Chapter 28: First Encounter with the Xenos.
(T/N:Xenos=Heretic)
....
Using the mine elevator to reach the fifteenth floor in seconds, Kihara moved directly toward the eighteenth without stopping. According to Lili's briefing, the eighteenth floor was a designated safe zone — the Dungeon Paradise, in common adventurer parlance.
Monster density here was far lower than on any of the combat floors, and generation was slow enough that extended stays were practical. Adventurers had taken advantage of the conditions to build a small settlement on the western island — a street called Rivira, carved out of a landscape where natural rock formations coexisted with crystal growths large enough to use as landmarks.
The supplies available in Rivira covered most of what you'd find on the surface. The prices reflected the understanding that buyers had no other options.
Coming through the entrance to the eighteenth floor, Kihara found himself looking at a modest town arranged around a massive crystal formation, the calls of vendors already carrying upward to where he stood. He didn't stop. He located the great tree at the town's far edge — the eighteenth floor's exit was in the roots — and kept walking.
From the nineteenth floor onward, the dungeon's architecture changed completely. The cave labyrinth gave way to an underground forest, dense with greenery, spanning roughly half the footprint of Orario itself.
The downsides: poison-using monsters and trap density increased noticeably.
The upsides: monster drops began including Stardew Valley base materials. Among them — Bat Wings, which happened to be a required component for signal tower construction.
The speed-run plan was immediately abandoned. He cleared monsters and explored the forest at a comfortable pace, collecting as he went.
"ROOOOARR—"
A Vouivre — black-bear shaped, but bigger and faster than any bear had a right to be — appeared on his path alongside the Minotaur that had been a fixture of these floors since the fifteenth. Kihara's expression sharpened with the particular interest of someone who has just found something worth fighting.
He drew Kokorowatari from the void and brought it down on the Vouivre's skull — the hardest part of its anatomy. The blade sank in approximately half a centimetre and stopped there, wedged solid.
The Vouivre swung its claws at his torso. Kihara let go of the sword without hesitation — something most adventurers would consider unthinkable — absorbed the swing with a kick to its snout, and used the recoil to backflip clear.
He hadn't fully landed when the Minotaur's steel axe came screaming toward the back of his neck.
The shadow at his feet stretched, reached upward, and caught the axe with Kokorowatari still embedded in it, redirecting the strike in a single motion.
Clang.
Ebony and Ivory were in his hands before the sound finished. Both barrels swung to cover the two monsters simultaneously, and the triggers came down.
The upper halves of both creatures absorbed a rainfall of bullets and ceased to function. The impact carried them several metres before they hit the ground, raising a cloud of dust. The bodies dissolved into black smoke shortly after, leaving only magic stones.
[Master. Something is watching you from the seven o'clock position.]
[Watching? It's not attacking?]
[Correct. It's maintaining distance. It appears to have assessed the situation and decided not to engage.]
[If it's not starting trouble, leave it alone. I've got over thirty bat wings anyway — time to move to the twentieth floor.]
The twentieth floor had fishing spots and a treasure chest. He'd been looking forward to it.
When he stepped through the entrance, a figure in black was waiting for him.
"Mr. Kihara. My name is Fels. I've been sent by Ouranos to meet you here."
"What does he want me to do on this floor?"
"Please follow me."
The robed figure moved ahead, floating rather than walking. The truth was that Ouranos had originally intended for Kihara to encounter the floor's unusual inhabitants organically — but the accumulated reports of what he'd been doing in the dungeon over the past weeks had introduced a serious concern about whether encounter might become immediately attack out of reasonable caution. Fels had been assigned guide duties to prevent that outcome.
Four hours of walking through terrain that no adventurer had mapped. Kihara was beginning to entertain the hypothesis that he was being led somewhere to be quietly disposed of when Fels stopped in mid-air.
"We're here."
"Where exactly is here?"
He looked around. A lakeside forest, actually pleasant by dungeon standards. No obvious reason to have walked four hours to reach it.
Fels didn't answer. Instead, she produced a sequence of notes — some kind of signal call. The undergrowth rustled, and a figure emerged from the tree line.
It was a lizardman. Lean build, light armour, red scales, yellow slit-pupil eyes that flicked to Kihara with immediate wariness.
"Fels... you brought a human here?"
"Mr. Kihara — this is what Ouranos needs from you." Fels turned to face him directly.
"The beings you see here are called Xenos — monsters who have developed reason and self-awareness. Ouranos asks that you help facilitate mutual understanding and coexistence between them and the people of the surface."
Kihara looked at the lizardman. Then at Fels. Then back at the lizardman.
He shook his head. "You've given me an impossible task. I can't do that."
"You won't even attempt it?"
The disappointment in Fels's voice was genuine. Kihara held up one finger.
"Answer me something first. Is it actually possible for humans and other races to exist together without any conflict?"
"...No. That isn't possible."
"Then you already understand the problem. You're asking people to accept creatures who look indistinguishable from the monsters trying to kill them every time they go underground. Not our kind, therefore suspect — that's not a bias, it's functional survival logic. It applies even more strongly when the thing you're being asked to accept looks exactly like something that was trying to eat you last Tuesday."
"Which is precisely why we're asking you to solve it."
Kihara pressed two fingers to his temple. He stopped arguing with Fels and looked at the lizardman instead.
"What's your name?"
"...Lido."
"Lido. How many of your people are in a similar situation?"
Lido considered briefly. "Approximately thirty, currently."
"Only thirty." He clicked his tongue, then looked between Fels and Lido with a new proposition. "Find a way to get that number to a thousand first. Then we can talk about coexistence."
Fels was lost. "Why?"
"Let me put it simply. If you found a bug in your house, you'd get rid of it, yes?"
"Yes."
"And if that bug suddenly started talking and asked to live with you peacefully — would your first instinct be acceptance, or would the talking make it somehow more alarming and therefore more urgently need to be dealt with?"
Fels said nothing. A small nod.
"Now imagine the same scenario, except there are a thousand of them. They can talk. They can fight. And they can offer you something useful. Does the calculus change?"
"...It does."
"There you go."
Kihara snapped his fingers and turned back to Lido, who was still working through the logic.
"What your people need right now isn't a mutual understanding campaign. It's numbers, and it's strength, and it's the capacity to offer something that makes coexistence worth considering from the other side. You don't negotiate from a position of thirty. You negotiate from a position where walking away from the table costs the other side something."
....
Thank you for reading.