After changing into our gear, we met up with Kokonoe-senpai and Hirose-senpai and headed over to the free space where we could do our warm-ups—the final step before stepping into the dungeon.
However, the sight awaiting us made Suzune-chan and me look visibly disheartened.
"There are so many people..."
"You might think so, but this is actually on the better side. During long holiday breaks like summer vacation, there's literally no room to even move."
"Is that so...?"
Hearing Kokonoe-senpai's warning as his gaze drifted into the distance, Suzune-chan and I slumped our shoulders, overwhelmed just trying to imagine such a scene. Our upperclassmen had undoubtedly lived through those nightmarish crowds before.
"Well, today is your first day and it looks like we can secure a spot here, but during peak seasons when there are too many people to find space for warm-ups, it's best to use a rental room. If it's just for a short time, it doesn't cost much. It's a small expense, but it's far better than going inside without warming up. If you don't stretch properly, your reflexes get sluggish, which can lead to serious injuries like pulled muscles or torn tendons. Never skip warming up just because space is tight."
With that, Kokonoe-senpai shared several cautionary tales about the fates of explorers who had neglected their warm-ups before heading into the dungeon.
One explorer's initial reaction was delayed, causing them to fail to dodge a monster's attack and suffer grievous injuries. Another hadn't fastened their armor securely, and it flew off during a sudden sprint, injuring them. Yet another was a middle-aged explorer whose Achilles tendon snapped the moment he took his first stride.
"I didn't know they had rental spaces here."
"Yeah. Aside from warm-ups, people use them for all sorts of things—like party strategy meetings before entering the dungeon, or coordinating teamwork for temporary parties. They have plenty of small rooms in addition to the large ones, so even if they're full, a small room usually opens up quickly if you wait a bit."
"I see..."
"It might feel like a painful expense for a newcomer explorer's wallet, but being stingy over a few hundred yen only to end up severely injured is completely putting the cart before the horse. As people gain experience, some explorers rush straight in thinking warm-ups are trivial, but that mindset will eventually come back to bite them hard."
Listening to Kokonoe-senpai, Suzune-chan and I glanced over at the bustling free space. This level of crowding was still manageable, but if it got any more packed, I could easily see why someone might give up on warming up and plunge straight into the dungeon.
Still, just as Kokonoe-senpai said, suffering a terrible injury on a dive just to save a little time and money defeated the entire point. I had heard minor injuries could be healed quickly with a recovery potion, but those cost around ten thousand yen each. Honestly, paying for a rental space seemed far more sensible.
"Understood. Even if it's packed, we'll make sure never to skip our warm-ups."
"That's the spirit. Well then, shall we get started?"
"Right... Ah, a spot just opened up over there!"
"Looks like it. Let's grab it before someone else does."
We managed to secure enough room to go through our radio calisthenics and stretching exercises. Since we couldn't play music, we simply matched each other's pace, wrapping everything up in about fifteen minutes.
With our warm-ups finished, we finally made our way toward the building housing the dungeon's Entrance Gate.
After one last restroom break, we followed Kokonoe-senpai and the others inside the building, where a massive queue had already formed. Given the crowd back at reception, it was only natural that the dungeon entrance itself would have a line.
Even so... another wait, huh?
"All right, let's line up at the back. You'll need your Explorer Cards to pass through the Entrance Gate, so make sure yours are ready to present at a moment's notice. If you fumble around at the turnstile, the people behind you are going to glare holes through your back."
"Got it. But seeing it like this... even though it's the entrance to a dungeon, it really looks like a train station's ticket gates during the morning rush, doesn't it?"
"Ah, that's it! I was trying to put my finger on what this reminded me of."
Watching explorers tap their cards against the authentication machines at the Entrance Gate before filing through gave me a sudden sense of déjà vu. Suzune-chan nodded in agreement when I pointed out the resemblance to a morning commute.
So this is how explorers commute to work...
"Haha, yeah, pretty much. Anyway, come on, let's get in line."
Right.
We joined the end of the queue, shuffling steadily toward the dungeon entrance at a leisurely pace.
