The Hidden Floor
In the thick dark, a beast shot forward, fangs locked on Serena's throat.
A saber-toothed jaguar.
I'd put distance between us on the pretense of rest, and there was nowhere near enough time to cover her. Without a second thought I triggered Time of Sonic Speed.
"Time of Sonic Speed!"
In that instant the world's order twisted. Everything stretched out, grotesque and slow, as if sunk into a bog.
"Whew."
Saber-toothed jaguars were no joke. Silent presence-nullification paired with lightning ambushes.
The labyrinth monkeys were noisy as hell, which made them easy to kill. This one's different.
The beast hung frozen mid-lunge, monstrous fangs about to drive into empty air. I strolled toward the ridiculous sight of it suspended in the sky.
Still not enough. I need a detection skill, too.
No matter how many skills you claw after, the thirst never really goes away.
I stopped in front of the creature's taxidermied head and looked it over at my leisure.
Damn. Those fangs are vicious. Size of a tiger, too.
But so what? In front of my full-power slap, it was just another equal cut of meat.
I brought my palm down on the jaguar's skull without mercy.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Three clean hits. Time of Sonic Speed was still active, so the physical force of the blows sat on hold. The second the skill dropped, that head would turn to paste without a scrap left behind.
Time of Sonic Speed—release.
BOOM—!!!
"GRAAAHHH!!"
A rupture that tore at the eardrums. Even the beast's death scream was crushed into a final, broken croak. The saber-toothed jaguar's bulk flopped across the ground in an ugly sprawl.
No—even "sprawl" was too generous. Its head was a ruin of brain and blood, smashed past any recognition of shape. Instant death, no question.
"Kyaaaah! Wh-what was that?!"
Serena, who'd been completely off guard, shrieked at the explosion.
"When did you even get over there?! Th-this is—don't tell me—a saber-toothed jaguar?!"
From her angle, my use of Time of Sonic Speed must have looked like teleportation. She stared back and forth between the pulverized corpse and me, too stunned to process it.
"That was close. Stay glued to me from now on and stop letting your guard down. It's not a skill I can just throw around whenever."
For the full hour of its cooldown, I'd have to keep my senses sharper than usual.
"And harvest the magic stone."
Serena slit open the blood-soaked jaguar's belly and dug out the magic stone while I kept watch at her side, raking the surroundings with a hard gaze.
Lucky the saber-toothed jaguars hunt alone. Saved us a messy accident.
No matter how well they hid in the dark like rats, if they came one at a time they would just explode under my palm the same as everything else. Nothing to really worry about.
"Wow, a saber-toothed jaguar's magic stone is huge and so clear."
Serena held up the stone, blood still dripping from it, and showed it to me.
"That one should be worth some money. Let's move out again."
We followed the gentle slope inward, pushing toward the heart of the Floor 4 tropical rainforest. The deeper we went, the more often we ran into monsters.
Not that anything stood in our way. I smashed two packs of labyrinth monkeys blocking the path, literally tore through them, and when another saber-toothed jaguar was stupid enough to charge me, I crushed its entire jaw in one go.
We cut a path for a while longer. Far ahead, past the dim jungle, bright sunlight was spilling through.
A wide clearing where the giant trees that had choked the sky simply ended. At its center sat the descent magic circle to Floor 5.
"We're here..."
Floor 5. All I had on it was a scrap of hearsay—swampland floor. The monsters that showed up were lizardmen, slimes, and tentacle beasts, something like that?
Yesterday at the Explorer Support Center I'd only skimmed the Floor 4 intel, and then the golden goblin had eaten the rest of my attention. I had nothing detailed on the floors below. Crossing Floor 4 to get this far had already burned a lot of time. Stirring up Floor 5 and trying to make it back to Floor 3 in this state would leave us exhausted and underprepared.
We'll need camping gear. Water's covered by Serena's water spirit, but food's another story... damn it, I really need an inventory skill sooner rather than later.
"We're not going to Floor 5 today."
I kept it short for Serena.
"Whew, thank goodness. Heehee."
She lit up like she'd just gotten an early out from work, smiling sunny and bright.
"We're heading back."
I turned without a shred of regret. We set off toward the outermost cliffs, where the Floor 3 exit circle would be.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Hideously tangled roots of massive trees. We climbed and dropped over the uneven ground, grinding our way up a long, gentle slope.
"Uphill's a pain."
I wiped the sticky sweat from my forehead and caught my breath for a second.
"Serena. Summon Tabi."
I'd kept calling it a water blob, a water spirit, until she'd nagged me half to death that its name was Tabi. So fine—I called it Tabi now.
"Yes~! Tabi! Make some water!"
In a blink, a transparent mass of water popped into the air in front of Serena, then poured out cold and clean. We cooled our overheated bodies under the stream, washed off the greasy sweat, and finished with a long, cold drink.
