“Achoo!”
Lefiya covered her mouth.
“Lefiya, did you catch a cold? You caught a cold!”
“No, that shouldn’t be…”
“That sneeze was so cuuute! I’m sure it’s that someone was whispering about wanting to see your cute side!”
“Please don’t tease me, Nano.”
Miliria and Nano excitedly gossiped as Lefiya looked down to hide the red in her cheeks and tried to feign calmness.
They were on the west side of Meren, in front of the giant shipyard.
The School District was currently on the ground.
Though it stuck to sea routes to avoid overuse and natural safety concerns, Hringhorni could rise onto the land by cranking its flotation device to deliver maximum power, and was precisely what it was doing now to undergo a complete overhaul.
The technicians who usually worked in the industrial district of Orario were all called in to repair and rebuild the structures and armor covering the bottom of the ship. It was already almost winter, but the heat rising from inside the shipyard was enough to make them sweat. All sorts of brawny dwarves and men were walking around in work pants and tank tops, making it feel like they had stumbled into an industrial city. The clanking rhythm, different from a blacksmith’s hammer, evoked something almost emotional in Lefiya.
“Getting back to the subject at hand. Today we’ll be conducting a small expedition to the Dungeon’s middle floors. The plan is to head to the eighteenth floor, the safe point.”
The control, residential, and academic layers underwent maintenance during the overhaul.
The control layer was in the middle of significant repairs and renovations.
Its primary residents, the sailors, and mages, were forced out and in the process of setting up residence in the residential layer or at inns in Meren while Lefiya prepared to set out with the 7th Squad.
“The Under Resort…! Oooooh, I can’t wait!”
“A mysterious floor that has day and night cycles even though it is inside the Dungeon…I always wanted to see it, at least once!”
“I’ve heard hardly anyone has reached the eighteenth floor while enrolled!”
“And those few were all people who broke the rules and almost died, from what I’ve heard.”
Nano, Cole, and Miliria were getting excited. Luke was feigning his usual calm, but he was clearly looking forward to it, too.
Students were given permission to advance only as far as the Cave Labyrinth and only to the fifteenth floor.
With two Level 3s, the 7th Squad certainly had more than enough strength to clear the middle floors, but students and adventurers were different. They lacked the experience adventurers would have built up on the upper floors. As evidence, there was no end to the number of students who came back from the Dungeon practical with terrible injuries every time it was held. There were even deaths on rare occasions.
Even if they could make up for it with their status, Lefiya believed that the administration’s decision to set the boundary at the fifteenth floor was correct.
And Lefiya herself was one of those people who had almost died during her time as a student here.
“It’s perfectly fine to be excited about it, but this is no field trip.” Lefiya took a sterner instructor’s look. “I have no complaints about the amount you’ve grown this past week, and you have adapted well to the Dungeon. I can vouch that monsters in the middle floors will not catch you off guard. However…”
““Don’t let your guard down.””
““You never know what might happen in the Dungeon.””
“That’s right. It seems like there shouldn’t be any problems. Let’s go.”
After she watched Luke, Cole, Nano, and Miliria repeat her warnings in unison, Lefiya nodded in satisfaction. They set out from the shipyard alongside countless other students headed to internships or to face the Dungeon like the 7th Squad.
Students were getting tired of going back and forth between Orario and Meren, and there were those still looking around excitedly the moment they passed through the gate, just as they had on the first day. While the students were in town, there were merchants and familias aiming to meet the students’ special needs, creating an even livelier atmosphere than usual.
A chic candy shop with special nougats and honey all lined up.
A café had rare books set out on display.
Places rented out to tenants looking to provide something the students might like.
Around a corner, a stylish back alley came into view, and Lefiya could not help laughing a bit. “Is this really Orario?”
Nano and Miliria went out on their days off with other girls from the School District, apparently searching for interesting spots and discovering all sorts of places.
Moving past the market in the southwest that was particularly thriving, they headed northwest to Guild Headquarters to handle the paperwork for their Dungeon exploration and to double-check that there were not any irregularities reported in the middle levels, just in case.
“—Heee?!”
“Hm?”
When they were walking through the courtyard of the Guild building, a boy Lefiya walked past let out a little shriek.
He was a student just like the 7th Squad, and he was wearing a school-provided combat uniform that was not yet broken in. He was a hume bunny. He had a fluffy tail at his back and long ears extending out of his brown hair, which was long enough to mostly cover his eyes.
She wondered why he would react like that since it was their first meeting.
…Hm?
He seems sort of familiar…
Lefiya’s eyes narrowed, and she looked closer when he froze and suddenly looked away.
“Rapi, what are you doing? Let’s go.”
“R-right! Sorry, Nina!”
Called by a half-elf girl, he hurried over to a group of students who seemed to be a squad.
“That was…”
“Ah, that’s the dropout squad.”
“Balder Class Third Squad. They’re the exact opposite of our Seventh Squad…nicknamed the worst party.”
“It’s sad since the squad leader, Nina, tries so hard. She’s smarter than me and a good girl…and she’s only thirteen!”
“It’s less that they’re failures and more that they’re all so extreme, they can’t really work together. That’s what it seems like in mock battles, at least. Though…there was a new person who enrolled recently, they’re currently a squad of five.”
Lefiya cocked her head as Miliria, Cole, Nano, and Luke all explained.
There had not been any squad with the distinction of being called the worst party when she was a student, so this had to be quite the collection of problem children.
At the very least, she got the feeling from the hume bunny that he was capable…but maybe that was just her misinterpretation?
Either way, the 7th Squad she and Alisa were part of were both elite and troublemakers as well.
Perhaps it was just the thin line between genius and stupidity.
“They’re going to beat us to the middle floors…”
After watching them until they disappeared from view, Lefiya and the 7th Squad entered the Guild.