Dungeon (3)
"Kkikigeuk!"
The monkeys, apparently deciding they'd had enough, launched into a chaotic retreat, leaping frantically from tree to tree. They were moving with such frantic abandon that now and then one would fail to get a proper grip on a branch and come crashing down to the ground.
Are these things seriously monsters?
I scratched my head as I watched the fallen monkeys stagger off and vanish into the underbrush.
"At this point they're basically Rank 10. Even an ordinary civilian could take one down."
"Shall we pursue them?"
"Hmm... no need, really. We've thinned their numbers considerably, so they shouldn't pose much of a threat anymore. Besides, the cart is heavy and—"
While Lena gathered up the magic stones scattered in every direction, I went back and retrieved the cart I'd hidden so sloppily. A few of the byproducts had been spoiled by the Baptism's blast, but on the whole everything was intact.
Drawing the cart along at a slow pace, I turned to Noah with a question.
"By the way, what was that spell you just used? It packed quite a punch."
Making an arrow explode on impact... if I had to give it a name, would [Explosive Arrow] be about right? Even against the lowest-grade of monsters, the firepower to wipe out a whole crowd with a single blast was undeniably appealing. But hadn't she said that large-scale spells consumed enormous amounts of mana?
"I did not create the explosion directly, sir. I merely detonated the arrowhead itself. I've been conducting research into several applications."
"So it's more efficient that way?"
"Very much so. However, detonating an ordinary arrowhead has a natural ceiling on its destructive power, so... further research will be necessary."
Interesting.
If this was how things worked, then relying on auxiliary tools would be far better than casting raw magic. Noah's role, for the time being, should be settled as [Magic Archer](?). It wasn't as though I'd bought her that bow with this class in mind, but the unexpected synergy was a welcome bonus.
Lena, having finished collecting every last magic stone, cut into the conversation.
"Unni, what were those things just now? Do they have a name?"
"I don't know. They don't appear in the encyclopedia."
"Oh? So there are things even you don't know?"
"...I am not omniscient, Lena. Monsters born inside dungeons are notoriously strange creatures, are they not?"
"Fair point. It's annoying not being able to know what they're capable of in advance, though."
This, too, was one of the factors that made dungeons so dangerous. Granted, in most cases you could make a rough estimate of a monster's capabilities from the aura it gave off—but not knowing its exact traits was still a source of unease.
...
Thirty hours into the expedition.
Noah had been guiding the party with her compass the whole time. We hadn't run into any further skirmishes with monsters, but as we pressed forward, something odd came to light.
"...We're not tracking the monkeys, are we?"
"No, sir. We are simply following the compass."
"Then why do I keep seeing signs of those things?"
Small footprints pressed into soil gone soft and muddy as wet clay. Branches snapped by artificial impacts. We were unquestionably headed toward the [Core], and yet traces presumably left behind by the monkeys kept catching my eye. What's more, the area around us seemed to be their habitat—there wasn't a single harvestable byproduct left to be found.
Lena stretched luxuriously and offered her own theory.
"Mnngh...! What's it called—the monkeys have a boss or something, maybe? You said the compass points toward the core or the strongest monster, right?"
"Hard to say. Judging by everything we've seen so far, this dungeon's boss—that is, its strongest creature—should be close to Rank 6. I doubt a monkey could be that strong."
"Hold on. Something's not right here."
Noah, walking up front, raised a palm and stopped us.
What is it?
"The forest ahead... it's completely dead."
"...!"
As Noah stepped slightly aside, the scene ahead opened up before us in full. Not far from where we stood, the cross-section of verdant forest gave way to nothing but brown, withered trees.
"It gives me the chills..."
Moving a little closer, I felt that same creeping dread Lena had described. The great trees that had once been laden with vibrant, fresh-green leaves now bore nothing but skeletal branches, and the weeds that had grown up in wild tangles had vanished entirely.
A forest that had, quite literally, died. And between the living forest and the dead one stretched a [borderline], crooked and jagged as if a child had scrawled it with a crayon.
"Do we absolutely have to go through there?"
