Chapter 14
“Ah! The truth is, we’re childhood friends from the same village. We came to Babilgrid so we could become Climber together.”
The second table I found was a childhood-friends party.
For a moment, I thought, That’s a nice-looking group—but then the sword spirits spoke in rough, sour voices.
[Invisible Sword: What the fuck.]
[Lustful Demon: Tsk.]
[Quick-Draw Master: Just as expected.]
Why are you all reacting like that?
[Invisible Sword: Childhood friends are a no-go!]
[Lassu Feedwagon: One of the things beginner Climbers need to be most careful about is a childhood-friends party.]
The spirits all spoke in unison.
To me, they just looked like a couple of country kids trying their luck in the city.
Did they really need to react with such disgust?
[Lassu Feedwagon: It’s a very common party type among rookies.]
[Lassu Feedwagon: Most of them are fresh off the farm, full of hope and saying things like, “Let’s work hard together and make something of ourselves!”]
Lassu even described the party in a bizarrely theatrical voice, as if he were mocking them from the stage.
[Lassu Feedwagon: Usually, they’re just kids sick of farm life and dreaming impossible dreams.]
[Lassu Feedwagon: They spend their whole lives helping their parents work the fields, then on a childish impulse they buy a sword they’ve never really swung before and head into the labyrinth, only to learn the world is cruel and die—or survive with their bodies and lives half ruined.]
Still, these people look like they already have some labyrinth experience.
[Lassu Feedwagon: They probably went in once or twice. But then one of the childhood friends got hurt, and now the ones who survived are going back in just to pay for the treatment.]
[Invisible Sword: You can tell at a glance. It’s obvious.]
The spirits sounded as if they had already seen right through everything.
I asked the childhood friends, “By any chance, did another childhood friend come with you?”
“…Ah, yes. We originally came with five, but on our last trip one of us died and one suffered a serious injury. We still need money for treatment, so we came here first, at least the rest of us could make it.”
Lassu’s words were unnervingly accurate.
The sword spirits clicked their tongues as if to say, There you go.
So it was true…
[Invisible Sword: Filter out anyone who keeps going on and on about being childhood friends.]
[Invisible Sword: They’re all the same—talking about loyalty and friendship, then dragging everyone else down with them.]
[Sword Master: For the record, the reason the youngest hates childhood-friends parties so much is that he never had any friends in life.]
[Sword Master: I think going to the first floor and coming right back would be fine, though. Still, if possible, it’s better to avoid them.]
[Invisible Sword: T-that’s not it!]
Apparently, some of them thought going just to the first floor would be acceptable.
They said the first floor wasn’t likely to kill you if you kept your head straight.
Since these people had just lost a friend recently, they were probably all on edge.
[Sapier: Let’s look at the remaining one before deciding.]
The consensus was to see the last table before making a choice.
I stood up.
“I’ll take a look around a little more.”
“Ah… understood.”
Kane answered in a disappointed voice.
The other two couldn’t quite hide their dejection either.
They’d said they had recently lost a friend.
Before I knew it, sympathy had started to well up in me.
For now, I left the childhood-friends party as my backup option and headed for the last table, number eleven.
“Hello. I was told you were looking for a vanguard.”
“Ah, hahaha! Welcome! Let’s get right to it!”
[Lustful Demon: Tsk. This one’s the same as the first.]
Table eleven was exactly like table one.
They were the kind of people who’d noticed I was a rookie and were trying to rip me off.
I immediately got up and left.
[Quick-Draw Master: Your luck isn’t good today.]
[Sword Master: That’s how first-floor parties are, more or less.]
[Emperor Augustus: Wahahaha!]
The spirits lamented my bad luck.
Two swindlers and a childhood-friends party.
If anything, the childhood-friends party seemed like the better option, but…
[Lassu Feedwagon: Hold on a little longer, if you can. Another party might show up.]
So I did as Lassu suggested and lingered nearby.
But the parties that appeared after that were all much the same.
[Sword Master: For some reason, today seems full of people trying to fleece newcomers.]
[Invisible Sword: Well, the rookie has to look enough like a sucker for that.]
[Quick-Draw Master: The user does have a rather refined look.]
[Sapier: Fair features, pale skin, and a fragile expression. It’s no wonder he’d become a target for other Climbers.]
