Quite a few people in Rivira did notice Leo and the others arriving.
But unlike up on the surface, the people here didn't gossip much about Leo's group.
On this safe floor that only upper-class adventurers could reach, well-known adventurers coming to Rivira were nothing unusual. First-class adventurer squads and members of the city's strongest Familias passed through from time to time too, so their reaction wasn't as big as it had been on the surface.
These people had only one purpose for staying here, and that was to make money, to wring it ruthlessly out of the fellow adventurers who came their way.
So what if it was Loki Familia?
So what if they were first-class adventurers?
When they went into the Dungeon, didn't they still have to spend their money here?
In the hearts of the crooked merchants here, no matter who came, they were all customers and fat sheep ripe for fleecing.
And especially the likes of Leo and the others, core elites belonging to the city's strongest Familia, were the fattest of the fat sheep, prime livestock as it were.
So at the sight of Leo's group arriving, beyond a bit of surprise, all that was left was the anticipation of them coming over to do business.
Precisely because of that, here Leo didn't put up his hood, and showed his real face.
As a result, Ais and the others didn't draw much comment, while he, the lone man among all these women, the "newcomer," drew the talk instead.
"That's the Leo Eligos from the rumors, right?"
"I heard he's already Lv.4?"
"That fast…"
"Just a month ago he was challenging Goliath with Lv.2 Status, and now the month isn't even fully over and he's already Lv.4. It's absurd."
"By the way, did you see that fight where he took on Goliath solo?"
"I didn't see it myself, but plenty of people next door did. They happened to run into that fight just as they were getting ready to head back here, and after they came back they were so worked up they went around telling everyone they'd seen something incredible."
"So you're saying that fight was real, not just somebody talking it up?"
"Of course. With that many people stepping up to confirm it, you think anyone's still got doubts?"
"I don't want to doubt it, but isn't that just too ridiculous?"
"Right? Lv.2 and he soloed a Lv.4 Floor Boss like Goliath. If that many people hadn't seen it with their own eyes, nobody would ever believe a thing like that."
"And now the guy's already Lv.4. If he went after Goliath again, it'd probably be a cakewalk, wouldn't it?"
"Tch, I really envy these gifted bastards. We've trained for years and still haven't hit Lv.4, never mind soloing a Floor Boss, and he just pulls it off without breaking a sweat."
"Who isn't envious…"
The talk wasn't loud, but it wasn't quiet either, and Leo's group, walking through the town, caught snatches of it.
"Still gonna tell me you're not famous?"
Tiona grinned and elbowed Leo, her tone all sly mockery.
Leo couldn't be bothered to discuss the topic any further. He just looked at the stalls and storefronts around him, cursing in his heart at how blatant the gouging was.
The prices here really were insane. Everything sold for several times the surface price, not a single item priced below five figures, even if it was just a bag of trail rations.
And the stall-owners and shopkeepers selling all this at such a markup put on a take-it-or-leave-it air, no hawking, no soliciting, just sitting there bold as brass, mouths split in wide grins, looking for all the world like crooked merchants waiting for the fat sheep to come to them.
They had it figured out on two counts, that adventurers couldn't easily resupply inside the Dungeon and that there was a limit to how much gear they could carry, so they weren't the least bit afraid of going without customers, which was why they could be so brazen.
No wonder Tiona and the others always wore that fed-up look whenever this place came up.
Tione, on the other hand, was thoroughly old hat at this. She went straight to the buyout station where you traded magic stones and the like for cash, and dumped out all the loot she and Lefiya were carrying.
"All of this. Sell it."
Tione's attitude was nowhere near pleasant, but the shopkeeper didn't take offense, just glanced it over and named a price.
"One hundred thousand valis."
Hearing that number, the corner of Leo's eye gave a violent twitch.
Good grief. That was at least a fifth of the surface buyout price.
It had only been half a day, and Leo's group had been focused on covering ground rather than seriously hunting for money, but the efficiency of this group killing monsters together went without saying, and if that loot were taken up to the surface to sell, it'd easily fetch four or five hundred thousand valis. Here it was only a hundred thousand. The gouging was off the charts.
