arc1 · 009-ep9

Episode 9: Is This an RTA Stream!?

Early in the morning two days on, Fukazumi Iori stood at the entrance of Dungeon #204 once more.

On his back today, in place of the small hip pouch of two days ago, was a sturdy canvas rucksack, large and riding snug. Inside: a canteen of reserve drinking water, portable rations, and ample free space secured to stuff away any number of big magic stones. His destination was the "lower layer", which last time he'd had to turn back from right at its doorstep when his pouch filled—and further yet, the deepest part that lay at its very end.

"Alright, camera power...yep, looks like it's on."

He pressed the switch on the old body camera at his chest and confirmed with a fingertip that the red lamp on the side of the unit had lit.

Diving down to the lower layer's deepest part and back would take until near evening no matter how smoothly his feet carried him. With the lower-layer exploration he wanted to take his time on still ahead, he meant to punch through the upper and middle layers briskly within the morning.

It happened right after he slotted the streaming terminal into the holder at his hip and set foot into the cool, dim stone-built passage.

Viewers who'd received the start notification from their registered channel came pouring into the stream slot like an avalanche.

『Oh, the notification's here!!』

『Onee-sama's heeeere!!』

『Diving on a weekday morning? Way too hardcore lol』

『I came from Tsukishiro Saya-chan's debrief!』

『Ah, I can see a thick strap over her shoulder—she's brought the big rucksack today!』

In under a minute from the start, the concurrent viewer count was leaping upward—three hundred, five hundred.

Not that Iori, terminal stuffed into its holder, was paying any of it mind—his attention was already on the passage before him. He was going all the way down today, so he'd decided to take the journey at a somewhat hurried pace; rolling his shoulders loosely, he set off into the upper layers at a brisk walk.

Tap, tap, tap—dry footsteps echoed in a metronome-steady rhythm.

Careful advances, wary of the presence around you and the traps underfoot—that was what normal exploration looked like. Iori, though, advanced at a speed like a man walking his shortcut to the station he commuted to every morning.

Even when the first fork arrived, splitting the passage into three, his gaze didn't so much as flick left or right.

Slipping into the middle passage without decelerating, he stepped lightly over the pressure plate of a capture-net trap sitting a few meters in—its coloring just a shade off from its surroundings—at his natural stride, and passed on by.

From a side burrow just ahead rang a rough snort of "Bmooh!"

Out burst two of the tusked boar-type monsters—great-tusked boars—kicking flagstone every which way.

――Upper-layer stones are small, and if I start picking those up now, they'll fill the rucksack on me.

Straight past these—so he judged, and didn't slow his walking speed one bit.

Without even a hand on the sword at his hip, at the instant he passed snout to snout with the charging first boar, he slid his body half a step left. Thick hide grazed the hem of his clothes and sliced empty air; the over-committed first boar slammed into the wall behind.

The second came pressing in to sink its tusks in.

Iori flicked his right hand carelessly in stride, and a compressed clump of wind slammed don into the second boar's flank, sending the near-hundred-kilogram bulk flying effortlessly to the far edge of the passage.

No finishing blow for the fallen monster, not even a glance back. He strode briskly on at the very same pace, so that on the footage of a camera with no image stabilization, the scenery ahead simply flowed backward, frame after frame, like fast-forward.

『Huh???』

『Fight them!! Don't just walk past lolol』

『She one-handed a charging Fang Boar into orbit and just kept running without even drawing her sword!?』

『Wait, hold on—two days ago it was all sword, and today she's just casually using wind magic!?』

『Eh, was she chanting while running? I couldn't hear a syllable of an incantation—is that chantless!?』

『Nah, this beat-up camera's mic is all crunchy with footsteps and rucksack-rustle; it's just smothering a quiet shortened incantation』

『Not even picking up the stones—so the upper layers hold zero interest for her, huh』

『Watching her bomb-run a dungeon at this speed first thing in the morning woke me right up lol』

After that, Iori's feet never once stopped.

Before corners with poor sightlines, as if timing the leap of small monsters around the bend off echo alone, he'd fire a slanted shot of wind a single step short to clear his line of advance. With so many dives behind him, the terrain map lived in his head; even the latter half of the upper layers, a maze quarter riddled with intricately tangled dead ends, he punched straight through on the shortest line without ever unfolding a map.

Barely fifteen-odd minutes from the start of the dive, he was racing down a long descending stair, and the walls around him had turned to rust-red rock shot through with iron and damp moss. The middle layers already.

Drawing the cool, damp air of the middle layers deep into his lungs, Iori pressed up the center of the passage at his quick walk, sparing not a sidelong glance. Even after barreling down all those stairs at this pace, his breathing hadn't wavered a hair; the mic at his chest picked up nothing but the metronome footsteps and the faint rasp of the big rucksack's straps.

The middle layers brought sterner monsters; the pace didn't drop in the slightest.

The instant the three Black Hounds blocking the middle of the passage ahead caught sight of him and bared their fangs, Iori moved the fingertips of his left hand barely at all—and only the surface of the flagstones beneath their paws froze over, thin and white. All three, hind legs loading to pounce, slipped in unison and went down with a flourish, jaws to flagstone, thrashing away on the ice—and past their immediate flank, Iori slipped like the wind, without so much as touching his sword's grip.

『Hold on, she's walking straight past them in the middle layers too!?』

『This is normally the layer where you creep forward wary of traps and ambushes, right!?』

『Is this an RTA stream!? Is this onee-sama running a time attack or something!!』

『The same monsters Saya-ojou-sama nearly died to two days ago are just skating off into the distance like it's a rink lolol』

『I mean, look, today she's actually facing forward instead of staring at the wall moss!』

『What's scariest is that the rhythm of those footsteps hasn't changed one bit from the very start, even at this pace lol』

The click of claws spinning on ice and the frustrated growls of the Black Hounds receded at speed into the darkness behind him.

Even after sprinting, in mere tens of minutes, a route a normal party would spend half a day carefully picking through—the upper layers through the middle layers' first half—Iori's stride hadn't shrunk by a single millimeter.