chapter02 · 046-ep40
Episode 40: An Idol, a Tsundere, and the Sage's Staff
Day Four of Golden Week — I dove Toda alone.
There were even more people in front of the dungeon than yesterday.
"Ah — the dual-wielding guy!"
"The 'is romance' guy."
"No dual blades today—?!"
"Thank you very much."
Smile, no stopping, through the door.
That day it was just Nameless and the Shadow Servant, diving in silence. The dual blades I sealed. For one day.
I made it to Floor 75. Lv: 118.
And then — Day Five of Golden Week.
Eight in the morning, at Toda Station's ticket gate, my feet stopped.
Tono-senpai was there.
That part was fine. We'd promised, after all.
The problem was who stood beside her.
A girl a little taller than Tono-senpai stood with her arms crossed, planted like a temple guardian. Light-brown hair tied up high in a single tail, a big shield slung over her armor. Sharp, upturned eyes glared straight at me.
I knew her.
Stellarion's Kisaragi Akane. Same as Tono-senpai — a second-year at our high school.
"G-good morning."
"Morning, Ichinose-kun."
Tono-senpai raised a small hand.
"This is Akane. She said she was coming along today."
The girl beside her switched expressions in a flash.
The glaring eyes vanished in an instant, and in their place was a smile I'd seen on television.
"Nice to meet you — I'm Kisaragi Akane. Looking forward to today!"
A perfect smile. A bow at a perfect angle.
"Ah — y-yes. Ichinose Saku. Looking forward to it as well."
"Akari's always in your care, it seems."
"No, no — I'm the one in her care."
"Hehe. Is that so."
Beaming.
Beaming — and yet somehow it felt like being addressed from behind a thick glass wall.
This, most likely, was the idol face. The outward-facing face, for a first-year she doesn't know.
Tono-senpai gave a troubled smile.
"Sorry about this. Akane was worried about me going alone, so she came along."
"Wh— Akari!"
Akane-senpai's smile collapsed on the spot.
Her face went red, visibly, second by second.
"I-it's not like I was WORRIED about her! Our days off just happened to line up, that's all!"
"Then how come you called me three times last night?"
"That was — that was checking in! CHECKING IN!"
Three calls is not a checking-in number, I don't think.
Akane-senpai turned her face away with a huff.
Then, still facing away, she reached out for Tono-senpai's collar.
"...There. Your collar's bent. Sunscreen? Water bottle?"
"On it. Got it."
"...Fine, then."
She fixed Tono-senpai's collar, plucked a thread off her hair, and then, as if nothing had happened, turned back toward me.
The perfect smile had returned.
"Well then — shall we?"
The switch-flipping was TOO fast.
In front of the Toda dungeon, it was chaos beyond the usual.
Two of Stellarion — and Dungeon Strolls.
The instant the crowd saw the three of us walking up together, it split open, then came surging in all at once.
"Huh — Akari-chan?!"
"Akane-chan's here too."
"With Dungeon Strolls?"
"Why? A collab?!"
Phones swung toward us as one.
Tono-senpai and Akane-senpai smiled and waved with practiced ease, never breaking stride.
Pros, truly.
"Thank you very much."
"Dungeon Strolls! Today's weapon — dual blades?!"
"Thank you very much."
Akane-senpai looked at me sideways, smile never wavering.
"Ichinose-kun — you're used to fan handling, aren't you."
"My big sis taught me. Smile, one word, don't stop."
"Your sister?"
"Ichinose-kun's big sis is the S-rank, Ichinose Rinka."
Tono-senpai said it.
"...Oh. Really. Impressive."
Akane-senpai's smile did not crack.
It didn't crack — but I saw one corner of her mouth twitch, just once.
According to what Tono-senpai quietly told me later, Akane-senpai is a huge fan of my big sis.
As the little brother — chest, slightly out.
Through the door, to the Floor 25 transfer circle.
Tono-senpai and Akane-senpai had their transfer circles registered up to Floor 25. From there, the three of us would dive together.
"Can we confirm roles?"
Tono-senpai said it, hand resting on the slim sword at her hip.
"I cut up front. Akane takes them on the shield. Ichinose-kun?"
"Today — support, from the back."
"The back?"
Akane-senpai tilted her head, smile intact.
"Doesn't Ichinose-kun use the katana, and the dual blades, and...?"
"Today, I'm on staff."
"Staff?"
Last night, I'd thought it over, long and hard.
Tono-senpai as the front-line attacker, Akane-senpai as tank. Then the best fit for me was support from behind. And honestly, riding the dual blades to ANOTHER trending spot — I'd rather be spared.
With a staff, I could keep quiet in the back.
