Saitama Dungeon by Yamaguchi Yuuko

 

 Episode 15: B-Rank Adventurer, Second Floor

When I got home it was almost 5 o'clock. As I opened the door and said, "I'm back," my mother came from the kitchen and asked, "Welcome home. So how was the dungeon?"

"It was fun." I answered nonchalantly. I didn’t bother giving details. My parents would never imagine that their son might earn ten million yen on his first day diving in the dungeon, and even if I told them that I had, they probably wouldn't believe me.

By using a banking app on my smartphone connected to my Special Cavity Bank account I could check my current balance and the total amount I had earned from selling materials to the Special Cavity Administration Agency. I think showing that to my parents would have convinced them but I didn’t think there was any need to go that far. Besides, I don't know how much my father earns a year but he might feel bad if it's less than 10 million yen and he discovered his son earned that amount in a single day doing what amounts to a summer vacation part-time job.

"Dinner is at 6 o'clock. Dad will be late home today so you should take a bath first." Mom said as she returned to the kitchen.

"Gotcha." I headed upstairs to get changed out of my adventurer’s gear.

Later, after getting out of the bath I had dinner with Mom and told her mostly made-up stories about what happened to me in the dungeon that day. At the end I added "I made more money than I expected, so I won't need any pocket money next month."

"Oh. Ichiro, you don't have to push yourself too hard."

"It's perfectly okay, Mom."

"Hmm. Ichiro, not only are your grades amazing, but you've really become a good kid. Mom is happy for you." Making my parents proud of me was a good feeling.

After finishing dinner, I was lying on my bed in my room, smiling as I remembered what had happened that day when I got a call on my smartphone from an unknown number.

"Hello, Hasegawa-kun? It's Saito." This was probably the first time I'd received a call from Saito-san. I didn't give her my phone number at the Dungeon Center but thinking about it, my phone number was listed in my middle school class roster so any of my old classmates would have it.

"Yes, this is Hasegawa. What’s up?"

"Hasegawa-kun, sorry for calling so late."

"That's fine."

"Good. I didn’t really realise until I got home, but you have been promoted to B rank, Hasegawa-kun. That’s right, isn’t it?”

"I’m not a B-rank yet but I will be one tomorrow after I complete the promotion procedure."

"So I discussed it with Hidaka and Nakagawa, and we think it would be a hassle for you to hang out with us in the dungeon. You said you'd dive with us sometimes but don't worry about it, Hasegawa-kun, you don’t really need to. I just called to tell you that.”

“I wasn’t really worrying about that.” I thought for a moment. “How about we dive together maybe once a week during summer vacation?"

"Really?" There was a pause. "Isn't that going to be a nuisance for you, hanging around A-ranks like us on the first floor?"

"It's not a bother for me at all."

"Thank you, Hasegawa-kun." A happy voice came over the phone.

"Well then, today is Thursday, so let's dive together next Thursday. Is that okay with you?”

"Yeah. I'll let both of them know." Saito-san agreed.

"Okay then, let’s meet up next Thursday at 9am at the ticket gate in front of the dungeon vortex."

"Yeah. I'll look forward to it." Saito-san seemed enthused.

We said bye to each other and ended the call. I stared at the ceiling, thinking about agreeing to go into the dungeon with them next week and every week after that during the summer holidays. I decided it wouldn’t impact my plans that much and besides it had been kinda fun hanging out with the Akigase Warriors.

Since I had my smartphone to hand I downloaded the map for the second floor of the Saitama dungeon. This allows people to look up the maps of various floors even when they’re offline in a dungeon where there was no phone signal. I worried that my smartphone alone wouldn't be enough if it got damaged or lost for some reason while I was diving, so I decided to buy a paper map of the second floor at the Dungeon Center's store before I went into the dungeon again.

The next day I left home early so that I would arrive promptly at the license center when it opened at 9:00 a.m. As I planned to enter the dungeon as soon as the formalities were complete I was fully equipped and wearing my backpack, just missing my weapons.

