The scene made Aiz smile all the more, and the swordswoman thought to herself how truly amazing Lefiya had been.
The girl in front of her had grown so much between this expedition and the last that she was scarcely recognizable.
Every spell Lefiya had woven in those many battles had helped shape her into the mage she was today.
Aiz found herself wondering what it was that had spurred her on, pushing her to achieve results. As she stood there looking at the younger girl, Lefiya slowly raised her head.
“Um…Miss Aiz?”
“?”
“The boy the captain mentioned back on the fifty-ninth floor…Bell Cranell?” There wasn’t a hint of unrest in Lefiya’s voice as she spoke, her eyes as sharp as tacks, and Aiz felt her heart jump in her chest.
It had been during Braver’s encouraging speech in the midst of that decisive battle down on the fifty-ninth floor. The magic-like courage he’d used to turn the tides of the battle, reversing everything even as an overwhelming despair had gripped their hearts.
It was then that he’d brought up the name of that boy, Bell Cranell.
“Did that human adventurer…do something as we were making our way to the fifty-ninth floor?”
Back when Aiz had been giving her training for Concurrent Casting in preparation for the expedition, Lefiya had finally been unable to take it any longer and asked for the name of Aiz’s other mentee, and the swordswoman had replied with that boy’s name. However, Lefiya hadn’t known about what had transpired down on the ninth floor—his ferocious battle with the minotaur.
Upon hearing that a minotaur had spawned on the upper levels, Finn and the other top-tier adventurers had broken away from the vanguard temporarily to appraise and handle the situation. This much Lefiya had heard from Raul and her fellow familia members. However, the details as to exactly what Aiz and the others had witnessed at the scene remained undisclosed.
When Finn had mentioned him, it had set off something and changed everything.
Hearing that boy’s name had lit a fire within Aiz’s heart, within Bete’s—within everyone’s.
Even Lefiya had been able to tell instinctively that something had happened.
As the elf’s azure eyes stared through her, Aiz’s gaze traveled up toward the speckled canvas of trees hanging over their heads, almost as though she was searching for something.
“Mm-hm…He had his own adventure.”
The array of crystals visible through the leaves spread out across the ceiling like chrysanthemums, guiding her line of sight farther upward toward the floors above.
“He was truly amazing…just like you, Lefiya.” The words slipped from her mouth so easily, betraying her true feelings.
Lefiya’s grip around her staff tightened with a jerk.
That boy…changed, too.
Aiz lost herself in her thoughts, unaware of Lefiya’s current turmoil.
Compared to Lefiya—there was no doubt that whatever the boy’s adventure had been like, it could never top the elf’s achievements.
But his adventure symbolized the starting point for Aiz and the other adventurers.
The weak defeating the impossibly strong-armed, relying on nothing but their own strength.
It was one of the simplest yet most difficult feats of all.
And Aiz and the others had been completely taken by it—the idea of betting everything for a chance to overcome one’s limits.
One’s first successful exploit would have a major influence on one’s life.
Everybody’s first adventure simply held that much meaning.
There was no question that the boy would continue to grow and change from here on out. Aiz was sure of it.
Would he succeed? Would it merely make him reckless? Or would he become something else entirely?
Maybe he’d use his newly acquired qualification for herohood to begin scaling that far-off, impregnable peak?
—What is he doing right now?
“…”
Aiz narrowed her eyes against the sight of those pure white crystals blooming on the ceiling.
The elf, too, followed her gaze, the two of them simply drinking in their ivory radiance.
“Night” had fallen across the eighteenth floor.
When the white clump of crystals at the center of the mass of blue glowed like the sun, the crystalline ceiling made them feel as if the sky from the surface was rolled out above their heads.
As time passed, however, the artificial light dimmed, bathing the floor in shadow and simulating a familiar twilight.
Once Aiz and the others had returned from their bout of scavenging, all of Loki Familia settled down for dinner within the circle of guards standing watch and portable magic-stone lanterns.
They feasted on the fruits Aiz and the others had harvested, as well as what little bread Tiona and Tione had managed to purchase in Rivira. Tsubaki had brought back some mushrooms from the nearby Wooden Labyrinth as well, and they grilled them whole over the campfire.
The half-dwarf had taken full advantage of her position as a guest in the group. Traveling about wherever she pleased—though she did make sure someone was taking care of her smiths in her stead—she’d first gone off monster hunting and then used the spoils to trade for alcohol and other various necessities in Rivira. Even with the alliance between their two familias, her actions should not be condoned, but given that the expedition was already over, Finn and the other elites simply let it slide with wry smiles of amusement.
Of course, such behavior was strictly prohibited for anyone from their own familia.
“M-Miss Tsubaki, are you sure these mushrooms are edible…?” Raul raised the question as a bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead. “We haven’t even checked if they’re suitable for human consumption…!”
“Aw, come on! As long as you’ve got a status with decent resistance, you’ll be fiiiiine!” Tsubaki was currently toasting the large purple mushrooms over open flames, sending up a considerable amount of embers in her mildly intoxicated state.
“So they are poisonous?!”
