"What do you think about those stairs over there?"
Having stuffed every last piece of dried meat, dried fruit, and other long-lasting food they could find in the warehouse into the Misty Ring, Rei and his party continued down the corridor of the Underground Facility.
As they pressed forward, a descending staircase eventually came into view.
Naturally, given that it had appeared so suddenly in their current situation, there was no guarantee it was the real deal.
Even so... it was only natural to assume it led downward rather than being some kind of trap.
"Since there are no other stairs heading down, I'm pretty sure this is the right one. Though if you're asking whether there might be other staircases of some kind, I'd bet on something like a hidden staircase rather than a hidden passage."
As he spoke, Rei recalled the information he had wrung from the Plain Man.
The man had said that the second basement floor housed Prostitutes pregnant with Giants, and the third basement floor contained a facility for birthing them.
If that was true, then he wanted to reach that facility as quickly as possible.
(Sentimental, huh.)
With the power at his disposal, there was no way for him to save the Prostitutes who had been impregnated with Giants.
Even knowing that, a fierce frustration burned within Rei.
Torn from the villages and towns where they had lived, their very wills rewritten by the Slave Collar, forced into prostitution, impregnated with Giants, and doomed to die in childbirth.
Rei understood full well that he was no champion of justice.
His past actions were proof enough of that.
He had lopped off the limbs of hostile nobles. Rather than being ambushed by Bandits, he had ambushed them instead, plundering their hoarded treasure. From anyone's perspective, it was obvious he could hardly be called a defender of justice.
Even so... the seething anger rising inside him was impossible to suppress.
"If there is a hidden staircase, we'd have to search every single room to find it. That would definitely take a lot of time, you know?"
Marina's words were by no means wrong.
No hidden staircase would be placed somewhere obvious, which meant tracking it down was bound to eat up time.
What's more, Byune—the party's specialist in such matters—was a combat-oriented thief.
Whether she could even find a hidden staircase was... uncertain at best.
Knowing they were conducting a surprise raid on this Underground Facility, it was only natural that Rei wanted to avoid burning through too much time here.
"Nn."
Byune, who clearly understood her own abilities, raised no objection to Marina's point.
She was still young, but her ability to make such shrewd assessments was proof of her sharp judgment.
It was not for nothing that she had been challenging the Dungeon alone since she was even smaller—no, since she was a mere child.
For just a fleeting moment, a flash of frustration crossed Byune's face—something only Vihera, who had known her the longest, caught.
"Then we've got no choice but to go this way. Let's move."
Everyone nodded at Rei's words and descended the stairs.
Perhaps to keep the underground structure's floor from giving way, the staircase ran quite long.
They made their way down the straight, descending stairs without issue until they were about halfway down... and then, without warning, the steps vanished, the staircase transforming into a sheer slope.
Had this happened right after they started descending, they could have simply scrambled back to the first basement floor.
But Rei and his party were already halfway down.
Even while on guard against potential traps, the steps suddenly disappearing and the staircase turning into a slope should have been completely unexpected.
There was still a drop of nearly ten meters to the second basement floor.
To keep the Underground Facility from collapsing, each underground level had to be built with considerable thickness between floors—which naturally meant the stairs connecting them ran longer as well.
Jaya's aim was likely to use this to send Rei and his party tumbling down to the second basement floor, inflicting whatever damage they could. Ideally, they hoped to kill them outright with this trap.
But that notion could only be called naive.
(They triggered the trap right as we reached the halfway point. That means whoever activated it can see us, doesn't it? A surveillance camera... no, it wouldn't be strange for them to have a Magic Item serving a similar purpose.)
The instant the stairs became a slope, Rei leaped off—almost reflexively.
Under normal circumstances, jumping from a height of ten meters would result in injury at the very least. A botched landing could even be fatal.
But that only applied under normal circumstances, and classifying Rei as "normal" was mistaken in every sense of the word.
Besides, he had descended the stairs already suspecting a trap, so there was no hesitation whatsoever when the moment came.
Activating the Sleipnir boots in midair, he bounded off the air itself several times, using it as footholds as he dropped toward the second basement floor.
Precisely because he had anticipated a trap, Rei felt not the slightest confusion—he even had the presence of mind to survey his surroundings.
Elena, likewise, activated her Sleipnir boots, turning the air into footholds as she descended toward the second basement floor.
Marina drifted down to the second basement floor at what could only be called a gliding pace, carried by the Wind Spirits.
Vihera seized Byune with one hand, adjusting her posture mid-fall as she dropped.
(Vihera's just falling straight down, but from the looks of it, she'll be fine.)
Vihera had always possessed extraordinary physical abilities, but now, enhanced further by having absorbed Unbris, her prowess was even greater.
And since Vihera's weapon was hand-to-hand combat, she was inherently adept at controlling her body.
A fall from this height would be no problem at all for her.
As for Ielo, who had wings, it was completely trivial.
In the end, everyone touched down on the second basement floor without so much as a noteworthy injury.
"To think they'd turn the stairs into a trap like that... color me surprised."
Having been in free fall, Vihera was the first to reach the second basement floor, and she muttered as she set Byune down.
At her words, Rei turned his gaze back toward the staircase. The steps that had vanished had already returned, reshaping themselves into something worthy of being called a staircase once more.
