Chapter 2: Encirclement to Departure

The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 2:
Encirclement to Departure

THE NEXT DAY, Loren and Lapis set out to meet with their client—the Wolfe Adventurer Training Academy. Loren had been a little concerned about whether the previous night’s adventurers would renege on their vows and come seeking retribution, but it seemed that had been a needless concern on his part. He’d spent a peaceful night in the inn with ample rest and peace of mind.

For the first time in his life, Loren entered a school—he hadn’t even really seen one before. For argument’s sake, he understood that a school was a place where children learned to be wise, cultured, and experienced. But because Loren had been with the mercenary company by the time he knew his own name, he had never attended one.

Mercenaries generally had little in the way of schooling, and many of them couldn’t read or even do basic calculations. In Loren’s case, not knowing how to read or crunch numbers would have been an issue when it came to negotiating work contracts—or at least, that was the reason the company’s clerical manager had given when he insisted on teaching Loren.

“The more I hear about your company, the more I think it must have been quite the sophisticated operation,” Lapis said, sounding eminently intrigued as she passed through the gates beside him. “I’ve never heard of a brigade that offered its members such a degree of education.”

“You think so? It was pretty normal for us. I mean, given the industry and all, we had our fair share of mean folk, but most of our men could read, and a good number could at least write their own names.”

“You must understand, that’s a feat in itself. If you did a circuit of the sticks asking the villagers to write their names, you’d find hardly a single one who could.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t have to sign contracts.”

“I really don’t think that’s the problem.”

For the most part, children weren’t provided access to proper education. Lapis noted that in a number of countries, only the nobility were even afforded the opportunity. She seemed to find the fact that an organization as humble as a mercenary company had done so to be more abnormal than special.

“Your captain was either exceptional or utterly mad…”

“Hey, Lapis. What do you reckon that is?” Loren tiredly dragged Lapis back to reality before she could spiral any deeper into her thoughts. She looked in the direction of his finger. He had indicated a crowd of people raising a ruckus, and a shrill one at that.

Something had clearly attracted the attention of a multitude of people—mainly young women. Loren couldn’t see what they were crowding around from the fringe, though given that the cheers and shrieks were nearly at peak intensity, he was sure it had to be astonishing.

“This is a school, right?” he asked.

“Supposedly. Perhaps they’re on recess or an independent study period—you wouldn’t ever see something like this during class time.”

But it was still early morning, and it was a little hard to imagine it was already time for a break.

And shouldn’t there be teachers rounding them up? Loren thought, looking around.

Indeed, he spotted a few teacher-looking individuals, but they all seemed more resigned than anything, as if they were tacitly accepting that this riot was frankly inevitable. They watched from afar, and not a single one tried to break up the crowd.

“What could it be?” Lapis mused.

“Who knows. Guess it’s got nothing to do with us.” Loren had only brought it up because he noticed it, but he swiftly lost interest.

Then, suddenly, there was a movement within the crowd. Whatever had been in the center was now parting the sea of people, attempting to venture into the outside world. This much was obvious, yet each time the crowd moved, the shrill cries seemed to rise in volume. Merely touching that moving thing seemed to spark joy.

“Something’s coming out,” Lapis said.

“More like hatching,” said Loren.

The edge of the crowd finally broke away, revealing a redheaded man in a ceremonial navy-blue suit. He looked a little younger than Loren, and both Lapis and Loren knew him well. They were still taken aback at the phenomenon of his rebirth.

“Ah, I found you at just the right time,” the man said. “You’re going to get the details on the job, right? Let me go with you.”

“Claes? I know we’re on the same quest and all, so I’m not gonna ask why you’re here. But what the hell were you doing in there?”

It seemed that breaking free of the crowd had been considerably tiring, and even prettied up as he was, Claes couldn’t conceal his fatigue. The swarm of girls behind him continued to stare longingly after him, their eyes glistening with envy and affection.

Claes dutifully paid them no mind as he replied to Loren. “Well, I told you this is my alma mater, right? It’s been a while since I came here, so I thought I’d dress up a bit…and then I got mobbed.”

“That mob of yours is still waiting right behind you.”

“Hoo boy. You still have class, don’t you?” he called to the herd. “I have to go discuss work with the headmaster.”

“Will you be overseeing the labyrinth exam?!” one of the girls asked, and the others around her grew visibly excited.

Holding up his hands to preemptively fend off another round of swarming, Claes smiled tightly. “Something like that—though the headmaster has the final say. So, uh…ah, hey, Loren! Don’t just leave me behind!”

Why is this my problem now? Loren thought when Claes called out before he could leave unnoticed. He turned back to Claes, looking rather peeved.

Claes’s adoring crowd eyed Loren with open enmity as Claes jogged over to him.

“We’re on the same quest,” said Claes. “What’s wrong with going together?”

“You seemed occupied. We can take care of ourselves, so why not keep your cute underclassmen company for a bit, and—hold up. Where’s your party?”

