“h.e.l.lo, Mik.u.ma, can you hear me?”
“h.e.l.lo? Yeah, no problem. Have you arrived at the stairs?”
After going through the entrance, we found the stairs after around 15 minutes.
How do you say this, but it was a man-made staircase on top of a natural-looking rock surface.
As for the first floor, no lights were needed.
A faint light was emitted by one"s feet at several places on the wall.
I asked Mik.u.ma in advance.
This light should illuminate us until the fortieth floor.
“We just got home as well…”
“I want to speak. Yoo-hoo, are you okay?”
“You"re not injured, right?”
I heard Mik.u.ma, Saeki, and Shouhei"s voices one after another from my hands-free earpiece in my right ear.
Because it is wireless, father was wearing the left earpiece, and the microphone was on my chest.
“Ah, we"re completely fine at the moment.”
My father also nodded next to me.
“Okay. Well then, based on the information from the Internet, a monster should appear on the next floor, so don"t fight it by any means. Your goal is to reach the top floor, so let"s give that our undivided attention. If you can"t run away, then don"t hesitate and defeat it. Even if they"re in the form of living things, monsters are not living things, so there"s no need to hold back.”
“Roger that.”
I briefly responded, and straightly grasped the dragon fang sword I borrowed from the rat.
I gulped, and took a step on the stairs.
“Father, let"s go.”
“Oh”
We steadily advanced up the stairway.
I-it"s scary.
Information and incidents about dungeons appeared quite frequently in the news.
Mainly reports about magic power in the dungeon, incidents of dungeons with weak floors collapsing, and fatal accidents.
I was never interested until now, so I don"t remember in detail.
Since the place I lived in didn"t have a dungeon.
My feeling of it is that it"s a dangerous place where precious minerals and treasures lie dormant.
That"s about it.
As for the treasure hunter occupation, I knew that it was some people"s livelihood, but that was about it.
It"s good to be ignorant.
“First of all, let"s investigate the disparity from the map we obtained. After going up to the second floor, try counting the number of steps until the first crossroad. Based on Kunpei-kun"s stride that was measured yesterday, it should take about 32 steps. If there"s not much discrepancy with the map, then the information is probably trustworthy.”
“I understand.”
After finally reaching the second floor, the faint light that illuminated our steps was still going strong.
“One, two, three…”
While being vigilant of the surroundings, I walked carefully so that there was no variation in my strides.
“Thirty-one, thirty-two,… it"s the first crossroad, a Y-shaped road.”
“That"s good, it"s in accordance with the map for now. With this, I can help navigate. Take the right, the stairs are on the left, but the transition trap is at the end of the right path. You have to walk a bit, but this way there"s a shortcut that helps skip five floors.”
That"s good.
With this, we wont get lost, nor do we have to take a transition trap to come back.
“Okay, best regards.”
“I leave it to you, Yuuno-chan.”
“Yes, leave it to me Kunpei-kun, father-in-law.”
Again, there"s a disturbing nuance.
Well, it"s all good. It"s not good, but it"s good.
I advanced to the right of the crossroad alongside my father.
There was still some excess room on the road.
It was probably wide enough to fit around three adults?
After walking for a while, a black object was squirming around in the corner of the road.
“Umm, Mik.u.ma. I found something monster-like.”
“It appeared, eh? Monsters are defense mechanisms brought forth by dungeons. Since they have no will, they can only attack reflexively, so walk as unnoticeable as possible. What does it look like?”
Err, I wonder what.
Overall, a bag?
An extremely revolting and undulating meat bag.
“Disgusting.”
“Is it a Dark Meat? I"ve heard that it has a pretty disgusting appearance. It"s not very strong, but it"s troublesome if it gets split. Let"s go without entertaining it. Their movement is very slow, so I think it"ll be easy to slip by.”
I understand.
You don"t even want to touch a creature that repulsive.
“Father, let"s go.”
“Wow, I"ll be d.a.m.ned, it"s like straight out of a nightmare.”
Don"t say it, I"m trying to forget.
I progressed nervously past the side of the Dark Meat, and after a while, we arrived at the next crossroad.
“Yup, it matches. Take the right again, I think you should be able to see pools of water and waterfalls ahead of this.”
We went right as asked, and eventually, like Mik.u.ma said, we heard the sound of waterfalls.
We arrived at a slightly open place and saw the waterfall.
“I guess you can call this a waterfall…”
“Mik.u.ma, is this right, it"s more like a leak?”
That was father"s perplexed voice.
It was a place where the water flowing from the low ceiling had acc.u.mulated on the ground.
The scale was too small to be called a waterfall.
I can"t see the waterfall.
“The information from the internet said that it was a waterfall. There should be a question mark behind it.”
“The pool of water there is a transition trap. It seems like it"s the type that activates when both feet touch the ground. The initial hunters didn"t want to get wet, so it wasn"t discovered until later on.”
When I looked at the depth of the pool of water, it looks like it"ll come up to my knees.
Well of course you wouldn"t want to get wet in this early stage.
“Because there is no water supply and refilling in the lower hierarchy, there is nothing like that. Stay vigilant when transferring, there"s a lot of cases of people being attacked immediately after the transfer.”
“Roger that.”
I sent a look at my father.
He nodded quietly and both of us resolved ourselves and went into the pool of water.
I started immersing from my right foot, then slowly with my left foot.
The instance the tip of my left foot entered, everything in front of my eyes started spinning.
“Woah!”
“Ooh!”
The two raised pathetic voices.
Soon our vision stabilized.
“Gahhhh!!”
“Wah!”
Two large wolves were before our eyes.
Lying in wait.