arc1 · 012-ep12

Episode 12: Into the Lower Layer

As the long stone stairway ran on beneath him, the temperature of the air against his skin dropped a clean notch.

Up through the middle layers, glowing moss had clung to the walls here and there; in the "lower layer" spreading out past the stairway, even that light cut off, and in its place a haze laced with pale phosphorescence filled the whole space with dim gloom.

It was a corridor like a vast underground cavern, its ceiling towering high.

Across the black bedrock floor lay a thin sheet of cold groundwater, shallow enough to sit just below the ankles, and ten meters ahead everything melted into the dark haze, even the outlines going fuzzy.

The water was about as deep as when he'd come four days ago—shallow enough that it shouldn't seep into his boots.

Fukazumi Iori glanced once at the water at his feet and stepped into it without slowing his pace one bit. Chap, chap—nothing but the sound of his soles treading the shallows echoed, metronome-faithful, through the dead-silent underground cavern.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the old body camera at his chest, the concurrent viewer count had broken two thousand, and the comment feed was awash in a babel of voices.

『Also, those three that got saved up on the stairs are definitely raising hell about it right now lol』

『Pulling her in by the waist, gifting her a magic stone, then leaving without a word—that was straight-up shoujo manga prince behavior』

『Whoa, the screen suddenly went dark the second she hit the bottom of the stairs!』

『Probably the old model's poor low-light performance—all I can see is blue haze』

『Nothing but this steady chap-chap of water is kinda putting me to sleep lol』

『Hold on, the glow moss is gone and it's flooded down here... this is the lower layer already!』

『Huh, the lower layer!? No way—she went straight in solo without turning back!?』

『Excuse me, first-time viewer here—is the lower layer somewhere you can go alone?』

『There is no way! Visibility is trash AND monsters ambush you out of the water and the ceiling—normally you need a party of five or six with a dedicated spotter covering each other's blind spots, or you're surrounded in a second!』

Iori had taken a few steps across the dark water, lightly re-clenching his fingertips gone slightly numb in the cold air, when—

The still surface swelled up soundlessly, and two blue great crocodiles, each about two and a half meters long, that had been lurking in hollows of the shallow bottom burst out of the water from both sides at once, spray flying.

――Whoa, a leap that showy and I'm getting it all dumped right on my head.

Iori, having no intention of letting his clothes and rucksack get soaked through, cut his gaze sharp—and a brutal wind pressure, as if the very air had condensed into a block and come falling from directly overhead, slammed down onto the pair in the same instant.

DOOM!!—the water's surface blew apart as if detonating.

The two Aqua Bits that had leapt into the air were pancaked flat onto the bedrock of the bottom without a single drop of spray reaching Iori's feet; a dull grind of bone against rock rang out, and as he passed the two motionless bodies he flashed his one-handed sword once—a wind blade split the water and opened both their necks in the same stroke.

Mind you, the cheap body camera at his chest didn't capture half of that footwork.

White spray went up on the left and right of the dark frame, and the next instant the mic blew out into violent distortion—KRZZT!!—and by the time the water went still, two blue magic stones were already rolling on the bottom.

『..........huh?』

『What just happened!? The screen was too dark, all I saw was splash!』

『My eardrums nearly DIED on that one with earbuds in!!』

『Those were ambush-from-the-water Aqua Bites, right? It was over before the leaping shadows even properly hit the frame』

『Also, she didn't get hit by so much as a single drop just now, did she?』

『Don't no-look crush lower-layer ambushes mid-stride lmao』

The two magic stones plucked from the bottom had a far heavier heft in the hand than middle-layer stock. He flicked the droplets off their surfaces with a snap and stowed them in the side pocket; a while further along the waterside corridor, the water fell away and he climbed up into a section where rough, dry rock shelf jutted out of the flood.

Around here the ceiling hung low, thick stalactites and rock overhangs stacked layer upon layer—even within the lower layer, an especially blind-spot-riddled stretch.

At the top of the shelf's slope, multiple red eyes glinted out of the dark rock shadow overhead.

Thud, thud—what landed before and behind the passage with heavy slams was a pack of large monsters bearing four log-like arms apiece: four-armed great apes. Three brutes strong enough to snap a vanguard's arm clean off even behind a great shield let out low growls, sealing off every escape from the narrow shelf, and the two in front swung their eight mighty arms back as one to smash their prey flat, bedrock and all.

Leap wide to the side here, and his precious big rucksack would scuff and scrape against the rough rock wall and come away damaged. Better to bundle them together in the middle before they scattered—so Iori, without giving back a single step, drove in between the two directly ahead.

In that instant, in the space between the pair, a vortex of wind burst to life, sucking air hard into itself.

The two great bodies, eight mighty arms poised to swing down, got yanked off balance by the sudden suction and cracked head and shoulder together—KONK!—seizing up on the spot.

Into those two abruptly wide-open chests, his right-hand one-handed sword tore a single horizontal stroke clean through both.

Then, at the third one leaping onto his back claws-first, he fired a sharp ice spear over his shoulder in the very turn. The mass, crystallized in the air in an instant, punched clean through the leaper's torso head-on and stitched it to the rock wall at the far end of the passage.

『...eh, that was a one-second kill too!?』

『She got surrounded by three Four-Arm Apes on a narrow shelf and melted them in five seconds lmao』

『Why did the first two suddenly smack heads and friendly-fire each other!?』

『And did an ice spear NOT just fly the instant she turned around!? That one at least can't be chantless...』

『The screen is too dark, not one millimeter of her hands is showing, okay! Can't tell if that's a magic-tool activation or pre-cast stock!』

『Lower-layer stones getting scooped up left and right—her cash-in total is gonna be obscene』

When the three plumes of black mist cleared, three fine magic stones the size of a clenched fist lay rolling on the ground.

At this size the side pocket wouldn't take them. Iori set the big rucksack down on the dry shelf once, loosened its drawstring, and tumbled all five stones in together—the two from before along with these.

A pleasant weight of clattering stone pooled at the bottom, and the bag still had more than half its room left. Iori cinched the drawstring tight, hoisted the rucksack back onto both shoulders, and nodded, satisfied.

"...Yeah. Going big on the rucksack was definitely the right call."