Most guys my age could probably agree on the top three things we’d want if we ever got transported to another world. Number three was a slow, easygoing life with no challenges thanks to some convenient powers a god bestowed on you. Middle-aged men—or younger guys who were loners—would probably put that at number one. For the average high school boy who wanted a life of adventure and excitement, it would be more like number three.
Number two was becoming so overpowered that you got a lot of special treatment and attention without really having to work for it. In isekai stories, there were some protagonists who put in a little bit of effort, but they were so few and far between you could basically ignore them. Back on Earth, that kind of success was probably the number one dream of guys who had basically nothing going for them and had never put much effort into anything—the kind of guys who were mentally trapped in middle school forever. Personally, that whole idea had always seemed unrealistic to me.
Beautiful girls were number one. There was no question in my mind that most guys my age, even if they’d never been able to talk to a girl in real life, had fantasized at least once about going on adventures with a beautiful maiden. Obviously, that was completely delusional—there was no way a girl like that would be attracted to a broke wimp. But as it so happened, I knew one guy who’d made this dream a reality through sheer luck: me!
I’d messed up with my initial choice of skills, and the knowledge I brought with me from my old life hadn’t turned out to be much of an advantage either. On top of all that, I’d ended up in a party full of muscular dudes on their way to Ivalia, then gotten caught in a pitfall trap. But all of my bad luck had been worth it, because now I’d been blessed with a stroke of luck so good that it was like a bright star shining in the darkness of the dungeon. I mean, yeah, technically speaking, meeting Adonix-san’s party was a stroke of luck too, but I’m going to ignore that for now...
After all the setbacks I’d experienced since I started my new life in this world, I’d finally made friends with a beautiful girl named Estelle. Now we’d formed an adventuring party together, and slowly but surely, we were getting to know each other. I won! From here on out, it’s gonna be a cakewalk...! Wait, didn’t I think the same thing right after I arrived in this world? And then it all blew up in my face. But this time, I know it’ll be different! I just know it. Yeah.
“What’s the matter, Sai?” Estelle asked, staring at me in confusion. “What’s with that weird smile?”
I quickly brushed her question aside. “O-Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. Yep.”
Currently, Estelle and I were standing at the entrance to the dungeon. I’d been lost in thought, savoring my good luck and reflecting on my journey up to this point.
Now I pointed ahead. “More importantly, let’s hurry up and enter the dungeon. Can’t waste any time, right?”
A guy claiming to be Estelle’s fiancé had suddenly shown up in Ivalia about a week ago. With the help of Elvira-san, we had convinced him to bet Estelle’s hand in marriage and her family heirloom on the results of a contest of strength. The winner would be whoever got past the twentieth floor of the dungeon first. Estelle and I had a slight advantage thanks to the support of the Adventurers’ Guild, but there weren’t that many adventurers out there who could make it to the twentieth floor. Usually, getting that far took you anywhere from a few months to a few years. Not knowing exactly how strong Broze’s second was, we had no way of estimating how much time we had left.
“I suppose that’s true, but don’t let your guard down,” said Estelle. “The first few floors are relatively safe, but anything can happen inside a dungeon. We’ve already learned this lesson the hard way, haven’t we?”
“O-Oh, yeah, absolutely.”
It hadn’t been that long since the pitfall trap on the fifth floor of this very dungeon had caught both of us off guard. Of course, that was the whole reason I’d gotten to be friends with Estelle, but regardless, I had to watch out for stuff like traps. A trap that sent you from the fifth to the eighteenth floor of a dungeon would be instant doom for most adventurers.
“You know, there might be traps that only react to you or me.” Estelle was walking ahead of me, but she turned around with a playful smile. “You do seem to be quite lucky.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just said, “Come on, don’t jinx me!”
In terms of my skill build, I was supposed to have luck with money, but depending on the situation, this could either be an advantage or a massive disadvantage, which was scary to think about.
Estelle giggled. “Well, in any case, it’s important to keep in mind that we need to proceed with caution.”
“Yeah, good point. So, what’s our next course of action? Should we try to get to the twentieth floor as fast as we can? We do have the option of taking a shortcut to the eighteenth.”
I had memorized the location of the pitfall trap on the fifth floor that had sent the two of us to the eighteenth. I had also partially mapped out the eighteenth floor, and I knew Estelle and I could deal with the monsters there no problem. With all of that in mind, I figured it would be possible for us to reach the boss room of the twentieth floor in no time, but Estelle sighed and gave me an exasperated look.
“Didn’t I just say that we need to proceed with caution? Of course, we probably could make it to the twentieth floor, but do you really believe we could defeat the boss there?”
“Uh...”
I had done some research. More specifically, I’d asked Lucas-san for advice, and he’d told me that the boss of the twentieth floor was a large group of stronger goblin variants. I knew that we couldn’t underestimate monsters like that just because they were goblins, but...
“...I honestly think we probably could,” I said after some thought.
Estelle once again stopped in her tracks and turned back to me. She put a hand on her waist and poked me with her index finger like she was scolding a disobedient child.
“If ‘probably’ is the measure of your confidence, then that isn’t an acceptable risk. Think back to the boss of the fifteenth floor and the weapon it wielded. Recalling that, do you really think we’ll be able to clear the twentieth floor at our current levels?”
As she argued with me, Estelle kept looking at the spear in my hands. I’d gotten it after defeating the reptila that had been the boss of the fifteenth floor, although based on the info Estelle and I had gathered later, reptilas normally didn’t use arms. Thanks to the unexpected difference between the boss and an ordinary reptila, I’d gotten my hands on an expensive and powerful spear, but if we’d made any more mistakes than we had, we would probably have died on the fifteenth floor.
“The next boss battle will be against a group of monsters, so we’ll start outnumbered. What do you think will happen if your financial ‘luck’ happens to trigger in that situation, Sai?”
“Oh yeah, we could end up with a lot of good quality weapons and get rich—”
“Surely you’re joking.”
“O-Of course. What I meant to say is that we would be in grave danger.”
Estelle seemed satisfied with my answer. She nodded, then resumed walking.
“In addition, we were very fortunate that we fell all the way from the fifth floor to the eighteenth without suffering any injuries. Are you confident that you could pull that off again, Sai?”
“U-Uh, no, not really.”
I’d successfully protected my lantern and avoided stabbing myself with my own spear, and I’d seen enough of the terrain in the dark that I’d been able to land safely, but that all came down to luck. Now that I knew what to expect, I could probably remain calm if it happened again, but there was no guarantee that I’d be able to pull off another safe landing.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Estelle. “We have decent odds of success, but considering how narrowly we avoided disaster in our first battle with a reptila, I believe it would be better to level up before we proceed much farther. There’s no point in forcing ourselves to take huge risks immediately.”
“Yeah, it was a pretty close call. I bet it’ll go a lot smoother the second time around, though.”
“Mm. Now we know the boss monster’s weakness.”