Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 5 (11 page)

“You’re late, Hermes!”

Hestia scolded him angrily as he emerged from Babel Tower.

They had gathered in front of the tower’s west gate. The curtain of night had fallen over Central Park. The place was very lively during the day, but there was almost no one here now. The pure openness of the park was terribly quiet, and what trees were there were motionless in the night air.

The search party’s preparations were complete. Hestia concealed the fact that she was a deity by using a long traveler’s robe and a small supporter’s backpack strapped over her shoulders. In fact, she looked remarkably like the supporter Lilly. Mikoto and the rest of
Takemikazuchi Familia
were assembled and ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Hestia was tired of waiting. Hermes walked down the front steps with Asfi at his side and a grimace on his face.

“You see, I had a rather loose end that needed tying up…Was easier said than done.”

His expression went blank for a moment as he looked at the tallest
point of Babel Tower. Coming back to himself, he turned to Hestia and earnestly apologized for being late.

Hestia knew time was of the essence and was just about to give the order to go in.

“…Lady Hestia.”

“!”

Mikoto stepped up to her side. Now Hestia noticed, too.

A mysterious person had emerged from the darkness and was walking toward the girls.

The figure was wearing a hooded cape that extended to her lower back. The front of the hood concealed a great deal of the wearer’s face; only the lips were visible. Judging by the shorts, knee-high boots, and delicately feminine legs, this person was female.

A long, wooden sword was attached to a belt just under her fluttering cape. Two smaller blades ran down the sides of her thighs.

The female, equipped with adventurers’ battle clothes, didn’t say a word before coming to a stop in front of the group.

Mikoto moved to protect Hestia, one hand on her katana. Hermes just laughed.

“She’s on our side. Strong, too. No need to worry.”

Hestia sent a piercing glare in Hermes’s direction before taking a look at their new supposed “ally.”

A pair of sky-blue eyes emerged from beneath the hood.

With the hooded adventurer joining their search party, the group made their way into the tower.

To save Bell, Hestia and her party entered the Dungeon.

CHAPTER 3

Ferocious roars suddenly turned to painful squeals.

The air screamed as it was torn in half by something long and sharp, followed closely by the sound of dying breaths. The wooden sword left afterimages in its wake, looking like little more than a serious practice session.

The movements were unnaturally fast, and she had moved on to the next target before the sound of the crashing impact of the first rang out. Every so often sky-blue eyes flashed from beneath the hood.

Despite being surrounded by more than ten monsters at once, she tore into them with the strength of a hurricane.

“
KYII?!
”

“
GAH—?!
”

An Al-Miraj was struck across the chest when it was too slow to respond to her advance. She sliced another in half with one of her blades, her momentum taking her through a third rabbit monster. All three of the beasts fell in less than a second.

The monsters’ net formation was pointless. They weren’t fast enough to protect themselves against the hooded adventurer, her cape swirling with each precise movement. Hellhounds jumped for her suddenly exposed back, saliva flying from their bared fangs. However, the hooded female spun like a top and hit their jaws from beneath with her wooden sword. The devil dogs were launched backward, their muzzles completely shattered.

“
KYUAA!
”

Two more Al-Miraj jumped into the fray. Squealing with all their might, both of them were armed with stone tomahawks, this floor’s landform weapon.

The hooded adventurer saw the weapons as they were thrown straight at her. She deflected one with a quick whirl of her wooden
sword—and caught the second with her bare hand. She spun again and released it without any hesitation.

The monstrous rabbit’s red eyes went wide just before it took the tomahawk to the face. The sheer force of the blow launched it straight backward.

The remaining Al-Miraj stood in shock at the sudden disappearance of its ally before a dark shadow descended over it. The creature looked up just in time to see a wooden sword coming right for its face. “
KYU?!
” came its last squeak as its eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. The Al-Miraj fell silent.

“S-so strong…”

“To take on so many of them alone like that.”

“W-whoa…”

Takemikazuchi Familia
’s Mikoto, Ouka, and Chigusa watched the battle unfold before them with bewildered eyes. They might have had different ways of expressing it, but all of them were shocked by the dominant display of strength and skill.

The search party had reached the thirteenth floor.

They had made it all the way through the upper levels in a few short hours in their quest to save Bell and had now reached the middle levels. Their pace was much faster than anyone had anticipated.

