ch21-ch40 · 040-ch34

Chapter 34

The day after Sai solo-cleared the seventeenth floor.

Shinjuku Tower Adventurer's Guild.

The place where all adventurers who challenged Shinjuku Tower gathered, whether rookies or veterans.

In the lobby of that guild, Sai was talking with a certain group of adventurers.

"I heard you made it to the eighteenth floor, Yamana."

"Yeah. It's a bit of a fast pace, but I'm just going with the momentum."

"For someone who's solo, you sure do well."

"I'd love it if you'd join our party soon."

"Haha, an old man like me wouldn't be able to keep up with you all."

"Oh, come on~"

They all laughed together.

Sai happened to glance toward the tower entrance and spotted Hiyori and Mio.

"Oh. Looks like my disciples are here. I'm heading over."

"Sure. See ya~"

When Sai headed toward Hiyori and the others, the two waved at him.

"You two finished with today's adventure?"

"Yeah, that's right, but..."

"Sensei, were you just talking to those people...?"

Mio pointed in the direction of the adventurers Sai had been speaking with.

She asked with a surprised expression.

"Those are members of 'Wakou,' aren't they?"

When she looked over, the adventurers waved back at them.

The pair of high school girls were well-loved by the adult adventurers.

"Yeah, they're an adventurer party currently struggling on the twenty-fifth floor."

In response to Sai's words, shouts of "Shut up!" and "That's why we're asking you to join!" came from across the room.

Sai deliberately ignored them.

Hiyori and Mio were both amazed at the situation.

'Wakou' was one of the top-tier teams among the elite.

Our teacher is being invited to join a party by people like that?

They knew he was strong, but it was still surprising.

"Sensei, won't you join a party?"

"Nah. Most of my equipment was made in the other world. I've disguised it, but I'd be in trouble if someone pointed it out..."

Sai was the only adventurer who had reached the eighteenth floor solo.

He was often asked what equipment he used, but he was careful to hide the fact that it was other-world-made.

"Oh, right. Speaking of mentioning things — Sensei, you haven't gotten any interview requests from publishers or anything like that, have you?"

"No, thankfully not."

Adventurers who could reach the twentieth floor of Shinjuku Tower were truly a select few.

From the past to the present, hundreds of thousands of adventurers had challenged Shinjuku Tower.

Even so, fewer than a thousand had made it to the twentieth floor.

When you factored in retirements due to severe injuries or PTSD, only about a hundred parties were still active.

As for adventurers who had reached the twenty-fifth floor, including Wakou, there were only about thirty.

The reality was that over ninety percent of adventurers stopped at the fifteenth floor.

And in the midst of all that, Sai had reached the eighteenth floor solo.

This was an unprecedented record, and as a result, Sai's profile had risen.

Recently, Sai's view counts on Tower Tube had skyrocketed, and his instructional streams, which he held twice a week, now had considerable participation.

Incidentally, he held training for Hiyori and Mio once a week. He made sure to do that as consistently as possible.

Partly because they were minors, but more importantly, he used the flow of teaching them to confirm whether the things he was teaching were safe to share with other adventurers.

The remaining three days of the week were available for Shinjuku Tower conquest, with one full day off. In a sense, Sai led a regular but busy life. Yet despite being such a high-profile adventurer, he received surprisingly few interview requests from magazines and media.

In fact, the Ichijō family was behind this.

Her family — which had connections in political, financial, and various other fields as former faith healers and now exorcists — was supporting Sai, their daughter's teacher.

"I'm really grateful."

"Hehe, you're welcome."

There were many media outlets that wanted to interview Sai, a top-rank solo adventurer.

But accepting every single one would take up too much time.

Sai had been troubled by how to handle the media, but a helping hand came from the high school girls.

Hiyori consulted her grandfather and father, and they reduced the number of interviews.

By only dealing with the ones that absolutely couldn't be avoided, they managed to keep interviews down to about one every two weeks. They were also thorough about accepting questions in advance and not answering anything outside of that.