I bought three onigiri and two bottles of green tea at a convenience store the way to the Dungeon Center. I also bought some spare batteries for my helmet lamp since I intended to use it today. I can actually create light using magic but doing something like that in this world where no magic of any kind is known to exist would definitely cause me major problems if I was spotted using it, so I needed to use a lamp like everyone else.

The convenience store accepted my Adventurer ID card for payment for my purchases. I had thought that the card might only be useable in the shops in the immediate area around the Dungeon Center but the payment card readers at regular konbinis were apparently set up to recognise the Adventurer ID cards. I supposed dungeons had been around long enough in this world for such a feature to have been widely implemented.

After leaving the convenience store, I walked and ran to adjust my arrival time and reached the Adventurer license center at exactly 9:05. Anyone intending to take the training and exam for a licence that day had already entered the building and there was no one in front of the doors. There was also no one in line at the promotion processing counter which wasn’t really a surprise, after all rank promotions weren’t a common event. I handed my A-rank card with its light blue stripe to the clerk at the counter.

“Here you are.” I said.

"Promotion from A rank to B rank, right?" the clerk said as he scrutinised the card.

"Yes that’s correct." I nodded. The clerk looked surprised when he saw my birth date and license acquisition date printed on it.

"It only took you two days, no, actually just one day to earn ten million yen?"

"I got lucky." I said, giving him my standard explanation.

"You are probably the only 16-year-old B-rank adventurer in the entire country, Hasegawa-san. Congratulations." Making 10 million yen on my first day in the dungeon was clearly an unusual feat. Moreover, 16-year-olds had only been able to get a dungeon license since the age eligibility rules were changed earlier this year, so very few people my age would have had been able to earn the necessary qualifying amount for promotion to B-rank even if they had been hunting monsters on the first floor every day for the past three months.

The staff member took my photo on the spot and my new Adventurer's ID was ready in about five minutes. "Sorry to keep you waiting," they said, handing over my new ID.

"Thank you." I answered politely.

The B-rank adventurer badge in my hand had a single dark blue line on it. I also received a new card holder and a blue neckstrap. The dark blue strap looked really smart. I assembled my ID card into its holder and hung it around my neck. I was now a B-rank adventurer.

I hurried out of the license office and headed for the main building of the Dungeon Center. Oops, my face reflected in the glass at the entrance was looking at me with a smug grin. I need to act cool. Coooool. I first headed to the weapon locker to get my mace and knife, intending to immediately dive into the dungeon’s second floor but I stopped short as I remembered that I wanted to buy a paper map first.

I needed to go into the large convenience store next to the main Dungeon Center building where they sold maps and other dungeon-specific essentials. There are no ticket gates at the shop’s entrance so even non-adventurers can go in and buy items. Because of that, carrying weapons in the store is prohibited and besides you can’t leave the main building with your weapons anyway.

I went to the map section in the store where I picked up a map for the second level. There was a similar map for the third level next to it so I bought that one too. I picked up two boxes of C******mate nutrition bars in the grocery section of the convenience store as emergency rations and then paid for everything with my Adventurer ID card at the checkout.

After leaving the shop and passing through the ticket gate to re-enter the main building I took the escalator up to the second floor and presented my Adventurer ID card to the card reader at the weapon locker counter. Within five minutes, an attendant handed my mace and knife to me. I don't know how many weapons are stored in the warehouse but it must be a considerable number. The fact that my personal weapons could be located and handed to me in just five minutes is quite amazing, isn't it?

Impressed, I went down to the first floor, passed through the ticket gate and entered the large cavern on the first floor of the Saitama Dungeon through the mysterious black vortex.

Just past the other side of the vortex on the first floor there was a sign pointing to the stairs leading to the second floor. An adventurer was headed in that direction so I followed him. After walking half a kilometre we arrived at a single-story concrete building standing incongruously among the grass and bushes of the first floor. There was an automatic ticket gate inside the building with two attendants standing beside it.

In the dungeon Special Cavity Administration Agency staff members were easily identifiable as they wear a uniform, black tops and bottoms with red piping on the arms and legs. They have a card commonly known as an R-rank Adventurer's licence marked with a red line hanging around their necks so that it can be clearly seen.

