The Aldora Labyrinth council was, just as its name implied, a council formed to make decisions involving the stated dungeon. Its headquarters was located in one of the nearby cities, and adventurers who were heavily involved in the labyrinth were granted a council seat.
“Don’t fuck with me! What the hell does ‘double item drops campaign’ even mean?!”
The council was currently gathered in their meeting room. The old man who’d just pounded his fist vehemently into the table was Walter, the presiding chairman. There were a total of three other people lined up beside him and a single woman standing across the table from them.
That woman—or arachne, rather—was none other than council member and Aldora Labyrinth’s very own tenth-floor boss, Marinnie. She was wearing a fancy dress with a cinched waist and a flowing, wide skirt that hid her lower half.
Incidentally, she tended to go naked while in the labyrinth. She was only wearing clothing at the meeting because she followed common sense and obeyed the humans’ social rules when appearing in front of them.
“You sure do like to yell... Look, there’s clearly been an increase in the number of treasure chests, right? It’s gotten to the point where it’s clearly obvious that the drop rate’s gone up! Like, I just thought it would be nice if we got everyone all pumped up to come explore—you know, since we’ve got all these rare items on the table?”
“What do you think the casualty rate for the first floor is right now?! It’s only been two days since the season started and it’s already at fifty-four percent! That’s crazy! Normally an entire season would see less than one percent in casualties, you know?! Something strange is clearly happening! How do you plan to settle this, huh?!”
What’s he talking about? Marinnie thought. She’d wondered why she’d been suddenly called to the council; now that she’d come, she’d been met with nothing but belligerence. Then again, she also understood where the man was coming from—if such numbers were true, it was obvious he would want to complain.
Normally, Marinnie’s job was to come up with the placement of monsters for each season, and that was it. It was a constant cycle of reading through the end-of-season reports, understanding the labyrinth’s situation, and using that information to choose her placement in the next season.
In other words, she was still in the dark about the current situation in the first underground floor.
“Uhhh... Sure, but why’re you yelling at me about that? The distribution of monsters is exactly according to what I handed you at the beginning of the season. You’re the ones who get to look at that and decide if you want to challenge the floor. Doesn’t that mean it’s all your responsibility?”
Marinnie was in charge of setting the monsters from the first through the tenth floors. This was a fundamental duty of mid-bosses, and it was up to them to show their skill in keeping adventurer casualties within prescribed amounts through good placement.
It would be easy to make things as hard as possible, but then no adventurers would come. It was important to maintain that sweet spot—the perfect level of difficulty that would stir a human’s gambling spirit and make them believe that they could do better than the last poor sap without discouraging them.
Which was all the more reason to worry about the adventurers that were being wiped out on the first floor. Killing fresh newbies who’d just wandered into the first floor had no merit to it, no matter how large the body count was.
The standard strategy for dungeon management was to maintain the perfect difficulty curve. Humans provided training courses for fresh-faced hopefuls, and these newcomers were given the ability to stock up on weapons and party members before entering the labyrinth. After they’d been given an appropriate amount of experience, the management would lure them down to the lower floors to kill them.
Of course, only weak monsters were placed on the first floor—the type that anyone could defeat. Only extreme eccentrics would dive head-first into a dangerous dungeon that could kill them from the very beginning. No place or its management would be able to survive a state like that.
Normally, the fatality rates should’ve been close to zero under the circumstances. Even one percent would’ve been rather high; the reason that amount was the expected mean was to account for the rare occurrence of monsters born with an extreme battle sense. That was something that level displays couldn’t account for, since said monsters couldn’t be detected until they were actually thrown into battle.
When all was said and done, nothing could be done about those anomalies but to try to account for them in advance. Still, no matter how strong such a monster might’ve been, a casualty rate of fifty-four percent was staggeringly, absurdly high.
“And we even lost our base camp! It was completely destroyed! What possessed you to make that decision?!”
Well, that’s bad, Marinnie thought. “Uhhh, well...it’s not like the base camp was in a guaranteed safe area, or anything?”
“Whaaat?!”
Of course, Marinnie knew that a base camp was constructed at the entrance, and that it was used to conveniently supply adventurers with whatever they needed. She had left it alone on purpose. That was just custom, however, and not a rule.
The only thing the dungeon side could do was publish a data sheet detailing monster placement and item drop rates, then promise to keep things to the stated values.
“Yeahhh, so...your anger is justified, but... We don’t know what happened either. The only thing I can think of is that, like, maybe an incredible monster was born from a sudden mutation or something. But you’d already factored that into your expectations, right?”
“Regardless, we object to this strongly! Do something about it! Now!”
“Well, if you’re going to put it like that, I guess I’ll do some digging... But I can only change monster placements after the season ends, so why not just wait till then?”
“Listen here—if you won’t fix this, then we’ll have to consider sending in a hero, got it?! If you think we can’t do such a thing because we’re a provincial city, you’d be dead wrong!”
“Ah ha ha...a hero, huh? D’you silly humans think you’d scare me with that?”
“Wha...?!”
The sudden change in Marinnie’s voice had caused Walter to flinch. But that had lasted only a moment—she was quickly back to her usual laid-back self.
“You know what, though? If we could get a hero in our dungeon, we’d gain some prestige...”
“Y-Yoouuu! Do you understand what I’m saying?! I’m talking about a hero, here! A dinky little dungeon like yours wouldn’t hold a candle to one!”
“Anywaaays, I’ve received your request, so I’ll take my leave. By the way, we are a dungeon, so we welcome any challengers!”
With that, Marinnie left. She exited the building, walked through town, and returned to the labyrinth. It seemed to her that they were picking a fight, so she’d responded in kind, but she actually had no clue what was going on all the way until the end.
“A hero, huh? I wonder if Lord Aldora would be mad if one really came?”
No matter what happens, I need to figure out what’s happening first. Then I can choose what I’ll do.
Marinnie decided to head to the first floor of the Aldora Labyrinth.