First Day with Exploration Team 3
Juno arrived at the Exploration Team 3 office on his first day. He looked up at the sign hanging on the wall. [Exploration Team 3]
It was the Exploration Division under the External Exploration Bureau. The team assigned to him was Team 3.
Knock, knock.
After straightening his clothes, he opened the door. The moment he stepped inside, his eyes met those of a woman with a short bob haircut. One side of her hair was hot pink, the other blue, split down the middle by her part.
She was perched on the windowsill with her legs crossed, smoking. The dreamy, peculiar atmosphere around her seemed almost otherworldly, perhaps because of the violet smoke drifting from her cigarette.
“Who are you?”
The woman tilted her head slightly as she looked at him. Juno bowed politely to the senior colleague he would be working with from now on.
“Hello. As of today, I am Juno, an apprentice mage assigned to Exploration Team 3.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a new recruit.”
The woman took a deep drag from her long pipe. Her crimson lips parted, exhaling a long stream of purple smoke. “Just sit down. The team leader will be here soon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Juno took a seat on the sofa she indicated with a jerk of her chin. He had definitely been assigned to Team 3, yet she knew nothing about a new hire. Did the message get lost somewhere in between?
While he was thinking that, her expression shifted as if she had just remembered something. She hopped down from the windowsill and approached him.
“If your name is Juno… are you the Tower Lord’s disciple?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Never thought the Tower Lord’s disciple would end up on our team. What an honor.”
Wearing leather boots, she clicked across the floor toward him. At the same time, a strong fragrance hit his nose. At first he thought it was perfume, but on closer inspection it seemed to be the scent of tobacco clinging to her body. Unlike ordinary cigarette smoke, this tobacco carried a pleasant, floral aroma.
She waved her hand lightly through the air, and a teacup and teapot appeared on the table as if by magic. The teapot tilted on its own, filling the cup. She had cast a spell.
“I don’t usually do this for new recruits, but since you’re the Tower Lord’s disciple, I’ll make an exception as a welcome. Drink up.”
“Thank you.”
Slurp. Juno lifted the cup and took a sip. This is the advantage of having a good background. Thanks to the title of being the Tower Lord’s disciple, he was even being served welcome tea by a senior on his very first day. He felt like someone special.
“You’re pretty famous, you know? I was really curious what kind of guy you’d be. You’re a lot younger than I expected.”
She studied him as if he were some curious object, then flopped down on the opposite sofa and crossed her legs. Just then, someone entered the office.
“What’s with the kid?”
It was a man. Dark skin, long red hair tied high in a single ponytail. Earrings, bracelets, rings, and necklaces dangled from his entire body, jingling with every step. Juno had never seen a man so lavishly adorned with accessories. Golden goblin, maybe?
“Hello. As of today, I am Juno, an apprentice mage assigned to Exploration Team 3.” Juno stood up quickly and bowed. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Oh, so you’re the new guy?”
The man replied in a nonchalant tone while crunching into an apple. He headed for his desk in the corner, propped both feet up on it, and crossed them in an X. If you wanted to be negative, he looked like a delinquent student. If you wanted to be positive, a free-spirited bard.
Is that allowed? No matter how much it was his own desk, this was still a workplace. Juno wondered if such a sloppy attitude was acceptable. Is the team atmosphere always like this? Come to think of it, the bob-haired woman had also been smoking by the window. Maybe pursuing that kind of at-home freedom was the team’s motto. Well, better than being uptight.
Still, it was his first day, and just sitting around felt awkward. He looked around for something to do. His gaze landed on a messy pile of documents. A quick-witted new recruit was supposed to find work on their own.
“Senior, I’ll organize those documents over there.”
“Nah. Just relax. You don’t have to do that.”
With his senior staring at him so blatantly, how could he possibly feel relaxed? Juno gave up and sat back down. Hmm. Being treated well was nice, but staying like this felt like sitting on pins and needles.
While he sipped his tea, an unexpected debate broke out between the two.
“How long do you think this new recruit will last?”
“Three days.”
“I say one day.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Haven’t had free drinks in a while.”
The topic was how long the new recruit would endure. The man bet one day; the woman bet three. Their natural conversation suggested they made this wager every time a new recruit arrived. But weren’t these kinds of conversations usually held when the person in question wasn’t around?
