The flying needlefish had flown at us from the area he was indicating. It was because they had a straight line of sight that they could come at us so fast. If they’d had to fly more slowly and maneuver, they wouldn’t have been much of a threat at all.
“Dealing with more flying needlefish isn’t my idea of a fun time, though,” Touya added with a shrug.
Of course, someone disagreed vociferously.
“Nah, it’s good! We got a lot of fishes!”
Metea looked proudly at the bag full of fish we’d collected. Mary glanced over her sister’s shoulder and into the bag, and a smile appeared on her face too.
“Over a hundred fish from climbing down one time? We’ll be able to eat fish every day now!” Mary exclaimed.
“Yeah! We won’t run out for a long time even if we both eat two fishes every single day!”
The sisters had never had fish before they came to live with us, but now they were delighted whenever it was served. Of course, we had no idea if these fish would taste good, but the most important quality an adventurer could have was to be excited about exploring, so the rest of us laughed at the sisters’ contagious enthusiasm and positivity.
★★★★★★★★★
As it turned out, Yuki had guessed correctly: After following the new plank trail for a while, we arrived at another dead end. Looking over the edge, we saw a number of ledges. We descended using the same strategy of staggered rappelling we’d developed earlier, filling another bag with fish as we climbed. The smiles on Mary’s and Metea’s faces were radiant. The rest of us were also looking forward to flying fish broth, but we were getting ready for a change of scenery. Even after three successive descents, the bottom of the gorge still wasn’t visible. The path forward remained unclear, which was unfortunate—or, from the sisters’ perspective, very fortunate.
By the time we’d rappelled over five ledges, we had descended more than a hundred meters. Just how deep is this gorge? The mist was slowly thickening, so I was confident that we were getting closer to the bottom, but I was still concerned that we were depleting our supply of rope. We had prepared as much as possible, but rope that was sturdy enough for our purposes was far from cheap, besides which there was a limit to the quantity available in Laffan. Of course, we would never have tried to save money by buying less expensive rope given how essential it was to our safety, but even so, we didn’t have an infinite amount in our magic bags.
Haruka voiced the thought that was probably on everyone’s minds: “We need to plan out our next course of action soon.”
We’d been making decent progress, and there had been no clear stopping point, so no one had said anything, but now an unignorable change was taking place across the entire twenty-first floor of the dungeon.
“For whatever reason, our surroundings seem to be getting darker,” said Haruka, “so I thought this would be a good moment to reconvene and discuss our plans.”
In fact, the way the darkness was enveloping us, it was almost as if dusk had descended on the dungeon.
“The floors up to the twentieth floor were always bright, weren’t they?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Yuki replied. “The floors before this one didn’t change in the whole time we were exploring.”
I looked up at the sky and saw that the “sun” was approaching the horizon. “I wonder if this means the area we’re in is closer to the natural environment outside of the dungeon than the grasslands up to the twentieth floor.”
“That might be the case,” said Natsuki. “Nevertheless, this place doesn’t appear suitable for camping.”
“Yeah. We’ve come a pretty long way from the waterfall, but if anything, the humidity is getting worse,” I said.
On that first rock ledge, we’d been covered in spray borne on the wind, but now there was mist all around us. It wasn’t exceptionally dense, but it had lowered our visibility. Arrowhead eagles in particular had gotten harder to deal with, given that we had to hit them rather than just dodging them like we could the needlefish. Fortunately, it wasn’t a huge problem, since the number of eagles attacking us had decreased with every level we descended, whereas the number of fish had remained constant. On our most recent descent, we’d only had to contend with a single eagle.
The main issue at hand was that we were getting soaked in this mist. We continued to dry ourselves with magic from time to time, but the moisture was incessant. If the ambient temperature had been warmer, it wouldn’t have felt so bad, but we had, after all, named this the Summer Resort Dungeon, and it was always cool inside—cool enough to sap our stamina and chill us. As if that weren’t bad enough, the moisture was making everything slippery. Touya in particular was struggling to rappel down to each successive ledge. All of us had put on coats halfway through our descent in order to prevent our clothes from getting wet, but they didn’t completely keep out the moisture, and worse, they hindered us when climbing. With all of that in mind, we couldn’t truly rest and recover from our fatigue camping out in a place like this, especially since there was a high chance that one of us would catch a cold if we stayed here.