This was all thanks to the mysterious hooded adventurer.

She was eliminating monsters on her own before anyone else had a chance to act. Once known by the title “Gale Wind,” the female adventurer was on a level far beyond that of Mikoto and the others—Level 4, to be exact.

Even Hermes’s ace Asfi watched in awe as the hooded adventurer blazed a trail with unparalleled speed and strength through the upper levels, slaying more monsters in the process than she cared to count.

“
OOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!
”

The sound of something rolling at high speed, accompanied by a low roar, reached them. Sure enough, one armadillo monster, a Hard Armored, appeared farther down the tunnel.

Completely unfazed by the wrecking ball rolling her way, the hooded adventurer withdrew one of her small blades. She charged it
head-on, blade sticking from the bottom of her hand. Edging out of its path at the last moment, she brought the blade straight through its body on her way by.

The monster’s body kept spinning as it fell apart.

The massive rotating flesh hit a rock in the floor, sending four distinct chunks into the air to land at a stunned Mikoto’s feet.

“Well, I won’t complain about this being too easy. There shouldn’t be a problem even in the middle levels as long as she’s taking the point position…Would you look at that?”

Asfi had been enjoying the show at the front of their ranks when suddenly a few monsters emerging from the wall behind them caught her attention.
Takemikazuchi Familia
also sensed the danger and immediately moved to protect Hestia and Hermes.

“Excuse me, step this way.”

“Eh?”

Ignoring the two hellhounds for the moment, Asfi grabbed Chigusa’s shoulder and pulled her back.

Suddenly the ground beneath where Chigusa had been standing swelled and shifted as if a mole were tunneling underneath.

Asfi swirled her white cloak to the side and withdrew a dagger from within.

She didn’t even have time to breathe before a Dungeon Worm came bursting out of the wall.

The beast didn’t have a head—just a mouth lined with serrated teeth at the end of the wormlike body. It rocketed toward them with its limbless frame writhing in midair. Asfi lined up the cutting edge of her weapon with the oncoming hidden terror of the Dungeon walls and made her move. Meeting the beast head-on, her dagger cut the Dungeon Worm from mouth to tail in one swift motion.

It split clean in half in an explosion of blood. Chigusa’s body froze as the pieces of the worm flew past her left and right shoulders.

“Let me handle this.”

Asfi turned back toward the hellhounds, both hands now beneath her white cloak.

She had a leather belt wrapped around her thin waist. In addition
to her dagger’s sheath, several more holsters dangled from the belt. She pulled something from one of them.

It was two small vials filled with a moss-green liquid. Asfi threw them toward the hellhounds.

“
Gu?!
”

“…
gh
…?!”

Both vials hit their marks and exploded on contact, covering the monsters’ faces with the green slime. It was sticky and strong, binding the hellhounds’ mouths closed before they could unleash their fiery attack.

The monsters immediately started clawing at their mouths, trying to get the green liquid off their faces. Asfi used the opening to withdraw two spiral-shaped darts from a different holster and let them fly.

Both darts pierced the heads of their intended targets. The monsters died instantly.

“I should be more than enough to cover our back.”

Mikoto and the others once again stood in disbelief as the items’ wielder easily dispatched the monsters around her.

Asfi Al Andromeda.

She was a top-class adventurer belonging to
Hermes Familia
. The title she had received from the gods was “Jack-of-All-Trades, Perseus.”

Known as one of the best item makers of this generation, she was one of only five people in Orario who possessed the Advanced Ability “Enigma.”

“…Hermes, aren’t your children an average of Level Two?”

“Ha-ha-ha, now that you mention it, I forgot to report her leveling up to the Guild!”

Hermes brushed off Hestia’s questioning eyes, smiling and answering like it was no big deal. It was obvious to everyone that the girl who just took down three middle-level monsters that easily was much stronger than Level 2. Hermes knew there was no point in denying it.

While they didn’t dislike the spotlight, members of
Hermes Familia
preferred to work behind the scenes, unnoticed.

It was very similar to how Hermes himself conducted business.

Hestia knew this from their days living in Tenkai, but she kept it to herself.

“…It’s really dark down here.”

All monsters taken care of, Hestia’s words bounced off the dank walls of the thirteenth floor.

The upper levels hadn’t been much of a problem for her, but the distant lights well overhead didn’t provide anywhere near enough light for her to see clearly.
Do the children really come down here all the time?
she thought.

