ch01-ch20 · 004-ch03

Chapter 3

The next day, just like always, he turned on his body camera, confirmed the stream was running, and Hayasaka Toru — Toru — began his "cleaning" of the Sugai Dungeon.

Predictably enough, his report about the strange noise seemed to have been completely ignored. There were no signs of any investigation — in fact, it didn't even look like they'd checked the stream footage at all.

Not that Toru could really blame them, since he himself had forgotten to review the stream and check the spot where the strange noise had been heard.

"Rats, four." "Furballs, three." "Demi-gobs, one." "Furballs, two."

With his usual monotonous pace, he beat the trash mobs to death, scraped together the rice-grain-sized "magic cores," descended to the second floor, and continued the same cleanup routine, then from the second to the third floor.

And then — straight to that spot.

"...I can still hear it."

Keeeen — a high-frequency sound, like a mosquito tone, like ringing in the ears. He should've checked whether the mic was picking it up. Toru clicked his tongue at his own stupidity, pausing for a moment just like yesterday.

An idol explorer around his age was taking on a B-rank dungeon, and here he was, troubled by some inexplicable phenomenon in a D-rank dungeon.

Oh well, whatever — with a half-defeated attitude, he took a step forward.

And then — at the end of the corridor, there was a figure.

"...No way."

The words slipped out before he could stop them. He squinted, but there was definitely a figure there. At the very limit of the labyrinth's faint glow — about thirty meters away — stood a man in hakama.

On reflex, Toru pulled his device from his pocket and checked the stream duration.

"Three hours fourteen minutes. Found a figure at the location of the strange noise. Can't tell if it's a human or a humanoid monster. If it's a monster, it'd be weird for it to be in the upper floors of Sugai Dungeon. Could be a 'Dungeon Rampage,' or... maybe some unknown anomaly. Hell if I know."

He let his thoughts spill out toward the mic.

Was the camera catching the figure?

The figure still remained at the thirty-meter mark. Toru glanced at the stream screen, but the small display on his mobile device didn't show much. It looked like it might be picking something up, but it could also be his imagination.

Then, the figure moved.

A motion like it was beckoning — come this way, follow me.

"...I'll confirm it. Just confirm it, then run."

His rational mind understood that there was only one choice a cleaner faced with a situation like this should take. When you encounter something unexplainable in a labyrinth, you retreat immediately.

And yet — unable to resist a restless, inexplicable feeling he didn't fully understand himself — Toru turned his feet toward the direction the man in hakama had disappeared.

The hakama-clad figure pressed deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

Toru followed without running. For some reason, the figure in hakama seemed to wait for him, pausing to look back and confirm Toru was still following.

"Shit... this is definitely bad. If something happens, it's on me, isn't it..."

Encounter an anomaly, retreat immediately, report it.

He knew that. If he didn't do it, nobody would cover for him. It was written clearly in his cleaner contract too.

But — in the end, nobody was going to guarantee his life for him.

"Ah... whatever happens, it's my fault. But yesterday I reported it to the Sugai Dungeon branch office. The branch office ignored my report and didn't even pretend to investigate. Maybe I can pin a little of the responsibility on the government too."

Muttering to himself, he followed the figure in hakama.

They advanced for a while, turning right, turning left — Toru matched the path against the map of the third floor in his head, but he had no idea where they were headed. It didn't seem like they were making for the stairs to the fourth floor, nor trying to go back up to the second.

It was starting to feel like he was being dragged along on some kind of prank.

Then, abruptly, the figure in hakama walked into a wall.

"—Huh?"

They'd been going down what should have been a straight corridor, but it turned left — and without a doubt, Toru saw it disappear right into the wall.

Letting a dozen question marks float through his head, Toru still reached the wall where the figure in hakama had vanished and reached out a hand toward it.

No — he couldn't reach it.

Because his hand sank right into the wall.

No, that wasn't right either.

It only looked like a wall — it was actually a place you could pass through.

A hidden passage, disguised by something like a hologram or spatial projection — or, in magical terms, an "illusion."

"Whoa whoa whoa... no way."

The Sugai Dungeon had been fully cleared two years before Toru took on the cleaner contract. That was five years ago now.

Since then, explorers had hardly ever visited, and until the city started recruiting cleaners, its staff apparently did cleanings about three times a year — but Toru had never heard of a hidden passage like this.

More to the point, there was no way anyone could discover it with so few clues.

Nobody in their right mind would meticulously search every inch of a D-rank dungeon's shallows. Even Toru, who'd been walking these floors for three years, had never noticed.

Past the wall was a simple small room.

About eight tatami mats in size. It seemed too cramped for a labyrinth chamber, but Toru didn't know much about dungeons other than Sugai Dungeon, so maybe rooms like this weren't that uncommon.

At the far end of the small room, something like a painting was hung on the wall.

A painting... on a labyrinth wall...?

Eyeing it suspiciously, he took a step forward — and there was no floor beneath his feet.

He passed through what only looked like a floor — another "illusion" — and fell.

◇◇◇

Once an object begins free-falling, it apparently drops over seven meters in a little over a second.

That was a calculation that didn't account for air resistance, but by Toru's sense of it, he fell for over ten seconds, probably less than thirty.