“When I said I was going to the academy, they told me to go alone. I don’t know why, but they hate coming here—even though we all graduated together.”

Of course they hate it, thought Loren as he glanced at the wave of hostile eyes behind Claes.

For whatever reason, it seemed the man called Claes was enormously popular with the student body. It was easy to imagine any woman receiving a truly menacing amount of hate simply for being in his general vicinity.

“Anyways, this is my school, so I want to show you around. Isn’t that reason enough to take me with you?” Claes closed in, adding in a whisper, “Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll get away at this rate.”

Loren still saw this as a pain, but it also occurred to him then that while this school principally recruited those of talent, not a few individuals in the student body were the offspring of powerful individuals. If Claes happened to get on their bad side, there was no telling what awaited him. Maybe that was why he couldn’t take a strong stance against all this attention. In short, he suddenly seemed too pitiful to ignore.

“Fine, fine. Let’s go.”

Loren grabbed Claes by the shoulder, roughly pushing him into the lead.

A chorus of protests followed them.

“What are you doing to Claes?!”

“Don’t touch him with those filthy hands of yours!”

“Where are you taking Claes? I haven’t finished talking to him yet!”

Claes turned pale at the words chasing them up the steps. He was well aware that Loren was the sort of person whom it was generally dangerous to insult. And this particular barrage was entirely Claes’s fault. He somewhat frantically turned, seeming about to throw himself back to the wolves, but Loren acted first.

He turned to face the students, and something within his stance, his aura, silenced them instantly. While he didn’t speak with much in the way of volume, his tone carried clear across the crowd.

“Quit your yapping, or I’ll quit it for you.”

He didn’t so much as reach for the sword on his back, but the clear threat in his voice caused the girls to turn pale. Worse, a number of the ones closest to the steps collapsed, fainting on the spot. Conscious and otherwise, several students wet their skirts and trousers, a few falling into outright panic.

What followed was a chorus of crying, screaming, and enraged yells. Loren was startled, to say the least. He understood he had been the cause of this outburst, but he had only intended to intimidate them into leaving. Swooning and incontinence had not been part of the plan.

“Aren’t they a bit fragile to be your peers?”

“No, you’ve got my blood running cold too,” Claes stammered.

Meanwhile, Lapis peered at Loren with a baffled expression. His attempt at intimidation hadn’t hit her as it had everyone else—it was more that she seemed suspicious that something truly extraordinary had unfolded right before her eyes.

Did I do something weird? Loren wondered as Scena popped up in the corner of his eye.

<Perhaps I shouldn’t have mixed a dash of Lifeless King into your aura.> She smiled.

What are you doing? Loren sighed, but she flitted around his field of view, making a face as if she couldn’t contain her irritation.

Loren didn’t really know how to respond. A part of him felt a little happy she had gotten angry for his sake, but this chaos felt a bit out of hand.

I appreciate the sentiment, but let’s tone it down next time, he told her. And while she didn’t look convinced, she nodded and disappeared once more.

“I have the strangest feeling. Like I just sensed a flash of an ominous presence,” Lapis said flatly, staring at him.

Presumably, Scena had only exercised a mote of power and for just a split second, yet Lapis had picked up on it. Astonished as he was by her sensitivity, Loren played dumb. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Oh, really? Perhaps I’m imagining…no, perhaps you’re genuinely just a profoundly terrifying person, Mr. Loren. Enough so that you can induce such a disaster with a mere threat.”

“These students are just delicate. I mean, we’re all battle-hardened survivors. Guess I’m just a bit much for brats who’ve never seen real combat.”

Lapis still didn’t seem convinced, but she also didn’t offer any other explanations. While she cocked her head quizzically, she didn’t pry further. “Is that how it works? In any case, back to work.”

“The headmaster’s office, right?” said Claes. “I’ll take you there. Follow me.”

With Claes leading the way, Lapis and Loren whispered between themselves.

“Ain’t he acting a bit too friendly? At least, compared to how he was when we first met him?”

“How should I put this? I’m starting to think he’s bottling it up and waiting for the opportune moment to stab us in the back.”

“Can’t you just say I’ve turned over a new leaf? Not that I care…” Claes muttered.

Whichever it was, having a graduate at the lead meant they wouldn’t lose their way. While his shoulders drooped, it didn’t seem like Claes was about to abandon them, and soon they were free of the chaos.

“The Wolfe Adventurer Training Academy was founded three hundred years ago in honor of the adventurer after whom it was named,” Claes explained as they walked, though no one had asked him.

Lapis quietly listened, always eager to collect a new piece of knowledge. As for Loren, the name of some guy from hundreds of years ago did little to entice his interest.

Generally speaking, those in the mercenary profession tended to think simply and in terms of the immediate. Very few thought about the future. Loren shared this mindset for the most part. The clerical manager in charge of Loren’s education had told him day after day to fix that habit, and he had reconfigured himself somewhat. However, his tendency to focus only on the tangible present often came out when he was dealing with matters in which he had absolutely no interest.

