chapter02 · 038-ep33
Episode 33: After School, I Dive as the King
Tuesday. The instant the chime ended sixth period, I had my bag in hand.
"Ichinose-kun, karaoke tod—"
"Sorry, Yano, can't today!"
"FAST! I hadn't even finished the word!"
"Next time. I'll bring the yakisoba bread tomorrow — all three."
"You actually remembered?!"
I remember. A promise is a promise.
As I made for the door, Yano leaned out after me.
"Wait. Dungeon again today?"
"A walk."
"That's just Dungeon Strolls!"
"No, no. An ordinary walk."
"That is DEFINITELY a lie! And lay off Chikusa — it's packed again today, apparently."
"Not going to Chikusa."
Not a lie. I am not going to Chikusa.
From the back seats, Kuzumi gave me a small wave. Matoba yelled "Tell me when you stream!" Not streaming. Today, absolutely not streaming.
Fast walk down the corridor, out to the bike racks.
My legs were light.
Since last night, I had been waiting for this exact moment.
The destination was already decided.
Last night I'd searched Tritter end to end. Type in "Dungeon Strolls stakeout" and every D-rank in Nagoya City was basically done for. Outside the city too — Kasugai, Nisshin, Toyota, all of them reporting people.
But there was exactly one place nobody named.
Akazu, in Seto City.
A D-rank dungeon in the hills of a pottery town. Medium-sized, and with nothing around it, apparently not very popular.
I parked my bike at the school's nearest station and got on the train. Transfer at Ozone, then the Meitetsu Seto Line. Out the window, the scenery shifted bit by bit from houses to mountains.
Off at Owari-Seto, then twenty minutes swaying on a bus.
The Akazu dungeon turned out to be a place where a single door stood alone, partway up an old stone wall on a mountain slope.
I looked around.
Nobody.
Nobody flying a drone, nobody holding up a phone, nobody staking anything out. Beside the authentication gate, one stray cat was taking its nap.
"Yesss!"
A small fist pump. The cat opened one eye, and closed it again.
Guild card to the gate. Green lamp, door open.
I think I heard at registration that entry logs stay on the card, but whatever. The only ones who can see those are the Guild.
Floor 1 was a stone passage.
Reddish stone stacked up, with what looked like pottery shards embedded here and there. A pottery town's dungeon is pottery to the core, apparently.
I walked on a while, then turned into a side passage, well clear of the entrance.
No human presence.
I pulled the cloak from my bag and threw it on. Hood up, and the top half of my vision sank into shadow.
Checked the time on my phone. 4:40 PM.
At my current level, the silence holds for about two and a half hours. The math gets me home before dinner.
One deep breath.
Now then.
Nobody here. Nobody to hold back for, either.
I'd been restless to my bones, wanting this.
"—Before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its end I remain."
Five lines, all the way to the end.
The world changed.
Bangs lengthening, swaying at the edge of vision. Right eye black, left eye white. A feeling of something impossibly vast seeping out, just a little, from the depths of my body.
Opened my status.
Lv: 90 Job: Abyss King Who Rules the End STR: 63 (+Unmeasurable / Release Rate ???)
Release Rate, still censored out.
I'll probably never know how much is released. Never — but my body is unmistakably lighter than on the day I first became the King. The amount of power welling up from the depths is on a different level.
Bit by bit, something is opening. At least that much, I can tell.
"—Onward."
I hadn't meant to say it.
(Right. Let's go.)
I answered in my head and broke into a run.
I opened the Magic Eye of a Thousand Leagues.
My vision expanded all at once. Beyond the walls, beneath the floor — the shape of this floor's passages came flowing into my head like a map. The position of the descending stairs too.
The Magic Eye of Discernment stamped red marks onto the traps.
After that, all that was left was to run between them.
Floor 1: three minutes.
Floor 2: four.
Monsters came out. They came out — and in the same instant, they ended.
Around a corner of the passage, a lump of reddish-brown earth loomed itself into view. A squat golem, like clay kneaded into the shape of a person. A head taller than me.
