ch61-ch80 · 077-ch76

Chapter 76

The explorer club Shirazawa Kana belonged to had quite a lot of members.

That, she figured, was probably because the profession of "explorer" was so popular in this day and age.

After the world fused at the end of the last century, the era of the 'Chain Dungeon Rampage' followed, and labyrinths and explorers seeped into the world. Before long, industries built on labyrinth produce kicked into gear in earnest, and demand for the explorer profession skyrocketed.

Unlike the lifetime employment of the past, explorers didn't struggle to find work after retiring — that was probably the main draw. Considering the boost to physical ability, they were tailor-made for manual labor, and since they were physically far sturdier than ordinary people, even certain brutal jobs were no problem. Those who reached B-rank or above could, by special exception, enroll in the police academy and open a path into the Criminal Explorer Countermeasures Division. The list of perks and advantages went on and on.

Those who showed mana affinity in middle school — to varying degrees — usually ended up entering labyrinths. Becoming even a D-rank explorer was already a huge step up for an ordinary person. As long as you weren't genuinely terrified of monsters, Kana thought there was no reason not to enter a labyrinth.

"Hey, hey, Shirazawa-san. Did you see today's stream? That was insane."

Watanabe Yuki, cheeks flushed, called out to Kana, who was idly killing time on a nearby bench instead of going into the club building.

Smiling softly, Yuki settled onto the bench next to her — and going by looks alone, his gender would've been impossible to pin down. His frame and limbs were slender, his beauty androgynous, his wardrobe mostly unisex, and above all, he had none of that unconscious sexual desire men tended to leak toward women. Nor did he have that leering quality women sometimes let slip when sizing up a man.

"Yeah, I saw. Really was insane."

A vague sigh slipped out of her.

Needless to say, it was the labyrinth exploration stream of 'Toru-bro' — Hayasaka Toru. The other day, Yuki had spotted them reuniting by chance, and she'd already admitted they'd been classmates. She hadn't told him they'd been boyfriend and girlfriend, but if he wanted to dig, he could probably find out. It wasn't as if they'd been hiding the relationship back then.

"If he was Shirazawa-san's classmate... that means he was Seno-kun's classmate too, right? Man, you could really feel the rivalry."

"Ah... was he?"

Seno Kyohei was a club member who hadn't ended up coming to the department store the other day, and a classmate from her middle and high school days.

Calling him "the textbook easy-to-get-carried-away popular kid" felt a little arrogant, but on the surface at least, that was the kind of person he was. He wasn't some kind of terrible villain, and he was decent to his inner circle, but he could be astonishingly sadistic toward people he looked down on.

After getting his nose broken by Hayasaka Toru in middle school, he'd stopped openly bullying people, but the root of his nature — constantly comparing himself to others and trying to set up hierarchies — probably hadn't changed much. Well, maybe that was just an instinctive trait of human beings.

"But feeling rivalry after watching that stream is pretty wild. I mean, even 'Anthem' couldn't pull that off. Even with S-rank Ilseria, that kind of absurd dungeon attack wouldn't be possible. Sugai Dungeon itself had gotten insane too... oh, and that's not a pun. Not a pun."

"Super funny. Keep it coming, keep it coming."

"Nguh. ...Shiraza-san, you can be a little harsh sometimes."

"Suits you better that way, though," Yuki said.

Probably the ex-boyfriend's fault, Kana sighed inwardly.

"But man, how many magic cores would you even get from defeating that many monsters? I wish my mana affinity had been higher too."

Yuki laughed with a "hahaha," but Kana couldn't bring herself to sympathize.

After all, Hayasaka Toru's mana affinity had been close to nonexistent. That was the reason he couldn't become an explorer and had ended up working as a cleaner.

Everyone's got their own circumstances.

If you start in with "comparing this side and that side, the other side has it worse, so you should just suck it up," the world just keeps getting harder to live in.

Hayasaka Toru must have had his own circumstances. Watanabe Yuki had his own circumstances too. That was all. Kana, who didn't have much in the way of circumstances herself, had nothing to say about it.

"Well, you can only do what's within your ability. That's an explorer's iron rule, right?"

