Chapter 50

The superficial, objective, and roughly summarized explanation—in other words, the account of everything up until I lost consciousness—came to an end.

However, Kirio, standing before me, did not look convinced in the slightest. Pouting her cheeks, she screamed almost at the top of her lungs.

“So, what does all of that actually mean!?”

“Mmm…”

I groaned. Even though I was the one telling the story, I still didn’t fully grasp the big picture myself. After all, I had only just been rescued.

I was wrapped in a blanket and had been sipping hot wine for a while, but I still felt a bit chilled—perhaps a lingering side effect of the drugs. And that was despite the fireplace being lit for me.

“I must ask as well,” added Bent, who looked as if he had aged years in a single night.

“From your story, I understand that my son is dead. But if I do not understand how or why he died, I cannot find peace.”

I could empathize with his feelings, so I turned the problem over in my mind.

We were currently in the drawing room of Bent’s manor—the very place where we had been commissioned for the dungeon expedition. After being saved by the rescue team Bent hired and receiving medical treatment, we were immediately gathered here.

“Kirio—the ace medic of Shark—rushed here the moment she heard you were in trouble and treated you, so you should be feeling fine by now,” Kirio said, her snake-like eyes glaring at the girl sitting next to me.

“Now, start talking. Especially about your relationship with that woman. In detail.”

“Look, Eni is a member of the party, just like I said. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Eni, who was also sipping hot wine and clearly enjoying the taste, was in high spirits.

“That’s right! Besides, if I hadn’t been there, Van might be dead by now. What’s with the attitude?” Eni said, while provocatively resting her hand on my shoulder to needle Kirio.

“Hey! Get your hand off his shoulder!”

Ignoring the furious Kirio, Jin—who had removed his armor and was dressed in uncharacteristically light clothing—spoke up.

“Still, it is true that knowing where to start the explanation is difficult. There were parts where everyone was moving according to their own individual agendas.”

Unlike me, whose face was still pale, Jin looked incredibly healthy. He had been knocking back hot wine at an impressive pace.

“True. If we are going to talk, it might actually be fastest if everyone explains their own actions and thoughts one by one,” agreed Watch, who had set aside his spear and bore a somewhat softer expression.

“If Lord Watch says so, then it must be right, but… if we all just talk randomly, we’ll never get anywhere,” Henya interjected, sounding uncharacteristically reserved. This humble attitude of his was quite a fresh change.

“Well, let’s see. It seems to me that the most significant divergence in our thoughts and actions happened after we returned to camp following the deaths of Hunt and Mora. Maybe we should start from there?”

No one objected to Jin’s suggestion.

“Then, Van should go first.”

Shirona, whose complexion remained porcelain white no matter how much wine she drank, finally opened her mouth.

“Me? First?”

“It’s appropriate,” Watch nodded. “You were the first one to grasp the overall framework of the incident. Starting with your account will be the easiest to follow.”

Urged on by Jin, I looked around at everyone’s faces. They were all waiting expectantly for me to speak.

To be honest, it was a bit embarrassing for one of the Seven Detectives to be sitting here in comfort, grandly explaining a case that resulted in so many victims, but I had no choice.

I began the story.

“We returned to camp, and since I wasn’t used to dungeon trekking, I’m ashamed to say I was exhausted. I fell into a half-sleep while trying to puzzle out the case. I had a dream. I was climbing up through the dungeon, but the higher I went, the heavier my body became. I was jolted awake by Kijiitsu’s scream. Oh, and for the record, Eni was gone when I woke up.”

I glanced at Eni, but she just silently shrugged her shoulders.

“Anyway, Jin gathered us at the center of the camp to discuss what to do about the scream. But because I was still half-asleep, I just started rambling—blurting out the contents of my dream and the half-baked theories I’d been chewing on right before I drifted off. It was a total blunder.”

The memory was genuinely mortifying, so I took a long swig of hot wine to hide my embarrassment before continuing.

“However, as I sat there talking, I realized something. You know how it is—sometimes as you speak, your thoughts organize themselves and the answer just presents itself. That’s what happened. Regardless, I knew I had to consider what my ‘materials’ were. I couldn’t deduce anything because everything was so nonsensical that there was no room for logic. There were simply too many unknowns—too many materials. So, I had to start selecting from them.”

Kijiitsu had phrased it as having no materials, while I had described it as having too many. We seemed to be saying the opposite, but looking back, we were just using different expressions for the same problem.