Maybe that’s why my wallet’s so light, Loren thought as Claes’s explanation went on.

“I don’t think I need to tell you about Wolfe, do I? I could regale you with his achievements for days, and it’s no exaggeration to say that almost everyone in this academy aims to someday measure up to his legend.”

“Could you please tell me what he achieved? Unfortunately, my priest training has left me rather estranged from general world knowledge,” Lapis said, although Loren suspected that she was lying out her ass.

In the first place, Lapis was, in truth, a demon—a race that lived in solitude and secrecy in a small but well-guarded territory. Honestly, he doubted she had completed any holy training whatsoever.

On top of this, Lapis was the sort of girl who never held back on her preliminary investigations. She had known they were headed to Wolfe Academy from the first, and it would have struck him as highly unusual if she hadn’t already looked into every aspect of the place.

That left him asking why she was making Claes explain anything at all. Seeming to sense his concern, she leaned over to answer this in a whisper. “I’m just checking my answers.”

That made sense. It was always worth comparing your intel with what others had been told.

“Well, let’s see,” said Claes. “It was too long ago to say whether this is entirely true, but several records credit him with slaying a dragon, and there are tons of accounts of him discovering ruins of the ancient kingdom. Also, he hunted down and sealed away a dark god.”

“Have you ever wondered if it was all made up?” Lapis asked, entirely sans tact.

When they’d first met Claes, he would have been infuriated by someone questioning the authenticity of an adventurer he respected, but it seemed he really had matured. He smiled wryly, and he didn’t even raise his voice. “I can’t blame you for wondering that. But numerous sources have come to consensus on his deeds. And then there’s the labyrinth beneath the academy.”

“What about it?” Loren asked. As the conversation had segued into something relevant to his work, his interest had reignited.

Claes seemed a bit taken aback by his sudden return to the conversation, but he carried on with a smile. “It’s said that Wolfe himself created the labyrinth beneath the academy.”

“You don’t mean he dug it, do you?” asked Loren. Though that’s quite an achievement too.

It just didn’t seem like the kind of accomplishment that adventurers were usually credited with.

“Apparently, he took control of a preexisting labyrinth.”

“You can do that?”

“Some say he figured out the inner workings of the labyrinth’s core, but there are no records left of that. The thing is, if you look around the labyrinth, you’ll see why people think that just might be true.”

Claes went on to explain that the labyrinth beneath the academy was divided into distinct sections—as if it had been organized in terms of difficulty. It seemed to be almost deliberately designed to be a training ground, which had led people to believe that Wolfe had left it behind for the sake of future adventurers.

The shallow floors were relatively safe, while the danger rose the deeper one went. This was the same for other labyrinths too, which led Lapis to ask if this one was really anything special.

“Our labyrinth is ten floors deep, but you can usually only get to the ninth,” said Claes by way of explanation. “You can’t enter the tenth without the headmaster’s permission.”

“Are you saying the proof of Mr. Wolfe’s achievements is on the tenth?”

“I am. I only saw it once before I graduated, mind you. But if you do your job right, and your examinees reach the ninth floor, you’ll be rewarded with entrance to the tenth. They get the headmaster’s permission before the exam begins,” Claes explained.

That sounds important, thought Loren. They had accepted this quest for the purpose of finding a missing part of Lapis’s body, and given Claes’s explanation, there was a good chance it was on the tenth floor.

As long as they got the students to the ninth floor, it seemed it would be a relatively uncomplicated task. This also explained why the labyrinth wasn’t open to the general public. Loren didn’t know what defenses the tenth floor possessed, but Claes described a number of defenses that had been put in place to prevent outside adventurers from breaking in and making off with the treasures Wolfe had left behind.

“Oh, and the exam will continue until the students give up hope,” said Claes. “You should prepare for a long stay. I believe the record is a whole month.”

“And we have to stick with them the entire time? Doesn’t sound too profitable, then.”

“Yeah—that’s why it’s mostly only graduates who take the quest. Why did you?”

Loren couldn’t answer that question; he couldn’t exactly say he had business with the labyrinth.

“Pure curiosity,” Lapis replied without missing a beat. “Neither Loren nor I are proper adventurers, so we were interested in what a training academy might be like.”

She answered so smoothly that she must have practiced in advance. Claes accepted it without a second thought. Somewhat amazed by her quick thinking, Loren awkwardly averted his eyes.

Finally, Claes led them to the headmaster’s office. The request was from the school, but their client was more specifically the headmaster. It was therefore only natural to meet the man himself, and Claes cracked open the doors.

“Well met! I am the Headmaster of the Wolfe Adventurer Training Academy, Wolfe XV!”

Claes stiffened at the voice that suddenly boomed from the open doorway. Loren clapped his hands over his ears while Lapis swiftly darted behind him.

Loren had barely managed to guard himself in time, and Lapis escaped unscathed. Claes, however, had taken the sound waves head-on, and a chill ran down Loren’s spine at the sight of the poor man’s quivering knees. The chill grew stronger when he saw the ostensible headmaster.

