Even the stronger variants of goblin weren’t that strong, but they were excellent sparring opponents: You could practice all kinds of things, like dodging their attacks or, in my case, deflecting their arrows with my spear, and they were weak enough that even if I screwed up badly and took a hit, I wouldn’t be in any danger of dying. We could probably become stronger faster if we battled powerful foes like reptilas, but it would be pointless if we died trying.
“Don’t let your guard down, Sai. The number of traps also increases from here onward, so we’ll have to watch out for those as well as for monsters. Some traps are difficult to detect, so try not to be careless.”
“Okay. Man, I’m really amazed you can spot traps too, Estelle.”
Adonix-san’s party had one guy—Lucas-san—whose whole job was scouting and disarming traps. Estelle and I were a party of just two, so I’d been wondering how we were supposed to deal with traps, but I guess she had it covered.
“I originally planned to work as a solo adventurer, so I tried to acquire all kinds of knowledge and skills I thought I’d need,” Estelle explained. “But as I said, you should stay alert too, Sai. After all, I didn’t detect the pitfall trap on the fifth floor.”
“Oh yeah, that caught me completely off guard! Well, I bet traps like that are pretty rare—”
There was a heavy sound, and I fell silent. Estelle and I stared at each other.
Her gaze hardened. “It seems you spoke too soon, Sai.”
“Nah, please, it’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything!” I objected, waving my hands.
I hadn’t touched any of the walls, and I was fairly sure that I hadn’t stepped on anything strange either. Well, it’s not like I can detect every weird spot on the ground, but I don’t see any suspicious dents or anything like that under my feet, so I’m pretty sure this isn’t my fault! Is it? I glanced at Estelle for confirmation, and she briefly looked around us, then nodded back at me. Whew. A not guilty verdict! Yay!
“Well, if you’re not the one who caused that sound, Sai, then where did it come from?”
Both of us had heard it, so something must have caused it. We examined our surroundings again to see if anything had changed, and I actually did spot something that stood out a lot.
“...Look over there, Estelle.”
“Hmm? Oh my.” Estelle let out an involuntary gasp when she saw what I was pointing at. “I really have no idea what to say.”
She hadn’t noticed earlier because she was looking in my direction, but a square section of wall about two meters ahead of us had retracted. We carefully approached the newly formed hole, which appeared to be about thirty centimeters in area and about twenty centimeters deep. At the end was an engraving of a handprint that looked like you were supposed to put your hand on top of it.
“This is so suspicious,” Estelle and I said in unison. Clearly we were thinking along the same lines.
“Wait, hold on,” I said. “Is this actually a trap?”
“I don’t think a trap would be this obvious...”
“Yeah, exactly. Hmm...”
If the dungeon had wanted to spring a trap on us, then it could simply have activated something like the pitfall trap and taken us by surprise. This seemed too convoluted.
“In that case, I suppose it might be some kind of mechanism to open a door to a hidden room. Could you please place one of your hands into the print for a moment, Sai?”
“Huh? Me?!”
“Other adventurers have explored this area before, and I’ve never encountered any information about anything like this. It’s possible that someone hid it immediately after finding it, but most adventurers wouldn’t skip out on an opportunity like this.”
Estelle’s reasoning made perfect sense to me. Anyone who didn’t get excited at finding a secret like this wasn’t cut out for the life of an adventurer. Still, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy, since we had no idea why this hole had shown up.
“If you don’t want to do it, then I’ll do it myself—”
“N-Nah, I’ll do it! Or I guess I should say, please let me do it!”
Considering the situation we were in, I could never have forgiven myself as a man if I’d foisted this task onto Estelle. I gulped, slowly brought my right hand up to the print, and—
Estelle suddenly thumped me on the shoulders. “Bam!”
“H-Huh?!”
“It would be scary if there was a sound like that and we were suddenly locked in here, wouldn’t it, Sai?”
“E-Estelle, please don’t scare me like that...”
I glared back at her, but she just stuck out her tongue and giggled.
“You seemed very nervous, so I couldn’t help myself. Sorry.”
Ugh, she’s so cute! I guess I’ll forgive her this time...
“Fine, fine. But let’s take this seriously now. We have no idea what might happen.”
“Of course. I’ll stay alert just in case.”
I made sure Estelle had taken a step back before I brought my hand to the print again. Immediately, the wall in front of us retracted even farther, then slid down to reveal a passageway.
“A hidden passageway!” Estelle exclaimed. “I had no idea there was anything like that on this floor!”
“Maybe nobody else has found it because this floor isn’t popular with adventurers,” I said. “We’re going to explore it, right?”
Estelle’s eyes lit up like a kid’s. “Of course! My mother told me stories about finding treasures at the ends of hidden passageways like this one!”
I chuckled—it was so rare to see a response like that from her—and in response, Estelle made an anxious gesture.
“O-Oh, don’t worry, I’ll stay on high alert,” she said. “It sometimes takes courage to retreat in the face of danger, after all.”
“Yeah, of course. So anyway, let’s advance carefully.”
“Mm. Let’s go!”
Even if the odds of this passageway being a trap seemed pretty low, it was still a new, unexplored area of the dungeon, so Estelle started paying closer attention to our surroundings than she had been, but the passageway turned out to be just about twenty meters long. At the end was a door similar to the other ones we’d seen in the dungeon.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of door that leads to a boss room or something like that,” I said. “Maybe there’s nothing special behind it.”
“Don’t let your guard down, Sai. If there’s nothing worthwhile behind this door, we can laugh about it later, but if danger awaits us, it’ll be no laughing matter.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I said. “In that case, let’s dim our lanterns first.”
We glanced at each other and closed our lanterns, then slowly cracked the door. The room beyond was completely dark. We partially reopened our lanterns, and they illuminated a small area of the room, but...
“Well, the door is normal, but this room is actually pretty big,” I said. “Bigger than a boss room.” Actually, it was as big as a school gym back in Japan.
“You’re right. We need to be extra careful now, so— Wait, there are reptilas inside!”
At the far end of the room were two reptilas standing side by side. They were completely still, probably because we hadn’t actually entered the room yet, and much larger than the one we’d run into in the boss room. Their size alone kind of intimidated me. The only noteworthy positive difference from the boss was that they weren’t armed.
“Yikes,” I said. “Seeing two reptilas, I’d normally turn around and head back without a second thought, but...”
“...there’s something behind them,” said Estelle.
Specifically, there was a treasure chest on a pedestal, almost like the reptilas had been placed there to protect it. The existence of the chest made me hesitate about my knee-jerk conclusion that we couldn’t beat them.
“This is my first time seeing a treasure chest in the dungeon,” I said.
“Mine too,” said Estelle. “You have to be very lucky to find unopened treasure chests in floors that are popular among adventurers.”
“So if we head back now...”
“...someone else will probably retrieve the treasure instead. High-rank adventurers don’t usually explore this area, but they may show up if someone discovers this passageway and sells them its location.”
Although the tenth floor didn’t see heavy traffic, it wasn’t like zero adventurers ever came here. If we retreated now, someone else would probably find this passageway before we could challenge the dungeon again.
“All right. Listen to me, Estelle.”
I quietly took a deep breath and grabbed one of her hands. She’d been leaning forward into the room, but now she snapped out of it and looked back at me. I shook my head at her as I slowly closed the door.
“You said it sometimes takes courage to retreat in the face of danger, right?”
“...Yes, you’re right. I did say that.”
“So let’s calm down and discuss whether or not we can actually defeat those reptilas.”
At first, Estelle looked downcast, but then she lifted her head with an excited expression on her face and nodded.