Crossing Into the Second Floor
"Straight down?"
Philon asked, clearly reluctant to part ways so abruptly.
We couldn't turn back anyway, and there was no rush.
"Well, maybe spend a day to resupply and rest. Sound good?"
"Hmm?"
From behind, I felt Ray tugging at my clothes.
"Why?"
"You never said anything about it."
"Just to stock up. A day to chill."
Ray loosened her grip even though she still looked a bit uneasy, but she nodded in agreement.
"Then let's book rooms together. We're right at the top of the third floor too, so resting up makes sense."
Nathaniel insisted he would cover the room fees, but I refused.
Accepting charity like that felt wrong. Even if I could handle it, I didn't want to lean on others.
Eventually these things turned into debts anyway.
Technically it was a free favor, but since it had no written record, it stuck in the heart instead.
'The other side would suffer more for it.'
Money stuff was best kept clean.
"In the first floor, you'll only need three places: blacksmith, inn, and general store. Magic schools have branches too, but you mostly stick to your own. Oh, did you hear about the magic school?"
"Just one."
"If it's not rude, I'd like to ask."
Nathaniel's neat appearance matched his polite tone.
Probably the messy beard was because he'd been down in the Abyss for so long.
"Since it's small, you might not know. It's the Telema School."
"Telema School? Hekate's?"
"You know it?"
"I teamed up with her once."
Hekate really had done exploration work.
I'd always pictured her as a shut-in who only took outside jobs and farmed them out to Mea.
Now I wondered why the change.
"She was a fierce demonologist. That memory's stuck with me. With you there, you'll hear her name sooner than you think."
"Fierce?"
"No way."
Completely unthinkable.
Of course I knew Hekate was strong, but her usual demeanor didn't match that image.
"We're here. The rooms are pricey, but the facilities are best in town."
Nathaniel had tried to assign us separate male and female rooms, but we all turned it down.
After what happened, the idea felt weird.
Ray and Leaf preferred team rooms anyway, and sleeping in tents had already broken that habit.
After booking the rooms, we used Nathaniel's help to complete resupply.
Then we gathered back in our shared room with all four of us.
Even though we were celebrating the milestone of reaching the end of the first floor and the next step into the second, we barely stopped ourselves from opening the liquor.
'What are they planning to drink?'
Ray was a 16-year-old kid, Leaf was all grown up.
They were too young for hard liquor.
Still, the saying about drinking to loosen up wasn't entirely wrong.
Even without liquor, conversation flowed naturally.
"Have you talked to the others?"
"No. After getting licensed, you're the first one I saw."
Everyone shared a common goal and circled around me as the center, but beyond simple motives, we formed a kind of community bond.
Still, each of us had our own affiliations.
Aras was Frontier Guild, Fiona the Grand Ducal House, and Alexander the Alexandria School.
They were doing their best in their own lanes.
It was actually strange that Ray and Leaf, with no affiliations, were the ones sticking around.
"Yeah, I've been inside the school the whole time after getting licensed."
They must have felt their limits.
Against the abyss cultists' strongest foe, their strength felt meaningless.
At best, could the top three even hold a real fight?
Ray and Teresa would be the limit.
'At this point, I could include Leaf too?'
I was the irregular one.
Anyone who used spatial magic had stepped outside the norm.
"I didn't even know you joined the school. Telema, right? The one I trained at?"
"Yes. Still, not knowing makes sense. No real-time contact network."
My words overlapped with Ray's voice.
"Number Four probably knows."
"Number Four? Grand Duchess?"
"Mm-hmm."
Ray and Philon both immediately understood the numbering system.
How long would that continue?
We had already named our gatherings "Numbers" at the start.
"Then Nahat Blumer should know too, right? They get along."
"Probably. But she hasn't sent it yet?"
"What?"
"Chromatic... something. That lizard thing."
Chromatic Hide Leather and the mithril sales money.
We still hadn't received it.
"Probably delivered to the Telema School by now."
Conversation jumped around like a buffet of random thoughts, and Philon fell silent, lost in deep thought.
"Philon?"
"Huh? Yeah?"
"What are you thinking about?"
"I was just... thinking about what Roman said."
"What did I say?"
It wasn't a casual remark.
Philon caught my intent and added, "No real-time contact network."
"Ah, that."
"So how can we do it?"
"Real-time contact network?"
"Can we do that?"
As always, it was Ray who voiced what I was thinking.
"It's difficult. Rune magic and communication magic both break the moment the floors change."
If that were possible, we would have done it long ago.
Contacting through different floors of the Abyss was impossible.
That had been the accepted theory so far.
"Still, it sounds worth considering."
"Yeah."
The gap between having and not having a contact network was huge.
It was surprising no one had pointed it out before.
Maybe because everyone was an explorer, they defaulted to being in the Abyss as the norm.
That topic left the conversation, and the day's story ended.
Back in his own room, Philon received a question from his mentor.
"Philon."
"Y-yes, Master."
"What kind of person is that Roman to you?"
What kind of person was Roman.
In Philon's mind, the image from the moment he first truly recognized Roman flashed back.
The other reincarnates who had already died.
The times they fought and lost.
Teresa who appeared in the worst situation.
Thanks to her, they barely won, but everyone was already mortally wounded.
Philon had to choose.
Who to cast healing magic on.
And Philon chose himself.
There was no choice.
Only he, the one who could heal, needed to stay functional.
But in the end, Philon failed to save his teammates.
When he applied emergency treatment to himself and then tended to the others, their injuries were already beyond saving.
Philon had watched his teammates die in full, the light in their eyes fading, the warmth leaving their hands, and their final breaths stopping.
Roman was different.
Unlike Philon, who couldn't save anyone, he saved everyone.
Ignoring himself.
Burning himself as fuel.
That scene was burned into Philon's memory forever, like the sight of a savior.
The moment he understood the believer's heart.
But his spoken answer differed from his feelings.
"Just... a comrade."
The next day, at the gate leading into the second floor, we exchanged parting words.
"I'll go then."
"Yeah. Be careful."
Instead of a flood of worries, Philon gave a clean farewell.
Ray smiled brightly and gave a thumbs-up.
Leaf, who usually chatted easily among us, just nodded at the Serapeion people watching from the back.
Nathaniel's gaze toward Leaf had been particularly intense.
Maybe it felt burdensome to her.
After the goodbyes, we turned and stepped through the gate.
Down.
To the second floor.
Koong!
Boom!
Cough—
"Oof!"
"Hyak!"
"...What?"
Three collision sounds and three voices.
Excluding Ray, whose reflexes were the best, Leaf and I landed flat on our backs.
"Ugh... hurts..."
Leaf's voice carried a hint of tears, echoing my own pain.
I rubbed the spot where I had crashed and stood up.
"Where did you even enter from..."
Ray, who had been floating by kicking the air, landed and spoke.
"The mana feels unstable. And it's thicker than the first floor."
The mana in the second floor was noticeably denser than the first.
If the first floor was just water, the second felt like it had been sweetened and thickened.
"And it's really dark."
Unlike the bright first floor that light could reach from outside, the second floor had almost no light at all.
It was practically the same as total darkness.
Our eyes, after adapting to the dark, could only make out silhouettes.
"Light."
As soon as I cast a glowing spell and summoned a light orb, the second floor finally came into view.
A vast, enclosed space with no horizon or sky.
In the distance were blurry mountains, but right in front stood walls with visible texture.
A completely different environment from the first floor.
This was the second floor of the Abyss.
The Labyrinth.