DAY 24: MORNING — INTERLUDE: DUNGEON

DAY 24

MORNING

I can hear a spooky noise at night, but they berated me when I said the inn was haunted.

INTERLUDE:
DUNGEON

 

WE FOUGHT—no matter what, we kept fighting. We had to gain levels. That’s what Haruka-kun asked us to do. We couldn’t help him directly, but at least we could do as he asked.

I caught my breath.

“Is that Lamaze breathing?” Oda-kun asked me.

I’m not pregnant!

Oda-kun took us to a mysterious dungeon. This was the secret to their high level. They told us that there wasn’t a better grinding spot than this.

I had no idea why dungeons existed in the first place. They made no sense, but Oda-kun said it was a good place to level, so I took his word for it.

I didn’t need to understand this place—this world made no sense to begin with. However, we all understood that we had to become more powerful. We didn’t know why we had to be stronger, but it was part of Haruka-kun’s plan.

“Where did that snake come from?! It’s wriggling toward me!”

“There are some monsters that you won’t sense with Presence Detection,” explained one of Oda-kun’s friends. “Keep your eyes peeled for them.”

Under Oda-kun’s supervision, we alternated fighting and planning.

“Swap the vanguard,” Oda-kun called. “Triangle plus one formation, but no thunder wall!”

“Aww,” I said, and saw blue sparks go out.

As we rested, they gave us lectures on skills, fine-tuned our stats, optimized our magic usage based on our fighting styles, and helped us acquire new skills. They taught us everything there was to know. It felt like they had visited this world before and had mastered its rules. Were they really from Japan? How did they know so much? Haruka-kun wasn’t kidding when he said that they had seriously prepared for being summoned to a fantasy world, even before we knew this place existed.

The first floor of the dungeon contained only goblins. They were easy to fight. The next floor was full of kobolds, but we weren’t scared of them anymore. There was a den of bluewolves on the third floor. They were a bit troublesome, but we took care of them. Eek! Next were gargantuan insects that looked like water bugs!

Everyone should have freaked out and started screaming and causing mayhem, but instead we exterminated them methodically. Gross, I’m not touching that. Whenever we slashed them, they spewed noxious effluvia all over the dungeon walls. Nonetheless, we kept killing them.

They weren’t strong, just gross. They weren’t even remotely dangerous. Frankly, they were beneath us. We didn’t have any close calls—these things couldn’t even make us flinch anymore.

Orcs roamed the warren of tunnels that made up the fifth floor of the dungeon. We were so grossed out by the bugs that we went all out fighting orcs.

The sixth floor was infested with nests of green snakes. They slipped past our Presence Detection and attacked from the shadows. We had no trouble dispatching them. We were stronger now. We killed the snakes whenever they attacked.

We were almost ready for the seventh floor. Our objective was to reach the twentieth floor by the end of the day. We didn’t care if that was too ambitious—it was our goal, and we’d reach it. This was all we could do.

It’s fine. Everyone seems fine. We’re definitely not pretending.

 

It was just about time to go back. We didn’t go past the seventeenth floor. According to Oda-kun, the monsters between the tenth and twenty-fifth floors were worth a roughly equal amount of experience. That meant we were in a great place for power leveling.

It wasn’t a challenge. We took all our pent-up emotions out on those poor monsters, and they never stood a chance.

“Like, these praying mantis monsters are no problem!” Shimazaki-san said.

The seventeenth floor was swarming with these mantises. They also sprayed bug juice everywhere when they were stabbed—even more juice than the bugs from the fourth floor. They look just like cockroaches! Don’t get any closer! Stay away from me!

“We’re out of time, so let’s get going,” said Oda-kun. “Swap the vanguard, split into two teams, and mop up any other monsters on the way back.”

After some initial confusion, a chorus of agreement rang out. Everyone kept pretending that everything was okay.

 

Most of us were almost level 50. Shimazaki-san and her friends, who were sharing experience points with Haruka-kun, were over level 60. We’d catch up to Oda-kun and his friends in a matter of days.

Everyone was determined to get stronger, single-mindedly focused on getting stronger, even though no one was really sure why. Are we really doing the right thing?

Everything will turn out fine. Let’s keep pretending that we feel fine.

 

From my bed, I could hear the others sobbing.