A thick arm swung upward.
I was inside its guard before it came down. One punch.
A fist-shaped hole opened in the earthen chest. The golem tilted its head as if peering down at its own chest, and then simply trickled apart.
"—Brittle."
It's not brittle. I'm just far too strong.
I retorted at myself.
Everything out of my mouth is the King's dialogue, but inside my head it's entirely the usual me. The first day at Kanayama, that mismatch had me holding my skull. Now I'm used to it. Used to it — past that, honestly, it's getting fun.
Somewhere past Floor 5, I leveled up.
Lv: 90 → Lv: 91
- XP earned is halved (King's power in use)
Halved. As ever.
But fine. Even halved, when the kill count is on another digit scale, it doesn't matter.
Floor 10. Floor 15.
In Chikusa terms, the same depth as the trap room. That time, it took me half a day to get this far.
Today: forty minutes.
"—Hm. Not bad."
(Not bad? This isn't not-bad — it's FAST. Stupidly fast!)
The me inside my head was jumping up and down.
Just before Floor 20, a human presence.
The Magic Eye of a Thousand Leagues showed three figures ahead in the passage. Adult explorers, three of them, sitting against the wall on a break.
Go around, then.
Going around meant backtracking to the fork and looping in from a different route. Ten minutes lost.
No, wait.
There's a skill for this.
【I Am Not Observed by the World】. The one that fades my presence and makes me hard to spot. Learned it back in my Kanayama days; used it plenty since.
The problem was that it needs a chant.
Announce the name, then declare. Meaning: near people, out loud.
(Could I get away with a whisper?)
No. It doesn't come out unless I mean it.
(Thought so.)
I steeled myself. Fifty meters, still, between me and the three of them. At this distance, probably inaudible. And if audible — they'd take it for dungeon echo.
"—Ten thousand eyes observe. Yet I am not observed."
A feeling of my outline dissolving into the surrounding air.
On, down the passage.
Past the three of them.
No footfalls. Hood pulled down deep.
Three more steps. Two.
"...Hey. Did something just go past?"
A voice behind me.
(You're kidding — they noticed)
My feet very nearly stopped. The King's body did not.
"Wind, probably."
"Since when is there WIND in a dungeon?!"
"No — I saw something black just now. Hooded..."
One of them said it, sharp with sudden realization.
"Wait — that's the Nanyo—!"
(Bad)
I ran. All out.
Around the corner. Down the stairs in leaps. The voices behind me shrank away in seconds.
Two floors down, on Floor 21, I put my back to the wall and let out a breath.
"—Look not back. The King never turns to gaze upon the road he has passed."
(I want to look back SO badly. That was nearly a confirmed sighting just now!)
I screamed inside my head.
But nearly is all it was. Not confirmed. Worst case, they think I'm "the Nanyo black cloak" — and nobody connects that to Ichinose Saku.
Nobody does. Probably.
(It's fine, it's fine. There's a hood.)
Shaken off, I ran on.
On Floor 25, there was a transfer circle.
A faintly glowing circle drawn into the floor.
Guild card to it, registered.
"—One mark, carved."
(Right. One registered.)
Kind of like a save point in a game — my hype ticked up a notch.
Past that point, the air changed.
The passages widened. The ceilings climbed. The footfalls of monsters grew heavier.
At the end of the passage, it stood.
A demon close to three meters tall, a knotted mass of muscle. A horn growing from its forehead. In its hands, a club like a felled log.
The very image of an ogre, seen a hundred times over in games.
The ogre bellowed — a voice that reached all the way to the bottom of my gut. The club swung up.
The Magic Eye of Karma showed me its arc as a line.
Half a step outside that line. The descending club traced the spot I'd just occupied and smashed the floor, the weight of it arriving through my soles.
By then, I was already inside its guard. One punch to the belly.
The ogre folded in half and blew backward. Hit the wall, became sand.
"—Child's play."
(No, that was NOT child's play. That club was enormous.)
But it's fun.