“Aww, don’t be like that! They’re a rare delicacy, seriously! C’mon, you try one, Thousand Elf!”
“I-I must respectfully decline!” Lefiya responded with a frightened shout.
“Oh man! Let me eat one!”
Tiona enthusiastically reached toward the mushrooms everyone else was emphatically refusing, prompting a laugh from the others. Even Aiz felt a smile form on her lips.
As soon as the boisterous dinner came to an end, the group retired for the night.
Guard duty was to be handled in shifts, though Aiz and the other elites were, of course, exempt. At that moment, Tiona, Tione, Lefiya, and the other female members were sound asleep together in the tent they had been given since all other accommodations were being used to house the injured.
Sensing that the second-tier elf had left for her own night-watch shift, Aiz focused on recovering her strength.
Before she knew it, it was “morning.”
“…”
Light had returned to the eighteenth floor of the Dungeon, and a hazy forest sunrise settled over the camp as Aiz emerged from the tent.
She was wide awake.
She always was when traveling deep within the Dungeon.
A truly sound sleep was impossible within this underground labyrinth, no matter how tired someone happened to be.
Big time difference between the surface and down here…
The crystals on the eighteenth floor dimmed and brightened according to their own schedule, creating a gap between the day cycle of the surface and that of the Dungeon, which often discomfited visiting adventurers.
Lefiya’s small pocket watch sitting next to her pillow indicated that it was only a few hours past midnight, meaning that the world aboveground was still blanketed in darkness underneath the light of the moon.
As Aiz stared up at the heavenly rock formations hanging overhead, she found herself craving t
he light of the sun, the peaceful tranquility of the moon—she’d seen neither for nearly two weeks now.
Fastening her trusted sword, Desperate, to her side, she notified the others of her departure and left camp behind her for a brief walk. She was up anyway, and it would feel good to stretch her legs. She might even do a bit of sword training—something she’d had little chance to do since delving into the Dungeon.
All these thoughts were drifting across her mind as her boots swished through the grasses, when suddenly—
“oooooaaaaaarrrrr!”
“!”
—the far-off howl of something massive reached her, almost like a rumble in the ground.
A colossal boooom immediately followed, causing the earth to tremble.
Her top-tier-adventurer senses tingling, Aiz knew at once that something was wrong. The floor boss, Goliath, was on the move in the large hall above her on the seventeenth floor.
Aiz took off.
This was the first she’d heard of the beast since they had set up camp. Which had to mean that the seventeenth floor’s Monster Rex had just recently spawned and was now attacking an adventurer who’d trespassed on its domain. The fact that she could feel the vibrations so strongly, too, was a sign that the brute’s iron hammer was wreaking havoc in the passage connecting the two floors.
Loki Familia’s camp was at the floor’s southern tip, close to the cave leading to the seventeenth floor.
Concerned for the safety of her companions, Aiz hurtled toward the floor entrance.
Sprinting through the trees, leaping over the knolls of crystal, she flew out of the dim exit to the forest.
And then.
…Huh?
She saw a group of adventurers sprawled out on the ground.
They were lying on a bed of green grass just outside the cave’s entrance.
There were three—two male humans and a prum female.
It was a horrible sight. The unconscious prum girl’s face was littered with scratches and covered in dust, while the red-haired human boy passed out next to her appeared to have broken his left leg, judging from its ghastly angle. It seemed as if they had rushed to this floor in a last-ditch attempt to escape.
However, it was the last boy whom Aiz couldn’t stop looking at.
Dust and sand discolored his snow-white hair.
His lightweight equipment was scratched, and the salamander-wool linens inside were shredded.
He was facedown in the grass, unmoving.
Blood poured freely from his forehead, staining what she could see of his face a dark crimson.
—It can’t be.
Aiz’s mind went blank for a moment, her feet glued to the ground, before she managed to start moving forward in a half daze.
She was having trouble thinking, and the sounds around her seemed so, so far away. It felt as if she were traveling through a white tunnel—her thoughts, her vision, everything was obscured by a pale shroud from the sheer terror and shock of the sight in front of her.
Rustle, rustle, went her feet through the grass as she neared the prone boy.
She stopped in front of him, gazing downward as her shadow veiled the boy’s slender frame.
He was breathing—that much she could tell for sure—but then…
…his hand twitched.
“!!”
Suddenly, he gripped her left foot.
Aiz couldn’t help but wince when his trembling fingers dug into her boot as his bloodied face slowly rose up toward her.
Then his lips parted, using what seemed like every ounce of strength he had left.
“Please…save my…friends…!” he pleaded hoarsely.
As though fearing she might not understand, he turned his clouded rubellite eyes toward the two adventurers on the ground next to him. Then, his hand slackened, and completely spent, he lost consciousness.
Aiz found her bearings, dropping to her knees and running her fingers over the boy’s bloodstained bangs and forehead.
“Bell…?”
But the boy’s face remained motionless.
It hadn’t even been two weeks since his grand adventure—his fight with that minotaur.
Now, at this mid-level Dungeon paradise where nature and crystal lived in harmony, Aiz and Bell were together again for a reunion that no one could have seen coming.
