Rei and his companions continued walking upstream along the river for about two hours.
A pathless trail—perhaps that was slightly exaggerated. They had been making their way through terrain a bit easier to navigate than a game trail when they suddenly emerged into a clearing.
An open space.
Trees still ringed the area, of course, but in this particular spot, nothing obstructed their footing.
And at the center of that space lay...
"Stairs, huh?"
Rei murmured, though a note of suspicion crept into his voice—and those stairs were the reason why.
The passage from the first floor to the second had naturally led upward.
So he had assumed this dungeon followed the same pattern, advancing higher rather than descending... yet what now lay before Rei and his party were stairs going down.
"Stairs, indeed," Elena murmured in much the same way.
Her expression suggested she couldn't fathom why stairs would lead downward.
"Well, it wouldn't be strange for things to turn out like this. It's a dungeon—anything goes." Marina, the former Guild Master—and before that, a seasoned adventurer—said with a shrug.
"Right. It's a dungeon. Nothing especially unusual about it."
"Mn."
Vihera and Byune, both veterans of the Labyrinth City, nodded in agreement.
"In the Exil dungeon, there are areas structured exactly like this—first you descend a floor, then climb back up, then descend again. 'Three-dimensional' might be the best way to describe it? Layouts like that aren't uncommon."
Rei and Elena could only manage an uncertain, "Is that so...?"
Neither of them was new to dungeon diving, of course. Even so, they had never encountered a dungeon like this—what Vihera called a three-dimensional one.
"That said... when a dungeon is structured three-dimensionally like this, there's rarely just one staircase to the next floor. Given how vast this forest is, there are probably several others. What do you want to do?"
Search for more stairs, or descend to the first floor using the ones right in front of them?
Vihera left the choice to them. Rei weighed his options for a moment before deciding.
"Let's go down. This forest is too large—if we pass up this staircase, there's no guarantee we'll find another."
Having settled on descending, Rei led the group down toward the first floor.
With no way of knowing what awaited them the instant they set foot on the next level, they proceeded with their guard up, scanning their surroundings.
And so, when they finally reached the bottom of the stairs...
"So this is where it led."
Rei's murmur echoed through the space before them.
What lay at the foot of the stairs wasn't a corridor but a single, cavernous room.
The reason Rei murmured at the sight was simple: the space was thick with Rock Plants.
These were the same Rock Plants that had grown in the dead end of the Y-junction on the first floor, the one branching away from the dungeon entrance. Now those very plants filled this chamber in dense clusters.
"I'd been hoping to bring a rock flower home, but seeing this... there's hardly anything rare about it." Reliu, who had wanted a rock flower as a souvenir for his wife, Schmine, stared out at the dozens, hundreds—possibly more—Rock Plants before him and spoke with quiet resignation.
Seeing them grow in such profusion, neither rarity nor preciousness remained. Those qualities were felt precisely because something was scarce. With this many spread before them, scarcity existed nowhere in sight.
"Either way, if we're having the Guild research these Rock Plants, the more samples the better."
"Right. Though... those Rock Plants attack even though they aren't monsters. The attacks aren't especially powerful, but with that many, they're a bit of a hassle?" Marina's gaze settled on the dense thicket of Rock Plants.
Despite not being monsters, Rock Plants assaulted anything that came near.
(Then again, even on Earth there are carnivorous plants like Venus Flytraps. If Elgin has its own flora, it wouldn't be strange to find plants that attack more aggressively. ...Though "rock plant" is already a contradiction in terms.)
A plant made of rock was inherently paradoxical. Yet the feeling that such a thing wouldn't be out of place in Elgin was perhaps proof of just how accustomed Rei had grown to this world.
"Anyway, let's harvest as many of these Rock Plants as we can and bring them back. Fortunately, carrying capacity isn't an issue."
No one objected. Everyone seemed genuinely curious about what kind of creature the Rock Plant was—Marina most of all. As a Dark Elf, even Rock Plants seemed to hold her rapt attention.
"I'd love to bring them back roots and all... but that's impossible, isn't it?"
"It's impossible," Rei answered without hesitation.
If the Rock Plants were left alive, their previous encounter had made it abundantly clear they would attack endlessly. And more to the point—the Rock Plants currently in their line of sight were clearly sizing Rei's party up as prey and shifting into attack stance.
"Marina!"
At Rei's signal, Marina cast Spirit Magic in a flash.
A Wind Barrier materialized, deflecting the rock leaves hurtling from the Rock Plant swarm in every direction.
Had they been near the river on the second floor's forest, she could have raised a sturdier Water Barrier for defense. But with no river flowing here, that was out of the question. She could manage it given enough time—but what they needed most right now was precisely that.
