The Price of Learning

"All right—shall we kick off another lively adventure today?"

Cindy offered Rai an awkward smile. After crushing everyone's spirits the day before with a long-winded lecture, he had gotten up and spoken as if nothing at all had happened.

"It's all right. You don't need to worry about it."

Zeroa tried to comfort her from beside her, but having grasped the problems of adventurer society, Cindy was in no state to feel better. If, as Rai had said, even a little more knowledge had been available, the number of adventurers who died unjust deaths would have fallen dramatically.

She didn't deny that an adventurer's experience was an asset. That gap in experience decided ranks, and with ranks came the difference in fame and fortune. Among high-ranked adventurers, there were even those who held their standing on experience and knowledge alone, despite having little fighting power to speak of.

What Rai was asking for wasn't that they surrender every scrap of knowledge they had. He was saying they should at least teach until someone had built up enough skill not to die. Adventurers so hung up on the word asset had ended up turning their backs on other adventurers' lives.

Cindy's career as an adventurer wasn't long, but she had spent the previous night thinking hard about what was right. She bit her lip, then walked up to Rai.

"Could you teach me the technique for breaking through walls?"

"Huh? Haven't you been scolded enough yet?"

Rai asked with a laugh, but Cindy looked at him with unwavering eyes.

"I'll give you whatever you want as payment. And..."

"And?"

Coming from a greenhorn who had only just begun her life as an adventurer, it was an absurdly grandiose claim. Rai snickered, apparently finding it amusing that a mere porter would talk about changing adventurer society. Whether he laughed or not, she waited for his answer with a serious gaze.

"Fine. But the technique I'm teaching you now—you keep it to yourself."

"...Why?"

Cindy frowned at words that contradicted everything he had said the day before, and Rai wore a thoroughly annoying smile.

"You said you'd change all of adventurer society, right? Then you've got to climb to a position where you can actually change it. You planning to go up empty-handed? With your skills, you could spend a lifetime and never get there. You need a weapon like this, even if it's a cheap one."

Having given the dreaming girl a dose of reality, Rai called the other two over and revealed the formula. Complex patterns scattered chaotically through the air, but the three of them stared with fierce concentration.

"A formula that infiltrates an opponent's formula is pretty complicated. But you're breaking into a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fixed pattern created by a dungeon with no will of its own, so once you learn the pattern, you can keep using it. Just keep in mind that every dungeon has a different pattern—figure out how to analyze them yourselves."

Cindy, who lacked specialized knowledge, struggled to memorize the entire formula with Zeroa's help. She didn't even dare attempt to deploy it, but Aslan tried the formula in the air a few times, then walked straight up to the wall.

He grabbed the club he had been carrying around as little more than decoration—he had never used it even once—deployed the formula, and slammed the wall.

With a piercing clang that rang in their ears, the club snapped in two and went flying, grazing past Cindy.

"Eek—!"

She let out a cute little scream, found herself locking eyes with Zeroa—whom she had just thrown her arms around—and backed away in embarrassment.

"Hey, this isn't working."

"You dumbass. You swung without even using the formula properly. If you can't do both at once, don't try. Cast first, then smash."

Rai kicked Aslan in the back and demonstrated. After a few practice attempts, Aslan managed to punch a hole just big enough for one person to squeeze through. Compared to Rai it was pathetic, but considering that several adventurers had once poured everything they had into making a hole that size, it was an impressive sight.

"She doesn't have the ability to use it, so you teach her."

"Me?"

"Yeah. You can at least teach her some basic training methods. And you learn a lot by teaching, so treat it as practice."

Zeroa looked at Cindy without much confidence, but she bowed and asked him to take care of her. With an awkward smile, he taught her what he had learned so far as they walked, stumbling through it, and whenever he got stuck he asked Rai, picking up the parts he had previously skipped over without realizing.

