Claire was there when I arrived at our meetup location. She appeared relaxed in her snow-white dress and soft blue cardigan.
“Sorry, I guess I made you wait,” I said.
“Good morning, Amane-san,” she replied. “Do not worry. You arrived before our meeting time.”
“Cool. So, you wanted to talk about something?”
“Correct. Let’s talk over a table instead of standing around.”
We entered a nearby café where I ordered a milk tea, and she ordered a café au lait. Our conversation stayed light, but once our drinks arrived at the table, Claire got down to business.
“First, I’d like to thank you for yesterday. Yagami-san told me the gist of what happened,” she explained. “If you weren’t there, they would’ve struggled to defeat the extra boss. You protected them, and I’m truly grateful for that.”
“You’re welcome, but…” I glanced around. “Should we discuss this in public?”
“I’m using a soundproofing skill, so no other customers will hear us. Put your mind at ease.”
She said it so casually, but I was startled to hear she had a skill like that.
“Let’s debrief about the dungeon dive itself,” she continued. “After your group dive, Onizuka Dungeon was determined too difficult even for an A-rank party, so they sent me in solo to document the particulars. I thought it only fair to share my findings with you, since you were there.”
“Oh, nice. I’m definitely curious.” Plus, this information could help me grind Onizuka.
“I found that Onizuka has three abnormal points to it. The first point is that it emits mana with regenerative properties. Monsters with powerful magic stones have the ability to absorb that mana, which grants them a high likelihood of regenerating.”
Now that she mentioned it, what I witnessed down there matched her first point perfectly.
“The second abnormality is the monster swarm that appears on floor thirty. It only spawns a horde of monsters to attack if you stay there for longer than ten minutes. Finally, the third abnormality: If you run from those monsters, the dungeon leads you to an irregular room that spawns an extra boss. It must be fought to escape. That’s where you and the rest of the party encountered the level-40,000 high ogre.”
I could sense a but there. I nodded at her expectantly.
“But…if you don’t enter the boss room and choose to fight the monsters instead, they stop spawning once you defeat a thousand of them.”
“…Did you test that yourself?”
“Yes,” she replied, deadpan.
One thousand monsters ranging from level 10,000 to 20,000… Yikes, that gave me flashbacks to the Remote Magic Tower! I wanted to clutch my head just from thinking about it. To Claire, it probably felt like mowing down riffraff in a hack-and-slash game. The gap between us was undeniably huge.
She continued. “If you descend the floors without fighting the high ogre, you’ll encounter the final boss on the sixtieth floor. There, a level-25,000 ogre will spawn as the normal dungeon boss. The only takedown reward is a Fortifying Medicine that reduces damage by 20 percent.”
“Oh, but I got a medicine from the high ogre that cuts damage by 30 percent, so that’s not the same reward description. I imagine the level-up reward is different too?”
Defeating the high ogre and the dungeon takedown rewards provided a combined 300-level boost. Beating an ogre would grant, what, one hundred levels?
I had another question, though.
“Maybe I’m prying, but isn’t dungeon investigation disproportionate to your abilities? I can’t imagine the rewards were worth getting stuck in a Span.”
There weren’t a ton, but Japan had dungeons worth more than a hundred levels upon defeat. Those seemed worth her time, hence the reason I questioned her motives.
Claire’s eyebrows drew together a little as she frowned. Was she troubled? “That’s my duty as a guild member. I’m fine with that, so I don’t require your concern.”
She said it as if she was reciting from memory.
“Right, no problem,” I conceded. If she didn’t want me to, I wouldn’t pry any further. I lifted my cup and sipped my milk tea while it was still hot. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”
“No, that was simply a brief show of thanks and a report. I actually asked you here for something else. It’s a more personal matter.” She sat straighter and met my gaze with a marksman’s intensity. “Amane-san, may I ask why you became an adventurer?”
“You want my reason…?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “When I heard the report about your defeat of the high ogre, I realized you were much stronger than I had anticipated. No normal adventurer grasps that kind of power at your age.”
Said the pot to the kettle, but I wasn’t going to interject. I kept listening.
“It’s been two decades since dungeons first appeared and vastly changed our world. Humankind was granted great powers by the level system,” she said. “At the time, we only knew of what we now call E-rank dungeons, but the resources inside of them were still valuable.”
Claire withdrew several sizes of magic stones from an invisible pocket in space and set them on the table. She must’ve used Item Box.
“Once we learned that we could use mana as an energy source, countries began harvesting efforts. Only a few hundred thousand people could retrieve magic stones from those E-rank monsters, but once higher-ranked dungeons manifested, their worth decreased. Nowadays, these are worth a few hundred yen at most.” She gestured to her visual aids on the table.
