Where the Alchemist Resides (1)
It was as good as a settled future that Agra would come to interfere with me.
He was an evil god, after all — one who never left alone anyone capable of causing him trouble.
Just look at the pettiness of it: laying curses on those who bore blessings, strangling the sprouts before they could ever grow.
He would never stand by and fairly watch his great adversary rise.
I knew all of this, of course. The reason I was still thrown into confusion was that I'd never imagined Agra's gaze would fall upon me inside a dungeon of the Academy itself, and this early.
The Academy's dungeon was different from an ordinary one.
It was an artificial pocket dimension created by the Academy — it took the form of a dungeon, but Agra's influence within it was vanishingly small.
Which meant that, from Agra's perspective, meddling in this place was a costly burden.
Back when I played the game, Agra only intervened in the Academy's dungeon after you'd broken three or more of his curses and been branded his great adversary beyond any doubt. Dispelling a single curse of Agra's should never have been enough to draw him into the Academy's dungeon.
So why on earth was Agra already watching me?
What possible reason was there for him to perceive me as someone annoying enough to warrant interfering with an Academy dungeon?
Don't tell me it's because Armadi is watching me? So he thinks her blessings must have reached me because of it?
That useless, incompetent Chief God, seriously.
Here's Agra, actively trying to hunt down his adversary, and you're just leaving the very person you're watching alone?
Shouldn't you be granting blessings, or omens of fortune, or at the very least doing something to keep Agra from interfering?!
Fine. It was my mistake for expecting anything different from a god who did absolutely nothing in the game either.
While I was lodging my protest with the divine bastard through a prayer poured with genuine sincerity, a grotesque sound echoed from a corner of the boss room, and a door surged up from the ground.
That door, steeped in an eerie aura, was unmistakably an entrance to a dungeon.
"...Dungeons can appear inside other dungeons?"
"This is the first I've ever heard of such a thing."
⟨That is, without a doubt... Agra's.⟩
Watching Joy and Benedict stand there bewildered, a wave of guilt rose up in me.
The two of them had only been dragged into this because of me.
They had nothing whatsoever to do with Agra — it was solely his interest in me that was bringing harm down upon them.
At this point, the responsibility was mine to bear. From this moment on, if anything happened to those two, it would all be my fault.
'Everyone, calm down.'
"Everyone, please calm down."
"How am I supposed to calm down in this situation?!"
'The Academy will have noticed by now. So...'
"Even a pathetic Academy like this one will have noticed what's happening. So if they don't want their necks on the line, they'll come rescue us. We just have to wait."
The people currently in this room were the Count's daughter of House Alrn and the Duke's daughter of House Partran.
If something happened to even one of them, the Academy would be turned upside down. Both of them at once?
If the situation grew serious enough, a bloodbath could sweep through the Academy itself.
Which meant that if they wanted to live, those professors would throw everything they had at solving the problem.
"...I suppose so. They did watch everything unfolding inside, after all."
"The professors of Soul Academy will resolve this in no time!"
In the actual game, when trouble struck during the Academy exam, the player was given exactly two choices.
The first was to confront Agra's curse directly. Whatever appeared — a new dungeon, some bizarre monster, anything at all — you broke the curse with your own hands and survived.
The other was to hold out. If you lacked the confidence to overcome the phenomena born of Agra's curse, you simply killed time inside the dungeon. Before long, the Academy's rescue would arrive, and you could walk out without a single hair harmed.
If it hadn't been for Joy and Jacob, I might have chosen to challenge the dungeon.
The phenomena born from Agra's curse were certainly high-difficulty — but the rewards were just as enormous.
Still, I had no intention of choosing that option now.
The life riding on my back wasn't mine alone.
I had no desire to watch Jacob die because of me, or Joy — one of my favorite characters — die because of me.
So I had to choose the safest path available.
And honestly, the current situation wasn't the worst it could be.
What Agra's curse had spawned was a dungeon, after all.
If it had been some other monster, or some curse itself taking root inside this dungeon, even waiting it out would have been agony.
But a dungeon? That was fine.
However vicious a dungeon might be, it was still just a dungeon. As long as we didn't set foot inside it, nothing would happen to us.
In other words, all we had to do was lounge around outside it and wait for the Academy's rescue.
"No need to worry after all. I panicked over nothing."
'Nothing's going to happen.'
"Airhead Lady. You're more of a scaredy-cat than you look, huh? Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen~"
"Who said I was scared?!"
Pot, meet kettle — you were the one panicking your head off just a second ago.
Whatever. Fine. Since I'm such a magnanimous soul, I'll graciously pretend I didn't notice.
The moment everyone was letting out sighs of relief, Grandfather's voice suddenly rang out, sharp with alarm.
⟨Girl! Now is not the time to relax! The floor—!⟩
The floor? At his words, I turned my gaze around the room — and heard it. Something splitting.
Crrrack. Crack. That ominous sound of a fissure widening, spreading, inch by inch.
Dammit!
My body moved before my words did.
'Run!'
"MOVE!"
Wrapping an arm around Joy beside me, I shouted for Jacob to run.
We had to get out of this room before the floor gave way — otherwise we'd be forced straight into the dungeon!
But we'd been far too slow to grasp the abnormality of the room for escape to be possible.
The floor collapsed before we could take a single step out of it, and we—
⟨...cy.⟩
Ugh. Dammit. My head hurt like hell.
