Four days had passed since then.
I'd finished distributing the rings to pretty much all the women.
As you'd expect, or rather, since they asked, I ended up putting them on each of their fingers myself.
Yes, every last one of them. Because they asked me to.
That aside, a lot of people were struggling with how to use them.
But once you got the hang of it... well, pretty much everyone had gotten the hang of it completely.
What about the men I'd been worrying about?
That was resolved surprisingly easily. Apparently they said a ring was fine too.
I'd been agonizing over it and now I feel a little stupid.
Also, just for the record, I accepted requests from both men and women.
Anything made of metal — pick something you like, and I'll make it into a simple terminal.
Hoss's black metal plate. Luma's white metal plate. Samarnia's pen.
Alexander's pipe, and Rel's silver-rimmed glasses — those were the only requests I got.
Hoss and Luma's metal plates each had a diagonal slit in the center.
When you put the two plates together, they fit together perfectly.
You're welcome.
Everyone else just went with rings.
Agaro picked a ring. Axe picked a ring.
In the end, I went with a ring too.
I thought it would be interesting to go with a knife or a terminal, but they'd be too much of a hassle to use, so I gave up on that idea.
The ring called the Simple Device Ring is used by first summoning the "Menu."
You can call it up by setting either voice input or a menu button.
At first, it only responds to voice.
Once you've brought up the Menu, the very first thing you do is user registration.
Select the registration option from the Menu list.
Pick user registration, which is at the top.
You enter each specified field — name, and so on — one by one via voice.
A password isn't required, but I set one anyway.
Once user registration is done, you move on to friend registration.
This time, everyone who has a terminal is already registered as a friend.
After registering, they show up under Friends in the Menu list.
Select Friends from the Menu list.
The selection is done via a touchscreen panel.
Pick someone and double-click to start a call.
Chat and email aren't included as features for now.
Calls only.
Whether to add chat and email hasn't been decided yet.
"Well now, this is quite the curious thing."
"It sure is."
'Being able to talk even from a distance like this is really convenient.'
'Hmm... could work in combat too... zoi.'
'Oh. I see. So it can.'
'Indeed it can.'
'That's pretty handy.'
'Hmm... coordination... easy... chin.'
"......"
The living room of my uncle's hideout.
The four of us chatting through the link at a visibly short distance from each other was truly surreal.
Hm? A phone call.
'Hello? Hello?'
'What's with the "hello?"'
That was Mineha. Oops. A habit from my past life memories had slipped out.
'Well, it just kind of slipped out.'
'Whatever. So, what are we doing for dinner tonight?'
'Dinner?'
'Just so you know, "anything is fine" is not an acceptable answer.'
'......I'd like meat.'
'Meat, got it. Anything else?'
'I'd like a light soup.'
'Got it. I'll make dinner properly, so make sure you come back home properly.'
'Y-yes. Understood.'
'See you then.'
The call ended.
"............"
I wonder what it is. This strange sense of nostalgia.
At the same time, a feeling of incongruity with this fantasy world.
"Well, I guess it's about time."
I have to go back to Hydrangea today.
Oh, right, right. That's how it was.
Axe and Rel ended up living in Heisen for a while.
Those two ran into Hoss back at Berk's restaurant after that.
They chatted briefly, and then he introduced them to Luma, and they were both completely frozen stiff — body and soul.
After that, they asked all sorts of things about my dungeon.
"I can't believe even that Hoss managed to get a girlfriend."
"Well, she's beautiful and he looks happy, so what's the problem?"
"That's true, but still. I always figured he'd be the last one, so don't you feel a little rushed?"
"Do I? Not really."
"Is that good enough? You're the eldest son of the Tasan family."
"That's good enough."
That's apparently how it was.
Well, I could understand Axe's impatience.
In my past life, I'd felt something similar when a friend got married.
One thing and another, and my daily life had gotten just a little more convenient.
Heizen's dungeon. The deepest level.
Ever since Alexander arrived, the deepest level had completely changed.
First, the cave-like appearance was gone, replaced by something that felt like a temple.
Riv's simple cottages in the surrounding area had increased to twelve—it was practically a residential district now.
Though first, Riv—how many of those simple cottages did she actually own?
Another ten or twenty and you could probably set up a pretty nice
base
or so it seemed.
Ishibara and Mires weren't around.
Apparently they'd gone shopping. Well, whatever.
So I asked Alexander about living in a dungeon.
—Oh, that ain't nothin' unusual. My hometown of Ipomea-Nil was inside a dungeon, y'see.
—Is that so...
That surprised me a little. I guess it was more common than I'd thought.
Alexander puffed on his pipe.
