Beyond the Tenth Floor
"Do you really think so?"
"What—!"
The foreman had been daydreaming about the high post awaiting him when a voice cut through the dark. He scrambled to shove the gold coins into his coat—
Or rather, he tried. Before he could so much as close his fingers, a scrap of pure black snatched the coins clean out of his hand.
Clink!
He lunged after them, but the darkness vanished a beat faster. Left with no choice, he drew his sword and spun toward the voice behind him.
And there he saw it: the man who was supposed to be their target, holding the gold coins the darkness had just handed him, turning them over in front of his eyes.
He went ahead of us. So when the hell did he get behind me?
The second he passed us? Did he already know we were going to jump him?
Damn it. That doesn't matter right now.
What mattered was surviving the man in front of him.
But was there even a way?
"So you're with the Merchant Coalition."
"…That's right. So you'd best not do anything stupid."
The target had clocked his affiliation. Coalition policy was to keep the mining connection buried as deep as possible—under normal circumstances the foreman would have denied everything. But with a lifeline dangling right in front of his face, he couldn't bring himself to look away.
"You're an adventurer. You know how much influence the Merchant Coalition has over people like you."
The Coalition took plenty of heat from adventurers, yet its grip on them remained ironclad. And for good reason: to adventurers, the Coalition was a client nearly as big as the Guild itself. Unlike the Guild shops that stocked only expedition gear, the Coalition dealt in everything—liquor, jewels, fine clothes, and goods that sat well outside the law.
They made you rich, then gave you somewhere to spend that wealth. How could they not hold power?
Worse, word had it that crossing the Coalition meant quiet visits from the adventurers they sponsored—and from the Eastern Guild. Any adventurer with a brain watched their step around the Coalition.
Even if those same people had been plotting to cut his throat behind his back.
Slash!
"Gyaaah!"
Unfortunately for the foreman, the man standing in front of him—Jun—had zero interest in watching his step around the Coalition.
A casual sweep of Firmus took the foreman's leg clean off. Clutching the stump with both hands, he howled:
"Kh—! You think you can make an enemy of the Coalition?!"
"I already have."
At ten years old—two hired mercenaries.
Just recently—two parties and a cult.
The Coalition had already tried to kill Jun twice. The enmity was settled, and it had been entirely one-sided. He had no reason left to hesitate about making an enemy of them.
"And do you really think the Coalition will ever find out I killed you? Unless I go around bragging about it, they'll never know. Just like nobody knows you've been hunting adventurers."
"The miners with me—! The other crews that got my signal—when they come back—!"
"Will they come back?"
No guilt. Not even a flicker of anger. Just a voice so flat it was almost inhuman.
So why did it sound more terrifying than a monster's roar?
The foreman looked up at the speaker without meaning to—and his whole body started to shake.
"A d-dragon—!"
"…What the hell are you babbling about."
The foreman foamed at the mouth, chanting about dragons. Jun stared down at him in blank disbelief, shook his head, and called for Rebecca.
"Rebecca."
"You called, my lord?"
"You said last time you had a talent for interrogation, right?"
"I did. Shall I put this one to the question?"
"Yeah. Find out what the Merchant Coalition's connection is to the miners up ahead. And whether any of those miners have never gotten adventurer blood on their hands."
Jun was no blood-crazed maniac. He had no interest in killing without reason, and no intention of killing anyone who didn't deserve it.
"Oh—and find out how much of my information has spread through the Coalition. From the way this guy talked, he already knew a fair bit about me."
"Understood. Wait a moment."
"Take your time. I'll clean up ahead."
Jun pulled his robe's hood low and walked steadily into darkness so thick he couldn't see a hand in front of his face. Black robe covering him head to toe, black sword resting on his shoulder—vanishing into the dark, he looked less like a man than a reaper come to collect the living.
First a dragon, now a reaper!
How did every association this man inspired turn out so nightmarish? How could a mere human call both of those things to mind? It was absurd.
"Right. This is a dream. I dozed off on watch."
The foreman squeezed his eyes shut, choosing to fall asleep inside the dream so he could wake from it.
