chapter02 · 060-ep54
Episode 54: The C-Rank Rank-Up Examination
The message from the Guild came on a Wednesday, eleven days after the stream.
When I got home from school, there was a message from Mishima-san on my phone.
『Ichinose-sama. I am contacting you because the date of your C-rank rank-up examination has been set. This Saturday, at nine in the morning, please come to the Nagoya headquarters. The examination will consist of three parts: a status check, an interview, and a practical examination in a C-rank dungeon.』
A C-rank dungeon.
As a D-rank, I've never been able to open a C-rank door. For the practical, with an examiner watching, I'll set foot in a C-rank for the first time.
Staring at the screen, I grinned.
Then, one more thing occurred to me. Something important.
The status check.
Showing my status, in front of Guild people.
My current Lv is 160.
A fifteen-year-old, not even three months past registration, at Lv 160.
"Time for Disguise to earn its keep."
For the first time — in front of people.
That night, on my bed, I practiced with Disguise.
Opened my status, used 【Disguise】. The display rewrote itself, smooth.
The last time I tried it, at the very end of Golden Week, I'd set it to Lv 52.
But 52 is too low.
I've been to Toda's Floor 150. The recommended level for a D-rank's deepest part is around 100, if I remember right. If it turned out I'd cleared the deepest floor solo at Lv 52, that'd be suspicious in its own way.
Besides, I've already told the class "100." Told the Guild "almost 100," too. Dropping below that would be strange.
But too high is no good either.
Able to clear a D-rank's deepest floor, but just barely enough to pass as "an amazing rookie."
"104."
I set the display to 104.
Lv: 104
Lv 104 three months after registering is plenty strange. Strange, but it still passes as "a genius once a decade."
Probably.
HP, MP, STR — I lowered everything to what befits Lv 104. Fine-tuning the numbers was harder than I expected.
I also tested whether Disguise could hide the skill column — the one where names like 【The Aloof King Stands Alone】 and 【I Am Not Observed by the World】 scream the Job 【Chuunibyou】 the instant anyone sees them.
It could.
The display now showed only "Weapon Summoning" and "Presence Concealment."
"Thank you, me-from-back-then."
Today, too, I thanked him with everything I had.
Saturday.
In a meeting room at the Nagoya headquarters, faces I knew were lined up.
Mishima-san.
Shibasaki-san. The examiner who'd overseen my D-rank exam at Chikusa. As always, a terminal at hand.
And then, beside them.
"Eh? Big sis?"
"Guardian."
Big sis sat there, arms crossed.
Black jacket over a crisp shirt today, too. Fully armed, as always.
"Examinations for a fifteen-year-old require a guardian's attendance, you see."
Mishima-san added that, pleasantly.
Same as the D-rank one.
"Then, let us begin."
Shibasaki-san worked her terminal.
"First, the status check. Please hold your Guild card over here."
My heart gave a hard thud.
The Disguise is properly active. This morning, before leaving home, I checked three times.
I held my Guild card to the reader.
Numbers appeared on Shibasaki-san's terminal.
"......Lv 104."
Shibasaki-san's hand stopped, for an instant.
Mishima-san drew in a small breath.
Big sis said nothing.
Only looked my way — just a little.
She knows.
Big sis, most likely, knows everything.
"......Lv 104, roughly three months after registering."
"Yes."
"......"
Shibasaki-san stared at her terminal for a while, then let out a slow breath.
"At your previous examination, you were Lv 68. Over spring break."
"Yes."
"And at the end of April, I heard 'almost 100.'"
"Over Golden Week, I dove like crazy."
Not a lie.
What went up was 92, not 36 — but still.
"......Understood."
Shibasaki-san typed something into her terminal.
"Considering you cleared Toda's deepest floor solo, it may be a reasonable number, if anything. Recording it."
It passed.
A single line of cold sweat ran down my back.
The interview wrapped up in about thirty minutes.
Procedures for diving. Experience coordinating with allies. Judgment in dangerous situations.
Shibasaki-san's questions, answered one at a time.
"You seem to dive solo quite often. Party experience?"
"I dive F-rank with middle-school friends. And over Golden Week, at Toda, with Stellarion's Tono-san and Kisaragi-san."
"......Stellarion's."
"Yes. Support, from the back."
"From the back."
"With a staff."
Shibasaki-san's eyebrow gave a twitch.
"......With a Weapon Summoning skill, you can call a staff as well?"
"Yes. Katanas, dual blades, staves, bows."
"......How many varieties?"
"Um... lots."
Beside me, big sis coughed, quietly.
I might have said too much.
Shibasaki-san was silent for a while, eyes on her terminal.
