“Huh, sure would help if this dungeon had an easy mode or something.”
Thank you, R, captain obvious!
Rumble, rumble...
The golem swung its huge sword downward. It was trying to slice us all apart!
“Yah!” Lea shouted and stopped the blade by grabbing it with her bare hands.
“Lea!”
“It’s quite heavy, but...”
SNAP!
Lea clenched her fist, and the sword shattered between her fingers.
“It’s not as powerful as that vampire’s fists.”
Without missing a beat, Lea then stepped in and destroyed both the golem’s legs with a single kick. Now unable to move, it gradually shut down.
“Whew...”
Nothing else in the room moved, so it looked like that was the only trap. We could finally take a break.
“You know, I kind of figured it would be something like this when you called it a dungeon, but... there are way too many traps here.”
Since leaving the room where we found Corona, we’d run into at least 30 of them. Considering dungeons were supposed to get tougher the further down you went, that meant that we—beginning adventurers at best—had started off with the hardest part. Actually... Forget it. It was probably best not to think about it.
Lea was still okay, but the other girls were at their limits. Mio was physically fine since Lea had carried her the whole way, but I could see the fear on her face. She was stressed out, which wasn’t helping her previous exhaustion any.
“Is this just going to keep going... Corona?”
Corona, pale and spaced-out, took a moment to realize I was talking to her.
“...Hm?”
Apparently she was tired, too.
“Are you okay?”
“Mm... Oh, I’m fine.”
Even though she said she was okay, she didn’t look like it. The long time she’d spent sealed away must have had an effect on her. Come to think of it, how long had she been sealed down here, anyway? She saved Aburaamu... several centuries ago, right?
That meant that even though she looked like she was our age, she was way, way older than that. How long did spirits live? Or had she just not aged while she was sealed? I had a lot of questions, but she looked out of sorts enough that I decided to stick to what was most important. And right now, our most pressing problem was how to get out of the dungeon.
“Corona, how many floors does this dungeon have?”
She thought for a minute and said, “A hundred, I believe.”
That many, huh? We still hadn’t found a single staircase, so it was a tough number to get my head around. We’d managed to cheat our way straight to the bottom and save the sealed hero, but because of that cheat, we had no real way to get back up.
“Well, no point in crying about it.”
I knew these girls wouldn’t make it through another 99 floors of this, so we needed to come up with an easier way to get out. A shortcut.
“Let’s try to come up with a way to bypass all the monsters and traps.”
Like usual, it wasn’t the standard way of doing things, but I wasn’t concerned about the details on this impromptu dungeon crawl.
“I don’t know about that...” Tsumiki said with a frown.
What I was saying probably sounded crazy.
“Let’s just go over what we know about the dungeon for now.”
It was a huge labyrinth filled with traps. It was a hundred floors deep. It had traps and doors that seemed to be magical.
“I... guess that’s it.”
“It’s hard to even comprehend.”
“Yeah...”
Tsumiki and Harissa sighed. I looked at Corona.
“How much do you know about the way this dungeon is laid out?”
“...Hm?”
She was still pale. If anything, she looked worse than before.
“Are you really okay? Want something to eat?”
“Sorry, but I don’t think I could eat anything right now,” she said, stopping me when she saw me starting to go into my backpack. “This dungeon... Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about it. I wasn’t the one who made it, after all.”
“I see...”
It was a fair point. If she’d known how the dungeon was set up, we wouldn’t have fallen for all those traps.
“Hmm...” I scratched my head.
“Rekka.”
“What is it, Lea?”
“I might have a plan.”
“Really?!”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “I can take my Leviathan form, and everyone can get on my back. Then I can just break through ceiling after ceiling until we get to the surface.”
“What?!”
Well, that would be a lot faster than walking.
“But there’s a hundred floors to this dungeon. We don’t know how sturdy it is. Damaging it too much might cause a cave-in.”
“...I’d rather not be buried alive.”
“With plenty of energy, I could protect everyone, but I don’t think I have enough right now.”
“Then...”
I looked at Tsumiki. The dark matter she created while practicing cooking was energy-dense and Lea’s favorite source of fuel. We had some food with us. It was mostly just preserved goods, but maybe...
“No, um... I didn’t bring any cooking utensils or anything...”
Okay, maybe not.
“Why didn’t you?!”
“I thought if we needed any, we could just use the castle kitchen! Besides, I had lots of clothes and things to pack...”
Come to think of it, I had asked her to pack clothes for Mio, too. I didn’t think that would come back to haunt me...
“What do we do, Rekka? If we’re careful when we break through the floors, we might be fine. But who knows how long that will take...”
“Anyone have any other ideas?”
Since I still had Ellicia’s story to worry about, I wanted to get to the surface as soon as possible, but I wasn’t willing to risk everyone’s safety to do it. As I was pondering the dilemma...
“Ugh...” Corona groaned and fell over on the floor.
“Corona?!”
“Hahh... hahh...”