“Yup, that’s the reality, isn’t it? Value’s still trending down too,” I said. “It takes becoming a C-rank adventurer to make a living, and the amount you make drops every few years.”
That was why everyone around me told me to quit adventuring. Those without talent could never catch up, no matter how fast they leveled up. By the time they reached their goal, the value of dungeon resources would have changed, and their spoils would sell for as little as they always had. A goalpost that never stopped moving.
Dungeons had existed nearly since Claire and I were born, but the history of our world didn’t amount to anything compared to the history of the world. The arrival of dungeons would ripple throughout history, well beyond our lifetimes.
Claire wasn’t finished. “Common sense dictates that, considering the fixed level-up rewards and the Span, those who become adventurers now will never catch up to the veterans. The only people who can overcome that are those with promising unique skills. They soar over the drudgery of others and reach greater heights through luck.”
Claire’s hands tightened on her cup of coffee. Had someone accused her of that before? Something about her face told me she was recalling a memory.
“Many people say things like that about adventurers with unique skills, but I don’t agree,” she said. “I believe those adventurers suffer a great deal because of their power, yet they strive for greater heights nonetheless.”
Her eyes blazed as she stared at me.
“That’s why I’m so curious about you,” she said. “If you have the power it takes to topple that high ogre, you must’ve struggled to get there. In essence, I am asking how you have not cracked under the immense pressure.”
Her lovely blue eyes bore into me. How could I lie to someone so earnest? I wanted to answer her honestly.
“I…”
Slowly, I told Claire the same story I told Rei once upon a time—the story about why I became an adventurer.
That fateful day, Hana and I were on an errand when a dungeon collapse occurred nearby. The street flooded with monsters. We were about to die at the hands of a massive monster when a single adventurer rushed in to defeat it and save us. Staring up at his back in awe, I knew I wanted to be just like him. The memory was fuzzy nowadays, so I couldn’t remember who he was, but what I could remember was the desire to grow up just like him—strong, capable of protecting strangers and loved ones alike. Money and proving myself were afterthoughts.
The main reason was that simple.
“…There’s nothing more to it,” I finished.
I kept the story concise. I was the minority among adventurers, most of whom were in it for fame and fortune. But I was hardly alone—others felt the same way.
What would Claire think of my story? I anxiously awaited her reaction.
“I think that’s a wonderful reason,” she said. Her smile was as gentle and light as the sound of piano music playing in another room. The unexpected beauty of it caught me off guard. In that moment, she seemed like the only person in the café.
“Yui-san and Rei-san have told me quite a bit about you,” she added. “They say they’re grateful for the help you’ve provided them, and the same goes for Yagami-san’s party. Your goal is well on its way to being realized.”
“You think so?”
“No, I know it. And once you do realize it, I hope you’ll be…” She drew a sharp breath and shut her mouth as if catching herself.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, no, not at all. Your drink is running low. Would you like another?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
I gulped down the rest of my milk tea, though it had cooled as we talked. It seemed like Claire had said everything she wanted to say, so it was about time we parted ways, but…
“Can I ask you something?” I couldn’t let her go without one more question.
“Yes, what is it?”
“What’s your reason for becoming an adventurer?”
I was equally interested in her answer. Maybe it would offer a glimpse of her strength.
Claire’s eyes widened, a stark contrast to her gentle smile when she heard my reason. The air in the café chilled somehow, cold like her eyes as they looked at me—or rather, looked past me. What she saw wasn’t here.
Her pink lips moved slightly before she spoke.
“I’m here to protect everything,” she answered. “That is my duty.”
“Your…duty?”
Not a goal or a dream, but a duty? She said those words as if they weren’t hers.
“Claire—”
“Or something along those lines,” she rushed, cutting me off. “My reason isn’t so different from yours.”
I didn’t reply: I didn’t know how to. The opportunity to ask for more detail slipped away. The gentle atmosphere returned, though I sensed crystals of ice in the air, as if she was warding me off treading any further into her thoughts. An uncomfortable silence fell over us.
Claire was the one to slash through it. “Amane-san, thank you for meeting me here today. I’m glad we had this important discussion. Shall we go?”
She picked up the order ticket and rose. Why was her expression so lonely as she turned away? The urge to turn her around somehow surged through me.
“Wait, Claire.”
“Yes?” she said, turning toward me.
Well, I was glad, but I didn’t know what to say. After a weird pause that probably took a year off my life, I settled on my answer.
“Did you know that Wolfun version two will appear in Magidun next week?”
“…Come to think of it, I believe I’d like another cup of coffee.”
“Oh—yeah! Me too.”