Final Exams, Second Semester (21)
Arthur let out a hollow laugh as he looked at the corridor he could only now, for the first time, properly face at the start of the exam dungeon.
What on earth was I doing inside that dungeon?
Just how empty must my head have been to miss every single one of those clues?
Careless of the stares around him, Arthur dragged a hand down his face and, shielding his eyes with his palm, began recalling each of the clues Lucy had pointed out, one by one.
A perfectly intact ceiling. Windows with no view of the outside. A blurred portrait with an absurd year written beneath it. A broken clock.
And beyond those, the countless clues Lucy had indicated were all spelled out, plain as day, in the Dungeon Studies textbook.
At the end of the section explaining gimmicks. Under the heading of exceptions. In the passage covering high-difficulty dungeons, listed alongside instructions on how to determine whether a given place was real or not.
Arthur, who had memorized the entire textbook from cover to cover, clutched his bangs and pulled as he dredged that passage up from memory.
I was being played by the dungeon's boss.
That girl built an illusion out of rooms we'd already cleared, and I mistook it for a new dungeon.
Except that wasn't it at all. That corridor was simply a path we had already walked.
Think it through, and it all made sense.
Everything they had faced while conquering the dungeon from Floor 0 onward had been nothing but a repetition of trials they had already overcome!
At the time, they'd assumed their past strategies were simply helping them through — but that wasn't it!
They were conquering things they had already conquered, so of course it would all feel familiar!
The more Arthur thought about it, the more he was confronted with his own stupidity — and then, suddenly, he remembered what he had said to Lucy just yesterday.
How confidently he'd declared, showing off, that he had conquered a difficult dungeon.
Aaargh!
What must Lucy Aln have been thinking while watching me boast?
How pathetic must I have looked — a moron talking back while failing to notice a single one of the things she herself had designed?
So that's why her expression was so strange when she came to meet us after we finished the run!
It wasn't sorrow over losing the bet — she was simply looking at us with contempt!
Arthur's hand fell to his side mid-lament, and his face had flushed scarlet.
When I face Lucy Aln again, I dread what she'll say to me.
Because of everything I've already let slip, I can't even speak up even though I know the truth now — and that is terrifying.
Should I consider trading the bet's prize for her silence about all this?
Just as Arthur was weighing his options, Lucy Aln set her foot on the stairway leading down into the depths.
"I'm tired of explaining to you losers that you're idiots at this point?♡ So take your time and enjoy the show while you soak in just how much of a waste of space you all were♡ You scrubs♡"
With those parting words, Lucy Aln sealed her lips and descended the stairs.
The first scene they came upon was the training yard.
Countless soldiers stood before the exam candidates, swinging their weapons.
Lucy Aln watched the scene at her leisure for a moment, cast a sidelong glance at the boy sprawled on the stone floor and the girl nagging at him, then slipped out of the yard.
Next came the cavern. At the far end of the space once ruled by a colossal wolf stood a party.
At its center stood a man who resembled the boy who had collapsed from exhaustion just moments ago.
He stared at an ordinary-sized wolf with frightened eyes, then sheepishly forced a smile at the people around him as he rose to his feet.
Lucy, just as before, gave the scene only a brief look before moving on.
What unfolded next was a plain.
In that place once filled with golems shaped like demons now lay the corpses of real demons — not mere golems — along with the bodies of several people presumed to have fallen to them.
And at the very center stood a lone survivor.
Smeared head to toe in blood, the man could only stare blankly into empty space with frantic eyes, making no other move whatsoever.
Lucy regarded him with indifferent eyes, then dragged her feet slowly toward the fourth room.
The place she arrived at was a corridor.
Not the first corridor, but the ruined one that appears past Floor 4.
Lucy deliberately filled the corridor with the sound of her own footsteps as she made her way to its end.
"You've come."
The imposing Derelict who had guarded the dungeon's end was there no longer.
The figure leaning against the closed door, speaking in a drained voice, was not the monster that had driven Arthur's party to death countless times — just an ordinary man worn down by the years, stripped of the will to go on living.
Such a shabby creature was the creator outside his own stage.
"It was a stage I prepared rather diligently, you know. To have it all dismissed like that... truly heartbreaking."
The Derelict peeled himself away from the door and drew a sword from his hip.
"But since my guest has come all this way, it is only right that I, as master of the stage, attend to you properly."
What seeped from him was not the horrific crimson aura Arthur's party had faced, but only a faint, gray haze.
"Come."
Only then did Lucy draw her weapon for the very first time.
In her right hand, the white mace that was her very emblem; in her left, a pristine shield that seemed to hold the light of the sun itself.
Mouth shut tight, she filled the chamber with her divinity — a sight so sacred that even those who knew her true nature would have found themselves letting out a gasp of awe.
The moment the duel between Lucy Aln and the Derelict began, every soul in the exam hall could not help but be certain of one thing: Lucy Aln's victory.
When I designed the Academy Dungeon, I poured my effort into two things above all.
First, that every single student of the Academy should be able to clear it.
I'd heard the argument that since individual ability was itself a factor in clearing a dungeon, there'd be nothing wrong with a dungeon that lower-ranked students simply couldn't beat.
