Screams Echoing Through the Dungeon
"Let's learn to be adventurers, too."
It was Testia—Black—who brought it up first, two weeks after they had come to live with Wicker.
"A-adventurers? Us?"
Yuri—White—went pale, her ears and tail drooping flat against her head.
"Look at Luca. She's only been learning the sword from Wicker for two weeks, and she's already this strong."
"Ta-da!"
Lucas—Yellow—puffed out her chest proudly. At her feet lay three massive wild boars, hunted for tonight's dinner and collapsed in a heap.
"But maybe Luca's the only one with special talent…"
"I can cast simple magic too. I taught myself mana circulation ages ago."
Black cupped her hands together, concentrated, and murmured a tiny incantation. A small flame flickered to life between her palms.
"That's amazing, Tia. But I'm not good at anything."
"You pray every day, though. What about being a healer?"
"Wouldn't that be hard? I've never once heard the Goddess answer me…"
"Doesn't the heart matter most? Besides, if all three of us go, no one will be left to hold the rear."
"Hmm…"
After a moment's deliberation, White finally steeled herself and clenched her fists tight.
"Okay. I don't want to be a burden to Orabeoni forever, either. I can't live my whole life as a freeloader."
"Then it's decided. First, let's ask Wicker to teach us magic and healing."
That very night, Black and White went straight to Wicker and begged for lessons, just as Yellow had done. But the answer wasn't encouraging.
"Magic and healing? Ah, that's a problem. I'm a complete layman in those fields. I wouldn't be much help."
At Wicker's response, the two looked as though they'd lost their entire country. But Wicker immediately offered an alternative.
"You want to learn magic, right? I'll buy you some beginner textbooks from the market district tomorrow. Come on, cheer up. Your faces could scare off ghosts."
Black and White were moved by his thoughtfulness all over again. There was no reason in the world for a slave merchant to spend a single coin on his slaves' wishes.
And yet Wicker had never once refused any of the three girls' requests. If anything, he was always the one looking out for them first.
The three of them grew accustomed to his warmth, little by little. Like a soft pillow they could no longer sleep without.
Now, they no longer wanted to let go of it at all.
"Magic is broadly divided into three schools—arcane, divine, and mental. The one I'm learning is arcane, and Yuri's is divine."
"The higher the tier, the stronger the spell. Zero through ten… That thing Tia showed us was probably tier zero. I should start with mana circulation, I suppose…"
"So if you put mana into a sword, that makes aura?"
The three of them studied and practiced without a moment's rest. Yellow, who could already read well, read the textbooks aloud to the others again and again, until the beginner's guides were worn ragged and falling apart at the seams.
"Magic Arrow!"
"M-minor Healing."
In just three days, both girls had taught themselves first-tier magic.
After four days of drilling as a team, the three of them slipped into the city without Wicker's knowledge and made their way to the Adventurers' Guild.
They liked it there. Every adventurer in the hall carried an air of freedom, untethered to anyone or anything.
"We'd like to register as adventurers."
Black approached Guild Receptionist Seri with all the confidence she could muster. The receptionist's brow furrowed slightly.
"I will need to confirm this, but adventuring carries considerable risk. Has your owner judged that all three of you are of an age suitable for such work?"
They hadn't expected the question, and the three of them faltered for a beat. Still, Black bulldozed ahead on sheer momentum.
"O-of course. You might not know this, but I'm an elf. Older than you, in fact."
Somehow it turned into a bluff backed by an outright lie.
Even for an elf, her age wasn't all that far removed from Yellow's or White's.
Fortunately, the receptionist had no particular expertise in elven lifespans.
"…Very well. I don't see any personal identification names on you three, and registration requires one, so please enter at least a pseudonym."
That part was no problem at all. The three of them had names they called one another by.
The receptionist sighed and issued them their adventurer licenses.
Slave owners sending their slaves to the guild to earn pocket money was a common occurrence.
How could anyone work children this young to the bone?
Elend was an enormous city, and a dangerous dungeon under active exploration sat nearby—yet hardly a day passed without word that some adventurer who'd taken a commission had died.
Even so, a mere receptionist like her had no authority to refuse issuing a license.
This city lay on imperial territory, and the Empire was doing everything it could to inflate its numbers of fighting bodies—adventurers and soldiers alike—to grow its national power.
Refuse to issue a license, and she was the one who'd be punished, and severely at that.
Lucas. Testia. Yuri.
Each received a license set with a small mana stone, and they rejoiced like children receiving their very first presents.
"We'd like to take a commission right away."
Their owner must starve them if they don't meet their quota, I suppose. Thinking this, the receptionist selected a collection request—among the safe ones—with relatively high pay and handed it over.
Yellow read it through and accepted it on the spot.
"Is something the matter?"
