Arifureta/ From Commonplace to World’s Strongest Vol. 1 Ch. 2

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest Volume 1.

Chapter 2: The Monster of the Abyss.

The sound of water dripping reached his ears. A chilly wind blew past his cheek, and his whole body shivered. Hajime groaned softly as he opened his eyes. His cheek was resting on something hard, while the lower half of his body was freezing cold.
Groggily, he pushed himself up off the ground, an aching pain running throughout his entire body all the while.
“Owwww, where… I thought I…” He steadied his head with one hand, then tried to recall how he’d ended up in that position.
His surroundings were relatively dark, but thanks to the green crystals scattered about, it wasn’t pitch black. He looked behind him and saw a river five meters wide, and noticed that he was still half submerged within it. His upper body was resting on a boulder that jutted out from the riverbank.
“Oh yeah… the bridge broke, and then I fell. And then…” A haze lifted from his mind, and his brain finally started working again.
A stroke of luck had saved him from falling to his death.
Halfway down the cliff he had seen an opening in the wall from which water was flooding out. A waterfall, basically. There had in fact been numerous little waterfalls as he continued to fall, and Hajime had found himself swept away by them, until eventually they had guided him into one of the openings in the cliff, much like a water slide from hell. The fact that he was still alive was nothing short of a miracle.

Especially considering that halfway through his water ride, something smacked into him and knocked him out. Honestly, even he didn’t comprehend just how miraculous his survival was.
“I don’t really remember what happened, but I guess I’m not dead at least… Achoo! I-It’s really cold.” His body temperature had dropped dangerously low due to how much time he’d spent in the cold water. He ran the risk of developing hypothermia if he stayed submerged much longer, so Hajime quickly pulled himself out. Shivering, he stripped and started wringing out his clothes.
Then, in nothing but his underwear, he cast a transmutation spell. He used it to carve a magic circle into the hard earth.
“Gah, I’m so cold that it’s hard to concentrate…” He was trying to inscribe the “flare” spell. It was a very basic spell that even kids could cast with a ten centimeter magic circle.
However, not only did Hajime have no mana crystals with which to enhance the magic circle, he also had a magical affinity of zero. As such, he needed a complicated magic circle over one meter in diameter just to cast a simple flare spell.
After ten grueling minutes he finally finished his magic circle and chanted the incantation.
“Mine desire is fire. Fire, imbued with the essence of light— Flare… Gah, why does such a simple spell have such an exaggerated incantation? Can’t believe I have to chant something so embarrassing… Haah…” He sighed again, something he’d been doing quite frequently as of late, and brought himself closer to the fist- sized flame. He also laid his clothes out next to it to dry.

“Where am I…? I fell pretty far down, so can I even make it back up?” Worry gripped his chest as he calmed down and considered his situation while warming himself by the fire.
He felt like bawling his eyes out, and tears did form in the corners of his eyes, but Hajime knew he would break down completely if he let himself cry, so he held them back. He stubbornly wiped his tears, then slapped his cheeks.
“I’m gonna do this. I’ve gotta get back to the surface somehow. It’ll be fine, I’m sure I’ll figure something out.” He gave himself a pep talk and renewed his determination, wiping the sullen expression off his face. After that he simply gazed into the flames, mulling over his options.
After about twenty minutes he warmed himself sufficiently and his clothes were mostly dry, so he decided to head out. He didn’t know what floor he was on, but he was clearly deep in the labyrinth, and it wouldn’t be strange for monsters to pop out at any time. Hajime walked as cautiously as he could down the long passageway.
The path Hajime was going down resembled a cave of sorts.
It was nothing like the orderly rectangular passageways he’d been on in the upper floors. Boulders and other obstructions showed up at random intervals, and the path itself was twisting and winding. Much like the path they had found at the end of the twentieth floor.
However, the size of this one was on a completely different scale. Even with boulders and the like obstructing parts of the path, it was twenty meters wide. In fact, even the “narrow” stretches were still at least ten meters wide. Though it slowed his progress, Hajime moved from cover to cover, making sure to stick to the shadows as he advanced.
He had no idea how long he walked for. Around the time Hajime was starting to grow tired, he found himself at a fork in the road. Though it was more like a street intersection than a fork. Hajime hid behind a boulder as he deliberated which way to go.
While he was thinking, he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and he hurriedly shrank back, behind the safety of the boulder.
He timidly peeked out from behind the boulder and saw a giant white ball of fur hopping down the passage directly across his. It had rather long ears and looked just like a rabbit. However, it was the size of a dog, and it also had very thick hind legs. Plus, there were veins of pulsing dark red mana trailing down its body. It looked quite disturbing.
It was clearly deadly, and Hajime decided to go down one of the paths to avoid running into it. Judging by the position of its ears, Hajime determined that it would have a harder time spotting him if he went right.
He held his breath and waited for the perfect moment to run. Eventually the rabbit turned around and lowered its head, busily sniffing the ground. It was at that moment that Hajime attempted to leap out from behind the boulder.
But then the rabbit suddenly twitched, rising back up as it did. It warily looked around, its ears twitching.
Crap! D-Did it see me? O-Or am I safe? Hajime had quickly retreated behind the safety of the boulder, and he tried to calm his pounding heart as he clung to the rock face for dear life. He broke out in a cold sweat, afraid the rabbit’s exceptional hearing would be able to pick up on his pounding heartbeat.
However, it was not Hajime that had spooked the rabbit.
“Graaaaaah!” With a bestial roar, a white-furred wolf monster leaped out from behind a different boulder, heading straight for the rabbit.
The wolf was as big as a large dog, and had two tails sprouting from its behind. Just like the rabbit, pulsing veins of dark red mana ran down its body. Then, out of nowhere, two more Twin-tailed Wolves suddenly leaped out into the open.
Hajime peeked out from behind the boulder once more to see what was happening. The wolves were clearly attacking the poor bunny, though the creature was nowhere near cute enough to warrant a description like “bunny.” Hajime slowly got to his feet, planning on escaping during the confusion of the fight. However…
“Kyuuu!” The rabbit let out a cute squeal, then leaped up, did a turn in midair, and caught one of the wolves with a powerful roundhouse kick.
Boom! It didn’t sound anything like how a kick should, and connected squarely with the face of its target.
A second later— Crack! Together with a very ominous sound, the wolf’s head was turned to a very unnatural angle.
Hajime stood stock still as the battle raged on.
The rabbit then used the centrifugal force of its spin to turn itself upside down and hurtle toward the ground like a meteor. Then, a mere instant before impact, it righted itself once more. A powerful axe kick came down on the wolf standing at the rabbit’s point of landing.
Smash! The second wolf didn’t even have time to cry out before its head was pulverized.
Two more wolves came out of hiding and charged the rabbit.
Hajime thought that was the end for the rabbit, but it flipped itself upside down, and like a breakdancer, stood on its ears while spinning, legs spread out. The two new wolves were sent flying by the tornado kicks and slammed into the wall. And they hit that wall with a splat, spraying blood everywhere, and slid to the ground, unmoving.
The last wolf growled menacingly, its tails standing straight up. Suddenly, electricity began running down its tails. It looked like that was the magic the wolves could use.
“Graaaah!!” The wolf roared, and bolts of lightning flew toward the rabbit. But with nimble steps, the rabbit swiftly dodged the incoming bolts of lightning. Then, at the moment the lightning attacks stopped, the rabbit hopped forward and hit the last wolf with somersault kick. The wolf’s head bent back with a sickening crack, and it fell to the ground, utterly still. It was yet another wolf with a broken neck.
The Kickmaster Rabbit let out another squeal.
“Kyu!” Is that supposed to be a victory cry? After that, it started scratching its ears with its leg.

You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me. Hajime smiled in disbelief, his body still completely still. “Dangerous” didn’t do the beast justice. That thing made the Traum Soldiers Hajime and the others had fought earlier look like nothing more than toy skeletons. In fact, it might’ve even been more dangerous than the Behemoth they had fought, since the Behemoth’s attack patterns had at least been easy to read.
Hajime trembled in fear, knowing that his life was forfeit if he were discovered. Due to his fear, he unconsciously took a step back. But that was a mistake.
Clatter. The noise reverberated throughout the cavern.
He had accidentally kicked a pebble when he’d stepped back. He couldn’t believe he’d made such a basic blunder. Rivulets of cold sweat were pouring down his forehead after the fact. The rabbit’s neck creaked like a badly oiled machine as it turned to look in the direction of the kicked pebble.
The Kickmaster Rabbit clearly saw Hajime. Its glowing red eyes glared at him. His entire body stiffened, like a deer caught in headlights. His brain was yelling at him to run, but it felt like his nerves had all been cut, so his body refused to listen.
The rabbit turned its whole body around, then began gathering strength for a leap. Here it comes! Hajime instinctively managed to guess the moment of the rabbit’s leap. The speed of its jump was so ridiculously fast that it left afterimages behind it.
Driven purely by instinct, Hajime threw himself to the side. An instant later, a kick with the force of a cannonball slammed into the ground Hajime had been standing on. The force of it gouged the earth below. Hajime rolled over and over on the hard ground before coming to a stop in a sitting position. His face paled when he saw the pulverized ground and he quickly started running.
The rabbit leisurely got back up and dove toward him with another earth-shattering leap. Hajime hurriedly transmuted a wall behind him, but the rabbit easily blew it away and aimed another kick at Hajime. He instinctively brought up his left arm to shield himself from the blow. That somehow helped him avoid getting his face blown apart, but the shockwave of the kick sent him flying backward. Waves of excruciating pain ran down his left arm.
“Gaaaah!” When he looked down, he saw his arm was dangling at a very unnatural angle. His bones had been completely shattered. He crouched down in pain, then looked over at the rabbit. This time it wasn’t lunging forward, but leisurely hopping toward him. He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but it felt almost like the rabbit was looking down on him. It was toying with him.
But even then, all Hajime could do was unceremoniously continue backing up. Finally, the Kickmaster Rabbit stopped right in front of him. It glared down at Hajime as if it were looking at a worm. It then raised one if its legs up high, as if to show off before slaughtering its prey.
So this is where I die… Hajime thought, sinking into the depths of despair. He looked up at the rabbit with defeated eyes. Its leg came swinging down, together with a whoosh of wind.
Hajime closed his eyes, terrified of what was coming. “……” However, the blow he was expecting never came.

