Chapter 9: The First Dungeon

And now, the main story of WF has finally begun! Time to keep up the enthusiasm and earn those precious user points!

"An ancient ruin...?"

"Yes, that's right. It's known as the 'Jamal Mataha, the Gakuma Labyrinth.' If you conquer it and uncover its mysteries, the lord will surely meet with you."

I answer Kizuna-kun's question as though I'm some kind of walking encyclopedia. It's the convenient Tierra-chan routine where you can ask me anything and I'll have an answer.

Oh, by the way, I had Kizuna-kun stop using formal speech with me. I used our old memories (which I completely fabricated) as an excuse, saying, "It feels somehow strange having you speak to me like that." From a user's perspective, I figured this kind of speech would make us feel a little closer, so it was a rather simplistic decision.

And then there's the guide character who teaches you all sorts of things early in the story... That's probably worth quite a few user points, isn't it? She might even have a bit of a teacher attribute. A bespectacled female teacher Tierra-chan... wouldn't that be pretty good?

Of course, it's also standard practice for characters like that to become useless around the middle of the story... But by then, the developers should have started implementing things like Swimsuit Tierra and squeezing money out of the users, so I'm sure everything will be fine.

"The mystery, and conquering it?"

"That's right. This labyrinth is still shrouded in many mysteries. The story begins about a year ago, though—"

As I answer Rune's question, I organize the information written in my mental memo.

In the mountainous region north of the fortress city of Zalfedahl. About a year ago, a giant ruin appeared suddenly there. As suddenly as if it had been swallowed into the mountain.

Though, this isn't particularly unusual in "Chaos." The event itself is rare, but the explanation is simple. That's right—world fusion occurred at that location.

Worlds fuse together and become incorporated into "Chaos." It's simple when put into words, but this is an extraordinary phenomenon.

Yet neither the side of "Chaos" nor the world being incorporated experiences anything like an earthquake or abnormal weather. "Before you realize it, you're already together." Lands and structures take root in "Chaos" as though they had been there from the very beginning.

Only beings possessing intelligence can notice the change. Whether that is actually the correct thing to happen, however, is something no one knows. Everything other than intelligent life—even the "laws of the world" themselves—melts together into a single world as though nothing had happened. You could almost fall under the strange illusion that possessing intelligence itself was some kind of mistake.

Regardless. Worlds fuse together far too naturally. And, basically, things originating from the same world gather together in one place. But occasionally, like with this ruin, people and objects whose world of origin is completely unknown will suddenly appear. They cross even space and time before suddenly revealing themselves.

That is how this ruin appeared.

The mountain and the artificial ruin merged together, becoming one enormous, bizarre existence. The surface of the mountain had transformed, mixed with artificial structures, while the interior of the mountain had been hollowed out and filled with the ruin's vast spaces.

That is the "Jamal Mataha, the Gakuma Labyrinth."

"Um, so if conquering that place is such a great achievement... does that mean nobody has cleared it?"

"That's half correct. Indeed, no one has been able to conquer that labyrinth yet. However, if that were all there was to it, the lord wouldn't meet you simply for conquering it."

"What's the other half?"

"Hehe, yes. I suppose I shouldn't tease you any longer. In truth, this labyrinth is also a major headache for the fortress city."

The reason being that many monsters from the ruin's original world lived within it.

No, perhaps saying they "lived" there isn't quite accurate.

The ruin itself is producing magical beasts.

The pitch-black magical beasts that emerge from this ruin turn into black ash and disappear when they die. And they keep pouring out in seemingly limitless numbers.

Naturally, the fortress city took the situation extremely seriously. They dispatched an investigation team to determine the cause and find a solution—

—and failed, leaving behind only one result:

Zero survivors returned.

Afterward, fearless experts and people like treasure hunters gathered from the surrounding areas, but not a single one of them managed to return, either.

In response, the fortress city gave up on investigating the ruin. They sealed its entrances with magical barriers and steel doors, then stationed guards there to keep the place under constant surveillance.

There was even a proposal to burn down the mountain, but it was obvious that a ruin made from some unknown material couldn't possibly be burned away. On top of that, doing anything reckless could cause the magical beasts to flood out and inflict damage on the fortress city. The environmental damage would also be enormous.

"So, that's more or less the situation. If you can conquer this labyrinth and uncover the mystery behind the magical beasts' emergence, there's no doubt the lord will commend you."

"But the entrance is sealed."