"Honestly, I could never repay your old man and grandfather, Hiyori."

Incidentally, when he went to thank Hiyori's father and grandfather about this matter, there was a bit of a commotion (?) — that was just part of the charm. Hiyori's father Hayato's doting-parent antics were still going strong.

"So how did your adventure go?"

"We successfully defeated the tenth-floor Floor Boss!"

"Oh! Congratulations, both of you!"

"Hehe~ thanks, Sensei! Thanks to the strategies you taught us, it was actually pretty easy."

"They said the weakness of the Raging Gorillas was that there were three of them at once, and I wondered what that meant, but when we actually fought them, it really was exactly that."

Seeing the two smiling happily, Sai felt genuinely pleased.

The tenth-floor Floor Boss: Raging Gorillas.

Gorillas that acted like animals but were monsters.

They had longer, thicker arms than normal gorillas, close-combat power that could crush you in one hit, and the intelligence to fire a spell called Stone Spike — earthen stakes — at distant opponents.

Three of these vicious monsters attacked simultaneously.

Normally, the standard strategy was to dodge the Stone Spikes while attacking from range. But for Hiyori and Mio fighting as a duo, dodging the Stone Spikes was a bad move.

If three Stone Spikes were fired at once, their escape routes became too limited.

The standard approach would have a tank defend, but in their case, if one of them switched to defense, only one would be left attacking.

And there was no way three Raging Gorillas would miss that opening.

When fighting Raging Gorillas solo or in a pair, the best approach was to engage in close combat.

The Raging Gorilla's defining features were its massive body, long thick arms, and heavily trained muscles.

Having long, thick arms might sound terrifying, but actually, those massive bodies and arms meant they couldn't see opponents at extremely close range.

And although there were three of them, their intelligence wasn't that high.

They had intelligence, but only to a limited degree.

In other words:

At extremely close range, if three Raging Gorillas tried to attack simultaneously from three directions, their own arms would get in the way and prevent them from attacking properly.

Even if they tried to attack, they'd mostly just hit each other.

The best method was for the two of them to each get close to a gorilla and keep attacking without ever moving away.

"And compared to the Majin we fought before, these weren't nearly as scary."

"That was a special case, Mio-chan."

Normally, facing powerful monsters at such close range would be suicidal.

Fear would come first, no matter what.

But for the two of them now, they'd already experienced that during the Shinjuku Majin Frontline last year.

"There were some scary moments. I almost got hit a few times. But that shield thing bailed me out."

"That shield thing" referred to Hexa Shield.

On Earth, it was a spell that only Hiyori and Mio knew, aside from Sai.

"I'm glad you managed to use it well."

The three of them smiled brightly in the lobby.

Recently, everything had been going smoothly for Sai.

His relationship with his parents was good. His teaching was going well.

Many people looked up to him.

Half a year after returning from the other world, without any major troubles, he was able to fully use his abilities. His disciples and the rookies he was training were getting stronger too. Everything was going well.

But when you let your guard down, Death (?) appears where you least expect it.

That was the law of life.

At the entrance of the Adventurer's Guild.

Standing there was a woman with wavy platinum blonde hair.

A simple white shirt and black pants. Distinctive black-rimmed glasses with unique detailing.

Despite her breathtaking beauty, no one around her paid her any attention.

Sai noticed immediately. A presence-concealment spell.

Moreover, it was perfect concealment that didn't even let on that she was using magic, fooling even the surrounding mana.

Only Sai, who specialized in scouting, could detect the faint sense of wrongness in that space.

Looking toward the source of his gaze, Sai's eyes went wide.

Standing before him was not Death, but a goddess.

'Hmph. So you were here, my idiot.'

One of the greatest minds of the other world.

The High Elf sage, Hexaria, stood there.

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Thank you for reading.

I apologize for the long wait.

The main heroine (?) makes her appearance.