Crisis
A dungeon cannot be pinned to any single shape. The forms they take are too various, too wild, for any such definition to hold. Distinguishing one dungeon from another by outward appearance is, in short, impossible.
What binds these places under the category of dungeon is not how they look. An alien composition of mana, the presence of the beasts called monsters, the peculiar rewards they offer — these are the true criteria by which a dungeon is known.
There are goods in this world that can be obtained nowhere but a dungeon, and monsters that can be met nowhere else. A dungeon is a dangerous place, one you explore with your life on the line — and yet it is also a land of opportunity. Whether a nation holds powerful dungeons can decide the very measure of its national strength. This is why the Academy teaches Dungeon Studies.
The instant dungeon was classified as a rather special type even among dungeons.
Unlike ordinary dungeons, which exist at all times, an instant dungeon can be entered only when particular conditions are met. Those conditions are, more often than not, hidden. That is why the instant dungeons known to the public are vanishingly few. Moreover, unlike regular dungeons, their cycles of appearance and disappearance are wildly irregular. An instant dungeon that stood until yesterday might vanish overnight; conversely, one might bloom into existence without warning. In sheer rarity, they far outstrip the ordinary kind.
Perhaps because of that scarcity, the rewards drawn from instant dungeons are said to be vastly superior to those of ordinary ones. Of course, that figure is only an average — it is not always so. Still, the public conviction that they are far more precious than ordinary dungeons has taken deep root. For all these reasons, the very existence of an instant dungeon was often a closely guarded secret of a house or a nation.
Hmm. This place is…
Having stepped through the entrance into the instant dungeon, Arsha first took stock of her surroundings. What unfurled before her eyes was a vast jungle.
She had passed from the Garden Forest, with its sparse green trees, into a dense jungle overflowing with the vitality of life, yet she was not particularly surprised. Inside a dungeon and outside it were entirely different worlds. An ecology that changed this abruptly was, in dungeon terms, perfectly ordinary.
A jungle-type dungeon, then.
She had received dungeon instruction from her family more than once. Conquering a dangerous dungeon brought not only economic profit but a rise in reputation — and for a noble, reputation was in many cases worth more than gold. Lessons in dungeon conquest were, for the children of aristocratic houses, a matter of course.
Where is that guy?
Yohan was nowhere to be seen. The place was thick with obstacles that made it hard to secure a line of sight, and finding a person was no easy task. He had probably gone deep into the jungle.
Srrrk—!
The entrance she had come through vanished. The sight startled her.
Ah. Come to think of it, they said there were instant dungeons of this kind too.
An instant dungeon whose entrance and exit were separate. It was a form that appeared only rarely even among instant dungeons.
Arsha drew the sword at her hip. She stirred the mana in her body so that she could swing the blade at any instant. This was a dungeon. She had no idea what dangerous monster might be hunting her. No — they would be hunting her.
First, find the exit. Or at least that guy.
And so Arsha walked deeper into the jungle. Lush undergrowth and a canopy of leaves closed around her in greeting.
Sashashat!
"Kikikik—!"
Broadleaf trees shuddered, shedding leaves. Small shadows leapt from branch to branch, circling Arsha — and there was more than one.
"Kikikik—!"
"Kikik—!"
"Kikiki—!"
From the cries, they seemed to be monsters of a roughly simian shape. The natives, it appeared, had discovered an outsider's intrusion.
Arsha closed her eyes and called on the power of her Trait.
Five of them.
Not many. She waited for their next move with her sword extended in a clean, straight line.
"Kikikik—!"
A stone came flying from the tree above her head. She focused her dynamic vision and saw that it was not a stone at all, but a tree fruit armored in a hard shell.
They infused it with mana.
Even a flung stone became a different proposition once mana was poured into it. The fruit's shrill scream as it split the air was proof enough that this was no attack to take lightly. Arsha traced her sword through empty space as if drawing a brushstroke.
Seogeok!
The fruit split beautifully in two.
But the assault did not end there. The monsters encircling her were not a single creature.
Sssssut—!
Sashat—!
Tree fruits came flying from every direction. Ignore them and take the hits on bare flesh, and a fracture would be the least of it. Exhausting their prey with this kind of ranged barrage seemed to be the monsters' hunting method.