I tapped my B-rank Adventurer's licence on the card reader, passed through the barrier and headed down the stairs beyond.

According to information I had read on the internet, each stair between floors has sixty steps. The steps are about 20 centimeters apart vertically so the calculated difference in height between floors should only be 12 meters but when SCAA investigators dug down from the first floor they were never able to reach the second floor no matter how far they went. This weirdness is a common feature of all dungeons, apparently. The only way to travel up and down between dungeon floors is via the stairs.

　

As a newly-minted B-rank adventurer, I was now permitted to dive to the third floor but I decided that today the second floor would be enough for me.

From the second floor onwards, the dungeon looks like a hand-dug tunnel in some primitive underground mine, making it feel like the sort of dungeon you’d read about in fantasy novels. The surface of the rock inside the tunnel gives off a faint glow providing a certain degree of illumination but this isn’t enough to see clearly so adventurers use head-mounted lamps, flashlights and lanterns. Yesterday I didn't put batteries in my helmet lamp since I stayed on the first floor where it is always bright, but today I put the batteries in. I switched my lamp on before going down the stairs resulting in a very bright white light illuminating my way. It was stronger than I expected so I turned it down to about half its brightness.

1, 2, 3, 4… I counted the steps as I went down but then I started thinking about something else and lost track of the number. The internet said that every staircase in all the dungeons nationwide had 60 steps. That felt about right to me, and it didn't really matter if my own personal count was off by one or two.

At the bottom of the stairs was a fairly large cavern with many dark holes in the walls, each hole the entrance to a separate tunnel. There were signs indicating the route to the stairs leading down to the third floor since that was a common destination for adventurers.

There are no radio beacons on the second and subsequent floors of the dungeon for the smartphone locator app to connect to. That app only works on the wide-open first floor where the SCAA has installed beacons. It’s easy to get lost if you stray away from the main tunnels in the lower floors. In the more popular dungeons such as the ones in Saitama and Tokyo which are frequented by many adventurers, most corners and tunnel intersections have stone markers with coordinates based on the location of the stairs leading up to the previous floor. Even if you do get disorientated, it's not that difficult to find your way back to the stairs leading up to the previous floor by following the markers. These route markers are only in place up to the tenth floor though since only elite S-rank adventurers can go beyond that point in any dungeon. Right then, which way should I go...

 

  Saitama Dungeon by Yamaguchi Yuuko

Episode 14: Akigase Warriors Part 2

The leader of a group of college-aged men who had picked a fight with us was forced to leave the battlefield after apparently tripping over his own feet. Wanting to get this farce over quickly, I taunted the remaining three idiots hoping they would all come at me at once.

"Oh, he just fell down by himself. That was kinda disappointing. Anyway, next please."

Sadly, only the biggest guy stepped forward to accept my challenge. He was wearing what looked like an American football helmet on his head, you know, the sort of helmet with a grille across the lower part of his face? It seemed like a silly thing to wear for protection in the dungeon, to be honest.

From what I could see of the man's face behind his mask, he had a square chin and a squashed nose. If I had to sum his appearance up in one word that word would would be “ugly”. I refrained from saying that out loud of course since it would be rude and the fellow might feel insulted.

The man crouched down and spread his arms. "I'm really gonna crush you for that. You need to learn respect for a football defensive tackle." He then rushed me.

If this man really was an American football player and got into trouble fighting or whatever it could be a big problem for him. You see, adventurers weren't allowed to compete in sports and physical competitions such as American football. If this kind of thing became public it's likely he'd end up being ejected from his football team. Maybe he didn’t actually play in a proper team, or perhaps he was just an adventurer cosplaying as a footballer? Either way, it wasn’t my concern.

For a moment, I thought about dodging his attempt to tackle me and then I’d knock him down from behind with a kick, but since I was standing in front of him anyway I just took the impact straight on.

The man probably wanted to use the momentum of his large body to flatten me, but instead I simply pushed him over onto his back and then I dropped down to kneel on his chest, pinning him to the ground. I could have punched the guy in the face at that point but since the girls were watching, I decided not to. Instead I punched the ground right next to the idiot’s left ear, sending my fist deep into the hard-packed soil.

