed a troll's shoulder in a single blow, yet the Ifrit didn't even flinch.

This was why I hated spirit-types.

It would have been different with Property Conversion, a spell that converted physical force into an equivalent amount of another element. Frost Enchantment, however, could only deal its bonus damage.

"Aysir Feist."

Raven's rank-six curse spell, Flash Freeze, followed by Misha's [Shatter] combo.

In the end, this battle came down to Misha and Raven carrying us while I held the monsters off.

「You have defeated an Ifrit. EXP +5」

Mister Bear at least summoned Iron Bear to help tank, but Aynar could only watch.

Such was the fate of a physical warrior.

A magic crystal dropped where the Ifrit had disappeared and rolled along the ground. As usual, no Essence appeared.

But instead...

「The character's Level has increased.」

「Magic Power increases by +10.」

「The maximum number of absorbable Essences increases by +1.」

I'd finally reached Level 5.

Not that it would mean anything unless an Essence actually dropped.

["SKREEEEE!!"]

Now there was only one monster left.

Having lost its precious companion, the blazing beast roared at us.

It was at that very moment.

"... An Ifrit?"

A group of five explorers appeared from the other direction. They seemed to be heading back to the safe zone after finishing their hunt...

Where had they learned manners this fucking awful?

"You can tell this'll take them over five minutes."

"Ugh, I'm exhausted. Why don't we just kill it ourselves?"

An enormous mass of water fell from above, drenching the Ifrit. Its flames dwindled in an instant.

"What the hell are you—"

Before I could protest, an arrow followed, piercing the Ifrit's head.

WHOOOOSH.

The last monster dissolved into light.

When I saw what it had left behind, I let out a heavy sigh.

"... An Essence, nyah!"

A rank-five monster's Essence had dropped.

'God fucking damn it.'

Seriously, I was speechless.

Why did it only happen at times like this?