Dungeon Practicum (2)
The southeastern tip of the island of Dilmun.
Beyond the edge of the island they call the end of the world.
Kael's car, which had carried us there, rumbled with a cold growl before coming to a stop before a sheer cliff, as if the earth had been cut away by a blade.
"We're here! Everyone, hop out."
At Kael's call, I opened the door and stepped out onto the ground.
My toes came to rest right at the lip of the cliff — one more step and I'd have gone tumbling over.
So this is the end of the world.
The cliff face was perfectly vertical, smooth as if carved with surgical precision.
That cross-section was the boundary line marking where the world itself ended.
A view you could never grasp from words alone — only with your own eyes.
When I threw my gaze down below the cliff, an unfathomable darkness waited there.
An empty void, devoid of sound, of presence, of anything at all.
Staring down at that dizzying horizon, impossible even to measure, my heart began pounding on its own until I found myself clutching my chest.
The sight unfolding before my eyes was the kind of memory I'd carry for the rest of my life, so I filed it away in the album of my mind.
"Th… that's high…"
Eva, who had climbed out of the car behind me, peered down at the bottomless cliff and offered her review.
At that, Kael, who'd been watching from the side, sidled up and added a word of her own.
"According to the records of our ancestors, beyond this lies the land of the monsters — the Otherworld."
"Be… beyond that… monsters."
Eva swallowed hard.
She stepped up to the cliff's edge, her clenched fists trembling violently.
"Th-then… do we have to jump from here?"
"Huh?"
"You said… we have to enter the dungeon… isn't this the entrance?"
At Eva's startling question, Kael's eyes went wide with surprise.
With her mouth hanging half open like a broken doll, Eva tilted her head as if to ask whether that was such a strange question.
"The passage to the dungeon is separate. It's called a Gate — there's a door fitted into the cliff face, and we go in through that."
"Oh…"
Common sense said that leaping off a place like this was suicide.
Once that obvious fact was pointed out to her, Eva finally put on a look of realization.
Seeing that, Kael crept over to Mori and whispered.
"Hey Mori, is it just me? How does a self-proclaimed Academy student not know this?"
"Kael, I can hear you. Keep your voice down."
"Uuugh…"
Mori's late warning changed nothing — the arrow had already buried itself in its target's chest.
Her pride shaved away, Eva hunched her shoulders with a gloomy expression.
Sigh. Our poor high-maintenance protagonist.
Guess I'd better comfort her.
"It's okay, Eva. Not knowing isn't a crime. What matters is you know now."
Just as I'd done with Marin, I placed a hand on her head and patted it a couple of times.
It was my own idea of comfort.
"Euuugh… please remove your hand…"
"Oh, sorry."
Startled by the sudden touch of a man's hand, she flushed bright red.
Only then did I realize I'd been treating her far too familiarly, and I hastily apologized, withdrawing the hand from her head.
Tsk. Looks like my Marin habits have turned into reflexes.
I'd have to be more careful to avoid this kind of mishap in the future.
Anyway, having arrived at our destination, we spotted a lone door standing in the distance not far off, and made our way toward it.
The students who'd arrived first were already lined up in order, stepping one by one into the light-spilling Gate.
"Over here, guys!"
I saw someone waving at us from far off.
Even accounting for winter, she was bundled up to an absurd degree.
Buried beneath thick layers of clothing, it was hard to make out even her features.
Someone I was meeting for the first time today.
But I'd read her description in the original novel, so I knew at a glance she was the fourth member Kael and Mori had talked about.
"Toma, sorry. We didn't keep you waiting, did we?"
"It's fine. You're not late. These are the kids, then?"
"Yep. Purity Academy students who'll be entering the dungeon with us."
"Hmm."
Toma studied the two of us for a moment; after her brief assessment, she extended a gloved hand.
"Give me your hand. I'll cast a spell on you."
"A s-spell…?"
Baffled by the out-of-nowhere offer, Eva hesitated.
I left her to it and readily offered my hand to Toma.
"Looking forward to working with you."
Toma's gloved hand gently clasped the back of mine.
Moments later, with a shimmer of light, a lily-shaped sigil was etched onto my hand.
I turned to Eva, who was practically glued to my back, and showed it to her.
"This is a binding spell. It serves to keep your party from getting separated when you enter the dungeon."
"Oh…"
I grinned at Eva, who was staring blankly at the back of my hand.
"You should hurry and get yours too. Skip it, and you'll be a lost child in the dungeon, wandering around for the rest of your—"
"Me too! Hurry…!"
Before I could even finish my sentence, Eva thrust her hand out.
Being left alone in a den crawling with ferocious monsters.
For a timid girl like her, that was surely the worst scenario she could imagine.
"Everyone's got their binding spell, so let's quit dawdling and go — gogo!"
