Dungeon, Floor 4.
Like the three floors above, it was made of the same pale blue walls and ceiling, and the overall structure was still a labyrinth of branching paths and corridors. The total area, though, was larger than the floors before it.
One of the Dungeon's rules: the deeper you went, the stronger and more numerous the monsters became, and barring special circumstances, the floors themselves grew larger and larger.
Around one in the afternoon, Leo officially stepped onto this floor and started fighting the monsters here for his life.
It was right then that he ran into a pack of Kobolds.
They were exactly what their name suggested. Dog-headed monsters that fought with sharp claws and fangs, no taller than a Goblin, not even a meter high.
They rarely showed up in groups. Usually you'd see one or two wandering the Dungeon alone. But when Leo entered a wide-open area, he suddenly ran straight into a whole pack of them, and they jumped him without warning.
"Gurururu!"
"Ga!"
"Gaaaah!"
About ten Kobolds, claws raised, closed in around Leo. He didn't hesitate. He spun around and bolted into a side passage.
The pack came after him immediately, pinning him against a wall.
No, "pinning" wasn't right. Leo had backed himself into the corner on purpose, the same way he had before, to keep them from coming at him from both sides.
He set his back against the wall, faced the ten Kobolds head-on, kept the shield up firm in front of him, and hid the short sword behind it. The instant one of the Kobolds couldn't hold itself back and lunged at him, he brought the blade down hard at its head.
"Shhk!"
A cold flash of steel. Before the Kobold could even react, the sword bit into its skull, split its head open, and kept going all the way down through its neck, cleaving the thing clean in two.
"Gagu!"
"Gaow!"
The rest of the Kobolds saw it and lost their minds, rushing forward one after another, claws swinging at Leo.
A burst of dull thuds rang out as Kobold claws hammered against the shield Leo had raised, every blow turned aside.
Leo had spent the whole day watching, analyzing, and stockpiling intel on these things, and he was reading the entire pack's attack lines easily. The shield strapped to his left arm wasn't big enough to cover him completely, but with minimal movement he turned away every incoming claw, and whenever the Kobolds' assault slowed, he counterpunched, the short sword darting out to run several of them through and put them down.
The pack thinned. The pressure on Leo eased.
He thought it would just be more of the same from here on out, picking the Kobolds off one by one until they were all dead. Then the unexpected happened.
"Krrrk..."
The sound of something cracking, clear and unmistakable.
Like rock splitting, like an egg breaking. It came out of nowhere. Leo's pupils tightened. He snapped his head around to look at the wall behind him.
And he saw it.
Behind him, the dead, heavy wall was slowly cracking open.
Through the widening fissures, an orange-yellow light bled out, exactly like the kind of warmth you'd give something hatching from an egg.
And really, that was what it was.
Leo watched as the wall cracked open, hatching like an egg, and a whole brood of monsters dropped out of it like ripe fruit.
"Gagu!"
"Gaga!"
"Gaaaaah!"
In moments, about twenty Kobolds were standing in front of Leo, snarling.
"...Some Dungeon. Kicking a man when he's down, exactly the way they say."
Leo, who had already pulled away from the corner, looked at the scene with an expression that strained no matter how you read it.
The Dungeon is alive.
That line had been on the lips of countless people, and gods too.
Sometimes as a warning, sometimes just thrown into idle chatter, but mortals and gods alike kept repeating it, as if it were some kind of caution.
A newcomer might find it puzzling and not understand what it meant.
But Leo was different. He knew what it meant from the original work, from the Familia's records, from his companions' own mouths.
The line was literal. The Dungeon was alive. It had life.
It repaired itself, regenerating any structure that got broken. And like a hen brooding chicks, it birthed monsters out of the labyrinth walls, monsters full of hostility toward all life on the surface. No matter how many an adventurer killed, the Dungeon's monster supply would never run out. They could never all be slaughtered.
Worse, when adventurers in the Dungeon hit a moment of crisis, it would hatch a swarm of monsters right next to them, as if trying to make sure they didn't get out alive, turning a bad spot into a hopeless one.
That kind of malicious behavior was as good as the Dungeon telling everyone, out loud, that it was alive.
It lived. It vented its hatred and loathing on the life above without restraint.
That was why, a thousand years ago, people had built Babel over the Dungeon's entrance, to act as a lid, to hold it down. And around Babel they had built Orario, the city that was both the Labyrinth City and the famed fortress city.
As long as they watched the Dungeon here, managed it, kept the monsters inside from getting out, the people on the surface wouldn't be threatened by them. That was the reason for Orario's existence, and the Guild's single greatest duty as the governing body.
People on the surface could be protected. But adventurers, the ones who walked into the Dungeon of their own free will, had to live every second with malice that could break loose at any moment.
And right now, that malice had Leo. Just as the tide was about to turn his way, the Dungeon had set an "ambush" for him.
A pack of Kobolds, far larger than the first, was snarling at him with bared fangs.
Leo didn't think. He ran.
"Gawooooooo!!!"
The Kobolds bayed together and tore after him like a stampeding wolf pack.
They weren't fast, but their stamina far outstripped a Human's. The moment Leo started panting, they put on speed and closed the gap.
"Krrrk..."
"Krrrk..."
He didn't run into another adventurer the whole way, but every so often he heard that cracking sound again, telling him the Dungeon's malice wasn't done with him, and the enemy count was probably still climbing.