"'A little red light is still a red light,' right. Yeah, I know that. I know. That said — Shirazawa-san, are you... not keeping in touch with that person?"

"No. I don't wanna get in the way."

"In the way...?"

"People who can pull off that kind of thing — if some old acquaintance came clinging to them, that'd just be in the way, right? If we'd stayed in touch all along, that'd be one thing. But at this point... no."

Saying it out loud, she realized that was a pretty regrettable fact.

But even so, did she want to tie herself back to Hayasaka Toru? — well, she did want to reconnect, but... reason kept insisting she shouldn't.

Hayasaka wouldn't fall for a woman that shallow.

Then again, the fact that three years after the breakup she still kept a seat for her ex-boyfriend in the center of her heart was probably pretty shallow in its own right.

"Oh, that's right. Seno-kun was saying something about it in the club room. Something like, we might be able to get into Noumi Dungeon."

Maybe sensing that Kana had gone gloomy, Yuki changed the subject.

"Noumi Dungeon — that's still not open to general explorers, right?"

Apparently there'd been no casualties in that 'Dungeon Rampage,' but both Noumi Dungeon and Sugai Dungeon had their labyrinth branch offices and parking lots smashed. Both had mutated, so they shouldn't be explorable until the investigation progressed.

"That's what I thought too, but... well, you know Seno-kun was bragging about having relatives on the city council. Said he had relatives at city hall too, so maybe he pulled some strings."

"Is that really the kind of thing you should pull strings for?"

Kana was skeptical, but Yuki just let out a vague wry smile and shook his head. The fact that the gesture suited his beautiful face so perfectly was kind of ironic.

He probably didn't think much of his own looks himself. Kana had seen him get comments about his appearance a few times, and he'd always worn that same vague wry smile.

Kana herself had no particular thoughts about Yuki's looks, which was probably exactly why he talked to her. He was one of her few friends.

"It's just 'use it if you can use it,' I guess. Oh — someone's coming from the club room. Maybe to call us?"

At his words, she looked down the hallway and saw a club member waving at them. Being called meant she couldn't very well not go, so she let out an inward sigh and stood up.

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"According to a certain information source I heard from, Anthem has already surveyed Noumi Dungeon down to about the middle layers. That means it's not that dangerous down to the upper layers. And since it's a post-mutation dungeon, there's a chance it won't line up with the existing maps."

Seno Kyohei, bragging in the middle of the club room, spotted Kana and Yuki walking in and broke into a 'been waiting for you' grin.

That kind of... how to put it... deliberately performative reaction he put on for the people around him was something Kana was a little bad with. Every little gesture felt like a stepping stone to elevate 'his own standing.' Hayasaka Toru would probably have called him "a monkey on a monkey mountain."

In short — he was the type of guy who obsessed over his position within a community.

Kana didn't think that was a bad thing in itself. More or less, everyone cared about where they stood in the places they belonged. Kana was no exception. In the explorer club, she consciously held a position of 'not too conspicuous, but proactive about activities,' and she figured she was doing reasonably well at it.

"You're here, Kana, Yuki. This time, we absolutely need Yuki's 'special ability.'"

Without bothering to re-explain things to Kana and Yuki, who'd come in partway, Seno pressed on.

"Um... what exactly is the plan?"

Yuki tilted his head with a wry smile, and Seno let out a mocking "Hah" of breath before sweeping his gaze around the club members in the room.

The vibe was — these guys don't get it, but I'll lead them right. Some of the club members reacted with exasperation, while another subset watched the proceedings with interest.

Unlike middle school or high school club activities, a university explorer club wasn't a place where all the members marched toward some shared goal. Being registered came with a clear advantage — it made labyrinth exploration more favorable.

For example, party members.

It was fairly hard for an individual who'd only gotten an explorer's license to efficiently explore a labyrinth on their own. Diving as a party was far more efficient than solo dungeon attacks, and the danger dropped considerably.

And there was no need to aim to be some top-tier explorer. Hunt monsters within your ability, gather magic cores, occasionally score a rare drop. Reaching C-rank while still in school would brighten your future prospects considerably, and the income from magic cores alone was nothing to sneeze at.

