chapter02 · 032-ep28

Episode 28: Stepping Up to D-Rank

Monday.

Sixth period ended, and the classroom went loud all at once.

"Ichinose-kun!"

The one calling out was Yano, from the seat next to mine.

"You free after this? We're talking karaoke with Nishino's crowd."

"Ah—"

I want to go. Honestly, I want to go SO badly.

Last time's karaoke was a blast, and Kuzumi and I have weirdly gotten each other since then. Go again today and fun is guaranteed.

But.

"Sorry, today's impossible. Next time, for sure."

"Ehh, why?"

"I'm diving a dungeon."

Yano went rigid on the spot.

"Huh — today? It's a weekday!"

"Dungeons don't have weekdays and weekends."

"I mean, I know that. But you're seriously going?"

"Seriously going."

I have to. E-rank won't raise my level, so above my weight is the only way.

"Oh-ho. Serious about it, huh."

Yano propped her cheek on her desk.

"Me, I'm strictly a watcher. Diving on a weekday is beyond imagining."

"You've gotta dive when you can dive."

"Ichinose-kun, you're surprisingly hardcore about this."

"Not hardcore. Hardcore-adjacent, at most."

"That IS hardcore!"

"Fine — a notch above hardcore-adjacent."

"That's called hardcore!"

I wanted to object, but I had exactly zero materials to object with.

"Where are you going?"

"Chikusa. It's near my house."

"Chikusa?"

Yano's head came up.

"Isn't Chikusa D-rank?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Wait — Ichinose-kun, you're D-rank?"

Ah.

Blurted out without thinking. Chikusa is a D-rank dungeon; you don't get in the door without D-rank.

"More or less... that is where things stand."

"'More or less'?"

"Wait, wait, wait. D — that's the one where even college kids get called fast, isn't it?!"

"Do they?"

"They DO! I'm not even registered!"

Yano's voice was so loud Horiguchi in the front seat jolted upright.

"Ichinose is D-rank?!"

"No way?!"

Even the people around crowded over. Bad — center of attention, completely.

"Wait, isn't that amazing?"

"How'd you rank up?"

"Luck, probably."

Not a sentence a man with LUK 23 should be saying — but that part, I kept quiet.

The question siege went on a while after that, and I somehow steered it off.

I was standing with my bag when Yano called me back.

"Hey, Ichinose-kun."

"Hm?"

"Are you, by any chance, doing streaming?"

Wait. Wait, wait. Busted?

"W-why?"

"I mean — diving a D-rank alone on a weekday? That's a genuinely serious person!"

Yano was still thumbing her phone, not even looking up.

"People like that usually stream, you know. Wanting to leave a record, and all."

...Oh. I see. That's what this is.

Hardcore explorers tend to stream — just a piece of general knowledge. Nothing to do with the black hood, nothing to do with Dungeon Strolls.

Whew. For a second there, I genuinely thought it had ALL come out.

"I'm not."

"Really?"

"If I were, I'd tell you."

I lied.

First lie I've ever told a high school friend.

The guilt: a little exists. But I can't say it. Yano's on the side that follows explorer streams — the second she hears the channel name, everything connects.

"Hmmm."

Yano didn't ask anything further.

"Then tell me when you DO start one! I'll absolutely watch!"

"Yeah. If it happens."

Sorry, Yano. I'll tell you properly someday, so hold on till then. For now — apologizing in advance, inside my head only.

Out of the classroom, toward the bike racks. Fifteen minutes by bike to the Chikusa dungeon. Home turf.

I'd been in exactly once, for the exam — but that time I had my sister and Shibasaki-san with me. Today is my first time in alone.

The Chikusa dungeon had people even on a weekday evening. A line at the branch reception, and plenty coming out of the gear shop. School uniforms here and there, too.

I mixed in among them and passed through the gate.

No stream today. Today was purely a level-raising trip.

Floor 1 was the same route I took at the exam. The wide passage, the high ceiling, the evenly spaced marker stakes — all of it familiar.

