ch61-ch80 · 087-ch71

Chapter 71

Adventurers in Japan... no, on Earth, are mostly in their twenties.

Adventurers in their late thirties and older are rare, and the ones who exist are all fighting in the lower floors.

There are various reasons for this, but one major reason is the difference in magical power between those born after the 2000s and those born before.

If you're born, or raised from early childhood, in a place with high atmospheric mana, your magical power simply tends to increase more easily.

For adventurers, that amount of magical power is a matter of life and death.

The reason they can move at superhuman speeds when exploring dungeons or fighting monsters is thanks to Body Enhancement, and that Body Enhancement consumes magical power.

Less magical power means less time you can stay active.

Recent research has also confirmed that the magical power of younger children is increasing. Furthermore, knowledge brought from the other world's sage, the 'Great Mage' Hexaria, has revealed that atmospheric mana on Earth is gradually rising.

In other words, it's said that in the future, humans with even more magical power will be born.

Humans born with a certain amount of magical power from birth.

In other words, they will be the Mana Native generation.

This isn't something that will suddenly appear tomorrow in some mutation.

Little by little. But surely.

The times are changing step by step.

As the curtain gradually rises on this new era, a middle-aged man in his forties... the adventurer Sai, achieved Adventurer Rank 'A'. Apparently, it was a rank-up evaluation recognizing his breakthrough of the twentieth floor and his revolutionary instructional content like magical control training.

In Japan, no one in their forties had ever reached Rank 'A', making it huge news.

Thanks to Hexaria's declaration of 'Don't touch my property,' there were no major headlines on TV or in mass media, but it caused a massive stir on social media, especially among adventurers.

For adventurers, rank is a kind of indicator and status.

For example, whether you can accept specific requests — like a company asking you to collect drops from a certain monster — is one easy-to-understand aspect.

On each floor, one powerful enemy roams.

The Raging Bull on floor three, and the Demon Specter on floor fourteen, are examples.

Floor three itself is a place even 'F'-Rank adventurers can go, but if there's a request to 'collect Raging Bull drops,' it's set as an 'E'-Rank target.

Or, in some adventurer-oriented auctions, you can't participate unless your adventurer rank is high enough, as a way to favor high-rank adventurers.

But for Sai and Hexaria, there's no particular reason to take specific requests, and there's nothing they want at auctions right now.

Another benefit is increased influence, but nobody's going to ignore what these two have to say anyway. So even with their guild ranks going up, Sai and Hexaria don't really have any particular feelings about it... that's the current situation.

"Anyway, back in the other world, Saria was Special Class and I was Upper Rank too... I was happy when I made Upper Rank back when I was young, but... it's old news now."

His reaction was nothing but utterly unimpressed.

His parents and sister's family were happy about it, though, so he was grateful for that.

Anyway, as for what the two of them were currently up to...

◇

Shinjuku Tower, floor twenty-three.

Sai and Hexaria conquer Shinjuku Tower about once or twice a week.

Going up one floor every week — a high-speed conquest pace that other adventurers can't imitate.

In the midst of that, a request came from the Adventurer's Guild.

The request was: "Please turn on your sound during exploration. And if possible, please give us tips for conquering the upper floors."

Floors twenty-one and above of Shinjuku Tower are a demon's den for ordinary adventurers.

The monsters get steadily stronger and craftier.

The dungeon traps also increase to instant-death level.

Nearly a thousand adventurers have made it to floor twenty-one so far, but they've been broken by casualties, injuries, or PTSD. As a result, only about a hundred adventurers can currently explore there.

It's been over twenty years since Shinjuku Tower appeared, and even though hundreds of thousands of adventurers have existed in that time, only about a hundred are still active on floor twenty-one and above.

You can see what a narrow gate it is.

But now, with mana starting to increase little by little.

The quality of adventurers is also rising, and in the future, more people might be able to reach the upper floors. If Sai's advice could serve as a reference for conquering them at that time, how many people could be saved?

That was the gist of it.

Sai and Hexaria hesitated a bit, but decided to accept the request on the condition that they mute when talking about private matters.

There was no reason to refuse the chance to nurture the next generation.

Incidentally, the reward was originally supposed to be money, but they settled on having some dungeon materials made available to them. They don't need anything in particular right now, but it'd be helpful to have that option if they ever did.

So Sai and Hexaria are currently doing a conquest stream while giving all sorts of advice.

"...And if you do it like this, it should be easier to take down."

"You. Let's go."

"Yes yes, Hexaria-san. I'm coming, I'm coming."

"......Hmph."

For the public stream, Sai refrains from calling her 'Saria' and uses 'Hexaria-san' instead.

If the world found out he was married to Hexaria, who knows what would happen.

They can't let that bomb explode... that's the reason.

But.

"Honestly, you sure are impertinent for being my property."

"Impertinent... wait a sec. This is a space trap. The spirit-draining kind?"

"An air purification spell, or perhaps drinking an energy drink while going, would be best."

"Is an energy drink even healthy?"

"As long as you don't make a habit of it, it should be fine."

"Fair point. By the way, even if there's a trap in the air itself, if you enhance your five senses, you can definitely notice it, so don't worry."

They discuss conquest info while having this familiar-sounding conversation.

It's probably inevitable that some viewers post on social media, "High Elves drink energy drinks?" "What's with that visual?" "Aren't these two flirting the whole time?"

But the information seems welcome from an adventurer's perspective, with comments like "Flirting aside, there are air-type traps?" and "So that's why I got that weird status effect on this floor!"

And they keep this same energy against monsters too.

For example, a Mirror Monster. Mid-battle against a Mirror Monster.

"Mirror Monsters will reflect normal magic if you shoot it at them."

"For ordinary magic attacks, that is."

"Right, right. They have the property of reflecting magical power... but for example, Create Iron."

With that, Sai created a small iron ball that fit in his palm.

"This thing's an iron ball that'll disappear after a while but... Hmph!"

Sai threw the baseball-sized iron ball at the Mirror Monster.

"Even if it's made of magical power, if the created object itself doesn't carry magical power, it can't be reflected."

The Mirror Monster's mirror shattered perfectly and disappeared.

"If you do it like this, you can actually beat them. Keep this in mind when fighting at range."

Even though they were already on floor twenty-three, they kept defeating enemies with ease.

Despite adventurers calling it a demon's den and all, here they were with this energy.

"Alright, let's keep pushing forward, Hexaria-san."

"......Mm."

Hexaria nodded with a rather stiff voice.

The bomb of 'marriage reveal' to the public still hadn't exploded.

...Instead, a different bomb looked like it was about to go off, and Sai continued exploring while vowing to handle the fallout at home.

On floor twenty-three... in this conquest, there was something else they needed to accomplish besides exploration.

================ Thank you very much for reading.