"That's right, normally, you can't get in. However, recently, reports of sightings of the pitch-black magical beasts have begun to increase here and there. Not enough that we can simply dismiss them all as lies or mistaken sightings."

"Which means there's another entrance?"

"Or perhaps something that didn't exist before was newly created due to some kind of circumstance."

I say it with an innocent expression.

Of course, thanks to my precious memo, I already know the truth.

Five-years-ago me was ridiculously competent. I'm falling in love with myself.

This ancient ruin is a place where the ancient people of a certain world sealed away numerous weapons that were far too dangerous. Many of their weapons couldn't simply be disposed of, and the best course of action was to wait for them to slowly decay over the course of an unimaginably long period of time.

And so, they built this ruin and sealed them away.

The pitch-black magical beasts were the ruin's defensive mechanism. Originally, they were a system designed to automatically intercept anything that entered the ruin.

The mechanism was simple: the ruin itself absorbed the power of anything that entered it, then used that power to create pitch-black magical beasts.

Even if the power of a single magical beast was weak, the ruin could continue sucking power from an intruder and producing more magical beasts for as long as that intruder had energy left.

An endless labyrinth and infinite enemies.

The unwelcome intruder would ultimately be destroyed by none other than their own power.

With a system like this, no matter how much time passed, the ruin's defensive mechanism would never weaken. There was no need to worry about running out of energy, either.

But then something unexpected happened.

That's right—world fusion with "Chaos."

As a result, the ruin's system itself fused with the mountain.

A "mountain teeming with life" merged with a "ruin that absorbs power and produces magical beasts."

The rest should be obvious.

The ruin became an obnoxious monster house capable of producing magical beasts infinitely.

Even the ancient people would be shocked.

So, Kizuna-kun, Rune, and I simply have to conquer the place and shut down the ruin's system, thereby resolving the situation.

The exact location is unknown, but we'll find the existing back entrance and infiltrate the ruin from there.

And conquering this ruin isn't merely necessary for us to gain an audience with the lord. We'll also be able to acquire something absolutely indispensable for our future adventures.

It's one of the weapons created by the ancient people...

Though you could practically say there's no danger whatsoever.

It was incredibly sturdy and extremely difficult to dismantle, so it ended up being sealed away alongside the other dangerous weapons.

Poor thing.

Incidentally, every weapon created by the ancient people except the one our protagonist-kun will acquire has already decayed to the point of being completely unusable. It's been far too long since they became impossible to restore.

So there's no chance that this weapon will cause another wave of war to sweep across "Chaos," nor will the protagonist's faction use ancient weapons to effortlessly conquer the world and establish peace through sheer violence.

That would change the genre of the game.

"A dungeon with zero successful conquerors... Can we really clear it by ourselves?"

"But if we don't, we can't meet the lord. Or would you rather give up and go home? There's no question that this will be dangerous."

"...No. We're trying to stop all the wars in the world in the first place. If we can't even handle something like this, then we don't stand a chance."

"Mhm. I agree with Kizuna. An unexplored labyrinth? Just what I was hoping for."

"You two really are... All right. Then let's go."

Though, from a meta perspective, this is the first dungeon in a mobile game.

In reality, it's not nearly as dangerous as it sounds.

At this point, you might be wondering, "It was their first dungeon, so how come the people of the fortress city couldn't solve it for an entire year?"

There's a perfectly good reason.

Normally, this would be an extremely dangerous labyrinth. This time, however, is an exception.

Although this dungeon is constantly producing an infinite number of monsters, its fundamental nature hasn't changed: it uses the intruder's own power to intercept them.

Neither Kizuna nor Rune can be considered particularly powerful at this point in the story, meaning the defensive system isn't able to demonstrate its true potential.

Furthermore, the ruin's power-absorption system is already completely saturated with the power of previous intruders and the mountain's life force. It can no longer absorb anything more.

As a result, Rune and Kizuna can challenge the dungeon without suffering any weakening effects.

As an added bonus, the back entrance we're planning to use was created by a section of the wall collapsing by sheer coincidence. Entering from there makes it surprisingly easy to reach the ruin's central system.

There is some maze-like wandering involved, but it's nothing they can't clear in half a day.

And so, through this wonderfully convenient, game-like sequence of events, the "Jamal Mataha, the Gakuma Labyrinth"—the first dungeon—has been completed.

"All right, we're prepared for the dungeon as well. —One final confirmation. You're ready for this, aren't you?"

"Yes!"

"Preparation, perfect."

"Then let's go. The 'Gakuma Labyrinth' conquest operation begins now."

And so, their first adventure began—