Chapter 4
“That makes twenty-eight... Two more to go.”
A dozen or so minutes after running into the Hero’s party, Kagami was taking down Blue Devils one after another, thanks to an astonishing string of good luck.
A quest that would normally take people of the appropriate level a day or two, given the monsters’ danger and the need to prioritize safety, was nearly complete just three hours after Kagami started it.
Kagami had expected it to take five hours, allowing for the time it would take to find Blue Devils. Unexpectedly, though, he kept running into them, and was finishing ahead of schedule.
“I feel like I’ve been running into monsters an awful lot today.”
Actually, it was a little abnormal. In an ordinary dungeon, encountering ten monsters in an hour would be a lot. But today, more than twice that number had stood in Kagami’s way.
The Blue Devil was blue all over, had wings it never used inside the dungeon, and attacked with a combination of a three-pronged spear and magic. The Ocorojjo looked like an ermine, had big red eyes, and impaled its targets with a tackle, using the dungeon walls to launch unpredictable attacks.
There were other monsters, too, but Kagami kept running into these two in particular.
In an instant, they were turned into gold and drop items, then vanished.
“I’m lucky today. Not sure why, though.”
Normally, a high monster encounter rate was dangerous, since it meant more chances to put your life on the line. But to Kagami, it was little more than more chances to pick up money.
Just now, an Ocorojjo had suddenly charged at him at tremendous speed from outside his field of vision. Kagami swatted it into the ground as casually as if he were hitting a fly, and it turned into gold.
“...I need to hurry.”
Just then, Kagami heard a voice nearby.
He turned toward the sound and spotted a girl crossing a passage at a four-way intersection, barely visible in the darkness. She wore a tattered hooded cloak.
He couldn’t get a good look at her in that brief moment, but the red pigtails peeking out from under her hood and the pale thigh visible between her thigh-high socks and skirt were enough to tell him she was female.
Next, there was her height. She was clearly a child. Ten years old, maybe? In any case, the girl Kagami had spotted was only about 130 centimeters tall.
“Huh? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Kagami hurried after the girl as she disappeared down the passage.
When Kagami had been around her age, he’d already been fighting monsters on par with those in this dungeon, but he’d nearly died plenty of times. And now the rate of monster encounters was abnormally high, making the place even more dangerous. Anyone who came to this dungeon ought to have some skill, but Kagami chased after her anyway, just in case.
Besides, Kagami knew that no one else lived the way he did. Having considered every possibility, if he knew someone was in danger of dying, he would help them unless they had brought it on themselves or were a bad person. That was a principle he put ahead of making money.
Kagami didn’t go out of his way to do good deeds, nor did he set off on journeys to save lives. His principle was simple and straightforward: 【Never abandon someone who’s about to die right in front of you】.
It wasn’t that he only cared if it happened right before his eyes. Kagami wouldn’t ignore a danger to someone’s life once he knew about it. But he had nothing to do with what he didn’t know about. It was a principle that seemed kind, yet cold.
“Wait, wait! You there, girl! This dungeon is more dangerous than you think! Stop!”
When Kagami caught up to the girl, he immediately shouted at her, but she showed no sign of stopping.
She must have noticed Kagami, so it was obvious she was deliberately refusing to stop. That left two possibilities: either she was strong enough not to need help, or she was panicking and running away because she thought Kagami was a monster.
It was certainly suspicious for a casually dressed young man who didn’t even look ready to defend himself to call out to her inside a dungeon known to be dangerous. There were monsters in the world that could disguise themselves as humans, so perhaps it would’ve been stranger not to find him suspicious.
In fact, as she fled from Kagami, the girl kept glancing back at him with a puzzled expression.
“Look ahead! Watch where you’re going! There’s a monster!”
Kagami hurriedly shouted a warning at the girl as she kept looking back at him.
Three Blue Devils were blocking the path right in front of her. Kagami relaxed, sure she would stop, but in the next instant, she passed right between the three Blue Devils and continued on.
“Huhhh...?! Why aren’t those monsters attacking her?!”