In theory.
I opened the weapons volume from the Vault of Tomes.
【The Sage's Staff】 — the reading: Sophia
An old wooden staff. Its surface densely engraved with magic circles. It handles the five basic attributes — fire, water, wind, earth, and lightning — and can combine attributes with each other, the page said.
Since it came from the era of the technique-name book, there were combo-spell names — names alone — written in such bulk they buried the entire lower half of the page.
Today: read that part as little as possible.
"—Five truths, bind the two. 'The Sage's Staff.'"
A staff appeared in my hand.
An old wooden staff about my own height. The instant I gripped it, the magic circles on its surface glowed faintly.
"...Ohh."
Tono-senpai let out a small sound.
Akane-senpai was beaming.
"What a lovely staff."
The corners of her smiling mouth were twitching away.
"Are you suppressing a laugh right now?"
"Not at all?"
She was.
Floor 30.
The water on both sides of the levee path burbled and bubbled at the same moment.
The smell of mud sharpened all at once.
Four Mud Toads burst up, splitting the water.
"Here they come!"
"Taking them!"
Akane-senpai stepped forward, shield set.
DOOM — a heavy thud. A mud-mass tackle coming in at waist height, stopped by a single shield. Stopped it — and Akane-senpai's feet hadn't given back so much as half a step of levee path.
The second came at once. Akane-senpai swept it aside with the shield's rim. Mud splashed across the water.
From behind that cover, Tono-senpai dived in.
The slim sword slipped past the shield's edge, through the first one's throat — a flick of the wrist and out the side. The mud body unraveled back into water.
Fast.
Impossible to think this was the same person who'd been caught in that trap at Nanyo. She must have trained hard this past month.
Shield stops, sword slides free. Between the two of them, not one signal that even resembles a signal.
Just watching them felt good.
I had to work too, though.
Staff up.
The attribute's name — it won't come out unless I shout it with everything I've got.
"—O flame!"
A ball of fire flew from the staff's tip.
A fist-sized flame struck the third one in the face and burst. The frog went "guehh" and tipped backward.
"TINY."
It slipped out.
Normally, it's probably way bigger. At my current self, this was apparently the ceiling.
Tono-senpai's sword passed through the backward-bared throat. The third one went to mud as well.
Akane-senpai, shield still raised, glanced back over her shoulder.
"...Ichinose-kun. You shout that every time?"
"It doesn't come out unless I shout. It's that kind of skill."
"...I see."
She was smiling.
Smiling — but the eyes alone were phenomenally lukewarm.
Ah.
All at once I noticed my own volume. The paddy floors have high ceilings — shouted words echo embarrassingly well. The two ahead could hear every last syllable.
And the other party was Stellarion. People from the other side of the TV.
The last frog slipped past the flank of Akane-senpai's shield and leapt at me.
"—O-o water..."
My throat was half shut.
What came out of the staff was a thread of water like a hose pinched at the mouth. It hit the frog on the forehead with a piddling squirt — end of spell.
The frog blinked. Once.
"......"
Akane-senpai was watching me, silent.
It got weaker.
Get self-conscious, and this is the result.
The frog's mouth yawned wide — another leap. The smell of mud filled the space in front of my face.
Oh, for—
Fine. Laugh, then.
"—O wind!"
I shouted it from the bottom of my gut.
A gust burst from the staff's tip. The frog, taking the wind head-on, was shoved back in midair and hit the water belly-up.
"...Hehe."
I aimed the staff beneath the frog as it floundered, trying to right itself.
"—O earth!"
The bottom mud heaved up like a fist. The frog was heaved bodily skyward.
"...!"
And in midair, Tono-senpai turned it back to mud with a single stroke.
With every shout, Akane-senpai's smile tightened another notch.
Tono-senpai, mid-fight, kept letting her mouth go soft now and then.
On Floor 35, it came.
The channel had widened into something like a river.
One levee path on each bank, and between them, calf-deep water flowing slow. Cross the shallows, or you can't reach the next stairs.
Tono-senpai and Akane-senpai waded in first to check the depth. From the bank's levee path, I watched their backs, staff at the ready.
When the two of them reached the middle of the channel, the water's soft murmur — stopped.
One bubble.
Two.
Everywhere at once.
"Akane!"
The surface heaved up all at once.
Mud Toads, boiling out one after another. Four, eight. Still not stopping. Ten, twelve.
"So many...!"
"Fall back for now?!"
"Wait, Akane — we're surrounded!"
By the time we noticed, the two of them were walled in mud frogs. Front, sides, behind.