Hajime timidly opened his eyes to the sight of the rabbit’s foot inches from his face. The rabbit had stopped just before hitting him. Hajime despaired, thinking the rabbit intended to toy with him further, but then he noticed there was something off about it. A closer glance revealed that the rabbit was trembling.
Wh-What? Why’s it shaking? It almost looks like it’s scared… It wasn’t “almost:” it actually was scared.
A new monster had appeared from the right-hand corridor Hajime had tried to escape into. And said monster was massive. It stood over two meters tall, and like everything else on that floor so far, had white fur. And just like the others, it had veins of dark red mana running down its body. The closest thing it resembled was a bear. However, unlike a bear, it had massive forearms that went all the way down to its feet, which ended in wicked sharp claws over thirty centimeters long.
The Claw Bear had closed in while the rabbit had been focused on Hajime, and it glared down at both of them. A moment of silence enveloped the corridor. The rabbit had gone stiff out of fear and stopped moving. Rather, it couldn’t move. It was in the exact same situation that Hajime had been in mere moments ago. It was staring up at the bear, completely immobilized.
“…Grrrrr.” The bear let out a low growl, as if tired of watching two unmoving statues.
“Wha—!?” The rabbit quickly did an about-face and began hopping away as fast as possible. The explosive jumps it had used to annihilate its foes were instead being used to jet it to safety as fast as possible.
However, its escape was still unsuccessful.

The Claw Bear rushed forward, surprisingly fast for its large frame, and swiped its paw at the Kickmaster Rabbit. The rabbit nimbly dodged, twisting its body to avoid the paw’s sharp claws.
It looked to Hajime like the rabbit had somehow managed to dodge perfectly, avoiding even a glancing blow.
However… The moment the rabbit landed, a fountain of blood spurted forth, and the two halves of the rabbit fell in different directions.
Hajime watched on in shock. That overwhelmingly powerful rabbit had been killed so easily. It hadn’t even had time to put up a fight. Hajime understood why it had been so scared and ran earlier. That monster was on a completely different level. Even the rabbit’s Capoeira-esque martial art skills had been of no use in the face of its might.
The bear leisurely walked up to the rabbit’s corpse, speared one chunk of it with its claw, and began scarfing it down, making sickening squelching noises.
Hajime was rooted to the spot. The combination of fear and the bear’s sharp gaze kept him pinned in place. It kept its eyes on Hajime even as it chewed on the rabbit.
It finished the rabbit off in three huge bites, then turned its body around and roared at Hajime. Its eyes told Hajime everything he needed to know. The bear’s next meal would be him.
Panic gripped his mind as he stared into the eyes of the predator.

“Uwaaaaaah!!!” He let out a garbled scream and momentarily forgot about the pain of his broken left arm as he mounted a desperate escape attempt.
However, it was impossible for Hajime to escape from an enemy not even that rabbit had been able to flee from. He heard the sound of rushing wind, and an instant later something hard hit his left side. He was flung against the wall.
“Gahaah!” Hajime coughed violently as all the air was pushed out of his lungs, before sliding down the wall to fall in a heap on the ground. His vision blurred over, but he could still make out the bear chewing on something.
But he couldn’t quite make out what it was. It had already finished eating the rabbit, so it couldn’t have been that. Then he realized the bear was chewing a very familiar looking arm. Still confused, Hajime looked over to his left side, which had become inexplicably lighter. Or, more specifically, to where his left arm should have been…
“H-Huh?” His expressions stiffened, and he tilted his head in bewilderment. Why don’t I have an arm? Why is there so much blood spurting out? His mind, no, his entire being was rejecting the reality his eyes saw. But he could only feign ignorance for so long. The excruciating pain of having his arm ripped off finally hit, which brought him back to reality soon enough.
“Agaaaaaaaaahh!!!” Hajime’s scream of anguish echoed throughout the labyrinth. His left arm had been torn cleanly off from the elbow down.
That was the bear’s particular magic ability. Its claws were wrapped in blades of wind, and could cut thirty centimeters past what their length would suggest. All that considered, it was a miracle Hajime only lost his arm. Hajime wasn’t sure if it was because the bear was toying with him too, or if he was just lucky, but that last attack should have cut him in half.
After it finished wolfing down his arm, the bear slowly started walking toward Hajime. Unlike the rabbit, it didn’t seem to be looking down on Hajime. Instead, it merely saw him as food, nothing more.
It slowly extended one of its claws toward Hajime. The fact that he wasn’t ripped to shreds by it told Hajime the bear meant to eat him alive.
“Aaaaaah! Gaaaah! T-Transmute!” His face covered in tears, snot, and drool, Hajime screamed out his transmutation spell and set his right hand against the wall behind him. He was barely even aware of his own actions any longer.
He had been ridiculed as incompetent and had no magical affinity or physical talents to speak of, so Hajime, the weakest of them all, relied on the only power he did possess. A skill that was normally only used to craft armor and weapons.
Hajime, who possessed a job normally only meant for blacksmiths, desperately fought back. Because he’d been ridiculed for his lack of strength, he’d used all of his knowledge to think of unique ways to put his power to use. His results had been so unorthodox that he’d surprised even the knights, and his fervent devotion to his lone skill had even made him somewhat useful to his other classmates. This was why, even in the pits of hell, Hajime instinctively relied on this skill, and it was also why that skill was able to save him.

His sky blue mana shone briefly, and a depression opened up in the wall behind him. Hajime barely avoided the bear’s outstretched paw and tumbled back into the hole he had created behind him.
The bear roared, furious that its prey had managed to escape from right under its nose.
“Graaaaaaaaaah!!!” It wrapped wind blades around its claws once more, then thrust its paw into the hole Hajime had made for himself. The wall screeched angrily as the bear’s claws gouged furrows into it.
“Aaaaaaah! Transmute! Transmute! Transmute!” Hajime’s panicked mind registered the bear’s roar and the sound of the walls being gouged away, so he continued transmuting in succession, trying to put as much distance between him and the bear as possible.
He didn’t dare look back for even a second. He just kept transmuting. And crawling forward into each new opening he made. The pain of losing his left arm was temporarily forgotten. His survival instincts had kicked in, and he transmuted like his life depended on it. Which, frankly, it did.
He had no way to tell how far he’d dragged himself. Hajime had no idea; he just knew he could no longer hear the bear thundering behind him. In truth, he had not actually traveled all that far. Transmutation was only effective within two meters of his target this was still double what it had been initially , and blood loss had slowed him considerably. He wouldn’t be able to keep moving for much longer.
In fact, he was already on the verge of unconsciousness. Still, he squeezed every last ounce of strength out of him to keep crawling forward. However…

“Transmute… Transmute… Transmute… Transm…” He kept chanting the incantation, but the wall in front of him remained unchanged. His mana had run out before his consciousness. Drained of all his strength, his hand fell away from the wall and he collapsed on the ground.
Hajime used every ounce of his willpower to keep himself conscious, rolling himself onto his back. He gazed blankly at the dark ceiling above him. There were no green crystals there to light his surroundings.
Hajime began recalling events from his past. Guess this is what they mean when they say your life flashes before your eyes. He went over his life, from preschool, to elementary, to middle school, and then finally to high school. Memories flew by, until at last they stopped… on the night he had talked with Kaori. He recalled the moonlight spilling in from the window, and the promise he had made with her.
His consciousness finally faded as he recalled that fond memory. But before he sank fully into unconsciousness, he felt water dripping onto his cheek. They felt like someone’s tears.
Drip… Drip… The water trailed down his cheek and dripped into his mouth. Hajime’s faint consciousness slowly began to grow brighter. Bewildered, he slowly opened his eyes.
I’m alive…? Did someone save me? He raised himself up, only to bump his head on the low ceiling.
“Agah!?” He remembered too late that he had made the ceiling above him a mere fifty centimeters tall. Hajime raised his arms up to the ceiling to transmute a larger hole. However, only a single arm entered his line of sight, and he cried out in surprise.
He stared at the stump of his left arm in disbelief for a moment before remembering he had lost it recently. A sharp pang of pain ran down where his left arm should have been. He was experiencing phantom pain for the first time. His face twisted in anguish and he reflexively gripped his left arm, only to realize— That there was slight swelling where his arm had been cut off, and the wound had already closed.
“H-How…? It was bleeding so much…” It was too dark to see, but if there had been any light it would’ve been clear that Hajime was lying in a pool of his own blood. In fact, Hajime had lost so much blood that he should by all rights have been dead.
He felt around with his right hand and felt the sticky sensation of blood all around him. It was recent enough that it hadn’t dried yet. With that, he was able to confirm that his bleeding out had not been just a dream, and that it had been only a few minutes since Hajime lost consciousness.
And yet his wound had completely closed up, and as Hajime pondered how such a thing was possible, he felt water drip onto his cheeks and mouth once more. He felt somewhat revitalized as the drops slid down his throat.
“Don’t tell me… this is what saved me?” Hajime was still a little lightheaded from the blood loss and phantom pain pangs, but he reached his hand out to the source of the water and transmuted the earth around it.