Do I really look that gullible?
Was my face just naturally suited to being ripped off, as the spirits said?
I glanced at the mirror hanging in one corner of the association building.
My face was unnaturally pale, probably because I’d spent my whole life in a private estate.
I’d thought I’d gotten a little rougher working as a servant, but compared with the people here, I really did look unusually polished.
[Sword Master: Why don’t you just go with the childhood-friends party? Your goal is only to experience the first floor, after all.]
[Lustful Demon: That does seem like the best option.]
[Invisible Sword: But I hate the childhood-friends thing…]
In the end, I decided to join the childhood-friends party.
There were still things I was uneasy about, but I didn’t exactly have a better option.
“Hello. Are you still looking for a vanguard?”
“Ivan!”
Kane’s face brightened the moment I returned.
Table three still had only the three childhood friends.
“You came at the right time. Will you join our party?”
“Yes. But I’d like to clear the first floor by the shortest route in the shortest time possible. My main goal is just to experience the labyrinth for now.”
“Ah…”
At my words, Kane looked troubled.
The three childhood friends exchanged glances.
They’d said they were trying to earn treatment money for their injured friend.
So my suggestion to rush through the floor as quickly as possible probably made them hesitate.
They likely wanted to make as much money as they could from the first floor.
“Understood. We accept.”
“Good.”
In the end, Kane agreed.
It seemed they’d been having trouble finding party members too.
Kane and I smiled and shook hands.
[Invisible Sword: Ugh, I really don’t like this childhood-friends thing…]
[Sword Master: They’re only going to the first floor. They’re not bad people.]
[Invisible Sword: I don’t care if they’re good people or bad people, childhood friends are still a no! Nobody’s born wanting to be bad!]
[Lustful Demon: The youngest is acting like this because he’s never gotten any sex.]
Invisible Sword still looked displeased.
The other spirits said this should be fine, so I decided to ignore him.
If the childhood-friends party had looked like they wanted to kill or rob me, the others would have noticed that too.
It really did seem like he was just being petulant because he’d had no friends in life.
It’s all right, Invisible Sword. I’ll be your friend.
[Invisible Sword: Hmph, I’m not doing this because I don’t have any friends!]
[Sword Master: He’s embarrassed.]
So I became his friend instead.
Even Invisible Sword, who’d been whining a moment ago, went quiet.
“Then we only need one more person.”
But the party wasn’t complete yet.
Now that I’d joined, the table had four members.
We still needed one more in the rear.
“Hello. Are you looking for a rear guard?”
That was when a female elf approached us.
Judging by the bow at her side, she seemed to be an archer.
[Lustful Demon: An elf. Lucky.]
[Invisible Sword: An elf archer is trustworthy.]
[Sword Master: For a rookie party, an elf archer is a blessing.]
Elves were said to be a race naturally gifted with bows.
Put one in the rear, and they’d usually do their job more than adequately.
“Ah, yes! That’s right. Please, have a seat.”
Kane’s face lit up as he welcomed the elf.
The others exchanged glances, as if relieved by their good fortune.
“My name is Nierel. As you can see, I’m a rear guard, and I use a bow.”
“If it’s an elf’s archery, there’s no reason to doubt it. Though we’re a first-floor party of 10th-class Climbers. You look like you’ve got quite a bit of experience, so would it really be all right for you to join us?”
Kane had been smiling, but after taking in Nierel’s appearance, he voiced a note of suspicion.
As a rookie party, having an elf in the rear would be reassuring.
Still, Nierel looked far too experienced to be joining a beginner group like ours.
“Ah, ah, yes. The truth is, I’m actually a 9th-class Climber…”
“A 9th-class?”
It turned out Nierel was a 9th-class Climber.
That meant she’d already broken through to the fifth floor.
“Then why are you looking for a first-floor party…?”
[Invisible Sword: This one feels off too.]
[Quick-Draw Master: Nothing seems to go smoothly today.]
Along with Kane’s doubt, the spirits spoke up as well.
A 9th-class Climber trying to join a rookie first-floor party?
There had to be some kind of ulterior motive.
Just then, a group of Climbers walked over to our table.
Looking at Nierel, they sneered.
“What’s this, Nierel? Crawling around after first-floor parties now?”
