Chapter 6

Chapter  6

After passing through the frozen cave, we arrived at the site of the next trial.

“Wow, it’s huge.”

The first thing we saw was a vast forest blanketed in white snow.

It was not outdoors, but rather a cavern as wide as a football dome, with light filtering in through large and small cracks in the ceiling.

Beneath that seeping light, the forest covered in soft white snow gave off a strangely cozy feeling.

“It’s pretty, right?”

[It is. Though you might feel differently once you actually take the test.]

The theme of this trial was the “Dungeon.”

This forest was a space made to imitate the ecosystem and various effects of a dungeon.

[It is easier than the first floor, but it will still be plenty difficult for people experiencing it for the first time.]

The dungeon, the main setting of Ethrana Exodus, was an underground space that descended in vertical layers.

Naturally, the farther down one went, the more the difficulty rose exponentially, and one had to suffer major and minor side effects from the field effects.

“Side effects?”

[The mana in the dungeon puts a strain on the body.]

The deeper the dungeon floor, the more the density and pressure of mana gradually increased, and when that seeped into the body, it caused a range of side effects.

At the lighter end, there was dizziness, but the farther down one went, the symptoms progressed into sensory loss, decay, mental corruption, and more.

Worse, those side effects did not appear one floor at a time. They stacked with all the side effects from the upper floors as well, so if someone recklessly descended, they could die.

“Then how do you overcome the side effects?”

[It’s nothing special. You just level up.]

“Level... up?”

It sounded grand when put that way, but it was basically just an entry requirement.

The way to overcome it was not complicated either. You simply had to increase the amount of mana in your body.

Since the side effects were caused by the dungeon’s mana density, you overcame them by increasing your internal mana to withstand it. That act of increasing your mana was what people commonly called leveling up.

In that sense, the fourth trial was also a leveling tutorial.

[If you look around nearby, there should be monsters. When you kill them, they drop something called a mana stone. Bring those back, and I can raise your level.]

“If you mean monsters... those things?”

There really were fluffy lumps rolling around nearby that looked like snow rabbits.

Their proper name was Seolto.

They looked cute, but underestimating them would be a mistake. Contrary to their appearance, they were creatures with terrifying combat power.

[That’s right. Things like those are commonly called neutral mobs. No, neutral monsters?]

“Okay, got it! But what exactly is a level?”

So I had to explain that too.

Come to think of it, “level” was just a concept created to make explanations easier, so maybe it really did not exist in reality.

[It’s a measure of how many mana stones you’ve consumed.]

“Wow, then the higher it is, the more of a pig you are?”

Now that was certainly a novel perspective.

Well, levels did increase by absorbing mana stones, so saying high level = mana stone pig was not exactly wrong.

‘Though it’s not like you can eat them endlessly like a pig.’

This trash game had a limit on how many mana stones you could absorb at once.

If you recklessly increased your mana, your body could not withstand it and would burst apart. At least, that was how I remembered the setting.

‘Needlessly realistic.’

There was nothing special about increasing that limit. You just had to spend mana extravagantly through skills or whatever else and accumulate experience.

As you did, your body gradually adapted to the increased mana, and your maximum capacity slowly rose.

Then someone might ask, what about Swap? Well, that was a bug from the start, so it solved even that problem all at once.

That was why Swap was so overpowered.

“But even now, I don’t really feel anything strange. I’m not dizzy, and my body doesn’t hurt.”

[That’s because your level is way too high compared to this field.]

Right now, Ishara’s overall level had been inflated by Swap, so her specs were far too high for a place like this.

Even by the commonly used “Star Rank,” she was comfortably above one star.

Judging by mana capacity alone, she could have gone straight into active duty on the first floor right away.

She had already cleared the cutoff by a wide margin, so it was only natural that she felt no side effects.

[Normally, this is where you would grow through hunting, but....]

But once your specs already met the requirement, there was no reason to stop there.

Veterans had their own methods.

[Let’s hunt something a little more unusual.]

“Something unusual?”

[Do you happen to know what a hidden piece is?]

There was a special reward hidden in this trial.

Its acquisition difficulty was so high that you were originally supposed to come back after graduation and after raising your specs, but who did they think I was?

When it came to game elements, I was the sort of veteran who licked up every last tiny detail.

Naturally, I knew how to obtain it even on an early run.

[There’s a field boss here, and if you kill it, you can get a pretty useful reward.]

In truth, “useful” did not begin to cover it.

If you got this, half the early-game obstacles were solved.

