Point Exchanges Dungeon Collector - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Dungeon Scavenger

Mitaka Dungeon, Third Floor.

How many years has it been since that name first became known to the world? Countless survey teams have been sent into this floor since it was designated a danger zone, and here I am, standing in the middle of it like it's nothing at all.

Beneath my feet, a grassland stretches out in every direction. No thickets, no rocky outcrops — just gentle, rolling ground and green as far as the eye can see. It's far too open, too natural, to be called the "Third Floor" of a dungeon. The sky overhead is clear without a single cloud, a blue canvas with the sun sitting comfortably in the middle of it.

And yet — none of this is real.

"Nice weather again today."

Muttering to myself, I started walking. I couldn't say how long I'd been walking. The surroundings stayed just as quiet as ever, the only sound the faint rustle of grass swaying in the wind. Then, at the edge of my vision — deep in the grass — something flickered, just for an instant, like it had caught the light.

I stopped, crouched down, and moved closer. Gently pushing the grass aside, I found a sword. No — more accurately, something that used to be a sword.

The blade was chipped and jagged, snapped clean in half partway down its length. It had probably broken in a fight and been left behind. Whether the owner gave up on repairing it or just had to retreat in a hurry, I couldn't say — but the sword told its own story of a battle fought here.

Broken equipment. The kind of junk most explorers wouldn't even glance at. A waste of time. Dead weight in your pack. Left alone long enough, the dungeon's self-cleansing would eventually erase it — a "worthless thing," destined to vanish.

But for me — it's different.

"...Jackpot."

I couldn't help the corner of my mouth curling up. I picked it up carefully. Cold to the touch, and somehow fragile. For just a moment I felt its texture against my fingers — and then, in the next instant, it dissolved into motes of light and drifted away from in front of my eyes.

A translucent panel appeared in the air where it had been.

——【Steel Longsword (Damaged): 1,050P】

"Ohh... steel, huh. Not bad for something found on the third floor."

The words slipped out under my breath. It had been a while since I'd come back to the third floor. The other explorers seemed to have been holding their own well enough. Steel gear was more than enough to get by on this floor.

"...Well, I'll gladly take it off your hands."

My cheeks loosened at a haul better than expected. To me, a "broken sword" isn't just trash. Someone's trace — one that never became experience, never became a victory for them — takes on meaning here, in my hands.

Feeling a little pleased with my modest "pocket money," I looked out over the third floor's scenery again.

The wind, the smell — a "natural" world reproduced down to perfection. But none of it goes beyond being a fabrication. Take the wind, for instance. It really does sway the grass, brush against skin — but there's no heat in it. Even with the sun blazing overhead, not a single bead of sweat forms on my forehead.

"Zero sense of temperature, as always. Whatever kind of system holds this place together..."

Even I was struck by how unbothered my own voice sounded. The first and second floors had a far more brutal atmosphere — dark, damp caves, maze-like corridors. But the third floor is different. Grassland. Just grassland, stretching out with no end in sight.

The sheer size wouldn't be a problem on its own, but the real issue is that it's always daytime here. No matter how far you walk, no matter how far you travel, the sun never so much as twitches from its position. The angle of the shadows, the brightness — none of it changes, like a fixed image.

"...Endless daytime is creepier than you'd think."

I remembered a professor from some university, dispatched by an academic society, who'd once come down to this floor with a small army of bodyguards in tow. Three days and three nights of camping out and surveying, and the report he came back with boiled down to one line: "That sun hasn't moved by so much as a millimeter."

"Well, no kidding. It never turns to night, so of course you'd notice — that's kind of the whole point."

A wry laugh slipped out of me. Even a distinguished scholar turns out to be just a person once he's out in the field. This dungeon is full of uncertainties that no amount of theory on paper could ever measure.

That's it, probably — the reason I can wander through this third floor with a picnic-like ease is that I've grown completely used to that uncertainty.

Whatever counted as common sense in this world had long since crumbled away.

* * *

After walking through the grassland for a while, a familiar sight came into view.

It sat there abruptly, as if someone had forcibly patched over just one section of the space around it. Amid the endless green carpet of the land, a stone staircase rose up out of nowhere, as though the ground itself had forgotten it wasn't supposed to be there. The stairs climbed gently toward the sky, then cut off partway up, snapped short. Beyond that, faint through a thin haze, hung the outline of the second floor.

It was as if space itself had folded over, connecting one floor directly to another.

"...Still looks unsettling, no matter how many times I see it."