The sound of the impact was clearly enough to frighten the man. I looked up and saw the two remaining men step back as our eyes met. They were obviously in no mood to fight me now, which I took as my win.

I stood up, looming over the fallen football player. I couldn’t resist the temptation to gloat though.

"Is it normal for a defensive tackle to get knocked down by a high school student?"

"What?! Just you wait!" With that empty threat the men scuttled off, literally. It was the first time I'd actually had someone threaten me with "Just you wait!", and with that, everything was settled.

"Hasegawa-kun, you’re good at fighting too!" Saito-san exclaimed. The other two girls said things like "Cool!" and "Amazing!"

I shrugged, somewhat discomfited by their adoring looks. "I think my opponents were just weak, that’s all." I demurred.

"But they looked like university students and that one guy wearing the helmet was really big. And yet, Hasegawa-kun, you didn't seem scared at all, in fact you seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing."

"It seemed like he was used to fighting." Hidaka-san added.

I had fought humans, beast people, demons and all sorts of dangerous creatures in the other world and I had gotten very good at winning over the ten years I spent there. Because of that experience I had to work hard to hold myself back in this world and I had to say that it wasn’t easy. If I faced more low-level opponents like those guys I had to be careful to not maim or slaughter them by accident. There was no point in worrying about that right now though.

"It's about time we resumed monster hunting." I said and the Akigase Warriors agreed. After tidying up our picnic site and packing away our belongings we began our afternoon monster hunting session. We moved around the first level in a rather random way with the girls defeating any monsters I located. After we decided to finish for the day at 3 o'clock it took us about thirty minutes to walk back to the vortex. We managed to collect six more monster cores that afternoon, so including the slime core and two beetle cores we obtained in the morning, that made a total of nine monster cores between the four of us.

After re-entering the Saitama Dungeon Center building via the vortex, we headed towards the dungeon materials purchasing area. There were a large number of people in front of us in the queue but since there were lots of Dungeon Center staff on hand to cover the end-of-day purchasing rush, it didn't seem like we'd have to wait too long. By the way, the purchasing counters where higher-ranked adventurers sold monster meat and other dungeon materials were in a different part of the building so the adventurers using these particular purchasing counters were almost all A-rank individuals.

After about five minutes in line, it was our turn to sell our cores. Each purchasing counter was located in a separate room for privacy reasons so the four of us filed into the room together. I added my beetle monster core to the other cores we had collected after I had joined the girls. That made a total of ten monster cores which we put on the counter along with our Adventurer ID cards.

Regarding the payment for these ten cores, Saito-san said that I should receive half of it and they’d split the rest among the three members of the Akigase Warriors but I insisted that we split the money equally among the four of us.

A Dungeon Center employee dropped the cores one by one into the appraisal machine’s hopper on the counter. I had been told that the cores fed into the machine would be transported to somewhere else in the building for safe storage. The appraisal was completed quickly and each of us received a printed receipt along with our Adventurer's ID. The receipt listed the current purchase price for each core and the cumulative purchase amount. The purchase proceeds were automatically credited to our individual Adventurer bank accounts.

The ten cores were purchased for 38,000 yen in total which we divided equally between the four of us so we each received 9,500 yen. I’m not sure that could be described as a decent amount for high school students to earn in a day, but the girls seem satisfied. After the exchange was over, the three of them went to leave the room but they stopped when I said to the counter employee, "I have another core to sell and I'd like to cash it in now."

I placed my Adventurer's ID card back on the counter and then I retrieved the rainbow-colored core from my backpack before putting it down next to my card. The attendant’s eyes widened when he saw the core. Saito and his friends were surprised too.

"What is this?" asked the attendant.

Because I didn’t know what I was being asked I said, “It was a core I recovered from a slime I defeated. Is there anything special about it?"

The attendant excused himself before exiting via the employee door at the back of the room. He quickly returned, accompanied by an important-looking man who was obviously his superior. The newcomer picked up the core and examined it closely.

