I expected a longer trip, but I followed Claire on a short walk to an idling car on the shoulder of the nearby road instead. The guild must’ve been located far enough away to require a drive.
“Don’t be shy,” she said.
“Gotcha.”
Claire took the front passenger seat, and I slid into the seat behind her. A man was already sitting in the driver’s seat. If I had to guess, he was a member of the Yoizuki guild too. His clothes had the Yoizuki emblem—a moon and a sword—on it.
The man glanced at me. Our eyes met for a moment. Did I imagine the way his eyes narrowed? I hummed in question to myself. I suspected he harbored hostility toward me.
“Yagami-san, please drive,” Claire told him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He started the car and pulled out into the road, as instructed. I must’ve imagined the hostility. I relaxed into the smooth momentum of the car. No one spoke, so I eventually decided to break the silence.
“Going back to what you said, Claire, did you learn my name and details just for the sake of recruiting me?” I asked.
She was quiet for a beat before answering.
“Yes, I did. Originally, I planned to visit your home, but I saw you on the drive over and approached you at the tower. Thankfully, I didn’t miss you. A fortunate miscalculation.”
“Right…”
So, that was what she considered a happy accident, huh? Frankly, I was more hung up on the knowledge that this intense girl knew where I lived.
If Claire had the kind of pull to procure personal information, would she know the reason I was being recruited? The guild master would probably tell me once I arrived, but who knew how long this car ride would last? This was a good opportunity.
“Could you tell me something?” I asked.
“Sure. What is it?”
“I expect we’ll talk about this soon, but why does Yoizuki want…”
Why does Yoizuki want someone like me?
The whole question never left my mouth. The tangible pressure of a wave of high-density mana washed over us, right from the direction we were headed. It was impossible to ignore. This amount of mana was unheard of outside a dungeon!
“What was that?” I asked.
“It must be a dungeon collapse,” Claire replied, just as I came to the same conclusion.
A dungeon collapse was a rare phenomenon that occurred before a dungeon destroyed itself. Normally, only adventurers could pass through the Gate of a dungeon above E-rank, but during a pending collapse, monsters could too. That meant monsters could spill into the Return Zone or worse, overflow to the surface. To stop the collapse from causing complete chaos, someone had to dive down and defeat the final boss before it rose to the surface as well.
It was something I had done before, but this time, there was one big problem. I looked to Claire to confirm my hunch.
“Claire, is the dungeon ahead of us the one I think it is?”
“Affirmative, I’m afraid. It’s Shiranui, a B-rank dungeon with a level recommendation of 15,000.”
“15,000…!”
I’d never stuck a toe inside a dungeon of such high difficulty, let alone beaten one. Not to mention, a dungeon collapse often multiplied the power of its monsters several times over.
While I worried over the danger, Claire twisted in her seat to look back at me.
“Amane-san, we’re going to the scene,” she said decisively. “We can’t get you involved in this. Unfortunately, we’ll have to reconvene another day. Is that acceptable?”
“Wait—you’re going?”
“Correct,” she said, as if I’d said the sky was a nice blue today.
She said we were the same age, which made her nineteen years old. How could someone so young be on par with monsters that spawned in a dungeon for a recommended level of 15,000? Was she backup for Yagami-san? He appeared to be in his late twenties, so it wouldn’t be strange if he had that kind of power. But Claire…
Flipping through my options, the most sensible one was leaving and letting Claire and Yagami-san do their thing. Since I lacked experience, there was no guarantee I could handle B-rank monsters, let alone ones stuffed full of mana from a collapse. Besides, they would learn about my true power if I stayed and helped. When I looked at the situation like that, the logical side of brain told me to pick the get-out-of-jail-free card. And yet—
“I’ll go too,” I said.
“What?” Claire replied.
Instinct pushed back on sense and told me to make a different choice, so I did.
“Amane-san, are you certain? This is a highly unsafe situation,” she said. For the first time, Claire sounded uncertain.
“I’m sure. I can help evacuate civilians.”
“But…” Her face grew tight and distant as she considered it.
Yagami-san interjected bluntly. “If he wants to come, let him come. He’s not a guild member yet, so we can’t order him around. Besides, we’re already here.”
Yagami-san was right; he’d just pulled to a stop in front of Shiranui Dungeon. Adventurers who woke up with plans to face the dungeon were now battling powerful monsters on the surface. From what I could see, they were holding their own—for the time being.
We exited the car and hurried to talk to an adventurer on standby in the rear.
“We’re here to assist,” Claire said in an authoritative voice. “Tell us what’s happening.”
