arc1 · 005-ep5

Episode 5: The Trial Ground and the Blue Crystals

The footage of dark rock, juddering along without pause, switched without warning to an open space.

Past the damp passage spread a section like the ruins of an old temple: thick stone pillars, several of them snapped, standing jumbled and tall. From the cracks in the floor, a pale haze of mana rose faintly, blurring the far end of the view in white.

The comment feed of the stream—which had quietly passed a thousand viewers without his noticing—began to stir at the sight of that distinctive landscape.

『Hold on—mana haze coming up out of the floor cracks? Isn't this already a pretty deep middle-layer section?』

『Active explorer here. Deep-middle-layer stretches like this—bad visibility, bad footing—are normally a five-person-party trial ground: two shields up front, advance with care』

『Yo, an actual active-duty bro in here—and you're taking a danger zone like that SOLO!?』

『And in light gear with no sub-bag, at that』

『Bet it's just someone flexing in a lookalike ruin area in the shallow layers—the stream title doesn't even name a floor』

『No—the Rock Lizard magic stones she was picking up earlier were unmistakably deep-middle-layer size』

『She walked on even deeper from where she saved ojou-sama Saya, so this must be near the very deepest reach of the middle layers』

Clips of the rescue had spread across the boards and social feeds, and beyond the rubberneckers, listeners used to dungeon streams and working explorers alike were flowing into the stream one after another.

But while the viewers on the far side of the screen braced themselves at the appearance of a trial ground, Iori himself was eyeing the rock wall deeper in with the ease of a man strolling a street he knew by heart.

――I usually just breeze right past this place, but the mana haze welling up from below is thick here. If that iron-rich stratum runs all the way down to here, the wall deeper in might be growing some nice crystals.

Chest swelling with that hope, Iori picked his way between the broken pillars on familiar feet.

Then, from beyond the haze ahead, multiple heavy footfalls sounded—THUD.

Emerging from behind the pillars came a pack of heavy-armored shell beasts—towering bipedal monsters sheathed head to toe in glossy black plate. One appeared out of the passage dead ahead, the other two looping out of the pillars' blind spots to either side, and as an eerie grind of hard shells scraping against hard shells rang out, they closed the distance inch by inch in a formation that sealed off Iori's line of retreat.

Iori glanced between the three beasts' positioning and the rock wall deeper in, just behind them.

These were opponents whose thick armor would turn a head-on blade, so normally he'd blow them away all at once with strong magic—but slamming ice or a shockwave into them here would likely shatter, through vibration alone, the crystals that might be growing on that wall deeper in. Wrecking with his own hands the very wall he was about to go look at would be a waste, so he settled on sword-only again, and stood his ground right up until the lead beast lowered its head and charged.

A glossy black bulk north of two hundred kilograms came on hard enough to punch clean through flagstone. Iori slipped half a step left and set the flat belly of his drawn one-handed sword flush against the shoulder armor of the first charging beast.

In the single instant steel met shell, he popped a minutely compressed charge of wind's repulsive force between blade and armor.

There was no dramatic bang. Just one exquisitely measured push that slid the vector of that furious charge cleanly off sideways—and the first beast's bulk veered away like it was nothing, ramming head-on into the flank of the second, which was just then bursting out of the blind spot to the right.

KRASH—the ring of heavy shell colliding with heavy shell—and the two great monsters tangled together and toppled to the floor.

Slipping past right beside them, Iori fed a rapid series of wind-accelerated thrusts into the chests of the first and second beasts, belly-up on the floor with the soft seams of their abdomens bared.

The third beast, startled at watching its packmates vanish one after another before its eyes, pulled up short.

Kicking off the toppling bulk of the second, Iori bounded lightly upward and let the point of his one-handed sword drop neatly from above into the gap in the third's helm-like shell—the narrow split at its neck—piercing the core within.

As the three great bodies dispersed one after another, Iori's gaze went straight to the rock wall deeper in; confirming it was unscathed by the battle's aftermath, he breathed a sigh of relief.

But the comment feed, knowing nothing of the easygoing little drama inside his chest, was in an uproar over the sight of huge armored monsters being handled like toys with a single one-handed sword.

『............Hah?』

『You're kidding—that charge got parried with nothing but a one-handed sword!?』

『That's a weight that would launch even a greatshield vanguard if they took it square!!』

『Hey, just now—when the sword deflected it, didn't you hear a little "snap" of bursting air? Is wind magic mixed in there?』

『With the garbage audio on this cheap camera there's no telling a wind noise from a magic, lol』

『Honestly this isn't even a mage—this has to be some major clan's head vanguard diving on a burner account, right?』

『The creepiest part is the breathing hasn't wavered once this whole stream』

『Onee-sama...do you perhaps take the middle-layer monsters for mere moving rocks, or something of the sort...?』

Having swiftly gathered up the three magic stones at his feet, Iori walked over to the rock wall behind the innermost pillar.

Exposed there in clean lines was a vein of faintly blue-glowing crystal, born of the iron-rich stratum that had run down from the section above mingling with this area's dense mana.

The moment he spotted it, Iori's face lit right up.

Even the motion of sheathing his sword bounced a little as he crouched down, heedless, in the very middle of the hazard section with its drifting mana haze, bringing his face so close to the crystal vein that the body camera all but knocked against the rock.

"...Huh, so I was right. The iron-rich stratum from the upper floors mixes with this section's mana and turns into these beautiful crystals."

Through the muffled mic, for the first time, a slightly longer stretch of gentle, happy voice rode the stream.

『Ah—she just spoke!!』

『What a lovely voice! Just as I thought—a cool-type onee-sama with a refreshingly clear voice!』

『Nah, the content is straight-up ore nerd talk lmao』

『Please don't crouch down in the dead middle of a dangerous section to stare at walls, my heart can't take this lolol』

『Terrifying in a fight, but somehow only gets hyped staring at walls—what's with this person?』

Never once dreaming that his muttering had an audience of over a thousand, Iori ran his fingertips over the blue crystals' grain to his satisfaction and stood, content.

On a whim he gave the pouch at his hip a light squeeze from the top: the leather bag was already about four-fifths full of the stones gathered along the way, with room left for one more largish magic stone—maybe. He decided he'd call it a day at the boundary hall further ahead, and gave the pouch hanging from his belt a little straightening.