by Fujino Omori
But this was something more than that for her.
If she could make something better for adventurers—anything at all—by bringing circumstances to light, then she had no problem overstepping her bounds to do so.
Eina wished for nothing more than the safe return of all adventurers, and she was willing to get burned in the process, to make sure that came to pass.
There was no turning back after I got involved with that Familia…
Eina knew just how much personal information was in this document, and that she was incriminating herself by writing it.
That Familia…Bell’s Familia.
In the end, her desire to help Bell was what convinced her to go to Loki Familia, and ultimately get involved with the problems in Soma Familia.
This was something that a Guild employee—someone who was supposed to be neutral and in the background at all times—should never have done. Her actions were completely different from simply giving Bell advice and leaving it at that.
It was an abuse of power, as well as cause for her removal from the Guild.
However.
…Ignoring this situation is much worse.
Even if it meant failing in her duties as a Guild employee, it was much better to follow through with this than fail as the person, Eina Tulle. It might have been flawed logic, but her mind was already made up.
The same noble blood that flowed within Reveria also flowed within her. She might be only half-elf, but she didn’t want to do anything to disgrace her name or kin.
If I do get dismissed…Perhaps I should try to join Hestia Familia.
Telling herself a joke to keep her spirits up, Eina thought about her options for a new place of employment.
As she chuckled to herself, Eina’s shoulder-length brown hair lightly swished around her neck.
“What is it, Eina? You sure are grinning all of a sudden.”
“I’m not grinning. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Yeah, yeah, but really. Did something happen? Tell me, tell me!”
“Nothing major…I was just thinking about my next job…”
“Next job…No way! You’re quitting the Guild?!”
Slide, scrape, slide. The moment Misha raised her voice in surprise, half of their coworkers jumped out of their seats—the male half.
Feeling the sudden pressure of many sets of eyes trained on her, Eina quickly corrected her friend’s misunderstanding.
“N-no, no. Just thinking about ‘if I were to be fired,’ that’s all. I have no intention of quitting the Guild.”
“Don’t scare me like that…And there’s no way you’ll be canned, Eina.”
That’s not entirely true…Eina thought, and forced a smile.
Meanwhile, the men who stood up let out a small “Oh” in unison and sat back down.
In any case…
Once she turned in this document, an investigation into Soma’s managing policies would be under way.
Even though there was no problem with the group itself, many of its members had been flirting with the darkest side of the gray zone. Considering the information in Bell’s testimony, it was almost guaranteed that some of them would be punished for crimes against civilians.
There were cases in which entire Familias had been banished from Orario for ignoring the Guild’s warnings.
For a god who was only interested in his hobby, like Soma, a warning like this ought to be enough for him to reconsider some of his policies.
And it turns out the supporter named Erde wasn’t a bad prum, after all…
Eina had tracked down and visited the elderly couple who’d gotten caught up in Lilly’s issue with Soma Familia. They told her what happened after that horrible day, with a tinge of guilt in their voices.
Ever since they kicked her out, money started appearing in front of their store. Since it came on a consistent basis, they never filed a damage report to the Guild.
They asked Eina to apologize to Lilly in their place, but Eina refused. It was the elderly couple’s duty to tell Lilly directly, no one else’s.
…The sweat and blood of adventurers, eh.
Eina remembered the words she had spoken only minutes ago.
She looked up, as if looking far off into the distance.
If adventurers trample others under their feet…then some of that sweat and blood doesn’t belong to the adventurers, does it?
Not all of it, anyway, Eina thought.
Eina earnestly hoped that all adventurers would make it home every day, and wanted to support them. But there was one thing that made her question herself: the adventurers who were able to commit such atrocities without so much as batting an eye.
Her own emotions contradicted each other; a very strange feeling. This wasn’t the first time that Eina had questioned whether or not she was doing the right thing by supporting adventurers. Eina’s body shuddered where she stood.
She knew that she was overthinking it, but that didn’t stop a twinge of uneasiness from flowing through her.
“…Tulle.”
“Ah, yes?”
The call of one of her coworkers brought her out of her reverie before she could find an answer.
A man whose desk was close to the reception counter waved his hand and pointed toward the lobby.
Eina looked in that direction in time to see Bell walking toward the counter.
“…Thank you.”
She did a quick bow and left her desk.
Her face had been rather dark, but now a small ray of light had broken through.
Eina quickened her pace and met Bell out in the lobby.
…But there are also adventurers out there giving it everything they’ve got.
Bell smiled when he saw Eina emerge from behind the counter.
Eina smiled back at him.
Of course there were many kinds of adventurer, but seeing their passion and ability to ignore inconsequential things made Eina happy.
While there might have been adventurers willing to abandon a supporter, there were also adventurers willing to save a supporter.
If it was to help them, Eina felt like getting fired or depressed was worth it. Her wish for adventurers to stay alive was pure.
