Dungeon Gacha Life Chapter 34

 Chapter 34: An Ordinary Day, Shattered

The next day, once I'd finished getting ready in the morning, I sat on the couch drinking coffee.

On the table in front of me sat a half-eaten chocolate. The one Yui had given me yesterday turned out to be homemade.

She'd kept insisting it was because "you helped me out before" and "I owe you"  over and over but how many girls actually go out of their way to hand-make chocolate for someone over that?

Guess she's just not the type who can lie convincingly. Then again, playing dumb and accepting it anyway makes me just as guilty.

Right now, I have no intention of spending my time or headspace on romance. Besides, in love, whoever falls first loses, the one who's fallen for has all the leverage.

I'm not about to give up that leverage.

Not that it's ever really mattered — I've never once fallen for anyone in my life. Better she just chalk it up to falling for a lousy excuse for a man and move on.

"You were actually a lousy excuse for a man?!"

Lapis, who'd drifted over without me noticing, looked thunderstruck. Guess she'd finished her morning educational program.

"Huh? Then what about how you act around Ryouka-san? You even asked her out on a date, didn't you?"

The image that came to mind was Shimotsuki-san's face, the cool, beautiful woman with the long black hair. I do have a pretty favorable impression of her, honestly. Just...

"Sure, I like her, but I don't think it's romantic. Wouldn't anyone be happy getting attention from a pretty older woman?"

"That's the exact mindset of a mischievous little boy..."

Men are basically kids their whole lives, aren't they. Anyway, where's she even picking up this kind of insight from?

"Have you seriously never liked anyone before?"

"Nope. Had people I was physically attracted to, though."

"That is absolutely not the same thing."

Turns out the Gacha fairy was firmly Team True Love. Most people's romantic feelings and physical desire are pretty tightly tangled together though.

"Isn't love supposed to be that thing where you can't get someone out of your head, waking or sleeping? Sounds exhausting, living your life chained to something like that."

People call it being a prisoner of love or whatever. I don't get it at all.

"Oh, Yui-san... the man you fell for turned out to be a coldhearted demon lord."

Lapis clasped her hands to her chest and let out a wail of despair. That's rude. Who're you calling a demon lord.

"So you're not denying the 'coldhearted' part."

"People have been saying stuff like that about me since I was a kid."

Rough stuff. If I'd had a weaker heart, that would've counted as straight-up bullying.

The Gacha fairy nodded along like that made perfect sense.

"You must've been a real unlovable kid."

"My mom says that to me constantly, actually."

"...Now that you mention it, she did say that on the trip too."

What a terrible mother.

* * *

With my usual taxi commute done, I'd arrived at Hachioji Dungeon Guild.

Being ten in the morning on a weekday, the lobby was pretty sparse. The early risers show up even earlier than this and the late ones apparently roll in past noon.

Amid all that, I made my way to my usual counter and spoke to the cool beauty sitting on the other side.

"Good morning, Shimotsuki-san."

"Morning, Suzukaze-kun. Morning to you too, Lapis-chan."

"Good morning, Ryouka-san!"

Shimotsuki-san greeted us with her usual air of quiet competence, softened just slightly by the smile on her face.

Cutting the pleasantries short, I decided to bring up yesterday.

"The chocolate yesterday was really good."

"Oh, good, I'm glad you liked it. Did you share some with Lapis-chan?"

Something about Shimotsuki-san's words came out just a touch too quick. Cute, when she's flustered like that.

"Yes, I got some! It was so, so good. Thank you, Ryouka-san!"

While that was going on, I went through the dungeon-entry procedures. Today's plan was the same as always, going to Floor 36 and defeating High Orcs.

That was when it happened. A blaring alarm suddenly tore through the lobby speakers.

The volume alone said this was no drill and red warning lights began flashing across the ceiling. The chatter of Explorers who'd been casually talking a moment ago cut off instantly and the lobby's calm atmosphere flipped over into chaos.

"W-what's going on?!"

Lapis clung tight to my shoulder with her voice shaking. Around us, the other Explorers were talking over each other too, 'Hey, what's this alarm for?' 'Is this...'.

I turned to look at Shimotsuki-san across the counter. Her face had gone pale. This wasn't normal.

Shimotsuki-san immediately turned to her terminal and started checking the situation. The click of her keyboard sounded unnaturally sharp.

Then her hands went still and she covered her mouth. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"Shimotsuki-san. What's the situation?"

At my question, Shimotsuki-san, who'd been staring fixed at her screen, looked up with her face tight with tension.

"...A Stampede has broken out at Aihara Central Park Dungeon."

* * *

A Stampede. A catastrophic disaster where monsters overflow out of a dungeon and onto the surface.

Under normal circumstances, monsters never come out of a dungeon.

Dungeons, reshaped into something game-like, are said to connect to the real world across fundamentally different dimensions, which is supposedly why it's flatly impossible to drag a monster out by force.

But this Stampede was the one and only exception that broke through that absolute rule.

Twenty years had already passed since dungeons first appeared in the world. Plenty of mysteries had been solved in that time but the root cause behind this particular disaster still hadn't been figured out.

The one thing anyone actually knew was this: diving into dungeons diligently and continuing to hunt monsters kept Stampedes from happening.

That was the only preventive measure humanity had managed to come up with, after twenty years of trying.

The reason this disaster gets called truly vicious isn't simply that vicious monsters flood the surface.

In whatever space that has been overrun at the surface world, the HP Barrier that normally protects a person's body stops working entirely. As if in response, defeated monsters no longer dissolve into pale blue motes either, they're left behind as raw, physical corpses, an anomaly all its own.

Which meant the brute-force tactic every Explorer takes for granted inside a dungeon by using HP as a shield to soak up attacks, then healing it back with a Potion when it drops, stops working the moment you're on the surface.

Take a blade and your flesh splits open, blood pours out and agony will tear through your whole body. A bad hit in the wrong spot can kill you outright and depending on what status ailment you're left with, you could end up in a state so gruesome that dying might almost feel like the mercy.

Dungeons had brought humanity no end of benefits. But every so often, as if trying to violently claw all of it back, the dungeon bares its fangs like this, without any mercy.

And now that terrifying disaster was closing in on me, an inescapable reality about to become mine.

"T-Touya-san, where's Aihara Central Park?"

Lapis asked, her voice trembling. I let out a sigh and spat out the answer.

"Less than thirty minutes from here by car. Actually, it's close to my apartment too."

"Wha—?! Isn't that a huge deal?!"

Yeah, no kidding.

"W-why are you so calm about this?!"

"...I'm not, actually."

Honestly I was thrown. What I should even do about this.

Shimotsuki-san watched me the whole time with her breath caught in her throat.