"This is the core of a rainbow slime, quite a large one too.” he said as he put the core back down beside my badge. “The proper assessment of this core cannot be carried out immediately so we must ask you to please wait a day or two.”

The three girls who had remained at the counter started making a fuss. "Hasegawa-kun, did you really find something like that?" Saito-san asked, her eyes still fixed on the rainbow-coloured core.

"I thought it was something I shouldn't show to just anyone while we were still in the dungeon." I explained.

"Y-you're right." Saito-san agreed, remembering her dispute earlier with the boys over the ownership of a regular slime’s core.

The important-looking man operated the appraisal machine and finally returned my Adventurer's ID card along with another receipt. "A provisional sum of 10 million yen has been deposited into your Adventurer's account. When you complete the formalities at the license center you will be promoted to B rank.” Oops! I earned a promotion after just one day? Was this going to completely derail my plans?

The official continued speaking. “I repeat, this is only a provisional payment. Rest assured, the difference will be transferred to your account once the final assessment of the core is completed.” The man looked thoughtful. “A rainbow slime on the first floor, that’s quite an unusual place to find one."

"Where can rainbow slimes be found normally?" I enquired. It was clear the Dungeon Center staff already knew about rainbow slimes and their distinctive cores.

"They aren't a common dungeon monster, but they are usually encountered on the tenth level and below in the dungeon." I see. Basically, I was super lucky today. Since I had surprised him with just the rainbow core, I refrained from bringing out the gold slime core.

As we left the private purchasing room, Saito turned to me.

"Hasegawa-kun, just who the hell are you exactly?” She asked, exasperation in her voice. “You can find monsters even though you can't see them, you easily defeat a group of university students in a fight by yourself, and now you’ve suddenly been promoted to B-rank."

I wondered how to respond and finally decided to answer with an outright lie. "I’m just a very lucky first year high school student, I suppose. Yeah?"

"Yeah, right...." Saito-san didn’t sound convinced but she didn’t press me further. I studiously ignored the suspicious looks on the faces of the other girls too.

Our next stop was the weapons locker area. To store your weapons you place your weapons on the counter and show your Adventurer's ID. An attendant will take your weapons and scan the barcodes and tags on them before placing them in a basket cart at the back of the room. Once the basket is full of weapons, another person comes and takes the cart to the warehouse behind the counter.

The storage fee is quite low, only 500 yen per month regardless of how many weapons you have or how large they are. The fee is normally debited from your account on the first day of the month. In my case, I only started using the weapons locker today so the first month’s fee should have been deducted from the account linked to my Adventurer's licence.

To retrieve your weapon before entering the dungeon again, simply return to the weapons locker counter and hold your Adventurer's ID card against the card reader. Your personal weapons will be handed to you within a few minutes.

The girls all headed toward the women's locker room where they had left their regular clothes. When we were leaving the purchasing counter I was asked, or rather I was instructed by Saito-san to wait for the girls in front of the main building’s entrance so they could meet up with me again.

I had been standing around in front of the main building for about 10 minutes before the three girls, now dressed in casual clothes and carrying large sports bags, hurried out the main door towards me.

"Sorry I'm late." Saito-san said breathlessly.

""sorry"" Hidaka-san and Nasegawa-san chimed in.

"I wasn't waiting that long so it's okay." I guessed that was the right thing to say to girls you were meeting somewhere. It’s not like I really had any experience of that sort of thing before.

"We still have some time and I'm starting to get hungry, so why don't we go to a restaurant?" Saito-san suggested.

I had eaten two rice balls earlier but they were not really enough to satisfy me. I love onigiri so I'd get some more for my lunch tomorrow when I come back to dive in the dungeon again. Since I have more money I'll get more than just two onigiri next time. Getting something else to eat right now though sounded like a good idea.

The four of us went into the hamburger shop nearest the Dungeon Center building. We all ordered ordered hamburger sets and sat down at a table on the second floor with our bags beside us. We talked about our studies and teachers and other high-school-student topics of interest while eating our hamburger sets.

"It would be a pain to have you call me by my family name every time, so you can just call me by my first name." Saito-san said around a mouthful of burger.

""Me too"" the other two girls mumbled.

