Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 4

by Fujino Omori, Kiyotaka Haimura

  They’d truly descended into hell!!

  “Guuuuwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!”

  Lefiya’s face morphed into an expression of pure despair as the mighty dragon roars shook the air around her.

  In the midst of the nightmarish scene, her body hurtled down toward those monstrous dragons.

  The impossibly long, impossibly wide tunnel created by the countless flares trembled.

  —In the past, it had been Zeus Familia that had ruled over Orario from on high.

  It was they who held the record for farthest floor reached. It was they who’d nicknamed this area of the Dungeon “The Dragon’s Urn.”

  It was so named because of the valgang dragons inhabiting the fifty-eighth floor, the bottom of the “urn.”

  They were monstrous red dragons boasting heights of some ten meders when standing on their hind legs.

  She fell toward those dragons now. They awaited her as she sliced through the air, her bangs whipping back and forth as she plunged in a free fall down that massive hole.

  Other monsters caught in the blast fell, too, tumbling around her as she froze in fear.

  I’ve seen this before. In a dream…

  A terrifying dream where she’d fallen from a great height.

  Only now, in reality, there was something even more horrifying awaiting her than the hard surface of the ground.

  She couldn’t move. Not even a single finger. She was overcome with a primeval fear as one of the valgang dragons below opened its massive jaws.

  Its maw was like a gun barrel, only it wasn’t bullets loaded in its magazine but a blazing red ball of flame that dyed the dragon’s mouth a brilliant crimson as it aimed directly overhead.

  It was going to destroy them all in one giant flare—every one of the falling monsters, and Lefiya with them.

  “ “LEFIYA!!” ”

  “?!”

  In that instant.

  She heard her name breaking into the impossibly long stretch of frozen seconds.

  Looking up, she saw them practically throw themselves over the side of the hole.

  “You’re not slowin’ us down, you big, ignorant blockhead!”

  Tiona, Tione, Bete.

  They launched themselves off the side of the tunnel walls, speeding down toward her.

  The sight of the first-tiers racing to save her made her eyes fill up with tears, warping her vision.

  “Veil Breath!!” The translucent, ringing name of Riveria’s spell came from the fifty-second floor less than a second later.

  The four of them, Lefiya and her three rescuers, were quickly surrounded in warm green gowns of light—Riveria’s protection spell that would safeguard them against all incoming attacks.

  Armed with the blessings of Orario’s strongest magic user, Tiona, Tione, and Bete raced down the wall to make it to Lefiya’s side.

  “Aaaaahhh!!”

  In that same instant, however, the mighty red dragon released its flame.

  The massive fireball, boasting a diameter of over five meders, launched from the dragon’s mouth and bathed Lefiya and the others in a fierce vermilion hue. Tiona leaped from the wall, giant silver sword at the ready.

  “Ya bastaaaaaaard!!”

  In a swipe that utilized her entire body, she gripped her Durandal sword in both hands and aimed it at the incoming fireball.

  The explosion that followed was astronomical.

  The two forces had offset each other.

  In a crushing blast, the inferno came to a screeching halt in front of Lefiya’s eyes.

  “Miss Tiona—?!” Lefiya began to scream, but before she could even finish, the Amazon appeared from within the brilliant flash.

  “Yeeoouch!” was her only reaction; otherwise she was completely unharmed and wreathed in embers. Lefiya’s eyes widened in surprise. The logic-shattering berserker was as lively as ever even as steam rose from her skin.

  With Riveria’s Veil Breath canceling the majority of the fireball’s damage, she’d pulled through without a single scratch. Her Durandal weapon, too, was unharmed. The silver glint of its surface was no less brilliant than before.

  “Tione! Bete! There’s a wyvern coming!” Tiona cried out, sensing movement from not only the valgang dragons down on the fifty-eighth floor but on the fifty-sixth floor, too.

  Dragons began flying out of the tunnels lining the hole like ants crawling out of their nest, mighty wings flapping.