Never one to hesitate, Kael hopped into the queue for the Gate.
We joined her line, and—
"S-Solis. Mr. Solis."
"What's up? Got a question?"
"W-well, you see. Where exactly does that Gate lead…?"
"To the dungeon, obviously."
"N-no, that's not what I'm asking. There are many kinds of dungeons, so… specifically, where does it connect to…"
Ah, that.
Come to think of it, from a girl who'd never heard of Gates, it was a fair question.
The usual way to enter a dungeon was through dimensional rifts that appeared irregularly all over the world, after all.
"The Gates of Dilmun are passages connected to the end of the world — the Otherworld we call the dungeon, where monsters dwell. Unlike the dimensional rifts that Guardians commonly use as dungeon entrances, they're the only passages capable of reaching anywhere in the Otherworld, provided you meet one specific condition."
"A-and that condition is…?"
"You offer part of a monster's corpse into the furnace beside the Gate. Meet that condition, and it opens a passage to the dungeon where that monster lives."
"Yacha!"
No sooner had I finished than Kael, her turn come up, flung a scrap of monster hide into the furnace.
Fwoooosh!
The blue flames flickering inside the furnace fed on the hide like kindling and blazed up — and the tightly sealed Gate swung wide open.
"You offered up the hide of a Red-Tattooed Stag, so our destination is the Thornvine Forest Dungeon."
"Th-that's amazing! Identifying the monster and the destination from just that tiny scrap…"
Oh, it's nothing.
I was merely imitating Chloe's line from the original novel.
A guy like me, who couldn't tell one monster from another, had no way of actually recognizing a Red-Tattooed Stag from a little scrap of hide.
"Eva. Here."
"Y-yes?"
"If you're scared, hold my hand. Just until we're through the Gate."
In the original novel, this was how Chloe guided Eva, who had balked at stepping into the Gate.
I might not have been her best friend, but I was every bit as dependable a partner as Chloe was.
If I weren't, she'd never have chosen me as her practicum partner in the first place.
"O-okay…"
Eva took the hand I offered her.
Cold sweat beaded on her palm; through the damp, soft grip I felt a fierce strength, as if she were trying to conquer her fear.
I squeezed her hand back, reassuring her.
Gently enough not to hurt — but firmly enough that she could feel, without question, that I was right there beside her.
Preparations complete, we threw ourselves through the Gate without hesitation.
Whoooosh!
The instant we crossed the door, the scenery in my eyes warped.
The open plain and the cliff vanished, and in their place stood massive ancient trees crowding together so thickly they blotted out the sky, forming a forest.
Brambles bristling with sharp, jagged thorns — like the fangs of a beast given form — carpeted the paths in every direction. A landscape befitting the dungeon's name: Thornvine Forest.
"Hold it! Stop!"
Mori, in the lead, threw up a sudden hand signal.
Toma and Kael pressed down on our shoulders, forcing us low.
"Twenty meters ahead. Three monsters."
"What kind?"
"A pack of Blue-Rake Wolves. Probably starving — they're prowling around, sniffing for prey."
"Their hide's touching their bellies. Perfect timing."
After a brief exchange of glances, the Guardians huddled together in a whispered huddle, then turned back to us.
Kael crept over on soundless steps and asked me.
"You two. Want to try taking them down?"
"Us, you mean?"
"Yep. It's fine even if you fail. If it gets dangerous, we'll intervene immediately. I want to see exactly what you're capable of."
The Guardians had come to instruct us, but they didn't know our practical abilities in detail.
And real combat was the surest yardstick there was.
I took a short, deep breath and nodded.
"Understood. I'll go first."
"Good. Show us what you've got."
The moment Kael's permission fell, I rose to my feet and strode boldly toward the wolves.
A frontal assault with no thought of concealment — my way of announcing just how confident I was.
"Grrrr!"
"Arf! Arf!"
Spotting the intruder, the wolves bared their pointed fangs, hackles standing stiff.
They barked loud warnings, but I didn't slow my stride.
Instead, I drew the mana sleeping in my heart and flooded it through my entire body.
PAH!
Dazzling golden mana blazed to life, and the radiance filling the space transformed into a flame charged with searing energy.
KWA-BOOM!
The instant I swung my hand, a colossal pillar of fire erupted from the ground in answer, surging upward.
The flame, thrusting vertically toward the heavens, writhed like a living serpent as it swept across the area.
"Kyeng!"
With a single short cry, the wolf was reduced to a lump of charcoal before leaving so much as a silhouette behind.
The trees, the thornbushes, every feature of the terrain nearby crumbled to ash in the acrid heat and vanished without a trace.
"Is that sufficient confirmation?"
"..."
The Guardians said nothing.
They simply stared, dazed, at the scorched emptiness where everything had burned away.