Chapter 8: Would You Like to Sign a Contract and Become a Magical Girl?
....
The moment Kihara set foot in the dungeon for the second time, Shinobu's voice surfaced in the back of his mind.
[Master. Five people are following you.]
[Noted. Keep watching them for me.]
[Mm.]
He thought it through as he walked. Adventurers who specialised in dungeon robbery generally had the basic sense not to target someone who looked completely destitute and was operating on the first floor — there was no profit in it. Which meant this probably wasn't that.
Soma Familia, then. Coming to settle the score.
Level 1 adventurers made up the majority of Orario's registered population. It wasn't a world where Level 3 and 4 fighters were commonplace and Level 2s were disposable — in reality, a small Familia with even one Level 2 member occupied somewhere in the lower-middle rankings. Losing that Level 2 to Kihara's hands was a genuine blow. Sending people after him in retaliation was entirely predictable.
Once he'd identified them to his satisfaction, a thin smile crossed his face.
The direct approach — confront them immediately, end it cleanly — had obvious appeal. But the upper floors were too close to the surface. Other adventurers moved through these passages regularly. Bodies attracted attention, attention attracted complications, and complications were tedious.
Better to lead them down to the fifth floor. He could confirm whether Stardew Valley's mine elevator functioned here, deal with his pursuers using the local monster population as an instrument, and accomplish both objectives in a single trip.
Decision made, Kihara adopted the posture of a hopelessly out-of-depth newcomer.
He drew his standard longsword and spent the next stretch of the first floor staging the most unconvincing combat performance of his life — cramped, stumbling swings in the narrow passages, several near-misses against goblins that should have been trivial, a general impression of someone who had deeply miscalculated their own capabilities.
The Soma Familia members trailing him at a distance exchanged uncertain looks.
"...That's the person who beat a Level 3? He can barely handle a goblin."
"Are we sure we have the right person?"
The fox-person at the head of the group made a dismissive sound. His eyes sharpened with the particular expression of someone who believes they have just perceived a truth invisible to lesser minds.
"None of you noticed he hasn't used the magic item. Think about it — either it's broken, or it has a limited number of uses and he's already burned through them."
"...Actually, that does make sense. So do we move now—"
"Idiots."
The fox-person's hiss was barely audible.
"We're on the first floor. Do you want other adventurers to see us attacking someone unprovoked?"
The Guild didn't involve itself in disputes between adventurers as a general rule — but assault witnessed and reported by third parties was another matter entirely, carrying the kind of consequences that involved bounties and active pursuit.
"Right, sorry — I just thought about the divine wine and got a little—"
"Don't mention the divine wine. Not now. Focus."
The fox-person swallowed the saliva that had reflexively flooded his mouth and wrenched his attention back to the task.
As they followed Kihara down to the third floor, his confidence in the magic-item theory only grew. Their target was going out of his way to avoid every monster encounter, showing no willingness to engage. During a rest stop, he'd taken the item out from under his cloak and stared at it with an expression of obvious frustration before putting it away.
Something had clearly gone wrong with it.
A magic item capable of defeating a Level 3 adventurer.
Greed is a simple mechanism, and once it engaged fully, the fox-person's judgement became unreliable. When Kihara continued down to the fourth floor, he overrode his companions' increasingly vocal objections and followed.
Once I have that item, what's Zanis? He's a Level 2. I could replace him. I could drink as much divine wine as I wanted, whenever I wanted—
At the entrance to the fifth floor, he resorted to a combination of divine wine promises and outright threats to keep his party moving. He guaranteed them: they would make their move on this floor.
It took effort to hold the group together, but he managed it. The fox-person led the way through the entrance to the fifth floor — and immediately noticed that Kihara's figure had vanished into the darkness ahead. Even the residual scent trail was faint.
Panicking at the thought of his prize disappearing, he pushed the pace, following the smell.
What none of them were prepared for was the thing waiting around the next corner.
They walked directly into a congregation of Dungeon Lizards.
The creatures were roughly the length of a grown adult, brown-skinned, and distributed across the ceiling in a loose and patient arrangement. The moment they registered human intrusion into their territory, one of them acted — a tongue like a thrown spear crossed the distance and punched through the skull of the nearest adventurer before he'd had time to process what he was seeing.
Thud.
"AAAAAGHH—"
Warm brain matter and blood sprayed across the face of the man standing immediately behind. He turned the colour of old ash. His legs stopped working properly.
"B-boss — shouldn't we be running—"
"Nobody runs until we have his money and that item. Nobody."
A tongue curled around the fresh corpse and hauled it upward. It hung from the ceiling in a limp and undignified arrangement while the surrounding Lizards began methodically working holes into it with their tongues to get at the meat beneath. Blood dripped from the dangling limbs and tapped against the stone floor in a patient rhythm.
The werewolf in the group — who had never been below the third floor in his life — took one look at this and discovered that divine wine and the fox-person's threats were not, in fact, sufficient motivation. He flung his torch at the nearest Lizard and ran.
The torch was a catastrophic miscalculation. Dungeon Lizards favoured darkness. The light didn't hurt them — it enraged them. Claws raked across stone as multiple creatures shifted into motion across the ceiling, moving with a fluid, horrible speed that didn't belong to something that size.
The group's cohesion collapsed instantly. Every member ran in whatever direction felt most immediately survivable, the collective agreement to stay together dissolving in under three seconds.
The fox-person looked at the ceiling, counted at least a dozen Lizards in motion, and understood with sudden clarity that running in a straight line was not going to save him. His eyes moved to his remaining companions, and something cold and functional took over.
His sword cleared its scabbard. He picked out the smallest figure in the group and swung at her legs.
"AH—!"
The gnome girl went down with a scream, blood sheeting from the wound, her legs no longer answering. She hit the stone floor and stayed there.
The fox-person stepped over her without breaking stride.
"Nothing personal, little runt. Think of it as your final contribution — buying me enough time to get out."
"You absolute — you —!"
She screamed everything she had left into the darkness as he disappeared around the corner. Then the words ran out, and she lay in the spreading warmth of her own blood, staring at nothing, the sounds of the ceiling moving above her.
Of course. She'd always known adventurers were rotten, every last one of them. And she was just as bad — a coward who hadn't been smart enough or ruthless enough to betray someone first. That was the real lesson. Move first. Everyone else was just waiting for their moment.
Her vision was losing definition at the edges.
I'll die down here the same way I lived — pointlessly. Just like my parents.
She closed her eyes.
From somewhere in the darkness came the fox-person's voice — shot through with terror.
"How — how are you here—"
Bang.
Then silence. Then footsteps, unhurried, moving toward her.
The Dungeon Lizards, recognising the two-legged creature that had herded them back into their territory without apparent effort, receded like water finding its level and disappeared into the dark.
Liliruca's survival instincts fired before her conscious mind caught up.
"Is — is someone there? Help me — please—!"
She heard him crouch beside her. When she opened her eyes and saw his face in the torchlight, whatever hope had briefly ignited in her chest caved in on itself. She turned her face against the cold stone floor and dragged it back and forth until her cheeks were properly filthy.
Kihara held the torch up, looked at her with an expression of complete ease, and smiled.
"A maiden in the depths of despair," he said pleasantly. "Would you like to sign a contract and become a magical girl?"
...
Thank you for reading.