chapter1 · 004-ep4

Episode 4: ...Guess I'd Better Head Home

Before I knew it, it was well past noon on Sunday.

My phone read 1:27 p.m.

"...Whoa."

The sound slipped out before I could stop it.

Man. I'd really done it.

The dungeon was too much fun, and I'd gone and straight-up crossed into the next day.

I was supposed to have left home Saturday afternoon, and here it was, past noon on Sunday.

Normally you'd head home at some point, right?

Actually, not heading home is a problem, full stop.

Sleepiness dulls your judgment, and my body ought to be way heavier by now.

And in fact, my legs were dead.

My stomach was empty, too.

Water and Calorie Mates alone was rough going, honestly.

But.

"...I can still move better than I thought."

That was the strange part.

I should be closing in on my limit, but my head still works.

My vision isn't swimming, and my feet aren't stopping.

"Is this another one of those Awakener perks?"

I opened my Status to check.

Level 5.

Strength, Endurance, Agility — every one of them had grown to nearly double where they started.

Thanks to that, my body felt lighter than usual.

"...No, but — seriously, should I head back once?"

Honestly, I think that call is pretty sound.

I think.

I scrolled a little through the achievement list.

Since then, on top of the hundred left-hand punches, I'd claimed these two achievements:

【D: Withstand 5 enemy attacks in a row without moving a single step】

【C: Complete 10,000 squats inside a dungeon】

Both of them were genuinely, absurdly brutal.

So brutal I swore on the spot: never again.

And the Skills I'd gotten for them were —

Posture Control.

And the other one,

Posture Control.

My first thought was, why are they the same? But apparently duplicate Skills are treated as stacking, and they evolve into something like 【Posture Control+】.

In other words, my balance and the way my legs plant and drive got stupidly strong.

An absurdly plain Skill.

"...There's still a weird one left, though."

Midway down the achievement list, one line had been bugging me this whole time.

【C: Spend 12 or more hours together with the same monster, without either of you dying】

From the first time I saw it, I'd thought this one alone was a different breed.

Not the kind you get by fighting and winning.

If anything, the kind where you're not allowed to fight.

Observation, coexistence, distance.

The kind of achievement that puts those to the test.

"...But if I go for this one, I'll be finishing in the middle of the night."

Should head home after all.

No, wait.

That's when a different achievement drifted through my head.

【C: Remain active inside a dungeon for 36 or more hours without sleeping】

"...Oh."

Hold on.

If I keep moving another twelve hours from now, I clear that one too, don't I?

I mean, that puts my return home firmly in dead-of-night territory.

But flip it around: go home now, and this whole flow disappears.

Time, stamina, conditions — right now is when everything's lined up best.

"...What to do once I'm home — I'll leave that to the me who's already home. Yeah. Good plan."

I muttered it quietly.

I'm getting chewed out either way.

In that case, screw it — might as well grab every achievement I want and then go home (trembling).

The instant I decided that, a dragging sound came from deep in the corridor, right on cue.

From beyond the stone wall, Greyfish slid its face into view.

I'd stopped counting which number this made.

The face was as unpleasant as ever.

Huge eyes.

Nose in the wrong spot.

Slimy gray skin.

A split mouth, drooling.

I'd thought I was getting used to it, but no.

"...Alright. You're the one!"

Of course, it wasn't listening to a word.

Knife up, it charged in like always.

"Wait, wait, wait—"

I slipped sideways on reflex.

Its fist cut air.

I didn't counter.

Just dodge, without hitting back.

And that alone was hard.

But it seemed to catch on that I wasn't striking back, because the second attack came sloppier than the first.

When I kept dodging, Greyfish suddenly stopped.

Its shoulders were heaving for breath.

I see.

So its stamina isn't infinite either.

Well, it's a living thing too.

Using the opening, I backed up to the wall and pulled the water out of my backpack.

"Little break."

With Greyfish dead ahead of me, I cracked the bottle open.

It watched me, wary.

But it didn't step in.

Probably waiting for its breathing to settle.

I drank.

Delicious.

Why is water inside a dungeon this good?

"...Want some?"

No answer.

Obviously.

What am I even doing?

Once the break was over, Greyfish approached again.

But not an attack step.

More like it was measuring the distance.

So it has a caution distance.

It stops moving about three meters out.

Stepping in from there means an attack.

Pull back, and it won't come close.

As a test, I slowly backed away.

Five meters.

Greyfish didn't follow.

It just stayed put, eyes on me.

"...Huh. It's not chasing?"

One more step back.

Still nothing.

Then what about eye contact?

I turned my face away, deliberately theatrical.

Faced the wall.

A few seconds.

A quick sidelong glance.

Greyfish had stopped.

Meet its eyes and it steps in. Break the gaze and it stops.

...This might work without fighting.

"Huh. It actually has rules."

No answer, of course.

But I'd already started taking notes on my own.

The strategy guide in my head was gaining Greyfish pages, bit by bit.

Caution distance: three meters.

Pursuit range: within five meters.

Break line of sight and it stops moving.

Even knifeless, it never tries to arm itself with the rocks lying around.