Kana herself earned enough that she didn't need a part-time job to buy clothes she liked, and she could eat out without worrying about her wallet.

Not that that was the reason she entered dungeons, though.

"My bad for ditching on the department store run. I had a talk with my contact at city hall. Got permission to enter the upper layers of Noumi Dungeon, nominally for investigation purposes."

His attitude made no effort to hide the 'pretty huge accomplishment, right?' vibe, and watching it was a little painful. Connections look more impressive flashed casually than bragged about, but Seno Kyohei was the type who couldn't hold back the bragging.

...Looking at other people this way means I've got a pretty nasty personality, Kana thought, almost breaking into a wry smile.

But ending up with a slight prejudice against the kind of thing Hayasaka Toru would laugh through his nose at — that was just a habit of thinking Kana couldn't help.

Of course, she understood Seno Kyohei's drive to climb as an explorer.

Or rather than understanding, it was more imagination — but it was true that he'd been seriously and repeatedly exploring labyrinths since getting his license. By now he was an upper C-rank explorer, one of the top fighters in the club. As an explorer, he was far more serious than Kana.

"Ah... so because it's a mutated labyrinth, you're saying my 'special ability' can be put to use?"

"That's right. Could be hidden passages and stuff, right? And since the official purpose is investigation, the more detailed the map, the better."

"...Bump up my cut, and I'm in."

Yuki's expression tightened sharply.

Seno raised the corner of his mouth in a grin and nodded at him.

"Obviously. Anyone wanna raise their hand for backup? Oh, Shitani-senpai, that was fast. Link up with Yuki's terminal and handle the mapping, would you. For the exploration members, it'll be me, Yuki, and I'd like to ask President Hatoba too. And Kana. I wanna go at this seriously. Anyone else—"

Nobody bothered objecting to Seno Kyohei, who was happily running the show.

If permission had been obtained, there was no problem, and even if it was a mutated labyrinth, Anthem had already surveyed it — and for an upper-layer exploration, it wasn't worth outright refusing.

After thinking for a moment, Kana raised her hand and spoke.

"Seno-kun, can you get Anthem's survey data from your information source? There probably isn't much info, but at the very least, we should pin down the monster ranks."

"Yeah, no problem. I'll contact them tonight and set it up so we can reference the data by tomorrow morning."

Seno nodded with full confidence, and Kana felt something like unease stir deep in her chest. If he started talking about going down from the upper layers, she'd absolutely refuse — she quietly resolved that to herself, but if it turned out to be unnecessary worry, all the better.

After that, they coordinated everyone's schedule for tomorrow, and the club president and other participants asked Seno about the 'information source' and what would happen with the Noumi Dungeon labyrinth branch office. It was a special arrangement this time around, but if it became possible to explore normally, that'd be even better.

Probably, it wouldn't be long before general explorers could enter Sugai Dungeon and Noumi Dungeon.

Why — because if you leave dungeon monsters alone, the probability of a 'Dungeon Rampage' goes up. Both the city and the Labyrinth Agency would want to open them to general explorers ASAP.

"Leave it to me. That said, Yuki's job is the big one this time, but cooperating with the investigation counts as a track record, and it'll also help with explorer rank evaluation."

Seno, chatting with the club members, had clearly grown since middle and high school. Back in middle school, he would've been even more full of himself here.

Literally — until someone broke his nose, Seno Kyohei had been a far nastier piece of work. She still didn't exactly like him now, but he had matured, that much was certain.

Glancing sideways, she saw Watanabe Yuki letting out a determined "Mmph" of breath, face full of resolve.

She hadn't heard the details, but apparently Yuki needed money. Money, or maybe the rare drops you could get from a labyrinth.

Everyone has their own circumstances, their reasons, their motivations.

Shirazawa Kana too — wanted to contribute, even if only a little, to deterring 'Dungeon Rampages.'

Needless to say, self-satisfaction.

But surely, Hayasaka Toru would put it like this.

— What's wrong with satisfying yourself?

Remembering her ex-boyfriend smiling sarcastically in her memory, Kana broke into another wry smile.

She'd thought she'd finally said goodbye the other day, but she still couldn't forget him at all.