  These ill wyverns, bluish-purple dragons boasting heights of some three meders with their tails included, only further emphasized the Dragon Urn’s name. As the great red dragons on the fifty-eighth floor bombarded the adventurers with fireballs, these flying creatures took advantage of the resulting tunnels to launch their own direct attack.

  Dragons poured out from the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh floors one after another, and Tiona and Bete took off running.

  “Tione, protect that numbskull!”

  With a speed that seemed to ignore the fact that he was falling, Bete kicked off from one of the large stone sheets and shot upward like an arrow to bring his twin blades down on one of the wyverns.

  He drove both swords into the monster’s eye sockets and then kicked off its body as it let out a scream of agony. He sprang from one dragon to the next with jarring blows that sent them spinning into their nearby brethren.

  He used the momentum from his jump to land on the wall, dodging the wyverns’ rapid salvo of fireballs before leaping back for another attack.

  Tiona, equally undaunted, launched her own attack and sliced an incoming wyvern’s wings from its body.

  The falling wyvern bodies acted as a shield that protected them from the second wave of explosive fireballs from the valgang dragons down below.

  “W-wuaah…?!”

  Tremendous explosions. Plummeting monsters. The painfully loud cries of howling dragons.

  The out-of-this-world spectacle taking place before her made Lefiya shake so hard she couldn’t stop.

  “Breathe, girl!” screamed Tione, currently falling alongside her.

  “!”

  “Don’t be afraid! We’ll protect you!”

  The halberd-wielding Amazon and her intense look caused a flutter in Lefiya’s chest.

  She thought back to the night before and the time they’d shared in her tent. Now surrounded by Riveria’s green armor of protection and touched by the indomitable mettle of the first-tiers refusing to allow this predicament to play out, she let out a grunt to banish the fear from her body.

  Nodding in Tione’s direction, she tightened her grip on her staff.

  She stared down into that infernal abyss at the monstrous red dragons lying in wait, her hair whipping wildly in the wind.

  “Aiz, don’t!!”

  —Meanwhile, back on the fifty-second floor…

  Finn commanded Aiz to hold back as she prepared to follow Tione and the others into the great hole.

  “If Raul and the others fall in there, we’ll never be able to protect them all! You’ll stay with us as we continue along the main route to the fifty-eighth floor!”

  “…!”

  Her lips curved into a tormented frown, her feet still poised on the edge of the hole, but she did as she was told.

  Even if Lefiya and the others did land somewhere midway down the tunnel, there was no guarantee they’d be able to find them in the complex labyrinth of the Dungeon. If they could all just make it to the fifty-eighth floor, which comprised nothing but a single grand hall, they’d be able to reconvene without troubling themselves. Tiona and the others knew this, too. Or, at least, they should.

  In addition, the tremendous strength Aiz could employ against the caterpillar monsters would greatly hasten the party’s descent. It was essential that she remain with the main party if they had hopes of making it to the fifty-eighth floor quickly.

  “Gareth! I’m leaving Bete and the others to you!”

  “Roger that!”

  Already armed with
his standard battle-ax and grabbing his Durandal ax from one of the supporters, Gareth took off after Lefiya and the others in Aiz’s stead.

  Finn quickly set forth reorganizing the rest of the party, not even waiting for Gareth to leap into the hole before ushering them onward.

  “It…It’s all my fault…” Raul fretted, unable to shake off his own failure and the horrifying turn of events it had caused.

  “No need to fret. Save that for when you receive your punishment later. For now, though, focus, yes?”

  The thought of Riveria’s punishment sucked the color right out of Raul’s face, leaving him no room for self-reproach. Even the remaining three supporters could do nothing but send him looks of pity.

  With Aiz now in the front line, the party sped its way through the passageways of the fifty-second floor.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Looks like I’m stuck in a crazy place again!” Tsubaki hacked away at an incoming monster with her tachi, ever-present smile plastered on her face.

  One party had become two.

  The two parties followed two separate routes, racing their ways to the fifty-eighth floor.

  Tiona continued her assault on the wyverns amid the barrage of valgang dragon fire from down below.