"So this is the 'no way out' treatment, huh?"
Leo dug a potion out of the small pouch at his waist, twisted off the cap, and tipped it straight into his mouth.
He didn't have time to taste it. The stamina he had burned through started coming back, noticeably, under the potion's effect.
Even running at full tilt, he felt his breathing steady, the exhaustion in his body slowly draining away, like he'd gotten a fresh charge of strength. He picked up his pace again.
"Krrrk..."
But just as he was starting to put distance between himself and the Kobold pack behind him, the cracking sound came again.
This time, not behind him. In front of him, at the next branch in the passage.
Leo looked up and saw a handful of monsters dropping out of the broken wall.
They blocked his path.
"Gug-ga!"
"Aow!"
The monsters bared their teeth and waved their claws, sneering at him.
"..."
Leo's running legs came to a stop, as if he had given up the struggle.
"Gug-gaaaaa...!"
Snarling monsters in front of him. Vicious-faced monsters behind him.
Leo had been surrounded, and there was no way out.
"...Can't run, huh?"
Realizing that, Leo steadied himself and went calm fast.
When you're still weak, you don't take risks.
He thought of the rule he'd set for himself, looked at the dead end in front of him, and finally understood just how unrealistic that rule had been.
If he'd decided to be an adventurer, he couldn't not take risks.
If he'd decided to walk into the Dungeon, sooner or later he was going to hit danger and a moment with no way out.
Sure, he was an otherworlder who'd only been here a year. Before today he hadn't fought a real battle. He hadn't even been in many proper brawls. But over that year, with his own eyes he had seen countless people whose strength went far beyond ordinary. He had seen adventurers carving up terrifying monsters like they were poultry. He had seen the unbelievable possibilities the Falna opened up. He had seen the kind of miracle Magic actually was.
Especially that golden-haired swordswoman who'd carried him out of this Dungeon once. The image of her tearing through monsters like a gale, taking them apart on the spot like it was nothing, had carved itself into the deepest part of him long ago.
That was the first time he'd seen what strength beyond the mortal looked like.
The first time he'd seen what an unreachable back looked like.
Maybe a seed had been planted in him from that moment on.
A seed that refused to settle for ordinary. That refused to come to this world and waste the trip. That wanted to live a second life unlike the first, to grasp the kind of strength he had only ever seen before in fantasy.
An adventurer has to take risks. And no transmigrator has ever been content to be ordinary.
He was both transmigrator and adventurer.
So...
"Right now, right here, this is my first real risk. The cry I make to say goodbye to an ordinary past."
Murmuring that, Leo unstrapped the small shield from his left arm and tossed it to the ground beside him.
"Gaaaaaaaaaah...!"
The monsters bared every fang and rushed him without mercy, howling all at once.
Facing this dead end, Leo lifted his head.
The words that carried power came out of him, firm and unshaken.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
And the miracle called "Magic" woke up.
"Meteor Dance!"
The short chant pulled out the supernatural power sleeping deep in the human body, and a streak of starlight flew from the boy's hand.
The starlight, like a real shooting star, circled his raised hand a few times, then burst forward, shooting straight at the Kobold charging him from the front.
The Kobold didn't even have time to react. The meteor slammed into its face and blew it apart on the spot. It dissolved into ash along with the scattered stardust, gone in an instant.
A tiny magic stone shard hit the ground, rolled a few turns, and came to rest.
The rest of the Kobolds in front of him froze stiff, eyes wide, locked in place.
They were scared.
Leo didn't stop.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
The second chant came fast. He turned to face the larger pack of Kobolds.
"Meteor Dance!"
This time, Leo pushed more Mind into it. Several meteors spiraled up from his palm.
Meteor Dance could trade extra Mind for more power, or for extra strikes.
Leo dumped the Mind in for extra strikes, and meteor after meteor streaked from his hand, slamming into the Kobold pack rushing toward him.
A meteor hit. Another. Another. Another. Another.
One after another, the meteors found the Kobolds, blew their stubby bodies apart on impact, scattered them into ash.
"Meteor Dance!"
"Meteor Dance!!"
"Meteor Dance!!!"
Leo showed no sign of stopping. He chanted the spell again and again, hurled wave after wave of dancing meteors, ran one Kobold after another through, killed them, blew them apart.
By the time the Kobolds finally reached him, the pack that had had overwhelming numbers on its side was down to fewer than ten.
"Grrr...!"
The survivors threw themselves on Leo, full of rage. Some bit down on his arms and shoulders, others raked their claws across his chest, his thighs, his stomach. He grunted under his breath. He'd finally taken real damage.
But this much was still within what he could handle.
"Shhk!"
Pushing through the pain, Leo swung the short sword hard, hacking down a Kobold that had its teeth in his thigh. He followed up with two quick thrusts, running another two Kobolds through the chest, killing them dead.
"Ga!"
The rest of them were still biting and clawing at him. Leo wrenched them off one by one, his form falling apart, and cut them down stroke by stroke, taking off arms, heads, finishing them off one at a time.
By the time Leo was drenched in blood and covered in wounds, only two Kobolds were left, and even they had been shaken by what he'd shown and backed off step by step.
"Meteor Dance!"
Leo wasn't about to let them go. He chanted the spell again.
The meteors flew, ran straight through both Kobolds, and the two of them dropped with a wail.