"Pathetic. Blade Dance."
Spin a mana-infused blade to attack in all directions. The mana dwelling in the sword combines with rotational force to produce a powerful synergistic effect. The longer the assault is sustained, the greater its power becomes, and the final strike deals twice the initial damage.
Power: Equipped Sword Power + 15 + (Strength × 1)
Brilliant azure mana settled into Arsha's blade. Holding a sword that shone a beautiful blue, she began to turn, her right foot as the axis. The tip of the azure edge left a fine blue thread in the air.
The smooth curve she traced became a savage storm of mana, batting every incoming fruit aside. It did not merely knock them away — it chopped them into dozens of fragments and flung the pieces to the wind.
"Kikikit—?"
Even monsters of low intelligence, watching that display, seemed to grasp that she was no opponent they could match.
Arsha, however, had no intention of letting them go. Spare them out of kindness here, and there was no telling when or where they would come back to plague her.
"Release."
Release
Shiiiiiiit!!!
The blue curves that had been circling Arsha spread outward in every direction, like ripples racing across a lake. They were a kind of mana chakram. The tall trees around her were sheared through in great chunks and toppled.
"Kikikit—!?"
The monkeys that had been pouring a one-sided barrage down from the canopy panicked. They tried to leap from one tree to the next, but it was too late. They fell with the collapsing timber.
Three died from the fall. The two that survived had broken legs. Arsha walked toward the remaining pair, unhurried.
"Kikikit—!"
Were they begging for mercy? The monkeys suddenly bowed their heads and rubbed their hands together in a frantic plea.
Arsha drove her sword into their chests with an expressionless face. Luxuries like mercy for monsters were not something she carried.
"Where the hell is the exit. And where did that guy go this time?"
Arsha grumbled as she pushed her way through the forest.
Had she not been skilled enough to claim second place at the Academy, she would have brushed death more than once by now. She had encountered monsters more than five times, and the ones she had cut down with her sword numbered a good twenty.
The dense jungle showed no end, no matter how far she went. All she could do was fell whatever monsters appeared and keep moving forward.
"My mana's starting to get dangerous. Damn it. Getting swept up in curiosity for nothing…"
Mana was not an infinite resource. Until now she had hunted without real crisis on the strength of her own ability, but that could not last forever.
Exploring a dungeon alone was, in truth, an extremely dangerous thing to do. The reason Arsha had made that dangerous choice without thinking it through was that she had watched Yohan enter the dungeon by himself. The sheer confidence with which he had walked into an instant dungeon had clouded her judgment.
So the situation she was in now was all Yohan's fault. That, at least, was how she saw it.
"Don't tell me he dropped dead somewhere out here…"
The words died as she pushed through the undergrowth. An alien structure stood before her eyes: a stone temple, long abandoned, overgrown with moss and vines that had run riot as they pleased. In a jungle that had shown not the faintest trace of a human hand, it was the first landmark she had seen.
"The exit?"
In an instant dungeon, a region that clashed this sharply with its surroundings was said to have a very high chance of being connected to the way out. Arsha, who had been feeling the first real prickle of crisis, approached the temple in high spirits.
"Grrrrrk—!"
The moment she drew near, a hulking monster draped in a thick coat of white fur appeared before her. A giant ape, a heavy wooden club gripped in its left hand.
As if appointing itself the temple's sentinel, it leveled that massive club at the Arsha who had appeared so suddenly. Red blood drooled from its jagged teeth, and from strange, pupilless eyes a combative killing intent rolled off in waves.
"What. A boss, here…?"
Sweat beaded along her skin. The presence coming off her opponent was no joke.
Tch. If only my mana were intact.
What she had left was about thirty percent of her original store. On top of that, several of the powerful skills she could call her trump cards were still cycling through their cooldowns. Arsha swallowed and ran the numbers on her odds. The result was bleak: her chance of winning did not even reach three in ten.
Had she ever, in her life, been driven into a pinch like this?
Gulp.
A dry swallow escaped her before she could stop it. Arsha narrowed her eyes and fixed her attention on the enemy's every movement. Getting through this crisis, it seemed, was not going to be easy.