“He’s the kid the Tower Lord brought in. He won’t be the same as the others, right? At least he’ll last three days.”
“What? The Tower Lord’s direct disciple? That kid?”
The red-haired man looked genuinely shocked. Reflexively, the apple pieces he had been chewing flew out of his mouth like popcorn. Good thing he wasn’t sitting right in front of me, Juno thought.
“Yeah, Dunting.”
“No wonder. You never cared about new recruits before, so why suddenly serve tea? Trying to score points with the future Tower Lord, huh?”
“Shut up and eat your apple.”
“Ambition incarnate.”
“Says the greedy pig who goes crazy for anything gold.”
Juno quietly watched their verbal sparring while waiting for the team leader. Watching other people’s fights was always the most entertaining. Even though it wasn’t a magical brawl, there was a certain fun in seeing who would win the mouth fight where neither would back down from a single word.
Just then, the team leader appeared.
“You two sure know how to treat a new recruit.”
Despite the scolding words, his voice carried a playful chuckle at the end. A dwarf?
A middle-aged dwarf mage with a shiny bald head like polished shoes, a beard braided in two strands, and a giant-like presence despite his small stature.
“Hello, I’m an apprentice ma—”
“Follow me.”
That was the extent of his first greeting with the superior he would be working with. It was an introduction proportional to the number of hairs on the man’s head.
[Team Leader Gengor]
Juno only learned the dwarf’s name after seeing the nameplate on the team leader’s desk. The moment they entered the office, Gengor had skipped introductions and fired off a question instead.
“Do you know what the Exploration Division does?”
“It’s the department that explores and manages erosion zones.”
Erosion zones. In simple terms, they were similar to dungeons. The problem was that they were murderously difficult dungeons with hell mode as the default setting.
“Correct. To be specific, there are three main duties.”
Gengor continued, fingers interlaced.
“First, exploration. When a report of erosion comes in, we deploy immediately and investigate the entire erosion area—its characteristics, resources, internal environment, hazards, inhabiting creatures, and so on. We analyze and confirm various items to gather information from multiple angles.”
Exploring erosion! What mysteries might exist there? What powers? How would they differ from magic? What about alien lifeforms? There would surely be many creatures with unusual forms and properties. Erosion zones supposedly hid all sorts of strange treasures, weapons, and artifacts. How rare and special would the items he encountered be? Ah, he was already getting excited. He was dying to go inside right now.
“After exploration, if the erosion can be eliminated, we proceed with removal. If removal is deemed impossible, we assign it a code number and continue observing, managing, and inspecting it regularly. That’s the second duty.”
“……”
“The third is handling requests. Occasionally, other departments or researchers submit requests—asking us to collect resources or materials from an erosion zone, or to assist with erosion research. Of course, there are also quite a few requests that come from outside the Magic Tower. Performing those missions as well is part of the Exploration Division’s work, but…”
Gengor shrugged and leaned back in his chair.
“You won’t need to worry about that. The third duty won’t apply to you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Every new recruit who joins our team quits within a day or two. Before they even get a chance to experience request work.”
Gengor looked at him with a completely uninterested expression—the gaze one might give someone who was about to leave anyway.
“Erosion zones are unknown territories filled with the bizarre and the mysterious. They’re dangerous battlefields where alien species can appear at any moment and stab you in the back. No one knows if they’ll die today or tomorrow.”
“……”
“Every day is a struggle for survival, no different from walking a tightrope where a single small mistake can mean life or death. Still want to do it? If you think you can’t, say so now. If you’re going to quit anyway, it’s easier for me if you do it early.”
Juno knew. He knew how terrifying erosion zones were. But it didn’t matter. Danger wasn’t a problem for him. He was thirsty for magic. When it came to magic, his creed was never to set limits on learning and experience.
Through his recent intense studies, he had come to realize that magic was a fascinating field of study—strange the more you learned, and irresistibly addictive the deeper you delved, stimulating an almost obsessive desire to collect knowledge. In that sense, the Exploration Division was…
The perfect department for indulging in magic obsession.