Eina realized it as she looked at the rather diminutive adventurer standing before her.
It’s been said that the good ones die young, while the bad live on…
Eina didn’t believe this, however; she didn’t want to. But she could do her best to keep the good ones alive.
It was time for that “superstition” to come to an end.
This was the Labyrinth City, Orario.
A city with a will of its own where even the gods didn’t know what would happen next.
Kanu froze on the spot.
“K-KANU?! HELP ME—GYA!!”
He could only stand and watch blood burst out of the other adventurer’s body.
“GYUAAAAHH…!”
Bloodred, mad bull.
A fresh wave of the red liquid ran down its toned, two-meder-tall body as it looked up to the high ceiling, before unleashing an explosion from its vocal cords.
“UWOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!!”
A monstrous howl.
Kanu’s ears bled, his body still frozen with fear as he came crashing down on his rear end.
With muscles like boulders, the beast’s entire body looked like a weapon. Far less could strike real fear into the hearts of many adventurers.
A Minotaur.
It was a name given to this type of monster, but this particular example wielded a large cleaver as it hacked and slashed its way through adventurers one by one.
This all started when Kanu happened across a group of Amazons fighting against a giant of a man.
Their heated battle covered well over half of a wide room. It was a battle between masters, adventurers who were far too powerful to waste time in the upper floors of the Dungeon. The battle that unfolded in front of Kanu’s eyes was beyond epic.
At first, Kanu and h
is battle party couldn’t believe their eyes as they watched the attackers gang up on the solo adventurer, but after noticing the emblem on the beast person’s armor—the profile of a goddess surrounded by a golden necklace—they realized this was a battle between members of the same Familia.
The mountain of a man belonged to Freya Familia. As the goddess of love and beauty, Freya had many enemies based on that alone. The power of jealousy knows no bounds.
So it was only natural that her enemies would try to get back at her in any way possible. Freya herself didn’t seem worried by the fact that her adventurers were often targeted when they traveled alone in the Dungeon.
While it was still unknown to Kanu and his group, rumors that this man, Ottar, was prowling around the seventeenth level for the past week had been circulating for some time now. This attack on Ottar was all part of a goddess’s plan to keep things interesting.
These combatants were far out of their league. Kanu and his compatriots could only gawk at them from a safe distance. That is, until someone noticed something peculiar.
The beast person was completely ignoring the difference in numbers, instead choosing to protect a large cargo box behind him.
That was the moment of truth.
Kanu and his battle party circled around behind the battle and waited for an opportunity to steal it. Once they made their move, all they heard behind them were the sounds of combat. Kanu was confident that Ottar had to fend off too many attackers to pursue them immediately.
They raced through the Dungeon with the cargo box in tow. That being said, it was slow going due to the size and weight of the box, but they needed to get as far away from Ottar as they could, as quickly as possible.
Kanu was convinced that this cargo box was full of loot from the lower Dungeon—the hard-fought gains of a top-class adventurer. The magic sword that he’d recently acquired from a…former associate of his was fresh in his mind, and Kanu had no doubt that his good luck would continue.
Then.
Once they had put enough distance between themselves and the beast man, Kanu and his party lost their patience and decided to divvy up the loot right then and there.
That’s when they saw exactly what was inside.
A bound and extremely angry Minotaur.
Without exception, every member of that battle party’s minds went blank.
It wasn’t long until red filled their eyes.
The Minotaur ripped the chains that restricted its hands clean off in a rage, crushing one of Kanu’s allies into a pulp in the process.
Letting out a howl that signaled the end of the world, the enraged Minotaur emerged from the cargo box with fresh blood on its hands.
“Hyeeaah…yaaaaahh?!”
A man—one of the last survivors of his battle party—let out a scream that sounded no better than a broken flute as he ran in circles.
The normally grassy floor had become a bloody marsh. His battle party was nothing more than fertilizer now, part of the gruesome field of death. The room had become an abattoir.
However, the man had lost the ability to think rationally and ran himself into a corner trying to escape.
The Minotaur advanced on the human at a leisurely pace, its eyes locked onto the back of the adventurer’s exposed neck.
Kanu looked over his shoulder to see an extremely unnatural sight: the Minotaur carrying a massive cleaver that happened to be in the cargo box, as if the monster were an adventurer.
“I-It’s a dead end… ?!”
“Mroooooooo…!”
“Yaaaagh?!”
Understanding the part his ally had to play in this episode, Kanu could only smile.
Neither his body posture nor his expression changed, only the color of his face as he watched the beast approach the man.
“Hrrrrnnn…!”
“Why, damn it all! Why are you here?!” The human screamed with his back to the wall. The Minotaur looked down on him, its shoulders heaving with each breath.
This Minotaur listened to its instincts and raised the cleaver as the whimpering human shrank to the floor.
All of the beast’s muscles tightened in rhythm, raising the blade high like a guillotine.