The figure beyond the door looked less like a man than like a small mountain. He wore formal clothes befitting his title, but on a scale that defied common sense. Loren was decently tall himself, but the individual behind the desk was already at his eye level—even while sitting.

“What are you standing there for?! Come in already!”

Loren kept his ears covered; the walls were visibly shaking. Why did this guy think he needed to shout when they were right in front of him? Either way, he gave Claes a push on the back.

Despite the stiff smile on his face, Claes timidly dragged his feet into the room. “It’s b-been a while, headmaster. You haven’t changed one bit.”

“I’m glad to see you’re in good health!”

Loren winced. No matter how hard he covered his ears, the voice bled through. Lapis was holding her head, barely withstanding the assault even from her hiding place.

“U-umm, Headmaster, sir. Could you speak a little softer?”

“Silence, Claes! You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to since you graduated from my school?!”

“I’ve been reflecting on the matter…”

“Hmm? You have? You certainly don’t seem as bad as the rumors say.” The headmaster’s volume dropped ever so slightly. He was still speaking rather loudly, but he had fallen to a level that could be endured without earplugs.

Loren released his head while Lapis nervously peeked out from behind him.

“You’ve had a change of heart, Claes. I see you’ve learned humility.”

“I’m sorry for troubling you.” Claes lowered his head.

The headmaster snorted. “If you’d been as bad as I heard, I would have had to retrain you from the ground up before I could confidently send you out on your next job.”

“I’ve been blessed with an opportunity to learn.”

“You got lucky.”

The headmaster and Claes carried on a conversation Loren didn’t quite understand, but they reconciled just as incomprehensibly, and that was the end of the matter.

As such, Loren remained at the ready to run at any time even as he called out to the now-satisfied headmaster. “Hey, can we talk about the job yet?”

“Oh, sorry about that. I heard a thing or two about a former student of mine who was getting up to no good. I thought I might need to teach him some manners, but it seems that was unnecessary.”

“Glad to hear it. Please keep that voice in check,” Loren said, all the while wondering if maybe it was actually the headmaster who needed to learn some manners.

The headmaster glanced between Loren and Lapis, as she peeked out from behind Loren’s back, then looked back to Claes. “You’ve brought some skilled fighters this time. Were they the ones who triggered your reform?”

Claes hung his head a bit. “It’s embarrassing, but yes.”

“Hmm. You, big fellow. I need to thank you somehow.”

“I’d lose to you in the size department, I think—but either way, I don’t care for thanks. Let’s just get to the job.”

The headmaster placed two stacks of paper on his desk. They were of normal size, but in this giant’s hands, they looked like tiny scraps. Loren drew closer to pick one up.

“That’s the register of the students taking our next exam. This time, we have your party and Claes’s. Just the two of you.”

“The name’s Loren. The one behind me is Lapis. We’re a party of two.”

From behind Loren, Lapis stealthily slid the documents from the Kaffa guild across the table. After scanning through them and ensuring their verity, the headmaster tucked them away in a drawer. The quest had now been officially accepted. Once the job was done, the headmaster would return those papers with his seal of approval.

“Your job will entail accompanying the students. We generally don’t permit you to assist, but you can offer advice. They should take full responsibility for themselves while in the labyrinth, and it is not your responsibility if they lose their lives. Don’t worry.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we rescued them before that, would you?”

“Of course not. But if anything happens that requires your intervention, you are to promptly return to the surface. The examinees are expected to keep a map, but you will be handed your own map of the labyrinth in advance.”

The labyrinth had already been used for the same exam several times before, so the map was fairly comprehensive. In case of emergency, they were supposed to use it to return. Otherwise, it was hands-off; it would be impossible to gauge the examinee’s true strength if they received help from their proctors. In other words, the exam was over the moment a proctor determined help was necessary.

“Clearing the fifth floor is enough to pass, but they’re entitled to go as far as they’re able. Of course, the floor they reach will correspond to their grade. The exam only ends when the examinees reach the fifth floor or lose all hope. Any questions?”

“I heard from Claes that we would be permitted entrance to the tenth floor if we managed to reach the ninth. Is that true?” asked Lapis.

“It’s true. To be more precise, you will need to beat the keeper of the ninth floor to reach the stairs to the tenth. The passage from there is usually sealed, but I will hand the students the appropriate permissions to pass through.”

“Is that the only reward? Sounds a bit lackluster.”

“If they manage to bring something back from the tenth floor, I’ll permit that as well.” The headmaster grinned, taking Loren by surprise. The license to retrieve a treasure from the horde of an ancient adventurer sounded genuinely wondrous. “The same goes for the proctors. If you’re able to take anything, go ahead. However, know that if something happens to you, it’s not our responsibility.”

“Well, I guess we have some outrageous traps to look forward to.”

