The Hero's Crest
“The knight order is here?”
The information I got from the receptionist at the guild made my brow furrow.
Elend, where I had made my base for nearly two years now, was a backwater corner of the world where beginner adventurers gathered. It technically sat within Imperial territory, though it was practically closer to the Holy State — there was no reason in the world for the capital's knights to come sniffing around here.
“Did something happen?”
“It's about the dungeon that appeared to our north.”
“Wasn't its exploration nearly complete? It's been almost a year since it surfaced, and I'd heard the fifth floor had already been cleared.”
“Well, about that... it seems there was a sixth floor.”
“Hah. And it's only coming to light now?”
Even accounting for how slow the exploration had gone thanks to this city having almost no adventurers above C-rank, that was glacial pacing. Most dungeons were five floors deep and rated low difficulty — easy to subdue, and no trouble at all even if left alone.
But the moment a sixth floor existed, neither the dungeon's true depth nor its difficulty could be guessed anymore. If the monsters on a dungeon's lowest floor were left unkilled for long enough, there was always the chance they would surge to the surface and run rampant, leaving devastation in their wake.
“So the knight order is here to subdue it?”
“That's the situation. Our branch guildmaster looks like he's about to have an aneurysm.”
I hadn't seen this coming either. A dungeon in a beginner's region — I'd carried the lazy assumption that of course it would only be five floors.
“Wiki.”
I opened the wiki window and searched for Elend, following the related entries to dig up information on the nearby dungeon.
[Access Denied — Insufficient Permissions]
Restricted. The wiki was still as useless as ever with my level stuck at 1.
Not to mention this is a different timeline, so there are plenty of discrepancies from what I know.
As I scrolled up and down the page, I noticed something — a feature that hadn't been there before.
[Elend — View current version of this article]
What's this?
The moment I touched it, I was redirected to an entry with an entirely different name.
[Plain of the Dead]
A bug? Why is it redirecting here... no, hold on.
I studied the map embedded in the article, and realization struck me like a hammer.
“It's the same location.”
The Plain of the Dead. It was a region name I'd seen on the wiki back before I possessed this body.
And the position marked on that map was exactly, precisely identical to where Elend stood on the map of the present day.
“Damn it all.”
Cold sweat traced a line down my spine. In fairness, there'd been no way for me to notice until now — I'd only ever read everything as text on the wiki, never actually played the original game. This was the first time I'd seen a region's information laid out visually, on a map. Even if the name Elend hadn't rang any bells, I'd simply assumed it was one of the thousands of proper nouns that had slipped my memory.
The cause seemed obvious. The monsters festering on the dungeon's neglected lower floors would eventually erupt and swallow the city whole. And if that catastrophe was coming, today — the very day the knight order arrived to put the dungeon down — would be the day it happened.
“Kids.”
Strangely enough, in that instant, the thing I wanted to know more than anything else was where my three children were.
“Did a party of three young adventurers happen to come by the guild today?”
“I'm sorry... what?”
“Were they here or not?”
The receptionist flustered. “Guild policy strictly forbids sharing information about other adventurers. We're not a brokerage house—”
“They're my kids. Quickly, please.”
At my choice of words, she frowned. “Mister Wicker, didn't you say you owned no slaves? Weren't you the one who let children that young become adventurers in the first plac—”
“Yes, exactly, so hurry up and tell me! Lucas, Testia, Yuri — where are they?!”
BANG!
I'd slammed my fist down on the desk without even realizing it. The receptionist glared at me frostily and answered in a mechanical voice.
“...Owners and their slaves fall under the exception clause. They accepted three monster-subjugation quests this morning and left the guild.”
“Damn it.”
I bolted out of the guild and sprinted toward the dungeon at full power.
“...Yuri? Are you alive?”
Black asked weakly, clutching the hole punched through her chest.
“...Still... *cough*... yes.”
White answered through the blood she coughed up, staining her snow-white hair red. Her trembling legs barely held her upright.
“And... Luca?”
Yellow seemed to have no strength left in her voice; instead, she raised her thumb with the hand that wasn't gripping her sword.
Death's shadow hung thick over the three exhausted faces. Skin torn open, weapons shattered, the chamber around them scarred everywhere by the ferocity of the battle.
But they weren't the only ones wrecked. The monster that stood against them — the Chimera — bore its own web of wounds across its body. It, too, had clearly recognized the three of them as a genuine threat, fully intent on finishing them for good. It crouched, biding its time, waiting for an opening to land the killing blow.
“My mana's at its limit... I have one healing spell left in me.”
“Save it for Luca. If the front line collapses, we're done. Luca — can you manage?”
Yellow nodded. Black calmly studied the Chimera, plotting out their next move.
I should have listened to Mister Wicker.
