DUNGEON DIVE: Aim for the Deepest Level Volume 6, page 1
Chapter 1: Side Fight
The semifinals of the Brawl were over. With Team Lastiara formally conceding, I had now advanced to the finals as the representative of the nation of Laoravia. That is to say, the plan that I had formulated alongside Lastiara was a success, as the bangle sealing my memories now lay destroyed.
I now possessed the memories of both “Siegfried Vizzita”—the me before the mind wipe—and “Aikawa Kanami,” the me after (and my actual name). And both of those memory banks held nothing but bitter recollections. I’d made an ass of myself after the semifinals, for one. I’d definitely be a laughingstock throughout the Alliance, probably for a good month or so. But that hardly concerned me, because in exchange, I’d been able to find what I truly wanted.
No more lies, and no more being toyed with. With that as my reward, some ridicule was a small price to pay. And best of all, I was able to reunite with two allies I could truly trust, Lastiara and Dia.
After the match, I described my plan to overcome the perils of the Brawl right away. While circumstances made for a plan that was exceedingly fragmentary and incomplete, Lastiara went along with it anyway out of her trust in me. Meanwhile, I was off on my own, fighting my utter exhaustion to shuffle out of the arena. I passed through the dim and gloomy corridor and returned to the contestant waiting room. Needless to stay, the ghost girl who’d seen me off before the match was there waiting for me.
Reaper flashed me an innocent smile. “Congrats, mister! You finally got your true wish back!”
But I couldn’t be too happy about her words on account of the alarm bells ringing in my head. I remembered my past failures, and I could pick up on ulterior motives lurking behind her celebratory remarks. I knew from the emotions coming through our curse-link that she and I were actually at odds. I was now sure that she was as formidable a foe as Palinchron himself.
“Thanks. The memories are on the painful side, but I’m glad I managed to retrieve ’em. And it’s all thanks to your help, Reaper.”
She was all smiles. “Hee hee! That’s great! Now you won’t get what you really want confused anymore!”
But I couldn’t allow myself to be taken in by her toddler appearance or charming smile. She was, in truth, cunning and crafty. My conjecture, based on observing Reaper thus far, was that she could obtain more than just emotions through the curse-link. And no one ever said there was only one such link. There was a good chance that she was learning through the experiences and emotions of others by creating a whole mass of curse-links. In fact, supposing there was no upper limit to the number of links she could create, her targets were the entire populace of Laoravia. It was quite possible that, over the span of a handful of days, she could procure several centuries’ worth of experience, and that would explain why she sometimes displayed behavior that didn’t fit with her apparent age.
“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ll never forget what I really want again. It’s because of you giving me that push on the night of the dragon quest. Thanks, Reaper. I mean it.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t do a gosh darn thing. I was too busy with my own problems!”
I was watching her every motion via Dimension. Just as she said, she wasn’t doing anything—or so it might appear. In reality, however, she was most certainly giving a lot of people a supportive push while looking inert.
Her methods remind me of Palinchron’s, I thought. Maybe she’s got a link with him too. But when did that link come to be?
The day before yesterday, I had heard that Reaper had helped run a search for Lastiara. And who could Lastiara have been searching for but Palinchron? She’d already found me by that point, after all. I had no doubt she was trying to pinpoint the enemy’s location next. And so Reaper cast a Dimension of her own to aid in the hunt for him. As a result, Rayle’s residence was razed to the ground, while Palinchron was forced to flee past the country’s borders. Reaper had to have been there to witness that battle. And that was when she had come into contact with Palinchron. What other possibility was there?
“So, mister, what’re you gonna do now that you’ve got your memories back?”
That was all it took; I couldn’t dispel my unease. Reaper’s wish was to protect Lorwen. The crest at the nape of my neck was conveying that that, at least, was no lie. And that was the very reason we were at cross purposes. There was no mistaking it—she was giving me a wide berth because I held the power to erase him from existence. Everything she did, she did in order to drive me out of the Dungeon Alliance. That was the reason she’d urged me to leave Snow to her own devices and helped me retrieve my memories. It was all to distance me from Lorwen.
I spoke with caution. “I’m gonna go see Snow so I can talk to her.”
“You wanna talk to her? You sure that’s okay? Didn’t you want her to solve her Walker Clan problems on her own?”
“Sure, yeah, but...wouldn’t it be horrible if I just left without saying anything? I’ve gotta at least talk to her one last time.”
“You’re leaving... Yeah, you’re right. You might wanna go talk to her once more. I mean, you’ve gotta go chase that mean, nasty Palinchron man without regrets!”
“That’s right. I cannot let Palinchron get away with this. I’m surprised you know so much about him, actually. Who’d you hear about him from?”
“That’s... It was Mr. Rayle. When Lorwen asked Mr. Rayle about your past, I was there too. That’s why I know it’s this ‘Palinchron’ who sealed your memories away.”
“Gotcha. Explains why you’re so knowledgeable about my past.”
I endeavored to seem as indifferent and matter-of-fact about it as possible, and she was probably doing likewise. If either of us ever got worked up, our respective thoughts would leak out to the other by way of the curse-link. As a consequence, we kept each other in check by lying through our teeth.
