What Replaces the Crocodile Swarm 1
Instead of chasing an unsolved plot hook with unclear rewards and a chain quest that had simply cut off mid-progress without any updates, Han Se-ah returned to the Adventurer's City to climb the Tower. As both a streamer and the number-one progress gamer, she had chosen Tower climbing over obsessing over side quests and wandering the wasteland.
Naturally, the viewers welcomed the decision. As I had pointed out while wearing the Jjanhae-jwa mask, if this was a fantasy world overflowing with realism, then anything outside the Tower ought to be the kingdom's knight order's problem to handle.
What the viewers wanted was not a vicarious tour of a vast fantasy world — it was information on the high floors of the Tower they themselves had never reached. The average player had only just cleared the tenth floor, and Han Se-ah was preparing to enter the thirty-first. As latecomers, they could hardly help but look forward to it.
"What, you're already on the thirty-first floor? And you guys cleared the thirtieth-floor gate too?"
"Didn't the word get around that I was hunting for golem mana stones?"
"Hell if I know. I was above the fortieth floor back then, so the news never reached me. After that I bolted west to go rescue that idiot."
"Hehe, sorry about that."
Lily and her companions had headed west to take a mercenary job and cover the mana stones they'd lost, and in Lily's place Rebecca and one of her subordinate mercenaries had joined us. I sat comfortably inside the large carriage Rebecca had purchased and talked with her.
Even so, with the orcs thoroughly wiped out, the journey back through Erteta to the Adventurer's City was peaceful beyond measure.
A few viewers seemed to be hoping that a freshly rekindled Rebecca would snatch me up and pounce, and Han Se-ah looked quietly hopeful about it too — but unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened. She'd poured every last drop of her rage into the orc settlement's facilities rather than the orcs themselves, so she'd calmed down a bit.
"When I came charging out, people were going on about the thirtieth-floor gate opening. You taking the kids up to the thirty-first?"
"Of course we are. We didn't form a party just to stall out on some mid-tier floor."
"Fair enough. If a guy who got sick of the Tower and climbed back down is going back up, there's got to be something to it."
We talked about a great many things on the way to the Adventurer's City. We could hardly avoid it — orcs that had spilled out of the Tower and put humans to work. Orcs that kidnapped people and used them as hostages.
As both a Highest-grade adventurer and a mercenary company leader, it was a story that was bound to get under her skin.
"I already reported the remaining stragglers to the knight order. From what the merchants were saying, they charged out the moment they got my tip. So we don't need to worry about anything outside the Tower — we just go up."
"Useless tin-can bastards. They shouldn't have let them slip through in the first place."
Rebecca grumbled her accumulated grudge against knights from her mercenary work at me. The rest of the party, buried in the plush carriage cushions to shake off a full day of walking the wasteland, were already asleep. And then there was Han Se-ah, explaining everything to viewers who had no idea what was going on.
She had finished the side quest — which had also been a chain quest — but viewers who had only just tuned in were thoroughly lost. They'd thought she was trekking the wasteland after some unusual orcs, and now she was suddenly riding in a carriage with Rebecca. What the hell was this situation?
Thanks to that, while Rebecca poured out complaints and started nodding off, and the rest of the party was already deep in sleep, Han Se-ah alone had to keep her mouth moving at full speed.
"How exactly is that supposed to be a threat against me… All right, this is the last time I'm explaining. I can't keep repeating myself every time someone joins late, okay?"
"Hey now, I have zero interest in your weird sexual fantasies. Anyway — the orcs kidnapped the guy Rebecca sent out on a cigarette run, Rebecca got there first and smashed everything to pieces. Thanks to that, we cleared the quest without even fighting. Summary over!"
"Huh, the knight order? Honestly I was going to ask Roland to… but before I could even say anything, Roland had already called them on his own. That bare-body marathon knight we met before — what's his name? James. Looks like he contacted that guy."
Han Se-ah was chatting with her viewers while pretending to look out the window on the opposite side, so I likewise kept my head turned toward the carriage window as if admiring the scenery, with an internet browser open. James Sullivan, the man who'd chased a carriage on foot bare-bodied, must have left quite an impression — the nickname "bare-body marathon knight" nearly made me burst out laughing.
He was the type to catch up to a carriage on foot for exercise, and for a knight he was rough-edged and easygoing enough to get along comfortably with commoner-born adventurers — a guy with some odd quirks. But he was solid when it came to getting things done. And with a 4★ buff on top of that, he'd handle it fine on his own.
…The kingdom's knight order had even declared a formal expedition and charged into the western wasteland. If that orc bastard still managed to survive, that would mean the orc was connected to the main scenario.
