Please don’t look at me in such a purehearted and innocent way, Estelle. You’re making me feel bad. As she held my gaze, I accidentally let my true feelings slip out. “O-Oh, don’t worry about it. I have my own personal reasons for working hard...”
But Estelle didn’t seem to mind; she just laughed. “That actually makes you sound more trustworthy than if you’d claimed to be helping me out of the kindness of your heart. And in any case, I know that you’ve been working far harder than Broze...”
“Huh? Wh-What do you mean?”
Do I actually have a chance? Is she into me?
But Estelle danced around that question. “Depending on your efforts, you may be able to learn the answer...eventually,” she said with a teasing giggle.
Her reaction left me feeling really motivated, and I eagerly strode into the boss room.
“Okay! Let’s hurry, Estelle!”
Don’t get ahead of yourself just yet, Sai! You’ve still got a long way to go! As long as the hare doesn’t slack off and take a nap, he can still beat the tortoise! I dashed through the boss room, accompanied by Estelle’s cheerful laughter, but as I placed my hands on the door to the sixteenth floor, I paused.
“Hmm? What’s wrong, Sai?”
“Oh, nothing. I just got a bit nostalgic after everything we’ve been through.”
It was in this room, not too long ago, that I had finally earned Estelle’s trust after the battle with the armed reptila. I’d leaped into the boss room ready to face death. Now, the situation had turned around completely—I believed there was a bright future beyond that door. Would forming a party with Estelle have gone as smoothly if we’d just fought a normal reptila?
“Now that I think about it, maybe my blessing has actually been a net positive so far,” I said.
“Oh, are you talking about your spear?” Estelle nodded to herself. “It certainly has been useful. A high-quality weapon is essential for combat.”
She’d reached her own conclusion, so I just nodded back, unable to say what I really meant, then opened the door and started down the stairs to the next floor.
“That said, if your blessing were to activate constantly, it could quickly become overwhelming, so I hope it allows us some breaks,” Estelle added.
“Honestly, my blessing probably played some role in us encountering an armed reptila and a hidden room, but I think those were mostly coincidences,” I said. “Like, the boss room on the fifteenth floor turned out to be completely empty.”
The description of my blessing on my status screen was pretty ambiguous—it was hard to tell whether or not it actually improved my financial luck. But if it did trigger frequently, then proper blessings were probably even more beneficial than I’d imagined when I chose it.
“I guess we’ve had some rare outcomes twice in a row, so maybe—”
I cut myself off when I suddenly heard a sound reverberating through the stairwell.
“...Can you still chalk it up to coincidence if it happens three times in a row, Sai?”
“No, trust me, it’s really not my fau— Actually, it might be my fault this time.”
Estelle stared at my left hand, which was flat against the wall beside the stairs.
“Hold on, Estelle... Aren’t the stairs between floors supposed to be safe areas?!”
“Not necessarily. There have been cases in which traps were discovered in passageways between floors. However...”
Estelle stood still and took a careful look around. When nothing else happened, a confused expression appeared on her face.
“Maybe that was a sound from elsewhere in the dungeon that had nothing to do with us?” she suggested.
“Yeah, maybe. We could also just be imagining things—”
I carefully pulled my left hand back from the wall, and the same sound echoed through the passageway again.
“Something seems to have changed,” said Estelle.
From the wall where I’d placed my hand, there was a sound like a lock disengaging, and a squarish indentation like a handle sank into the stone.
“Wh-What should we do, Estelle?”
Estelle looked at me as if that were a stupid question. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“...Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
When adventurers discovered something new, they only had one option as long as it didn’t seem too dangerous. I gave the indentation a careful look over, then reached into it.
“I probably just have to press this, right? Here goes nothing.”
When I pressed the handle, a section of wall began to move smoothly, forming something like a swing door. It was big enough for one person to pass through at a time, and ahead, there was a narrow passageway.
“It looks like there’s a faint light at the end of the passageway,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Mm. Be careful.”
I couldn’t detect any monsters, but I held my spear at the ready as I entered the passageway. As it turned out, though, it was only about ten meters long, and soon, we arrived outside of a small room. In the middle of the floor was a circle that glowed softly.
“That must be the light I saw earlier,” I said. “It’s a magic circle, right?”
The room was a cube, about three meters on each side. The magic circle was about two meters in diameter, so it took up most of the floor. I made sure not to step on it as I entered the room.
Estelle looked a bit surprised as she glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, Sai, I believe that’s a return device.”
“Return devices let you teleport out of a dungeon, right?”
“That’s right. You may recall that there’s a teleportation device on the twentieth floor.”
“Oh yeah—the thing we need to reach to beat Broze.”
“Precisely. The Adventurers’ Guild sets up teleportation devices to allow adventurers to enter and exit dungeons at will. The trouble is that they’re expensive to maintain. Return devices, however, are created by the dungeon itself. They’re one way—they only allow adventurers to teleport out of the dungeon—but they don’t have to be maintained.”
“Okay, but what does all of that mean?”
“It means that this will have a significant impact on everyone exploring this dungeon. In fact, it may entirely change the way adventurers approach it!”