The way the headmaster put it suggested that there was something on the road back that no student or adventurer could possibly hope to face. Loren wondered if perhaps they would only be allowed to return if they were empty-handed. What would they have to defeat in order to escape to the surface with their loot?

“So with two parties, who’s going to be in charge of who?” Loren looked at Claes, but Claes urged Loren to take his pick first.

As Claes was a graduate adored by the current student body, he was presumably confident that he could take care of anyone he was assigned to. With that in mind, Loren looked through the documents on both parties and placed one of them on the table.

“Please assign this one to us.”

“Very well,” the headmaster nodded. “On what did you base your decision?”

Loren scanned the top page again. “I felt a bit of a connection.”

Still hiding behind Loren’s back, Lapis peeked over his shoulder at the bundle of papers he had selected. As soon as she saw the party leader’s name, she nodded her acceptance.

It read “Ein”—the leader of the kids they’d met at the bar.

Their introductory meeting was over in no time flat. This was largely because they weren’t strangers to begin with. At the bar, Loren had been able to tell the kids were pretty young, but looking at them in broad daylight, he felt rather conflicted about their entirely childlike auras.

“You have an old-looking face after all, Mr. Loren.”

“I’m aware. You don’t need to tell me.”

The truth of the matter was that Loren didn’t know his own exact age. If he counted back to the time he’d known how to count, he could surmise he was a little over twenty, but he didn’t know the actual answer. No one around him had ever seemed to care, and as a mercenary, Loren had thought the number meaningless. His occupation was one where few ever grew old enough to care about age.

But once he found himself looking at the faces of these young students, he felt strangely decrepit.

“It’s all right. You’re still young,” Lapis said.

“I don’t need consolation either. How old are you anyway, Lapis?”

“Oh, Mr. Loren. I’m surprised to hear such a roundabout death wish coming from you.”

“Hey, now…”

“Just kidding. I’m just as old as I look.”

If so, then she wasn’t as outrageously old as demons were known to get. However, this was Lapis making the claim; he didn’t know whether to take her at face value.

“We’re happy to have you aboard. Thanks for agreeing to be our proctors.” Ein, the party’s leader, greeted them with excess energy. He was well built, his firm physique draped in chain mail, and his sword and round shield giving him the look of a run-of-the-mill front-line fighter. His short-trimmed blond hair just added to the look.

“Not that we needed one,” sniffed Cloud, the brown-haired, flippant-looking boy. He wore a leather breastplate with fewer moving parts than Loren’s, and the weapon hanging from his belt was a long, slender blade called an estoc. Loren presumed he was a swordsman who focused on speed.

“Just quit it, Cloud. You’re dealing with professional adventurers—they’ll be scary if you make them angry.” This awfully meek statement came from Al, the boy with the bowl cut. This one wore priest vestments with a long mace dangling from his belt. The design of his robes shared some similarities with Lapis’s.

Al professed himself to be an apprentice priest in service to the supreme god, but his flinching demeanor made it hard to believe that he served the supreme being who sat at the summit of the pantheon.

“Thanks for helping me out last night! You really saved me there.” This came from Phem, a girl with an unusual amount of pep in her step. She had short black hair and wore a robe while carrying a wooden staff—a rather orthodox look for a magician. She was indeed a magician, and with her graduation near, she claimed to be able to cast elementary magic once a day.

After the introductions were over, Loren watched the party prepare from afar. He whispered to Lapis, “Do you think they’ll be able to reach the tenth floor?”

They had already brought all their own belongings from the inn, which were split between Loren’s sack and Lapis’s backpack. Loren couldn’t wear a backpack due to the sword already strapped across his back, so he instead had a loose sack dangling from his left hand. On top of this, he had a brand-new, if crude, knife on his left hip.

“You’re able to use a knife, Mr. Loren?” Lapis casually asked, sending the conversation in a completely different direction.

“For what it’s worth. You use them to slit throats when you have to.” He drew the weapon as he said this. It was certainly shaped like a knife, but it was far too long and unwieldy for everyday use. Its blade was as thick as that of an axe.

“That’s practically a shortsword. I’m surprised they had that at the weapon shop.”

“They had it at the one in Kaffa. The guy there guaranteed it was sturdy but said no one was buying it ’cause it looked too unrefined. I got it for ten silver.”

“I would have gotten one for you if you asked.”

“It’s just a side weapon. Only has to cut well enough,” Loren replied, but Lapis huffed discontentedly.

He had coincidently run into both his coat and sword at a shop in Kaffa—at least, that was the official story. He’d already interrogated the shop owner and established that Lapis had been moving behind the scenes to provide his gear. She would never admit it aloud, but it was essentially an open secret.

The set had cost Loren—or rather Lapis—thirty gold coins, which had saddled him with a small fortune’s worth of debt. However, he had been more or less certain from the start that both coat and blade were likely worth far more than that. If he’d asked Lapis to procure a side weapon, it was clear as day that she would have found something staggeringly expensive. Perhaps his equipment had come absurdly cheap given its real value, but that didn’t mean he had the leisure to waste money.

