arc1 · 013-ep13

Episode 13: The Shortest Route

Past the waterside and rock-shelf sections, the latter half of the lower layer shifted all at once into a proper labyrinth of a layout.

Near-identical passages of black rock branched off like a net, and pale mana haze pooled thick at his feet, hiding even the unevenness of the floor. Lose your bearings for a moment and even a veteran explorer would lose track of where they were walking.

And yet, Fukazumi Iori's walking pace hadn't changed so much as a whit from the upper and middle layers.

Even at a three-way fork, he never so much as stopped to glance around. Not a hint of reaching for a map or a terminal to check; he turned straight into the leftmost passage without hesitation, as if there had only ever been the one road.

The truth was, since deciding to go see this dungeon's deepest part for himself, Iori had already come down into this lower layer alone a couple of times for recon.

Rather than charge at the innermost boss from the get-go, he'd wanted to first walk the terrain into his own head—what shape it took, where the forks and the dangerous spots lay. Two days ago, too, he'd meant to press on to the depths as the continuation of that, but between getting his eye caught by the middle layer's crystals and detouring down a side passage for the rescue request, his little hip pouch had filled up with magic stones, and he'd turned back just short of the stairway.

So the lower-layer road he walked today, big rucksack on his back, was to him nothing more than a familiar route he'd already finished scouting.

A few steps on, eyes still fixed ahead, Iori stepped lightly over a flat floor stone a shade off in color from the surrounding bedrock, pace unbroken. The switch of a trap he'd spotted last time—one that would jet a cloud of poison mist up from underfoot.

Two more corners, taken without hesitation, and the passage ahead cut off clean, opening onto a vast vertical shaft that gaped like a cliff edge.

The stone bridge that once connected the passage had collapsed away, leaving a deep open drop continuing down to a level even below the lower layer. For a normal party, this was a trial ground—turn back here, hunt for a detour, and pick a careful way down to the next level at a cost of half an hour or more.

But Iori, who had confirmed on his earlier scout that dropping straight down was far the faster way, walked to the edge of the collapsed bridge and stepped out into the black abyss of the shaft without a second's hesitation.

The floor vanished from the body camera's view all at once, and the walls of the dark open shaft came streaming upward at breakneck speed.

WHOOSH—a roaring rush of wind shook the mic, and out of a hollow in the falling wall below burst five enormous bats, wingbeats clamoring.

But with his form undisturbed even in freefall, Iori sent a wide, spreading wave of wind punching straight down, swatting the whole flock of pouncing Blood Bats onto the bedrock below in one go; and a breath before slamming into the stone floor of the level below, the air at his feet compressed with a soft whum, killing his fall speed—tap—and his soles landed light as a man stepping off a low curb.

He scooped up the magic stone lying at his feet, stowed it in the rucksack, and walked on as if nothing whatsoever had happened.

In the few seconds from unforeseen dive to landing, the comment feed flooded over, wall to wall, with shrieks and bewilderment.

『HUH!? She just straight-up jumped down that dead-ended shaft!!』

『The view went suddenly head-over-heels and I nearly spat out my lunch pasta, pray tell, what on EARTH are you doing!!』

『Dropped from that height, blew the monsters in the way away with wind, and touched down without a scratch!?』

『That shortcut was straight-up an RTA glitch exploit lmao』

『No wait, hold on. The strength is weird too, but how did she know there was solid footing at the bottom of that hole?』

『Come to think of it, she stepped over that trap-floor stone earlier without even dropping her gaze』

『The lower layer's layout is a maze, isn't it? Even veterans push through bit by bit while mapping, right?』

『Wait, so this ISN'T her first time down here—this is the movement of someone who's dove this far solo several times doing recon...』

In the final stretch of corridor continuing from the shaft's bottom, the mana haze thickened further; on the old body camera's screen even five meters ahead was painted over in black—nothing to see at all.

Even so, the rhythm of Iori's footsteps never wavered. The ceiling of the gentle bend ahead was prime lodging for great black spiders—ones that killed their presence and lay in wait for prey.

――If I remember right, that hollow just above the corner.

Before even rounding the corner, Iori snapped a pale ice shard and a wind blade—SHP!—into the depths of the dark haze.

Immediately after, from beyond the darkness came the thud-thud-scatter of hard carapaces dropping and dissolving into mist. Iori walked on, rounded the corner, and briskly collected the three glossy black magic stones rolling at his feet.

『...huh?』

『Did she not just fire magic into pitch-black space before even turning the corner?』

『It ended before one millimeter of enemy made it onto the camera, and she turns the corner to find nothing but stones on the ground lmao』

『That is ABSOLUTELY chantless! There was nothing but footsteps just now!』

『No, that's pre-casting she'd been holding since before the corner—more importantly how did she know there was an enemy there before turning...?』

『The whole place really is in her head... was she running the lower layer solo even before the stream found her?』

『I'll have you know that movement was scarier than a horror movie lmao』

Three stones into the rucksack, through the final stretch, and he emerged into a broad, open gallery of worked stone.

Unlike every cramped passage before it, the ore in its ceiling gave off a faint glow that lit the space. Dead ahead in the body camera's lens, a pair of double stone doors, immense enough to reach the ceiling, stood towering in solemn weight, plain for anyone to see.

The doors of the boss room where the master of the lower layer lay in wait—the deepest part of this dungeon.

On the flagstones at his feet lingered faint old bootprints and scorch marks, likely from the top-tier parties that had tried the kill before—but no presence of previous callers hung about now, and the doors stood shut fast.

The instant those emblematic great doors filled the screen, the comment feed—past three thousand and swelling as the rubberneckers came running from outside message boards—detonated at its loudest yet that day.

『Ah, wait wait, those giant stone doors...』

『That's the deepest-part lower-layer boss room!!』

『No way. Onee-sama actually came all the way to the very bottom solo...!』

『Been lurking the boards in the background—every explorer thread is going wild with "the explorer who saved Saya-ojou-sama is at the lower layer's deepest part SOLO" lmao』

『3000+ concurrent viewers, I'm dying—on a no-name channel whose slot title is still just "Exploration Stream"!』

『Surely this is it for today, though—this was the scout run's goal, right?』

『From here on it's a boss even top clans bring full parties against—go in solo and you die before you ever reach a return spot』

But Iori's footsteps didn't stop.

He crossed the broad gallery's flagstones straight-on and walked right up to the towering double doors, huge enough to crane your neck at, and only there did his feet halt.

On the last scout run, he'd turned back as soon as the route and the traps were confirmed—so for him too, today was the first time setting foot beyond these doors.

Looking up at the thick stone doors, ancient mana sigils carved across their face, he could feel it in his skin: from beyond them, a presence orders of magnitude heavier and denser than anything on the road here was seeping out, slow and thick.

The trip down had taken less time than expected, and his mana hadn't dropped one bit. Word had it this place's master wore an incredibly hard outer shell—and the pure fun of testing himself against an opponent he'd never once fought let the corners of his mouth curl up, just a little.

Iori lightly checked with his left hand that the big rucksack's shoulder straps hadn't loosened, laid his right gently on the grip of the one-handed sword at his hip, and stepped forward.

"...Alright. Let's go."

With that brief murmur, Iori laid a hand carelessly on the giant stone doors and pushed them inward.