Still somewhat unsteady, he continued transmuting deeper and deeper into the wall. The strange liquid that he now realized couldn’t possibly have been water, continued oozing out of cracks in the rock. Interestingly enough, it restored his mana as well, so Hajime was able to continue transmuting without running out of energy. Hajime deliriously continued transmuting, single-mindedly seeking out the water’s source.
Eventually, the slow trickle transformed into a faster stream, and Hajime finally arrived at the source of the liquid.
“This… is…” The source of the liquid was a basketball-sized crystal that emitted a pale blue light.
The crystal was buried into the wall around it, and the liquid was pouring out from underneath it. It had an aura of wondrous beauty about it. The light it emitted was just a shade darker than an aquamarine’s. Hajime stared at it in wonder, his pain momentarily forgotten. Then, as if drawn to it, he put his mouth to the crystal.
As he did so the, the pain, the haze that had fallen over his mind, and the fatigue, all left his body. As he had suspected, it was the liquid from this crystal that had saved Hajime’s life. Which meant that the liquid contained some kind of healing agent. His phantom pain could never be cured for good, and the blood he’d lost wasn’t coming back, but the rest of his wounds and all of his mana were restored in an instant.
Though Hajime didn’t know it, the crystal was actually a “Divinity Stone.” Divinity Stones were rare crystals, and considered to be one of the world’s greatest historical treasures. Modern day people thought them a lost legend.

Divinity Stones were created when a large clump of mana pooled together and crystallized over the course of a thousand years. They ranged from thirty to forty centimeters in diameter, and then over the course of a few hundred years their saturated mana liquefied and poured back into the earth.
The liquid they secreted was known as Ambrosia, and it healed all wounds. It couldn’t regrow missing limbs, but supposedly it extended one’s life so long as they continued to drink it, and was also referred to as the elixir of life. Legend claimed that Ehit healed the masses with this very Ambrosia.
He realized he’d just narrowly escaped a very painful death, and Hajime slumped down against the wall. He hugged his trembling body, then buried his face in his knees, the fear of death still fresh in mind. He no longer had the energy to try and escape. The constant stress and fear had finally broken him.
If it was just enemies he had to face, then he might have managed somehow. He would have rejoiced at the fact he was still alive, then gotten back up.
But those eyes the bear had looked at him with broke him. Those were the eyes of a predator that saw Hajime as nothing more than food. The eyes most humans, who stood at the top of the food chain, never even had to dream about. Those eyes, and the sight of the bear chewing on his own arm, had completely crushed Hajime’s spirit.
Someone… anyone… please save me… But he was deep within the pits of hell, so there was absolutely no way his thoughts would reach anyone. He didn’t know how long he sat there. But for the longest time, he just huddled in a fetal position, begging for salvation he knew would not come.
Four days had now passed since Hajime had fallen from the bridge.
In that time he had barely moved, drawing the sustenance he needed from the Divinity Stone. However, while Ambrosia could keep a man alive through all but the most heinous of conditions, it could not sate his hunger. Though he couldn’t die, Hajime suffered constant pangs of hunger, along with the phantom pain that ran down his missing left arm.
Why is this happening to me? That question had been something he constantly thought about.
He couldn’t sleep because of the pain and hunger, and if he drank more Ambrosia, all it did was clear his mind to let him feel the pain more vividly. Over and over, his fatigue brought him to the edge of consciousness, only for the pain and hunger to draw him back. And then to escape the pain he would drink more Ambrosia, which only invited further pain. He had repeated that cycle more times than he could count.
At some point, Hajime stopped drinking the Ambrosia altogether. He had unconsciously chosen the fastest way to end his pain.
“If all that awaits me is eternal pain… then I might as well…” He muttered to himself, clearly defeated, and let his consciousness slip away.
Three days after that.
The pain which had passed a certain threshold had abated for a while, but that was simply the calm before the storm. His starvation came back in full force, and excruciating hunger pangs continuously wracked his stomach. The phantom pain continued as well, tormenting Hajime all the while. It felt as if his fingernails were slowly being peeled off one by one, and then salt was dumped in the open wounds.
I’m… still not dead yet…? Aaah… Please, please… I just want to live…
While craving death, he still instinctively clung to life. His thoughts began to contradict themselves. Hajime was no longer capable of rational thought. His delirious mumblings no longer made any semblance of sense.
Yet another three days passed.
Without the Ambrosia’s aid, he would expire in another two days. He had drunk nothing in that time as well, so his thirst mingled with his hunger.
However, a short while earlier, around the eighth day since discovering the Divinity Stone, a strange shift in his mentality had begun. Hovering between wishing for death and praying for salvation, his mind had begun to warp, and dark thoughts began welling up from Hajime’s subconscious.
Like slime, it had slowly oozed into the cracks in his heart caused by his suffering, and slowly eaten away at his soul.
Why do I have to suffer so much…? What did I ever do to deserve this? Why me… Why did it end up like this? God just kidnapped me and dropped me off at this place… And then my classmates betrayed me… I was looked down on by a rabbit… And then that bastard ate my arm… His thoughts continued to grow darker. Like black ink slowly spreading through white parchment, Hajime’s pure heart slowly grew sullied.

Someone was at fault, someone had pushed this unfairness on him, someone had hurt him like this… His mind started searching for an enemy to hate. The pain and hunger and darkness all slowly eroded away Hajime’s sanity. His dark thoughts continued to grow.
Why isn’t anyone coming to save me? If no one’s going to save me, what should I do? How can I make this pain go away? By the ninth day, Hajime was trying to find a way out of his predicament.
Thoughts of how to escape the pain were all that filled him, and even anger and hatred were slowly being worn away. There was no time to be trapped by such petty feelings. Because no matter how much he raged against his foes, Hajime’s pain never lessened. In order to escape the absurd and unreasonable situation he was stuck in, unneeded feelings had to be discarded.
What is it I want? I want to live. And what’s stopping me from living? The enemy. And just who is the enemy? Everyone and everything that gets in my way, everything that pushes this unreasonable fate onto me. So what is it I should do? I should… I should…
The tenth day. Both hatred and anger had vanished from his heart. The unfair god that thrust him into this world, the classmate that betrayed him, the monsters that wanted to kill him… even the smile of the girl who said she would protect him… they all ceased to matter.
Compared to the pressing need for survival, such tiny feelings meant nothing. Hajime’s will resolved into a hardened point. Like the tip of a sword forged from the fires of hell. Sharp, strong, and able to cut through anything.

And his will desired to… Kill them. There was no hatred, hostility, or anger in those words. Just a simple statement of fact. In order to live, he had to kill.
Anything that threatened his life was an enemy. And all enemies were to be… Killed. Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill. In order to escape the relentless hunger, he had to kill them and eat them. It was at that moment that the kind, quiet Hajime Nagumo, the Hajime who blew everything off with an apology and a smile, the Hajime Kaori had come to admire, ceased to exist.
And a new Hajime Nagumo, one who was willing to mercilessly slaughter anything that stood in his path, was born.
His shattered soul had reformed once more. And it was not as a mere patchwork, hastily repaired soul. No, this was a soul reforged in the darkness and despair of hell, a soul tempered in pain and instinct. A soul harder than steel.
Hajime dragged his weakened body over to the cavity where the Ambrosia had spilled, then lapped it up like a dog. His hunger and pain still remained, but his body regained its vigor.
Then he roughly wiped his mouth, his eyes sparkling ferociously as a wicked grin spread over his face. His canines peeked through his cruel smile. It was a complete about-face from the kind of person he had been before.
Hajime stood up, and began muttering while he transmuted the ground.