"That is the correct bearing, sir. Moreover, the monkeys' trail continues onward through it."
"...This is not a natural phenomenon. Not in any way."
I dragged my foot back and forth across the boundary where life and death met within the forest. It was shaped much like the border I'd seen long ago between the grassland and the snowfield, back when we were escaping that frozen expanse. The borderline stretched on as far as the eye could see.
Noah waved her hand slowly back and forth across the line, then spoke with a grave expression.
"This is not good. Your mana is being forcibly drained—only slightly, but it is happening."
"...So it is. Is this why the forest died?"
"I feel weird... like something's sapping all my strength."
We crossed just a little way past the dead forest's border to check our condition. Immediately, aura began seeping out of our bodies by the second. Steeling my resolve, I clamped down hard on my aura, and the outflow—leaking through as though through a pinhole—was at least held in check for the moment. But...
"The environment itself is hostile here."
"Far from recovering, your mana is only worsening, sir."
The moment my concentration slipped even slightly, the mana-drain would begin all over again.
"How far to the core?"
"Nearly there. Thirty minutes should suffice."
"That's something, at least. We push through."
It felt deeply unpleasant, but the amount of mana leaking out wasn't enormous. If we did nothing at all, we could hold out for about a day. We entered the dead forest.
...
Some ten minutes of making speed while drawing the cart with carefully rationed aura—and then I sensed something wrong.
The rate at which my aura was draining was accelerating! The intensity had grown stronger as well; no matter how carefully I focused now, I couldn't seal the outflow completely.
Staying here any longer would do us no good.
"How much farther?"
"We're almost there."
"Then move, fast!"
Rrrrrumble...
We picked up the pace. The heavy wooden wheels of the cart clattered deafeningly as they rolled over the ground. Stealth was a lost cause at this point. True, the monkeys had entered this forest too—but between the bare, naked trees there was nowhere to hide, so I judged the risk of an ambush to be negligible.
As we tore through the forest at a mad dash, the densely packed dead trees gradually thinned to scattered stragglers—and then vanished almost entirely.
Noah, at the very front, glanced back and shouted.
"A clearing!"
Whoosh—!
Before her shout had even finished dissolving into the air, we burst out into a wide-open clearing. A split-second thought flashed through my mind—did we make it out of the forest?—but one look around told me how wrong that was.
The clearing was ringed on every side by the dead forest.
"Mister, I think this is the center of it."
"Yeah... and it's no joke."
The outflow of aura, already bleeding out of my body, spiked to its peak the moment we arrived here. As if osmosis had kicked in, my aura was being siphoned out of my entire body, steady and relentless. Squinting, I peered toward the heart of the clearing—and there, familiar shapes came into view.
"Ukkik!"
The monkeys that had escaped us. Wherever they'd rallied their numbers from, there were nearly a hundred of them now.
At this rate of mana drain, losing consciousness and collapsing within the hour wouldn't have been surprising. So why on earth had they come to a place like this?
"What are they doing, Mister?"
"...Are they bowing?"
Something was off about the monkeys' movements. They were throwing their whole bodies down in prostration—before empty air. And piled up in front of them was a heap of fruit.
An offering?
"I don't know what's going on, but let's put a stop to it. Noah, hit them with one of those like before."
"Yes, sir."
Noah nocked an arrow and took aim at the gathered monkeys. A brief incantation.
"Signa, exploda."
Fweeee...
With a sound like a firecracker, the arrow flew—and landed squarely in the middle of the pack. Any second now, the explosion would—
Psshk!
Contrary to all expectation, the arrow produced no explosion whatsoever. It simply buried itself, like any ordinary arrow, in the throat of one unlucky monkey, with no trace of magic to be seen anywhere.
"What happened?"
"...It appears the mana stored in the arrowhead was absorbed mid-flight, dispelling the spell. The blueprint of a spell is delicate, after all."
"Huh..."
Ukkiyak!
Kiaaaak!
As we hesitated over the unexpected failure, the monkeys grew louder and louder. And yet, despite having clearly noticed us, instead of coming at us they only redoubled their frantic bowing and wailing.
