The Patran Festival (7)
When I first stepped up to the stall and took the paper, I had been wound tight as a bowstring. After all, I'd been more or less strong-armed into a duel with the First Prince.
The stares raining down on me from every direction were prickling with disdain, the First Prince's challenge to "let's see this famed skill you displayed at the Academy" had dripped with aggression, and not a single soul in this crowd existed who would cheer for me or worry about me.
But the moment I sat down and unfolded that paper, every last ounce of that tension simply evaporated. Because what lay before me in that instant was not a mere sheet of paper — it was a dungeon. Not a place I had to clear against my will just to survive, but one of those dungeons where, on the far side of a monitor, I used to agonize over how to clear it faster and more efficiently than anyone else.
At the very top of the paper were written the name of the dungeon to be cleared and the composition of the party tasked with clearing it.
Let's see now.
A swordsman at B-Rank adventurer level as the frontline.
A rogue who fights well but fumbles trap disarming.
A mage with heavy firepower and even heavier restrictions.
A priest who knows nothing but healing.
The party comp itself is textbook-standard, but the contents are straight-up garbage. They min-maxed the carry and then just slapped the rest together to fill the slots. If someone posted a party like this on a forum asking for a rating, the thread would get locked for being trash bait. Their gear is shoddy, and the inventory they brought is stuffed to the brim with useless junk.
Wow. This is a genuinely brand-new newbie?! This is the very definition of someone playing on pure vibes with zero knowledge!
Hey! Mister stall owner! Are you allowed to show this kind of thing to a minor?! Do you want to get arrested?! A troll-looking uncle shows up and goes, "Hey you. This might be the thing that keeps you alive"!
Haaah. Calm down, Lucy. First things first — check where the dungeon is. If a lewd newbie clears a newbie-appropriate place, that's just a normal, run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl. Let's see. The name of the government-regulated dungeon is...
The Cave of the Black Spider
We have a problem. Not on my end — on that stall owner's end. That man is absolutely getting hauled off in cuffs. Straight to jail, right now. How could anyone show pornographic material to a small, adorable young girl like this? Even flashers don't sink this low! The severity of this crime is off the charts!
What kind of idiot sends a party comp like THIS into a dungeon like THAT?! Listen up! The textbook clear for this dungeon is: a tank, a rogue with perception and trap detection maxed to the ceiling, a fire mage with plenty of ammunition, and a versatile priest! A swordsman who can't take a hit, a glass-cannon mage, a dagger rogue whose reason for existing is a mystery, and a heal-only priest have absolutely no business being here!
Wait, actually, on closer inspection the entire party is garbage?! Kyaah. They must have walked into this dungeon without even reading the dungeon info!
"The conditions are troubling. How is one meant to clear a dungeon with personnel such as these?"
Halbae dismissed it as nonsense the instant he read the description. He is outstanding in countless ways, but when it came to this simulated dungeon raid specifically, he was hopelessly out of his depth. Why would a man who has blown apart countless dungeons be so clumsy at this, you ask? Because Halbae himself was a broken, overpowered character, that's why. Back in his day, he could demolish any mid-tier dungeon solo, and for the truly dangerous ones he traveled with companions elite enough to belong to the Hero's Party. There's simply no way a man like that could comprehend a party stuffed to the gills with incompetent buffoons.
"Tell me, girl. Does the answer reveal itself to you?"
"Obviously."
But I'm built different. From cheese-strat guides all the way to single-character, no-equipment, bare-handed, curse-restriction runs — having done it all, I can dig up a clear method no matter what party you drag in front of me. A newbie party like this? Easy. Too easy.
I picked up the pen and began to write. If the party spots two eggs blanketed in webbing on the ceiling, I know exactly where they started. I sketched the map in my head, marking spawn points and trap locations as I went. There is a shortest route, but taking it means forcing one battle. Hmm. No. I'll pick a different path. The moment THIS trash party enters combat, the time they burn killing a single monster will balloon. And every fight they stumble through drags out the boss clear too — so even if it means a longer detour, a no-combat route is the right call.
My pen never stopped, but my pace wasn't exactly brisk. That was because I was writing out the reasoning behind every single decision. It was a habit formed in Dungeon Studies class. The first time we did a simulated dungeon raid there, I wrote up my answer like a game guide — "You do this, then this. Easy, right?" — and turned it in. So the Dungeon Studies professor summoned me to her office and demanded to know if I thought any of that made sense. So I rebutted every single point she raised, explaining why I had made each judgment where I did.
Naturally, those rebuttals were absolutely loaded with choice vocabulary — "pathetic," "idiot," "bottom-feeder," "boomer," "fossilized brain," and the like. The Dungeon Studies professor came in brimming with righteous confidence, but by the end she had no possible counterargument left and just stared blankly at my submission. Then, face flushed red, she declared that from now on I was to write out the reasoning behind every judgment — otherwise understanding my decisions would be impossible.
Listening back, I had to admit she had a point. How could an in-game character possibly follow the thought process of a rotten-water veteran? So from then on, I made an effort to lay out my reasoning in full. Didn't stop her from dragging me into her office every single time, though. But after repeating that process an uncountable number of times, cataloging every judgment call simply became second nature.