A dark shadow fell over the human adventurer, pure despair filling his mind.
The man’s wordless screams of panic and fear filled the room until—
“Mooooooooh!!!”
Thok. The sound of a slicing impact shot through the room, accompanied by the beast’s ferocious howl.
SPLASH. Yet another wave of fresh blood ran down the monster’s body.
“…Huh?”
Only able to see the beast’s shoulders from his vantage point, Kanu couldn’t see exactly what had become of his former party member.
But he only needed to look at the red splatter of blood and guts on the wall to know all that he needed to.
Kanu stood there in shock, a sitting duck out in the open, as the smallest of sounds fell out of his mouth.
“Mroo—”
But it was enough for the Minotaur to hear him.
The Minotaur turned, its face still contorted by rage.
Its eyes, surrounded by a splatter of fresh blood, shot through Kanu like hot knives into butter.
The adventurer’s body stiffened, as if chains had enveloped him from the inside out. Kanu started to hyperventilate.
“Mroooooooo!!”
He ran.
Breaking free of his mental chains, he put so much power into his first steps that he nearly fell flat on his face.
Regaining his balance, Kanu ran as fast as he could, the echoes of the beast’s roar right on his heels.
He was moving so fast that his boots sounded like whips as they hit the floor, his eyes wide. His mind was beginning to leave him.
The hideous god of death was catching up.
You’ve got to be kidding—?!
His breath was ragged, panting like a rapid dog. His thoughts were going all over the place, but none of his thoughts came to any kind of conclusion.
It was as if his mind was boiling inside his own head. Hot, much too hot.
Rivers of sweat flowed from his body as he sprinted like a madman.
Kanu had been running without much thought to where he was going. He nearly lost his balance many times, focusing only on making his escape.
It was nighttime outside the Dungeon. There were no other adventurers prowling these halls. He was truly alone in the Dungeon. It had become an endless labyrinth where the same walls and patterns went on into eternity.
Can’t shake it, can’t shake it, can’t shake it……?!
He couldn’t escape the overwhelming presence that was just behind him.
This wasn’t right. The beast’s aura was drowning him in his own fear.
Minotaurs were supposed to be known for their head-on bull-rush attacks, or so Kanu screamed at nothing in particular as he tried to put some space between himself and the monster.
Half of one of the Minotaur’s horns was missing, broken off by something else. It was as if through that pain, the beast gained intelligence.
The Minotaur held the cleaver in its right hand, giving chase with all speed.
“Haa-ha-haahaa?!”
Kanu gasped for breath as he made a sudden change of course, throwing his body into a small side path.
Desperate to go forward, desperate for distance.
All semblance of calm gone, the man wished for nothing more than a release from the fear that consumed him.
He had absolutely no idea where he was or how he got there.
His boots treaded grass as he prayed for the speed to escape death.
Before he knew it, he’d run himself into a room with no exit.
“Son of a—?!”
His eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets.
His voice sounded tight, like his vocal cords were seconds from snapping.
Once he realized what had happened, Kanu turned around with his eyes shaking.
The next moment, out of nowhere…
The half-horned Minotaur stuck its face out from around the corner.
“—?!”
A scream to end all screams rocketed out of Kanu’s ragged throat.
He had crossed the line from fear into sheer terror. Panic flooded his body.
The Minotaur fully emerged, gripping the cleaver in its powerful grasp. The massive sword would require two hands and an incredible amount of strength for a normal person to wield. However, in the hands of the Minotaur, it looked like nothing more than a longsword designed to be held in one hand.
Savage breath passed through intimidating, sharp white teeth.
Its dripping red weapon and bloodshot eyes were starving for another kill.
“G-get away!”
Kanu reached behind his back and pulled out a crimson knife.
Aiming the magic blade at the slowly oncoming monster, he waved it frantically until its power was unleashed.
“GUWOU……!”
“Go! Scram! Get the hell away from me!”
The flames that shot forward from the magic blade hit their target head-on.
Kanu shook the blade with all of his might; volley after volley of flames found their mark. With nowhere to run, this wall of fireballs was the only thing between him and certain death.
The Minotaur shielded itself from the onslaught with one of its huge arms. Kanu launched round after round after round…That is, until he heard a loud crack. The blade fell to pieces in his hand.
“Haa…whaaa?!”
The now lifeless magic blade had reached its limit, crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces as it fell to the ground.
The adventurer somehow managed a scream of surprise as his last line of defense fizzled out.
At the end of it all, Kanu was betrayed by his own weapon.
“Hnfff, hnfff…!!”
“Eeee-eeeeeeee!!”
Sparks still smoldering in its blood-soaked fur, the Minotaur had come close enough for Kanu to smell the beast’s putrid breath.
Enraged eyes bore into him.
The Minotaur’s muscles tightened as its shadow on the wall, and it raised its sword high.