In the actual game, the majority of Academy Dungeon floors couldn't be cleared below a certain level anyway, so now that it was reality, I didn't expect things to be much different.
Knowing all this, I still agonized over making the dungeon clearable for everyone.
Because I wanted the dungeon I built to actually help the students of the Academy.
Back when this world was a world beyond a monitor, the Academy's students were little more than extras. Aside from the handful of characters who had actual illustrations, they weren't even worth remembering.
But not anymore.
Everyone enrolled at the Academy was living out their own life.
People who breathed and lived right beside me, writing their own stories.
Before any question of whether they showed me goodwill or not —
I simply hoped that at least one of them might learn something in my dungeon and survive out there in the real ones.
I wanted them to stop being sacrifices to dungeons, and instead make the dungeon their sacrifice.
So I did my absolute best to make sure every student at the Academy could clear it.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason I was so stubborn about it.
There was definitely some personal greed mixed in, I'll admit.
The first dungeon I'd ever created. The countless ideas a hardcore veteran of Soul Academy had engraved in her skull as she rotted into a true endgame old-timer. The crystallization of all my effort.
It was true that I wanted everyone to enjoy it.
I wanted to build it so that anyone, through effort, could see it through to the end — and stand at the dungeon's depths, awestruck.
Because I refused to compromise on all these reasons, actually designing the damn thing nearly cracked my skull open.
I flipped through textbooks I hadn't opened once since enrolling at the Academy more than ten times in a single night —
All so that a student who'd properly studied Dungeon Studies could look around the interior and notice that something was off.
And so that, in solving the gimmick, they'd realize their knowledge could be put to use like this.
But for all that — despite all that — my efforts bore no proper fruit.
Because the Academy students' clearing abilities fell short of even my pessimistic expectations.
No, wait. It's true that I deliberately went out of my way to make the gimmick hard to spot.
But only TWO parties in the entire Academy Dungeon figured out the gimmick?! Are you kidding me?!
Actually, "two parties" isn't even accurate!
It was just two PEOPLE!
Toby and Jeff.
Aside from those two, not a single soul gave the dungeon's gimmick any serious thought?! How is that even possible?!
I knew not many people would catch on, but this is excessive!
If I'd known this would happen, I would've built an easier dungeon.
If I'd known you were all babies, I could've finished the design in an hour and gone straight to bed!
"No wonder everything you said dripped with venom. You were just stewing in resentment, weren't you?"
"Of course I'm stewing in resentment?! I worked my butt off building that dungeon!"
After everything I did for the Academy students —
Not only did nobody appreciate it, I had to sit there listening to nonsense like "you really made it unwinnable on purpose, didn't you"!
It would be abnormal NOT to be angry!
"I do not doubt your effort. But surely the students, green as they are, have their side of the story as well."
"Which is?!"
"Well — a dungeon where one must suspect everything is hardly a common thing."
"...That's — that's exactly the point, though."
A dungeon that must be cleared not by simply conquering it, but by doubting everything about it while you do — those aren't common.
More precisely, they can't be common.
Most dungeons in existence originate from the power of the Evil God Agra.
To put it another way: every time a single dungeon is created, a measure of Agra's power is expended.
High-tier dungeons can never be numerous.
To make a dungeon of high difficulty, even Agra must expend a correspondingly enormous amount of power.
"If you don't know a dungeon like this exists, then in the worst case you just plain die. That's all there is to it."
This is not a game.
Lines like "oh well, failed this time — let's try again" don't fly here.
"If you don't know, you die" isn't a joke in this world — it's somebody's last will and testament.
The other students can't possibly be unaware of this danger, so how does it make any sense that not one of them prepared for high-tier dungeons?!
Especially the ones blathering about dungeon-clearing being a noble's duty!
"Haha. True. Thanks to the effort you lent this time, the Academy's students will now know such dungeons exist — and learn how they must be cleared when one appears. You've worked hard."
"Switching your attitude now just makes you look scared of retaliation, you know."
"To twist an old man's goodwill so cruelly... how sorrowful."
At Grandpa's little jest, I let out a snort and surveyed the chamber where every battle had finally ended.
Then, instead of stepping toward the exit that led out of the dungeon, I placed my hand on the crystal orb installed beside it.
"Lucy, child. What are you doing?"
"Blowing off steam."
Everything I'd shown them so far was the proper way to clear a dungeon.
There were faster routes, easier routes, all manner of shortcuts born in the process of the dungeon's creation — and I ignored every one of them, choosing only the orthodox path.
I swallowed my usual instincts and made a tutorial video for the babies. So isn't it my turn to have fun now?!
"Wait — child! If you go clearing the dungeon the way you always do, in front of all these people, it will reflect poorly on—"
"Like I care? The Academy's idiots need to learn just how pathetic they really are."
A veteran's lecture for the newbies? Cancelled.
Effective immediately, a brand-new course is opening: Rotten-Water Speedrun Lectures.
I'll show you all exactly how it's done, from start to finish.
Go on, then — try to keep up if you can.
You scrub-ass trash.