Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Three: Adventurers’ Problems 4
“Welcome, Your Highness. This way, please.”
“Mm. Have there been any problems since then?”
“Nothing worth reporting to Your Highness has happened.”
“Would you like to take a look around, just in case?”
“If there are no problems, that’s fine. I have no intention of troubling you all with the effort of guiding me.”
“Are you sure that’s all right?”
“I trust you all. Or to be precise, I trust Karen, who said I could trust you all.”
At Waltride’s firm and dignified words, the adventurers who came to greet her group looked impressed.
Waltride’s true feelings were that she didn’t want to encounter any monsters. Since the adventurers’ camp was half-embedded in the forest, she was dying to leave this place as quickly as possible. Knowing this, Karen smiled wryly inwardly.
After Waltride exchanged a few words with the adventurers, she said, "I leave the rest to you two," to Karen and Julius, and calmly left with Dorotea and Irmlinde.
Incidentally, once she returned, it was time for her medicine. She was still continuing to drink the detox potions.
“We adventurers share the same view as you. There’s something fishy about the eighth floor.”
“So it is as I thought.”
Julius nodded at Gunther’s words.
It was time to share information. Although Karen felt that Waltride should have participated, the princess had hurried back, not wanting to reveal any vulnerability.
Yet despite that, she apparently had a good reputation as “a princess who goes out of her way to visit the adventurers’ camp in her limited free time.” Partly because the comparison was with Boromias from the other day, her personally getting in line for soup curry was also highly regarded.
Back then, when the adventurers were all scrambling around the pot, Waltride had quietly taken her place at the very back, and the startled adventurers began forming an orderly line after seeing her. Many adventurers regarded Waltride highly for this reason—without that, the particularly strong adventurers might have monopolized the soup curry.
Though apparently Waltride had only thought, “Is this the end of the line?” and joined it without any special intent.
“Another group of B-rank adventurers disappeared. If it were just one person, there’d be a possibility they capriciously lost motivation and vanished somewhere, but with three people, it’s a different story. Every one of them had monster-level magical power, so I don’t think something ordinary happened.”
“One unit of the Royal Guard has also gone missing. They should have been skilled among those whose conduct wasn’t particularly good. It’s hard to think they were taken down by the eighth floor’s monsters.”
“So basically, we can cooperate with each other in searching for the missing ones, right?”
It wasn’t by chance that this dungeon investigation team’s base was placed in the forest at the foot of the seventh floor—they had been keeping an eye on this area for some time. Something was happening—not as deep as the tenth floor, but not too close to the surface either.
“Sir Tristan reported that according to the Royal Knights’ investigation, the eighth floor has the thinnest concentration of magical power in the air. Could that have something to do with the disappearances?”
“We don’t have magical tools to measure magical power in the air, so we don’t know about that, but many who enter the eighth floor seem to have their sense of direction thrown off. There might be monsters that show illusions. Monsters that shouldn’t originally be on the eighth floor.”
“Isn’t the eighth floor originally a place where it’s easy to get lost?”
“Yeah, the Rock Labyrinth. But even if the paths are hard to read, skilled adventurers don’t lose their way toward the depths. So, that’s why this whole thing’s… suspicious.”
When Gunther sighed, he called out to the surroundings.
“Hey! Anyone who got lost on the eighth floor, come here! Tell Sir Julius about the situation at that time.”
“Handing over information to a noble, huh…”
“It’s for Karen’s sake! Or would you rather go to the nobles’ camp to talk!?”
“Fine, fine, we’ll talk!”
Julius was now serving as a bridge between the Royal Knights and the adventurers. The adventurers reluctantly approached Julius. Since they seemed uncomfortable talking with Karen nearby, she read the room and moved away from them.
“Karen, could you come with me for a moment?”
“? Yes.”
Called by Gunther, she toddled after him.
Julius also glanced their way, so Karen waved at him.
Gunther pointed deep into the forest.
“Over there, there’s another adventurers’ camp.”
“Eh? Really?”
Hearing that for the first time, Karen widened her eyes. She had never been there before.
“It’s a camp for the ‘Almost-Theres’… the adventurers of B-Rank and above. Even though we’re all adventurers, those of us who are C-Rank—even regular B-Rank adventurers— can’t really communicate with the ‘Almost-Theres’. That’s why their camp is set apart from ours in advance.”
“Even among adventurers, you can’t communicate…? There’s an alchemist at the Alchemists’ Guild who used to be an A-rank adventurer, and he seemed perfectly normal to me.”
As Karen recalled the vice guild master of the Alchemists’ Guild, Gunther shook his head.
“If anything, most A-ranks are the sane ones. To reach A-rank, you need more than just strength—you’ve got to contribute to the Adventurers’ Guild too.”
“Doesn’t ‘Almost-There’ mean they’re about to become A-rank?”
“That’s one way to take it, but what I mean is they’re literally on the verge of becoming beings on the same tier as the goddess.”
“…Is such a thing really possible?”
If you became A-rank, you were respected as if you’d ascended to the same tier as the goddesses. She’d thought it was just a metaphor, but Gunther said while gazing deep into the forest:
“Those guys are seriously a different species of creature. There are two kinds of B-ranks: humans and monsters. The ones the Adventurers’ Guild has been promoting to A-rank recently are all the human type of B-rank adventurers. The real ones—the monsters—think in ways that are completely unhinged. Even the Guild’s given up on them.”
Karen gulped and looked deep into the forest.
“Still, if one of those types conquers a dungeon beyond the thirtieth floor, they’re recognized as A-rank. Most of them don’t even care about their adventurer rank—some don’t even bother applying after passing the thirtieth floor. But there are dangerous A-ranks too, so be careful.”
“U-Understood.”
“Those guys are existences enchanted by the goddesses, only interested in ascending the steps. So normally they ignore national requests and don’t gather—but…”
Gunther sighed.
If you wanted to ascend the steps in a dungeon, you had no choice but to kill monsters like crazy. And that meant putting your life on the line. If someone already stood on a lofty height and still sought to go higher, the price they’d have to wager would be unimaginable.
“Even guys like that gathered when they heard rumors about the dungeon investigation team. Some adventurers of their own rank have gone missing, after all. I guess lunatics can understand each other in their own way.”
Deep in this forest, there was apparently a camp for B-rank and above adventurers whom even C-rank adventurers called lunatics.
“You can imagine what would happen if we let those kinds of people meet nobles—especially those from the Royal Guard—even you, who aren’t an adventurer, can picture it, right?”
Karen nodded while gulping down saliva.
“So you’re isolating them. And that’s why you haven’t let us meet them until now. I think that’s the right call. I don’t think Lady Waltride would be angry about you hiding it! I’ll explain the reason properly myself. I’m thought to be knowledgeable about adventurers.”
“Well, the ‘Almost-Theres’ and nobles have already crossed paths, though.”
“But it’s good nothing happened.”
“With all that preface, there’s no way nothing happened.”
“Eh?”
“There was talk about missing noble knights, right?”
“Eh…?”
Karen recalled Julius’s earlier words and tilted her head, saying "Eh?" once more.
“Um, um… are those people alive?”
“They are alive.”
Gunther said with a sour expression as if chewing on bitter insects.
At the answer that gave no relief at all, Karen broke out in a cold sweat.
No comments:
Post a Comment