“At this rate, are you going to keep hovering around rookie parties too?”
“If it were me, I’d be too embarrassed to stick around Babilgrid. Hah.”
For some reason, they were insulting Nierel.
Nierel kept her head down.
Then the same Climbers turned their attention to us and said, “Hey, rookies. If you’re thinking about partying with this elf, you’d better think twice. This girl has this stupid habit of shooting the wrong target at the worst possible moment.”
“She might even stick an arrow in the back of your heads. Heh heh.”
With those words, the Climbers left the association, snickering and clicking their tongues all the way out.
Our table had gone awkwardly silent.
The childhood friends and I exchanged glances.
It seemed like this elf had a problem with her skill.
“Hah, hahah. The truth is, I’ve made a lot of mistakes…”
When she sensed our hesitation, Nierel spoke first.
Whether she was trying to seem unbothered or really was, she laughed awkwardly and began telling us her story.
“The first time I entered the labyrinth after becoming a 9th-class Climber was… well, you know the labyrinth changes terrain every five floors, right? It was the day I first entered the sixth floor, where the terrain changed for the first time.”
Nierel said she’d initially been doing fairly well in the labyrinth.
With the party she’d first joined, she’d made it from the first floor to the fifth without a single crisis.
The mood within the party was good.
Riding that momentum, Nierel’s party challenged the sixth floor.
But that was where they encountered their first real disaster.
A battle that might have wiped them out completely.
Everyone fought with their lives on the line.
Nierel, too, fired her arrows with everything she had.
But at the most crucial moment, she made a mistake.
A monster had closed in tightly on the party’s vanguard in close combat.
Nierel trusted her own skill and aimed at that monster.
Elf archery was said to be so precise that even in chaotic mêlée they could still target only the enemy.
But that time was different.
The bowstring slipped at the wrong moment, and the arrow struck one of her party members in the arm.
What followed was a massacre.
Because of Nierel’s mistake, the battle spiraled completely out of control, and one vanguard and the guide died, leaving the remaining three barely able to flee.
The survivors were badly injured as well.
With their guide gone, the three of them wandered the labyrinth in a desperate daze.
Fortunately, they were lucky enough to encounter another party passing nearby, and that was how they managed to save their lives.
“Well, up to that point, it’s the kind of thing anyone can go through in the labyrinth. The real problem came after that.”
After surviving, Nierel shut herself away in an inn room for days.
She apologized over and over to the party she’d harmed because of her mistake, and she cried more than once at the graves of the dead party members.
But she decided she couldn’t run forever.
She forced herself to regain her resolve, found a new party, and went back into the labyrinth.
“But after that, every time there was a dangerous moment, or a crucial moment, my arrows started going astray. After I made a few more mistakes like that, word spread among 9th-class Climbers, and no one would take me into their party anymore. Hehe. Pretty pathetic, right?”
Nierel finished her story with a self-mocking laugh.
She’d been rejected by everyone at 9th class, and now she had come to us.
[Sword Master: An elf archer who keeps messing up at decisive moments…]
[Sapier: What a tragic story. Trauma is common, but still…]
[Quick-Draw Master: And yet she keeps challenging the labyrinth. That’s admirable.]
After hearing her out, the sword spirits spoke in calm voices.
Developing trauma in the labyrinth was common.
An archer accidentally shooting an ally wasn’t common, but it wasn’t impossible either.
Usually, unless they were extremely confident in their aim, archers wouldn’t shoot when an ally was too close to the target.
But at the time, Nierel had been an elf, and she’d been confident in her shot.
That incident had become a trauma, and the trauma had grown and grown until it turned into a stigma: the elf archer who always makes mistakes at the important moment.
“But I don’t make mistakes normally! On the first floor, there usually aren’t situations dangerous enough to make me nervous. I’m sure I won’t mess up. Of course, believing me is up to you…”
Nierel added that much.
At first she’d sounded confident, but by the end she’d shrunk in on herself completely.
Still, it seemed she really didn’t make mistakes in ordinary circumstances.
Maybe she’d be fine if we were only running the first floor…
“I’m sorry, but could we talk among ourselves for a moment?”
Kane said to Nierel.
It seemed we needed some time to think.
“Y-yes, of course.”
Nierel gave an awkward smile and left the table.