ch21-ch40 · 028-ch27

Chapter 27

In an instant, the world switched places—that was the sensation Toru felt.

One moment ago, they'd been taking a break in the boss room on the fourteenth floor of Kamioka Dungeon, thinking they'd resume the stream soon even if they rested a bit more.

That should have been the case, yet somehow he was under the night sky.

Beneath his feet were dirt and grass. A perfectly flat stretch of ground, like someone had leveled it but forgotten to lay asphalt or concrete. The chilly nighttime air. The sound of insects echoing from somewhere.

In other words, he was outside.

It made absolutely no sense.

Looking around, the members of "Anthem" all wore expressions of "We have no idea what's going on" just like Toru. Even the elf Ilseria couldn't hide her confusion and agitation. The only one moving was the cameraperson, Shingu Sanagi, who was swinging her camera around, filming the surroundings. Toru found himself a little impressed by her cameraperson spirit... but this wasn't the time for that... or was it? No, was it the time for that?

Startled, he glanced at the mobile device he'd been holding with the stream still running. The footage Sanagi was shooting—of them—was showing up on the stream.

"What the hell is this?"

"Did we suddenly go outside?"

"We were supposed to be resting in the boss room"

"Everyone's confused"

"No wait, Tia-chan is—"

"—You 'sealed' it!"

Running out with a loud shout, Tia reached what must have been fifty meters away in an instant and seemed to punch someone who was apparently there.

Toru still couldn't grasp the turn of events and could only stand there like an idiot... but even so, a corner of his mind started working.

Why had Tia suddenly run off and punched someone?

Probably because that someone was a "bad guy."

That much didn't require thought. She went to punch because she decided she should punch. So when Tia said "sealed"... did she mean she'd "sealed" the "labyrinth"?

Kamioka Dungeon was sealed, so they'd been pushed outside...?

But sealing a labyrinth?

For what purpose? By whom? And how, for that matter?

"Toru! This guy—wasn't he at that meeting?!"

Tia came running back, dragging the guy she'd knocked down by the scruff of his neck, and tossed him toward Toru like a lousy delivery driver tossing a package.

A middle-aged man in a suit.

He'd been knocked out so quickly and efficiently that despite being punched, there were no visible injuries. His eyes were rolled back, and Toru could tell he was breathing, but he had the incongruous thought that an unconscious middle-aged man was pretty damn creepy.

"Ah... uh... who is this? I feel like I've seen him."

Scratching his head, he tried to recall, but couldn't match the face to a name.

After a moment, he confirmed the camera was filming the fallen man, then looked at his device. He figured the comments would be more reliable.

"That's Sasamori Takeshi, isn't it!" "Why's a councilman currently getting flamed here of all places?" "How can you forget that, Toru-bro"

"He's apparently Councilman Sasamori."

"Lol using comments to cheat"

"I left that meeting halfway through. Why's this guy getting flamed anyway? I mean, I get why he's getting flamed... but... why's this guy in a place like this at a time like this? And more importantly... what about Kamioka Dungeon...?"

"So I think this guy 'sealed' it. Circumstantially, it can only be him. Or maybe the person who brought him here is the real culprit—"

"Toru-kun!"

Cutting into their discussion, Anthem's leader, Saito Megumi, shouted. And not just any shout. Her voice and expression could only be described as anguished, which startled even Toru.

In her hand was a mobile device.

She must have just finished communicating with someone.

"Hey, calm down... listen calmly, okay? Noumi Dungeon and Sugai Dungeon... they've had a 'Dungeon Rampage,' apparently..."

◇◇◇

CRACK—went something.

A violent awakening, like two live copper wires being forced together. Toru's consciousness, which had felt oddly detached—became that of a person directly involved, and his mind sharpened to a degree that surprised even himself.

Maybe it was the Cursed Blade's experience.

Or perhaps because of his connection to the Holy Sword.

He had no way to verify either, so he didn't think about it at all. Instantly, Toru checked the sky, located the moon, spun around to survey the surroundings, and then started running.

"Toru!? Where are you going!?"

Tia followed, surprised but keeping pace. She was probably used to emergencies. In her lifetime wielding the holy sword, she must have been through countless life-or-death situations.

"Sugai Dungeon."

Not wasting time on explanations, he spat out the answer tersely and kept running.

He reached his destination quickly. The parking lot. He'd calculated the parking lot's position assuming the place he'd been standing was where Kamioka Dungeon's entrance used to be—and despite being mostly guesswork, it was right.