In Chikusa, killing even one took care. Minding the stream camera, hiding chants, thinking through every last swing of the katana.
Now, there's nothing to mind.
Nobody watching. No camera. No comments. No stakeouts.
Only the dungeon, the monsters, and me.
Floor 30. Floor 35.
Levels climbing like it's rigged.
Lv: 94 → Lv: 95
Each kill worth half XP — but mowing down monsters at this depth, one after another, went by in a blink.
"—Not yet. Still, not enough."
(Right, right. Plenty more where that came from.)
Past Floor 40, I checked the clock.
6:50 PM.
Two hours ten since becoming the King.
The silence should hold about two and a half hours.
But today, I had been talking the entire time. "Brittle," "child's play," "onward" — every time the King's mouth ran off on its own, the timer reset. If anything, all that chatter meant it showed no sign of cutting out at all.
(Me-from-back-then: thank you for making the King a talker.)
For the first time ever, I thanked me-from-back-then, sincerely.
The problem was the hour of my return.
Dinner is at 7:30 — Mom told me this morning. Even leaving now, I definitely wouldn't make it.
Phone out, message to Mom.
『Sorry, going to be a bit late. Around 8:30.』
Sent.
Marked read instantly, and back came a reply.
『Big sis says she figured as much.』
And then, one more, on top of it.
『Message from big sis: in moderation.』
She had every last bit of it in view.
Floor 50.
The bottom of the stairs opened into a place nothing like the floors above.
A vast circular hall. A ceiling too high to see. All across the walls, holes like the mouths of pottery kilns gaped here and there, red light leaking from within.
The air was hot. Kiln-front heat, the kind that clings to the skin, and it was reaching me even through the cloak.
And in the center of the hall, something stood.
A giant made of pottery.
Its whole body fired red-brown ceramic, cracked here and there. From inside the cracks spilled light like kiln fire. Twice an ogre's height, with arms grotesquely long — the hands tapering to machete points.
A dry creak of ceramic rubbing ceramic.
The giant's head turned toward me, slowly. The light in its cracks brightened a full step.
A boss.
The Floor 50 boss. Of a D-rank.
(Whoa, big... and cool...)
I meant it, honestly.
Seeing things like this — that's part of why I dive.
"—Interesting."
For the first time today, my mouth and my head said exactly the same word.
The giant took one step forward.
A boom through the floor, the tremor crawling up from my soles to my knees.
An arm rose.
Fast. Far faster than the ogre. The lines of the Magic Eye of Karma ran — two at once. Right arm and left arm, together.
But lines do not lie.
Half a step outside the first line. Sink beneath the second.
The machete tip of an arm passed centimeters above my hood. Even the wind that trailed it was hot.
"—Slow."
It isn't slow. I'm dodging because I can see it.
The giant hauled both arms back. This time three lines ran. A right sweep, a left thrust — and, feinting both of those, a stomp.
The Magic Eye of Discernment marked the floor red: the stomp's landing point. Even the feint, fully visible.
Duck under the right. Slip the left with a half-turn. Jump outside the red mark.
The giant's foot hammered the floor.
The whole hall leapt.
The floor was still shaking under my landing. For one instant, the floor I'd planted on fled out from under my soles. My knee buckled.
By the time I raised my face, it was already coming.
The machete arm. The line was visible — my body couldn't make it.
I twisted only my head. Fired ceramic skimmed past my ear.
A thin rip of cloth.
(Close one)
Rolled across the floor for distance. Up on my feet, fingers to the hood's edge — a finger's width of cloth torn away. The cheek underneath: untouched.
Seeing it doesn't save you when the ground itself lurches.
The landing after a jump is the most dangerous moment of all.
(What even IS this? It's too much fun.)
The King's face stayed cool as ever while my heart alone made a racket.
The giant's attacks swung wider and wider. As if furious at failing to finish me — the kiln light pulsed hard inside its cracks.
Back away from a sweep. Slip a thrust with a half-turn. Another sweep. Under it. Every one of them a size bigger than the last.