“So what are your thoughts?” he asked as they watched the group struggle to pick out their supplies.

“You mean about their skill level? Yes, let’s see. This is going to be difficult.” Lapis’s frank appraisal was rather harsh. “They can most likely make it to the fifth-floor pass line, somehow or another. But I don’t know about anything beyond that.”

The map they had been given displayed the location of traps; it also provided information on the monsters residing on each floor in excruciating detail. Going off that intel, Lapis had calculated the general difficulty of each level.

“Though that’s assuming that the monsters born in this labyrinth are no different from normal monsters.”

“Why would they be different?” Loren asked.

Perhaps it went without saying at this point, but as a former mercenary, Loren had never entered a labyrinth before. He hadn’t known there was a possibility that the monsters in a labyrinth might differ from the ones found elsewhere.

“To put it simply, normal monsters leave corpses when they die. Labyrinth monsters leave only certain parts of their bodies, and the rest gets reabsorbed into the labyrinth.”

“Does that impact their relative strength?”

“It can. It really all depends on the labyrinth’s scale. Don’t let your guard down just because they look familiar,” said Lapis. “However, the labyrinth we’re headed into is used for school exams, so I’m fairly sure they’ll be the same, if not weaker, than our usual fare. If worse comes to worst, we can get rid of those four, and—”

Talk about a dark turn.

“And then what?” Loren cut her off. “Take a shortcut to the bottom floor before filing a report? I’m not helping you do that.”

“Oh, at least say you’re going to stop me. Or do you intend to sit on the sidelines?” she retorted.

Loren turned away and played dumb.

This nonchalant banter would, admittedly, have made for a terrible fuss if Ein or his fellows had caught wind of it.

“On that note, I’m guessing that part of you is on the tenth floor, but why would it be there?” Loren asked. “What’s it doing with the belongings of some three-hundred-year-old adventurer?”

It had occurred to him that a demon like Lapis could very well have been walking the earth back then, but if Lapis was to be believed, she hadn’t been born at that time. That still left the question of how her body part had gotten there.

Lapis thought for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “Presumably… My parents secretly snuck in. Either there’s a secret passage somewhere, or it’s the sort of place my parents could easily sneak into.”

She said that, but the academy was the exclusive owner of the labyrinth, and strict security measures protected its entrance. Loren hadn’t heard of any adventurers successfully robbing it either. On the other hand, Lapis’s parents were naturally demons as well, and Loren had no idea what level of security you’d need to keep them out of a place.

“Who are your parents, exactly?”

“Do you want to meet them sometime? I could introduce you.”

Loren could tell that some other meaning lurked behind her smug smile. Still, he decided to answer honestly. “I’d rather not. More importantly, what’s your basis for thinking it’s here?”

For a moment, she looked disappointed; as for his question, however, she reached out and took his right hand. There seemed to be no logical reason for it, and Loren was a little surprised. Lapis paid him no mind and squeezed, asking, “Mr. Loren, can you feel where your right hand is?”

“Of course, it’s my right hand. It’d be weird if I couldn’t.”

“It’s the same for me. It is a part of me, so I have a vague sense that it’s in the area.”

Was the grip on his hand really comparable to the feeling in a part that had been torn off of her? Loren still didn’t get it. But he could tell it was the sort of sensation no vague thought could really get a handle on, so he accepted it and avoided probing any further.

“Say we’re assuming this is a given. How are we supposed to get down there?”

“I can’t help but think that it would be easiest to just incapacitate those four with Sleep and finish our business while they’re out—”

“All right, looks like they’re ready.” Loren cut Lapis off at the pass before she could conceive any more callous stratagems.

Lapis quickly shut her mouth as Ein’s party approached, their bags all in order, psyching each other up for the task ahead of them.

“The pass line’s at floor five, but we have our sights on the tenth floor,” Ein said.

“We can totally do it,” Cloud agreed. “Not a problem.”

“You really think so?” Al murmured.

“Let’s do this thing!” Phem crowed. “We’ve been training and studying for this day.”

Loren was pleasantly surprised to see Ein leading the charge. While Lapis didn’t seem to think they had the skills to reach the bottom floor, they were at the very least aiming for it. In that case, as long as Loren could help them reach their goal, he could also complete Lapis’s objective without resorting to any drastic measures. That seemed far preferable to the various dangerous things that came out of her mouth.

“Let’s hope our advice is enough to get them there,” he said to her.

“That sounds a tad optimistic to me,” said Lapis.

It would have been that much easier if he could have helped them directly, but the students were playing the lead role in this quest, and Loren and Lapis had to act the part of side characters.

“How about we secretly help out a bit to make sure?” Lapis pushed.

“Sounds like we don’t have much of a choice.”

“All right, let’s go.”

On Ein’s order, Loren, Lapis, and the students started off toward the entrance to the labyrinth. The entrance itself was in the school building—to prevent anyone unaffiliated with the academy from getting in. However, keeping the worst-case scenario in mind, Loren warily scanned for traps along the way—just in case the academy was even more gung ho about keeping out intruders than they advertised.