“...I hope I’m just imagining things, but does anybody else feel like the whole path we just followed was one big, long trap?” Yuki looked up at the cliff we’d just descended and sighed in irritation. “We haven’t found anywhere warm to rest, and even if we decide to turn around, we need to get our stamina back first. This floor is a way bigger pain in the butt than any of the other ones we’ve done so far.”
“It’s not all bad,” said Haruka. “We have a magical pop-up tent, which could prove extremely useful.”
“I bet that’s the whole reason the tent was in the treasure chest after the boss of the twentieth floor,” said Touya.
“Yeah, I guess it was kind of necessary for us to explore farther,” I said. “It reminds me of how games give you items that you need to progress.”
“I imagine that for most adventurers, it would be difficult to start a fire under these circumstances,” said Natsuki.
To get to this point, ordinary adventurers would have to find some way to deal with the issue of fuel. Thanks to our magic bags, we could carry a decent quantity of wood and keep it dry. Without them, the wood would have been soaked, as would tools like tinderboxes. That being the case, most adventurers wouldn’t even be able to warm themselves on this floor. We were very fortunate that we had not only dry firewood but the ability to ignite fires magically.
“We can make a campfire!” said Metea. “We have lots of wood too!”
“Are we going to grill some fish here?” Mary asked.
Luckily, Mary and Metea were still upbeat despite the situation. I wasn’t sure if it was because of all the fish we’d collected or if beastgirls just naturally had more stamina than humans. Their physiques were comparable to Yuki’s, but Yuki was actually the most exhausted of any of us. Admittedly, she’d been using a lot of magic, so her fatigue might have been mental rather than physical.
“Let’s put that off until we return to the twentieth floor,” Haruka told Mary. “Then we can relax while we eat.”
“Does that mean we’re heading back now?” Touya asked.
“I think we could make one more descent,” said Natsuki.
Even as Touya and Natsuki chimed in, Yuki remained silent, then sighed to herself.
“Are you good to keep going, Yuki?” I asked.
“I can probably handle one more climb down. But then you gotta let me rely on you when we teleport back, Nao.”
“Sure. It’s not too far away, so I should be able to handle it by myself.”
I had also expended a decent amount of mana, but as an elf, I had more to spare than Yuki did.
“All right, it’s decided,” said Haruka. “Let’s make one more descent, then return to the twentieth floor and grill some fish.”
“Yay!”
Metea expressed her joy openly, while Mary just smiled demurely. Our hearts warmed by the sisters’ positive attitudes, we began looking for a suitable ledge for our final descent. We had done this enough times that by now, everyone knew their own roles in the process. However, that might have made us complacent, because this time, there was an unexpected accident as Natsuki was rappelling down.
“...Huh?”
The upper part of the rock wall that the rope ladder was secured to suddenly collapsed. Natsuki was about ten meters from the ledge when it happened. The rest of us watched as she went flying. Natsuki, like all of us, had leveled up enough that the fall was unlikely to kill her in itself, but there was another problem: the rocks falling alongside her. There was no way she could survive being crushed.
Natsuki hesitated for a split second, then swung her naginata at the wall in order to push herself away from the falling rocks. However, as a result, her trajectory was now carrying her beyond the rim of the rock ledge. If nothing caught her, she would fall all the way to the bottom of the gorge.
I checked Haruka’s and Yuki’s positions. They can’t reach her in time. Without another thought, I leaped off of the ledge toward Natsuki. She’d gained a lot of momentum, but I just barely managed to grab one of her arms and pulled her toward myself.
“Hold on tight!”
“Okay!”
Natsuki wrapped her arms around my back, and I held her tightly against myself. But I wasn’t wearing a safety harness, so now I was falling too. It was what you might have called a huge mistake! Still, if I’d been limited by a lifeline, I probably couldn’t have caught her.
“No! Nao!”
Haruka’s scream echoed all around us as Natsuki and I plummeted through the dense mist.