arc1 · 001-ep1

Episode 1: The Distress Stream and the Dead Stream

Ragged breathing and footsteps struck against the damp rock face.

Tsukishiro Saya ran for her life through the dim underground passage, her feet catching again and again on the torn hem of her robe. The wound at her shoulder throbbed with her pulse, and long black hair, stiff with sweat, clung to the nape of her neck.

Right behind her, the scrape of hard claws on flagstone was closing in.

A black, four-legged beast—a pack-type monster nesting in the deep middle layers. One alone would have been no trouble for Saya's magic, but right now five of them, whipped up by the scent of blood, were glued to her tail.

"Hah——how persistent you are...!"

Saya bit down the urge to sob against her back teeth and, still running, turned to aim the tip of her staff at the head of the pack.

Truthfully, she wanted to stop, take her time weaving her mana, and only then fire. But the moment she stood still, that would be the instant her throat got torn out. From a throat wheezing for every breath, she wrenched out a shortened incantation.

"——Fire, pierce!"

The fireball that leapt from her staff was pathetically small. It did no more than lightly singe the lead beast's shoulder before scattering—not only failing to slow the pack, if anything it just irritated the beasts further.

Worse, the backlash of wringing out her mana made her head swim and her feet tangle. Saya took her shoulder hard against the cold rock wall and, wincing, threw herself around the corner anyway.

Floating a little behind her shoulder, a small streaming camera was capturing every second of it.

A fleeting glance at the terminal on her hip caught her viewer count ballooning at a ferocious rate, comments streaming down like a waterfall.

『Saya-chan, run!!』

『The vanguard who got separated still can't regroup with you!?』

『She said she put out a rescue request, but this is deep in the middle layers, people』

『I came flying when I heard "distress stream"』

『Whoa, the nouveau riche ojou-sama is seriously coming apart lol』

『That's what you get for diving in that floor-length cosplay getup』

『Mana nearly dry, chanting in pieces—isn't she done for?』

『Might get to watch someone die for the first time in a while』

Those rubbernecking comments, so plainly entertained, set her eyes burning with frustration.

On any normal stream she would have puffed up her chest and shot back, "Something this small? Leave it to me—it's nothing at all!" But right now, she didn't even have the breath to spare for bluster. Her lungs ached like they were burning, and her fingertips on the staff were shivering, cold as ice.

It had been nearly twenty minutes since a trap's collapse cut her off from her party.

She'd sent the emergency rescue signal right away. But all the way back here, deep in the middle layers—would anyone really leap into the middle of a monster pack to save a stranger like her?

"No...! I will not... let it end in a place like this...!"

Biting down hard on her trembling lip, Saya hauled her last magic recovery potion out of her pocket. She cracked the stopper with her teeth and gulped it down on the run, but mana drained to nearly empty didn't come back on command.

Then she saw it: the passage ahead, sealed off completely by fallen rubble.

A dead end.

A squeak caught in her throat. The instant Saya stumbled to a stop and whirled around, black beasts came bounding out of the corner one after another. Five of them fanned out in a low growl, shutting down every gap she might slip through.

　　　　　＊

Around the same time, in a different section of the middle layers a little way off, Fukazumi Iori was walking along at a lazy, unhurried pace.

No other parties' footsteps. No voices.

Iori filled his chest with the cool, damp underground air and let his shoulders loosen, content. "Yep... this time of day really is nice and quiet." Exploring alone—no one to watch out for, free to gawk at whatever caught his interest as long as he pleased—was, for him, the easiest, most pleasant breather there was.

Clipped to his chest was an old body camera, worn for no other reason than to meet the Explorer's Association's requirements.

It was a cheap thing with barely any image stabilization, so the footage rattled with every step—and since Iori kept spotting interesting moss on the walls and cracks in the floor and shoving his face right up to them, the stream had shown nothing but extreme close-ups of dark rock for a while now.

In the corner of the screen, the live viewer count read 『2』.

One of those two dropped a line into the dead-silent comment field.

『What even is this stream, the camera shake is giving me motion sickness』

『Not a peep out of them, and all they do is walk a dark corridor. Boring』

A moment later, the viewer count ticked down from 『2』 to 『1』.

Not that Iori, terminal still slotted into the holder at his hip, was paying the slightest mind to somebody having come to watch.

——Huh. The walls around here seem to have quite a bit of iron in them. They smell different from the upper floors, too.

He ran a fingertip gently along the exposed cross-section of reddish-brown rock and narrowed his eyes, pleased. That little treasure-hunt thrill of finding where the strata changed—the corners of his mouth curved up on their own.

Just then, rough beast breaths and the thud of paws came closing in from deeper in the passage.

Bursting out of the dark came a pack of black four-legged beasts—the same kind that had Saya cornered. Three monsters kicked off the walls to either side and lunged at him from his blind spots, fangs bared, all at once.

"Aww. And I was just looking at a good spot."

Iori dipped his brows, a touch disappointed.

The beasts' fur was caked thick with passage mud. If they pounced and got that all over the outfit he'd only just put on this morning, that would be unbearable.

Meaning to deal with them before they could close in, Iori swung his left hand forward, casual as anything.

The instant his fingertips flicked, a mass of wind like a sudden gale tore down the passage, caught both beasts leaping in from either side in midair, and smashed them viciously into the rock wall across.

The last one came at him head-on, jaws gaping wide right before his eyes.

Iori drew back half a step to keep the mud from spattering, drew his one-handed sword with his right hand, and gave it a single light swing. A keen blade of wind extending from his own edge opened up the beast's throat before its claws could even enter range.

The pair slumping down the rock wall and the one cut down midair rolled to the floor without even a cry, and seconds later faded into black mist and were gone.

From start to finish, the fight hadn't taken ten seconds.

Iori sheathed the sword, breathed out in relief once he confirmed no mud had spattered his sleeves, and picked up the three magic stones lying on the floor.

Rolling them in his palm, the color and sheen were pretty fine—fitting, given the last one's coat had been a touch coarser. So this section really does pool its magic a little differently, he thought, nodding in satisfaction, and tucked them into the pouch on his hip.

If this held, one more section deeper might show him even lovelier strata. He was raising his head at the thought when—

Pip-pip, pip-pip: the terminal at his hip shrilled an electronic beep.

"Wah—that startled me..."

At the alarm ringing through the quiet passage, Iori blinked and gave a helpless little shrug.

He plucked the terminal free and lit the screen: a red marker reading 『Emergency Rescue Request』, transmitted from a nearby section, was flashing hard.

"...A rescue request? Huh. So someone else was walking this floor at this hour."

Going by the quick-look map, it was close—two or three minutes' run from where he stood.

For someone to be sending a rescue signal this deep in the dark middle layers, they had to be truly desperate.

It was a little bit of a shame, the strata he'd just found. But knowing someone was having a terrifying time just a minute away, he couldn't pretend he hadn't seen it.

Iori rammed the terminal back into its holder, turned on his heel, and broke into a run down the passage the red marker pointed to.