Ah, I'm dead.

That was his honest thought.

They said B-rank and higher explorers barely took any damage from the impact of a free fall. That was assuming they could land properly, of course — but even so, it said something about how abnormal the explorer breed was. Even among C-ranks, there were probably those who could cancel out the impact of a free fall with magic or abilities, and maybe some who could handle it with raw physical ability alone.

Toru was below D-rank.

He wasn't even an explorer. He was a cleaner.

He figured he'd definitely die. He also thought that, in that case, he should at least spit out some kind of curse, but unfortunately, he didn't have the presence of mind to come up with anything sarcastic. More than that, he simply couldn't afford to think about anything while falling.

The impact of the crash — was smaller than he'd expected.

Like falling from a step about fifty centimeters high. Maybe thanks to his body curling up on instinct, he'd avoided landing on his head — but instead, his back took the brunt of it.

"Khaa—!"

Air was forcibly driven from his lungs.

But that was it.

Toru reflexively sat up and checked himself for injuries. Legs, arms, back, neck... no broken bones, for now. His back where he'd hit it ached a little, but nothing life-threatening.

"How am I alive—"

—he started to say, then felt an intense sense of danger and spun around.

The scenery hadn't changed much from before — it was still a Sugai Dungeon corridor. The faintly glowing labyrinth structure, the familiar dungeon passage carved out of stone.

Where Toru had landed was the middle of a straight corridor. He couldn't see an end in either direction. A straight path stretching at least sixty meters.

And at the far end of that straight path — a black ogre.

An ogre species — equivalent to at least C-rank. A bulging, muscular humanoid monster. It had horns like the oni of old folk tales, and its entire body radiated a murderous intent that made the air tingle and crackle. A presence so unmistakably hostile that even the biggest idiot would recognize it as an enemy.

Its eyes gleamed like a wild animal in the dark, fixed on Toru.

"——!"

Without thinking about anything at all, Toru scooped up his trusty iron rebar bludgeon from the ground and ran — in the opposite direction from the ogre.

Oh right, you're never supposed to turn your back on a wild bear — he recalled a random bit of trivia after he'd already started running. Too late.

About two seconds passed between Toru breaking into a run and the ogre starting to chase him. And from there, it took less than a second for the ogre to catch up.

In his perception, it was instantaneous — the black ogre was right behind him.

Every attack from the black ogre would almost certainly be fatal for Toru. Even a flick would probably make his head explode.

"——Ghhk!"

He let go of the iron bludgeon in his hand — more like dropped it than threw it. Running at full speed, he couldn't manage a big motion.

It was all but pointless, of course.

His trusty weapon was batted away like swatting a fly, and the next moment, Toru himself was sent flying. Twenty meters or more, in the same direction he'd been running.

It probably felt to the ogre like no more than a light nudge. And with that kind of casual gesture, a grown man was hurled twenty meters — slammed into the floor, tumbling and rolling — and using that momentum, he sprang back up.

Pain? He couldn't tell. But for now, he wasn't dead.

He'd probably die. Almost certainly die. And yet, he was running again.

"——!"

The straight corridor had no end in sight.

It stretched on forever. His body wouldn't move forward, like running in a dream. Maybe instead of a life flashing before his eyes, time was just slowing down in his final moments — Toru thought, as if it were happening to someone else. In about one breath, two at most, the black ogre's arm would tear through his back... and then he'd die. Maybe his head would get smashed and his brains would fly everywhere, or maybe he'd be slammed into the ground.

In that stretched-out, near-frozen moment of time, the man in hakama appeared in Toru's field of vision.

Only about five meters away.

Even though it was a straight corridor, the man in hakama casually turned right and disappeared into a wall. Another one of those "illusion walls."

Toru threw himself forward, like a diving front roll.

A gamble. In another instant, the black ogre would do something. And he'd be killed. So he thought he'd try to dodge at least one hit. The next one was impossible.

By some miracle, the timing aligned — the black ogre leaped over Toru's head as he rolled across the floor.

"Ha—h—!"

One shallow breath. Without even the composure to savor the miracle, too pressed for time to even stand up, Toru crawled across the floor like a bug and slipped through the "illusion wall."

He emerged into a room.

Not a small room this time. About twenty square meters — not quite what you'd call a large room. Floor, walls, and ceiling, nothing else — no, there was something.

In the center of the room, two swords were stuck into the floor.

One was a Western sword. With a longer blade and hilt, a sleek silhouette.

A double-edged sword of the type called a hand-and-a-half sword.

The other was a katana.

A crimson-black bare blade, with a black tsuba and hilt. The blade was about seventy centimeters long.

They were stuck side by side, close together.

The distance between the sword and the katana was less than a meter.

When Toru reached for both of them at that moment, he wasn't thinking about anything at all. Why were two of them stuck in the floor like that in a place like this? The katana looked sinister, like it was obviously cursed — the Western sword felt somehow strangely holy — none of that crossed his mind.

He was about to die.

There were weapons in front of him.

In that case, he had no choice but to fight dirty until the very end.

In his right hand, the sword.

In his left hand, the katana.

He gripped them, pulled them from the floor — and consciousness faded.