“So I just have to kill the strongest one here? Hmm~”

[That’s right. It will be difficult, but with you, it should be more than─]

“This sounds fun, doesn’t it?”

[You can do it.... Hm?]

I had not expected her to be frightened.

Still, I thought she would at least hesitate. But instead of wavering, Ishara merely smiled like a mischievous child and softly gripped her sword hilt.

[Aren’t you scared?]

“You only suggested it because it’s something I can do, right?”

[That is true, but.]

“If it’s something I can do, why would I need to be scared?”

That really was remarkably clear logic.

It was nice that it saved me the trouble of persuading her, but I could not help feeling strangely unsettled.

It had not even been a week since we met.

It was hard to believe that this much trust could have taken root in such a short span of time.

‘Well, good is good, I guess.’

I decided not to think too deeply about it.

I was not used to the feeling of being trusted, so maybe the suspicion came from that.

Or maybe Ishara’s personality was just that wonderfully offbeat.

Shaking off the stray thoughts, we crossed the snow-covered forest and headed deeper inside.

[There it is.]

After wandering through the forest for about an hour, we finally found the field boss.

A giant snowman covered in white fur.

Its proper name was Sasquatch, and it was a fairly troublesome creature that required about mid-first-floor specs to defeat.

“Wow, it’s big.”

Sasquatch was roughly four to five meters tall.

To look at a fist as big as its own body and say only, “Wow, it’s big.”

That was one impressive set of nerves.

[From now on, I’ll teach you the easiest way to defeat an enemy.]

“Hm? What is it?”

[Dodge everything and land every hit.]

“?”

Ishara glanced down at me for a moment.

Her expression clearly said, What kind of nonsense are you talking about?

[Watch.]

What I was about to attempt was an expanded transmission.

Not a fragmentary transfer like with the Knight Puppet, but a wholesale implantation of the knowledge I possessed into Ishara all at once.

“This is....”

Together with a faint glow, I could feel the knowledge I had accumulated flowing into her.

What did it feel like to have something that was not your own carved into your soul?

I did not know, but judging by Ishara slowly closing her eyes and surrendering herself to the sensation, it did not seem all that unpleasant.

‘Maybe it’s a good thing I’m a fairy.’

Knowing the game’s knowledge and replicating it in reality were two different matters.

If I had been a human instead of a sword, I would have had enormous difficulty putting what I knew into practice.

No matter how well you imagined it, it was useless if your body could not keep up.

All of my knowledge was technique forged through countless deaths, so if I, rather than Ishara, had tried to use it, I might have run headfirst into a brutal death ending in an instant.

“Ah....”

She opened her eyes.

Gripping her sword tightly, she stopped hiding her presence and revealed herself openly before the boss.

“So this is how you do it?”

There was no fear in her face.

It held only a smile, shining clear with confidence.

[From here on, a lot will be different.]

The tutorial was short and time was tight, so the lesson had no choice but to proceed as an accelerated course.

[Just because you learned it in your head doesn’t mean you’re done. I’ll teach you how to use it and how to adapt it all, so don’t miss a thing. Follow closely.]

“Okay!”

I flew a step forward and took my stance, and Ishara reproduced it exactly.

From this moment on, Ishara would grasp the core of how to handle not just momentary reactions, but every situation.

The very essence I had used to conquer the world, and with which I had finally reached its final chapter.

─ROOOAAAR!!

The snowman that had spotted us let out a roar and charged.

I stepped toward it and finished preparing the first strike.

[Let’s go.]

It was time to begin the hunt.

***

Cold.

Persica rubbed her shivering body and let out a white breath through her teeth.

It was fortunate that she had dressed warmly before departing. Among the other participants, some were already beginning to freeze to death one by one.

“So this is the next testing ground.”

A forest thickly piled with white snow.

Maybe it was her imagination, but it felt even colder than before.

“The others....”

They had all departed together after finishing the third trial, but somewhere along the way, their numbers had dropped considerably.

Two-tenths had been eliminated in the first trial, and not a small number had died fighting the Knight Puppet.

The examinees, who had once numbered over a hundred, had now been reduced by more than half.

“A t-tree! Light a fire first!”

Persica stopped the people who were trying to start a fire because they could not endure the cold.

She had a rough idea of the trial’s contents, so she also knew what existed in this place.

“There’s a field boss here. If you light something like a fire, you’ll attract its attention immediately.”

Sasquatch. That snowman was incomparably stronger than something like the Knight Puppet.

If they charged at it, puffed up with confidence because they had passed the trial, becoming corpses would be the likeliest outcome.

