I pointed out the location of the next rock spider we encountered and told Mary exactly where to attack. She was as successful as Touya had been at dislodging it from the wall, but its legs were still moving, and it attempted to flee, so I had to step in and stab it with my spear. Either the one that Touya had clobbered had instantly passed out or it had already been on the verge of death. In any case, stabbing rock spiders was a simple enough task that Touya and Mary took turns clubbing them for me to finish off. We worked our way down the trail for about an hour, but...
“Looks like a dead end to me,” said Touya.
“Yeah, totally,” I said.
This narrow trail had been cut into the cliffside. We’d now reached a point at which it was suddenly cut off, as if someone or something had stopped working on it. We walked to the edge and checked in all directions for another trail or path, but we were unable to find anything. We simply couldn’t progress any farther by conventional means.
“This isn’t a sign for us to start carving out our own path, is it?” I asked.
“I don’t believe so,” Haruka replied. “I don’t think that this is the end of the dungeon either, but...”
“Yeah, there’s no way it’s the end!” Yuki interjected. “That would be way too disappointing!”
“I would imagine we can go farther,” said Natsuki. “In the books I’ve read, there are a few recorded cases of adventurers of the past successfully reaching the end of this or that dungeon, but in all of those cases, it was unambiguous that they had reached the end.”
I had read the same books Natsuki mentioned, and as she said, all of the tales of successful conquests ended with something like a very strong boss monster or a special treasure chest. None of them ended with this kind of anticlimax, and it would have been foolish to assume that our dungeon was unique and we were the first to experience something like this.
“Have there ever been cases in which hidden doors were hidden along the path to the end of a dungeon?” Haruka asked with a glance at Natsuki.
Natsuki shook her head. “None that I can recall. We might be able to find one if we went back and took our time searching carefully, but...”
“I’d like to avoid having to do that if possible,” I said.
We had advanced slowly and carefully because of the numerous narrow sections in the trail, but we’d still walked way more than a kilometer. The idea of constantly exposing ourselves to the risk of falling off the cliff while we inspected every centimeter of the rock walls sounded far too psychologically fatiguing to me. I was the only one who had the Trap and Snares 101 skill aside from Natsuki, after all. If we used this as an opportunity for Yuki to copy the skill, we could split up into three groups, but then each group would still have to cover a few hundred square meters. All of us would likely run out of stamina and patience halfway through.
“I think the most realistic option would be for us to test the walls with hammers,” said Natsuki. “That’s something we can do as we walk.”
“Personally, I think we should try something other than looking for a hidden door,” I said. “Either up...”
I looked up at the cliff. It was so unbelievably tall that its top was actually hazy; I couldn’t see it even with my Hawk’s Eye skill.
“...Or down.”
I looked downward more cautiously than I had looked up. The bottom of the cliff, too, was shrouded in mist. We had come a long way from the waterfall, but the majestic sight was still visible, and the mist from its basin traveled all the way here—a testament to its sheer size and power.
“Hmm. This is an opportunity for us to put our practice into actual use, but it’s kinda scary,” said Yuki.
“Yeah. We have no idea exactly how high we need to climb, so we don’t know if the rope that we prepared will be adequate,” said Haruka.
“We also don’t know yet whether or not we’ll actually have to climb down,” I said. “Hmm? Wait a second...”
Something caught my eye, and I leaned forward. There appeared to be an opening in the cliff face about twenty meters down. It was carved into the rock, making it difficult to distinguish, but it appeared to be another plank trail.
“Hey, what do you think of that over there, Haruka?”
“...Yes, it does appear that we could advance farther from there,” Haruka replied. “Hold my hand for a moment, Nao.”
She extended her right hand to me, and I gripped it firmly so she could lean forward and peek over the edge. As she returned to her original position, she murmured, “It definitely appears to be a viable path.” We took turns supporting each other as we checked the spot, but...
“I wonder if it’s necessary to climb down there to progress,” said Haruka. “It’s a more realistic objective than the bottom of the cliff, but...”
“Yeah, it’s within a doable range,” I said.
During our practice, we had climbed close to twenty meters up and down, but in the canyon, the ground had been clearly visible, whereas this gorge appeared bottomless. Anyone who slipped would fall much longer than we were accustomed to. Yuki and Mary were visibly terrified, and Haruka and Natsuki seemed somewhat uneasy. In contrast, Metea and Touya didn’t look particularly scared at all.
“It’ll probably be fine,” said Touya. “There’s no way we’ll fall if we just go one at a time. Besides, I’m also curious about those things growing on the rock walls. See over there? Flonions and stackmushes, apparently.”
“Huh? Let me take a look,” I said. “Oh, I think I see what you’re talking about.”
There were indeed plants growing on the rock walls. It was probably the high humidity that made it possible for them to thrive here. The two specific varieties of plants Touya had pointed at were green and white, respectively. The green ones, which hung down from the rock wall, were flonions, which were similar to chives and leeks. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about them, and they didn’t seem remotely worth risking our lives for.
The white plants—or rather, fungi—were stackmushes. At first glance, they appeared to be as thin as paper. I was curious about why they weren’t growing outward from the rock face like ordinary mushrooms. This gorge was fairly windy, so maybe the wind inhibited their horizontal growth.
“The stackmushes don’t look like anything special,” I said. “Are they actually worth a lot of money or something?”
We were adventurers, so it wasn’t greedy to be curious about the monetary value of materials and food. If the stackmushes could actually fetch us a decent amount of money, it would be worth the risk to harvest them, but otherwise, we could just ignore them.
“As you can probably surmise from where they grow, they’re difficult to gather, so they are worth more than common vegetables and mushrooms,” said Haruka. “However, they don’t have any special properties, so they’re not worth a lot of money, especially since they can be found outside of dungeons as well.”
Haruka added that they were supposed to be delicious. Flonions were apparently comparable to brand-name vegetables, while stackmushes were only one tier below truffles and matsutake mushrooms in their refined flavor. They were growing abundantly below the cliff, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t see any overhead, at least not within reach. So given that this is a dungeon, is there some reason for that? Like, do rock spiders eat them? I guess it’s possible. They don’t have a lot of obvious sources of food here.
“Okay, but it’s probably okay for us to get some, yeah?” said Yuki. “You said they taste good, right?”
“As far as I’m aware, yes,” said Haruka. “They don’t look particularly delicious by any means, however.”
“Especially the stackmushes,” I said.
“They’re very thin!” Metea exclaimed. “But maybe they’re not very filling?”
Admittedly, they were thinner even than something like a wood ear. I had no idea how you were even supposed to eat them.