It only uses what's within reach.

Also, when I set my backpack down, its eyes flicked over for just a second.

It reacts to movement — or to new objects.

As a test, I tossed over a Calorie Mate.

It rolled to Greyfish's feet.

It showed a moment of hesitation.

It didn't eat.

But for that one instant its gaze was dragged there, I could move pretty freely.

"So you can be baited with food..."

No — less bait, more distraction tool.

Knowledge gained.

Grateful for it.

Grateful, but.

"...What am I even doing with my life?"

Coming back to myself, the words slipped out.

A high schooler spending Sunday afternoon observing the ecology of a grey alien fishman, in a dungeon.

I'm probably the only human on Earth doing this.

Time passed without mercy.

One hour.

Three hours.

Five hours.

By then, I could read Greyfish's movements pretty well.

But it still wasn't a clear.

Twelve or more hours, apparently.

These unlock conditions are brutal, seriously.

A few times along the way, Greyfish flashed an attack step, but I kept holding the sweet spot — slightly out of range — the entire time.

Put bluntly, that was the whole job.

Too bland to call "just that," though.

But the blander the achievement, the fewer people touch it.

And because nobody touches them, world-firsts are lying there for the taking.

Thinking of it that way kept some weird hype alive in me.

A little past the nine-hour mark, Greyfish sat itself down on the floor.

Fully sat.

In something like a cross-legged pose, staring at me, motionless.

A break?

You take breaks?

"...Must be nice, getting to rest."

I leaned against the wall too and gnawed my last Calorie Mate.

The air was strange.

We weren't fighting.

Nobody was fleeing.

I was just resting, with a wall between me and the thing with the unpleasant face.

Strangely, the revulsion had thinned, just a little.

No — the look of it stayed awful to the end.

The drool, gross. The yellowed fangs, gross. The slimy skin, normally gross.

But once I understood it had its own logic of behavior, it stopped looking like just an "enemy" and started looking like "that kind of creature."

I would never call it a pet, though.

But I'd spent a little too long with it to see it as a plain enemy anymore.

That's roughly where we stood.

And at last, twelve hours had passed.

The instant they did, the edge of my vision flashed.

【Achievement Unlocked】

【C: Spend 12 or more hours together with the same monster, without either of you dying】

"...! There it is."

【World-First Reward will be granted】

【Passive Skill Acquired: Enemy Observation】

In that instant, Greyfish's outline snapped into sudden focus.

No — it's not that how it looked changed.

How it felt changed.

The habits in its lunges.

The shift in the air right before it goes on the attack.

Not just reaction speed or anything like that.

More like its whole nature drops into my head.

What it'll do next — I can somehow tell a beat ahead.

"...Like strategy notes wired straight into my brain."

【Enemy Observation】

Makes it easier to grasp a target's behavioral tendencies, habits, and alarm responses.

No, that's way too useful.

I looked at Greyfish one last time.

It was looking back at me.

Twelve hours we'd spent together.

But this is where it ends.

I put my left hand forward.

【Off-Hand Strike】's cooldown had long since cleared.

"...Good work today."

The party concerned, obviously, wasn't listening.

The one I'd walked twelve hours with came stepping in.

Its trajectory was clear as day.

Half a step aside, and I drove in the left.

With a dull crack, Greyfish's body burst into specks of light and was gone.

"...Whew."

Leaning on the wall, I let out a breath.

My Status said Level 6 now.

The Skills field had grown, too.

【Off-Hand Strike】, 【Posture Control+】, and now 【Enemy Observation】.

Not bad.

No — better than that, a seriously strong lineup.

【Achievement Unlocked】

【C: Remain active inside a dungeon for 36 or more hours without sleeping】

"...Oh."

It hit me right there.

Apparently I'd just cleared that one too, right on schedule.

【Reward will be granted】

【Passive Skill Acquired: Sleep Deprivation Adaptation】

A sensation ran through the back of my head — like a thin membrane settling smoothly into place.

The sleepiness itself hadn't vanished.

But the feeling of being dragged around by it alone had suddenly receded.

"Ohh... handy."

Handy, but.

"...I've been down here way too long. Yeah."

That finally knocked some sense back into me.

I turned and started back the way I'd come.

The return trip was easy.

All those hours in the dungeon had left my mental map nearly perfect.

Where to turn.

Which corridors dead-end.

Where Greyfish tends to show up.

All of it was already in my head.

Honestly, I'd been in deep a long time.

And the moment I finally stepped outside —

"Whoa."

My phone buzzed.

Nothing but bad premonitions.

I looked at the screen.

Family group chat. Rin. Mom. Missed calls. Class announcements. Breaking news.

Turned out there was no signal inside the Gate, of all things, so every notification hit me at once now.

The kind of screen that gives you stomach pain just from looking.

"...Guess I'd better head home."

The dread was crushing.

But honestly, not going home was worse.

Dungeon monsters are scary, but so is the air at home, quite a bit.

For someone who'd spent over a day down there, Greyfish honestly felt more endearing right now.

"Ahhh~ should've brought one home with me?"

Leaking a joke that didn't qualify as a joke, I at last set out for home.