—But it ain't that simple, mind you. The old dungeon cities that exist today—they started because people had no choice but to live there. They had to, or they couldn't survive. So it ain't like they lived there because they wanted to.
"……"
"And that's already hard enough with a normal settlement—let alone inside a dungeon. That'd be about as difficult as it gets, wouldn't it."
Alexander puffed on his pipe.
"……I see. Not something on that scale—more like a food court. Somewhere people can eat and take a break."
Alexander took a drag from his pipe.
"Depending on the size… that'd be something like a restaurant, would it?"
"Yeah."
"Then you'd need a dedicated entrance of some kind."
"Dedicated?"
"A passage that lets suppliers and whatnot get through the dungeon safely."
"Right. If we use the teleportation circles well, it should be doable. We could set up employee-only passages and such."
"Well, well, well—that's really something, Mister Wof."
Alexander said, sounding impressed.
"How so?"
"That's the unique strength of an artificial dungeon, plain and simple."
"Well, yeah, I suppose…"
"Thanks to you, Mister Wof, dungeon research is gonna move forward in a big way. You can create dungeons freely. You can speak directly to a dungeon's will. Nothing like this has ever existed before. I tell you, this is gonna go down in dungeon history."
"No, no, I'm just doing what I can."
Dungeon history or whatever—that had nothing to do with me.
Alexander put his pipe to his lips. He drew deeply, then exhaled.
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. But I never thought it would turn out like this."
I gave a wry smile.
Alexander tapped the ash from his pipe.
"Well, that's life for you."
Hearing those words, I thought to myself.
Alexander's life was probably about a hundred times more eventful than mine.
After all, he was a land catfish.
Hmm, hmm. To sum up, setting aside the whole living-inside-a-dungeon thing, it looked like running a shop would be feasible.
I should set up a teleportation circle for employees only, too.
Ideally, I'd like to open shops selling mixed-meat soup every ten floors.
And I'd also want something like a rest area — or maybe more of an inn.
Maybe I should consult the witch about all this.
I returned to Hydrangea from Heizen.
When I got back home and stepped into my room... what the?
On my bed sat a round, white, squished-looking, strange sphere.
It was quite puffed up. What on earth was it?
Cautiously, I approached — and when I realized what it was, I was dumbfounded.
"...Dagaa?"
It was the bloated form of Dagaa.
No no no, there's no way... It really is Dagaa.
It was Dagaa, swollen up like a balloon.
Huh...? He got fat.
Hydrangea.
Deep in the slums. A dive bar at the edge of town.
Men were gathered in a raucous crowd, drinking their fill.
"Can't take this anymore!"
"Exactly. What the hell did we even join Kuun Hunt for!"
"Unforgivable. That bastard Alverd..."
"What does he think Kuun Hunt, our glory, is to him?"
They were former clan members of Kuun Hunt.
For the longest time Kuun Hunt had been left to rot, until Alverd finally got serious about reforming it.
They were the pus that reform lanced to the surface.
In short, the various crimes they had been pulling were discovered and they were fired.
To make matters worse, they were also wanted as criminals, and their fate hung by a thread.
"The Forecotts too. Those guys were top brass in Kuun Hunt, right? Why didn't they stop it?"
"What are you talking about? Those guys are Alverd's dogs."
"Tch, what loyal dogs."
"It's all that kid's fault."
"Wof, huh. But man, that guy's bad news. He's the witch's disciple."
"I know that. I ain't planning to make a move. I know damn well what happened to those who did try something..."
"More importantly, over there. The 'Five Sisters.'"
"Ah, the ones you tried to go after and got beat to a pulp."
"I can't just sit there getting stomped on by some rookies!!"
"These guys are pissing me off. I wanna freaking kill 'em! I wanna grind up every bastard I don't like into mincemeat, and every girl I don't like I wanna wreck something fierce!"
"But hey. We can't go public with this. First-Tier guys are crawling all over the place."
"............But still. If this keeps up, we're screwed. We'll get shipped off to the Prison Continent!"
"The Prison Continent? That's basically an Execution Continent."
"Only you're the one dying."
"What did you say, you bastard?!"
"Cut it out. You look pathetic."
"Says you. What about you?"
"I've got one option."
"Huh?"
"Just one, but it might work."
"Don't be all coy about it. Spit it out."
"I'm not being coy. Listen up, because there's no turning back. If we go to those people, we'll sink deeper and deeper into darkness. We'll never see the light again. Even so, are you fine with that?"
"Those people?"
"The clan."
"Huh?"
"It's Paredo."
The man laughed darkly.
A few days later. Half of the men would end up dying as the price.