Aslan, who had rested for a day, seemed overflowing with energy as he took on the monsters. Whenever one appeared, Zeroa would break off from teaching Cindy and rush out to fight, and even without Rai joining in, the two of them took the monsters down with ease.

Monster corpses were reabsorbed by the dungeon over time, so harvesting materials quickly was the smart move—but Rai, whose only interest was the fortieth floor, ignored the bodies and pressed on. Zeroa and Cindy looked on as if it were a waste, but when the party leader decided to move forward, they had no choice but to follow.

The dungeon grew larger as the floors deepened, but for Rai, who simply went in a straight line, it wasn't much of a problem. They had never been here before, but the thirtieth floor was said to take three or four hours even following the path—and they had cleared it in fifteen minutes. Cindy should have been getting used to the party's pace by now, but she still couldn't adapt.

Even Rai's blistering march, however, came to an end at the thirty-first floor. Coming down the stairs, he handed the map to Cindy, then looked at Aslan and Zeroa.

"No more map from here. Which way's the exit?"

"...You didn't buy a map?"

"Nope. From the thirty-first floor they sell them for ten gold coins. Ten coins for a map that isn't even properly finished? Are they insane? For that price you could buy a precision map of the Bernies Empire. Paying for that junk would give me an ulcer."

Of course, precision maps were military-grade, so you couldn't actually buy one with money. Maps marked with new harvesting spots and all kinds of information had to be purchased from cartographers or the guild, and they weren't cheap. The orthodox approach was for individual adventurers to map the dungeon themselves, but having an accurate map versus not having one made an enormous difference, so adventurers with the means tended to buy them.

"So how do we go from here?"

"We hitch a free ride off an adventurer who has a map."

Leaving Cindy behind to worry whether that would be as easy as it sounded, Rai looked at the floor and scanned here and there. Wondering what he was doing, Cindy watched closely, and Zeroa answered for him.

"He's looking for tracks."

"...Tracks? That's ridiculous. How many parties have passed through here? How are you supposed to find the one that has an accurate map?"

Since there was only one passage connecting the floors, the number of parties that had come through here was truly countless. Some would be first-timers; others would be parties traveling to and from deeper floors. Picking out exactly the party they wanted from among countless tracks was close to impossible.

"Well... the instructor's tracking skills are incredible. I can hardly believe it myself, but I think he'll find them."

Cindy frowned at the deep trust in Zeroa's eyes. She had seen one unbelievable thing after another so far, but this one still struck her as absurd. She watched Rai, who seemed to be wandering around aimlessly.

"Do you have any other specialties? I'm getting tired of being shocked, so I'd like to know in advance."

"He's also got a talent for pissing people off."

Aslan chimed in from the side, and Cindy smiled.

"That one I already know."

The three of them nodded in unison and looked at Rai. He had been staring blankly at the wall, then the ground, moving in odd ways; then he turned around.

"Found it. Let's go."

His confident expression inspired a strange kind of trust. Aslan, who had been watching with his arms crossed, followed first, and Zeroa set off with Cindy.

Cindy could tell that even though Zeroa had taken a long break from adventuring, he had a great deal of experience. The reason he stayed by her side wasn't, as Rai claimed, because he was after women. Guarding the rear of the party with a porter who lacked combat power was an inconspicuous but vital role. Even when he went to fight monsters, he always moved Cindy over to Rai's side first, which made it look like he was always joining the fight late. Cindy thought it was remarkable how Zeroa naturally took his position and moved without anyone telling him to, and she looked at him with admiration.

"Don't fall for him. He's not Zeroa—he's a player."

"Kyaah!"

Startled by Rai, who had appeared beside her without her noticing, Cindy hid behind Zeroa's back. Rai snickered and kicked at the tracks on the floor.

"These aren't the right tracks. Let's go back."

Aslan, who had been walking ahead, Cindy with her startled face, and Zeroa with his gentle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠smile—all three stared at him with icy eyes.

"What? You guys were following so confidently I figured they had a map. We were right up to the midpoint, so we won't have to backtrack much. Come on."