Loren had assumed the entrance to a labyrinth would be a sinister sort of place. That wasn’t the case for the labyrinth they were entering this time. The entrance consisted of an austere, unfussy set of stairs leading down from a room on campus.

This was somewhat of a letdown to Loren, but he reminded himself that the exterior design didn’t necessarily correspond with the level of danger.

That entrance room was where they met up with Claes again. He was, it turned out, leading a group of four girls. While Ange the mage stood behind him, the sour look on her face made clear that she was heartily displeased with the situation. Loren couldn’t help but smile—just a bit.

“Are you going down too?” Claes asked, and Loren nodded.

For some strange reason, the girls following Claes looked at Loren with venom in their eyes, and he had to tilt his head. Sure, Claes was clearly popular—or rather, he seemed to have amassed a fair bit of…affection—but was it really so troubling to them for him to be friendly with another guy?

As Loren puzzled over this, he suddenly recalled the contents of the documents on the examinees that he had seen in the headmaster’s office. “This isn’t the party I remember.”

Not that he recalled the examinees he hadn’t picked in detail, but he was sure they hadn’t been all girls. What’s more, the girls behind Claes all seemed to be sword fighters, and the other party’s composition hadn’t been so unbalanced.

“The moment we heard Claes would be the proctor, we had that party swap with us,” said one of the girls behind Claes. She had an imperious expression and blonde ringlets. She stood in front of Loren with her chest stuck boldly forward, showing no signs of fear, and she spoke as the representative of her group. “How foolish it was of them! Honestly, to think they gave up the opportunity to be proctored by a man they called a prodigy when he attended the academy.”

“Who’s she?” Loren asked Claes, making no attempt to conceal his preemptive exhaustion with this kid. I wasn’t asking you, girl.

Claes smiled stiffly. “This is Ms. Parmè Pentatonic. I don’t imagine you’d be familiar, but she’s the daughter of a count in a nearby state.”

“Be grateful, adventurer. Someone of your lowly stature wouldn’t usually be permitted to talk to me.” The girl called Parmè turned her chest away, looking down her nose at him as best she could, given their height difference.

Without so much as a glance at her, Loren addressed Claes again. “Does peerage give you benefits in this school?”

“Officially, students are all treated equally without consideration to any external factors. However, the exceptionally talented students, and the ones of high birth, do tend to throw their weight around… My apologies.” Claes’s voice shrunk very slightly as he spoke.

“Why are you apologizing?” Loren sighed. Claes was clearly ashamed of whatever he’d done as a student, but faced with his penitent attitude, Loren couldn’t help but think Claes was overdoing it.

“That’s right! You needn’t apologize to one of his ilk!” said Parmè.

“All right, could you please tamp it down?” Loren said. “Especially if you want any favors down there.”

Parmè looked ready to lash out, but Claes stopped her with a stern side glance.

On Loren’s end, he didn’t care how much any student shouted at him—it was still better if he didn’t have to deal with this one at all.

That said, he promptly lost interest in that crowd and turned his attention to Ange, who was sulking behind them. “That’s a real face you’re making there.”

“You understand where I’m coming from, don’t you?”

“More or less. But stay like that, and you’ll get Claes all worried. The students won’t take to you either.”

Perhaps Ange didn’t care how the students felt, but when Loren brought up the chance of her distracting Claes, her expression straightened just a bit. There was still a crease on her brow, though, so Loren glanced away.

“Where are the other two?” he asked.

“On strike. We’re the only ones on this job.”

The quest hadn’t stated any requirement for the number of party members required to proctor. Apparently, Claes’s other comrades—Leila and Laure—had determined that they would be unable to withstand the atmosphere and refused to join.

“Then couldn’t you have stayed with them?” he asked.

“And leave Claes alone with those girls?” Waves of outrage rolled off of Ange, as if Loren had said something unbelievable. Loren winced back, overpowered, and tried to make some distance, but Ange came straight at him. “You listen here. Sure, Claes has his looks going for him, and his skills are decent. Thanks to all you’ve done, he’s lost a bit of his arrogance, and he’s mellowed out. But I’m telling you, he still makes moves on girls just as quickly—that part hasn’t improved at all!”

“I don’t remember taking pains to fix that in the first place.”

Loren didn’t exactly not know this about Claes—he’d just thought of it as not his problem. Given that Claes had three women in his party, and they all had feelings for him, Loren had an impression that the kid worked fast. But even if that was the case, it seemed harmless enough—to Loren, at least.

“If I shoved Claes and a party of women into a labyrinth without anyone to keep an eye on him, they’d all have hearts in their eyes by the time they stumbled out!”

“I can’t say I understand.”

“Nine months later, we’d have a flood of girls claiming: This is your child!”

Isn’t that going a bit too far? Loren thought. But when he looked at Claes, the man was staring into the middle distance, his face a ghastly pale.

