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Over the Infinite – Chapter 13 (1)

Translator: mii

Prologue「G Rank Adventurer」

-1-

「Eat this!」

A young boy swung his long sword to the back of a poison lizard.

The poison lizard, which had already took considerable damage, was defeated with that blow, and started sublimating into magical fog.

Poison lizard was the monster that inhabited the fourteenth floor of the Infinite Corridor.

It had hard skin and natural toxin, moving at a reasonably fast speed. It was a moderately powerful small fries monster in the lower layer.

At first, the party didn’t have any countermeasure against the poison, ending up annihilated after overwhelmed by the numbers.

However, they tried again after taking some measures and preparing their equipment, so this time they managed to somewhat cope.

「What about that group!? Have you finished!?」

「Just a little bit more! …We opened it!! We got the treasure!!」

「Okay, we’ll move before the next enemy comes.」

With that in mind, they moved out from the area with the treasure chest.

In dungeons, monsters appeared frequently in areas with treasure chest filled with treasures.

In particular, we needed to be careful after opening the treasure chest, as monsters would appear in a swarm.

If we found a treasure chest, we need to be prepared for the enemies assault, other than being aware of the possibility that traps might be inside the chest itself. I had been able to experience and practiced that in the last few layers of our venture in this dungeon. 

It was something we learned from our experience by ourselves as soon as we became lower class adventurers.

「Hehe, we got something pretty good there.」

「We also have gotten used to it. One month ago, we would open every treasure chest after finding it without saying alert.」

「That’s right, you died immediately after suffering the monsters assault, eh.」

「Hey hey, you promised that you won’t say that anymore, right?」

Hahaha, the adventurers laughed.

「Then, we already got the treasure. Should we go back for once?」

「Yeah, unlike trial dungeon, we’ll lose our item if we die. I just bought this sword recently too.」

「Ehh, there’ll be considerable relay warp gates from here on, you know. It’ll be faster if we go forward.」

The warp gate, which could make us escape to the ground, was generally installed on a well-separated level. We were currently at the lower floor of the Infinite Corridor, so the warp gate would appear once every five floors.

Our current location was the thirteenth floor, and we had confirmed the staircase to the next floor just nearby us.

「No, it’s dangerous. The fourteenth floor is still okay, but I think the enemies in the fifteenth floor will suddenly become stronger.」

「It’ll be fine. From what I heard, the warp gate in the multiples of ten floors in the Infinite Corridor are located at the area after the boss, but for the fifteenth or twenty fifth floor like these, they are mostly located in the beginning, right? It’ll be fine as long we pass through the warp gate when we reach the fifteenth floor after passing through the fourteenth floor.」

That information wasn’t wrong.

At least at the floor which information was being disclosed now, it had been confirmed that this dungeon had that kind of structure.

Even so, my anxiety remained. Certainly, going back from the road we already knew was much better. Wouldn’t it be better go go back to the tenth floor?

But two of my companion had already gone ahead. If I told them to go back here, it would definitely cause a discord within the party now.

「That’s right. Plus, we’re stronger than last time, so I’m sure that we can defeat the enemies in the fifteenth floor without any problems.」

「Yeah, yeah. Leader, didn’t you say that you haven’t tried using that sword enough too?」

Yes, we were definitely getting stronger.

We even managed to deal with those poison lizard without any problems, even if we struggled to get pass through it so much before. We were also no longer trapped when collecting the treasure chests.

And even if we went back, there were still enemies on the way. The danger wouldn’t change even if we returned using the shortest path anyway, right?

「Y-yeah, you’re right. It’s definitely closer if we go to the gate in the fifteenth floor. Let’s go forward, I guess.」

「Yup, I told you already. We can still do this.」

And then, we optimistically went to the stairs to the fourteenth floor.

However, we hadn’t fully understood the horror of the Infinite Corridor’s random structure.

No, we were about to understand it now.

[ Welcome to the Monster House ]

Countless monsters attacked those three adventurers.

On the fourteenth floor, if they stepped into the Monster House where a lot of monsters gathered, they would be annihilated and lose all of their equipments and items.

They could’ve avoided this danger if they had returned to the floor which already had fixed structure.

If they really wanted to be safe, they should’ve gone back to the previous floor which they had grasped the directions.

●Things to remember

・Be careful with attacks that inflict abnormal status. In particular, the continuous damage from poison is dangerous.

・Be careful with traps inside treasure chest.

・Be careful as many monsters gather near the treasure chest.

・(Not limited to Infinite Corridor) Random map dungeons are created when moving to the next floor. 

・It’s possible to return to the previous floor, and once the map is confirmed, it won’t change.

・Infinite Corridor has lowest floor limit. Adventurer can’t return to the previous floor beyond the warp gate every five layers.

・Monster House is very dangerous. It’s filled with super crowded outraged monsters venting their anger to the adventurers.

・Be careful if you lost high level items, since you’ll be ridiculed by a knight with no head.

――――Lessons learned this time:『When you think you can still go, it’s already dangerous.』

－2－

「…What’s with that?」

I muttered so while watching the video that was being screened in the debut class. 

I understood what it was trying to say, but well… it reminded me so much of those driving school training video made with unnatural acting… Hahaha.

The staff roll appeared, and the names of the performers, editorial guild staffs, and production company were displayed along with sad BGM.

There was a party that had been exterminated in the background. Then, the screen changed, and the leader was hanging his head in front of the pawnshop while a knight with no neck laughed at him.

In the very end, there was『This story is not a fiction』displayed in the screen. Eh, those people were real?

「Well, even if this city is not based on Rogue, it’s still the truth. It’s the same lesson as I said during the trial.

It looks like the Infinite Corridor doesn’t really resemble Rogue games that much anymore, but then, it’s still important to be careful.

This doesn’t matter, but I hope they can do something about the irresponsible acting from those unmotivated performers. That [Scout] girl is reading her speech in monotone voice too.

Her voice sounds like a cute voice actor so it’s a plus, but her monotone voice makes it even more noticeable that this is an act.」

Beside me, Yuki started to criticize the acting. 

When we were making that cat ears to eat goblin meat, Yuki was also talking with monotone voice, eh.

「Well, even if they won’t die, they’re too careless, considering that they have expensive equipment and there is also level down penalty after death.

By the way, it’s amazing. It really looks like they’re cutting off that scene from a recording. I wonder if we will act like that too.」

On the other side, Filos, who had been together with us in the beginner course, was impressed with the video technology itself.

We completed the trial in a day, so we took the predebut class together.

Gawain, who was also taking the beginner course with us before, sat across Filos.

He was still watching the video without talking, but he wasn’t sleeping with his eyes open, right?

By the way, I hadn’t heard his voice yet. Filos was sure amazing, able to understand him well. 

「I feel like I kept taking classes ever since I came to the Labyrinth City.」

「Well, it can’t be helped. The rule is like that.」

Even if Yuki said that, I was most likely going to fall asleep like this just by letting my mind wander. This class made me feel really sleepy.

Earlier, I was guilty for about to fall asleep before Yuki woke me up.

We had been sleeping for more than a day after the trial dungeon, so we went to the guild hall the day after that. We then found out that the training for our debut was exactly at that day.

They told us that the schedule was adjusted to match the beginner course, so if we missed the timing, we would have to wait for a month.

We cleared the trial after a lot of great pains, so we can took the class since we didn’t want to wait that long. But then, my situation was like this.