The first orc came out five minutes in.

The smell arrived first. A damp, animal smell. Then heavy, thudding footsteps.

From the corner of the passage, a gray mass appeared. A body two sizes up from a goblin, iron club in hand. Its small eyes found me and flashed.

I drew the mass-produced iron sword from my bag.

A 12,000-yen iron sword. It was plenty for E-rank — but here?

The orc roared. The air in the passage shuddered. Club heaved high, it charged.

Half-step back. The mass of iron skimmed past my nose and smashed the floor — the hard clang ran all the way up through my soles.

On its return, I cut.

There was impact. But shallow.

The blade stopped in the thick hide, and the weight shoved right back into my wrist. The orc only staggered; it didn't fall.

It snorted, and this time swung the club around sideways. I ducked under, and rising out of the crouch, cut upward over the same wound.

That, at last, turned it to sand. One gray fang rolled across the floor.

Two hits, huh.

At the exam, I went deeper than this — on a borrowed sword, at Lv68. Now it's Lv71 on my own sword. The conditions have, if anything, improved. And yet: shallow.

Which means the difference is gear quality. The Guild's rental swords are professional grade; the one I bought is beginner-tier mass production.

"Ugh — should NOT have cheaped out."

My voice carried to the end of the passage, and I whipped around in a panic. Nobody. Good.

If I keep going to the floors where Orc Soldiers spawn, this sword absolutely will not cut it. Armor-skating — I already lived through that at the exam.

So, what do I do.

...No point pretending to wrestle with the decision.

I pushed into the depths of the passage and stopped just short of a dead end. Confirmed no human presence, and drew a breath.

"—No inscription, no meaning — cut, Nameless."

Space split, black particles swirled, and a bare-bladed katana settled into my hand.

A jet-black blade that reflects no light whatsoever.

Yeah. This one just feels right.

The next orc appeared on the way back up the passage.

Same big swing as before — club rising clear over its head.

My feet went forward before thinking did.

Slipped inside the falling club's arc, and drew the katana through from flank to back.

The arm it swung with was carried half a step past me by its own momentum — where I'd expected the blade to stop, nothing stopped it.

Passed through. Two steps on.

I looked back: the orc stood frozen in its club-swing pose. A single thin line surfaced late across the gray torso. Along that line, the body sifted apart, flowing into sand.

That is NOTHING like the mass-produced sword. Comparing them is honestly rude.

From there, I went down and down.

Floor 3, Orc Soldiers.

Taller than an orc, chest and shoulders armored up, a bladed axe in hand.

The axe comes. Not taking it head-on — I deflect it sideways off the katana's spine. Dragged by its own deflected axe, the soldier's body half-opens.

Armpit. The armor seam.

I slid the blade in, and the black steel sank smooth to near the hilt.

The enemy that wouldn't give me a single millimeter at the exam turns to sand in one stroke now.

Floor 5. Floor 8.

Orc or Orc Soldier, one swing of the katana apiece and it was over. My feet headed for the next stairs on their own.

At Floor 10, for the first time, they stopped.

Two sets of footsteps from around the bend.

From the main passage: an Orc Soldier, axe over its shoulder, stomping along. From the right side-tunnel: an orc, iron club dragging the floor with a grating, ear-jangling noise.

The two of them looked at me at the same time.

Ugh. Simultaneous.

Everything so far today has been strictly one at a time.

The soldier heaved the axe up and charged from the front. Same instant, the orc's club came whipping in sideways from the tunnel.

Front and flank — look at either one and you lose the other.

I jumped back.

Axe and club crossed in the space where my head had just been. Steel met steel with a clash, sparks flying.

Both of them snagged on that for an instant.

But really, an instant. The orc wheeled around first, and this time brought the club straight down.

I took it on the katana.

Heavy. My arms sank along with the blade, numbness racing up to my elbows. My braced soles grated backward across the floor.

From just left of the orc, the soldier stepped in, axe rising.

