part1 · 021-ep21

Episode 21: The Second Floor

The next morning.

Ren prepared more food than usual. He secured plenty of water, too.

He took the big nut shell he'd made to the water source and didn't fill it to the brim. He left a little room, so it wouldn't spill as much when it sloshed on the walk.

"...This much should be enough."

He set the filled shell near his bed. With this, he wouldn't need to go back to the water source for a while.

Ren took up his spear. And checked the map he'd drawn yesterday.

"...All set."

He was ready.

Ren left his bed. Heading for the stairs he'd found yesterday.

　　　　　◇

He arrived before the stairs. Ren looked back, just once.

Beyond this point was territory he didn't know yet.

"Let's go."

Ren set his foot on the first step. One step. Two. He descended slowly.

The stairs were long. He stopped several times along the way to check around him. No sign of monsters.

At last—

he stepped off the final stair.

　　　　　◇

At the sight spread out before him, Ren stopped in his tracks.

"...It's huge."

Clearly different from the first floor. The ceiling was higher. The passages wider. Even the shape of the rocks was different.

It was the same dungeon, and yet it might as well have been somewhere else entirely.

Ren looked back. The stairs were there. He could go back.

Confirming that, he faced forward.

"First... let's take stock."

　　　　　◇

Ren started walking. He began drawing a map at once.

The position of the stairs. The direction of the passages. Forks. Dead ends.

He recorded them one by one. What he'd learned on the first floor served him exactly as it was.

After a while, he found gouges in the wall. Deep.

Ren touched them with a fingertip.

"...Claws?"

Bigger than anything he'd seen on the first floor. Ren looked around, on guard.

That was when—

Thoom.

A sound echoed from far off. Ren hid in the shadow of the rocks at once.

Thoom.

Thoom.

The sound drew closer.

　　　　　◇

At last, a monster came into view. Big. Clearly a different class of build from anything he'd fought on the first floor.

Ren gripped his spear. But he didn't attack right away.

He observed.

The way it walked. Where its eyes went. The flick of its ears. The places it stopped.

What it was searching for.

Breath held, Ren watched all of it.

"...It looks strong."

Even so, he wasn't going to run just because he was scared. He had experience now.

Observe the monster. Find its weakness. Read its movements. Then think up a way he could win.

On his first time on the second floor, Ren quietly readied his spear.

From here on, it would be different from the first floor.

Ren was beginning to understand that, little by little.