Careful not to cross paths with other adventurers, I finished four runs. On the fourth, I made my best run time in the last few days. If I kept my pace up, I could break ten runs in one day. With that goal in mind, I headed for the boss floor for the fifth time.
Thump thump thump.
“What’s that sound?” I wondered aloud.
Suddenly, several pairs of footsteps echoed from in front of me. I turned toward the sound to see three boys and a girl—around high school or college age—rushing up the path in a panic.
“Run while we can!” one shouted.
“I know! We can’t beat that many!”
“Someone’s gotta survive, at least! Better be us!”
They raced past me. A sense of foreboding filled my entire body as I processed their conversation.
“‘Better be us’…?” I repeated to myself. The worst possible scenario came to mind. “No, they didn’t!”
“Someone, help me!” a desperate voice cried, from the same direction that party fled from. Oh, they definitely did exactly what I think they did.
I pushed my speed parameters to the limit and raced toward that desperate voice. A few seconds later, I found a cute girl surrounded by three gray wolves. Her equipment suggested she was a sorcerer type—and sorcerers would never survive a dungeon solo. Which meant only one thing.
Looking at her, it was plain as day.
“They abandoned her.”
Gray wolves averaged around level 100. That was twenty levels below the harpy boss, but the numbers were the real problem. Three level 100 gray wolves were way harder to beat than a single level 120 monster.
That group used her as a decoy to save themselves. In a dungeon, that was an unforgivable act. I should report them to the dungeon supervisor.
But first things first.
A gray wolf snarled. The girl trembled and screamed as it bared its teeth for an attack. With all my strength, I dashed forward, put myself between the two, and swung my short sword. That one strike severed the gray wolf in half.
“Huh…?” the girl behind me asked, her voice quiet and bewildered.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I told her, then faced the remainder of the gray wolf pack.
The wolves tried to intimidate and attack me in succession, but none of their strikes made contact. I swung my sword with precision and took the gray wolves down one after the other.
“W-wow…” the girl murmured.
“You’re last!” I shouted as I took down the final wolf, two minutes after the fight had started.
Finally, the girl was safe. I flicked the gray wolf blood from my sword, returned it to my item box, and walked back to her. Despite the death of the wolves, she remained kneeling on the ground and didn’t try to get up. Was she okay? I thought I’d rescued her in time, but she might’ve been injured before I arrived.
“Um, are you okay?” I asked. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“N-no, I’m not. My strength just kinda left me… Oh! Thank you for saving me!”
“Sure thing.”
I offered a hand and helped her stand, but once she was up, she squeaked and tipped forward.
“Whoa, there,” I said, catching her before she could fall.
A moment later, we simultaneously realized that our bodies were pressed together, faces nearly touching. Her cute face was so close to mine, and I felt her rapid heartbeat through her chest. Then her face bloomed bright red. She seemed even more shaken than I was. Abruptly, she staggered back and put some distance between us.
Did she hate close proximity with me that much? That kinda stung, to be honest. Still, I needed to apologize for making her uncomfortable.
“Sorry. You collapsed so suddenly. I didn’t mean to cross a boundary,” I said.
“I-it’s fine. You didn’t cross any boundaries! Really!” She shook her head adamantly, easing my concern.
“I’m safe, thanks to you. Really, I can’t thank you enough!” She must have meant it, since she smiled at me and bowed deeply.
After that, I asked her how things got to that point.
Her name was Kasai Yui. She was seventeen years old, and she would enter her final year of high school next month in April. Since she became an adventurer, just a few months after her seventeenth birthday, she’d been weekend diving.
Hearing Kasai-san talk about this reminded me of one of the dungeon-diving rules. “Oh, yeah. You can become an adventurer at seventeen these days, right?”
“Yep. The requirement just changed this year!”
Twenty years ago, dungeons appeared around the world: as the days and months passed, humanity understood them better. Rules were established. One of them was that anyone aged sixteen or under couldn’t enter a dungeon. Since there was a possibility that someone would die in unforeseen circumstances, this age limit was true worldwide. That being said, sixteen was just a minimum: various countries established their own base ages for their adventurers. Japan was among them. Until recently, there was outcry about preventing minors from entering dungeons. Now, an adventurer hopeful had to be eighteen or older to get their qualifications.
These days though, the strength and numbers of a nation’s adventurers was a status symbol. Japan eventually caved to the opinion that they should increase the number of Japanese adventurers. This year, they lowered the minimum age to take the qualification exam to seventeen. The change hadn’t posed any issues so far, so there were rumors they would lower the age again to sixteen in April. That recent change was why Kasai-san could become an adventurer before finishing high school, unlike me.
The thought inadvertently made me sigh.
Kasai-san tilted her head at me. “Is something wrong?”
“Just thinking that if the age requirement had been one year lower for me, I could’ve been adventuring while I was a student too.” I steadied my composure. “Why were you here alone, anyway?”
“Well, you see…”