Rai started heading back as if making excuses, and Aslan shrugged and followed. Apparently tracks alone weren't enough; Rai kept going forward and then turning back. Just as they were starting to look at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠him with skeptical eyes, wondering if he was actually finding anything, he discovered the passage down to the thirty-second floor.

"Oops—took a while, huh."

Rai said it casually and started down the stairs. Zeroa gave the dazed Cindy a push on the back and started walking, and she finally came to her senses and followed.

Even accounting for a few mistakes, she still couldn't understand how he had found the way from tracks alone. They had run into monsters along the way and had to backtrack, but the actual time it took wasn't that long. She had never been to the thirty-first floor herself—she had only heard about it—but even following a map by the shortest route was supposed to take three hours. Calculating the time, it seemed about the same. Cindy couldn't fathom how they had arrived in the same time as people with maps, and Zeroa spoke up.

"It's easier if you just give up."

Don't try to understand—just accept it. At those words, Cindy walked on with another pout.

Having reached the thirty-third floor without much trouble, Rai stretched, finding the progress too slow.

"Ah, isn't there some adventurer around here carrying a map?"

"Even if there is, you think they'd show you a map that expensive?"

"Eh, we can just borrow it for a bit."

Cindy didn't want to understand what he meant by borrow, so she decided to dismiss it as just talk and ignore it. Just as she had grasped Zeroa's advice—that it was easier to simply give up—and was feeling a sense of inner peace, Rai looked in the opposite direction from the passage they had been heading toward.

He gazed for a moment into the darkness beyond the reach of light, then grinned.

"A map."

"What?"

"Wait, no—I don't know if they have one, so for now, an adventurer."

The thing she had been trying to ignore was about to become reality. Cindy stared in horror, but Rai, excited, deployed a formula and grabbed Aslan's wrist. A faintly glowing thread connected their wrists, and Aslan freaked out, waving his hand. The swaying thread shortened and lengthened at will, remaining connected to Rai's wrist the whole time.

"It's an Anti-Lost Tag. I'll go first, so follow the string."

The moment he finished speaking, Rai shot into the darkness as if vanishing. Aslan stared into the dark where nothing was visible except the sound of running, then looked at the thread on his wrist. No matter how he moved, the thread adjusted its length on its own, so there was no worry of it snapping. And even if it overlapped with his body, it passed through like a spirit, so it didn't hinder his movement at all.

"He's using another groundbreaking spell..."

Cindy recognized the magic's usefulness and gave a bitter smile. A thread that told you each other's locations in a dungeon would be a huge help in emergencies. She didn't know if it would still connect through a teleportation trap, but getting unluckily separated from the party wasn't limited to teleport traps. Especially for beginners not yet used to dungeons, this magic would go a long way toward preventing danger.

The desire to learn this, too, welled up—but she had already received the formula for breaking dungeon walls from Rai. She had said she would give him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anything, so now she had nothing left to offer. Cindy smiled bitterly.

"What would I have to give to learn this one? I don't have anything left to offer."

"Huh? You're really gonna give Raikkang whatever he wants?"

Aslan, still waving his hand as if he didn't like the name Anti-Lost Tag, looked at her.

"Yes. He taught me magic that valuable."

"Ehh—that's not a great idea."

Cindy stiffened briefly at Aslan's words, then asked carefully, and he spoke with a queasy look.

"That guy's secretly into women, you know. From the stories I've heard, he's a total lecher."

"He said he likes women with big chests... You're pretty big."

At his gaze, Cindy covered her chest without thinking. By simple calculation, it was magic that could revolutionize the adventuring world, so if she could get it for a single night together, it would be a bargain. But things like that never worked out by simple calculation. Cindy was still a virgin; she had no experience, and she had never even considered selling her body to get something.

"It's all right. He's not that kind of person. Probably?"

Zeroa averted his eyes, unable to say it with certainty, and Cindy swallowed hard and shut her mouth.