I had my memories of the Day of the Blessed Birth. She had gained centuries’ worth of experience. We were no longer the innocent little know-nothings who had met on Floor 30 of the Dungeon. Each of us tried to dispassionately probe the other, our expressions never-shifting masks.
“But are you doing okay, mister? You don’t gotta rush things, do ya? Your memories are back, so maybe you’d be better off resting a few days.”
“Nah, I wanna go after Palinchron as soon as possible. So I’m gonna go visit Snow right now.”
“Oh, okay. If you wanna chase after that guy...I guess it can’t be helped, huh?”
It wasn’t a fib; I did urgently want to persuade Snow. I’d been about to commit the same error as when I had failed Maria. I’d hung on to the naive hope that Snow would be able to overcome her predicament on her own strength, and so I had run from her troubles. I never looked her problems square in the face. Not really. But I was determined never to turn tail and flee again.
This time, I’ll snatch a win. I swear it.
“Reaper, could you search for Snow with Dimension for me? As you can see, my magic energy’s running on empty.”
She paused to think. “Okay, got it. Let’s see here... Looks like she’s in a med-ship in the west area at the moment. I’ll take you there!”
I started in that direction without delay. “Thanks. Let’s hurry over, shall we?”
She followed behind me. I didn’t have to look to know that; I was still observing her every move. I could sense her staring a hole into my back, but I continued striding, cautiously and calmly.
The plan I’d shared with Lastiara was going without a hitch so far. By having Reaper use Dimension instead of me, I was replenishing a bit of my MP.
We reached the west area, moving on to the med-ship. Leaning on my status as the guildmaster of Epic Seeker, I got Snow’s room number from the attendant. I was having Reaper wait on the deck. I’d basically forced her to agree to it by telling her I wanted to talk to her alone since it would be the last time. Yet if she deployed Dimension and put a bit of juice behind it, she’d have front-row seats to what was going on inside anyway. That was why she’d given the nod to begin with. I could hardly rest easy.
Compounding my troubles, not only would persuading Snow be hard, but I also had no time to spare. Still, I put one foot in front of the other, vowing inwardly that I would not fail again.
I reached the door to Snow’s room and found one of the members of Epic Seeker there. It was Ms. Tayly. She must have been waiting on Snow as she recovered. I felt conflicted. I might have retrieved my memories, but it wasn’t as though my recollection of the good times I’d spent at Epic Seeker had disappeared.
“Ms. Tayly...”
The gloomy look on her face brightened up. She seemed surprised and delighted in equal measure. “K-Kanami? You came!”
“Yes ma’am. I thought I’d come talk to her one last time, so...”
“One last time? This is it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
I didn’t actually know if it would be the last time, but since Reaper was lurking nearby, I spoke as though it was.
“Please, Kanami, darling...please understand where Snow’s coming from. She was fighting, you know. Desperately. She was fighting, in her own way. Listen here!”
Ms. Tayly reminded me of a big sister going to bat for her younger sibling. She must have figured this was the last chance she’d ever have to talk to me, so she gave me a relatively thorough account of Snow’s past.
“Snow’s gotten serious enough to draconify three ti
I’d been vaguely aware already. Snow’s life was one of constant failure. By messing up over and over again, she’d formed the unfortunate tendency to just give up on everything. And if I had turned the wrong corner once or twice, I might’ve wound up like her too. I couldn’t think of this as her problem.
“Please, Kanami. You’re a ‘hero,’ aren’t you? Save her. If Snow doesn’t make it out of this intact, we all stand to lose out. We’ll all suffer for it!”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that; I’m not a hero.”
She grimaced, utterly disappointed, and hung her head. She knew I hated the hero thing, but she clearly wanted me to be one for Snow.
“Then what are you to her?”
“I’m...her partner. I’m going to talk to her as her partner.”
Unless I had the wrong idea, she and I had truly started things off by being colleagues. Back then, she hadn’t hung her hopes on me, and she hadn’t seen me as a selfless hero type. That was the sort of relationship I felt was ideal for us, so I proclaimed myself her partner now.
“I see. Her partner,” muttered Ms. Tayly.
I opened the door and entered. “Snow, I’m coming in.”
The room was stark white. The high-end bed was white, as was all the furniture. The big white curtains were swaying, and Snow was looking out the window as they brushed her azure hair. She seemed dazzled by the boundless blue sea. It must have looked sparkling to her indeed...
Seeing her like this reminded me of a candle that had burned out. That was how little vitality I sensed in her.
She gently turned to look at me. “Kanami?”
The white bandages covering her whole body came into view. Her menu told me she didn’t have external wounds. No, it was something else that was inside her. Something else gnawing away at her. Under the Condition section of her menu, all that was written was “Draco-form.”
“Yep, it’s me. Damn, you’re all bandaged up.”
“Yeah. Lady Lastiara put the beatdown on me.”
“She beat me up too. I can relate.”
“I didn’t watch, but I heard about it,” she said languidly. “We’re both bloody wrecks.”