What in the world—
Kugugugu...!
Just as I resolved to deal with the things myself, the ground suddenly began to shake. The source of the tremor lay ahead of us, near the spot where the monkeys had gathered.
"Whoa—!"
"Fall back!"
GGGGRRRRAAAH!!!
As the rumbling grew more violent, we retreated. I quickly shoved the cart into a corner and climbed one of the sparse trees standing along the clearing's edge. From the high vantage point, everything below unfolded in perfect clarity.
"Kiaak—!"
"Kuwaa?"
The monkeys hadn't been prostrating themselves before empty air after all. Before them yawned a fairly large pit, and the monkeys had been bowing to it again and again as though it were something sacred. The inside of the pit was shrouded in deep shadow, its depths impossible to make out. The whole arrangement looked exactly like something a monster might erupt from.
And my guess was dead on.
Kujik! Kujik!
KGWAGAGAGANG!
Hurling earth and stone in every direction, something white surged up from inside the pit.
That's—
"A tree?"
What rose from within the pit was a white tree. True, for a tree its movements were soft and supple as tentacles, but the shape itself was unmistakably that of a withered, gnarled tree.
"Hiyoo—!"
Faced with the grotesque tree that had appeared before their very eyes, the monkeys didn't flee—they cheered. Some of them even scooped up the scattered fruit respectfully in both hands and presented it to the tree in offering. Had they been through this routine once or twice before? A strange symbiosis seemed to have formed between the tree and the monkeys.
WAGJAK!
...Or maybe not?
Several of the white branches writhed like serpents and came crashing down on the spot where the monkeys stood. The victims(?), naturally, died without so much as a squeak, leaving nothing behind but magic stones.
"Hukkiiyak!"
"Kiaaaak!"
Apparently even the monkeys hadn't seen this coming. They scrambled in a panic to get away from the tree. But the white tree's response was startlingly swift. Like a snake coiling to strike, it drew its lower branches in tight—then released them all at once, outward!
WHUMP!
HUDUDUDUK!
The razor-sharp branches stretched out with elastic snap and swept a wide arc around it. The monkeys, of whom a fair number still remained, burst apart like bodies lashed by a whip, meeting their ends in an instant.
The clearing fell silent in a heartbeat.
Srrrk—
The tree, seemingly satisfied with itself, moved its branches gently and devoured the magic stones scattered across the ground, along with the fruit the monkeys had brought.
And no—I hadn't used the word devoured carelessly. Watching a human-like mouth bloom open on one of its branches and consume everything that touched its body, I couldn't imagine a more fitting verb.
I climbed back down to the ground.
"What is that thing? A monster?"
"...It is not identical, but I have seen something similar in the encyclopedia."
"Name and traits. Now, please."
In the span of a few short moments, the tree had polished off every scrap of prey in the vicinity. It had no face as such, but I could feel, vividly and unmistakably, that it was now training its attention on us. Either way, if we wanted the Core, we'd have to take it down.
Despite my urgency, Noah recited the encyclopedia's entry in perfect calm.
"Commonly known as the Tree of Longing. A Rank 8 monster, said to draw in and absorb the mana and life force of its surroundings. There is no record of it moving its branches about in that manner, however."
"That thing is Rank 8? You have to be kidding."
I gauged the residual mana radiating off the tree and stared in disbelief. By any measure, it was Rank 6—upper echelon of that tier, without question. Proof enough was the fact that the drain on my aura had accelerated even further the moment the thing appeared. And perhaps because of its life-absorbing trait, I had the strange sensation of my very stamina bleeding away.
There was absolutely no way that thing was Rank 8.
"...It does grow stronger if it survives for a very long time, sir. Though such cases are exceedingly rare."
"Why would— Ah! It's coming!"
Because I'd kept my eyes locked on the tree even while talking to Noah, I caught its strange movement the instant it began. In a flash, its branches compressed like coiled springs, point meeting point—and then fired like bullets!
"I'll block them!"
Lena stepped forward, shield raised high.