arc03 · 070-ep64

Episode 64: Blazing Speed!

After the Statue Knight fight, Floor 12 exploration wrapped up with nothing else in particular to tell. That said, the simple map is still riddled with holes—by the look of it I'm not even 50% done, honestly—but for now, as long as I can push ahead, that's good enough, so I decided to carry on into Floor 13 just like this.

I did pass them all by, but Floor 12's monsters were a different beast from every floor before—nothing like Floor 11's species. Up through Floor 10, the monster lineup got completely overhauled every three floors, but from Floor 11 on, every floor seems to have its own set. The first-ever treasure chest, showing up after the Floor 10 boss fight; monster placement like this; the almost perfectly straight routes—putting all that together, Floors 1 through 10 might have been the tutorial.

"The exploring's felt way more like real exploring since Floor 11, though. We've got traps, and even the monsters vary from one to the next. Yep—Floor 11 onward is the real deal."

Maybe the fact that you're treated as a pro from C-rank up factors this sort of thing in, too.

Without a rule-breaking skill like 【Movement Arts】, taking on the order of ten years to claw your way from here to B-rank makes perfect sense. Which means if I keep sprinting through like this and do it in under a year, I'll be quite the hot topic. By the time I hit B-rank, I want to have the strength to at least trade blows with an A-rank adventurer. That way, even if an upper-rank adventurer ever picks a fight with me, I could manage something. And for that, fighting opponents above my level and cranking my stats up as hard as they'll go is an absolute must.

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Now then, Floor 13.

Like Floor 12, this floor has imitation-looking manmade bits scattered here and there—but there's one clear difference from Floor 12.

It showed itself right at the very first fork in the road.

A water area.

A giant lake shimmering with pale light.

Floor 7, or thereabouts, had something like a small pond too, but the scale is obviously in a different league. Compared to this, that thing was a puddle.

And the water's clarity is staggering—you can see right down to the lakebed. The pale light seems to come from something glowing at the bottom. It's probably deep enough that I can't tell what it is, though. Still, a cave of water shining blue was, all on its own, really beautiful.

"It's incredible… Everything up to now has been dim scenery walled in by bare rock, so this gets to me all the more."

Standing before a bona fide scenic spot, I forgot about exploring for a moment and just stared.

With a little development, this place could turn into a popular tourist attraction.

And yet there isn't a single adventurer anywhere in this wide, gorgeous area. The reason is simple.

Nobody has any means of crossing it. Even with a small boat—how do you get it down here? Even swimming—how do you deal with the aquatic monsters? That's the hard part, most likely.

Me, though—【Movement Arts】 lets me walk on water, and walls and ceilings too, so none of it's an obstacle. As for the aquatic monsters, I'll give them a pass for today and just run across the surface to get around. Man, I thought walking on water would never find a use, but hey, there totally was one. Feel-wise, it was close to running on a sandy beach. Fun.

Running flat out across the water to the far shore, I noticed something—this side turns out to be a massive shortcut. Going through the normal bare-rock passages would probably still lead to the correct road eventually, but coming this way, I can reach the stairs to Floor 14 almost in a straight line. Well, that's a lucky break.

And so Floor 13 got cleared in the shortest stay I've ever logged on a floor.

Stay on the surface and the aquatic monsters don't particularly come at you, so it was a serious cakewalk. A bonus stage, in a sense.

Just in case, I'll at least bring some of this lake water back for Aizawa. Water like this practically screams alchemy ingredient.

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And now, Floor 14.

At long last, the bare-rock caverns end—replaced by a maze enclosed in properly finished stone walls.

"Sakurai-san, I've made it to Floor 14. Could you tell me about this floor?"

『Floor 14 already…? You truly are moving at an outrageous speed… As for Floor 14, as you can see from the look of it, it's a maze. Even the guild hasn't grasped an accurate map of it. That said, a number of manmade traps unlike previous ones seem to be scattered about—most of them seem to be that classic sort: switches in the floor that loose arrows from the walls, ceilings that collapse, giant iron balls that come rolling in.』

"I see. Walking on the ceiling, I can dodge all that, right?"

『I believe that would most likely be fine. Also, that floor seems to spawn a great many humanoid monsters. Minotaurs, orcs, werewolves, lizardmen—those are the ones mostly reported.』

"Ooh, the whole fantasy lineup."

『Hehe, that's right. Their movements don't appear to be irregular in any way, so for you, Takeru-san, they may well be quite easy opponents to fight. May fortune favor you.』

"Thanks for the intel! I'll give it my all!"

The enemies on this floor are thought to sit around level 35 to 37. Reasoning: Floor 15 has a boss, and it's supposedly level 40, so Floor 14 is probably the step right before that. How they came to know the Floor 15 boss's level, I can't say… but my guess is they had an upper-rank adventurer carry in some 【Status Appraisal】 item. They'd want boss intel on record, after all.

Setting that aside—I'm level 30 now, so 35 to 37 puts them a fair bit above me. That said, my stats themselves look to have drifted a good distance from my level, so fighting them head-on seems doable. And if I don't measure up, I'll retreat and fight on Floor 13. Speed alone should absolutely hold up, so escaping is easy.

All right—first up, a test of my strength.

Up ahead in the passage, torches burn with green flame, and by their light I can see a Minotaur. Presence concealment must be working—it doesn't seem to have noticed me yet. Maybe the Statue Knight was the special one.

In place of a greeting, I fire 『Shadow Blade』 from long range.

The moment it fires, I shift to the ceiling and close the distance.

"Bmooh!?"

『Shadow Blade』 landed clean, but it didn't seem to do much real damage.

It seems to have caught on that an enemy is here, but it hasn't pinned down my position yet.

It scans its surroundings wildly, swinging its battle axe all the while. It's gone completely berserk.

Now then—I don't know what skills it holds yet, so first I'll try stealing its weapon. Be nice if that works. If five tries get me nowhere, I'll fight it normally for a bit.

Right then, let's get to it.