I felt uncomfortable calling someone by their first name after only being with them for a day. "You can call me by my first name if you want but I’d rather call everyone else by their family names. It just seems the polite thing to do."

The three girls seemed a bit disappointed but in the end they agreed we would call each other "-kun" and "-san."

After finishing our hamburger sets and drinks we went our separate ways. The girls took the bus home but I decided to walk back to my place. The license issuing counter in the Dungeon Center that dealt with promotions was about to close for the day so I would have to get my B-rank Adventurer license tomorrow. I couldn’t wait!

 Saitama Dungeon by Yamaguchi Yuuko

 

Episode 13: Akigase Warriors

Saito and the other two girls refused to let me go off hunting monsters by myself and I ended up staying with them all day after that.

After recovering the core from the slime, we defeated a rhinoceros beetle and a stag beetle before we stopped for lunch at noon. I just located the beetles and didn't help the girls to defeat them. Regardless, the three of them enthusiastically beat the two beetles to a mushy unrecognisable pulp.

For some reason, after turning the monsters into goo they all stopped and looked meaningfully at me so I retrieved the cores from the mangled remains for them. Since the three of them were watching I couldn't use water magic to wash my dirty gloves so I had no choice but to take them off. When I fetched my towel out of my backpack Saito-san took out her own towel and wiped my gloves which were stained with insect bodily fluids and other crud.

At noon the four of us sat on a colourful picnic sheet on the ground having lunch together. The picnic sheet was something Saito-san had brought with her. I was eating the onigiri rice balls I had bought earlier at the convenience store while the three girls were eating sandwiches filled with cooked meat and salad.

One guy and three girls. A jealous outsider might look on this as a harem-like situation but I didn't see it that way at all.

"Hey, Saito, please introduce Hasegawa-kun to us properly." Nakagawa urged Saito-san.

"Oh, I forgot.” She swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and waved her hand at me. “Hasegawa-kun was my classmate in junior high school. His grades suddenly improved in the middle of the first semester of his third year and he went on to enroll at Saitama High School." I was a bit surprised that Saito-san had taken notice of me and even remembered that my grades had started improving back then.

"I think it's amazing." Nakagawa-san said.

"Isn’t Saitama High School really a prep school for University? Is it okay to be an adventurer? Don't you have to study during summer vacation too?"

"I'm keeping up with my school work pretty well so it's not a problem." I explained.

"As expected of Hasegawa-kun. Come to think of it, Hasegawa-kun's muscles are amazing." I remembered feeling Saito's fixed gaze on me several times while I was changing into my gym clothes back in middle school.

"I would love to see that." Nakagawa-san said excitedly.

"I want to see it too!" Hidaka-san agreed.

The three of them looked at me with intense expressions. I had no choice but to humour them so I stood up, took off my stab-proof jacket, my long-sleeved shirt and my underwear shirt to leave my upper body bare.

"His abs are really ripped. I think this is the first time I've seen them close up!" Saito-san breathed. "They’re amazing."

"Can I just touch them?" Without giving me the chance to say yes or no, Saito's hand reached out and stroked me from my stomach to my chest. I gritted my teeth and desperately tried to hold back the strange noise that was about to come out. Then the other two girls smiled broadly as their hands reached out from both sides...

"Ahem." I coughed, feeling embarrassed.

"Sorry." Saito-san didn’t sound very sorry.

"I think it was just too good to be true." Nakagawa-san said.

"Thank you for the meal…” Hidaka-san made a rather disturbing swallowing noise.

I turned my back for some reason as I put my clothes back on.

"Now that I think about it, we need to tell Hanakawa-kun about us.” Saito-san continued. “We’re classmates from Sakuragawa Girls High School. The three of us became adventurers and we call ourselves the Akigase Warriors.” As I remembered Sakuragawa Girls’ was close to Akigase park in Saitama. “We're going to become an S-rank adventurer team!"

"If we can…" the other two girls muttered.

"I, I see." The “Warriors” part of their team’s name was a bit off-putting but it's good to have big dreams. After all I intended to become an S-rank adventurer myself.

