"It's too long..."
Suzuki wondered how long he had been falling as he sighed helplessly, crossed his arms, and looked around him as if he were on a shinkansen trip.
Yet, at least, in the shinkansen, he could see the green, or unfamiliar town, but here?
All he could see was just darkness.
The fall into the true abyss of the Orcus Labyrinth took a terrifyingly long time. For a normal person, it was a descent into madness, screaming until their vocal cords tear before hitting the bedrock.
Yet, for Suzuki, it was just a really long, annoying commute to his new office.
"If I am just the Merchant, I will really die."
Fortunately, he has been working hard since he arrived in this world, so he believed that even if he fell from such a high altitude, he would be fine. Equipped with his core Assassin skills, the newly stolen Wind Magic from Hayama, and the spatial perfection of the Acrobat job, the laws of physics were no longer a lethal threat, but just a long, simple commute, like how he went to work. There was probably a mix of a mathematical formula, too, but...
"No, do I even need to count?"
Suzuki was the Manager, so even if he did nothing, the Manager would move his body, searching for a way to keep him alive, and landed safely as he reached the bottom of the abyss.
Yet, could he do it?
Unexpectedly, he was able to do it, and he did it flawlessly, landing completely unscathed, seemingly, like just walking around the park.
As the red light of the bridge faded entirely, he was swallowed by absolute, freezing darkness. Terminal velocity was kicking in. The wind was roaring past his ears, but he didn't flail.
Among the skills within the Acrobatic job, which he had taken previously, there was a skill known as the "Equilibrium," and thanks to this skill, his inner ear was practically indestructible. Even in pitch blackness, he knew exactly which way was up, down, and how close the canyon walls were. He essentially assumes a skydiver's ideal tracking position, minimizing drag to speed up the fall and get this over with.
Now, about two hundred feet from the bottom, his Danger Perception pings. The skill from his Assassin Job was amazing, and it suited him; a certain skill within this job seemed to be combined with the Merchant's Hostile Takeover.
Still, before that, he had to think about how to land first.
The floor was coming up fast. He didn't panic. He calmly raised his left hand and cast a highly compressed sphere of Wind Magic directly beneath him.
Wooosh!
He didn't use the wind to stop himself entirely—that would shatter his legs. He used it as a bounce pad. As he hit the updraft, he used his acrobatic kinetic redirection to twist his body, converting his downward vertical momentum into a horizontal spin and launching himself softly toward the cavern wall.
Only, as he kicked off the wall, erasing the last of his lethal momentum, his unnatural night vision kicked in.
"Hmm?"
The bottom of the abyss was a graveyard of white bones, glowing moss, and a massive, ten-foot-tall Nightmare Claw Bear looking up, waiting for its meal to drop from the ceiling.
"What a trouble..."
Sighing. Mid-air, just fifty feet above the bear, Suzuki essentially hit the "mute" button on his own existence.
Presence Concealment.
This was the ultimate skill of the Assassin Job, and its bread and butter.
With just this one skill, Suzuki believed that he was as good as invincible, as no one would be able to see him, including this monster.
His heartbeat slowed to a crawl. The Wind Magic perfectly enveloped his body, catching the scent of his sweat and the rustle of his clothes, blowing it straight up into the canyon. To the Claw Bear, the falling human it was tracking had vanished from reality.
"Ra?"
The massive beast grunted in confusion, sniffing the air, dropping its guard as it assumed the prey was snatched by a flying monster higher up.
Still, Suzuki, who had vanished, didn't aim to land on the ground. The ground was hard, and he didn't want to waste energy absorbing the impact with a roll. Instead, he aimed for the bear.
He fell the last thirty feet in absolute silence, completely invisible to the bear's senses. He drew a single dagger, holding it in a reverse grip.
In the Acrobat skill tree, falling from a high altitude wasn't a danger; it was a damage multiplier. He channeled the remaining kinetic energy of his descent directly into his right heel and his blade arm.
He landed Oxford shoe-first directly onto the back of the Claw Bear's neck. The sheer, concentrated force of the acrobatic drop instantly crushed the monster's cervical vertebrae. Before the beast could even register the paralysis, he hooked the dagger into the microscopic gap under the bear's armored jawbone.
Slash!
Using the beast's massive, collapsing weight as a fulcrum, he steps off its back, letting gravity do the work to drag the blade cleanly through its carotid artery and windpipe.
BOOOOOOOM!
The ten-ton Nightmare Claw Bear crashed onto the bedrock, dead before it even knew it was under attack.
Suzuki landed softly next to the corpse, Oxford shoes making absolutely zero sound on the stone floor. He stood up slowly, stretching his neck and his hands until they cracked, adjusting the collar of his shirt. He didn't breathe heavily. He didn't celebrate surviving a drop that would have turned the Kingdom's strongest knight into paste.
He just casually flicked the monster's blood off his dagger, looked around at the suffocating, hostile darkness of the abyss, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"This place is so nasty."
He muttered to himself in the pitch-black environment, feeling lucky that he had taken many unique jobs before he started the expedition.
"If Nagumo isn't the protagonist, this guy will die."
Unlike him, who had the Manager and many unique skills, Nagumo was just a Synergist, and no matter how Nagumo tried to make himself powerful, the stats from his non-combatant job made him simply weaker than others.
While some might say Nagumo had a Gunner job in secret, Suzuki felt it wasn't a particularly strong job either. Instead, those with mages, assassins, or many others might even be stronger than Nagumo, especially when the Gunner job didn't really give him special abilities or skills. If Nagumo had no weapons from the Synergist, then... he was as good as a goner in this world.
Still, as the plot had changed, Hajime Nagumo didn't fall. Still, considering Nagumo was a protagonist, this guy might unexpectedly show his determination to change or grow stronger in a way, right?
Suzuki wasn't sure, but he didn't care either, since at this moment, he should focus on himself, and because of that, he looked at the Bear Claw corpse in front of him.
"Can it be done?"
Suzuki looked at his hand, extended it to the corpse, and used the skill that came from the combination of the Hostile Takeover and the Steal skill, which came from the Assassin Job.
Steal.
It was a skill that stole the item of the target, and while usually, it was done randomly and based on the user's Luck, Suzuki's skill was definitely on another level, especially when he had the Manager, who adjusted and modified the skill, combining it with the Hostile Takeover skill from the Manager.
So, at this moment, he tried that skill, that combination skill.
"Snatch."
As he used this skill, Suzuki could feel his stats improving, new skills entering his body, and he realized that this place wasn't hell. Instead, it was an easy grind spot to raise his levels and status and gain new skills.
"Damn, what a powerful skill!"
Still, he unsheathed his other blade and began to walk into the darkness, completely unbothered, ready to slaughter every monster on the floor to become even stronger.