She was panting heavily. Had we pushed her too hard too soon after breaking the seal? I was kicking myself, but there wasn’t much point in dwelling on it. I had Harissa use a healing spell on her and tried to feed her a little food, but none of it helped.
“Ugh...”
“It’s no good. My magic’s easing her pain, but it isn’t fixing the real problem.”
“The real problem? She’s not just tired like Mio was?”
I patted Mio, who was now clinging to my waist again, on the head.
“I’m not an expert in healing magic, so I don’t really know... but I believe she’s suffering from some kind of illness.”
“Like what?”
“That I don’t know.” Harissa looked down.
“Don’t sweat it. Thanks for your help, Harissa.”
Even though her magic spell had actually worked properly, Harissa still felt guilty for bringing us to this world. I wanted to keep the conversation light so she didn’t end up feeling any worse.
After I talked to Harissa, Mio tugged on my sleeve.
“Rekka... what are we going to do?”
If Corona was sick, then we needed to get her to a doctor. But any doctors would be on the surface, and the only way to get up there right now was the brute force method. It was dangerous, but if we took the slow and steady route instead, we’d just be wasting time. And with each passing minute, Corona’s condition might be getting worse...
But hurrying meant more danger. Maybe we should just give up on Aburaamu and go back to Earth? No, there was no way to be sure that normal doctors could help Corona. We’d have to get her to the surface here to save her. But the only way there was risky, and I was hesitant to take it.
I leaned up against the wall and looked up at the ceili
ng. If there were some way we could get through the ceiling without destroying it, that would probably make the trip up a lot less dangerous. Something like what I’d seen Ellicia do.
“If only we could just pass through the ceiling...”
The instant I said that, it felt like the wall vanished from behind me. Since I was leaning up against it, I lost all my support and fell straight backward. Everything went black for a moment, but the light returned just in time for me to feel the back of my head colliding with something hard.
“OW!”
I grabbed my head, not knowing what had happened. It hurt so bad that there were tears welling in my eyes, but that wasn’t what was on my mind.
“...Huh?”
Everyone was gone, and I couldn’t hear anything.
Where was I? The walls were still made of stone, but... No, something was wrong.
Why were the pillars sideways and coming out of the walls? And why was my face so close the ground? And this feeling on my back... Wait...
It took me that long to process that I was lying face up on the floor.
“How...”
The instant I started to say something, I heard a sound I recognized.
Rrrrrumble...
“Is that...?”
Yup. It was a large boulder rolling straight towards me.
“Uwaaah!”
I quickly sat up to get out of the way, but then my vision went dark again. What... What was going on? I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but I could almost swear that...
“Did I just sit up into the wall?”
That’s certainly what it seemed like.
“Huh?”
I was talking to myself out loud, but I couldn’t hear my own voice. It was like someone had their hand over my mouth. Or my ears. Maybe both. But in the midst of my befuddlement, I felt someone grab my ankle and yank hard.
“Waaa... ah?”
Now I could hear myself screaming just fine. I timidly opened my eyes to see the girls again, and they looked worried.
“Rekka! Are you okay?”
“Huh? Wh-What happened to me?” I stammered.
“You fell behind the wall!”
“Huh?”
Tsumiki explained that while I was leaning against the wall, I’d suddenly fallen backwards through it. All that was left sticking out on this side was my foot at the base of the wall, and the rest of me appeared to be inside it. They’d all panicked, but Lea had taken it upon herself to try and pull me out of the wall.
“Sheesh... I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried that all that would come off would be your ankle when I pulled.”
“That’s terrifying! I don’t even want to think about that!”
Quickly purging that thought from my mind, I tried putting it all together. I must’ve literally fallen through the wall and landed on the other side, which was out in the hallway. That big rock coming for me was probably the same one that had tried to crush us earlier. It was weird enough as it was, but weirder still that I’d just been thinking about doing exactly that.
“Is this... Ellicia’s power?”
It was precisely what I’d seen her do, and it didn’t seem like there was any way that was a coincidence. There had to be some reason I could do it now, too.
“Hmm...”
I thought back to when I’d met her. Going over what had happened in my head, what stuck out to me was that she’d hugged me while she was telling me that Yang was after her. I could understand why she’d told me that, but why the hug? It didn’t make sense. And let’s see... Just before that, I remember her running her fingers through her hair...
“...”
I started patting myself down.
“Sir Rekka?”
“Rekka, what are you doing?”
The girls seemed confused, but I kept searching until I found something. It was a small object in my back pocket.
“What is that? An earring?” Tsumiki asked when she saw me pull it out.
She was probably wondering why I had something like that. Of course she would be. It was clearly a girl’s earring. But it was Ellicia’s, not mine.
When Ellicia was pretending to run her fingers through her hair, she was really taking off this earring. And when she’d hugged me, it was so she could slip it into my back pocket. As for why she’d done it... Well, she probably didn’t want to share her wall walking ability with me. She probably wanted to keep Yang from getting his hands on it. Giving it to me was just her way of making sure it would stay safe even if she was captured.
