by Hiro Ainana
However, the last facility had been created with the cooperation of the neighboring gray ratmen, and it had been abandoned just before its completion.
According to the documents, the monsters fed on the sap and fruit produced by the giant tree that made up the body of the Cradle. There was no need for them to go out and hunt, so the monsters in the Cradle apparently never ventured outside.
However, after the Cradle was completed, no other elves came to visit it.
At the end of his memoirs, he wrote the following:
After a hundred years, still nobody has deigned to forget my failures. My long life is soon to be over. I will seal away the Cradle until my brethren need it in the future. I believe that one day, elves will return to their position as the leaders of the world. —Trazayuya Bolenan
Since his family name was Bolenan, he must have been part of the same clan as Mia and the store manager.
This was probably why Zen needed Mia. Still, I was surprised Zen was able to figure out how to lift the seal without reading these notes.
I’d gained a lot of information from this, but I didn’t find any way to disable the forced teleportation.
I was a little concerned by the words explosions add more excitement scribbled in the margins, but I doubted anyone would be stupid enough to add a self-destruct mechanism to what was supposed to be a safe training facility.
It didn’t seem like I could get to the upper floors from this area, so I decided to go back to the dryad for now.
“Oh? Welcome back.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Sprawled out on a bed made of ivy, the dryad rolled to the edge of the bed and draped her arms over languidly.
“That was fast. Did you wanna smooch some more?”
“No, I’ll pass. I just want to get to the upper floors. Is there a portal or something, by chance?”
Looking bored, the dryad rolled over onto her back and nodded lazily, pointing at a corner of the room. “Right there.”
The spot in question was a little flower bed in the center of a circle of mushrooms.
“Just stand in the middle of that fairy ring.”
I followed the dryad’s apathetic instructions and stepped into the circle.
“What floor do you wanna go to?”
“If possible, I’d like to get to where the master of the Cradle is.”
“Oh, no, no. I can’t do that.”
A little irritated by the way the upside-down dryad shook her head, I asked her to send me to the highest floor possible.
“That would be the 100th floor, in the Guardian Knight’s Area. The guardian there is strong, so be careful.”
“Sure, not a problem.”
She shrugged and muttered, “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you” like some old lady, but she agreed anyway.
“Okay, here goes. Activate Kidou. Target: Floor 100, Guardian Knight’s Area.”
When the dryad’s spell was complete, the fairy ring produced glowing green spores, and they blew around like a whirlwind, creating a cylinder of light.
When the light faded, I had arrived at the 100th floor.
It seemed a little cruel to suddenly be dropped into the boss room, though.
Before my eyes was a seated, motionless iron golem; next to him, three beautiful women sat at a round table, playing a game where they stacked woodblocks into a pyramid.
Startled by my arrival, the busty beauty who’d been about to place a woodblock accidentally knocked over the whole pile, then stared in shock.
Her expression was so distressed that I nearly apologized automatically. Instead, I just cleared my throat.
“Just a moment, I do declare.”
One of the women spoke up in an unusual manner, putting out her open hand to stop me, so I assented.
She had long, straight hair and the composed air of an honors student, but her weird way of speaking ruined it. “Beauty is only skin-deep,” as they say.
I wanted to just ignore them and keep moving ahead, but the only staircase went back down.
You could probably proceed to the top only if you had beaten the floor by legitimate means.
I hadn’t really minded when I played video games, but being forced to follow these rules in reality made me want to blast a hole in the ceiling and make my own loophole.
But it would be pointless if I made them angry, got teleported again, and had to start all over, so I reluctantly waited for them to finish their preparations.
Each of the three women equipped a belt that held a rapier-like sword over her short, simple dress. The handles of the swords were carved with a fashionable relief designed to look like a rose.
They put on gauntlets and greaves, but for some reason no breastplates or helmets. Why wouldn’t they protect their heads and hearts?
As I contemplated this question, two of the women who had finished putting on their equipment carried the table into a corner of the hall, while the third started up the golem.
According to their AR displays, the women were level-7 homunculi. Apparently, they had “Foundation”-type skills and abilities, and all three of them had the “Magic Manipulation” skill. They shared the title Zen’s Puppet.
Strangely, although all three had the same rapier equipped, only one had the “One-Handed Sword” skill; the other two had “Polearm” and “Spear” instead.
All of them looked just like the woman who’d been tending to Mia in the main room.
As far as I could recall, a homunculus was an artificial life-form created with alchemy or some kind of sorcery.
Since they were basically clones, there must have been a lot of them with the same appearance. Judging by the facial features, could they have been based on Mia?
Fully booted up, the iron golem rose to its feet. It was huge, over ten feet tall. Its molding was peppered with random rivets, giving it a somewhat prewar aesthetic.
With their arrangements apparently complete, the women’s leader drew her rapier and brandished it in my direction.
Clearing her throat with a cute little noise, the woman spoke.
“I am impressed that you made it this far, Sir Labyrinth Explorer.”
