“Ha ha. Feel bad for the zombies all you like, but in the end, they’re just natives.”
“That’s not what I mean. It would’ve really fired me up if my opponent used this plan against me, but I don’t like being the one to use it while I stay safe on the sidelines.”
“...You really like playing with death, don’t you?”
“That’s just who I am. I don’t feel alive in safe places. It’s kind of an illness.”
I’d never been to a psychiatrist before, but even I knew I’d get diagnosed with some sort of mental illness.
That reminded me. “Whatever happened to the last three who went for leveling after the cap was raised?”
“They ran into a ton of goblins during Floor 2 of Agartha and were all decimated.”
“Couldn’t they just have leveled up the safe way outside of Agartha?”
“It was Mr. Imabayashi’s idea, so no one could say anything. You know how he is. He just yells at us to hurry up and level, whatever it takes.”
“That guy really likes to make other people do his bidding while he sits in his little safe spot, doesn’t he?”
For me, all I needed was the dollar. If I couldn’t satiate my lust for the brink of death, then I would sacrifice myself to the god I believed in.
Checking the time, I shook my head. “I have other work to do. I’ll leave the zombie surveillance to you.”
I turned with a wave and walked deeper into the forest.
After walking around for twenty minutes, I made sure that no monsters would appear in this region. But this was Agartha; there was no telling what could happen in this unknown dungeon. It was only natural for people to be scared. No one would usually walk this deep into the forest. Not even me.
So why was I, then? The reason was simple and clean: there was no better place to hold a secret meeting with someone on Floor 3 than here.
“Okay then, that should be far enough. How about you come out now?”
A girl bloomed from the shadow of a large tree after my words, in a literal sense. She wore black gothic Lolita clothes, and her long black hair looked like silk.
Sad to say, but I had no interest in little girls. Had she looked ten years older, I would’ve thought she was a fine woman.
“Tell me your story, goddess of the moon.” I looked her straight in the eyes.
Her face, built like a perfect work of art, smiled coldly at me.
†
Shinobu Iijima
It was late at night, the day after I’d called Tsukuyomi over the crystal.
I didn’t have any of my summons with me, just Alice. This was, in part, to give her some battle experience without them around.
The day had finally come when we would launch our attack on the slave merchant’s facility. As soon as we met with Ms. Mimi, Alice had a question.
“This time for sure we’re attacking from the front, Master Shinobu?”
She sounded just as worried as she had when we’d headed toward the headquarters of the Merchants’ Alliance the first time.
“This time for sure.”
She was making it sound like it was my idea to do this, but I actually hadn’t been the one to come up with it. All I did was take on the request at the Adventurer’s Guild, meaning the one to blame was Ms. Mimi of the Royal Guard.
Along with us was a fellow A-rank adventurer. Alice had been given a fake ID of her own that claimed her as a B-rank.
“Ms. Mimi,” I called out. “Is that really where all the slaves are being kept?”
The object of my vision was an image of a fancy building that could be easily mistaken for a grand noble’s mansion, or maybe a reception hall. It was splendid to look at.
“The slaves are demihumans of precious blood, so they’re being kept in such a place.”
I was going to ask why, but I already knew. If the slaves were of high value, then the people buying them were sure to be VIPs themselves. Prettier things would sell for more if they were meant to be dirtied only after the fact. It was imperative that the ones to harm them be their new owners, no matter what. It wasn’t hard to believe that, until the slaves reached their new masters’ hands, they would be handled carefully and treated like royals or nobles.
“Now then, Master Iijima and Master Hannibal, please do as we discussed.”
As I nodded, the other A-ranker opened his mouth. “Iijima, you’re level 30, right?”
“Yes, just about.”
“I’m level 35. I seem to be older than you too, so you’ll be following my orders on the field.”
Alice tried to argue, displeased, but I stopped her. With both his level and age being higher than mine, it was reasonable to let that be the nature of our relationship.
“Anyway, Ms. Mimi,” Mr. Hannibal changed the subject. “I’m gonna get straight to the point, but could we delay the attack by about ten minutes?”
“Why, Master Hannibal?”
He smiled. “Just a bit ago, I was in contact with the carpenter who built this mansion.”
Ms. Mimi blinked at him, not understanding.