INTERLUDE
FLIP SIDE OF THE FARCE
Let’s rewind a bit to a day long before Aiz and company arrived at the safety point on the eighteenth floor. To a point only four days into Loki Familia’s expedition, when a certain meeting was about to take place.
“Yahooo! It’s Denatus time!!”
The shout came from Babel, the soaring white tower in the center of Orario.
Gods aplenty had gathered in the great hall on the tower’s thirtieth floor.
It was time for Denatus, the grand meeting of the deities that took place once every three months.
Denatus was a gathering that was mostly bluster and didn’t accomplish much. That being said, it was an advisory body technically recognized by the Guild. Discussions at these events were dominated by inane topics of little to no consequence—truly representative of the gods’ capricious natures—but every once in a while, more important matters were brought up: the bequeathment of influential aliases onto adventurers, for instance, or the proposal and subsequent evaluation of potential events and festivities. Accordingly, there were times they had to convene outside the normal schedule.
The only requirement for participation in a Denatus was at least one upper-class adventurer within the god’s familia—in other words, at least one member needed to be Level 2 or higher. Pitting their familias against one another and comparing the ability of their followers to level up—to transcend the limitations of their current status—was just another way for the gods to jostle for status on the mortal plane.
Because an adventurer’s level was synonymous with how closely they stood to the gods themselves, the number of high-level followers in one’s familia had become a sort of achievement, a way to be recognized by their peers, as it were.
“Whoa! Even Lady Freya’s here?!”
“Hell yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
“And Lady Ishtar, too!”
“Ain’t she a sight for sore eyes…!”
The large room was one giant circular hall, countless long pillars supporting a ceiling far overhead. The blue sky beyond the thirtieth-floor windows surrounded them on all sides, imparting the feeling that the guests were traversing a holy temple in the clouds. Deities appeared one after another from the giant door that acted as the room’s sole exit, and the line made its way toward the massive round table in the center of the room.
There was a double-bunned god radiating austerity, an elephant-faced god emphatically introducing himself every chance he could get (“I am Ganeeesha!”), and a pair of silver- and purple-haired goddesses of beauty—these latter two garnered quite a lot of attention from the men. This, in turn, prompted more than a few eye rolls from the women. Old gods, young gods, male and female alike, all took their seats around the giant round table.
The room was filled with smiles as deities took the opportunity to chat among their neighbors.
After a short while, one of the goddesses rose to her feet.
“Well! We’re all here, ain’t we? Let’s get this show on the road!” Loki’s crimson hair gave a bounce as her narrow eyes squinted into a smile of their own. The room grew quiet, and she continued. “Let the one thousand something-th meeting of the gods, Denatus, commence! I’ll be yer host, Loki! Pleasure to be here tonight.”
“Woooooo!”
The gathering of exuberant gods burst into applause.
Loki responded to the ovation of her peers with an energetic raise of her arm.
The trickster goddess’s organizing of the month’s Denatus hadn’t been an accident. No, Loki herself had asked to be the host.
“Most of my kids are out on their expedition, leavin’
me with nothin’ to do! What say you guys let me host this month’s Denatus, huh?”
That had been her proposition.
Keeping the group of loquacious, unmanageable gods under control required a god of considerable rank. As the patron deity of one of the largest familias in Orario, Loki had been met with nothing but encouraging replies of “Be our guest!” in response to her offer.
Loki looked out across the table of gods and goddesses. There were, of course, many familiar faces, from the goddess of beauty Freya—with whom she maintained a trying yet inescapable relationship—to the scarlet-haired, scarlet-eyed goddess Hephaistos—with whom she was currently allied. The latter beamed a smile at Loki in greeting, her right eye covered by its ever-present eye patch.
In the process of surveying the table, she couldn’t help but notice the young goddess sitting beside the deity of the forge.
Ugh, so Itty-Bitty really did come? Cheeky little thing…
The short-statured girl gave a shudder as their eyes met. Her jet-black hair was done up in twin pigtails by a set of bell-shaped fasteners, and the overwhelming presence of her massive chest was almost paralyzing.
The sight of that detestable Loli-goddess and her eyesore of a bosom made Loki want to violently lose her lunch. It was none other than the pint-size busty Jyaga Maru tramp—Loki’s rival in all things breast related.
She simply glared back at Loki, “You got a problem, huh?” written all over her face.
Under normal circumstances, the two would have begun quarreling the moment they’d laid eyes upon each other.
Ah, whatever. Who gives a damn about her anyway? I’ve got things to do!
Loki decided to ignore her.
The fact that the red-haired goddess didn’t lunge at her from that single look was enough to arouse suspicion in the buxom girl, but Loki didn’t let it faze her, carrying on with her hosting duties in blithe ignorance.
“All right, then! Let’s get on with it, shall we? We’ll start with a little information swap. Anyone got any juicy tidbits they’d like to share?”
“I do, I do! I’ve heard tell that old Soma got a slap on the wrist from the Guild and had all his precious liquor confiscated!”
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 5 Page 3