In less than ten minutes, our turn arrived. For Kokonoe-senpai and the veterans, it was second nature; they tapped their cards against the gate's authentication machine with practiced ease and passed right through. Suzune-chan and I, keenly aware that crossing this threshold meant truly entering the dungeon, hesitated for a split second before pressing our brand-new Explorer Cards against the scanner with slightly trembling hands.
"All right, everyone made it through safely. Tatebayashi-san, Hino-san, we're officially entering the dungeon."
Y-Yes!
"There are plenty of other explorers near the entrance, so it won't be particularly dangerous, but you're inside a dungeon all the same. Never let your guard down. Remember your training and stay vigilant of your surroundings at all times... Understood?"
...Yes!
Though our eyes still wavered with anxiety, Suzune-chan and I steeled our resolve and answered while looking our upperclassmen straight in the eye.
We had finally made it this far. We had endured brutal training with our seniors, so we could do this. We just had to remember what we learned, stay alert, and do our best!
Even after stepping inside, we spent our first few minutes following the traveling queue formed by the massive crowd of explorers. Naturally, parties maintained a gap of several meters between one another in case a monster spawned nearby, but because of the sheer volume of people, a continuous stream of figures stretched far into the distance.
In other words, the scenery wasn't all that different from waiting outside the Entrance Gate. After getting so fired up at the entrance, it was a bit of an anticlimax...
"It really doesn't feel like we're inside a dungeon."
"Yeah, the line just keeps going and going."
"Well, that's fair. This corridor is the shortest route to the stairs leading down to the next floor, so explorers who want to move fast naturally congregate here. Even so, that doesn't change the fact that we're inside a dungeon, okay? If you get careless, a monster might spawn from the shadows of the passage and ambush you... and that'll be the end of it."
With the surroundings barely differing from the queue outside, Suzune-chan and I began to lose our edge, feeling that this was nothing like the dungeon we had envisioned. Being paralyzed by nerves was bad, but growing complacent was worse—yet with the line dragging on endlessly, keeping our focus sharp was easier said than done.
Kokonoe-senpai had warned us that newcomer explorers often got hurt because they let their guard down in situations like this, but maintaining high vigilance when nothing was happening was genuinely tough. Mika-chan and Saori-chan were casually scanning their surroundings with relaxed, steady expressions. Would we be able to do the same once we gained more experience?
Ah, right.
"I know it's easy to lose focus when the line stretches on like this, but these queues aren't unique to this floor, you know."
...Huh?
"Mhm. Just like Onii-chan said, this queue continues all the way down to around the 10th floor. Asami-chan, Suzune-chan, you'd better get used to it."
According to Kokonoe-senpai, this path was the quickest course to the lower levels, and as Mika-chan noted, the floor traveling queue persisted until roughly the 10th floor. Below the 10th floor, explorers dispersed across various hunting grounds, thinning the crowds out considerably. But for beginner explorers who hadn't yet reached the mid-level tier, relying on this traveling queue was practically the only safe way to descend.
With this many explorers packed together, any stray monster that spawned would instantly be swarmed and beaten down without anyone getting hurt. The downside, of course, was the agonizingly slow pace... A real double-edged sword.
"Also, make sure you don't cause a bottleneck while moving in the traveling queue. Every now and then, a newcomer party lets their pride get the better of them and tries to take down a monster entirely on their own, stalling the entire line. The boos and heckling they get when that happens are brutal."
Kokonoe-senpai shared this common rookie blunder as a word of warning. If a newcomer explorer party struggled and took forever to dispatch a monster in a line this long, a massive traffic jam was inevitable. A ten-minute skirmish at the front could easily translate to an hour-long delay for the people at the back.
It was just like the holiday traffic jams on expressways during Obon or New Year's—a tiny hiccup cascading until it created a gridlock spanning dozens of kilometers.
"If you take too long, complaints will fly from every direction: 'You're not ready for the next floor!' and stuff like that. And honestly, if you actually had the strength to survive down there, you wouldn't be struggling in the first place."