But Tione looked like this was business as usual. She didn't even haggle, or rather she knew there was no haggling to be done here, so she briskly handed over the goods and took the money.
The owner of that buyout station was an Amazoness dressed like a dancing girl, the same race as Tiona and Tione.
"Since you lot are so generous, let me give you a piece of news." The Amazoness shopkeeper put on a mischievous look and smiled. "The town's not very peaceful today. Most folks have run off to watch the excitement. If you're interested, you could go take a look too."
At that, everyone froze.
"Excitement?" Lefiya said, puzzled. "What kind of excitement?"
The Amazoness shopkeeper glanced at Lefiya, then sneered.
"Somebody died in town. Now wouldn't you call that exciting?"
The moment those words came out, the air went dead silent.
Ais, Tiona, and Tione all frowned, while Lefiya's face filled with shock.
But Leo's eyes flickered faintly, something no one else could read passing through them.
"How could someone die inside the town?"
Tione's voice was low, breaking the silence.
Put that way it might not sound like much, since at any given moment in the Dungeon someone could be dying. People dying was nothing new, much less a big deal.
But that was when fighting monsters.
This here was a town. A town built inside the Dungeon, true, but in theory, unless monsters attacked it, it was unlikely for anyone to die here.
And if monsters had attacked, how could the town be this calm?
When monsters attacked, there were usually only two outcomes. Either a stray monster that posed no real threat happened by and got hunted down once the adventurers in town spotted it, or a whole horde of monsters came swarming in, and the adventurers in town saw which way the wind was blowing and simply ran, leaving the place to be wrecked.
This was different. Someone had died inside the town for no reason at all, and that simply couldn't be the work of monsters.
The Amazoness shopkeeper said as much with a perfectly indifferent face.
"Who knows why that poor bastard ended up dead in town? All I've heard is the body was a real mess, head stomped to a pulp, so badly that nobody's been able to figure out who the dead guy even was."
As she spoke, the Amazoness shopkeeper opened the coin pouch she'd been about to hand to Tione, took a big handful of gold coins out of it, and handed the pouch back.
So much for telling them the news because they'd been generous. The whole thing had been a deliberate transaction to charge an information fee!
"So this poor bastard was killed by someone?"
Tione simply tossed the whole pouch back to the Amazoness shopkeeper and went on questioning her.
"Pretty much, I'd say?" The Amazoness shopkeeper caught the pouch and said cheerfully, "Sure, monsters can smash a person's head in too, but slipping right into the middle of town like this, smashing someone's head and then quietly sneaking off, that's just not the kind of brains a monster's got."
"So you see, other than being killed by someone, there's no way that person died for any other reason."
"Maybe the killer's still wandering around this town. You'd best be careful."
Saying that, the Amazoness shopkeeper slapped her forehead as if suddenly waking up.
"Almost forgot you lot are Loki Familia, first-class adventurers no less. Other people might be scared, but you don't need to be, right?"
As she said it, the Amazoness shopkeeper shot a glance at Lefiya and split her mouth into a grin.
"Of course, it never hurts to play it safe. The killer might not dare do anything to a Lv.5 first-class adventurer, but a dainty little Lv.3 girl who looks like an easy target, now that's a different story."
Hearing that, Lefiya nearly went white with fright.
Everyone exchanged looks, and in the end they left the buyout station.
"A killing, huh…"
Walking through the streets of Rivira, Tiona muttered under her breath as if grumbling.
"It's not exactly news, but hearing about it still leaves a bad taste."
In principle, an adventurer killing an adventurer was forbidden, and once confirmed it was a crime no one could escape. At the very least the Guild and the city's guards wouldn't let it slide.
To the Guild, every adventurer in the city was living strength for exploring the Dungeon, important fighting power within the city, not to be lost lightly.
So while clashes between adventurers happened often enough, it was rare for them to escalate to actual deaths.
