arc1 · 004-ep4

Episode 4: The Wall-Stain Observation Stream

A while into the branch passage, once the lively voices behind him had faded clean away, Fukazumi Iori let out a small "phew" and relaxed his shoulders.

Glad I made it in time, he thought honestly. That girl had been diving in a robe that looked like a serious mage's proper getup, but her shoulder wound hadn't seemed all that deep, and her friends had come running right after—she'd be fine now.

Besides, if he'd stayed at the scene any longer, all that thanks-this and gratitude-that would have drawn a crowd around him and eaten up his precious alone time. Iori gave a small wry smile at having slipped away before things got loud.

"...Alright then. Wonder if that stratum from before keeps showing up around here too."

Shaking it off, he looked around: this passage, too, carried the same reddish-brown iron-rich stratum as the section above. What's more, the deeper it went, the more the rock face took on a damp sheen, and the mana in the air thickened little by little.

"Ooh, looking good," Iori beamed, and leaned his face in close to peer intently at the wall cracks and damp moss that caught his interest.

Thanks to the man himself burrowing face-first into walls in total absorption, the old body camera on his chest had been showing nothing but extreme close-ups of dark rock for a while now.

But on the terminal at his hip—the one Iori never once glanced at—an upheaval was unfolding in the corner of that spectacularly unhelpful stream.

The concurrent viewer count, 『1』 until a moment ago, was leaping by the second—『19』, 『84』, 『260』.

Rubberneckers who'd caught the link pasted on the message board and the rumors drifting out of Saya's stream came avalanching into the dead-silent dead-end stream all at once.

『Reporting in from the Ojou-sama Club!』

『This the stream of the one who saved nouveau-riche-chan?』

『SO DARK! Over half the screen is literally just rock wall lol』

『Eyes forward when you walk! Is this a wall-stain observation stream?』

『Hold on, did we get funneled into some other person's dead stream? Nice bait』

『No—the cuff that flashed past on screen a moment ago was unmistakably that light-gear onee-sama!』

『Also the stream title still being the default "Exploration Stream" is such a zero-effort move lmao』

First-time viewers slung whatever popped into their heads back and forth, and the comment feed's scroll rate shot up all at once.

But with the terminal still slotted into the holder on his hip, neither the screen's glow nor a single notification reached Iori.

The passage had just sloped gently downward and opened out into an atrium-like section with a higher ceiling when—

A faint patter of tiny pebbles from overhead made Iori stop and tip his chin up toward the dark ceiling.

From hollows in the high ceiling, where the glow moss used for lighting grew only sparsely, four black shadows peeled loose and dropped without making so much as a claw-click.

A pack of great rock lizards—four-legged monsters nearly two meters long that camouflage against the deep-middle-layer rock and wait for prey. All four split the air at the same time, raining down over Iori's head and behind his back.

He'd figured something was lurking in those deep ceiling hollows, but four at once—that was pretty lively. Iori's brows dipped, just slightly, on the inside.

As heavy as they looked, letting them land properly on the floor would kick dust up off the dry flagstones—straight into his eyes and nose—and whitewash his clothes besides. Slamming flashy magic into them would only swirl up more dust anyway.

Deal with them by sword before they touch the floor, then. Iori drew the one-handed sword at his hip with his right hand.

As he stepped out, he fed the barest thread of wind mana through the sole of his foot. It was an assist so small it made no sound and gave off no light—but it was enough for Iori's body to slide forward as if gravity had forgotten him, slipping in a single instant into the chests of the two lead beasts as they fell.

Not the scale-armored backs, but the undersides of their jaws and the roots of their necks, left utterly defenseless in midair.

Into the gaps where a blade passed easiest, he slid the one-handed sword twice, smoothly, in passing. A thin film of wind wound around the edge flicked away blood and dust alike, and with an ease that left not even an unpleasant weight on his wrist, the vitals of the two falling beasts were severed without a sound.

The remaining two, landing late behind him, dug in their claws to brace.

But faster than their paws could scrape the flagstones, Iori pirouetted on his heel. A flashlike two-strike combination, riding just a whisper of wind acceleration on the snap of his wrists, swept horizontally across both beasts' throats.

From the moment the shadows had dropped from above to the instant all four crumpled to the floor and vanished, not even five seconds had passed.

Iori gave his shoulders a couple of light pats, satisfied that no dust had landed on them, and sheathed the sword. The body camera on his chest had jolted violently up and down from his high-speed step-in and swing; by the time its focus came back, it was showing nothing but four magic stones rolling on the floor.

He crouched, picked up the four stones, and gave them a light roll across his palm.

――Oh. These stones might be a shade darker than the last section's.

Feeling like he'd scored a small bargain, Iori tossed the stones into the pouch at his hip.

Then, rising as though the ambush from moments ago had never happened, he leaned happily in toward the damp rock wall right beside him again and fixed his gaze on the tiny moss growing deep in the cracks.

Over that egregiously own-pace footage, the comments of viewers catching up late came flooding in at full fury to bury it.

『.........Hah?』

『Oh, this is the real one』

『Eh, hold on—just now, no magic at all, killed them instantly with just the sword!?』

『When she saved ojou-sama Saya she fired three spells simultaneously, but here she's a straight-up grind-it-out vanguard swordswoman!?』

『Told you—that spell back then was a big pre-cast ambush technique, prepped with plenty of time behind the corner, right?』

『A silver line flashed schwoosh and the next second they were already rolling around as magic stones lmao』

『Wait, zero afterglow after that god-tier play and it's RIGHT back to staring at walls!?』

『The temperature gap between the two modes is gonna give me a cold lol』