"It sounds harsh, but I suppose we should take it as well-meant advice?"
"You should. Taking too long even while mobbing a monster alongside other parties simply proves you lack the necessary skill. Heading deeper to fight higher-tier monsters without the ability to back it up is how people end up maimed—or worse."
While receiving warnings was better than nothing, I wondered if stubborn rookie parties actually took the advice to heart in the heat of the moment.
"In a way, it's a safe chance to test whether your strength holds up for the lower levels, but you shouldn't use the queue for that. It inconveniences everyone around you, and if you deliberately cause disruptions, the other explorers will completely ostracize you. If that happens, no one will lift a finger to help you when things go south."
"They might step in at the very last second, but by then you could be horribly injured, or they might refuse to spare any recovery potions."
...Yeah, we definitely won't do that.
Faced with Mika-chan and Saori-chan's dead-serious gazes, Suzune-chan and I nodded emphatically.
The two of them had almost certainly witnessed people make that exact mistake before.
"All right, you two. We'll be stepping out of the traveling queue in a bit. Stay alert so you're ready no matter where a monster appears."
Understood!
"You probably won't run into anything immediately after leaving the line, so try not to exhaust yourselves from pure tension."
Yes!
After marching along with the floor traveling queue for another five minutes, we broke away from the crowd to begin our dungeon exploration in earnest. This was where our real adventure began!
Once clear of the main thoroughfare, we settled into formation: Mika-chan and Saori-chan took the vanguard, Suzune-chan and I held the middle, and Kokonoe-senpai and Hirose-senpai brought up the rear.
Our objective for today was simple: get Suzune-chan and me accustomed to the dungeon's atmosphere, and test our aptitude by defeating monsters to see if we were cut out to be explorers.
"First, I want the two of you to get used to the unique atmosphere down here. You might not have noticed it earlier because of the crowd in the floor traveling queue, but what do you think? It feels completely different from before, right?"
...
At Kokonoe-senpai's prompt, Suzune-chan and I looked around, our faces a mix of surprise and bewilderment.
We couldn't quite put our finger on why, but the air felt undeniably distinct.
"Um, I don't know how to explain it, but... something feels off, right? I know it's dim, but... huh?"
"Yeah. It feels really weird."
"Looks like both of you picked up on it. Here's a hint: try listening closely in that direction—toward the floor traveling queue we just left."
...Wait, what?
Straining our ears in the direction Kokonoe-senpai pointed, Suzune-chan and I tilted our heads in confusion.
"Even though it was so packed and noisy over there, we can't hear anything?"
"It's true. I thought it was pretty loud earlier, but now there's not a single sound."
"That's the source of the uncanny feeling you're experiencing. The interior of a dungeon has an absurdly high sound absorption rate. Once you step even slightly away, regular speaking voices become almost completely inaudible. To see what I mean, why don't we all close our eyes and stay quiet for a second?"
Kokonoe-senpai brought an index finger to his lips, signaling for quiet. We all closed our eyes, held our positions, and fell completely silent.
Instantly, every scrap of ambient noise vanished. The surrounding space plunged into a silence so absolute it was almost painful, broken only by the faint, muffled sound of our own quiet breathing.
...
An inexplicable wave of dread welled up inside my chest. Everyone was supposed to be standing right beside me, yet it felt as though I had been abandoned entirely alone in an endless void of darkness. I tried to call out to the others, but my throat seized up; I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt glued shut.
Just before my panic could boil over, the crisp crack of Kokonoe-senpai's kashiwade clap shattered the spell, dragging me back to reality.
"All right, that's enough."
...gasp... pant, pant...
Breathing raggedly, Suzune-chan and I looked around in a panic, letting out massive sighs of relief upon seeing our companions standing right there. We had grown careless because of the traveling queue—what a joke! Calling this place a boring, harmless hallway couldn't have been further from the truth!
And so, Suzune-chan and I received our very first baptism by the dungeon—delivered not by a monster or a trap, but by the oppressive weight of the environment itself.