Since their basic five senses also became stronger with their Status, this small amount of light was all the adventurers needed. But to Hestia, stripped of her divine power, these Dungeon tunnels were pitch black because her eyes were less sensitive than even the weakest adventurer’s. It kept her on edge. It took all the courage she had to put one foot in front of the other.

The darkness was beginning to overwhelm her. Deities were not immune from its effects. Her shallow breaths were getting more and more staggered as she moved the lamp in her right hand left and right as if frantically searching for a way out.

First the light hit the ash-colored stone walls. Then it illuminated landforms—decent-size rocks that could be broken to make tomahawks—before it flashed on a piece of broken sword.
Hm?
She focused the light in that direction only to find the bloody carcass of a hellhound staring back at her. “Eeeek!” she screamed as she jumped back in fright.

“Easy, easy,” said Hermes as he caught her shoulders in his hands.

The body sprawled out on the ground was most definitely dead. However, with its magic stone still intact, the beast’s body had been left to rot on the ground. The smell indicated it had been dead for nearly a day. Hestia took a deep breath and tried her best to get her racing heart under control. She looked back over her shoulder and could see Hermes forcing a grin in the dim light.

She was slightly jealous of him; he was used to these long journeys and could probably see what was going on. She puckered her cheeks in frustration before looking down at her feet and regaining her balance.

A broken sword and the bloody corpse of the monster. That meant that a clash between at least one adventurer and the monster had happened on this spot not too long ago. At the very least, they knew that the adventurer hadn’t had time to remove the magic stone after the battle.

The more Hestia looked at the scene, the easier it was to picture Bell right in the thick of it. A fresh wave of anxiety overtook her.

“…Andromeda, where should we search? We could spend days going in circles down here and never find Bell’s battle party,” Ouka asked in a low voice as Hestia tried to clear her throat.

He was quite an intimidating man, standing more than 190 celch tall, with wide, muscular shoulders. He looked at Asfi for a moment before returning his gaze to the end of the tunnel.

“Their party was only equipped to spend one day in the Dungeon. Finding a relatively safe spot and staying there indefinitely is not an option for them…I believe something else happened to them—something that made it impossible to retreat.”

“‘Something else’?”

“Yes. Otherwise their actions wouldn’t make sense. With only enough supplies to last a day, they would be overwhelmed in no time down here. Perhaps they fell into one of the holes?”

Mikoto’s and Chigusa’s eyes went wide as Asfi adjusted her glasses.

“If they did fall too far for them to come back on their own strength, what choices do they have? I highly doubt they’re still wandering around in the darkness, at the mercy of any monster that happens to find them. Considering their condition as a party with limited supplies…I’d say they’ve already been wiped out.”

She fell silent after drawing her conclusion.

“Perhaps they abandoned hope of returning to the surface and instead pressed onward to the safe point on the eighteenth floor…I believe that choice has some merit.”

“…Would they even try that? That would take some serious guts.”

Those who’d experienced the terrors of the Dungeon firsthand knew how dangerous it was to set foot into a lower level with no idea what to expect. If Bell’s party fell into one of the holes, they would have been forced into that situation.

Ouka couldn’t believe his ears as Asfi offered another possibility.

“In their position, I would go.”

A voice as delicate as the tinkling of a bell rang out.

The hooded adventurer had been silent up until now.

Ouka and the other adventurers turned to face her in surprise. She was a good deal ahead of them but somehow within earshot.

“And knowing them—knowing
him
, someone who’s already overcome one adventure, I think he would go forward without looking back.”

Her soft, refined voice once again filled the tunnel. However, the hooded adventurer didn’t say another word.

Asfi looked at the mysterious adventurer’s half-hidden face for a moment before turning to her god. “Lord Hermes, what is your opinion?” she asked.

“I agree with your reasoning, Asfi.”

“Um, me too…I have a feeling that…Bell is below us…”

Standing next to Hermes, Hestia brought her hands together and thought as she spoke.

Even though she had a direct connection with Bell through her Blessing, that didn’t mean that she could tell exactly where he was at any time. However, the bond they shared was stronger than any human relationship, and she could feel the source of their bond coming from beneath her feet.

She nodded to herself slowly as her twin ponytails reached out in different directions, as if searching for him. It didn’t take long for both of them to point straight down.