He pulled the key from his pocket, unlocked the car, tossed his rebar club into the back seat, and slid into the driver's seat. Tia also opened the passenger door, shifted Lightbringer from her back to the front, hugging it as she slid into the seat.

The moment he started the engine and put the shift lever into reverse—BAM!—something slammed against the window. A small hand. The elf, Ilseria. Catching up to a sprinting Toru was apparently no trouble for her.

"You said you're heading to Sugai Dungeon, didn't you!"

Apparently unwilling to waste time making him roll down the window, Ilseria spoke loud enough for Toru inside the car to hear. Toru, finding shouting annoying, simply nodded.

"We're heading to suppress the Noumi Dungeon 'Dungeon Rampage.' Whoever finishes first heads to the other one. Understood!"

"Fine! Let's do that!"

Tia answered on his behalf, but Toru decided to deal with that later. Ilseria moved away from the car, and this time he floored the accelerator, made a U-turn, shifted back to drive, and set off.

Even though he was in a hurry, he wasn't a professional driver, so he couldn't just floor the gas and maintain full control. He pushed the speed as much as he could while staying within controllable limits.

Leaving Kamioka Dungeon's parking lot, going from the city road to the prefectural road. Whether heading to Noumi Dungeon or Sugai Dungeon, from here it'd take at least fifteen minutes.

Ignoring the speed limit, if the roads were clear... even then, ten minutes.

Six hundred seconds. How much damage could occur in that time?

Of course, it would depend on the type and scale of the 'Dungeon Rampage.'

Since he didn't know anything right now, worrying was pointless.

"The roads are so twisty, it's frustrating."

Tia squinted at the prefectural road lit by the headlights and said.

"Yeah."

Toru replied with just that. Mountainous prefectural roads in Japan were naturally winding—he'd never found them frustrating until now.

"You're planning to do something about Sugai Dungeon's 'Dungeon Rampage,' right?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"...Huh?"

"I mean, it's not like you have any obligation, do you? It's not like in my day, where being a holy sword wielder meant you had to vanquish evil. Nobody's told you that with great power comes great responsibility. Not yet, anyway."

There was something almost world-weary in Tia's tone.

She'd probably been saddled with responsibility in exactly that kind of way. He could sense that much, but at the same time, he figured she hadn't thrown away that responsibility herself.

If she'd truly hated it—if she'd genuinely not given a damn—she could have tossed everything aside and disappeared somewhere.

"What's this 'sealing' thing?"

So Toru asked something slightly off-topic.

Tia made a face like she'd bitten into something sour, then nodded.

"There are items that can erase 'Labyrinths.' ...Well, in the world I was from, they existed. Basically, labyrinths disappear if you destroy the core at the deepest part, but there were items that could make that core stop functioning from the outside."

"And why did Noumi Dungeon and Sugai Dungeon start a 'Dungeon Rampage' when Kamioka Dungeon disappeared? There's a connection, probably."

"Just guessing here, but I think the three labyrinths are connected. The reason you ended up in Kamioka Dungeon when you stepped on a teleport trap in Sugai Dungeon is—how should I put it—I think they're magically linked. For example, if the three share a total of sixty units of magic power, and Kamioka Dungeon had a capacity of thirty..."

"Then when Kamioka Dungeon disappeared, those thirty units of magic flowed into the remaining two dungeons. They exceeded capacity, so a 'Dungeon Rampage' occurred. That's what you're saying."

"Probably, yeah."

It was also consistent with the logic that if you leave a labyrinth alone too long, a 'Dungeon Rampage' happens. In short, letting a labyrinth exceed its capacity was bad news.

In that sense, Toru's work as a rock-bottom cleaner, continuously hunting low-floor monsters, hadn't been meaningless—but then again, unrelated to any of that, this had still happened, so maybe it had been meaningless after all.

"Hey, Toru. You still haven't answered my question."

"What?"

"Why you're trying to do something about Sugai Dungeon's 'Dungeon Rampage.'"

"That place is near where I live."

"...Huh?"

Tia's face went blank with surprise—or so it seemed. He couldn't spare the attention to look directly at the passenger seat at this speed.

Maybe that's why, or maybe not. Without bothering with Tia's expression or obvious confusion, Toru pressed the accelerator a little harder and let his thoughts spill from his mouth.