Once a death happened, it could even drive the two Familias involved straight into war, and naturally the Guild couldn't pretend not to see it. They had to step in.
Rivira sat in the Dungeon, beyond the Guild's reach, but once something blew up and word got back to the surface, it would still draw attention, even serious concern.
So as crooked as Rivira was, killings here were rare.
Now, all of a sudden, someone had died here, and clearly been killed by another person at that. There was no question it cast a shadow over everyone's hearts.
Just then Leo, who had been silent the whole time, clapped his hands, the sharp sound snapping everyone out of the heavy mood that had settled over them.
"Alright, this isn't our business to deal with, and you'd all do well not to overthink it." Leo spoke calmly, as if to brush away the shadow in everyone's hearts. "We're not Guild staff, and we're not city guards. A murder case is the kind of thing best left to the professionals to handle."
"As long as the dead person isn't a comrade from our Familia and the killer isn't someone from our Familia, it's got nothing to do with us."
Leo's words were a little cold and heartless, but no one present was the sort of bleeding-heart saint who loved to meddle, and hearing it put that way, their expressions brightened up somewhat.
"Leo's right. This has nothing to do with us, no need to dwell on it." Tione patted her own cheek and said to Ais and the others, "If the captain were here, he might take some interest in that murder, but there's no reason for us to get mixed up in it."
"…Haah, I guess you've got a point." Tiona scratched her head. "But with something like this going on, are we still gonna stay here?"
"Uh…" Lefiya shrank her neck and said timidly, "Maybe… maybe we'd better not stay here? It's pretty scary…"
Clearly Lefiya hadn't forgotten what the Amazoness shopkeeper had just said.
The way she saw it, the killer surely wouldn't dare go making trouble for Ais and the others. Leo was already Lv.4 and had a Floor Boss solo kill to his name, so unless the other party was a first-class adventurer themselves, they wouldn't dare go after Leo either.
That left the most likely target in the group, the most dangerous spot to be in, as none other than herself, the only Lv.3.
And she was a rearguard Mage everyone knew about, who without her Magic looked like an extremely easy little girl to pick on, so the odds of the killer being afraid of her were as close to zero as could be.
The thought made Lefiya not want to stay here a moment longer.
"Then let's…"
Leo was about to say something when he noticed Ais staring off in some direction.
"What is it, Ais?"
Even as he asked, Leo followed her line of sight.
And looking, he spotted a suspicious figure at once.
It was a young chienthrope girl.
The chienthrope girl had wheat-colored skin and carried a medium-sized pack, her appearance not exactly eye-catching, so by rights she shouldn't have drawn Ais's notice. But right now she was moving in a hurry, leaving quickly as if spooked and unsettled, and however you looked at it her manner was deeply suspicious.
"Miss Ais?"
"Ais?"
"What are you looking at?"
Lefiya, Tiona, and Tione all noticed something off about Ais and turned to look together.
"That person…"
Ais didn't shift her gaze, still fixed on the hurrying chienthrope girl.
It wasn't only because the girl was suspicious, but because, for some reason she couldn't explain, Ais found herself oddly fixated on her.
Or rather, oddly fixated on some object the girl was carrying…?
Ais pressed a hand to her chest, feeling an inexplicable tightness.
Watching Ais like this, Leo was silent for a moment, then said mildly:
"If she's bothering you, go after her."
With that, Leo didn't wait for Ais to answer. He simply stepped forward, heading toward that hurrying chienthrope girl.
Ais started, hesitated a moment, then followed.
"Hey, what's gotten into you two?"
"Where are we even going?"
"W-wait for us!"
Tiona, Tione, and Lefiya looked at each other and could only follow one after another.
The hurrying chienthrope girl seemed to realize someone was tailing her, and as if frightened, broke into a run.
Leo and Ais didn't stop to think, quickly giving chase, which set Lefiya and the others running too without quite knowing why.
The group chased one after another and soon ran out of the street, drawing the attention of certain interested parties…
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