Is It Wrong to Try to Seek Meetings in the Dungeon? (True)
"Yeah, something about this is definitely wrong."
I muttered to myself as I kicked another monster away. Anyone watching would think I'd lost my mind, but I was being completely serious.
I'd woken up in the Dungeon — and Rivira Town was in its thirty-seventh rebuilding generation. Thirty-seven generations was already absurd; at this point, did anything even make sense anymore?
I swept my leg through the monsters that had once again closed in around me. Honestly, why did these things keep swarming toward anything that thought like a person?
Monsters... it's been a while, hasn't it.
Ever since I'd stopped entering the Dungeon, of course I'd seen far less of them.
I wonder what the Xenos are doing these days.
Every Xenos who had ever helped me was gone now, but that didn't mean the Xenos as a whole had vanished. A vague curiosity washed over me — where were they right now, and what were they doing?
"Well, Fels probably sorted everything out on his own."
Even so, had leaving so abruptly been too cold? I'd considered helping a little, at least — but back then, I'd been too desperate. It had taken everything I had just to claw my way back to sanity. Looking back on it now, I honestly marvel that I pulled myself together at all.
Lost in these idle thoughts, I found I'd already climbed to the Upper Floors. I had no idea why I was here, but since I was, I figured I ought to at least pay my respects to the people I knew.
How were Lord Uranus and Lord Hephaistos faring? It would be good to know that Miach and Lord Takemikazuchi were still in good health.
Had they been eating well? Was anything ailing them? Were they sleeping soundly at night? All the conversations I hadn't been able to have with them, pent up for so long, came pouring out like a tide — and my steps began to quicken along with them.
Wandering alone hadn't been so bad, but talking with people I knew... people close to me? Either way — there was a special flavor to it that solitude could never offer.
If only the other gods and everyone else were here too. It would have been so wonderful if...
"..."
Thud. My footsteps stopped dead.
The same legs that had been ready to take flight only moments ago now refused to move, as if nailed to the ground.
What if they resented me? What if they didn't want to see me at all?
I knew, logically, that it was impossible — and yet, the thought of actually talking to them began to frighten me a little.
"...Maybe I'll just slip out quietly."
My wounds weren't fully healed yet. Not completely.
Perhaps I should simply leave for now, put all my feelings in order, and come back once I had. There was no point in trying to talk with them anyway — lies don't work on gods, and any conversation would only end up making them worry for nothing.
That was what I was thinking, right at that moment—
-AAAAAAAH!!
"...Hm?"
Someone's scream tore across the Dungeon.
Nothing unusual about that. The Dungeon was, by nature, a place drenched in screams and shouting. What was rare was for the voice to belong to a young child. A rookie adventurer, maybe? Finn would have loved to be here — a shame he wasn't.
"Guess I'll go help, for now."
Judging by the sound of it, the situation wasn't exactly calm. The Upper Floors were where the most adventurers died, always had been. When it came to this, a senior ought to step in.
...I am a senior, right? I'd retired a while ago, but still — I'd been in the Dungeon for a good long while before that. Yeah. I'm the senior here.
Now that I thought about it, back when I first became an adventurer, I'd actually been dumb enough to chase after "encounters" in the Dungeon.
The days when I brimmed with dreams and hope — or to put it bluntly, when I was an idiot who knew nothing of the world.
If Miss Aiz hadn't saved me back then, the me standing here now might never have existed at all.
Thinking of it that way, maybe I really was lucky. In a strange, twisted shape, I'd managed to achieve my goal of a "meeting" — and on top of that, I'd survived it all in one piece.
And why, you might ask, am I dredging up such pointless memories now?
-KRAGH!
-Squelch. Crunch.
Because right now, it struck me — I might be looking at the very moment that boy back then had yearned for.
Using the familiar sounds of crumpling metal and a monster's flesh being pulverized as my compass, I arrived at the scene — and there it was, just as I'd expected.
An adventurer like a small child in a helmet, and barring the way in front of them, the unofficial floor boss of the Upper Floors: an Infant Dragon.
A hatchling, yes — but still unmistakably a dragon. Facing a being that was the very nightmare of every Upper-Floors adventurer, the tiny adventurer stubbornly kept pressing the attack without an ounce of retreat.
That person's about to die.
The attacks weren't rational so much as given-up; the movements carried not grit but pure, seething spite. I'd seen plenty of people like that before. Probably someone who'd lost family or comrades to monsters.
A quick glance around showed no other bodies or scattered equipment. So they hadn't lost a companion here, at least... which meant it was an old wound that had never healed. Just like mine.
Hmm...
Somehow I'd gone and turned sentimental. Was it because the old days were on my mind? Or maybe — it could just be that today was Elegia.
Then again, with no companions anywhere in sight, was that adventurer truly a rookie? Maybe I was about to witness the birth of a brand-new rookie hero.
-Ah?!
Apparently watching was as far as this went. The moment the adventurer's sword slipped and went spinning away, I began to move in earnest.
By unspoken rule, one was supposed to avoid interfering whenever possible — but there was no reason on earth to stand by and watch a person die in front of me.