"From my place to Sugai Dungeon, it's about fifteen minutes by car. There's a 24-hour supermarket on the way that I used to stop at after work. A little further and there's a convenience store too. Next door in my shitty apartment lives a cat beast-person mother and daughter. For reasons I don't know, the mom acts way too familiar with me. She works in the nightlife business and sometimes drops Mika off with me at night. Mika's quiet for a kid her age, and... how should I put it... she's thoughtful, I guess? I think her birth and circumstances made her that way. I can't improve her situation—but, well, she's not a bad neighbor. It's not like I do anything for her, but I watch a lonely kid for a bit, and she goes back home when her parent gets home. Makes me feel like I did something slightly good."

"...Toru..."

Toru didn't care what expression Tia was making. He was irritated by the fact that driving at ninety kilometers per hour on the prefectural road felt unbearably slow.

"When I was seventeen, I went with my parents to my grandparents' house and got caught in a 'Dungeon Rampage.' It was pretty small-scale, but everyone except me died. I don't hold a grudge against the explorers who suppressed the rampage. I don't think they could have done better. Everyone did what they had to do, within their ability. Basically, we all live our lives thinking 'we're doing the right thing.' Saying 'if only I'd done this' is just a dream. You're the kind of person who couldn't do it differently. That's all there is to it. Me, you, everyone else."

Countless choices lay before him.

The Hayasaka Toru of just a few days ago could have quit being a cleaner anytime and gone to a vocational school to get a proper job.

But he hadn't.

Even if it was a D-rank dungeon with no benefits for explorers, if nobody went in and defeated the monsters, eventually a 'Dungeon Rampage' would happen—the possibility increased.

If Hayasaka Toru kept working as a cleaner, he could reduce that possibility, even if only slightly. It wasn't like nobody else would have done it if he didn't. But in reality, for three years, the city's Labyrinth Department had kept contracting Hayasaka Toru to clean Sugai Dungeon.

He couldn't become an explorer, but still, he'd stayed involved with dungeons, kept fulfilling his own tiny role—no matter what anyone thought, that was enough for him.

Self-satisfaction.

What's wrong with satisfying yourself?

As for going along with Anthem this time after getting angry at the elf—accepting a cheap dogeza apology—it wasn't because he'd truly forgiven them. His heart wasn't that big. In the end, he accepted because it let him continue his self-satisfaction.

Then don't get angry in the first place, he thought to himself, but both were equally genuine feelings for Toru.

He didn't want to volunteer to the point of selling his soul, but he wasn't so unable to endure a little discomfort either. He got pissed, so he showed his anger. They apologized for now. They paid him. And then he got to join the labyrinth exploration.

"My parents wouldn't have gone to my grandpa's house if they'd known a 'Dungeon Rampage' was coming. They could have evacuated my grandparents beforehand. But that's not what happened. Obviously. Ordinary people can't see the future. Nobody could have done anything about that."

The compact car's engine began to scream at the high RPMs.

At some point, he'd reached nearly a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

"—But now I'm here."

A hero's voice, clear and resonant, as if it penetrated deep into his chest.

But Toru didn't look at the passenger seat.

Ahead, finally close enough to make out—the entrance to Sugai Dungeon, his workplace for three years. Something massive was moving there.

Even in the darkness of night with almost no streetlights, he could see it because the magical power leaking from the monster was interfering with something in the atmosphere, emitting light.

Just like the labyrinth walls.

Essentially—a luminous phenomenon, as if it fundamentally didn't belong in this world.

"A giant serpent-type monster. A fantasy species based on indigenous faith. Usually it just rampages mindlessly, destroying everything around with its enormous body and gobbling up anything nearby with its huge mouth. A monster that embodies calamity itself."

As she spoke, Tia yanked open the passenger door—while the car was still moving—and with a loud crack, tore it clean off.

What had been a car door a moment ago was abandoned on the road, and because they were moving at high speed, it vanished behind them in an instant.

Ahead of them was the 'Great Serpent,' larger than a two-story house.

It writhed violently like a freshly unearthed earthworm, and just as Tia said, that alone was destroying nearby trees and asphalt all around. The familiar dungeon branch office had long since been reduced to rubble.

"Hey—!"

The moment he thought "what the hell are you doing," Tia had already twisted around, Holy Sword in hand, and positioned herself on top of the compact car's roof. On top of a car going a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

"If I get too far from you, Toru, my manifestation will dissolve. So get close to that big bastard like you're going to ram into it! I'll definitely take it down, and I'll protect you too!"

A third of him thought that was insane.

The remaining two-thirds was convinced—if she said it, she could do it.

"Gotta thank Anthem. Good thing I took their money."

With that, Toru floored the accelerator, heading straight for the enormous 'Great Serpent' now clearly visible ahead.