He'd always hammered it into them: dungeons are dangerous, be careful. When he'd found out the three of them had registered as adventurers — and worse, that they'd been sneaking into dungeons — he'd given them the scolding of their lives.
But that was the only time. Soon flush with their rapidly growing strength, the three of them had grown cocky. Partly it was because there were no stronger adventurers around to measure themselves against. But more than anything, they'd wanted to get strong fast — strong enough to stand beside him.
He had saved them from a life of slavery and helped them purely, without wanting anything in return, and they wanted to repay him. They'd wanted to knock the smugness out of the adventurers who sneered at him, which was why they'd kept even their push below the sixth floor a secret. If they revealed they'd conquered the dungeon to its very end all at once — well, how much cooler would that look?
Every bit of it was just the sort of scheme children come up with. And now it had become a fatal problem.
“...I don't want to die.”
She'd been born into nothing but persecution, grown up under it, and ended her childhood a slave. The nametag above her head hadn't changed yet, but even so — she'd finally, barely, gotten her hands on freedom. ...No. The nametag didn't matter anymore. Not the way it hadn't mattered to their master, who went quietly about his work as if the letters the Goddess had carved above their heads simply didn't exist.
There was still so much she wanted to do. So many places she wanted to go.
“...Mm.”
The sight before Black — Yellow's back, the monstrous bulk of the Chimera looming beyond — was beginning to blur. She clenched her teeth and forced back her tears. If she started crying, soft-hearted White would follow, and then everything would truly fall apart.
And still, it was so hard. The pain wracking her entire body, the haze of blood loss clouding her mind, the parched agony of her drained mana — it was all unbearable.
Then—
―VMMMM!
The necklace at Black's throat vibrated violently. She pulled it out, and from the artifact that had activated on its own, a familiar voice spilled forth.
“Are you all okay?!”
“...Ah.”
His urgent voice echoed through the chamber. They'd meant to keep him from worrying, but somehow he'd found out after all.
This necklace was an emergency artifact Wicker had entrusted to Black in case the three of them ever landed in danger — a one-use item capable of only a short transmission. It had cost a fortune, but he had bought it for them without a moment's hesitation.
“Orabeoni...? Orabeoni!”
“...Mister.”
Hearing his voice, White and Yellow called out to him too.
“Don't tell me you're in the dungeon! Get out of there right now! It's dangerous!”
His voice was ragged with panic. Black opened her mouth to call for help—
—and stopped.
How long am I going to keep leaning on him? He's not some superhuman who can do everything. We've taken enough from him already. Time to stop being spoiled children.
Black's grip tightened on her staff.
“We're in the dungeon. Don't worry. We'll come home safe.”
“Just hold on a moment, I'm coming right—!”
Static swallowed the line, and the necklace crumbled to dust. The artifact had simply reached the end of its life.
Black lifted her head. “Luca. Yuri.”
Then she began to draw a magic circle with her staff. “You remember what we promised Mister Wicker?”
Instead of answering, Yellow squared her stance and faced the Chimera head-on. “Yeah. We go home to Orabeoni. Together.”
White cast her healing spell over Yellow, and bit by bit, her wounds began to close.
The fundamentals above all.
Yellow chanted it in her head as she coiled the strength into her legs. She launched herself forward in a dead sprint and brought her blade down on the Chimera's skull in a flawless vertical strike, without so much as a hair's breadth of error.
―KRAAAAAGH!!
The Chimera, which had been waiting all this while for its moment, finally moved. Teeth and claws that could render any living thing into a single mass of shredded flesh came swinging down.
“HAAAAAAH!!”
White, tears on the very verge of spilling, flared her large ears, balled her fists, and dove in from the side. Bright light blazed over the three of them — Black's fire magic loosing at the same instant.
Each of them, everything they had, one final strike. Killing blows born of nothing but the will to survive collided at a single point.
“Yuri. Yuri.”
White came to with her body swaying beneath her. Looking down at her, faces tight with worry, were Yellow and Black.
“...Did we... survive?”
Black answered by weeping and pulling her into a hug.
Helped upright, White slowly raised her torso. She must have fainted during the fight. The Chimera's corpse sprawled across the floor.
“We really won...”
“Yeah. We won.”
The three looked at one another and managed tired smiles. Each of them let out a long breath of relief without meaning to.
FWOOSH—!
And then, all at once, a brilliant white light burst before their eyes. All three covered their faces, then slowly lowered their hands.
“What is...?”
Something was floating in the air before them. Wrapped in radiant light, mysterious to behold — they looked like little more than pebbles, and yet somehow like insignias of some kind.
SHWAAAAK!
It happened in an instant. The insignias came hurtling down, sucked into the bodies of Yellow, Black, and White as if fired from a bow.
“Hyah?!”
“What the—?!”
All three yelped and toppled onto their backsides. And there, etched onto the backs of their hands, glowed a shining sigil.