Just before the Infant Dragon's tail could connect, I closed my arms around the adventurer and leapt.
-GAAH...?
Startled by the sudden intrusion of a third party, the Infant Dragon's face met my fist squarely.
Sorry, monster who might become a Xenos someday. If you're feeling wronged, come back as a Xenos and settle it then.
The monster's head simply burst. Perhaps the shock had traveled all the way to its magic stone — the Infant Dragon crumbled into ash and vanished from this world on the spot.
"Are you all right?"
The adventurer was in a sorry state. Broken equipment strewn here and there, armor caved in from taking hit after hit — every dent seemed to speak to just how long and grueling the ordeal had been.
"..."
The adventurer said nothing. With the helmet covering the entire face, I couldn't even guess at what expression they wore beneath it.
But the fierce emotion pouring out through that stare was unmistakable.
"...Huh."
The true nature of that gaze was—
"I could have... beaten it... on my own..."
Rage.
Fury that their prey had been stolen from them. Fury at realizing, once again, their own weakness.
The unbearable sting of it — the shame and the frustration — well, wasn't that something every adventurer went through at least once?
He's like the old me, isn't he.
Just as I'd once recklessly charged into the Dungeon because I couldn't stomach Lord Bert's words — had this child carried something unbearable of their own all the way here too?
Sniff. A damp, wet sound came from inside the helmet.
The clatter of gear rattling against gear echoed off the stone. What kind of sorrow made someone cry so pitifully?
A weeping that made no sound but the ring of metal — it somehow felt all the more heartbreaking for it.
"Here — I'll give you a potion, so drink this."
"..."
I deliberately pretended not to notice as I handed it over. Never, ever point this sort of thing out — Lady Hedin's teachings still lived and breathed within me.
Thankfully, the adventurer accepted the potion I held out. So they did have it in them to take things after all.
Good. If they hadn't, I'd have been force-feeding it to them.
"..."
The adventurer went to drink, then apparently remembered they were still wearing a helmet, and fumbled to take it off.
Full-face helmets — this was exactly their flaw. Terribly inconvenient for the adventurer's most essential task of all: taking a potion.
Perhaps their hands were too small, because the adventurer kept fumbling blindly, unable to get the helmet off no matter what they tried.
Somehow, without seeing a single inch of face, I could already predict the expression underneath.
They could have just set the potion on the ground and taken the helmet off first, after all. An airhead, unexpectedly?
"Shall I take it off for you?"
"..."
I couldn't stand watching any longer, so I offered — and mercifully, they nodded their permission.
I only had the use of one hand, so I wouldn't do it gracefully, but having someone else remove a helmet was far easier than struggling through it yourself.
...Come to think of it, if putting one on was the same ordeal, how had they gotten it on in the first place? Did someone else put it on them? But then, why had they come out here alone?
Lost in these thoughts, I worked the helmet loose. I'd never worn one myself, so it took some fumbling — but after a quick look around the clasps, I figured it out soon enough.
Click. The helmet came free.
And what appeared from within was—
"...Eh?"
Hair like molten gold, gleaming with a luminous radiance, and golden eyes.
So white and slender and delicate that one might mistake her for a goddess — a beauty that could make even a goddess burn with envy.
But there was no way I could mistake her.
I must not.
Because I had spent so long running after her back, chasing that figure, I knew instantly.
She was — she alone was — my admiration and my ideal.
THE SWORD PRINCESS, AIZ WALLENSTEIN.
...As a very, very small child.
"...?"
What on earth is going on here?
"Hmmm... so she got snatched away from me~"
A certain god, watching a lone girl from afar, let out a lament.
"I was sure there was no one else around, and then suddenly, out of nowhere... Eek."
He had only turned his gaze for an instant — and yet the white-haired man had stared straight back at him. Seized by instant terror, he severed his divine authority on the spot.
The Divine Mirror — the one and only form of Arcanum permitted in the Lower World. Something no mere mortal should ever be able to pierce through. And yet the man had met his gaze as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"So... have I found something far more extraordinary than the Daughter of the Spirit?"
The Daughter of the Spirit had certainly been an outstanding seed of calamity.
But what about that white-haired boy just now?
Cold sweat ran down him in streams, and the trembling through his whole body still hadn't subsided. It hadn't even been a face-to-face meeting with a mortal — merely meeting a gaze through the Divine Mirror, and this was the result. What would happen if he came face to face with him directly?
"Even the Prominent Figure and the Empress weren't this bad..."
Where in all the world had that thing come crawling out of?
But despite his complaints, the corners of that god's mouth — Thanatos's mouth — were curling upward, reaching for the heavens themselves.
"This calls for a little more preparation, doesn't it~"
The circumstances were different from the Daughter of the Spirit's. If she was a monster's child, then that one was a beast that devoured even monsters.
Half-measures would only get him swallowed whole. In that case, he would simply have to bring down a trial that not even such a creature could withstand.
Monster or mortal, before calamity all were rendered equal — nothing but lumps of meat.
From a corner of the Dungeon, a laugh of chilling, skin-crawling menace echoed into the dark.