"......There have been past cases of weapon-summoning-type skills covering multiple weapon types. But a range this wide......"
She cut off there and shook her head.
"No. Skill details are an explorer's personal information. I won't ask any further."
"That helps. Thank you."
"Showing me in the practical will be quite enough."
The practical's location was the Odaka dungeon, in Midori Ward.
Deep in the hilly woods of Odaka Green Park. In the center of a small clearing ringed by trees stood a moss-covered stone door.
C-rank.
A door I still can't open, as I am now.
"You've been granted special entry, with an examiner present."
Shibasaki-san held her own card to the authentication gate in front of the door.
Then mine.
The green lamp lit.
The door opened, slow.
"......"
From inside came the smell of a damp forest.
My first C-rank dungeon.
Inside, the Odaka dungeon was a forest.
Ground of fallen leaves and moss. The ceiling too high to see, thick trunks stretching all the way up. Through gaps in the trees, a hazy green light filtered down.
"The practical examination consists of reaching Floor 5. The examiner intervenes only when she judges there to be danger."
"Understood."
Shibasaki-san stepped back a little. Big sis lined up beside her.
I held my right hand out front.
"—No inscription, no meaning — cut, Nameless."
A black katana appeared in my hand.
There was the sound of Shibasaki-san typing something into her terminal.
From deep in the forest, footsteps approached.
The light crunch of paws on fallen leaves. Not just one. Spreading left and right, closing in to surround me.
Forest Wolf Difficulty: C
Gray wolves. Three of them. Far smaller than Hati or Skoll.
Hati and Skoll are way cooler.
I thought that for an instant, then shook my head. I'm mid-exam.
The three didn't come at once. Growling low, they split — front, left, and right. Only the middle one bared its fangs and closed the distance, little by little.
The first one lunged.
Half a step aside — blade into the neck.
Before its body hit the leaves, the two on the sides kicked off the ground at the same moment.
Slashed upward to the left; reversed the blade for the right.
All three ended with a single stroke apiece.
My hands had moved before I could think.
"......"
The sound of Shibasaki-san typing had stopped.
Crap.
That might not have been Lv 104 movement.
From here on, just a little slower.
Floor 2. Floor 3.
Holding back was harder than I expected.
C-rank monsters are harder and faster than D-rank ones. But to me at Lv 160, there's still room to spare. I have to shave that margin down until it looks about Lv 104.
What dies in one hit, I make two. Attacks I could dodge easily, I pretend to dodge by a hair.
On Floor 3, two more wolves came out.
Into the first lunging one, I deliberately sank the blade shallow. Shoulder-split, the wolf yelped and sprang back. When it came at me again, this time I cut it properly.
The second one's fangs, I waited out until the last instant — then rolled sideways clear. Fallen leaves stuck all over my back.
I cut as I rose to my feet, and the second was done too.
Able to cut — and not cutting.
Something deep in me itched.
Same as diving Moriyama with my middle-school friends over Golden Week. The time Fujidou saw through my deliberate half-beat delay.
So Shibasaki-san can't see through it. More naturally.
On Floor 4, a huge spider came down out of the trees.
The branch overhead creaked — mishi. By the time I looked up, a green shape was already falling on a thread.
Green Tarantula Difficulty: C
A round body covered in green fur. Eight eyes, all of them fixed on me.
It spat thread. I dodged. The thread splatted onto the tree where I'd just been standing — pashin, a dry crack, and a white net spread across the trunk.
Deliberately, I let the thread very nearly catch my foot.
Feigning a stumble.
Recovered — one stroke.
The spider collapsed onto the leaves.
"......Ichinose-sama."
Shibasaki-san spoke up from behind me.
"Yes?"
"That just now was deliberate, wasn't it."
"Eh?"
My heart very nearly stopped.
"The moment the thread nearly took your foot. Your center of gravity was planted there from the start. You meant to be caught — and weren't."
"Ah — no, um—"
"There is no need to hold back in an examination."
Shibasaki-san's face was dead flat.
"Full power is quite fine. Our job is to record your ability accurately."
"Y-yes."
Beside me, big sis had turned away, a hand over her mouth.
Her shoulders were trembling, just a little.
She's laughing.
Even told full power, I couldn't go full power.
In the end, I settled on holding back "just enough to not look deliberate." What dies in one hit, dies in one hit. Only my speed, I dropped — by the smallest amount.
Floor 5.
The trees thickened all at once. Branches layered over my head, the green light falling in thin streaks.
From somewhere deeper in, the faint sound of water.
Over that sound of water, howls layered in.
One. Two. And a third, answering.