“I’ll kill them.”
Twin-tailed Wolves made their dens in certain parts of the labyrinth floor. They usually moved together in packs of four to six. Alone, they were among the weakest of the monsters that roamed the floor, so they always acted in groups. This pack was no exception, and was a group of four.
They skirted from boulder to boulder, vigilant of their surroundings, searching for a suitable hunting ground. Twin-tailed Wolves generally preferred to ambush their prey.
They wandered the corridors for a while until finding what they deemed a suitable hunting spot and all hid behind different boulders. All that remained was to wait for prey to fall into their trap. One of the wolves slipped between a small crack in a nearby boulder and the wall, then erased its presence. It licked its lips in anticipation, imagining the flesh it would soon feast on, when suddenly it felt a rather odd sense of unease.
As the wolves’ key to survival was their cooperation, the members of a pack all shared a peculiar link with each other. It wasn’t as straightforward as telepathy, but they were basically able to tell what the rest of their pack was doing and where they were. And it was that link that tipped the wolf off. They were a pack of four, and yet the wolf could only sense two of its other companions. The wolf that should have been lying in wait on the other end of the corridor suddenly vanished.
Suspicious, the wolf slowly rose on its haunches, when suddenly another one of its comrades howled. The wolf that was hiding on the same side of the wall as the one that had disappeared was feeling a sense of impatience. It was caught in something and trying to escape, but seemed unable to do so.
The two wolves on the other side of the corridor rose to go to its aid. But then the struggling wolf’s presence suddenly vanished as well.
Confused, the two wolves rushed over to the far side, but found no one there. Bewildered at the turn of events, the two wolves put their snouts to the ground and began sniffing the area their pack members had been in moments ago.
Suddenly, the ground under them began to cave in, and the walls jutted out to encase them. They tried to jump out, but before they could, the ground around their feet rose up and hardened around them. Normally, the wolves would have easily been able to shatter such frail shackles. Had they not been confused by this unusual situation, they would never have even fallen for such a simple trap.
However, their assailant had predicted their confusion, as well as their hesitation. And their precious few moments of confusion were enough for him to trap them.
“Graaaah!?” The two wolves howled angrily as they found themselves stuck fast inside the wall… Then the wall swallowed them whole, and only the echoes of their screams remained.
It was, of course, Hajime who had trapped the four wolves. Ever since he had resolved to strike back, he had spent each day in ceaseless training, ignoring his pain and hunger. The Ambrosia extended his life and restored his mana, so he was able to focus on his transmutation twenty-four seven. He worked on his speed, his precision, and his range. He knew then that had he gone outside with his current level of skill, he would have died instantly. So he made his base where the Divinity Stone was, and honed the only weapon he possessed. That weapon was, of course, transmutation.
Though he had ignored his pain while he trained, it only continued to grow as time passed. But that pain only spurred his determination, and he redoubled his efforts to improve his transmutation. Thanks to his focused training, his skills increased far more rapidly than they had been until now, and he was able to transmute from over three meters away now. Unfortunately, his talent for earth magic itself had not grown at all.
Once he had decided he’d trained enough, he created a small stone container in which he scooped up some Ambrosia, and began wandering the dungeon, transmuting, searching for his first target.
That was when he had found the pack of Twin-tailed Wolves. He had followed them silently for a while. Of course, he was nearly spotted numerous times, but every time he managed to transmute walls around him and remain inconspicuous. Then, the moment the four split up to head to their ambush points, he had transmuted the wall and dragged one of the wolves into it.
“Now then, still alive, are we? Well, I can’t kill anything directly with transmutation, I suppose. I could maybe make spikes come out of the earth, but they wouldn’t have enough force to kill monsters this deep in the labyrinth.” Hajime grinned wolfishly as he peered down at the trapped monsters through a small hole at his feet. The wolves were all trapped within the wall itself, and couldn’t budge an inch. They were all whimpering softly, panic evident in their eyes.
He had, in fact, tried to attack a monster by transmuting a spike to stab it from underneath before, but it hadn’t even had enough power to penetrate its hide. That was, after all, something more in the domain of earth magic and not transmutation. In the end, it was still a skill used for mineral processing and production, so it would be impossible for a production skill to have any real power. Which was why trapping them was the best he could do with it.
“I could just suffocate you in here… but I’m not patient enough to wait that long.” Hajime’s eyes had the glint of a predator to them by that point.
Hajime put his right hand up against the wall and transmuted it. He cut away parts of the boulder little by little, focusing on the image in his mind to make sure his work stayed precise. Eventually, he was able to make a spiral-tipped spear. He then began working on the shaft. He added a handle where the grip would normally be.
“Now then, time for a little digging!” Hajime pointed his spear down at the wolves as he said that. He thrust down, and felt their tough fur and skin deflect his spearhead.
“So I can’t stab through, huh? Well, I expected that, though.” Why had he not just crafted himself a knife or sword? That was because the stronger a monster got, the tougher its outer hide was, usually. Obviously there were species that were exceptions to the rule, but as Hajime had spent all his time at the castle studying, he knew that a normal knife or sword wouldn’t penetrate the hides of monsters at this level.
And that was why he began to twist the handle he made for himself, while applying a steady downward pressure. The spiral-shaped tip began to rotate as he twisted. He had made a drill to pierce the thick hide of monsters.

He pushed the weight of his entire body down into the drill as he turned it with his right hand. Slowly but surely, the drill began to penetrate the wolf’s thick hide.
“Graaaaah!?” The wolf howled in pain.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Well, I’m not gonna apologize for it. Gotta do this to live after all. You’d eat me if you had the chance, so we’re even.” He spoke to the wolf while continuing his slow drilling. The wolf tried to struggle, but it was unable to move at all due to the stone tomb.
Finally, the drill pierced the flesh of the wolf. And Hajime mercilessly gouged out its insides. The wolf screamed in agony as it died. Its howls lasted for a while, until suddenly, it spasmed and grew still.
“Alright, with this I finally have some food.” Hajime smiled happily as he drilled the other three wolves to death. Once they were all dead, Hajime transmuted their corpses up to him, then began awkwardly peeling away their fur with one hand.
After that, driven by his hunger, he began to devour them. He cut a ghastly figure as he tore into their flesh, illuminated dimly by the green light of the crystals. The green light that defined his hell. He greedily devoured the wolf, every bit the animal he had just killed.
“Agah… Gah, tastes like shit!” He spat curses, but that didn’t stop him from eating the wolf. His entire mind was focused on his meal.
The flesh was tough and stringy, and the fresh blood clogged his throat, but he tore at the meat and swallowed it all happily nonetheless. It was his first time tasting food in two weeks. His stomach protested at the sudden infusion of flesh, and resisted its ingestion. But Hajime didn’t care what his stomach thought, so he continued wolfing the wolf down.
He looked just like a feral monster. Any modern human would have found his current figure repulsive.
The meat smelled raw and disgusting, bringing tears to his eyes, but Hajime felt the food relieve his excruciating hunger pangs, and compared to those, such minor inconveniences were nothing. He had never imagined eating meat could be such a euphoric experience. He ate and ate and ate.
Hours passed, and still he continued to consume. He gulped it all down with Ambrosia, and had the priests of the Holy Church known his barbaric meal was accompanied with such a sacred drink, they would have fainted. However, around the time he was finally starting to feel full, Hajime began to notice a change occurring within his body.
“Ah? Gah!? Agaaaah!” Searing pain shot through him. It felt as if something were eating away at him from within. As time passed, the pain only grew worse.
“Guaaaaaaaah!!! Wh-What’s— Gaaaaaaah!!!” It was unendurable agony. The pain was trying to eat him from the inside out. Hajime writhed on the ground, screaming in terror. This pain was far, far worse than the hunger pangs he had been feeling previously.
With a trembling hand, Hajime pulled a stone vial out of his pocket, ripped the cap off, and poured its contents down his throat. The Ambrosia did its work, and the pain began to recede, but then, eventually, it returned once more.

“Hiii… Gugaaaaaah! Why… won’t it heal… Gaaaaah!” Along with the pain Hajime, began to feel his body throb. It began to pulse, like one big organism. In fact, he could hear his body creaking too.
However, an instant later the Ambrosia kicked in again and began repairing his body. Once the healing finished, the pain returned. Then he was healed again.
Thanks to the Ambrosia, he couldn’t even faint. Its healing powers had backfired on him.
Hajime screamed incoherently, smacking his head against the wall over and over, but the pain showed no signs of ending. He begged for someone to end his pain, but of course no one granted his wish.
Eventually, Hajime’s body began to morph.
The color was bleached from his hair. He was unsure whether it was from the pain or for some other reason entirely, but his distinctively Japanese black hair slowly turned white. Then, his muscles and bones began to grow slightly, giving him a toned appearance. Red veins ran down the inside of his body, though he wasn’t aware of that at the time.
There existed a phenomenon known as overcompensation. When one attempted muscle training, their muscles actually tore, and the body simply regrew them a bit stronger to overcompensate. And that same thing was happening to Hajime.
A monster’s meat was poison to humans. Because of the mana crystals distilled into their blood, a monster’s specialized organs allowed them to directly interface with magic, and give them superior physical strength. The mana that circulated through monsters affected even their bones and muscles.

This transformed mana allowed monsters to use magic without incantations or magic circles, though no one knew exactly how. Regardless of the particulars, a monster’s mana was poison to humans, and killed any who tried to ingest it. It would eat a person away from the inside, destroying their very cells.
There were people who had tried to eat monsters in the past and they had all, without exception, died. In fact, Hajime had read all about this, but his extreme hunger had led him to forget.
Had Hajime just eaten the wolf’s flesh, he would have died an agonizing, but swift death. But there had been something that prevented that. And that was the Ambrosia. It healed him every time his body was destroyed. As a result, his body was forced to evolve at an unnaturally rapid pace.
It was broken, then repaired. Broken, then repaired. With each cycle, his body slowly changed. Almost like a reincarnation of sorts. His frail human body was forcibly transformed into something stronger, and he went through a ritual of rebirth. It could be said Hajime’s screams were akin to the cries of a newborn.
Finally the pain receded, and Hajime slumped to the ground. The hair on his head had turned white, and underneath his clothes, veins of dark red mana ran down his body. Just like the Twin-tail Wolves, or the Kickmaster Rabbits, or the Claw Bears.
Hajime’s right hand twitched. He slowly opened his eyes, then groggily looked down at his right hand, and finally clawed at the ground, slowly curling his fingers into a fist.

He clenched and unclenched his hand multiple times, confirming that he was indeed still alive, and that his body still listened to him, before slowly getting up.
“Come to think of it, you weren’t supposed to eat monster meat… I can’t believe I did something so retarded… Well, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer without food either, though…” Exhausted, Hajime smiled self-deprecatingly.
His hunger had faded, and the specter of his left arm no longer pained him either. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was free of pain. In fact, his body felt surprisingly light, and power was overflowing from within him.
Despite how much the constant pain had exhausted him mentally, he still felt better than he ever had in his life. He looked over at his arm, then down at his stomach, and saw very prominent muscles. He had grown a little taller too. He had originally been a mere 165 centimeters tall, but he had grown a full ten centimeters.
“What happened to my body? I feel different somehow…” And it wasn’t just the outside. The inside of Hajime’s body somehow felt different as well. It was at once both hot and cold, an indescribably strange feeling. If he focused, he could make dark red veins float up to the top of his arm.
“Uwaaah, th-that’s gross! It’s like I turned into a monster or something… I better not have, that would make for a terrible joke. Oh yeah, I should check my status plate…” He fished around for the status plate he had completely forgotten about, eventually pulling it out of his pocket. It appeared he hadn’t lost it yet. He examined his current stats, imagining it would give him some insight to the changes in his body.

Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 8 Job: Synergist
Strength: 100
Vitality: 300
Defense: 100
Agility: 200
Magic: 300
Magic Defense: 300
Skills: Transmute — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Language Comprehension
“What in tarnation?” A little of the old Hajime returned as the shock made him slip into his weird accent. His stats had all risen astronomically, and he had three new skills. But his level had only risen to eight. Since a person’s level represented the proportion of the total potential they had reached, it would seem that Hajime’s growth limits had increased as well.
“Mana Manipulation?” If he took it literally, that would mean Hajime had gained the power to directly control mana.
Could that weird sensation I’ve been feeling be mana? Hajime thought, and attempted to activate his Mana Manipulation skill.

When he focused, Hajime saw those dark red veins come up to the surface of his skin again. He concentrated on an image of that sensation rushing to his right hand all at once. As he did so, the strange sensation, or rather his mana, began slowly flowing down to his hand.
“Oh? Oooooooh!” He unconsciously cried out at the inexplicable sensation of mana moving throughout his body. Then, suddenly, his mana poured into the magic circle inscribed on the glove he was wearing without him having to say anything. Surprised, Hajime attempted to transmute something. The ground rose up without him saying a word.
“No way. I didn’t even need to chant an incantation? I thought direct mana control wasn’t supposed to be possible for anyone except monsters…? Does that mean I absorbed a monster’s special abilities by eating it?” That was indeed the case. Hajime had acquired the power of monsters. He then moved to try out another of his new skills, Lightning Field.
“Umm… how am I supposed to use this? Since it says Lightning Field, it must have something to do with electricity, right? Could it be? Do I have the same skill the wolf used when it gathered electricity in its tail?” He tried various things, but none of them seemed to do anything. Unlike Mana Manipulation, he couldn’t physically feel the skill inside him, so he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about activating it.
While pondering to himself, he remembered that when he was transmuting, he always needed a mental image of the effect he was trying to produce. The less one relied on a magic circle to define the characteristics of a spell, the more they needed a mental image to guide its creation.

Hajime formed an image of crackling static electricity in his mind. Suddenly, red lightning started trailing down his fingertips.
“Oooh, I did it! I see. So to use a monster’s magic, I need a good mental image of its properties. And now that I take a closer look… my mana’s become reddish just like the monsters.” He continued practicing making electrical discharges over and over. However, unlike the Twin-tailed Wolves, he was unable to fire off the electricity he could generate. From the sound of the name “Lightning Field,” Hajime surmised that he could only wrap himself in lightning, and transfer it via direct contact. So he practiced adjusting the flow of the current, as well as the voltage of the electricity he could produce.
The skill Iron Stomach most likely did exactly what its name suggested. Hajime most certainly didn’t want to suffer that hellish pain of eating monster meat ever again. However, there didn’t appear to be any other source of food in the labyrinth either. Which would have meant that he would be forced to choose between starvation and agonizing pain. Fortunately, he assumed that skill of his prevented him from having to make such a choice.
He took another strip of wolf flesh and seared it with his Lightning Field. Since he was no longer half-mad with hunger, he realized there was no need to eat the meat raw. He tried to ignore the pungent odor of burning flesh as he cooked the meat. Then he steeled himself, taking a bite of the meat.
A few seconds passed… a minute… ten minutes… and still nothing happened. Hajime grilled some more meat and ate it. And still there was no pain. He wasn’t sure if it was due to his Iron Stomach, or if his body had just adapted to monster flesh. He also didn’t care too much. He was just glad he could eat again, without having to suffer every time he did.
After he had eaten his fill, Hajime returned to his base. As he was, he might even have had a chance against that bear. He decided to spend some time training his new skills first, though.
He went back to where he’d left the wolves’ corpses and cut their meat into strips. He had a much easier time peeling their fur off this time. He piled as much meat as he could hold into another one of his stone containers, and carefully took it back to his base.
Once safe in his base with a supply of food, Hajime spent the next few days diligently training his skills.
All of his skills grew at a fast pace. His transmutation skill underwent a change as well. It appeared that he had mastered it to the point where derivative skills began to pop up. The derivative skill he had learned from it was “Ore Appraisal.” It was a high-level derivative skill that was rare even among royal blacksmiths.
Appraisal magic was generally far more complex than offensive magic, and therefore required suitably large magic circles to activate. For that reason, only certain academic facilities and large institutions had appraisal magic circles. However, people with appraisal skills could appraise anything within their domain of analysis with a small magic circle and simple incantation, as long as they were touching their target. It was a derivative skill, so it was by definition impossible to innately possess. Only through long years of transmutation training could one obtain the skill.

When he acquired it, Hajime made sure to appraise every single ore and mineral he could find. When he appraised the green glowstones, the following appeared on his status plate:
Green glowstone: This ore can absorb mana. When it is saturated with mana, it emits a faint green light. If you break a saturated glowstone, the light it has contained within explodes out all at once in a brilliant flash.
A very simple explanation. However, it was still very useful information. Hajime grinned wickedly as a plan came to mind. He wandered the labyrinth, looking for other stones to appraise, and ran into a certain mineral that gave him the idea for a weapon that would soon become his trump card.
Blastrock: A combustible ore. When exposed to fire, it burns like oil. As it burns, it slowly decreases in volume until it finally burns to cinders. Burning large quantities of blastrock in a confined space will make it explode violently. Depending on its quantity and pressure, it’s possible to create flames as strong as those created by fire magic.
Hajime could feel all the pieces coming together when he read that explanation. Blastrock is just like gunpowder back on earth. With

something like this, I can make a weapon out of Transmutation, even!
Hajime stared at the stone excitedly. It would take a great deal of trial and error to get things the way he wanted them, but he was still overjoyed. He finally had a combat use for the transmutation that had saved his life so many times before.
He began zealously working on his project, so focused on his transmuting that he didn’t eat or sleep for days. After thousands of failed attempts, Hajime finally completed it.
A modern weapon that boasted immense strength and fired projectiles that traveled faster than the speed of sound. The weapon was about thirty-five centimeters long, made of the hardest and densest material he could find, taur, and it boasted six chambers. The barrel was rectangular. The bullets were made from the same super-hard taur stone, and each shot was packed with powdered blastrock.
He had made himself a revolver. But the difference was that it used more than just the power of blastrock combustion to propel its bullets. Hajime was able to use his Lightning Field skill to electrically accelerate his shots like a railgun. The combination made his bullets pack more of a punch than an anti-tank rifle. He decided to name it Donner. It was going to be his partner moving forward, so he reasoned it needed a name.
“With this, both those monsters… and the exit… are in my sights!” Hajime stared proudly at Donner, the weapon he had made by using the guns he remembered from his old world as a reference.
The most common class in the world, Synergist, which was thought to be good for nothing more than crafting swords and armor, had brought forth modern weaponry into this fantasy world with the power of its sole skill, Transmute.
Taur stone: A black, hard rock. On the Mohs scale that went up to 10, it would rank an 8 for hardness. It is able to handle heat and direct impacts well, but is weak to the cold. Cooling the stone makes it brittle and fragile. However, reheating it will restore its hardness.
“Munch… Munch… Man, even rabbit meat tastes like shit…” A few days after he had finished crafting Donner, Hajime was sitting outside his base eating rabbit meat. By rabbit meat, he of course meant Kickmaster Rabbit meat. The same powerful rabbit that had looked down on Hajime before was nothing more than his prey. Hajime had hoped the rabbit’s meat might taste a bit better, but it was every bit as disgusting as the wolves he had eaten. It was still monster meat, after all.
Despite its disgusting taste, he still ate it with gusto. Thanks to his Iron Stomach skill, he was able to eat as much as he wanted whenever he felt himself getting hungry. Using the magic he had acquired from monsters made him grow hungry quickly, and since he had used that magic to take down the rabbit, he had eaten it all to replenish his energy.
If he overused his magic, his hunger pangs would flare up again, and while he wouldn’t die thanks to the Ambrosia he carried with him everywhere, he still needed to be careful about how much magic he used.