Regrettably—
Crrk!
"Ghk—!"
"I'll leave your mouth free. Talk as much as you like. My ears will decide what's true and what isn't."
—it was not yet time for him to sleep.
AAAAAGH!!!
A human scream, raw and unmistakable, tore through the tunnel behind him. Most people would have glanced back at least once. Jun kept his eyes fixed forward and walked on in silence.
Thud. Thud.
His footsteps drowned beneath the screaming—the same way his conscience had briefly stepped aside, crowded out by necessity.
"Jun, let For help. Please?"
"My lord. You need not bear the burden of sin alone. Entrust this to your humble servant."
Fortuna and Dohwa both tried to slip free of his collar as they spoke. Apparently the conscience that had stepped out had tugged on the soul-tether and asked them for help.
It's only been about six months. Looks like I've gone soft already.
Jun gave a bitter little smile and stopped them.
"There might be miners who haven't done anything wrong. If you two go into combat mode, we'd have to kill even the innocent ones just to keep that secret. I appreciate the thought—but leave this one to me."
"…Okay."
"…As you wish."
Fortuna and Dohwa nodded reluctantly.
At the same moment, the foreman's scream rang through the underground tunnel again. The footsteps racing toward them picked up speed.
A short while later, the miners who had charged out to catch Jun began to appear one by one.
"Wh-what the—! Why're you over there?!"
"You bastard! What'd you do to the foreman?!"
"H-hold on! Calm down, all of you!"
Two of the miners drew their weapons in a frenzy. The other three watched Jun carefully and tried to restrain the pair. Greed had fogged their judgment until the moment they actually saw him—then clarity hit like a slap.
"If you were going to chicken out, you shouldn't have gotten greedy in the first place."
Magic — Compression
Jun's Modified Form: Heavenly Demon Descent Step
BOOM.
Jun stamped his foot. Space itself crushed down on the miners—oppressive, violent, like some demon descending from the heavens.
Thud!
"Ghk—!" "Kgh—!" "Aagh—!"
The miners hit the ground without managing a single real act of resistance. They had no choice. Jun's Heavenly Demon Descent Step could pin even a Yellow-rank monster in place—and right now, boosted by the tenth-floor reward and the CPU's assistance, the magic was stronger and more efficient than ever. A handful of Navy-rank miners never stood a chance.
Jun followed up by forming another pressure field around their throats.
Crack. The sound of bone giving way. The miners' groans cut off completely.
"Dohwa, sorry—can you grab anything worth taking?"
"As you command."
Pink birds busied themselves searching the corpses. They found almost nothing. Fortuna and Dohwa looked puzzled—men who treated murder like a work shift, and yet so little on them?—but Jun already seemed to have expected as much. He watched without expression as the miners' bodies began to crumble into dust and sink into the Labyrinth, then started walking again.
Before long he ran into another mining party.
"Well, look at that. Still in one piece."
"Guess the fat pig called 'em. If he said work 'em, you shoulda finished the job already."
"Leave it. Their loss, not ours."
"Heh heh heh. Luck's finally turnin' our way."
Whether they'd answered the foreman's signal or not, the party made no effort to hide their killing intent. The naked greed shining in their eyes actually put Jun at ease.
BOOM.
Crack.
The mining party followed the same procedure as their colleagues and departed the living world on the spot.
Not all of them, though.
"Hic—! Please—please, spare me—"
The sole survivor blubbered through tears and snot, begging for his life. Jun looked down at him in silence, then frowned hard and dug through the man's coat, pulling something free.
Gold coins stamped with the Merchant Coalition's seal—and a fistful of multicolored hair.
He held the hair up in front of the man's face.
"You still think I should let you live after seeing this?"
"Th-that's not from people—"
"Bullshit. Then what about this."
BOOM.
His fist punched straight through the tunnel wall as if it were paper. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the hole, and a whole section of the wall collapsed in a roaring slide of stone.
"Explain with that lying mouth of yours. What are these, you animal."
Inside the hollow behind the wall, adventurer gear lay scattered across a floor still wet with blood.