Dungeon Conquest (4)
Standing side by side with Bell, the man found himself unable to utter a single word as he looked at him.
It wasn't as if he had prepared anything to say. The words had simply burst out under an urgency he could no longer suppress.
Bell did not jump to conclusions. He simply felt that air of desperation radiating clearly from the man's every movement.
"What... are you?"
In the end, that was all the man managed to force past his lips.
Words spat out through a face tangled with confusion and haste.
A question.
Rice. He was one of those called the Five Stars.
A seat that only a vanishingly small number of the greatest adventurers spoken of by the masses could ever reach.
One of the five highest stars, a name that alone commanded the trust and respect of countless people.
With that status, he should have been able to extend his senses and grasp the situation to some degree.
If he truly had confidence in his own skill, he might have stepped forward long ago—under any excuse he could invent.
The fact that he had rushed forward like this, as if being chased, meant he had not seen what Bell had already perceived.
In other words, that was the measure of his level.
Even so, he should at least have been able to grasp everything happening ahead through his senses.
That was why Bell did not bother opening his mouth.
If the man thought carefully, he would find the answer himself.
But expecting such a normal reaction might have been Bell overestimating him.
"Is this place... really a Catastrophe-class dungeon?"
Hearing nonsense like that made it clear. Either that, or he had grown so frantic he no longer knew what he was saying.
"There seems to have been some kind of mistake... From now on, I'll take the lead and open the path."
Whatever had become of the arrogant yet weighty demeanor he usually carried.
Right now he was impatient and shallow.
Was this his true face?
"You think you can just decide that on your own at this point?"
"Did you think I held back because I couldn't handle the demonic beasts? It was all out of respect for the Deep Night Clan..."
"Then keep respecting them to the end. Enough with the tantrums."
"A mercenary nobody like you... has no right to say that."
"..."
Yeah. I really didn't want to do this.
Back when Chainber—once a member of Estelle's party, who had lost his life in a Forbidden-class dungeon—had released his presence to oppress an opponent, Bell had cursed him for it.
Strength was something you proved, not something you flaunted.
But what was he supposed to do when someone refused to even look at the scene unfolding right before their eyes?
It was different from his homeland, where people submitted easily to pure ability alone.
Bell now understood that things like this happened all the time in this place.
He could not leave Rice free to do whatever he pleased with a gate-guarding demonic beast right in front of them.
In short, he needed to knock some of the wind out of him.
Bell released his killing intent.
His Will had been refined, honed, and ground down countless times until it took form—reaching a realm that could no longer simply be called "Will."
It was a perfectly purified weapon that existed to slice flesh, shatter bone, and pierce through anything harder still.
In his homeland it had almost always been directed only at monsters and the beasts of the polluted forests.
He had rarely ever turned it on a person.
Even after leaving the Forbidden Zone, he had never once revealed that killing intent toward another human being.
Now that killing intent locked onto Rice.
Bell conveyed only one thing.
Act up and you die.
Before it could take shape as a crimson aura, the formless killing intent surged toward Rice.
Rice, whose head had seemed full of other thoughts, froze on the spot the moment their eyes met—as if struck by lightning.
Unable even to swallow, his entire body trembling, he finally could not endure it and his knees buckled.
He looked more powerless than anyone could possibly appear.
"I-I'm sorry......"
The voice shaking so hard made even Bell pause.
He had not expected this much. This was still someone called a Five Star, after all.
He had thought the man would hold out.
He had never intended to break him so thoroughly that he lost all fighting strength.
"..."
A suffocating silence swallowed the surroundings.
Everyone had already been straining every nerve to follow the exchange between Bell and Rice.
The sight of one of the Five Stars—their greatest adventurers—dropping to his knees from a mere look was not something they could easily accept.
Rice's unfocused eyes were already rolling upward; he was slowly losing consciousness.
Bell hurriedly withdrew the killing intent.
It definitely had not been a good method. Now it simply looked as if Bell were the one oppressing Rice.
Bell personally helped him up. The moment his hand touched him, Rice shuddered violently.
"P-please spare me. I was wrong. Just don't kill me, please......"
He had never planned to kill him in the first place. Faced with such an overreaction, there was nothing particular to say.
"...Let's do this properly."
"Y-yes...!"
Bell clapped Rice's shoulder a few times in encouragement and sent him back.
Rice trudged away with a face that looked as if his soul had left his body.
People parted to let him through, yet kept glancing back and forth between his face and Bell as if they could not believe what they had seen.
Bell deliberately ignored those stares.
He felt the need to quickly dispose of the demonic beast guarding the first gate and change the atmosphere.
Where his gaze landed—
At the end of the corridor stood a demonic beast, as if it had been waiting.
Its appearance was not greatly different from the Flame Species. Even so, when Bell had extended his senses earlier he had felt a presence far stronger than the other beasts.
Meaning he could not afford to be careless.
The moment Bell took a single step forward to deal with it, the beast reacted at once.
As if the very spot where Bell had planted his foot were the trigger, it split open a massive maw that tore all the way to its ears.
A thick liquid surged up from deep in its throat and poured onto the corridor floor. The liquid, glowing a reddish hue like lava, released fierce heat the instant it touched the ground and began flowing along the corridor.
Sizzle.
The heat looked as if it would melt ordinary skin on contact, yet strangely the floor itself remained unharmed.
The liquid kept gushing from the beast's mouth without pause. Before long it was nearly reaching the feet of the assault party standing farther back.
In an instant the surrounding air itself began to boil. The already sweltering atmosphere turned insanely hot.
From behind, Ren urgently raised his voice.
"Should we use the Heat-Clearing pills?"
Heat-Clearing was a medicine specially prepared to counter this dungeon. A magically processed drug that temporarily suppressed the heat within the body.
Bell gave a short shake of his head.
"No. Hold out for now."
That medicine was not something they could use lightly. Side effects set in after a certain time, so he considered it wasteful to start using it this early, when they were still only at the entrance of the dungeon. He did not yet regard the situation as "that serious" either.
Bell decided not to bother testing whether the lava could actually affect his skin.
He kicked off the ground that was still free of lava, leapt over it in a single bound, and arrived in front of the beast.
Boom.
The fist he brought down as if to crush it was blocked by the beast raising its arm. Its movements were more agile than ordinary Flame Species, and its outer shell had been reinforced to an even harder degree.
But Bell had already known from the start that simple "Strength" alone would not bring this thing down in one blow.
Now it was time to call upon Will.
He discarded any thought of using mana. He had considered trying it out a few times with this opportunity, but with Bedeia of the Luen Order present he could not reveal black mana.
Besides, his mana was still feeble.