Artificial Dungeon (4)
"Just as I expected."
Remillion muttered under her breath as she watched the crystal projecting the interior of the Artificial Dungeon, the look of someone who had seen this coming written all over her face.
"Compared to last year, the number of students washing out has multiplied several times over."
The Artificial Dungeon joint exam.
On paper, it looked like a grueling ordeal — but once the exam's "answer key" started circulating among the students (dungeon layout, monster patterns, and the rest), it had become a test with a remarkably high pass rate.
Watching that unfold, the professors had caught on to the exam's flaws and tried every which way to raise the difficulty. The problem was that the Artificial Dungeon had been built in its early days by so many different mages working together that no one dared touch it now.
Put simply, it was like a game coded by programmers who each wrote in a different language and then jammed the pieces together by force. Try to tweak a single magic circle and the slightest misalignment would cascade into a parade of unexpected errors — so all anyone could manage was basic maintenance, and time had simply kept rolling on like that.
"Well… the biggest reason for the change is you, of course."
And the one who had more or less solved that problem was Felix.
Overhauling the dungeon's entire structure had been impossible with the time available, so rather than rewriting every line of code, Felix had focused on a single point: upgrading the circuits of the artificial monsters that spawned inside.
Originally, those artificial beasts only ever followed fixed patterns and fixed behaviors — little more than slightly tougher scarecrows to Academy students receiving high-level instruction. By rewriting their behavioral algorithms to make them act far more like real monsters, Felix had sent the failure rate skyrocketing compared to the previous year.
Even now, students who had just been eliminated were being reverse-summoned with vacant stares fixed on their shattered Life Crystals. Some stomped off seething with complaints; others bellowed their grievances at the top of their lungs — but after a scorching lecture from the faculty, they hung their heads and trudged away.
"Still… isn't the difficulty a bit too high compared to the last exam?"
"A real dungeon would be even harsher than this, wouldn't it?"
"Besides, if we train them properly in advance, it'll only give our growing seedlings a chance to grow even taller."
"I suppose that's true, but…"
Even so, a thread of unease lingered in Remillion's mind.
Raising the standard was something she agreed with. The previous exams had been far too easy, and as Felix said, real monsters were crueler and more vicious than anything in here. But she couldn't shake the feeling that this was simply too much for children who were still seedlings.
Outside of the graduating class, students in the combat track who could actually handle mana were still a tiny minority — and even among graduates, those who could raise mana into Sword Aura were vanishingly rare. Magic-track students had mostly only studied theory; their casting speed and reaction times were far too slow for real combat.
And yet those same students were being hit with ambushes, surprise attacks, retreats followed by swarm assaults with greater numbers, raids even while they slept, successive strikes by small units, trap-laying, and more. At this level, even active silver-rank mercenaries from the East would struggle to guarantee a pass.
Which left Remillion wondering whether Felix hadn't simply raised the difficulty — whether some of his more sadistic hobbies hadn't found their way into the design.
"Mmm… excellent. My creations are running absolutely perfectly…!"
"'Creations'? What are you, some kind of Demon King?"
Felix's casual smile was starting to make Remillion more and more uneasy. The thought that this whole situation might be going too far refused to leave her head.
And then—
Beep—beep—
"Hm?"
A small crystal orb resting on the table where Felix sat lit up with a red glow and began to blare noisily.
"What's that?"
"Ah, this? It's a security system I threw together on a whim while building the dungeon, just in case."
"A security… system?"
"Yes. It's designed to go off if anyone who isn't wearing a Life Crystal enters."
"You managed to build something like that even with the deadline breathing down your neck?"
"Well… once I got into it, it was fun, so I just knocked it out."
"You're the only person alive who would describe that as 'knocking it out.'"
"Haha."
Remillion pressed a hand to her forehead, half in disbelief, watching Felix laugh it off as if building an entire security system without so much as filing a report were nothing at all.
"…Wait a second. What did you just say?"
"Pardon? That it lights up if an intruder comes in?"
"…Then what is this?"
"It's glowing red, isn't it?"
"………"
"………Huh?"
The moment Remillion pointed out the obvious and Felix's cheerful grin faltered, the two of them locked eyes — and their mouths slowly fell open.
Between them, the security crystal continued to pulse with red light.
Something unexpected was happening.
"………"
"………"
At that same moment, Rachel and Rasel stood pressed flat against the wall, eyes rolling as they watched the spectacle unfolding in front of them.
They were stuck to the wall because they would only have gotten in the way — and they kept silent because they had completely forgotten how to speak.
"Hraah!"