Erosion zones contained new powers and mysteries that were difficult to encounter through normal means—a treasure trove filled with alien knowledge and items. While they were battlefields fraught with blood and death, to him they were no different from a playground where he could enthusiastically pursue his obsession.
That was why he had chosen the Exploration Division. You could call it fulfilling personal desires under the guise of work.
“I’ll do it. If I were going to quit, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.”
“Everyone says that at first. Then after one trip, they immediately submit a transfer request.”
Apprentices could request a transfer within one week of starting work. But Juno had no intention of changing his mind. Gengor didn’t seem to have high expectations for his persistence, but…
“Wait outside. Cynthia will give you your assignment soon.”
Following the bob-haired woman—Cynthia—through the teleportation circle, they arrived in the middle of a forest. A dense coniferous forest. Sunlight filtering through towering trees. It was an ordinary forest. The only difference was a green door standing alone in a clearing.
“Is that the green door?”
“Correct.”
A translucent veil with a reddish glow surrounded the green door. The moment Juno saw it, he recognized it as a barrier spell.
“Can I enter and exit the barrier freely as well?”
“What?”
Cynthia looked startled by his question. “You can see that?”
“It’s a red hemisphere. Nine spell formulas in total. A three-layer multi-layered barrier spell. Each boundary surface seems to have three formulas inscribed on it. Am I right?”
“……You figured all that out at a glance?”
Cynthia’s face filled with shock. “That’s magic you shouldn’t be able to see at 4-star level.”
His current level was 4-star. He was still only a lower-class mage. Apparently, a higher-level barrier that was impossible to perceive at lower ranks. Juno scratched his head, tilting it in confusion.
“Is that so? How strange.”
“At your level, you shouldn’t be able to see that red barrier yet. You’d need to be at least a 6-star middle-class mage… No, never mind that. Being able to see it is one thing, but how did you instantly grasp the number of formulas and the structure?”
Juno didn’t know the reason either. Why he could perceive and interpret higher-level magic without any particular effort. While others might not be able to, for him it was as natural as breathing. He had recently felt his magical senses and comprehension expand significantly with his improved achievements. This was probably influenced by that change.
“You… you’re an even more remarkable kid than I thought. No wonder the Tower Lord took you as a disciple.”
Cynthia let out a genuine exclamation of admiration. Saying she needed to calm her startled heart, she took out her pipe and lit some tobacco.
“Hoo.”
After exhaling a long stream of violet smoke, she pulled something from her pocket and held it out.
“Here. It’s the mark of an Exploration Division member.”
It was a necklace. A piece of yellow jade carved into a crescent moon shape hung from a leather cord.
“According to regulations, all Exploration Division mages must wear this necklace. With it, you can pass through most erosion zone barriers.”
Like an employee ID card, he supposed. Juno accepted the yellow jade necklace and put it on. After taking a deep drag from her tobacco, she exhaled and spoke.
“Your task today is to count the number of rooms inside the green door.”
Maybe because it was his first assignment, it seemed simpler than expected.
“Code number ERD-337. This forest used to be a lord’s hunting ground, but five years ago an erosion occurred and that green door appeared. The difficulty is the lowest—F-rank. The name is…”
Cynthia’s crimson lips curved into a long arc.
“Room of Infinite Regression.”
Room of Infinite Regression? The name gave off a much harsher vibe than the seemingly simple mission. She said it was F-rank difficulty. What kind of name was that ominous? While he muttered inwardly, Cynthia untied a pouch from her waist and suddenly held it out in front of him.
“Take it.”
“What is this?”
“I put some food in it. You’ll need provisions.”
So that was what she had been stuffing into the pouch before leaving the office. She had prepared it for him. Despite her sharp, cat-like appearance, she had a thoughtful side.
“Thank you.”
As Juno tied the food pouch to his waist, she turned away with a shrug.
“Well, good luck. I’ll be waiting here.”
With those words, Cynthia leaped up into a large nearby tree. Usually a mentor would teach the ropes from the side on the first day, but the Exploration Division seemed to throw new recruits straight into live combat—Spartan style.
All the better.
This should be fun, right?
Juno strode confidently into the barrier. The green door, where not even a shadow could be seen. Grinning, he pushed his body into the endless cycle.