If I'd written my guides this thoroughly back in the day, would the newbie population have grown even a little? ...No, that's never happening. My guides were never written for newbies to read in the first place.
"Your dungeon narration is a marvel each time I behold it. Had you led our party in place of that dim-witted Hero, we might have been spared a great many of our sufferings."
Brushing off Halbae's praise as I worked, before I knew it the party had entered the boss room. Not a single battle had occurred by that point, so the party was at full strength. Now then. Time for our glass cannon mage to earn her keep.
"I'm finished."
I was just lowering my pen over the finished answer when a voice made me look up. The First Prince was standing at his seat.
Already?! This is only easy for a rotten-water veteran like me — from the perspective of someone living inside the game, this is the level of a genuinely fiendish puzzle!
Startled, I set my pen down and studied the illusion at the center of the booth. Same party composition, but the dungeon itself was laid out quite differently. Had he deliberately engineered it so that even someone watching couldn't copy his approach? The answer the First Prince produced was both optimal and utterly by-the-book: whatever situation arose, he weighed every variable and selected the safest, most efficient option. It was like watching, in real time, what one ought to do when forced to clear a dungeon with no prior knowledge of it. And on top of that, when the moment demanded a decision, he had the boldness to gamble on risky plays. Watching him, I couldn't hold back a snort. Impressive. Look at the stall owner smiling, though. What must it feel like to watch a more precise answer key than the one you yourself produced?
But none of that is enough to beat me, hikikomori prince.
As applause and gasps of admiration rained down on the First Prince, I rose from my seat and approached the stall owner.
"Here you go."
"Well then. An answer key far too good for this shabby stall of mine. Accept it with my gratitude, Whiskers."
"Then I'll verify it now."
The stall owner took my answer sheet with not a shred of anticipation in his face. The crowd was no different. The First Prince had just demonstrated a flawless answer moments ago — how could anyone look forward to what came next? Whatever I produced would only be a pale imitation of his work. I'm sure they were all simply waiting for this tedious verification to end so they could watch the First Prince give an insolent noble lady her hard lesson.
But that languid atmosphere shattered not long after the illusion began.
"Why aren't they encountering any monsters?"
"How do they already know every single trap location?"
It's true that the First Prince's method is brilliant. It impressed even a rotten-water veteran like me. But at the end of the day, it's the way of a chess piece advancing across the board — pioneering the unknown while knowing nothing. My way is different. If the First Prince is an exceptional piece standing on the board, then I am the player gazing down at that board from above, moving the pieces at will. What reason is there to chart the unknown? For me, the unknown ceased to exist ages ago.
The party in the illusion never fought a single monster. Never suffered a moment of hardship before a trap. They simply ran. On and on, like marathon runners. Downward. Then down again. With no pathfinding, no trap disassembly, no monster combat — nothing at all standing in the way — the time it took them to reach the boss room was remarkably short. And so my party, every last ounce of its strength preserved, entered the dungeon's final chamber.
This dungeon's boss descends from above ten seconds after you enter. Its spawn location is fixed, and it uses none of its many annoying patterns.
What am I talking about? I'm saying that ten seconds later, a punching bag appears and politely asks to get beat up. The mage, entering the boss room without having spent a single resource, unleashes absolutely everything onto the boss. The boss plummets from its web, lands in a stunned state, and the entire party dogpiles it. The boss that had appeared looking so menacing was smashed apart like a bug children were playing with.
As the raid concluded, the illusion dissolved — but neither applause nor admiration erupted. Not from the stall owner. Not from the crowd. Not even from the First Prince. Everyone simply stood there, staring blankly at the space where the illusion had been.
And I, clop-clopping my way through that dead silence toward the stall owner, asked sweetly:
"I won, didn't I?"
"Say it, you mustached fool. Say that I won."
When this duel was first decided, the First Prince had clearly laid down the rules. If only one of us passed the stall, that one would be the victor. And if both of us passed, the winner would be decided by which party cleared the dungeon faster. See? No matter how you look at it, I was faster than that hikikomori prince, wasn't I?
Despite the outcome being blindingly obvious, the stall owner didn't open his mouth — instead, he glanced at the First Prince. Was he afraid of announcing the prince's defeat with his own lips? In proportion to the stall owner's hesitation, the crowd's murmur swelled louder and louder. The stunned spectators were coming back to reality, one by one. Hmm. This, I did not expect.
"Hey. Stall owner."
That was when it happened. Breaking the long silence, the First Prince spoke.
"...Yes?!"
"May I look at this answer sheet?"
"Of course, Your Highness!"
Expressionless, he flipped through the answer sheet I had produced and muttered under his breath.
"Your leaps of logic are far too extreme. This is nothing but a chain of gambles."
Those aren't leaps, Your Highness — those are judgments I can only make because I know everything. Don't nitpick what you don't understand. If you want to argue about it, come at me. I'll rebut every last point with the pride of a true veteran on the line. Come on! Say something if you've got it!
"I have lost."
You have successfully become the Slayer of the Festival!
🎁 Your reward is being granted!
...Huh?
Wait, WHAT?!