Incidentally, he had killed the Kickmaster Rabbit by luring it into a trap. He had drawn water from the river he had first woken up in, and lured the rabbit close. Once it had dashed forward into the wet surface he had created, he had used Lightning Field to transmit a powerful electric shock. Once the electricity passed, smoke started rising from the rabbit’s body, and as he had expected, its movements had been slowed. Hajime had finished the weakened rabbit off with Donner.
Just as he thought, his railgun powered revolver was able to obliterate the rabbit’s face, the bullet moving three kilometers per second as it punched through its head. Donner was even more powerful than Hajime had imagined.
“Now then, that was my first time eating rabbit meat, so let’s see how my stats changed…”
Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 12 Job: Synergist
Strength: 200
Vitality: 300
Defense: 200 Agility: 400
Magic: 350
Magic Defense: 350
Skills: Transmute +Ore Appraisal +Precision Transmutation +Ore Perception — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Air Dance +Aerodynamic +Supersonic Step — Language Comprehension

As he had thought, eating monsters increased his stats. Though he hadn’t gotten much stronger by eating more Twin-tail Wolves, his stats had taken a huge leap when he ate a new type of monster.
Guess I’ll test out what this “Air Dance” does. What first came to Hajime’s mind was the way that rabbit had moved. It had rushed forward so fast that he’d only been able to make it out as a blur. He inferred that that was most likely the Supersonic Step skill at work. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like the fast movement stuff you see in anime.
Hajime kept the image of explosive power gathering in his legs and dashed forward. He felt mana gather within his legs. The ground underneath his feet exploded in a shower of rubble as Hajime leaped forward… and slammed face first into the wall.
“Owww! C-Controlling my acceleration is harder than I thought.” However, his experiment was still a success. He imagined that if he trained it a little, he too would be able to move like the rabbit had. Used in tandem with his revolver, those skills would be a powerful weapon indeed.
Next, he tried to use Aerodynamics. However, he found himself unable to activate it. He had a hard time figuring out just what kind of skill it was from the name alone. After testing a bunch of different things, Hajime suddenly remembered how the rabbit had sometimes looked to be standing in midair. And so, he quickly stuck his foot out and imagined there being an invisible shield supporting it from below. Then he jumped forward.

He found himself face-planting magnificently into the ground.
“Guooooh!?” He cradled his face in his hand as he rolled around in pain. After the aching subsided a little, he sullenly drank a bit of Ambrosia.
“Well… at least it works…” The reason he had faceplanted into the ground despite jumping forward was because he hadn’t properly formed his footing. That was why he had effectively stumbled and fallen in midair. Aerodynamic was apparently a skill that allowed him to create footholds in midair. He had obtained multiple skills at once from the rabbit, though they were all derivative skills of the skill Air Dance.
Pleased that he had obtained multiple skills at once, Hajime began training them at once. He wanted to be strong enough to take down that Claw Bear. He figured he’d be able to defeat it at long-range with Donner easily enough, but he wanted to make completely sure, just in case. And there was always the possibility of even stronger monsters showing up. Optimism in the labyrinth got you killed. Once he was certain he could kill even Claw Bears, it would be time to start searching for an exit.
Hajime redoubled his resolve, training harder than ever before.
A figure sped down the labyrinth corridors so fast that he appeared no more than a blur.
That figure was, of course, Hajime. Having completely mastered Air Dance, he was using Supersonic Step to dash off the walls, while sometimes also using Aerodynamic to create mid-air footholds for himself. He traversed the labyrinth at high speed, seeking out his mortal foe, the Claw Bear.
In all honesty, searching for an exit should have taken priority, but Hajime was consumed by the desire to get revenge on the bear. He wouldn’t be able to move on unless he was able to prove to himself that he was more than a match for the monster that had once crushed his spirit.
“Graaaaah!” He ran into a pack of Twin-tailed Wolves, and one of them leaped at him. Hajime calmly vaulted into the air, did a mid-air somersault, pulled out Donner, which was strapped to his right leg with a holster made of transmuted threads, and fired.
Bang! The sound of combusting blastrock echoed down the corridor and Hajime’s Lightning Field-accelerated bullet pulverized the head of the first Twin-tailed Wolf.
He then used Aerodynamic to do a double jump in the air, before taking aim and firing a volley of shots at the other wolves. They didn’t all hit their mark, but he was still able to annihilate the pack with only a single barrage.
Hajime held Donner in the crook of his left armpit and quickly began reloading. Then, without so much as a backward glance at the fallen wolves, he dashed off once more.
After a while spent killing any Kickmaster Rabbits or Twin-tailed Wolves that he came across, Hajime finally spotted his prey.
The Claw Bear was in the middle of a meal. It was chewing on the remains of what appeared to have been a Kickmaster Rabbit. Hajime grinned triumphantly and began leisurely walking closer.

The Claw Bear was the strongest monster to appear on this floor. In other words, it was the king. While there were hordes of Twin-tailed Wolves and Kickmaster Rabbits, the Claw Bear was the only one of its kind.
Thus, it stood to reason that there was nothing stronger inhabiting the floor. The other monsters all took great pains to stay out of its way, and if they ever encountered it, they ran as fast as they could in the other direction. No creature dared oppose it. The thought of anyone approaching it of their own free will was patently absurd.
However, that very absurdity was currently unfolding before the bear’s eyes.
“Sup, bear. Been a while. Did you like the taste of my arm?”
The Claw Bear narrowed its angry eyes. What is this creature? Why doesn’t it run? Why is it not trembling in fear? Why does despair not fill its eyes? The bear was confused, having never seen something like this before.
“I’m here for my revenge match. But first, I’m going to make you see me as your enemy, and not just prey.”
Hajime pulled Donner out of its holster and pointed it at the Claw Bear. He then slowly asked himself a question as he took aim.
“Am I scared?” The answer was a definitive “No.” He wasn’t shivering in fear, nor was he in the grips of despair. No, the only emotions roiling within him were a fierce will to survive, and a burning desire to kill his enemies.
Hajime’s lips curled upward into a ferocious grin.

“I’m going to kill you and eat you, you bastard.” He pulled Donner’s trigger. With a resounding bang, a hardened bullet of taur sped toward the Claw Bear at three kilometers per second.
“Gaaaooo!?” It instantly dropped to the ground with a roar, narrowly avoiding Hajime’s bullet.
It had started moving even before Hajime had pulled the trigger. It was of course impossible for the bear to see the bullet Hajime had fired, but Hajime’s bloodlust had made it reflexively dodge. It wasn’t this floor’s strongest monster for nothing. It had reacted far faster than its massive, two meter long, frame would have suggested. However, even then it hadn’t been able to completely avoid the attack. The bullet had grazed its shoulder, gouging out a slice of it.
The Claw Bear angrily glared at Hajime, blood staining the white fur around its shoulder. It looked like it finally saw him as an enemy and not just food.
“Graaaooooo!!!” With a furious roar, it charged Hajime. The ground thundered as its tree trunk sized legs pounded down the corridor, making for a truly awe-inspiring spectacle.
“Hahaha! That’s right! I’m your enemy! Not just some prey to be hunted!” Despite how foreboding the Claw Bear looked as it bore down on Hajime, his smile didn’t waver.
This was the moment of truth. It was the moment that would decide if Hajime could overcome the monster that had eaten his left arm, crushed his soul, and been the impetus of his transformation. A necessary ritual he needed to overcome, if he was ever to move forward. Something deep inside made him feel that he would give up for good if he failed at that point. He couldn’t explain how or why, he just knew.
He took aim, firing Donner once more at the charging bear. He had aimed squarely at its forehead, but the Claw Bear somehow managed to roll to the side, even while charging forward. It made no sense for something so big to be so fast.
It barreled its way into range of Hajime and swiped at him with one of its massive claws. The edge of its claws looked slightly warped as they swept down. Is that related to its special magic?
Hajime recalled that the rabbit that had supposedly dodged the bear’s swipe had still been cut in half. So instead of just barely dodging to the side, he leaped back with all his might.
“Hah.” An instant later the bear’s claw swiped past where Hajime had just been standing, followed by a ferocious gale. He gasped in pain, then looked down and saw shallow cuts running down his chest. He hadn’t been able to completely dodge it. His reaction time wasn’t able to keep up with the rapid increase in his physical abilities.
The Claw Bear roared, angry that its prey still lived, and in the blink of an eye, swiped down a second time at his enemy.
“Damn, you’re fast!” Hajime cursed without realizing it as he saw a second set of wind blades bear down on him. He instantly used Aerodynamic to flee into the air while firing off a third shot. However, the Claw Bear instantly changed directions the moment it saw the red flash from Donner, completely ignoring the laws of inertia. Upon closer inspection, Hajime saw deep ruts in the ground and realized it must have used its claws as a fulcrum to pivot off of. It was certainly far more intelligent and far more agile than a normal beast.
“Gaaaaaaoo!!!” It roared again, then swung its foreclaws in a cross at Hajime, who was still up in the air. Warning bells went off inside Hajime’s head. Without sparing a moment to think, Hajime activated both Aerodynamic and Supersonic Step at the same time, then dashed away from that spot.
He felt a gust of wind brush past his thigh, and a second later the wall behind him had a crosshatched lattice of furrows gouged into it.
“Guh. Damn bastard. You can do that too?” Hajime groaned as he fell to the ground. He hit the ground off-balance, and fell. He righted himself instantly, but staggered as a sharp pain ran through his thigh. It seemed that the Claw Bear could throw its wind claws too.
Hajime’s expression twisted into a pained grimace, but he took no time to dwell on it and fired Donner once more. He didn’t have time to nurse his wounds, as the bear had already started closing in once more. He pulled the trigger again, firing twice in quick succession. Even with its inhuman agility the Claw Bear wasn’t able to dodge both bullets, and took two hits, one to the temple, and the other to its flank. Though it had managed to avoid fatal injuries, it had still been blown off the course of its charge. The distraction proved enough to stop the next barrage of wind claws from going off.
However, though it had veered a little off course, the Claw Bear still charged forward like a cannonball. Though he wasn’t directly in the bear’s trajectory any longer, his wounded leg prevented him from dodging, so the bear still managed to hurtle into him. It felt like being hit by a truck. Hajime was blasted backward from the force of the bear’s charge.

