ch81-ch100 · 083-ch82

Chapter 82

High-speed long-distance movement of a human-sized object is extremely difficult.

Not long ago, Hayasaka Toru would have laughed through his nose at the very premise, but to current Toru, it was a matter of life and death. Though, in practice, the one doing the moving was Tia, carrying Toru on her back.

Simply put — to run fast and far, you have to push off the ground hard and deep. Literally "kicking the earth." But kick too hard and you break the ground, losing your propulsion.

So when Tia kicked off a foothold, she seemed to use some kind of mana-based effect to deploy a barrier. The intent being to not destroy the foothold — which meant she couldn't just throw up a barrier in midair and air-dash. Probably. Most likely.

Even with the foothold problem solved by "slapping a mana barrier on the foothold," next came air resistance. Break the sound barrier and you slam into a wall of air, slowing visibly. Like a jet, you can't maintain speed in atmosphere without constant propulsion. Slicing the air with the wooden sword for an instant doesn't change the fundamental problem.

There's a fundamental difference between high-speed movement in combat and high-speed travel to a destination. That was probably the gist. Thinking about it, it was obvious that even S-rank explorers flew on planes. Defying the laws of physics requires mana, and defying them significantly requires significant mana.

Force your way past the sound barrier and you produce a shockwave. Do that over a city and every window in town shatters. So you have to suppress the shockwave with mana while exceeding the speed of sound — which is threading a needle while sprinting at full tilt.

Even so, he forced through as much unreasonable as possible.

From his rundown apartment to Noumi Dungeon — under five minutes. A joke of a speed. Probably faster than any vehicle in the world. But even with Tia kicking the earth and Toru slicing the air with the wooden sword, the way their speed bled off little by little while airborne was an agonizing lag.

The area around Noumi Dungeon was currently bare earth — or rather, wasteland.

Needless to say, because the hydra that had appeared had rampaged. And since it had been brought down pretty early after appearing, only the area around Noumi Dungeon had been devastated. It felt like a story from ages ago, but it was only a few days ago.

"— Someone's here!"

Tia leaped off the rooftop of the closest building on their flight path, and landed in front of the Noumi Dungeon entrance with the force of a mortar round.

Like Sugai Dungeon and Kamioka Dungeon — a section of the ground bulged out from the earth, and that was the entrance. From the entrance you went diagonally down for a while, and when you hit a corridor, that was basement level one.

Right near that entrance, a single man stood.

Because they'd landed at a fairly absurd velocity, a cloud of dust billowed up around the dungeon entrance, but the man didn't seem to care at all.

Young — probably not far off from Toru's age. Work pants paired with boots, and for some reason a sleeveless long coat over his bare skin. Short-cropped red hair. Mean-looking eyes.

"You a friend of Shirazawa?!"

He asked for form's sake, but figured probably not. Still — if he was wrong, he'd lose a lot of time, so he had to ask.

"Hah...? Shirazaw — wait, you that 'Toru-bro' guy?"

He got glared at, but decided he was unrelated and ignored him.

The moment Toru tapped Tia on the shoulder, the scenery was suddenly inside the dungeon. And from here, they couldn't build up that kind of speed.

"Toru, you get the dungeon's layout?"

"Nope. Don't know if the existing Noumi Dungeon map'll even help, and factoring in the time to download it, I figure it's faster to just barrel through blind."

"Then it's all on instinct! ...Also, that guy's chasing us."

He checked behind at her words, and sure enough — that red-haired ridiculous-coat was chasing Tia's back, even though she should've been tearing through the labyrinth at high speed. Maybe being ignored rubbed him wrong, or maybe he was coming to chew them out for entering Noumi Dungeon without permission.

Even with the labyrinth corridors dodging left and right, relying entirely on instinct, the ridiculous-coat kept right up. Just keeping up was enough to mark him as seriously skilled. A general explorer couldn't keep pace with Tia's sprint.