There was no way of telling what power the earring really had, but the one thing I knew for sure was that it gave me the ability to pass through walls. It was probably something very important in Ellicia’s story, but for now it was going to be our ticket out of here.
“Lea, I’ve got an idea.”
▽
After that, I tried going through several walls to figure out the limits of the wall walking power. First, I learned that the power needed to be activated. You had to imagine going through a wall for it to work. Next, it couldn’t go through the earth. You would just sink downwards through the floor until your feet hit whatever natural ground was below.
Lastly, and mostly importantly, I learned the power didn’t just work on one person. It affected the person holding the earring as well as anyone or anything they were touching, but the important part was that they had to be in direct contact. For example, if I held Harissa’s hand and Harissa held Tsumiki’s hand, Harissa and I could go through the wall but Tsumiki couldn’t. That meant the easiest way for us to get out would be to have Lea hold the earring while we clung to her and she flew up through the ceiling, but...
“All right, let’s go.”
“R-Right.”
I nodded timidly. Lea was still in her human form. That made c-clinging to her a little difficult for me...
Our first plan was to get all of us to ride on her back while she was in Leviathan form, but there was a passed-out Corona to consider. Since we’d be going straight up, there was a danger that she’d fall off. So instead, we decided that Lea would carry Corona on her back, and everyone else would grab on to her body somewhere.
“Rekka, don’t be shy. Squeeze tighter. I’m holding Corona, so if you fall, I won’t be able to grab you, too.”
“Y-Yeah...”
Lea was right, but...
“...”
“...”
Tsumiki and Harissa were glowering at me.
But I had to ignore them. I didn’t want to die, so I took a deep breath and squeezed Lea tighter... Wow, she was really soft. There were plenty of... handholds... to grab on to, but I knew if I picked the wrong one, I’d be the one needing a doctor. Tsumiki was vicious when it came to that stuff.
“Okay. Tsumiki, Harissa, Mio, are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
“...Yes.”
Mio answered last and the least enthusiastically, but her arm was wrapped tightly around Lea’s waist nonetheless. With all of us clinging to her, she looked like some kind of tree that grew people instead of fruit, I thought.
“All right, here I go,” Lea said, and then her feet floated off the floor.
When we got high enough in the air that we were closing in on the ceiling, I closed my eyes. It looked like we were going to crash straight into it... but then the power activated, and we passed right through. Lea started picking up speed, but I couldn’t feel anything pulling me downward. Her flight magic completely freed us from gravity, so as long as no one let go, there was no way we’d fall on the way up.
Eventually, we passed through all one hundred floors that way...
“Whoa!”
And were welcomed to the surface by the light of a brilliant sun.
Side Story: Hibiki Feature (July 20th)
The Ellicia rescue team, led by Hibiki, started by travelling to the next town over by train.
She’s staying in places where there are lots of people
... No, lots of buildings? Her wall walking power is probably more useful in places like this.
Hibiki called Satsuki on her phone as she and the others left the station.
“I just got off the train. Where’s Ellicia?”
“Just a second...”
The Magic of Omniscience was powerful, but it was draining. Satsuki didn’t have that much magical power left, so she couldn’t keep using it forever. With that in mind, they were having her conserve her energy until it was really needed. She was the only way they had to track down Ellicia, so they couldn’t have her running out of gas at a critical moment.
“She’s 300 meters west of the station. It’s... a department store. She’s inside there. Yang hasn’t gone inside yet, but he’s close, it looks like.”
“Got it. I’ll call you when we get there.” Hibiki hung up the phone and turned around to the rest of the party. “There’s a department store west of here. Let’s move out.”
“...”
“What’s wrong, Rosalind?”
“You’re not a very inspiring leader.”
“...Sorry for not being Rekka.”
Hibiki sighed and rubbed her temples. She looked and saw that Iris also had an unimpressed look on her face. Only Suzuran was neutral.
Shirley and her group went to Berano to get tools and intelligence regarding dealing with psychics... Satsuki’s tracking the target with her magic, and Tetra’s with her for support. The four of us are supposed to actually find Ellicia. I’d like to think the jobs were divided properly, but...
Hibiki was losing confidence. She wondered if she should have borrowed Garnet from Shirley. Garnet was an android, but she was good at what she did. She might’ve been more useful than these two unenthusiastic teammates. But right now, Garnet was in space with Shirley. Hibiki knew there was no sense in whining about what she couldn’t have.
“But... if you can find Ellicia before Rekka gets back, I think he’d really be impressed, you know?”
“Then what are we standing around for, Hibiki?! Let’s go!”
“Yeah, let’s get moving!”
Rekka’s name works wonders on those two...
Hibiki had used the same trick on them several times on the way here, and it was surprisingly effective on both Iris and Rosalind. But she kept her astonishment to herself and chased after the two girls, trying to keep up as best she could. Since they were both using their superhuman strength, Hibiki was quite a bit slower than they were.
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 7 Page 7