Her voice was entirely too monotone.
I would otherwise have wanted to hear more of her pleasing voice despite the circumstances, but her flat tone put it to waste.
“I’m just a merchant.”
“A merchant?”
The women were taken aback and looked at one another uncertainly.
After exchanging glances silently for a while, they seemed to arrive at some kind of conclusion, and they turned back to me and continued.
“…Labyrinth Explorer! We are impressed, I do admit.”
So they’re just going to stick with Labyrinth Explorer, huh?
She had started using that strange phrasing now, too, but it was better than the monotone from before.
“You have earned the right to do battle with the guardian, I do declare. If you can defeat the guardian, you will be entitled to proceed, I do acknowledge. The winner will receive a reward from our master, I do promise.”
…It might be better than the monotone, but I also feel like I’m watching an elementary school play.
Paying no attention to my indifference, the woman continued her scripted monologue.
“Now you must fight. Iron golem, there is no need to hold back.” The beautiful woman finished her lengthy monologue and gave me a satisfied look. The smugness in her expression kind of annoyed me.
The golem certainly looked impressive as it thudded and clanked toward me, but its incredibly slow speed made it much less intimidating.
“Number 6, Number 7, use ‘Body Strengthening’ and station yourselves to the left and right. We’re using Formation Z.”
At first I ignored the words, assuming it was some kind of ancient language, but then I realized there was English mixed into the beauties’ conversation.
Trazayuya had abandoned the development of the homunculus m
anufacturing facility, so they must have learned it from Zen, who was a reincarnation like Arisa.
The women dispersed to three sides of the room, and a light glowed on their foreheads. Looking closely, I saw that a little magic circle about the size of a five-hundred-yen coin had appeared on each of them, and in the next second their statuses changed to Body Strengthening. Was this Foundation Magic?
However, the effect was mild, as they were now only 30 to 40 percent stronger than an ordinary person.
I watched as they got into position.
…Are they not wearing bras? This is ridiculous.
My eyes were drawn irresistibly to the remarkably lively bouncing.
But I was shortly punished for the sin of forgetting about Mia and indulging in such stupid thoughts. While I was distracted, the golem had finished its approach and raised a fist into the air.
I could probably dodge easily if I crouched underneath the golem’s crotch, but I didn’t really want to do that.
Instead, I raised my Magic Gun with its power on the highest setting and shot out one of the symbols on its forehead.
It had the letters EMETH spelled out on its forehead in the Roman alphabet, so I destroyed the E, turning it into METH.
Technically, it should really have been written with three Hebrew letters, but it appeared to be the real thing nonetheless, as it stopped moving just like in the traditional folklore. That’s right: the folklore of the world that we came from.
“Impossible! I do exclaim.”
“This is why I said we should hide its weak point, I do remind you.”
“For now, we must determine a course of action, I do insist.”
The three women standing against the walls of the room clearly hadn’t expected me to win so easily and were starting to panic.
I guess that made sense, since I’d destroyed the main force that was their level-30 golem without batting an eye, and the three of them were only level 7.
Still, they had lovely voices that carried quite well.
“Number 5, Number 6, leave this to me and proceed without me, I do declare!”
“Number 7! We will not forget you; I do withdraw!”
“Number 7, I believe you mean ‘retreat without me,’ not ‘proceed without me,’ I do jest!”
Although they all had the same face, there appeared to be subtle variations in their personalities.
I was a little concerned that Number 7 had raised a death flag for herself so willingly, but I had no intention of killing them anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
The beautiful women swiveled their identical faces toward me, new magic circles of light appearing on their foreheads.
Above the magic circle, transparent Magic Arrows appeared.
“Fiiire!”
The women all shot their arrows at me on the command of Number 5. She was the leader, probably because she was the earliest model of the three. Without waiting to see whether they’d hit their target, Numbers 5 and 6 turned on their heels and started to flee.
They leaped onto ropes that were hanging from the back wall and jammed their feet into the knot at the bottom. Immediately, they were yanked upstairs.
The Magic Arrows zipping toward me didn’t seem to have a tracking system, so I trusted my “Evasion” skill to guide me out of the way and avoided them easily.
Dodging Number 7’s rapier took little more than swaying to the side. I grabbed her outstretched arm and pulled her off balance, striking her in the abdomen with the palm of my other hand.
I made sure to remember to turn my fingers downward so as to avoid sexual misconduct.
Number 7 lost consciousness, so I caught her in my arms.
She felt so soft that it nearly made me forget my purpose, but I had no choice, since I couldn’t just let her fall to the ground like that. Yep, I definitely had no choice.
But I couldn’t just go on carrying her around, so I spread a fur pelt on the floor in a corner of the room and laid her down on that.
When the women had been changing into their battle gear, I’d noticed that they had various kinds of weapons and magic potions. I was hoping to find magic scrolls, too, but there were none of those.
There were eleven magic potions in all. Three were intermediate, and six were lesser potions; the other two were Almighty Paralysis Removal and a Mana Potion.