The adventurer gave us the quick and dirty: It was taking their full strength to contain the monsters on the surface, and they didn’t have a party ready to defeat the final boss yet. During a collapse, it was safest for adventurers at least one rank above the dungeon’s usual recommended rank to fight the final boss. They needed an A-rank adventurer—someone level 20,000 or above. Adventurers that powerful weren’t growing on trees, so it would take time before one would arrive.
Unfortunately for us, we had run straight into the worst possible scenario.
Harsh tremors from within the dungeon shook the ground and knocked us sideways. The last time I felt this sort of tremor, Kenzaki was on the verge of collapse. I swallowed and accepted the truth.
These tremors could only mean one thing.
“Groooooaaaaaaaaa!!!”
An all-consuming roar, almost loud enough to burst our eardrums, pounded into us like a fist. At the same time, the ground above the dungeon split apart. It seemed that Hell itself was opening as a ten-meter-tall monster emerged. Its bulky body bulged with muscles, and its grotesque face bent around one large eye. Club swinging, it charged at us with a strength I sensed was greater than any I’d faced before.
Appraisal confirmed what I instinctually knew.
Cyclops
Level: 40,000
“Level 40,000…!” I gasped.
Even with the numbers swimming in my vision, I couldn’t believe it. That level wasn’t natural.
I wasn’t the only one shocked to see the beast. Fear of an enemy far more powerful than all of us was evident in those around me as they scrambled to retreat.
“Nameless,” I said, summoning my favorite weapon from my Item Box. No way could I rely on anything else. I gripped it in both hands and fell into a fighting stance.
Even if people discovered my true strength, I wouldn’t regret it if it meant I prevented this monster from killing someone. There was no question—it had to be stopped here and now, and no one else had stepped forward. Nevertheless, I was filled with doubt.
“Can I even do this…?” I muttered to myself.
Such a basic question. Was it possible for me to go toe-to-toe with this monster? I’d barely broken level 13,000.
With Nameless and my other stat-boosting skills, my Attack and Speed could rival a level 40,000 monster, but I was incredibly outmatched when it came to everything else. I needed to fight like one hit could kill me.
Another problem, almost as gigantic as the cyclops, loomed in front of me.
We were outside of the dungeon.
Dungeon Teleportation only worked if the destination was inside a dungeon. Out here, I couldn’t activate Time Zero, and that was my best combat skill. That alone was like a skyscraper blocking my path—not to mention I couldn’t rely on brute-force attacks against such a massive opponent.
To say I was feeling unprecedented amounts of doom and gloom was no exaggeration.
“But I don’t have any other options,” I told myself.
I steeled my trembling limbs and set my sights on the beast towering before me. Its one-eyed stare pierced me like an arrow through the chest. It had recognized me as its enemy, ripe for elimination. I raised my sword, about to charge at it, when Claire stepped in front of me.
“Pull back, Amane-san,” she said.
“…Huh?”
She coolly turned her head up at the cyclops like she was about to ask it for directions. How were her eyes so calm when the average adventurer had no hope of defeating this creature, even at their apex? I wanted to stop Claire from challenging it, but the words got caught in my throat. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Her valiant stance stole my conviction.
“Cursed,” she intoned.
In an instant, a sword manifested in the space before her outstretched right hand. The blade itself was constructed from ice, and it shone a translucent, pale blue. Something of its color seemed to reflect her windswept silver hair.
Everyone’s eyes turned away from the cyclops and toward her. Her aura sparked as powerfully as an electromagnet.
Then, before we could blink, Claire vanished.
“What?!” I gasped.
Did she teleport? No, that couldn’t be it. What she did was far simpler. She moved faster than the naked eye could perceive.
The match was settled before my next pounding heartbeat. Her pale blue sword flashed and carved a neon line in the air, where it sliced the cyclops from bottom to top. Right when the shine of the sword’s slash faded, Claire reappeared in midair and flipped elegantly over the cyclops’s raised club. She effortlessly stuck her landing behind it.
The cyclops’s body wavered left and right, a decrepit tower about to topple to one side. Then, incapable of bearing its weight anymore, the monster split as if halved by heaven itself. Blood should’ve spilled everywhere, but a crust of ice gleamed over the inside of the cyclops’s body, keeping it sealed.
After a few twirls of her sword, Claire strolled back to us.
Instantly, I remembered it.
Everything started to make sense.
“Claire, are you…”
I was so shocked I couldn’t finish the sentence, but she must’ve known what I was thinking, because she just looked at me with those striking, vivid eyes.
The news story circulating—a new celebrity in Japan, the youngest adventurer to make S-rank.
“I didn’t inform you about myself besides the fact that I belong to the Yoizuki Guild, did I?” she said. “I’m Kisaragi Claire, S-rank, and currently the twelfth highest level adventurer in Japan.”