Bad — if I stay under this, the axe lands.

I stopped trying to push it back. Angled the blade, and streamed the club I was holding off to the left.

The orc, its force robbed of anywhere to go, pitched forward left — and its huge body plugged itself squarely into the axe's path. The axe, its landing point deleted, stopped dead in midair.

Now.

Slipped past the stumbling orc, into the still-wound-up soldier's guard.

The same place as before — the armpit seam. Drove the katana in, and riding the pull-out, spun my body.

The half-risen orc's neck was right in front of me.

Swept it sideways.

Two massive bodies hit their knees at almost the same moment. Before either could finish falling, they unraveled from the outlines into heaps of sand.

The passage went abruptly quiet.

Even with the katana lowered, the numbness from that block was still living in my fingertips.

That was close. And yet — I noticed I was grinning.

One at a time, they're nothing. Two at once, and it's like this. Filing that away.

Status check.

Lv: 74

Up three. E-rank gave me two for twenty-five floors; D-rank gives three for ten. The efficiency isn't even comparable.

THIS. Keep this up, and Lv100 is in reach.

The problem is next Sunday. I have to dive the E-rank on stream — because I went and declared "E-rank, all 100 floors." The viewers are waiting for the continuation from Floor 25.

...No, hold on.

What if the stream just comes to D-rank?

Change the project. "Scrapping E-rank, switching to D-rank" — say that, and it's settled.

Which means bringing out Nameless on camera, but.

I looked down at the katana. Not even my face reflects in the black blade. It reflects no light, so obviously — but it's exactly this kind of detail that's so, so cool.

Well. The embarrassing part is only the chant.

But no chant, no katana. Mutter it or flub it, it doesn't come out — so there's no choice but to say it for real. Doing this on stream means saying "—No inscription, no meaning — cut, Nameless," straight-faced, in front of hundreds.

Hm?

My feet stopped in the middle of the passage.

...Why not summon it BEFORE the stream starts?

Enter the dungeon, walk to somewhere with no people, summon Nameless there. Then go live.

That way, what the viewers see is "me, already holding a katana." The chant never gets heard.

Wait. That's it?

I'm pretty sure I'd spent something like thirty minutes agonizing over how to hide the chant. And the answer is just "summon it beforehand." So simple I managed to miss it.

"I'm an IDIOT!"

A full-power self-roast, alone in an empty passage. Thirty minutes! How many orcs do you think that was?!

It's because me-from-back-then wrote nothing but grand-scale settings that present-day me ends up burning brain cells like this every single time.

Well, fine. Policy's decided.

Anything they ask about it, I push through with "it's a skill." Where it comes from — "no idea" is a valid answer. I genuinely have no idea, so it isn't even a lie.

Perfect.

...No. Not perfect.

I looked at the katana in my hand. There's exactly one hole that nothing can patch.

What if it vanishes mid-stream?

Knocked away, dropped, dispelled by some fluke — all of it perfectly plausible. Against the Emperor, the spear literally got batted out of my hands.

If that happens, re-summoning is the only move.

There's always summoning a different weapon — I'm under no obligation to re-summon Nameless just because Nameless is the one that vanished.

But whatever I summon, it needs the chant.

And if I'm summoning, it's probably Nameless. One line of preamble; in the weapons volume, it's the shortest there. The spear runs three, and the others aren't far behind.

Which means, at that moment, I'd be saying this in front of hundreds, straight-faced:

—No inscription, no meaning — cut, Nameless.

"Ughhh..."

I went and imagined it. The comment section in my head filled wall-to-wall with lols in a single heartbeat.

No, it's fine. Calm down.

Nothing on a D-rank's upper floors knocks weapons flying. Orcs, Orc Soldiers — current me ends those in one or two hits. Situations where I lose my grip aren't going to happen.

They shouldn't happen. ...Probably.

I re-gripped the katana and started down the passage.

No point agonizing; if it happens, it happens. For now: Lv74 today, and that's plenty.