—Gueeeek!?
"Whoa…"
"I didn't know orcs could fly."
When a bulk easily three times their own size went sailing past their faces at high speed, the two of them were so impressed by this newfound knowledge of orc flight that the observation slipped right out of their mouths.
—Thud.
"Ugh, the dust…"
Of course, orcs couldn't actually fly. "Got sent flying" was the accurate phrasing — and the girl who had so generously liberated that orc from the tyranny of gravity was now fanning the dust cloud raised by its impact against the wall with one hand, muttering to herself.
At a glance she looked delicate, a sharp-tempered young lady of a ducal house. To their eyes, she was a monster who could toss a giant orc like a rag doll.
—Mom! Me too, me too! I wanna try!
"Yeah? Then you go ahead."
—Hehe… Hiyaah!!
—Kerrrk! Kerrk!!
—Krererek?! Krerek!?
"Whoa…"
"A spirit… I've never seen one before… It's nothing like I imagined…"
Next, the wind spirit spinning lazy circles near Rosaria started juggling goblins the way a circus clown juggles little balls, tossing them into the air and playing with them. Watching that, Rachel learned yet another important life lesson for the day.
Spirits were strong.
"Is it… over?"
"Looks like it. Let's go."
By the time the cores of the goblins and orcs — pulverized not so much by a fight as by the sheer overwhelming violence of Rosaria's fists — began rolling across the floor, the two of them peeled their backs off the wall and set about gathering the fallen mana cores with a practiced ease that suggested they had already gotten used to this. They looked for all the world like women gleaning leftover grain at harvest time.
"…Is this even right?"
"Got them all?"
"Ah, yes. All collected."
Even as cognitive dissonance hit her — was she here to take an exam, or was she a farmer picking seeds? — Rachel answered Rosaria's question without missing a beat.
"There's a lot more of them this time, and they're bigger."
Whether it was her imagination or not, a faint smile had settled on Rachel's face, as if she had finally discovered the true joy of honest labor.
Having (sort of) defeated Gren and seized real authority over the party, Rosaria no longer dawdled. She began tearing through the dungeon at speed. She wasn't even using her guns — a single kick was enough to finish a goblin — and with Ariel at her side, she swept the dungeon so thoroughly that nothing left could stop her.
At first the two of them had been stunned by the true extent of Rosaria's power. Somewhere along the way, though, they had settled into a comfortable routine: watch the fight, then harvest whatever mana stones were left behind.
"By the way, I had no idea you could command a spirit too."
"Really? So spirits aren't that common after all?"
"Not at all. Spirit mages are even rarer than regular mages."
—Mom. Am I amazing?
"Yeah. You did great. You're amazing."
—Then I want food! Yummy food!
"Sure. Not right now — I'll get you some once we're out. What do you want?"
—Meat! Meat!
"…And I've never seen a spirit that likes meat, either."
"Our kid's a cut above the rest."
"…I see."
As if Rosaria being a spirit mage weren't surprising enough, Rachel now had to process the sight of a summoned spirit craving human food. She had a great deal she could have said — and chose not to say any of it.
She really is Professor Felix's little sister.
So many things had already happened since the exam began that Rachel figured nothing could surprise her at this point. Adapting was simply faster. She decided to exercise a little flexibility and file it under: Well, the siblings are something else~
"How far have we come?"
"Ah… y-yes…! Looking at the map…! We're almost to the center, I th-think…. Yes."
"How much time do we have left?"
"About a day remaining."
Once the fighting was done, Rasel pulled out the map and delivered a polite report so they could get their bearings. At some point he had started using formal speech with Rosaria — his junior — but no one present felt the need to call him on it.
"Hmm… so we're pretty early?"
"Hard to say. This is my first time in this dungeon, but from how the veterans have been reacting, this exam seems to be quite difficult."
"And despite everything that's happened, we've barely rested and still gotten here this fast… so maybe we're close to hitting that initial goal?"
"In the end, you were right. May you find happiness wherever you are… R.I.P…"
"Just so we're clear, he's not actually dead."
"I just felt like saying it."
One way or another, a lot had happened, but they had arrived at the dungeon's center right on schedule. Rosaria muttered the words as Gren — eliminated early — crossed her mind.
"Anyway, no need to rest and resupply, right?"
"All we've done is stand around watching and pick up mana cores."
"Y-yes… w-we're fine…"
"Then let's head straight for the center~!"
After a brief moment of silence for the fallen, Rosaria pumped herself up, took the lead, and at last set her feet toward the heart of the dungeon — the destination of this entire exam.