Saito-san suddenly pushed her face closer to mine. What was she doing?

"Hasegawa-kun, why don't you join the Akigase Warriors? Or rather, can we join up with you? Us three girls, people will try to take advantage of us in the future like those guys did just now. We’ll lose again in the future.” Saito-san smiled in what I supposed she believed to be a seductive manner. “And of course if you join us you will have three beautiful ladies by your side."

The other two stared at me without saying anything. Saito-san's offer had been made rather spontaneously but there seemed to be tacit agreement that they’d be okay with me joining their team. That was just my impression though.

Certainly, all three of them are cute girls but my immediate goal is to make money in the dungeon to raise my adventurer rank. I didn't want to handicap myself with beginners who couldn’t even defeat a slime with one hit or, even worse, have them see me using my magic skills. I decided to politely decline.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm more comfortable being alone so I'll pass."

"That’s a shame.” Saito-san said disappointedly before perking up again. “Then how about you come and dungeon dive with us sometimes?" This girl…

I surrendered. "That would be fine."

After finishing our lunch we took a short break and were about to head off to find some more monsters in the afternoon when a group of four men, college students by the look of them, approached. I had noticed their lingering presence for a while now. They were carrying two maces, a longsword and a small crossbow between them.

I decided quickly that would be best for me, the only adult person here, to deal with this. In terms of mental age, I’m akin to being the girls’ guardian so I called out to their leader before he could speak.

"Hi there, is there something you want?"

"Is that the way high school students talk these days?” The leader laughed. He made a show of counting us, pointing with his finger. “One, two, three, four. One boy and three girls.” He paused. “So can you give us two of them?" He smiled.

Are there really two-legged monsters like these in the dungeon? Normally a guy and three girls like us, high school students, would be no match for four male university students. If I were to make the first move though it would cause problems for me later. I should really take measures so I could prove it was self-defence if the authorities asked what happened, but what was the best move?

I glanced behind me and saw Saito-san pointing her smartphone towards me. This would be good evidence if we needed it but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

I answered the man's request forcefully. "There's no way I'm giving the girls to guys like you. And now we’re filming with our phones. If you do something stupid, you'll get into big trouble."

He ostentatiously placed his hand on the mace hanging from his waist and said "Hmph. I guess we'll just have to beat you up and take away her phone." This guy seemed determined to push his luck.

Don’t these guys realize that a fight involving weapons is not just a fight, it’s attempted murder? Being the kind person that I am, I made a suggestion for their own sakes.

“I understand. If we use weapons, it might make things more difficult so why don't we fight each other with our bare hands? Even if we get carried away, no-one will get seriously hurt, right?"

"A fist fight, how gentlemanly!” The man laughed. “Let’s go then, but don't complain if I knock a few of your teeth out."

He took up a fighting stance like he was in a boxing ring while the remaining three guys stepped back. I couldn't go all out against an amateur so I just stood there with my arms down. I kept my attention on the three goons behind their leader to make sure they didn't try to interfere.

“Hmm? If you’re too scared to move, then I’ll start things off. Don't whine now."

The man threw a right hook but it was the sort of wild punch I could see coming a mile away. This guy was clearly all talk and totally unused to fighting for real. I guessed he and his friends were underestimating me because I was just a regular high school student in their eyes.

I dodged the man's clumsy swing as I took a step forward and, too fast for the untrained eye to see, I struck the man in the solar plexus with the heel of my hand before sweeping his leg from under him with my foot. I moderated my power, of course but that was all it took for him to fall forward and land on all fours, coughing and vomiting. I stepped back and gestured to his friends to approach and help their fallen comrade. It seemed that no one except myself realised what I did, my movements were so fast.

"Oh, he just fell down by himself. That was kinda disappointing. Anyway, next please." I said, encouraging them with a ‘come hither’ gesture. I could clearly see that the other three guys were, at best, the same level as the first guy I had defeated so easily. I figured I could get this over with quicker if they all came at me together but that was up to them. I didn't turn around to look but I could sense the three girls behind me were looking on nervously. I shrugged mentally, most people in this peaceful world weren’t really comfortable with violence.