“Gahah!?” The impact forced the air out of his lungs, which made Hajime snarl ferociously.
Donner’s chamber held six bullets. He had fired five, but he still had one left. There was no way he would be able to reload in the middle of this fight, and his own stats weren’t high enough that he could beat the Claw Bear without Donner’s overwhelming firepower. Each shot that missed was a shot that had brought him that much closer to death. And yet, Hajime still grinned. Because with this, his victory was now assured.
As he slammed into the ground, he flung Donner into the air. He then pulled something out of his pocket and threw it at the injured Claw Bear.
“I’m quite proud of how this one turned out. You’d best be careful if you don’t want to die.” Though there was no way for the bear to understand Hajime’s words, it still looked down at the object that rolled to its feet when he mumbled that. What lay there was a small emerald ball, about five centimeters in diameter. And that ball suddenly burst in an explosion of light.
It was Hajime’s makeshift flash grenade. The principle behind it was simple. He had taken a piece of green glowstone and filled it to the brim with mana. After that he had applied a thin coating over it to keep the light from leaking through. He had then packed a small quantity of blastrock in the rock’s center, and created the blastrock fuse that led all the way to a coated surface.
Finally, he had lit the fuse by using Lightning Field. The blastrock on the outside burned slowly until it reached the packed center where it exploded violently. With the crystal shattered, the glowstone released its light all at once in a brilliant emerald flash. He had set the fuse to explode three seconds after he lit it. Though it had taken a great deal of effort to make, he was proud of the end result.
The bear, who had no knowledge of modern weaponry, naturally found its gaze drawn to the grenade, and when it exploded it blinded the Claw Bear. It roared in pain, wildly swinging its front paws. Being blinded had sent it into a panic.
And Hajime planned to take full advantage of that. He scooped Donner off the ground, took aim, and fired. The electrically accelerated bullet hit the rampaging bear squarely in its left shoulder, and ripped it clean off.
“Graaaaaaooooo!!!” Its roar was loud enough to crack eardrums. The Claw Bear had never suffered such pain before. Gouts of blood spurted from the stump that had once been its arm. The blown off left arm spun in the air a few times before losing its inertia and flopping back down to the ground with a wet thud.
“What an ironic twist of fate.” Hajime had not actually aimed for the Claw Bear’s left arm. He just wasn’t that good a shot yet. He had enough practice from fighting Twin-tailed Wolves and the like to hit an enemy that was charging straight at him, but he certainly wasn’t good enough to hit a flailing enemy with pinpoint accuracy. So the fact that Hajime had taken the bear’s left arm, just as it had done to him, was a complete coincidence.
Hajime kept a close eye on the bear, which was still flailing around blindly, and pushed Donner up against his body with his stump of a left arm and reloaded.
He fired once more. Though the bear was still disoriented, its beastlike sixth sense let it perceive Hajime’s bloodlust and it leaped to the side. It seemed it was Hajime’s bloodlust that gave the Claw Bear enough forewarning to dodge railgun accelerated bullets. Once he realized this, Hajime narrowed his eyes, and used Supersonic Step to dash past the bear, over to where his severed left arm lay.
The bear turned to look at him with its furious, hate-filled red eyes. It seemed it had finally recovered its eyesight. As it was watching, Hajime lifted up the bear’s left arm, and bit down on it. His jaws had been greatly strengthened from eating demon meat for so long, so he easily tore through the tough skin and sinew. It was a repetition of the time when the Claw Bear had eaten Hajime’s arm in front of him, except this time it was Hajime doing the eating.
“Hamf, mmf, no matter how many times I eat it, demon meat still tastes like shit… Though for some reason this is just a little bit better than the others.” Hajime looked down at the bear, who was watching him warily by that point. It didn’t move. There was fear in its eyes, but the shock of seeing its own flesh eaten in front of it, combined with its still blurry eyesight, prevented it from moving.
Glad for the reprieve, Hajime continued chewing. Suddenly, he felt something. Sharp pains pulsed through his body, just like the first time he had eaten monster meat.
“Wha—!?” He quickly pulled out a vial of Ambrosia and ingested it. The pain wasn’t as bad as the first time, but it was still sharp enough that he fell to one knee, unable to keep himself upright. It appeared the Claw Bear was a different species entirely compared to the Twin- tailed Wolves or Kickmaster Rabbits, and absorbing its power brought with it the old pain.
Of course, the bear wasn’t about to let that chance slip past. It roared in defiance and charged forward. Hajime was still on one knee, unable to move. At this rate he would be trampled by the bear, and it would just be a repeat of their first encounter. But when that thought crossed his mind, something suddenly occurred to Hajime and he smirked.
He put his right hand on the ground… and wrapped it in lightning. All of the lightning released by his full power Lightning Field raced down the liquid coating the ground, and zapped the bear standing on the other end.
The liquid was of course the bear’s blood. The sea of blood that had poured out of its stump of a left arm. When Hajime had brandished the Claw Bear’s arm right in front of it, he had spilled drops of blood everywhere, and created a small puddle of it around where he stood.
He was not so arrogant that he would eat in the middle of a fight just to show off. He hadn’t predicted the pain of eating monster meat to return, but the rest of it had all been part of his trap. Even eating the arm right in front of the bear had been to goad it into charging headlong at him. The pain had thrown a bit of a wrench in his plans, but everything had still ended up working out just fine.
The moment the bear had stepped into the pool of its own blood, thousands of volts of electricity fried its entire body. The electricity burned the Claw Bear’s flesh, scorching some nerves as it did. However, though he had unleashed it at full power, its might was still a far cry from the actual thing. Unlike the Twin-tailed Wolves, he was unable to shoot lightning bolts, and his Lightning Field could only output half the power of the original. But even that much was still enough to paralyze the bear for a few seconds.
“Graooooo!” The Claw Bear let out a low growl, then collapsed to its knees, shivering in a puddle of its own electrically charged blood.

Even down on all fours— or rather all threes— it still glared murderously at Hajime.
He glared right back at it, and painfully got to his feet. He slowly pulled Donner out of its holster, and walked over to the Claw Bear. He pushed the muzzle against its forehead.
“You’re my prey now,” he said with finality, pulling the trigger one last time. The taur bullet fulfilled its duty, utterly pulverizing the Claw Bear’s head.

One final gunshot echoed throughout the empty corridor.
Up until the moment of its death, the Claw Bear never took its gaze off Hajime. Similarly, Hajime never took his gaze off the Claw Bear.
The exhilarating rush of joy he had expected never came. But there was no sense of emptiness either. He had simply done what was necessary. Necessary in order to live, in order to earn the right to survive.
Hajime closed his eyes and rethought his mindset. After a moment of quiet deliberation, he resolved to continue living like this. He did not enjoy fighting. He just wanted to avoid pain. He just wanted to be able to eat his fill.
He just… wanted to live.
Overthrowing his unreasonable fate, killing everything that opposed him, they were all simply steps he took in order to survive.
He swore to himself. That he would survive… and… make it back home.
“That’s right… I just want… to go home. I don’t care about anything else. I’ll make it home, no matter what I have to do. I’ll grant this one wish of mine, by my own hands. And no matter who they may be, anyone that tries to stand in my way…” Hajime opened his eyes and smiled viciously.
“Will die by these hands.”
Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 17

Job: Synergist Strength: 300 Vitality: 400 Defense: 300 Agility: 450
Magic: 400
Magic Defense: 400
Skills: Transmute +Ore Appraisal +Precision Transmutation +Ore Perception +Ore Desynthesis +Ore Synthesis — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Air Dance +Aerodynamic +Supersonic Step — Gale Claw — Language Comprehension
Let us turn back the clock a few weeks.
Shizuku Yaegashi gazed sorrowfully at her still-sleeping friend. The summoned heroes had all been granted private rooms in the Heiligh Palace, and Shizuku was currently resting in one of them.
It had been five days since their desperate life and death struggle in the labyrinth. They had rested one night in Horaud’s inn before taking an express carriage back to the palace. After having tasted death and despair, the students were in no condition to continue their practical training course. Furthermore, even if he had been treated as a useless hanger-on, a member of the hero’s party had died and that fact needed to be reported to the king and the Holy Church.
And though they knew they were being cruel, the knights couldn’t allow the heroes’ fighting spirits to break. They had to restore the