Akane-senpai turned her whole body, shield set. Tackles came from four directions; she caught them — DOOM, DOOM — on the one shield. Each catch sank her heels deeper into the bottom mud, easing her backward bit by bit.
Tono-senpai cut from the shield's shadow. One. Two.
And still they didn't thin. For every one cut, the next face broke the water.
"—O flame!"
The fireball I fired from the bank burst on one frog's back.
A "guehh" croak. That was all. It didn't even stop.
Too small.
Two struck Akane-senpai's shield at once.
A CRACK — a different sound from anything before.
Akane-senpai's knee buckled into the water.
"Akane!"
Tono-senpai lunged out in front of her. As if filling shieldless space with sword, she swept aside every frog that came.
But that left her back wide open.
One frog leapt for Tono-senpai's back.
"—O earth!"
I shouted before I could think.
Right behind Tono-senpai, the bottom mud heaved up like a wall. The leaping frog splatted flat against it and dropped into the water.
"Thank you!"
Without turning, only Tono-senpai's voice came back.
My heart was loud.
At this rate, they wouldn't last. Akane-senpai's shield, Tono-senpai's sword — each could handle only one at a time. Clear twelve frogs one by one, and the two of them would run out of arms first.
One pass. All of them.
I looked at the channel.
Water. Every frog had come out of the water — and even out, half of each body stayed soaked in it.
The staff's description came back to me. Attributes can be combined.
Water. And lightning.
"Senpai, both of you — out of the water, just one second!"
"What—?!"
"Onto the levee path. Hurry."
Tono-senpai seized Akane-senpai's arm. Hauled her up, shield and all, and the two of them sprang onto the levee path on my bank.
Left in the water: frogs, and nothing else.
Now.
I aimed the staff at the water.
The combo-spell names that had buried the lower half of the page. One of them came out of my mouth on its own.
"—O water, rise! O lightning, run! Combine: 【Torrent of Azure Lightning】!"
Blue light ran out from the staff's tip.
The instant it struck the surface, the whole channel flashed blue, crackling.
Twelve frogs spasmed as one.
Spasmed — and stopped.
They didn't revert to mud. They floated in the water, limbs ramrod-stiff, twitching now and then.
Not dead. But not moving.
"Now!"
Tono-senpai was already in the air.
She dove into the water where the blue light had faded and cut the nearest throat. To mud. The returning blade took the second. The third. She sprinted between the floating frogs, throwing spray, turning each to mud before it could move.
On the bank, Akane-senpai was up.
On one frog trying to crawl onto the levee path, she brought the shield's rim straight down on its head. A dull GOSH — the frog collapsed into mud. The one washed up on the bank got smashed the same way.
"Akari — behind you!"
One frog, numbness wearing off, shook itself and leapt for Tono-senpai's back.
Akane-senpai kicked off the levee path.
Shield set in midair, she collided with the frog head-on. The repelled frog spun a full rotation in the air.
And Tono-senpai, turning, had her sword right beneath it.
The last one dissolved back into mud, like it was melting.
A single ring spread across the water.
When it faded, the channel went still.
The soft murmur of water came back.
My throat was raw. I'd shouted too much.
"......"
"......"
Climbing out of the water, Tono-senpai and Akane-senpai stood on the levee path, silently looking down at the channel.
Then, slowly, they turned toward me.
"...Ichinose-kun. What was that?"
Akane-senpai said it. The smile was, barely, still holding.
"A combo spell. Combine water and lightning, and you get electrocution."
"That's not what I mean."
"Huh?"
"What is 'Torrent of Azure Lightning'?"
"I-it's a technique name."
"A technique name."
"It's a skill — even the name's decided. If I don't say it, it won't come out."
A crack ran through Akane-senpai's smile.
She pressed a hand over her mouth.
It didn't hold.
"Pfft— ahahahaha! What IS that — 'Combine, Torrent of Azure Lightning' — ahaha!"
Holding her stomach, she rolled with laughter right there on the levee path.
A way of laughing nothing like the smile you see on TV.
"Please don't laugh. I'm completely serious here."
"C-can't help it— you said it — with a STRAIGHT FACE—"
Akane-senpai laughed for a good while before finally lifting her head.
She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes — then, as if catching herself, coughed.
"...S-sorry."
The smile had returned.
But the thick wall from before felt, just a little, thinner.
Being laughed at was embarrassing — but that laugh, I thought, was far better than the TV smile.
I'd figured a back-liner could stay nice and quiet.
Quiet nothing — I'd been the loudest one all day.
And we were still only on Floor 35.
Fifteen floors still to the Floor 50 transfer circle.
Akane-senpai's smile was fully back — but every so now and then, remembering, her shoulders would shake.