"The attacks themselves aren't that dangerous, but with this many of them, it's a real nuisance. Rei, mind if I step out front?" Reliu asked, longsword already in hand.
Rei left the barrage of rock leaves—a relentless sideways rain—to the Wind Barrier and turned to Reliu.
"Then I'll leave it to you."
No "Can you handle it?" or "Are you sure?"—just that, plain and simple.
Reliu outranked him, after all. Worrying about a man of his caliber against an enemy like this would have been an insult. Rei knew it, and so he kept it brief.
Reliu flashed a confident grin, as if to say it was no trouble at all.
"Understood. Marina, please."
"Yes. Run straight toward the Rock Plants. I'll drop the Wind Barrier to match your timing."
Reliu nodded—and with longsword in hand, broke into a dead sprint without a moment's hesitation. There was no trace of doubt in his stride toward the barrier. He ran as one who was absolutely certain the Wind Barrier would be gone the instant he reached it.
And Reliu's trust was not betrayed. The moment he was about to collide with the barrier, it vanished—as abruptly as if there had never been anything there at all.
Reliu burst through without losing a shred of speed.
Beyond the barrier, the rock leaves it had been blocking came flying at him in swarms.
But he didn't slow down. He wove through the barrage, dodging some, slicing others out of the air with his longsword as he pressed forward.
For all the leaves raining down on him, the battles he'd survived up until now had been far more harrowing—that was the honest truth.
As an Alias Holder and A-Rank adventurer, one of the finest in Gilm, Reliu had fought through enemies that ordinary adventurers could never have survived. An obstacle of this level was a nuisance, nothing more.
"Heh... not bad."
Even from within the Wind Barrier, Reliu's sharp swordsmanship was plain to see. Vihera watched with evident admiration.
They'd held mock battles before, but those had been sparring matches—neither had fought in full earnest. That was why she found herself captivated by what she saw now.
The way she licked her red, glistening lips—though she wore no lipstick—could only be described as sensual. What burned within Vihera, however, was the fighting spirit of one who hungered for worthy opponents.
In any case, from what they could see behind the barrier, Reliu's combat was steady enough that concern was unnecessary.
"Right, Reliu can handle himself. Let's hang back and provide support."
Vihera visibly bristled at Rei's instruction. Without a ranged attack of any kind, there was little she could do from behind. But she didn't complain—these were Rei's orders. Instead, she bent down and scooped up stones from the ground, doing what she could.
Whether pelting Rock Plants with stones would have any effect was doubtful at best, but it beat standing idle.
"Gurururururu!"
Set cried out, and twenty Wind Arrows materialized around him.
Their firing speed aside, the raw power behind them was nothing remarkable—but that only mattered if the goal was dealing damage. For supporting Reliu's charge, all they needed was to draw the enemy's attention. Power was beside the point.
Of course, whether Rock Plants would actually shift focus from Reliu when struck by Wind Arrows was an open question. For that matter, they still didn't truly understand what a Rock Plant was—whether it possessed anything resembling a sense of self.
It might turn away from Reliu in an instant. Or it might ignore every attack aimed at it and fixate solely on him. There was no way to know.
The others readied their attacks.
"Marina, now!"
At that signal, the Wind Barrier dropped once more.
In the same breath, the Twilight Spear, Wind Magic, Wind Arrows, Long Needles—a storm of varied attacks screamed toward the enemy.
Most collided with the dense hail of rock leaves, losing momentum... many were swallowed up entirely.
But some lost no power at all against mere leaves.
The thrown Twilight Spear was one of them.
Charged with Rei's magic, it pulverized every rock leaf it met—shattering them the instant they touched it. Plowing forward through the storm of debris without pause, the sight could only be described in a word: devastating.
The Twilight Spear carved onward, losing neither speed nor force, and screamed past Reliu's flank.
For Reliu, that attack must have come completely out of nowhere. But he didn't flinch—just kept charging until he reached the Rock Plants themselves.
Normally, the Rock Plants would have counterattacked the moment Reliu closed in. Perhaps with fruit instead of leaves, or with their branches and the rock vines coiled around their bodies—the same way they had when Rei first encountered them.
But Rei's Twilight Spear had already pierced and shattered a good portion of the nearest Rock Plants. From the standpoint of collecting specimens, it was an obvious failure. Yet with so many Rock Plants packed into this chamber, the loss was meaningless.
After the spear tore through, the surviving Rock Plants had almost no room to mount a counterattack. They tried—but the supporting fire from everyone but Rei rained down on them, disrupting their movements one strike after another.
"Shaa!"
Reliu reached the front line and let out a sharp cry as his longsword flashed—severing a Rock Plant clean through.
That single stroke didn't slow him in the least. He moved on to the next, and the next, cutting down the Rock Plants clustered around him in rapid succession.