Muttering to myself, I stopped and looked up at the staircase hanging in midair. The laws of physics simply don't function here — gravity, structure, consistency, none of it exists in this place. And yet, by now, even this bizarre structure had come to feel completely normal to me.

The grassland of the third floor is, at its core, made up of "nature." But around the staircase, and only there, faint traces of human presence remain.

Traces — that's all they are, though. The dungeon seems to have a strong self-cleansing effect of its own, and permanent structures are said to be impossible to build here. Put up a wall, lay down a floor, and within a few days it gets swallowed by the dungeon's "internal pressure," gone without a trace.

So what surrounds this spot is nothing but the barest essentials. A makeshift stall. A tent with cloth stretched over a simple frame. A folding bench. Even so, there's a faint scent of effort and everyday life bleeding through. People will make a foothold anywhere, it seems.

Among it all, one tent caught my eye. A khaki two-to-three-person camping tent. Standing a little shorter than me, swaying in the wind, it looked a bit unsteady, but somehow reassuring all the same. That one's mine.

I've slept here, resupplied here, rested here, and traded information here more times than I can count. If there's anything in this abnormal space I could call a "home base," it's this tent and nothing else.

As I got closer, I could see a handful of men and women gathered around it. Some faces I didn't recognize, but a few I did. One sitting at the tent's entrance chatting, another crouched on the ground with a map spread out, another off to the side, keeping a wary eye on the surroundings.

A small camp, with tension and ease sitting side by side.

"Whoops... keeping the customers waiting, am I."

I muttered with a light, wry laugh. "Yo, sorry to keep you. Looks like I'm running a bit late."

I raised a hand as I walked up toward the tent. Overhead, the sunless sky stretched out, as bright as ever over the grassland. But right here, it was a different world entirely. The people gathered at the makeshift base glanced my way — a mix of wariness and familiarity in their eyes.

"Alright... so, what are we collecting today?"

I said it with an exaggerated spread of my arms, and the big man standing nearby with his arms crossed snorted through his nose. A hulking build, a coat covered in scars, thick arms folded as he glared at me, clearly unimpressed.

"Tch, that's hardly what I'd call 'waiting.' More to the point — word is the Association's been getting jumpy lately. ...You good on that front?"

His name is Gotou. An old-school heavy fighter, well known around here for trusting nothing but firsthand experience. Not a man of few words, exactly, but his words have thorns in them. And those thorns are just another shape trust takes.

"Ehh, more or less. Got something like a warning, for what it's worth."

I gave a wry smile and shrugged. Gotou's brow twitched slightly at the gesture. Probably wondering whether I'd gotten myself tangled up in something troublesome.

"Still, all I'm doing is 'happening' to collect and exchange stuff that's already half broken. Look at it one way, it's basically junk removal."

I said it in a theatrical tone, though privately I already had a few excuses and exit routes lined up. On the surface, the Association is an organization dedicated to dungeon surveys and keeping order — but who knows what they're really thinking behind closed doors. Especially someone like me, calling myself a "scavenger" while quietly doing whatever I please — that kind of person draws attention fast.

"Well, from their point of view, someone privately hoarding dangerous goods — broken or not — probably doesn't sit well with them."

I said it with the corner of my mouth raised, and Gotou snorted again.

"Tch... can't say you're wrong. But your whole approach still rubs me the wrong way."

"Ha ha, and yet people like that are exactly the ones who bring me the good finds, aren't they?"

I said it teasingly, giving Gotou's shoulder a light pat. He shot me an exaggerated glare back, but there was no real anger in it. Just a familiar back-and-forth.

"...Well, if this spot ever gets too dangerous, I'll pack up and move on right away. No need to worry."

I said that with a light wave of my hand.

After a beat of quiet settled over the group, I clapped my hands together, deliberately loud, and raised my voice.

"Alright, alright, enough of that — let's get to business. So, folks, why don't you show me today's 'goods'?"

I said it with a smile, settling myself down in front of the tent. At that cue, several people around us picked up their sacks, cloth bundles, and wrapped packages, and slowly gathered in.

Objects of unknown origin, fragments faintly glowing with light, scraps of metal etched with unreadable patterns — items dug up from the dungeon's "distortions," laid out one after another in front of me.

For a moment like this, I could almost pass for a street vendor. But every single one of these items might be a key connecting the dungeon's depths to the underside of this whole world —

And no one held onto that anticipation, that tension, more tightly than I did.