"Yeah... well, nobody got hurt in the end. Judging by how that staircase looked, it was a pretty elaborate trap. They must be frustrated."
Rei said they must be frustrated, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Was he mocking the shallow cunning of Jaya's people, who thought they could kill them with something so feeble? Or was he imagining the chagrin of whoever had gone to considerable trouble rigging up such an elaborate trap, only to fail in killing—or even scratching—a single member of his party?
Either way, a smile lingered on Rei's lips.
"...Rei, that smile of yours is a bit..."
Marina, who had been watching him, spoke up, sounding somewhat hesitant.
"Hm? Something wrong?"
"No, if you're fine with it, I don't mind. You are who you are, after all."
Unable to say anything more, Marina turned back to surveying the area.
They had heard upstairs that pregnant Prostitutes were being held on the second basement floor, but from Marina's vantage point, it didn't look all that different from the first.
Actually, the presence of corridors and doors was the same as above, but the number of doors was drastically smaller, and each one was a much larger double-door design. In that regard, the difference was stark.
Eyeing the nearest door, Vihera was the first to speak.
"What do we do? Want to try opening that door first? Probably got traps, though."
"...It is a remarkably large door, that's for certain."
Elena echoed Vihera's sentiment, and Rei and the others were inclined to agree.
(Two meters wide... no, closer to three? And just as tall. Why such enormous doors... Giants?)
If this was the place where they gathered Prostitutes impregnated with Giants, then there was a possibility that, through some mishap, a Giant could be born inside that very room.
Could that be why? That was what crossed his mind.
Of course, Rei had no way of knowing whether a newborn Giant would have a body worthy of the name right from birth.
But if they were forcing women to birth Giants through such unnatural means, it wouldn't be strange for that kind of irregularity to occur.
"What should we do? Want to take a look inside? No guarantee we'll learn anything useful, though."
"You're right... though I can't say I'm eager."
Marina replied to Rei's suggestion.
The others likely felt the same reluctance.
Even so, they judged it best to see what lay beyond those doors, and they moved up to the massive one.
"Byune, how does it look?"
"Nn."
When Vihera asked whether it was locked, Byune gave her usual terse response.
"She says it's unlocked."
"...Unlocked? Why? On the first basement floor, every single door was locked. Jaya has to know we're already inside this Underground Facility."
"If they didn't, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of triggering that staircase trap."
Elena murmured in agreement, and precisely because they understood that, it was only natural to wonder: why was this door unlocked?
"Maybe they figure it doesn't matter if we see inside? Either way, if it's not locked, we've got no choice but to open it, right?"
"...Right. Byune, step aside."
"Nn."
At Marina's words, Rei eased Byune away from the door and reached out toward it.
Given that it was a three-by-three-meter door, its weight was substantial.
Ordinarily, it would take several people working together to push it open... but for Rei, it was nothing unmanageable.
(Maybe they didn't bother locking it—or posting guards—because they figured this door alone would be enough?)
The door was heavy enough to lend credence to that thought.
Given that the people inside were pregnant women, there was no reason to expect this door to ever be opened. It wouldn't be strange for them to think that way.
The grating of metal scraping against metal echoed through the corridor as the door crept open, inch by inch.
What drifted through the gap was a scent Rei had never encountered before.
It wasn't particularly unpleasant—rather, it carried a calming, almost soothing quality.
Breathing it in, Rei hauled the door fully open.
What greeted his eyes as he stepped inside was a sea of pregnant women—not merely a handful, but dozens, perhaps even over a hundred.
And yet, the room was enveloped in what could only be described as near-silence.
Not true silence, of course.
The pregnant women on the beds each appeared to be unconscious, letting out faint groans, with some even muttering in their sleep.
"What... is going on here?"
Vihera, who had entered the room behind Rei, muttered as she scanned the scene.
They might have been sleeping—or perhaps they were simply unconscious—but either way, the sight of the pregnant women sprawled across those beds struck everyone as undeniably abnormal.
"They're not just sleeping because they're sleepy. I refuse to believe this many people all fell asleep at the same time."
"Really? I get what Vihera's saying, but everyone here is a Prostitute. In other words, they all lived in Mejougo, right? If that's the case, isn't it possible they're just naturally asleep at this hour?"
Marina had a point—it was currently past noon.
Given that, it stood to reason that this would normally be the time when Prostitutes slept, and from that perspective, there was nothing strange about all of them being asleep.
"But all of them? And none of them show the slightest sign of waking up, even though we just walked in. That door was pretty loud when it opened, you know."
At those words, everyone fell silent.
Indeed, the sound that had echoed when Rei hauled the door open had been downright shrill.
The kind of sound that, under normal circumstances, would jolt anyone awake.
And yet, inside the room before Rei and his party, not a single woman stirred.
It was only natural to wonder what in the world was going on.
"Which means, if we think about it logically... they're being kept asleep?"
"For what purpose?"
The words had slipped from Rei's mouth half-absently, and Vihera pressed him while staring at the scores of pregnant women in the room.
But Rei hadn't spoken out of any firm conviction.
It was simply a remark born from a passing suspicion—maybe that was the case.
In the end, he couldn't answer Vihera's question. He could only stand there, staring blankly at the scene before him.