“He gave me the floor plan. We don’t have much time, but we should all memorize it first.”
“How thorough of you!” she exclaimed.
He hadn’t declared himself leader for nothing. Ms. Mimi nodded in agreement. This information really was invaluable.
Alice, meanwhile, still looked upset. “You put scouts in the mansion with magic, right, Master Shinobu?” she whispered to me. “Isn’t that way more impressive than a map?”
I’d set up several camera-type scouts inside with magic so I’d known the inner workings of the mansion from the beginning. But here’s the thing, Alice. That’s Grade 4 magic. You can’t exactly go around saying that.
“Let’s keep that on the down-low, Alice.”
I wanted Mr. Hannibal to keep up the good work for my sake too. He was participating in this mission because he didn’t like how the upper echelons of this city operated. His family had been killed by them simply because he’d refused to do an illegal request.
That was part of why he’d named himself the leader—he had a good reason to. I didn’t want to intrude.
We all turned our eyes to the floor plan Mr. Hannibal laid out on the table.
†
The Vagrant Grand Sorcerer Abraham
I learned how to read at two years old.
My parents were overjoyed at the time, then proceeded to be creeped out when I deciphered a magic tome at age four.
Once I cast a Grade 2 spell at nine, they forced smiles onto their faces, and the mage assigned as my personal tutor vanished.
At first, I wondered why no one else could do things the way I could. But when I graduated from the magic university at ten years old after I repeatedly skipped grades, I realized something.
It wasn’t that everyone else was stupid. It was that I was simply too capable.
After that, I would come to bear a depression that was common with geniuses.
No one could match me. I would live my days receiving nothing but praise and admiration. And of course, the overwhelming loneliness that came with it.
After such a life, at twenty years of age... I believe it was when a position for me was prepared in the upper echelons of the magic learned assembly that I first heard it.
I heard of a certain rumor—of the Gods.
A secret truth about our world only permitted to the elite. Apparently, there were humans called “players” that possessed devastating amounts of magic and had been controlling society from the shadows for four hundred years. As preposterous as it sounded, when I thought about where the national-level weapons could’ve possibly come from and the feelings of peculiarity and crookedness I’d been harboring regarding the structure of our society...the pieces came together, especially when taking into account the entities called the five grand guilds and the territories they reigned over. In fact, I simply could not come up with a reason why our world ran the way it did without factoring in such entities.
I wholly welcomed them. Up until that point, I knew of no one who paralleled me. No matter how high I climbed, nobody awaited me at the top. But it turned out even greater beings existed, far greater than me. The fact that these otherworldly monsters were out there was purely uplifting.
I resigned from the magic assembly and aligned myself with the Adventurer’s Guild. Wandering unexplored regions around the world known as the “poles,” I defeated legendary monster after legendary monster. Slipping past death, polishing myself, twenty more years would pass by before I ended up at the present—in Abrasil, with the ultimate strength in hand.
My magic had surely been polished to its limits. Just how much of it would be able to affect the Gods? That was what I was here to find out.
“Demihuman women sure are good-looking.”
Twenty women were lined up before me in the main hall of this mansion, ready to be shipped off at any time. A large man who looked like a brigand gave a vulgar smile while leering at them.
They were first-rate products in a first-rate mansion.
I sighed in awe when I first laid eyes on the many works of art decorating the place, thinking, this really is an establishment owned by Gods. But the tiny workers like this one certainly had no refinement to them.
“What do you think?” He grinned at me. “Mr. Abraham, former S-rank adventurer?”
I let out an exasperated breath in response. I had no intention of conversing with him.
“They sure are leaving us hanging, aren’t they, Mr. Abraham?”
Did this man not have a crumb of knowledge in his brain? There were five other guards in the room with us. The fact that he was choosing to speak to me, the one with the most high status of them all, even when I was plainly indicating rejection, made me huff again without realizing it. As a sign of compassion to this useless man, I decided to remain silent.
“We’re allowed to taste test normal slaves before they’re shipped as a bonus, but we can’t with these ones. Serious blue ball!” The brigand cackled while he leered at the beautiful women.
He walked toward one of the harpies among them. “Ah, I really can’t take it!”
“Stop that.”