The tenacity she’d exhibited up until yesterday was totally gone. Perhaps her defeat at Lastiara’s hands had sent her back to giving up on the world. I was a bit taken aback. Sure, she was always quick to throw in the towel, but for that insane level of fixation to vanish so easily? It didn’t feel natural. I tried to reassess how to bring up what I was there to say.
She pointed at my upper arm. “Your bangle. It’s gone?” She gave a strained smile. “You’re not my Kanami anymore?”
“No.”
“The world with you and me in it is no more?” she asked with a blank, detached expression.
“It’s no more.”
A pause. “I see.”
This was close to how she had been the time I first met her, when she was doing a Dungeon assignment for her academy. She always paused for unnaturally long before speaking, and when she did speak, it was slowly and at her leisure.
“I heard that in your match against Elmirahd Siddark, you declared you were my fiancé...and that you turned it into a duel of honor and drove him off.”
“Yeah, I remember. That’s what happened.”
“So does that mean you’re marrying—”
“Sorry. It was just because I wanted to repudiate him as a person. I didn’t do it in order to marry you, Snow.”
“Right. Right, I figured... Heh heh heh. I thought as much.”
It was a faint, enervated smile. An “I had a sliver of hope, but getting my expectations up hurts me so I didn’t” smile.
“But thanks,” she continued. “I think that’ll have put him off a bit.”
The way she phrased it, I got the feeling she was resigning herself to every woe again.
“So, are you quitting Epic Seeker, then? Are you leaving Laoravia?”
“I’ve got no reason to stay. I’ll be leaving the country before long.”
“I see.”
She seemed sad but unsurprised. She said nothing, the sound of the breeze rustling the curtains filling the room.
“So, what’ll you do, Snow?”
“Give up,” she replied immediately. She must have known I’d ask. “I don’t wanna do a thing anymore. It was me who should’ve given up... It was all a pipe dream. I was being an idiot all over again. I’m sorry, Kanami.”
I couldn’t bear to stand there and watch. Just like before...but this time, it was in a different way.
“You’re giving up again?”
“I can’t do it anymore. I’ve got no idea what to do to make things okay. And that scares me...so I just don’t care anymore. Anything’s fine.”
The longer she spoke, the hollower her eyes became. Before she lost all her strength, I gave her the reply I’d prepared beforehand.
“Well...I think it’s the noble House of Walker itself that’s tormenting you... Now that my memories are back, I can finally say that with absolute certainty. They’re the ones.”
What a roundabout path it had been to reach this point. I should have known from the start what the answer was, and yet look how long it had taken me.
“Snow...you shouldn’t remain in the Walker Clan.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it...because I already failed.”
“You failed?”
“In the past, when I tried my hardest to run away, a lot of people I cherished lost their lives.”
I was finally going to hear why she had become so torpid directly from the horse’s mouth.
“I may be the strongest, so I always survive, but that’s not true for everybody else. They all died because of me.”
She spoke of their deaths matter-of-factly; I reckoned it was because if she let herself get too earnest, the weight of it would crush her.
“The Walker Clan’s got no intention of letting me, ‘the strongest,’ the ‘hero,’ escape their grasp. If I flee, they’ll use the cruelest methods to bring me back. I can’t shake the memories of those horrible days. They won’t go away...”
She made her hopes and troubles clear. She’d failed in the past. She’d learned the hard way that she couldn’t escape the House of Walker, so all this time, she’d been trying to find a way to live a quiet life within it. And as a result, she’d chosen to shift all of her Walker Clan woes onto her would-be husband—onto me.
“Every time I think about fleeing, my body shrinks in fear. I’ve got no choice but to live my life with the Walkers. But Palinchron, he introduced me to you, or the you without your memories. I figured that if I could be with you, then I didn’t mind Palinchron pulling the wool over my eyes. I figured that if we were together, I could go on living even if I stayed. That was what I thought... But in the end, it was all in vain. Heh heh heh...”
Her sad smile made me sad too. Watching her be vulnerable and divulge her true state of affairs was painful. I picked up where I’d left off earlier: the answer I’d prepared in advance.
“Snow, let’s run away, one more time.”
“One more time?”
“I get that you were traumatized last time, but still. Let’s make a break for it. This time, you’ll have me and Lastiara’s grou—”
“Do you mean Kanami the Hero is gonna abduct me?” she asked, her face blank.
It was the same thing she’d said at that ball we’d attended. Back then, she’d fully expected me to be the hero. But now, to my eyes, she harbored no such hopes. She was waiting for me to say no. And naturally, I did indeed shake my head, just as she’d seen coming. There were no convenient fairy-tale heroes out there.
“No. No ‘abduction.’ But if you choose to flee of your own volition, I’ll help you.”
“Of my own volition? But why?”
“Don’t you see? Otherwise our relationship would become too one-sided. I want us to be on equal footing. If we’re not, I’ll be making a mistake. The same mistake...” I said, trembling.
The memory was fresh in my mind. I’d tried to rescue Maria unilaterally, and what had that ultimately led to? Nothing to anybody’s benefit. In fact, it had invited a great number of miseries upon us. The flashback played out in my head; I could see the spectacle again. The fiery purgatory that had capped off the Day of the Blessed Birth. I had lost so much within those raging flames...
