The week after our struggle to harvest minotaur meat had passed. On the first day of Golden Week, we had descended to the 25th floor of the dungeon. Since it was the holidays, the surface floors near the entrance were bustling with explorers, but down here, there were few who could make it this deep, and the atmosphere was quiet.
On this floor, minotaurs began to appear in groups, and the difficulty of clearing it had become quite high.
"Yuji! One's headed your way!"
"Got it, leave it to me!"
This time, four minotaurs had appeared simultaneously.
After calling out a warning to Yuji, I focused on dealing with the two minotaurs approaching me from the left and right. I held Shiranui in a high stance, then transitioned to the Kasumi guard.
I lunged toward the closer minotaur, closing the distance in an instant. The creature failed to react to me stepping into its range so suddenly, leaving its chest wide open. I thrust Shiranui straight into the center of its torso.
Pierced through the heart, the minotaur died instantly and began to fall forward toward me with its remaining momentum.
"Out of the way."
I delivered a front kick to the falling corpse's belly to push it back while pulling Shiranui out.
Quickly spinning around to face the other minotaur, I saw it had stopped in its tracks and was taking a deep breath to use its Roar.
"Tch!"
Letting it unleash a loud Roar in the middle of a group battle would be an unnecessary headache.
Clicking my tongue, I lunged forward, my footwork forceful enough to crack the ground. Just before it could unleash the cry, I reached a range where Shiranui's blade could strike and swung the sword across its throat. Shiranui accurately caught the minotaur's neck, severing the head from the torso. While the head was still in the air, I used the momentum of the swing to run past its side.
However, decapitating it right before the Roar was a bit of a mistake.
"Whoa!"
"Hey, now!"
"Kyaa!"
The air the minotaur had stored for its Roar blasted out through the severed neck, spraying blood everywhere and splattering the entire area. The blood didn't just hit me; it rained down on Yuji and Hiiragi-san, who were finishing off another minotaur nearby.
We tried to scramble out of the splash zone, but it was already too late.
"Ugh..."
Being the closest, I was covered from head to toe. The raw, metallic scent of blood stung my nose.
"Hey, now, Daiki. What was that all about? We're covered in the stuff."
"Me too."
"Sorry. I kind of messed up."
I lowered my dripping head to apologize for the failure to the annoyed Yuji and Hiiragi-san. Seeing me bow my head so honestly, the two of them seemed to lose their edge, and their anger subsided.
"Hiiragi-san. Before we hear Daiki out, could you wash the blood off us first?"
"...Alright."
Hiiragi-san activated her Cleansing skill, and our bodies were instantly clean. Not even the smell remained.
"...Phew. So? What exactly did you mess up, Daiki?"
"I cut the minotaur's head off right as it was about to Roar. It looked like the air it had saved up for the shout sprayed the blood coming out of the neck everywhere."
"...Uh, so that's what happened."
One could say it was just bad timing, but it was also a situation that could have been avoided. If I had pierced its heart like the first one instead of decapitating it, I might have prevented the Roar and the rain of blood.
"...Well, if that's the case, I guess it can't be helped."
"True. If it had let out a Roar at that moment, it might have interfered with our fight as well."
According to Hiiragi-san, she had just been finishing off the minotaur she was fighting right before the blood started raining. If the Roar had gone off then, she might have missed the finishing blow or been caught off guard. Considering that, was the rain of blood the lesser of two evils?
However, while Yuji understood, he still had a sour look on his face.
"Still, this happened right after we talked about being careful not to get covered in blood..."
"But Hirose-kun, wasn't it unavoidable in this case?"
Hiiragi-san spoke up to defend me, but Yuji shook his head.
"We had information that the minotaur's Roar uses air stored from a deep breath. We should have anticipated that if you decapitate it right before the Roar, the stored air would blast out through the windpipe."
"..."
"If it were our first time, that would be one thing, but we've fought minotaurs many times already. You should have been able to, say, kick the body away so the neck was pointing in a direction where no one was standing as you cut the head off."
...Yuji was right.
In that situation, instead of just running past the minotaur's side, I should have hit the corpse with a punch or a kick. If I had pushed it with my running momentum, the body of the dead minotaur would have fallen over easily.
I let out a heavy sigh, my shoulders slumped.
"...Kokonoe-kun."
"...Well, what can I say? After all is said and done, it just means we're still lacking experience."
"It seems so."
I thought we had gained a fair amount of combat experience by continuing to dive into the dungeon, but it seems we're still green. Things have been going well lately, and I got a new weapon, so I must have been getting carried away.
I needed to sharpen my focus. To psych myself up, I slapped both my cheeks hard with my hands.
"Alright! Now that we're done reflecting, let's collect the minotaur drop items and head back."
My cheeks stung because I slapped them a bit too hard, but I ignored the pain and called out to Yuji and Hiiragi-san about returning. Checking the time, I saw that over four hours had already passed since we started the dive.
"Ah, is it that time already?"
"Time really flies, doesn't it?"
Following my suggestion, Yuji and Hiiragi-san checked their own watches.
"Four hours of diving and we're at the 25th floor..."
"We were searching for stairs as we went. Next time we come, we'll be able to dive a bit deeper."
"That's right. If we use the shortest route, we should be able to get this deep in about three hours."
Though, I doubted there was any other party in this dungeon that could dive at this speed. Traps could be spotted at a glance with my Appraisal Analysis, and the presence of monsters could be detected in advance with Hiiragi-san's Presence Detection. On top of that, our individual combat power was high.
It was likely a diving speed that no other explorer party could replicate.
"By simple calculation, with a four-hour limit... the 30th floor is probably our limit for a dive."
"The 30th floor..."
"That's right on the edge of the middle floors."