Black asked the receptionist, the corners of her mouth curling up. The receptionist hesitated, caught off guard.
"Please give us the kind where we can fight monsters."
Time passed, and one day—exactly one month after they had first met Wicker.
The three of them stood together on the second floor of the dungeon beneath northern Elend.
"Our coordination's gotten pretty good. Nice link-up."
"Uuu… goblins are scary-looking."
"Fun."
The three were heading back toward the upper floor's exit.
"Fun or not, we have to head out before Wicker gets back. If he finds out we've been doing adventurer work, he'll worry for sure."
"That's right. I want to brag about it openly, once we've become a little more capable."
"Wait. Something's coming."
At Yellow's warning, the three smoothly shifted into combat stances. Moments later, a woman appeared before them—a nametag reading Swordswoman Lippy floating above her head—and spoke up.
"Hey, you kids. Why are you in a dangerous dungeon without a guardian?"
The woman was an adventurer herself, but the three didn't lower their guard. They'd heard that in dungeons, cornered adventurers sometimes turned to banditry and robbed their fellow travelers.
"You're all slaves? Did your owner send you into the dungeon to make money? How could anyone do that to children this young…"
Yellow, Black, and White exchanged glances. They knew how unusual they must look, which was why they had avoided contact with other adventurers as much as possible until now.
"Who's your owner, kids?"
the woman asked. Noticing that the children were clearly wary of her, she put on a friendly expression and spread her hands.
"I'm not here to scold you. Even if you are slaves, sending little children into a dungeon is wrong. So…"
"Why do you care?"
At Black's question, the woman placed a hand over her chest and answered.
"Because I can't just stand by and watch. I'm going to your owner and lodging a complaint. I'll tell him to stop this inhumane treatment, effective immediately."
"We appreciate the concern, but we can manage on our own. We handle the dungeon just fine."
At Black's reply, the woman's brow creased.
"Look here—your big sister here is a D-rank adventurer, you know? A four-year veteran here in Elend, and I've even cleared this dungeon down to the third floor."
The woman reeled off her credentials.
"I don't know how you three made it to the second floor, but you'll die down here in no time. I'll take you back to the surface, so tell me who your owner is."
"This lady's annoying. I don't like her."
Yellow leveled her sword at the woman.
"Um, Miss Lippy? We're sorry, but we really have to go. Orabeoni is waiting for us…"
As White fidgeted anxiously, the woman finally exploded and stamped her foot.
"That's what I'm asking—who is this Orabeoni of yours?! I'm kindly offering to help, so why are you hiding everything? Isn't your owner that slave merchant Wicker? Be honest. That utterly wicked man sent you to do this cruel work, didn't he?"
Until that moment, the three of them had patiently endured the woman's pestering. But the instant Wicker's name left her mouth, their expressions turned ice-cold.
"There it is—I was right. Nothing's lower than a slave owner. And here I thought it was all some kind of trick. I've never trusted slave merchants, not once. Just thinking about the gold coins they swindled out of me back when I tried buying a slave still makes my blood boil in my sleep…!"
Clenching her fists and swallowing her fury, the woman strode right up to Yellow.
"I'm going to expose that Wicker brute for what he really is in front of everyone and get him banished from Elend. You three—come to the guild with me right now and testify, all…?"
The woman, who had been about to seize Yellow's arm, sensed that something was wrong.
Yellow hadn't budged an inch—as if she were a stone pillar bolted firmly into the floor.
The woman turned her head. What she was gripping was unmistakably a human child of about seven years old.
"Huh…?"
The woman—Swordswoman Lippy—nearly blacked out under the wave of chilling dread that rolled over her.
She knew this sensation.
She had claimed, just moments ago, that she'd cleared the dungeon's third floor. It had been nothing but a bluff.
She had descended to the third floor exactly once—and the moment she set foot there, the killing intent radiating from the monsters had made her wet herself, and she'd fled straight back up. That was all.
And this bone-deep cold was just like the killing intent she'd felt that day.
"Ma'am. Was it 'four-year veteran'?"
The woman's mouth flapped soundlessly. Even the word 'ma'am,' scraping against her pride, couldn't summon a response.
"We've been adventurers for two weeks."
Her gaze darted between the three small faces, and then she understood.
"We're D-rank too."
She had just poked at something that should never, ever have been poked.
"No need to see us out. We're on our way back up from the fourth floor right now."
The tiny dark elf's pitch-black eyes bored into the woman.
"But there's one thing we should warn you about."
The human child's golden eyes. The beastkin child's crimson ones.
"Nobody touches our Master."
The three slaves each adjusted their weapons with practiced ease.
"How convenient—no witnesses around."
"Don't worry. We won't kill you."
In a dungeon, after all, the screams of adventurers and monsters alike never truly cease.