mental stability of the students before their psyches shattered completely.
As Shizuku recalled the events that had transpired since Hajime’s death, part of her wished that Kaori would wake up quickly, while another part of her hoped that she might just sleep forever.
Every single person who heard the report of Hajime’s death was first shocked that a member of the hero’s group could have died, and then relieved when they heard it was just the “worthless” Hajime.
Even the king and Ishtar reacted similarly. One of the powerful heroes who would save this nation couldn’t be allowed to die in a dungeon. Someone who couldn’t survive a dungeon excursion would stand no chance against the demons, and would only serve to spread further unease among the people. The messengers of Ehit, the heroes brought forth from another world, had to be invincible.
At least the king and Ishtar had been somewhat respectful. There were some nobles within the palace that had insulted and belittled Hajime behind his back instead.
Of course they said nothing incriminating publicly, but when they were talking privately among fellow nobles, many of them had whispered their scorn for him. They all abased him with statements like “Thank god it was the worthless one that died,” and “I’m so glad the incompetent got weeded out from God’s messengers.” Shizuku had trembled with rage when she had heard such snide comments, and had nearly come to blows with those nobles multiple times.
And had Kouki not flown off the handle before her, she probably would have beaten them to a pulp. Because of Kouki’s heated protests, the king and the Holy Church seemingly decided that it would be dangerous to let a negative opinion of Hajime spread. Therefore, they quietly dealt with anyone who badmouthed him… However, all that served to accomplish was increase Kouki’s popularity. Most people saw Kouki’s anger as proof that he was kindhearted enough to care for even the weakest of his party, and the general opinion that Hajime had been nothing more than a burden to such a noble hero remained cemented in the minds of the people.
Despite the fact that the only reason the rest of them were still alive was because Hajime had held back a monster not even the great hero Kouki had been able to touch. Despite the fact that he was only dead because some idiotic classmate had fired a stray fireball that had hit him.
However, as if by some unwritten agreement, the students all agreed not to talk about that stray fireball. Everyone was sure they had kept perfect control over their magic, but it had been a veritable storm of spells, and no one wanted to consider the possibility that it could have been their misaimed fireball that had led to Hajime’s demise. Because if it had been them, they would become a murderer.
As a result, they all closed their eyes to reality, choosing instead to pretend that it was some mistake on Hajime’s part that had led to his death. After all, dead men tell no tales. Rather than worry about who had killed Hajime, it was far easier to pretend he had died due to his own mistakes. That way none of them would have to worry. Without any collusion on their part, the students all came to that conclusion, and thus the topic was not discussed.
In order to uncover the truth behind Hajime’s death, Captain Meld decided it would be necessary to interrogate the students. He did not think the truth was something as innocent as a stray fireball. And even if it were, that was all the more reason to uncover the truth, so he could give the student who had accidentally killed Hajime the counseling they needed.
The longer the matter remained unsettled, the more problems it would cause down the line. And most importantly, Captain Meld simply wanted to know. Even though he had promised to save Hajime after they had fled to safety, his words had turned out to be as hollow as he now felt.
However, Captain Meld was not allowed to go through with his plan. Because Ishtar had forbidden him from questioning the students. He had protested the ban hotly, but even the king forbade him from meeting with them, so he had no choice but to comply.
“If you knew… you’d be furious, wouldn’t you?” Shizuku whispered quietly, then took Kaori’s hand. She had not woken since that day in the labyrinth.
According to the doctor there was nothing wrong with her physically. She had apparently just fallen into a self-imposed slumber to protect herself from the mental shock. The doctor had said she would awaken on her own eventually.
Shizuku tightly gripped Kaori’s hand and prayed to no one in particular, “Please, please don’t let any further harm come to my kind and gentle friend.” And at those words, Kaori’s hand twitched slightly.
“Huh!? Kaori!? Can you hear me!? Kaori!” Shizuku yelled out her name over and over. Eventually, Kaori’s eyelids began to flutter. Shizuku kept calling out her best friend’s name. As if responding to her words, Kaori’s fingers curled around Shizuku’s hand. And slowly, she opened her eyes.
“Kaori!” Shizuku leaned over the bed and looked down at Kaori, tears in her eyes. Kaori looked around dazedly, before her mind finally started working again, and her eyes fell on Shizuku.
“Shizuku-chan?”
“Yes, it’s me. Shizuku. How do you feel, Kaori? Does it hurt anywhere?”
“N-No I’m fine. My body does feel a bit heavy… but that’s probably because I slept for so long…”
“That’s right, you slept for five whole days… so it’s normal to feel a little numb.” Shizuku hurried to help Kaori, who was trying to rise, and smiled sadly as she told her how long she’d slept for. Kaori started acting odd when she heard that.
“Five days? How did I sleep… for that long… I thought I was in the labyrinth… and then I…” As she saw Kaori’s eyes grow more and more distant, Shizuku panicked and quickly tried to change the subject. However, Kaori’s memories returned before Shizuku could get even a word out.
“And then… Ah… What happened to Nagumo-kun?” “…Well…”
Shizuku grimaced, unsure of how to explain. From Shizuku’s pained expression, Kaori was able to surmise that the nightmare she saw in her memories was indeed true. However, Kaori was still unable to accept that harsh reality.

“…It can’t be true. Please, tell me it’s a lie, Shizuku-chan. You guys saved Nagumo-kun after I fainted, right? Right? Tell me you did. I’m in the castle right now, right? We all made it back safely to the castle, right? Nagumo-kun’s just… out training, right? He’s down at the parade grounds, right? Right, that has to be it… I’m going to go check right now. I have to thank him… so can you please let me go, Shizuku-chan?”
Incoherent ramblings spilled from Kaori’s mouth as she tried to get up and go look for Hajime, but Shizuku firmly grabbed on to Kaori’s arm and refused to let go.
Despite Shizuku’s anguished expression, she kept a strong grip on Kaori’s arm.
“Kaori… You understand, don’t you…? He’s not here anymore.” “Stop it…”
“It’s just like you remembered, Kaori.”
“Stop it.”
“He’s… Nagumo-kun’s…”
“Stop, I said stop it!”
“Kaori! He’s dead!”
“No! He’s not dead! I know it! Stop saying such cruel things! I won’t forgive anyone for saying that, not even you, Shizuku-chan!”
Kaori kept shaking her head, struggling to break free from Shizuku’s grasp all the while. But Shizuku refused to loosen her grip even a smidge. Instead, she hugged Kaori, trying to warm her frozen heart.

“Let me go! Let me go right now! I have to go look for Nagumo-kun! Please, I’m begging you… I know he’s still alive somewhere… so please!” She yelled at Shizuku to let her go, but was still sobbing into her chest as she did.
Kaori clung to Shizuku like a drowning man to a rock, wailing so loudly her voice went hoarse. All Shizuku could do for her best friend was hug her as tightly as possible. Praying that she might somehow ease the pain in Kaori’s heart.
The two of them stayed like that for hours, until the clear blue sky had been stained blood red by the setting sun. Kaori sniffled slightly in Shizuku’s arms, and stirred slightly. Shizuku worriedly looked down at Kaori.
“Kaori…”
“Shizuku-chan… Nagumo-kun… he fell, didn’t he…? He’s not here anymore, is he?”
Kaori whispered in a trembling voice. Shizuku didn’t want to give her any false hope. If she told Kaori he was still alive, that might alleviate her pain in the short run. But it would scar Kaori forever when she finally discovered the truth. And Shizuku couldn’t bear to see her best friend hurt any more than she already was.
“That’s right.”
“Back then, it looked like Nagumo-kun got hit by one of our fireballs… Who cast it?”
“I don’t know. Everyone’s trying to forget it ever happened. It’s too scary to think about for them. Because if they were the one that did it…”

“I see.”
“Do you hate them for it?”
“…I’m not sure. If I found out for sure who it was… I’d definitely hate them. But… if no one knows… then maybe it’s better that way. Because if I did find out, I wouldn’t be able to hold back…”
“I see…” Kaori spoke haltingly, her face still buried in Shizuku’s arms. Suddenly, she wiped the tears from her puffy, red eyes, and looked up at Shizuku with renewed determination.
“Shizuku-chan, I don’t believe it. Nagumo-kun has to be alive somewhere. I won’t believe that he’s dead.”
“Kaori, you…” Shizuku looked down sadly at Kaori. However, Kaori cupped Shizuku’s cheeks with her hands, then continued speaking.
“I know. I know that it’s foolish to think he survived that fall… But you know, there’s no proof that he died. So what if the chance of him surviving is less than 1% of 1%? It’s still not zero… So I choose to believe.”
“Kaori…”
“I’m going to get stronger. Strong enough to protect him even from what’s down there, and then I’ll go look for him. I won’t rest until I’ve confirmed with my own two eyes… what’s happened to Nagumo- kun… Shizuku-chan.”
“What is it?”
“Will you help me?”
“……” Shizuku met Kaori’s unwavering gaze. There was no sign of madness or desperation in her eyes. Just an unbreakable will, one that would not rest until she had confirmed the truth for herself. Nothing could change her mind when Kaori got like this. She was far too stubborn for even her own family to deal with, let alone Shizuku.
In all honesty, it was probably safe to say the possibility Kaori was referring to might as well be zero. It would be natural to assume anyone who thought differently was simply trying to escape from reality.
Even her childhood friends, Kouki and Ryutarou, would probably try and tell Kaori she wasn’t acting sane. But that was precisely why only a single answer came to Shizuku’s mind.
“Of course I will. Until you’ve found an answer you can accept, at least.”
“Shizuku-chan!” Kaori hugged Shizuku and thanked her over and over.
“I don’t need any thanks. We’re best friends, remember?” Shizuku replied, ever the manly samurai. The title that magazines had given her was rather apt.
Just then, the door to the room suddenly burst open. “Shizuku! Has Kaori woken… up…?”
“Yeah, how’s Kaori… doing…?”
Kouki and Ryutarou came hurtling into the room. They had come to check up on Kaori. It seemed apparent that they had rushed straight over after training, as dirt still caked their uniforms.
Ever since the labyrinth excursion, the two had trained harder than ever before. They had both been hit pretty hard by Hajime’s death as well. After all, they were the ones who had refused to retreat, which had caused the nearly fatal crisis that Hajime had to save them from. They were both training hard so that they would never do something so unsightly ever again.
Aside from those two, however, there was a third figure hanging back in the doorway. Shizuku directed a question toward him, her voice full of suspicion.
“Why are you—” “S-Sorry!”
“I-I’ll leave now!”
The figure hurriedly apologized, overruling Shizuku’s words. Looking as if they’d seen something they shouldn’t have, they hurriedly left the room. Kaori looked at them in confusion. However, the clever Shizuku realized what the cause must have been.
Kaori was currently sitting on Shizuku’s lap, and holding Shizuku’s face in her hands. To an outsider it must have seemed like they were about to kiss each other. Shizuku, too, was holding Kaori by the small of her back and her shoulder, like a lover.
It must have looked like a very romantic scene. Had this been a manga, there would have no doubt been flower petals everywhere in the background. Shizuku sighed deeply, moving away from Kaori, who was still staring blankly in confusion.
“Hurry up and get back here, you moron!”

Diamond. diamond. diamond.