Breaking through the brush, gray wolves came one after another. Three. Four. The fifth vaulted a root dead ahead.
A lot.
The five spread out like a fan, filling the front and both sides.
Speed still dialed down, I cut the first. The second too.
One hit each. But just a little slow.
The instant I slipped the third one's fangs with a half step back, branches flexed overhead.
I looked up. Between one branch and the next, two green-furred masses clung.
White thread came raining down.
Across the fallen leaves, webs spread — petari, petari. The ground on the right filled up. The roots on the left too. My footing shrank, visibly.
The wolves' growls dropped lower, as if they'd been waiting for exactly that.
I tried to draw my left foot back.
It wouldn't come.
Thread was wound around my ankle.
This time, not on purpose.
The wolf in front leapt. At the same moment, one each from left and right.
Three sets of fangs, all at once.
At this slowed speed, freeing the foot first wouldn't make it in time.
At the edge of my vision, I saw big sis take a step forward.
Beyond that, I wasn't thinking.
I slashed the thread at my ankle with the base of the blade and, riding that momentum, spun my whole body.
One stroke.
The black blade swept a full circle — low, on the diagonal — and came back to low.
The only sound was a single shhk.
The three leaping wolves fell, still in their leaping poses, off in separate directions.
The forest went utterly still.
Overhead, both spiders had frozen mid-move.
Ah.
I did it.
That was not slow. At all.
The spiders came down on their threads. Two, one after the other.
I dropped my speed. This time, properly.
Slipped the first one's fangs sideways and cut. The second, after circling the trunk.
Slow — just barely short of looking deliberate.
When the last spider curled up on the leaves, the sound of the spring came back.
The palm gripping the katana was slick with sweat.
Not from tiredness.
Because that one stroke had felt too good.
I glanced quietly behind me.
Big sis had already returned her one step, as if nothing had happened.
Shibasaki-san was looking not at her terminal but at my feet.
At the severed ends of the thread.
She said nothing.
And that was what unsettled me most.
The forest opened into a clearing with a small spring.
Beside the spring stood a transfer circle... no — a Guild marker stake set up for the examination.
"......Arrival, confirmed."
Shibasaki-san held her terminal to the stake.
"Time required, one hour twelve minutes. No injuries. This concludes the practical examination."
"Thank you very much."
I bowed.
Shibasaki-san lifted her face from the terminal, and the corner of her mouth rose — a little. Just a little.
"......For Lv 104, your movement is far too good."
"Urk."
"For the record, I will simply write 'exceptional.'"
With just that, Shibasaki-san started back the way we'd come.
She sees through me.
Probably not everything. But something — she's seen through.
Even so, Shibasaki-san said nothing.
Big sis came to my side and said one word.
"Pass."
"No — they haven't even announced the results yet."
"Pass."
Full smug face.
Back at headquarters, a thirty-minute wait.
Mishima-san returned to the meeting room.
In her hand, a new Guild card.
"Ichinose Saku-sama."
"Yes."
"As a result of the examination, your promotion to C-rank has been approved. Congratulations."
The card held out to me was a different color from the old one.
Silver.
A "C" engraved on its face.
"......"
I took it with both hands.
It was heavier than I expected.
No — the weight is probably the same. It just felt heavy.
"Thank you very much."
My voice had gone a little hoarse.
"A C-rank promotion at fifteen is the youngest on record in Japan."
Mishima-san smiled, bright.
"The Guild's official announcement will come a little later. New C-ranks are announced together in summer, you see. However—"
Mishima-san's brows dipped, faintly troubled.
"Most likely, by tomorrow, everyone will already know."
"Figures."
On stream, the moment I fulfilled the requirements was watched by a hundred thousand people. On Tritter, there are probably people who've guessed even the exam date.
Beside me, big sis stood.
Then she set her hand on my head — pon.
"Saku."
"Yeah."
"Congrats."
Today, no smug face.
Just a happy one.
On the subway home, I looked at the silver card over and over.
C-rank.
Registered over spring break: F-rank. Then, skipping E, D. And now, C.
Not even three months yet.
With this, I can enter C-rank dungeons. Today's Odaka too, and then—
Shidami.
A special C-rank dungeon in Moriyama Ward with an ancient burial mound for its entrance.
A place Shibasaki-san had told me about on the way back today, like small talk. "It's not a designated one, so it has no bearing on promotion — but of all the C-ranks, it's a somewhat unusual dungeon."
"Heh heh."
A grin broke out.
But next weekend, no diving.
It's the sports festival.
I checked my phone's calendar and let my shoulders drop, just a little.
Well — the sports festival will be fun in its own way, too.