"—Thy blade shall not reach me."
(It very nearly reached, just now.)
Three lines again. Right, left, stomp.
Red marks lit on the floor.
This time — no jumping.
Riding the momentum of ducking the right, I stepped not outside the mark, but toward the giant. Beside the still-raised foot. Right in front of the leg that bore its weight.
Overhead, the giant's foot came down.
The floor boomed. The hall shook. But my feet were already planted before it struck. Let it shake — I would not be swept.
The giant's torso hung right in front of me.
Not one line running.
Now.
One punch, driven into the torso.
Hard. Not even comparable to the ogre. Ceramic, and it felt like punching iron — the shock drove clean through from fist to shoulder.
A crack ran through it.
The long arm came sweeping in at me inside its guard. Beneath the line — a second punch, onto the same crack.
Two cracks.
The giant staggered. The light inside its cracks lurched.
(I've got this)
The third.
Feet driven into the floor, everything I had behind it.
Something snapped beneath my fist.
The sound arrived late — a huge dry crack, like a kiln splitting open. The red light flared once, hard, and the ceramic giant burst apart from the center of its chest. And then all of it crumbled down into sand.
The hall fell still.
On the floor lay a single lump, glowing red. A magic core. About the size of a fist.
For a while, I couldn't move.
Breath ragged. My right fist, three punches deep, still numb. Clench, open, clench again. Not one wound on me. Only the torn edge of the hood swaying beside my neck.
More than any of that.
(That was fun.)
I thought it from the bottom of my heart.
Best of the day — no. Maybe the best ever. Everything I had, thrown in, and I won.
"—Well fought."
My mouth said it, to the giant.
(Yeah. You were strong.)
Then — a screen floated up in front of my eyes.
Lv: 99 → Lv: 100
- XP earned is halved (King's power in use)
What.
Lv100.
The boss's XP must have blown me over the line in one leap.
(No way. A hundred? I HIT a hundred?!)
The me inside my head went rolling across the hall. My body, being the King's, stood there with a perfectly straight spine.
And then — one more screen floated up.
Condition fulfilled. Unlocking skill. 【Summoning】 【Appraisal】
Summoning.
The instant I saw those two characters, something ran down my spine.
The notebook's pages flipped past, one after another, inside my head. The pages of retainers. The soldier pages — one full entry of settings, then "there are lots of these" scrawled in summary.
And then the pages further in. The twelve seats. Their names. Their faces.
And then — and then.
The pages where me-from-back-then had added one extra line, for every single girl who had a name.
(No — hold on. Wait. Wait wait wait.)
Stay calm. It says Summoning, nothing more. What comes out is unknown. There is no way they all come out at once.
Probably.
"—The hour has come."
My mouth said it, on its own.
(It has NOT come. It has not come yet, I'm telling you!)
For the trip back, I used the Floor 50 transfer circle.
Guild card to it, and light wrapped me up; the next instant, I stood near the entrance. A notification chimed — the tax had been deducted from my card.
Released the King, took off the cloak. Bangs back. Eye color back.
Out the door, it was pitch dark.
Mountain nights run cold. Even in April, my breath came out faintly white.
Beside the authentication gate, the daytime cat was still asleep.
"I'm home."
I said it to the cat. Only its ears moved.
Walking to the bus stop, I opened my status one more time.
Lv: 100
Three digits.
A month and a bit since registration.
The magic core sat heavy in my pocket. Cash it in later — it'll probably come to a fair sum.
But more than that.
At the very bottom of the skill column, the two new characters.
【Summoning】
No telling what comes out. No telling — but something written by me-from-back-then is coming out.
Fear and excitement, split exactly half and half—
No.
Honestly? Excitement was running at about eighty percent.
I checked the bus timetable. Next one: twelve minutes.
I sat on the bench and looked up at the night sky.
Tomorrow too — the moment school lets out, I dive.
As the King.
Unseen by anyone.
I had still not spared a single thought for what the three explorers from Floor 20 would be posting on Tritter that night.