  The walls, the floors, the very neck of the Dragon’s Urn itself grew increasingly more damaged with each of the mighty fireballs, and the actors in the airborne skirmish—both the adventurers and their twenty monster enemies—were dyed a deep red as the flurry of attacks continued.

  “Gah! One of those beasties is fast! Nngh!”

  “Shit, it’s not one of those enhanced species, is it?”

  Jumping from wall to wall, Tiona and the others waged a splendid fight worthy of their Statuses, but even they had their limits. They couldn’t fly, after all.

  The wyverns, boasting a pair of wings as forelimbs, were incredibly fast, but there was one that was especially swift, even among its own kind, and it was currently waging war on Tiona and Bete. As they attempted to block the claws and teeth that accompanied each of its lunges, the wyvern would simply switch to its tail, knocking their weapons out of the way and barraging them with bullets of fire. As the protective Veil Breath surrounding them visibly withered, they found themselves hacking away at the air more often than not as cuts started to litter their bodies.

  An enhanced species was a creature that had attacked a great many other monsters and stolen their magic stones, and this king of the skies—fiercer, more powerful than its fellow wyvern brethren—had its flightless adventurer prey in its bloodshot eyes, intent on ripping them to pieces.

  The rest of the bluish-purple-scaled dragons doubled back for another counterattack.

  “Tione! Toss me!” Lefiya called out, noticing the dragons congregating around Bete and Tiona below her.

  “!”

  Tione responded by grabbing her hand and flinging the newly fearless girl in the direction of the wall.

  Generously bending her knees, Lefiya mimicked what she’d seen from the first-tiers and somehow managed a successful landing before running down along the wall’s surface.

  “Unleashed pillar of light, limbs of the holy tree. You are the master archer,” she began, weaving her spell as she fought against the pummeling pressure of the wind. Her eyebrows bristled.

  She couldn’t only be protected. She didn’t want that.

  She had to save them. Her magic had to save them!

  Calling upon the unshakable tree inside her, she chanted concurrently as her feet pounded against the wall.

  “Loose your arrows, fairy archers. Pierce, arrow of accuracy.”

  The wyverns noticed her chant and aimed their stones of flame in her direction. She kicked off from the wall, narrowly avoiding the rain of fire while doing everything possible to keep from releasing her net of magic.

  She raced, voice ringing loud and sonorous as she thought back to her training with Aiz and Filvis.

  Tiona and Tione were flabbergasted at the sight of the magic user moving and dodging, never breaking her chant. Even Bete was in shock, his lips curling upward in a laugh.

  She could do it!

  She could do it!

  She wasn’t afraid!!

  Her heart trembling, she pointed her staff, and a magic circle lit up with a glimmer.

  “Arcs Ray!!”

  The maximum-power arrow of light blasted out in a brilliant flash.

  The enormous, needlelike flash of magic careened straight down toward the flock of dragons.

  But she had only one target in sight.

  The bloodshot eyes of the enhanced wyvern widened as the light arrow veered toward it.

  Beating its massive wings, it attempted to escape the incoming bolt.

  “—TUUUUUUUUURN!!” the magic user roared, causing the arrow’s trajectory to warp.

  What was once a straight path became curved, the auto-follow properties of the projectile spell sending it chasing after the dumbfounded dragon.

  It evolved into a sort of dogfight, a high-speed midair skirmish. The arrow of light nibbled and gnawed at the great wyvern king, taking out the wings of any other dragons that got caught in its path.

  Finally, it connected.

  “Guuuuuwwwwwwooooooooaaaaaagh!”

  With a dazzling glare and an agonizing scream, the wyvern king turned to ash, its magic stone destroyed.

  Ash rained down the neck of the Dragon’s Urn to the base below. Tiona gave Lefiya a fist pump of victory, and Bete threw her a momentary smile before the two of them returned to their attack on the remaining wyverns.

  Her body instilled with a fiery passion, Lefiya moved immediately to her next chant herself.

  “Don’t think we’re gonna let you outshine us!” Tione licked her lips with a smile at the young magic user. She ran along the wall as she once more let loose with her throwing knives. One of her blades impaled the eye of a wyvern, sending it careening to the ground with a scream of anguish as she flourished the halberd in her other hand.

