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Over the Infinite – Chapter 2 (1)

 

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Translator: mii

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First Arc -「The Pair in Labyrinth City」

Chapter 1 -「Trial Dungeon」

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[ Trial Dungeon ]

It was a labyrinth for beginners, with the entrance located at the very end of the dungeon transfer facility in the center of the Labyrinth City.

The dungeon was created around fifteen years ago, and it was said to be the third oldest dungeon in the Labyrinth City.

It was a gateway to the labyrinth explorer, the adventurers in the Labyrinth City, to start their full-fledged adventurer activities, and if they didn’t capture this labyrinth, they couldn’t challenge other labyrinths.

There was five layers in total, no fixed maps, no traps on the way, and the small fry monsters were weaker than the ones in other dungeons. In addition, there was no level down penalty and no item loss.

If there was any adventurer who had debuted in the last fifteen years, they should have experienced and captured this dungeon already. In other meaning, this was the dungeon with the largest number of challengers.

Even if they were the people who had cleared the dungeon or adventurers who had already made their debut, they could challenge their skills here within the beginners. This dungeon was also used in adventurer school classes, so the number of users was large… or so it seemed.

The dungeon was introduced like that in the pamphlet distributed in the beginner course.

By the way, it was a full-color booklet, which was like a simple travel guide in my past life. I felt another technical gap between the Labyrinth City and the outside world again.

There were thorough illustrations of monsters and even photos of the dungeon interior.

What kind of joke were they trying to make with the deformed goblin with『Now, defeat me and go ahead!』as it’s speech bubble? Was it really okay for me to laugh at this?

According to this pamphlet, even those who wouldn’t become adventurers could challenge themselves here, so there were so some people who took this “exam” without any regard for their chances of passing. This was also mentioned in the lecture.

But even if they came without any high dream, it seemed like there were also some people among them who managed to break through the dungeon, so there might be greengrocers and fishmongers in the Labyrinth City that were stronger than adventurers.

This city was a scary place. I couldn’t act violently on the streets no matter what happened.

「For some reason, there are a lot of kids lining up here.」

We were dragged into a line in front of the entrance to the trial dungeon.

Most of the people who lined up were children. No, Yuki and I were also minors if we were following the standard of our previous life, but the children around us were even younger than that. They were around the upper grades of primary school.

Every one of the children who lined up were holding weapon, dressing formally with unified mantle which I suspected as some kind of uniform.

Apparently, there seemed to be a school for nurturing adventurers, and the children here were the students of that school.

According to Chitta-san, they came here regularly to train for dungeon attacks.

They challenged the dungeon a few times when they were enrolled in the school and earned their debut qualification just like that.

「The children are mostly the ones who are born at the Labyrinth City, nya. I come from outside so I don’t know the actual situation, but since there are many young children here, they should be the students of their affiliated school, nya.」

The cat beastman, Chitta-san, who were leading us said so.

Rather than saying that there were a lot of young children, all of the people here were children.

School that brought children and made them fight against monsters would definitely become a big problem in Japan, but we were at this kind of world.

It was rare to see a child of this age fighting outside the Labyrinth City, but even so, it was still common to see them working, mixing with the adults.

It would be just an ego to try to keep children who were living in a city named “Labyrinth City” from fighting simply because they were children.

If I didn’t have that mindset, I couldn’t help but to feel like I was in a very inappropriate place. We were clearly sticking out like a sore thumb here.

「It looks like we happened to come at the same time with school training, nya. The line will immediately flow smoothly, so we can just wait, nya. Today is a weekday, and it’s unlikely that other rookies will especially come here today, nya.」

So there was the concept of weekday and weekend here? I hadn’t heard them for a long time.

「It feel like an adventurer doesn’t seem to have any distinction with weekdays and weekends. Does it have any influence?」

「It really differs, depending whether they are rookies, lower until intermediate and advanced classes, or popular idols, nya.

For a rookie, they aren’t accustomed to dungeon attacks and training and that will make them tired, so they are often washed away by the surrounding atmosphere and take a rest, nya.

There are also many of these people swarming in the lower classes, nya. Once you get used to it, it won’t really matter, nya.」

What’s with this feeling of hopelessness?

「Since the advanced classes will go through the dungeon that takes incredible amount of time for one capture, there are many cases where training is closed for the enter clan on weekends.」

That’s right, this was a tough occupation where someone can easily got bettered by the physical work. Even if the adventurers were revived, it didn’t change the fact that they died, so they would want to take a proper break.

Break, huh… When I was working in the royal capital, I never took a break. There was no emergency holiday. The maximum time was working for twenty hours. Even so, that didn’t mean that I got overtime bonus, and the working environment was at the level that made business that exploit their employees count for nothing. Even though I was working in a bar, there were times when I went to help at the place that had nothing to do with bar.

「Err… What is the difference with the popular idols?」

「Idols, or popular adventurers, often work do jobs other than capturing dungeons, nya. It seems like they usually appear in events on weekends.

I went to an event where A-class adventurer Laurent appeared last weekend, nya.I was so excited at the handshake event that I was about to get a nosebleed, nya!」

They were really idols, huh. For me who was neither the participant or organizer, it felt like it had no relation with me.

If we were talking about the people who had relation with this business, it was more likely to be the guy next to me.

「Yuki, aren’t you relatively sell well to do that kind of job?」

「It’s impossible for me. Also, who is my target audience with my current situation anyway?」

「…Hmm. Maybe those shota-loving older sisters or the people whose strike zone is traps?」

Yuki-san’s appearance level was pretty high, but he had ‘that thing’ attached with him.

He basically wouldn’t be accepted with the people who had the same ‘thing’ attached with them unless they were those guys with weird hobby.

「I’m feeling sad now…」

「Isn’t it better for you to falsify your gender if you’re going to sell your image? Look, you can act like, “I’m Yukiko-chan~”」

Since he was originally a girl, she should be good at imitating girls, right?

Even now, his tone wasn’t that masculine and it would be difficult to distinguish his gender from his gestures. I wouldn’t know unless he told me. Rather, I still didn’t know even after he told me.

「Won’t I be a transvestite then? Also, my original name is『Yuki』, and I won’t add any ‘-ko’. It’s ‘snow’!」

So his name was originally Snow-san, eh.

「But then, there are the status card and a lot of ways to see other people’s status, nya. I don’t think you can falsify your gender that easily, nya.

Even so, Yukichin is a girl in your previous life, nya? What a great pity, nya. Ah, but nya, if you make a photo book, even if you have ‘that, you can still win against in sales, nya.」

「What kind of consolation is that?」

At this point, no one knew Yuki’s face yet, so there should be some people who would buy his photo book just by looking at the cover, but the demand for would only be for jokes.

If I was asked which one would I buy, of course I would buy Yuki’s. If he hide it well, I could use it. In the worst case, I could just paint it out with pen.

There were also some people who prefer having ‘that’ attached anyway. Yuki would fit in that special attribute swamp.

「Err, I don’t care about my photo book, okay…」

Really, why were we talking about making photo books when we came to be an adventurer?

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