All the weapons were engraved with stylish reliefs, and my “Estimation” skill told me they were worth a considerable amount of money.
They were all made of ordinary steel, but there were so many varieties—halberds, bhuj, long spears, short spears, greatswords, war hammers, and so on—that I decided to help myself to them anyway.
I had plenty of powerful weapons like Holy Swords and Sacred Blades in Storage, but unless I was fighting an opponent like a greater hell demon, it was annoying to have to change my title every time I wanted to use them.
I could beat most enemies with magic or my bare hands, but I wanted some disposable weapons that I could use in case I was surrounded by monsters I didn’t want to touch directly, like cockroaches.
Hearing faint sounds behind me, I turned around to see a spiral staircase descending into the center of the room.
Seems, I’d successfully met the victory conditions.
Quickly stowing the weapons and potions in Storage, I headed toward the staircase.
Recovering the core of the golem lying on the floor would take too much time and effort, so I just stuck the whole thing into Storage and started to ascend the spiral stairs.
The room on the far side of the fairy circle was made of ivy like the one the dryad had occupied, but it was a bit different.
This area had a cocoon, too, but the shoots forming it had withered and dried up, and all that lay in the cocoon’s bed was a brown, mannequin-like husk.
Laying a dark cloth over the corpse, I poured out some water from the Well Bag in place of a memorial service.
Now it could rest a little easier—or so I had thought.
“Wateeer!”
“Huh?”
Small white hands shot out and grabbed mine as I tried to put away the water bag, pulling it up to a small mouth.
The little face, which had looked like it was made of clay, began to change as it drank the water. In a matter of minutes, the mannequin turned into the shape of a little girl. She looked just like the dryad I had seen on the lower floor.
“Okay, now gimme magic!”
Are these things really dryads, or are they succubi?
The dryad happily took a few hundred MP from me, then let out a contented sigh like a middle-aged man knocking back a cup of sake.
“Oh? You gave magic to the me downstairs, too.”
“‘The me downstairs’?” I asked Dryad Number 2, puzzled.
“We’re all me! You humans are the ones who’re weird, splitting into individuals like that. Trees and spirits and such are all connected, y’know. I just can’t contact them unless I have magic.”
Was this like a subset of the Gaia theory?
Maybe they were like a colony organism that used magic to create a network or something.
I didn’t care enough to keep delving into it with more questions, so I just asked Dryad Number 2 if she could teleport me to the top floor.
“Yeah, sure. Wait a sec— Hmm…it seems like something’s interrupting my connection. If I had an elf with Forest Magic, I could send you wherever, but right now it looks like I can only get you as far as floor 180.”
“That’ll work. Thanks.”
“Leave it to meee!” she declared, puffing out her chest confidently.
I stepped into the fairy ring and was teleported to the 180th floor.
“An infestation?”
I muttered involuntarily. The trees and ivy that made up the floor and walls of the room I’d been teleported to on the 180th floor were all disastrously chewed up.
I was guessing this bug-eaten section was the reason that the dryad’s “connection” was interrup
ted.
Wielding a Magic Gun in each hand, I took out the insect monsters that blanketed the corridor one by one as they gnashed their teeth.
There were so many of them that I was afraid they’d crush me to death at this rate—probably impossible because of the difference in our levels, but I still didn’t want to be covered in bug guts.
I took a halberd out of Storage and held it in my right hand.
I thought it would be heavy, but since my STR stat was so high, I was easily able to swing it with one hand.
I didn’t have a “Halberd-Wielding” skill, but when I attacked a long-horned beetle–like monster that was charging at me, I at least gained the “Polearm” skill.
I nearly danced down the ten-foot-wide passageway, massacring monsters with my halberd.
It wasn’t that I was particularly enjoying the battle. Since my body was so light, despite my more than sufficient strength, handling the halberd’s heavy weight meant that I ended up turning my strikes into more of a dance.
I got sick of it halfway through, so I switched tactics: I pulled out a boulder from Storage and rolled it through the hall to crush the bug monsters, then took out any survivors with the Magic Gun.
I didn’t collect the cores because I didn’t want to get covered in bug guts, but I’d probably defeated at least a hundred of them by the time I reached the next grand staircase.
In the space in front of the staircase, even more monsters were waiting, oozing and wriggling on the floor.
…Gross.
My disgust must have influenced my next move, as I think I threw the boulder I used to crush them a little more violently than necessary.
I had assumed that after the boulder scattered the monsters, it would hit a wall and stop, but instead it pushed through the wall with a conspicuous groan, creating an enormous hole.
Bugs or corrosion must have weakened the outer walls.
The pressure difference created a sudden gust from the hole, so I grabbed on to some ivy growing from a nearby wall.
The draft quickly died down, so I headed over to the newly made hole, disposing of leftover monsters as I went.
“What a beautiful view.”
It was the kind of scenery that I would have liked to gaze at for a while under different circumstances, but in this case it was a bit disturbing.