  She’d already been having a hard time smothering the fire in her belly at witnessing that boy’s adventure up on the ninth floor. This new predicament was only throwing kindling on the fire, and she liked it.

  “Guuwoohh!!”

  One of the wyverns blew flames in her direction as she propelled herself from the wall and tumbled through the air before zipping toward the beast like a speeding bullet. Halberd whirling wildly, she deflected every flaming hailstone in the incoming storm.

  “This is pretty convenient!” she said with a smile. The Durandal weapon dispersed the approaching fireballs before she continued with a downward strike.

  The stupefied wyvern’s skull exploded upon impact, spraying spinal fluid everywhere. Tione used its carcass as a stepping-stone to propel herself farther, using the long reach of her halberd to take out all the nearby enemies with a single strike.

  “Though lacking a little on the power side of things,” she added as the blade of the halberd got stuck in the body of a wyvern halfway through its swing, eliciting a distressed moan from the unfortunate beast.

  Using the pole arm to pull the wyvern toward her, she snatched a Kukri knife from her side with her other hand before driving it into the beast’s long neck, relieving it of its head.

  “WUUUUAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!”

  “I thought you were dealing with those fireballs, Tiona!” she yelled in exasperation as a valgang dragon on the fifty-eighth floor roared, sending up another flare.

  “There’s only one of me, y’know?” Tiona shot back, her body singed as she went from one fireball to the next, offsetting each one.

  Tione simply stuck out her tongue as she gave another swipe of her halberd.

  Tione Hyrute—the Jormungand.

  A first-tier adventurer who was feared by even the gods themselves and who got stronger the angrier she became.

  Ignoring the look of disbelief from Lefiya, she charged the incoming fireball head-on.

  “You’re really starting to
get on my nerrrrrrrrrrrves!!” she screamed. The incensed Amazon smashed the red-hot ball of flame to pieces with her Durandal weapon.

  “—I’m gonna kick yer heads in, ya big red bastards!” Bete continued his own attack against the wyverns as the explosion lit up the sky over his head. His eyes were focused on the very bottom of the long vertical tunnel.

  He could make out four valgang dragons some two hundred meders below him on the fifty-eighth floor.

  Returning his twin swords to his sides, he prepared for his arrival at the base of the Dragon’s Urn.

  “Hey! Do somethin’ about those fireballs, would ya? Even just one of ’em!” he shouted at Tiona, who was currently falling alongside him.

  “You ask as if it doesn’t hurt like hell when those things hit you!” she screamed back in annoyance, sword flying. Already having taken out a good number of the massive flares, her body and armor both were looking considerably charred. Her tanned skin was practically cooked in some places, smoke rising in tiny wisps from her countless burns.

  “Aw, shut up an’ just do it!” Bete barked indifferently. “Here we go!”

  “You’ll pay for thiiiiiiiiis!”

  Two pairs of eyes met four as they set the dragons in their sights. Bete pulled one of his magic daggers from his leg holster.

  The amber blade atop a golden hilt crackled with an electrical spark as he attached it to his right Frosvirt. The topaz embedded in his long boot absorbed the electrical shock, and the magic dagger crumbled in his hand.

  Almost instantaneously, a sheath of lightning crackled to life around the silvery white boot.

  “WUUUUAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!”

  Four fireballs came at him at once.

  The four valgang dragons, their necks craned straight upward, shot off simultaneous blasts of pure flame.

  The gaps between them were infinitesimal. Kicking off one of the stone sheets, Bete dodged the first one, and as the second one threatened to swallow him whole, Tiona smashed it away with an upward swing of her sword.

  “Aaaalley-oop!!”

  The explosion was massive. Using the Amazon’s assistance, Bete landed back on the wall.

  Then he bolted forward in a burst of speed.

  He aimed for those tiny, tiny gaps, gauntlets singeing as he broke through the incoming wall of fire. The surge of electricity crackling from his Superiors seared the startled eyes of the valgang dragons.