Some of the female students seemed taken aback by Ange’s statements, but some among them had reddened cheeks and slight smiles; they plainly weren’t entirely put off by the idea.

“I have no choice but to come along and be the preventative.”

“That’s…rough. Good luck with that.”

After offering this uninspired encouragement, Loren approached Claes again, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pulled him aside. “Don’t overdo it, okay?”

Claes laughed airlessly. “Err… Thanks for the warning.”

Yeah, you put it like that, and you already sound doomed, Loren thought. It would be a sorry sight to see a party annihilated because of some kind of love quadrangle, and Loren could only pray he didn’t have to see any of it.

“So who’s going down first?” Lapis asked, sweeping in the moment the conversation was over.

The stairs to the labyrinth were in the corner of the room, and they weren’t wide enough for everyone to enter side by side. With two parties taking part in the exam, one would have to go first and the other after that.

Does that give one of them an advantage? Loren wondered, but he held his tongue. This was best decided by the examinees.

“I’ll concede this right to you,” said Parmè. “Do you have any objections?”

“Hold on a second. Don’t just decide for us,” said Ein.

Negotiations between the two leaders began a bit turbulently, each side adamant that the other should go first.

As Loren wondered what made them so desperate to relinquish the initiative, Lapis whispered, “Neither party has any thieves.”

Now he got it. Ein’s party consisted of two warriors, a mage, and a priest. Parmè’s party—from what he could see—consisted of four warriors. There wasn’t a thief in sight.

This being an Adventurer Training Academy, they surely trained thieves as well. That made it strange that they were conveniently absent from both parties. The critical value of a thief in labyrinth exploration went without saying. Given all the various traps, hidden passages, and locked doors and chests and such, a thief’s skill set would be invaluable.

“I can only speculate, but that party of well-to-do lasses has no thieves out of contempt for the occupation. They didn’t invite any.”

Loren supposed it wouldn’t be strange for nobles to see “thief” as a job for lowborn peons. No noble daughter would go out of her way to pick up the skill set. That said, while Loren wasn’t well versed in labyrinths, even he realized it was supremely dangerous to enter one without a thief in your party.

“They don’t need a lockpicker if they ignore all the chests, and so long as they keep an eye out and hit a long stick against the walls and floors as they go, they should be able to detect traps to a degree.” Lapis pointed to one of the girls, who apart from her weapon carried a stick as tall as she was. “As for Mr. Ein’s party, they have no one suited to learn the proper skills. I have a feeling they partied up because they were already friends.”

“Then they could’ve invited another friend along. Not like there were any restrictions on party size.”

Lapis had explained to him that it was a general adventurer’s rule of thumb for one party to consist of four to five members. Any fewer, and you might be unable to react to sudden danger. Any more, and you risked getting in each other’s way.

Of course, it was possible to form a party as small as two if efficiency wasn’t of the essence, and there was no upper limit either.

“They probably didn’t know any thieves well enough. For whatever reason, those four seem rather insular unto themselves.”

In short, after forming their inner circle, it had become difficult to invite any outsiders to join them, even when they knew they had a need.

While on a different scale, mercenary companies experienced similar difficulties. After making it through thick and thin with a group of comrades, even when the group’s numbers dropped, those already in the group often resisted taking in new recruits. As they were disinclined to recruit new members, the survivors ended up working harder just to make up for their losses.

“It’s like how those in the countryside despise outsiders,” Lapis said.

“That’s a blunt way to put it.”

“In any case, before they enter the unknown, they both want to send someone else to test the waters.”

Just as Lapis brought that explanation to a close, and Loren snorted in amusement at her conclusion, Ein and Parmè finished their tumultuous debate. Parmè’s face was red with frustration, while Ein looked a little proud of himself.

“On your way now,” Ein said.

“You’d best remember this, peasant. This debt will cost you.”

Parmè ground her teeth, but she had no further objections once it had been decided. She collected the other girls—and Claes, who kept lowering his head, as well as Ange, who seemed displeased by Claes’s hangdog attitude. Soon they were on their way down the stairs.

“But you know,” said Loren, “even if you send them ahead, ain’t it meaningless if you don’t follow the exact same path?”

Lapis shrugged. “They should follow the same path, as long as they search the way the school taught them to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I stole a glance at the school’s curriculum on the way here. They apparently teach you to place a hand on the left wall upon entering a labyrinth and to walk along that wall when lost.”

“I’ve heard that method before. Though I hear if you use it, you can never reach the exit if the exit’s in the center.”

Following the outer wall only worked if the exit was on the outer walls. If the stairs were somewhere in the center, or another point that didn’t make contact with those outer walls, the method would prove useless.

“When that happens, they are supposed to map out the full circle and use that map to search once again.”

“We’ve got a long way to go, then.”

This definitely ain’t a job for impatient mercenaries. Loren stifled a yawn as he watched Ein’s party discuss when they would enter, their map at the ready in front of them.