⟨...Lucy!⟩
And it wasn't just my head. There wasn't a single spot on me that didn't hurt.
It felt like the morning after pulling an all-night training session with the knights. That exact same bone-deep ache.
⟨Lucy!⟩
Who keeps yelling my name?
Let me sleep. I am exhausted right now, you know?
I'm a supposed delinquent noble lady — sleeping in a little is well within my rights.
⟨Lucy! Wake up!⟩
The instant Grandfather's shout cut through, my eyes flew open in a panic.
Directly beneath me was Joy's face, eyes closed, breathing peacefully.
What on earth is going on now?
⟨Finally back with us, are you?⟩
'Grandfather, what the—'
⟨The shock of the fall knocked you cold. You wouldn't open your eyes. I was worried.⟩
The word fall brought everything rushing back.
Right — the dungeon floor had collapsed out from under us, and I'd dropped down into the dark below. As the realization settled in, sensation gradually returned to its proper place across my body.
Bruises throbbed in a dozen places, and something heavy pressed down on my back — debris, most likely, piled on top of me.
'Grandfather, is something on top of me?'
⟨The remains of the floor. It's a fair amount, but you can lift it in your current state. Push it off.⟩
If there was one time Grandfather was never wrong, it was moments like this, so I gritted my teeth and shoved against the weight crushing down on me.
Before long, with a clatter of tumbling rubble, the pressure vanished from my back.
Free of the debris, I finally took in my surroundings.
The scenery of this dungeon closely resembled Where the Alchemist Once Stayed.
The difference was that while that dungeon had been set in a building ruined long after the Alchemist's disappearance, this one didn't look abandoned at all.
Oh... shit. We are so completely screwed.
This is Where the Alchemist Resides.
At a glance, it looked similar to the dungeon I'd been standing in moments ago. But the gap in difficulty between the two was night and day.
Whether the Alchemist existed or not changed absolutely everything.
To put it bluntly, this was not a place the current me could possibly clear.
My specs were simply lacking. The way I hadn't even been able to struggle against the Minotaur and got swatted aside like a fly — this dungeon carried enough danger to do exactly the same to me.
God damn you, Agra. Did you want me dead that badly?
"Mmm..."
While I was racking my brain for a way to survive this, Joy stirred awake with a low groan.
Perhaps because I'd taken the brunt of the debris, she wasn't badly hurt. She rose slowly, glanced around, and let out a hoarse voice.
"Lady Alrn. Where are we?"
'That dungeon...'
"Inside that creepy dungeon that appeared just now, probably."
"...Where is Young Master Jacob?"
'No idea.'
"Beats me, that little squirt. I only just woke up myself."
He was probably lying somewhere nearby. His position hadn't been far from ours.
As long as he didn't panic and start flailing around blindly, we'd find him without much trouble.
"Then we need to find him quick— Agh!"
Joy tried to rise in a hurry, then cried out and crumpled back to the ground.
When I looked down, her ankle was twisted completely out of shape.
She must have hurt it during the fall.
'Joy... stay still, even if it hurts, okay, Airhead Lady?'
"Sorry?"
I knelt down and brought my hand to the Airhead Lady's ankle.
Who knew I'd end up using Mercy of Armadi in the middle of the Academy entrance exam.
The miracle of healing unfolded from my palm, and in an instant Joy's ankle was restored to its original shape.
"What on earth—"
'Try moving it.'
"Airhead Lady. Try moving it."
Joy rose carefully once more — and this time, unlike before, her foot moved perfectly.
Thank goodness I had a healing skill. Otherwise I'd have been carrying her on my back the entire time we moved through this dungeon.
"Thank you, Lady Alrn."
'Don't mention it.'
"Don't worry about it~"
"But still—"
⟨Girl. Something is approaching from outside. Prepare to move.⟩
The moment Grandfather spoke, my eyes snapped to the door.
Who was it?
A chimera? A fully-restored golem? Or one of the tamed beasts the Alchemist kept?
Whichever it was, all of them were threats more than capable of taking our lives. We didn't even know where we were yet — running wasn't an option either. What were we supposed to do?!
Then what entered through the door was a humanoid figure with eyes packed densely across its entire body.
The unsleeping sentry. Chimera Argos.
If it's that thing, we're fine.
I hastily clapped a hand over Joy's mouth and whispered to her.
'Stay perfectly still.'
"Not a sound. Airhead Lady."
Argos, with its countless eyes, couldn't see out of any of them — a cruel side effect of its own design.
No matter which eye it looked through, the world was flooded with endless afterimages, so it couldn't focus on a single thing.
And so Argos never doubted a stationary object. It simply had no way to distinguish furniture that had always been there from a player standing perfectly still.
At least, that was how it worked in the game. It would surely be the same in reality.
It had to be.
Argos swept its gaze around the room — and stopped right in front of us.
Its countless eyeballs were fixed on us, staring.
Go away. Please, just leave.
Stop gawking at us with those disgusting eyes and get lost!
Perhaps that prayer was heard.
Argos did nothing at all, and simply walked back out of the room.
Only after its footsteps faded into the distance did I lift my hand from Joy's mouth — and she collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Tears glistened in the eyes of a girl who, until mere moments ago, had been desperately holding back her terror.
"What... what do they do in this place?"