arc1 · 020-ep20

Episode 20: The Drone and the Recording Settings

The dungeon a short walk past the Explorer's Association branch went no deeper than the middle layers even at its farthest—a comparatively calm location, and above all close to the branch, just right for a newcomer-training dive.

On a bench in the prep space set up before the entrance, Iori flicked the clasps of the Association-loaned black hard case open with a snap.

Inside lay a small white sphere of a drone, about the size of two palms pressed together.

"Um, going by what Sagimori-san said, during newcomer training we don't use the usual camera—this thing flies and does the streaming, right?"

"Yes. Serving both as a deterrent to harassment and accidents inside the dungeon—a closed room—and as PR and training material for aspiring explorers, regulation calls for a tracking drone filming both instructor and newcomer from a third-party perspective."

Fumino, checking her rucksack's straps at her side, answered smooth as a passage read aloud from a textbook.

As expected of someone who'd crammed all the classroom work into her head. "You really know your stuff," Iori thought admiringly, powered the drone on, took out his hip terminal, and pressed the pairing button.

"Alright, looks like it's linked. Now then, starting the stream just like this and——"

"――One moment please, senpai!!"

A hair before Iori's thumb touched the screen's start button, Fumino, peering in from the side, let out a sharp voice.

Iori froze his finger in surprise—and beside him, Fumino double-took the stream settings screen displayed on his terminal, then pressed a hand between her brows as if beholding something beyond belief.

"Senpai...... you were just about to start the stream on factory defaults, weren't you? May I see this screen for a moment!?"

"Eh? Yeah, sure...... was something off?"

"'Off' doesn't begin to cover it! The time-sync display against the drone footage, the auto-saving of in-dungeon position data and environment logs—every last one is still switched off! And even the channel name is still the default 『Exploration Stream』...... wait, huh?"

Fumino accepted the terminal, looked to the top of the screen—and her words cut off dead.

The bare, default stream title 『Exploration Stream』. Lined up right beneath it: a follower count in the tens of thousands, and yesterday's stream log at 『Dungeon #204』.

Fumino's eyes flew wide open, flicking between the terminal's screen and the face of Iori, head tilted before her.

"......Um, senpai. This 『Exploration Stream』...... could it possibly be the account of the person the whole internet was buzzing about yesterday, the one who dove Dungeon #204 to the very bottom alone!?"

"Ah, yeah, that's me. Seems like the people watching suddenly jumped up about three days ago."

"'Jumped up,' you say...... yesterday that analysis clip of Tsukishiro Saya's came up in my recommendations and I watched it too, you know!? To think the one instructing me today would be the person from that footage......"

Even the ever-composed Fumino gaped, words failing her.

The name never showed, and the streams themselves had always been shaking first-person footage with no face in frame—so she had never once dreamed that the mild-seeming senpai before her was that off-the-scale explorer in the flesh.

But after several seconds of hanging jaw, Fumino snapped back to herself at once, pressing a wrinkle still deeper between her brows than before.

"......Which, if so, makes it even more unacceptable!! An account drawing that much attention, and the time-sync, the position auto-logging, the account protection settings are all loose as a sieve—why!? If you get caught up in trouble or some bogus claim inside a dungeon, without accurate timestamps and position logs on record you can't prove your own innocence or claim workers' compensation—did that not come up in the very first course!?"

"Ahh...... now that you mention it, something like that did come up when I registered, maybe."

Iori scratched his cheek, looking a touch sheepish.

He loved diving itself to pieces, but settings—machines, streaming apps—had somehow always been his weak point. Even his everyday body camera ran on an "if the red lamp's lit, the obligation's met, good enough" sort of feeling, never touched once from its initial state.

"May I touch it? I'll fix everything now, while we can!"

"Yeah, that'd be a real help."

Permission granted, Fumino tapped through the screens one after another with unhesitating hands, opening the buried detailed menus and rewriting the settings.

She set the drone's camera feed to stamp an accurate current time and coordinate code along its edge in sync, and checked the boxes for the terminal side as well, auto-encrypting and saving logs of the surrounding environment data and movement path. Under a minute all told, and she handed the terminal back to Iori.

"There, all complete. I've saved it into the unit's base settings, so once newcomer training ends and you switch back to your usual camera—do not touch it, and keep using it just like this."

"Whoa, amazing—so it even had features like this. Thanks, Kirise-san, huge help. I'll leave it just like this from now on."

Thanked without a shadow of displeasure, with pure, open admiration at that—Fumino "...I-It was nothing, I only applied the obvious base settings," let her gaze slip aside, a little deflated.

Learning her instructor was a person of staggering ability made her spine straighten—but at the same time, a worry of an entirely different vector flickered through her head: was someone this absent-minded about everything else really going to be all right?

Beside that Fumino, Iori tapped the stream-start button once more.

With a quiet whirr of drive, the white tracking drone lifted softly into the air, lining up its position dead-on behind and above the two of them, some two meters off the ground.

Until now, Iori's stream had known nothing but the old body camera's first-person view—jolting violently at every step, capturing little but dark rock walls and rucksack fabric.

But today, what leapt into the eyes of the viewers who'd opened the slot on the start notification was third-person footage of startling clarity and steadiness, caught by a state-of-the-art optical lens.

In the bright morning light: a slender, androgynous figure, hair a touch long for a man and hiding the nape of the neck, unadorned light gear with a one-handed sword at the hip—Iori, whole body in frame, and beside him the newcomer girl standing tense-faced, both crisp and clear on the screen.

『Oh, the notification!』

『......Eh, hold on, isn't the quality insanely good today!?』

『No camera shake!? Did that beat-up camera finally get replaced!?』

『No wait, this is filming two people's backs from up and behind—it's not a body camera, it's a tracking drone!』

『UWAAAA, a god-tier stream with Onee-sama's whole body on screen at all times, it's hereee!!』

『Only ever caught glimpses before, but as expected—a tall, cool beauty......!』

『At this angle you only get her profile when she turns around—such a shame』

『Also the timestamp and coordinate log sitting crisp in the top right—suddenly an actual proper streamer, lmao』

『The serious-looking girl with shoulder-length hair next to her—could that be the newcomer-chan assigned for training?』

『Hold up, how is that Onee-sama supposed to teach a newcomer fundamentals, "If you fell them before they attack you, you're safe"—is that the lesson plan!? lol』

Past a thousand viewers came tumbling in from the moment of launch, and the comment feed filled to bursting with cheers and jabs.

Though for that matter, Iori, terminal holstered, wasn't watching the screen as ever—and Fumino, with her first dungeon entry before her, had no room to spare for the drone at her back either.

"Good, it's keeping up nicely. Well then, Kirise-san—shall we?"

"Yes! Please, I'm in your care, senpai!"

Taking along Fumino, who nodded after a small deep breath, Iori stepped into the dungeon's entrance at his usual light stride.