That was when it happened.
The floating water mass suddenly started drifting somewhere.
"Huh? Tabi? Where are you going!"
Startled, Serena scrambled after the water spirit. I narrowed my eyes and followed at an easy pace.
Tabi hopped over one grotesquely huge tree root, then began circling a secluded, flat little clearing.
"Serena, what's going on?"
"Tabi says it can feel something here."
"Hm?"
I rubbed my chin and surveyed the clearing. In this whole miserable, uneven Floor 4 terrain, here was a small open space as unnaturally flat as the descent circle to Floor 5 we'd just seen in the center.
"What is this? Nothing's really catching my eye..."
"Look here! The way the light falls is kind of strange!"
Serena urgently pointed at the ground where the water spirit had been circling. Between the heavy shadows, light filtering through the branches had spread in a bizarre circular band—and inside that ring of light, pebbles were scattered in a weird pattern, like some grotesque drawing.
It looked almost like—
"A transfer magic circle?"
"That's so weird. How is this even possible?"
Just a thin coincidence? A sharp intuition cut through my mind.
"Serena. Get the magic stones out of the bag. Now."
"What? All of a sudden?"
"Hurry. Give me a labyrinth monkey stone first."
Looking baffled, Serena set the bag down, dug out a magic stone, and handed it over. I snatched it and tossed it into the center of the light-and-pebble pattern that formed the circle.
I waited a moment.
Silence. Nothing happened.
"Hmm... then let's try the saber-toothed jaguar stone."
I swapped stones with Serena again and set the jaguar magic stone in the center. Same result. Not so much as a twitch.
"Maybe it just looks like that by chance? I've never heard of anything like this."
"You think anyone with a secret like this would go around telling people? Hold on. Let me think."
Maybe it needed a specific activation condition. Hmm.
"This time we put both of them on."
I took another monkey magic stone from Serena and set it right beside the jaguar stone already sitting in the middle of the circle.
That was the moment.
The silent pebbles began to shine, resonating with light.
"That's it! Serena, grab the bag!"
I hauled the still-gaping Serena onto the magic circle with me. Of course I did. The golden rule of fantasy was exactly this kind of sweet stroke of fortune!
A fierce light swallowed us. Just like when moving between labyrinth floors, the senses of the body vanished for an instant, and we drifted through a hollow, weightless abyss.
And then—
Thud—!
A dull impact hit the soles of my feet, and we transferred into another space.
You have entered Floor 4.5.
Starting Floor 4.5 entry reward random skill gacha.
What? Even a hidden floor hands out a random skill reward on entry?
Right on cue, the familiar, welcome error windows started flooding my vision like mad.
Crackle... bang!
1. Dark Vision(E)
2. Darkness Stealth(E)
3. Monkey's Stone Throw(E)
4. Intermediate Status Ailment Recovery(D)
5. Presence Detection(D)
As always, a skill list floated up in the air. But this was different. It wasn't a list crammed full of thousands of useless skills. Only five skills were laid out there.
It felt like I'd taken one more step into the labyrinth's hidden truth. The people with a stake in this place must have been monopolizing strokes of fortune like this among themselves and getting stronger off them.
I didn't need a second look. I picked the D-rank skill, Presence Detection.
You have acquired a D-Rank skill.
[Description]
Sharpens the body's senses into something feral—like a cat reading the faintest currents of air with its whiskers in the dark, or a deer catching the smallest sound from the rustle of leaves. Without relying on sight, you instinctively seize movement in your blind spots from the slightest presence.
[Effect]
Intuitively perceives a target's physical movement occurring within a 10m radius.
Good enough for now. I'd needed a skill to catch saber-toothed jaguars ambushing from the dark in the first place. I'd make do with this for the time being.
"Yaho! I got Intermediate Status Ailment Recovery!"
Serena's cheer hit my ears right then. She'd already pulled the jackpot of a low-grade water spirit contract on Floor 4, and now on Floor 4.5 she'd snagged Intermediate Status Ailment Recovery back-to-back—a real healer's prize. She bounced in place, unable to contain herself.
"Nice work, my personal hangover cure. Evolved into a super-human hangover cure, huh?"
I teased the overexcited Serena as I tossed her the congratulations.
With that, Serena's skill set was more or less complete. E-rank Minor Regeneration. F-rank Aggro Draw. F-rank Glossy Skin. D-rank Low-grade Water Spirit Contract. And D-rank Intermediate Status Ailment Recovery.
A walking human water cooler and bandage, with hangover-cure functionality thrown in. She was growing up into an excellent magnet pet.
"All right, then..."
I finished checking the skill and swept the surroundings with cold eyes.
"Where the hell is this place?"