The middle floors Hiiragi-san mentioned referred to the area from the 30th floor onward, as announced by the Dungeon Association on their website.
Before the general opening of the dungeon, exploration teams from the Self-Defense Forces and the police had confirmed the transition between the shallow floors and the middle floors. It was reported that from the middle floors, the quality of monsters and the lethality of traps increased, raising the danger level.
Furthermore, on the 29th floor, right before the 30th, a monster that could be called an area boss was said to be stationed there, blocking explorers from entering the middle floors. It was an area far out of reach for ordinary explorers who were still struggling in the shallow floors.
"The middle floors... the quality of drop items improves there too, right?"
"Yeah. Apparently, things like mid-grade recovery potions, which only rarely appear on the shallow floors, drop normally on the middle floors."
"Recovery potions... That reminds me, Kokonoe-kun."
"What is it?"
"Did you collect the money for the recovery potions from Shinohara-san and the others?"
"Oh yeah, that did happen... What's the status?"
Hiiragi-san's words made me realize something. Come to think of it, I hadn't told them the result.
"Of course I collected it. Through the Association, though."
"Through the Association?"
"It seems Shinohara-san and his group deposited the money for the recovery potions at the Association's counter, and it was transferred to my account under the label of medical expenses."
Two weeks after the incident, when I checked my bankbook, there was a transfer entry I didn't recognize. I confirmed it with the Association over the phone, so there was no mistake. The trial was still ongoing and no compensation had been paid yet, so I remember being impressed by how quickly they made the transfer.
Did it show just how grateful they were?
"So, the money for the recovery potions is fine. Sorry for forgetting to tell you."
I bowed slightly, apologizing for the lack of communication.
"No, as long as it was properly collected, it's fine."
"Kokonoe-kun, since you didn't say anything, I was worried they'd stiffed you for the potion money."
"Sorry for making you worry."
"Well, it's fine as long as you got it."
I bowed once more to Hiiragi-san. Reporting, informing, and consulting... it really was important.
"Well, putting that aside... the middle floors, huh."
"With the way we're doing day trips now, isn't exploring the middle floors impossible?"
"You're right. There's simply not enough time."
Currently, we were spending about eleven hours—nearly half a day—on dungeon exploration, including travel time. If we tried to extend our diving time any further, it would start causing various problems.
"Maybe during long school breaks like summer vacation, but with the current situation where we only come to the dungeon on Sundays, exploring the middle floors is impossible."
"Our school has classes on Saturdays, too."
"Going for an overnight dive from Saturday afternoon... that’s not happening."
Hiiragi-san shook her head, dismissing her own suggestion. Since Eiji-san and the others now had a proper understanding of the dungeon's reality, they wouldn't allow that. Considering how my own parents looked sour when I got home late from the dungeon, I didn't think they'd let me do an overnight dive unless it was during a long break.
"The shallow floors are the limit for the range we can explore on a day trip," I concluded.
It wasn't a limit of combat power, but an operational limit based on the time required to move between floors. It was a problem that could be solved by increasing diving time, but since we couldn't spare that time, it was our limit.
Yuji and Hiiragi-san must have reached the same conclusion, as they both nodded in agreement without offering any counterarguments.
After leaving the dungeon, we discussed our future strategy on the train ride home.
"For now, shall we plan to explore the middle floors during summer vacation?"
"Yeah. There's no need to force ourselves deeper at the moment anyway."
"I'm fine with that, but what about you, Hirose-kun? If you want to achieve the task of landing a single blow on Juzo-san, wouldn't fighting monsters on the middle floors be better experience than fighting those on the shallow floors?"
What Hiiragi-san said made sense. If Yuji wanted to land a hit on Juzo-san, it would be effective to gain combat experience against stronger opponents.
As Hiiragi-san and I looked to Yuji for an answer, he quietly shook his head.
"No. Looking at Daiki's mistake today, I think it's better for us to gain more experience against monsters on the lower floors."
"Uh..."
Was my mistake the reason?
"Of course, Daiki's mistake isn't the only reason. The lack of experience applies to all of us."
"..."
"Basically, as long as it's the kind of monsters that appear on the lower floors, there's almost no chance we'll lose in terms of raw power. But because of that, our clearing method has inevitably become a brute-force approach."
Well, I suppose that's true. When it comes to monsters on the lower floors, you can defeat them just by putting some weight behind a strike without needing any real technique.
"I think we should polish our techniques against lower floor monsters before we go to the middle floors where the quality of monsters goes up. And that includes ways to kill them without getting covered in blood."
"...True, Hirose-kun might be right. Looking back, our combat against monsters does tend to rely on brute strength."
"Yeah, I feel like we've been fighting by relying on our specs."
Since our physical abilities were enhanced by level ups, I usually just decapitated the monsters before they could even react.
"Right? So, I think it's better to polish our combat methods against lower floor monsters... including things like coordination and support."
Good combat methods, huh... Since our starting line in terms of combat power was so overwhelmingly advantageous compared to other explorers, we might not have picked up the kind of combat tricks that others learn.
Hiiragi-san and I looked at each other and nodded.
"Got it. If that's what you think, Yuji, I have no objections."
"Me neither."
Receiving our words, Yuji gave a silent nod. With that, our basic strategy was decided.
"Then, is it alright if we focus our exploration on the shallow floors until summer vacation?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, that sounds like a good plan."
Since everyone was in agreement, exploring the middle floors was officially put on hold until summer vacation.
After this, we discussed the policy in detail until we reached our local station, setting goals such as creating a full map of the shallow floors and defeating the area boss on the 29th floor. Among those, the first goal we set was defeating the area boss on the 29th floor. We should be able to manage that by the next dive, or at least the one after that.
"An area boss battle..."
Watching the lights of the streetlamps flash past the train window, I murmured softly to myself.