In the end, just finding the stairs from the first floor to the second took nearly three minutes. There was no one to blame, but being frustrated was unavoidable.

The moment they descended to the second floor — he noticed people.

Right at the bottom of the stairs, in a spot absolutely impossible to miss — two people. One was a college-aged guy. The other was... a slender beauty.

"'Toru-bro'-san! I'm Shirazawa-san's friend!"

The beauty shouted in a desperate voice.

Toru dropped from Tia's back with near-jumping momentum, wooden sword still in hand, and asked what he needed to ask.

"I got a call from Shirazawa. Abnormal situation on the third floor. A human turned beast-like and is attacking. Shirazawa let you guys go?"

"Y—yes! Shirazawa-san is buying time as the decoy, so she told me to run ahead and guide Toru-bro-san to her..."

"Guide? You know where Shirazawa is right now?"

"Yes. I can use a 'special ability' so—"

"Got it. Guide me. Loud as you can."

Saying that, he grabbed the beauty's wrist and practically threw him at Tia. Tia swung the Holy Sword from behind her back to the front, cradled it with the insides of both elbows, and set the beauty gently on top of the blade.

"Ah, you're a boy, huh. Thought you were a girl."

"Eh? Ah, yes..."

"Oi, you bastard! Don't you run! Entering the dungeon without—"

A voice echoed from the stairway. The beauty flinched, hunching his neck — but this wasn't the time to care, and there was no time to deal with him.

"Guide us!"

He said it and broke into a run. Tia instantly pulled ahead, which was fine. Tia ran, listening to the beauty's directions, and Toru chased her back. They'd slowed compared to before — because she was matching Toru's running speed.

The corridors of Noumi Dungeon, which he'd never entered once, were — exactly as Tia had said once, "magically connected" — quite similar to the scenery of Sugai Dungeon. Even lined up side by side in photos or video, you probably couldn't tell them apart.

Right, left, left, right, straight, dead end then right — they were doing the same thing as on the first floor, and yet Tia's stride had lost all hesitation.

He didn't know what the beauty's 'special ability' was, but if he said he could guide, he could guide. For a split second Toru wondered if it might be a trap — but if it was, it was way too stupid a trap.

If misleading them for a moment's delay was enough to get killed by Toru and Tia, he should've just left them alone. Either way, they'd get lost.

As if to prove it wasn't a trap, they hit the next staircase in under two minutes.

"Wahyaaaah aaa aaah aa—!"

The beauty's scream echoed weirdly as it trailed behind — because Tia had jumped down the stairs. Literally.

"Shut up! Which way at the bottom!"

Toru, slightly behind, finished the descent and the screaming was still going, so he yelled to silence him. The beauty gave Toru a look that was almost teary, then immediately pointed down the corridor.

"Straight, then right, right, left, right, then straight! Looks like we're getting close to the stairs! They're moving while fighting... running — wahyah!"

Tia burst into a run mid-sentence. If she bit her tongue, recovery magic would sort it out, Toru figured, and chased her back. Behind them, the ridiculous-coat was still following — but he'd stopped shouting. Silently tagging along.

Run. Run. Run.

He couldn't possibly outrun Tia. Even so, he ran at a joke of a speed by an ordinary person's senses.

How many minutes since the call had cut out?

Past five minutes, for sure. Not yet ten. Could someone hold out for ten minutes under a beast attack? But — the beauty had given directions and said they were "getting close." So she'd moved from her original position. Fighting while running?

"Found—!"

Tia shouted and tossed the beauty she'd been carrying aside with a "poi."

Toru slipped past the airborne beauty mid-flight and looked down the corridor.

A creature about two and a half meters long.

A monster.

Built like a human assembled from rock — but the shape of its shoulders and legs was different. A monster that looked like a literal mix of human and beast, in a dark stone color.

And — being held up by the throat, dangling in the air by that monster — Shirazawa Kana.