“Is the field boss really that difficult? Even so, there are dozens of people here.”

“T-that’s right! If we join forces and kill it....!”

“At this rate, we’re all going to freeze to death!”

What a pack of fools.

Persica let out a sigh that seemed to boil up from inside her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You need to be at least an active adventurer to kill that thing, and you think a bunch of applicants can do it by themselves?”

“B-but you’re from House Ortanis...!”

“And why should I take that kind of risk?”

If she were in perfect condition, that would be one thing, but now was not the time.

Her body had stiffened from the cold, and on top of that, she had been feeling a strange dizziness and weakness for a while now.

‘The dungeon’s side effects.’

It was weaker than the first floor, so it was bearable, but that did not make it any less irritating.

The idea of fighting while dealing with that was absurd.

‘I did hear it gives a good relic....’

Since there were no meaningless ordeals in the Selection Grounds, it was the prevailing theory that defeating the boss awarded something.

However, no one had yet discovered exactly what it gave.

Only a handful of people had ever killed it, and information of that caliber was confidential among the confidential, so even the highest nobility had no way to uncover it.

‘Or maybe they kept it secret on purpose.’

In truth, if it was House Ortanis, it would not have been strange for them to know, but Persica had received no such information.

“If you want to kill yourselves, do it among yourselves. I’m not interested.”

“......”

A heavy silence fell.

Dominic, who stood beside her, shook his head and spoke to the fairies.

“Fairies. Wouldn’t it be better to explain the trial first?”

The fairies, who had been reading the room, took the chance and began speaking to their masters.

Since fairies that had completed materialization were visible even to others, it suddenly felt as though the number of people had doubled, and the area grew noisy on all sides.

[W-well then! I’ll explain too, milady!]

Cecil, Persica’s fairy, forced a smile and continued the explanation.

[The trial itself is simple! Hunt the neutral monsters that inhabit this place, and strengthen your body with the mana stones they drop.]

“...Understood.”

Persica shook her pounding head and gripped her sword tightly.

The true side effects of the first floor were far worse than this. She needed to overcome something like this quickly.

“Are you ready? Then let us hurry and move─”

Just as she was about to act together with Dominic, who had likewise finished preparing, the ground beneath their feet shook violently.

THUD. THUD. Along with the approaching tremors, the crashing sound of trees snapping in the distance rang out loudly.

“W-what is that?”

“I think something’s coming....”

People began to panic.

Persica turned toward Cecil, but the fairy seemed just as clueless, with question marks practically floating over her head.

“...No way.”

As she watched the scene, one thought came to Persica, and she hurriedly stared beyond the forest.

“It seems milady was right.”

Now they could clearly see what was approaching.

The field boss, Sasquatch, was rampaging wildly as it charged toward them.

[Hiiik! Why is the field boss suddenly coming this way...!?]

“Damn it!”

There was no knowing why the Sasquatch, which should have been deep in the forest, had run all the way to the entrance of the testing ground, but judging by its speed, it was already too late to run.

People who had screamed in terror hurriedly snatched up their weapons, and Persica raised her sword as well.

“Wait. Something is a little strange with its condition.”

“What?”

However, Dominic, who had been watching Sasquatch closely, noticed that something about its behavior was off.

It was staggering, covered in blood, wildly swinging both arms.

Rather than attacking, it looked as though it was fighting something.

“What in the....”

─ROOOOAAAGH!!!

The moment it came right up to them, they saw it too.

A form very small compared to Sasquatch.

A certain “person” was fighting it head-on.

“Haaat!”

A spirited shout rang out.

She narrowly avoided the foot it brought down, then precisely severed the arm that swung at her with a single slash.

Blood spurted, and a scream of agony burst out.

“That is....”

The figure twisted her body lightly, ran up a nearby tree, planted her foot on the topmost branch, and leaped.

The silver blade, drawn back with all her strength, pierced the snowman’s head like a streak of lightning.

─Kuuuuh....

THUD!

It fell.

In the swirling snowstorm, not only Persica, but everyone watching, stared with their eyes wide open.

The moment they saw the snowman, they realized it was not something placed there to be defeated, and the fact that someone had killed it “alone” shocked them so deeply that their thoughts stopped altogether.

And then—“Ahaha! I got it─!”

[Hm. I’d say this is a passing score, at least.]

The instant they saw Ishara laughing as she pulled out her bloodstained sword, and the fairy beside her collecting a mana stone the size of a fist—“Ah...?”

Persica finally let the sword she was holding slip from her hand.