"Hey, don't call it cheating. I was already thinking the same thing before Jjanhae-jwa even posted. Running around a wasteland with nothing to say? Might as well just use Roland's connections, right~? But Roland contacted them first from Erteta."
Han Se-ah brushed off the viewers grumbling that she talked a good game, bantering right back at them. While I sidelong-watched her stream — which had long since become part of daily life — the expensive high-end carriage moved swiftly without a single sound.
From the nameless western village to Erteta, and from Erteta back toward the Adventurer's City, the carriage ran without rest. True to its steep price, the journey was free of noise and jostling, and at the end of that comfortable ride we returned once more to the towering structure rising high before us.
"I'm heading straight in. What about you?"
"We'll probably rest for about a day and then go in."
"That so? I'll be waiting up top, so haul ass to the fortieth floor. Bonus points if you clear the fortieth-floor gate on the way."
"You think that works just because we want it to?"
"You already cleared the tenth, twentieth, and thirtieth — so for fuck's sake, clear up to the fiftieth while you're at it, you lazy bastard."
Rebecca cackled as usual and thumped my back, then snatched the scruff of her subordinate mercenary who'd been quietly crouched in the corner of the carriage. She dragged him off like a predator hauling prey — the man who'd been oddly shrinking into himself among all the beautiful women.
With an attitude so ambiguous you couldn't tell whether it was casual or just plain rude, she gave our party's shoulders and backs a rough few pats by way of goodbye, then vaulted over a wall and vanished.
"…I always think this, but she really is like the wind."
"Less like the wind and more… mm, never mind."
Irene murmured softly at the sight of her disappearing with a person slung over her shoulder like luggage, while Grace swallowed whatever rude remark had been on the tip of her tongue. Still, Rebecca had cheerfully bought and given us a ride in that extravagantly enchanted, expensive carriage — so Grace holding her tongue was genuinely admirable.
When you had romantic feelings for someone, wanting to say something nasty about the woman who'd dragged him off and jumped him was only natural. As long as it didn't leave her mouth, that was fine. After climbing down from the carriage and glancing toward where Rebecca had vanished in the distance, I turned to the party clustered together watching my face and spoke.
"All right then. Rest well today, visit the Adventurer's Guild and the Magic Tower tomorrow, and then we'll head to the thirty-first floor."
"What's the thirty-first floor like? Is there anything we need to prepare?"
"Like I mentioned briefly before, from the thirty-first floor on it's all swamp. Dry ground you can actually stand on is extremely scarce, and most of the fighting happens with water up to your ankles. There are deep pools and sticky tar bogs, so when you fight, it's best to hold your ground as much as possible. As for prep… maybe just some rope you can use to haul someone up?"
The swamp stretching from the thirty-first floor onward was a truly nightmarish place. How nightmarish? Nightmarish enough that even in Roland's body, I'd gotten so thoroughly fed up that I quit adventuring and bolted out of the Tower.
The dry dirt paths people could walk on were barely thirty centimeters wide, and everything beside them was water. Some pools were shallow enough to reach only the ankles; others were lake-like basins five meters deep.
On top of that, if you planted a foot wrong on a floor of mixed clay and sand, or in a tar pit, you could sink straight down in an instant.
It was a deathtrap where a single misstep off dry land could kill you — and then moss crocodiles, lizardmen, and vine snakes that freely roamed the place would come lunging at adventurers on top of it all. How miserable was that?
"Just hearing about it sounds awful."
"Even just moving around is going to stress you out a lot. Hanna, if you can learn them, rock- and ice-type magic that firms up the ground would be useful."
"Me? Oh right — they said they'd give me some spellbooks as a reward for selling the golem. I'll pick up magic I can use on the thirty-first floor."
At my explanation the party nodded, then scattered to handle their respective tasks.
Han Se-ah headed for the Magic Tower, chatting with her viewers and checking the quest rewards. Grace went to the market to restock arrows and pick up rope while she was at it. Irene, who only needed holy power to be fully prepared, gathered the toys she'd bought in Erteta and headed for the Temple. Katie made for the alchemists' workshop district, apparently to check on her magic armor.
The party had become seasoned adventurers by now — they finished their preparations without any particular help from me. The sun set, Han Se-ah logged off, the sun rose, and the moment she went live again we gathered at the guild.
We passed through the gate into the thirtieth floor — denser with mages than adventurers — and committed ourselves to the passage leading up to the thirty-first. Instead of the expected musty, damp air—
"…Roland, didn't you say it was a swamp?"
"What the fuck is this."
—we faced a toxic mire thick with the stench of rotting corpses.
What the hell. Why did the game difficulty just change out of nowhere?