“So, what was the first thing to consider? The incident with Hunt and Mora, of course. No matter how you looked at it, they had completely vanished from a sealed room. Given that abnormality, and the fact that similar incidents had been occurring in that labyrinth for a while, people had even begun to rumor about a monster that manipulated time and space—a ‘Shadow.’ In other words, the secrets of the dungeon and that incident were linked. That was the first thing that needed untangling.”

I placed my empty glass on the table.

“And then, the contents of my dream linked up. The higher you went in the dungeon, the heavier your body felt—meaning it became harder to proceed. Wasn’t that an exact reflection of our reality? Below the seventh floor where our camp was located, we could still explore the dungeon somewhat freely. But the moment we tried to go up, we faced the Poison Lizards. It was far too dangerous to fight creatures with lethal venom while in a state where you couldn’t truly trust your allies.”

“That’s true,” Kirio nodded. “It’s quite harrowing when you can’t even trust your medic.”

“Exactly. But wasn’t it a strange story? I mean, the difficulty increased as you ascended. Several pieces of information overlapped there: the ruined entrance, the similarly broken Return Stone, a first floor with a difficulty and items equivalent to the deepest depths of a mid-grade dungeon, and a tenth floor that led nowhere.”

“Impossible.”

Bent, who had been listening to me list the keywords, let out a dry swallow. “That’s… that’s preposterous.”

“If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. They said the entrance was buried by an earthquake, but who guaranteed that only the entrance was buried? It wasn’t just the doorway; the ‘whole thing’ might have been swallowed up.”

“You mean the Earthbound Labyrinth… the Labyrinth of No Return…” Kirio’s eyes widened as she grasped the conclusion. “It was a ‘Tower’ buried by an earthquake?”

“Yes. The top of the tower—the place you would normally reach last—had its ceiling and walls smashed and was buried whole. That’s why everyone mistook that broken top floor for the entrance and ended up struggling toward the ‘entrance’ located at the very bottom.”

“Wait, that still doesn’t add up.” Bent tapped the table irritably with his finger, unconvinced. “How do you explain the broken Return Stone? Are you saying someone faked it? That dungeon was discovered by accident during an excavation for historical research. Who could have faked a Return Stone, and when?”

“I think it’s most natural to assume it was there from the start,” I answered simply. Since I had to rely entirely on speculation for this part, it actually felt easier to say.

“From the start?”

“Yes. By ‘the start,’ I mean the moment it was discovered. That fake, broken Return Stone was already there.”

“The logic doesn’t hold!” Bent clutched his head in his hand, confused.

“No, no, you have to think simply. That region has always been prone to earthquakes, right? That means there was an adventurer who discovered that dungeon a long time ago—so long ago it isn’t even in the records. That person entered through the fake entrance and immediately realized they were at the top of a tower. But for some reason—perhaps they were just incredibly spiteful—they decided to play a cruel practical joke. A joke that would make countless unsuspecting adventurers gamble their lives for nothing.”

“I see. And after that…” Jin clapped his hands together. “Another earthquake occurred and buried that fake entrance again. Then Mora and the others dug it back up.”

“Exactly. As far as the timeline goes, I think that’s the most natural explanation. Now, if that’s the case, the disappearance from a sealed room ceases to be a problem. Because at the true entrance, there’s a working Return Stone.”

“Hold on a second,” Eni frowned. “How do you get to this ‘true entrance’? I mean, that dungeon was a ‘Tower of No Return,’ right? That’s why we couldn’t go deeper than the tenth floor. Unless you synchronize with the Return Stone at the entrance first, there’s no way to ‘Return’ to it.”

“Right, right. That’s the point.”

“In other words, it was impossible to reach the true entrance from the fake one by going through the dungeon. Which meant you had to go through the outside.”

“The outside? But the outside is just dirt… oh.” Kirio stopped mid-sentence as the realization finally hit her.

“He-he. Come to think of it, on the way to that dungeon, we wandered all over the place through the tunnels Mora and the other Diggers had made.” Henya curled the corner of his mouth in an embarrassed smirk, as if laughing at his own denseness. “There were so many side-tunnels, and Mora was adamant about us not wandering off the path.”

“I suspect one of those side-tunnels led straight to the true entrance. Regardless, that was when I realized. In this incident…” I pictured the small, almost childlike face of that Digger girl and said, “Mora is deeply involved. There is no doubt about it.”

“Watching Van go from a half-asleep rambler to being so logically consistent… I was shocked when he reached that conclusion. Truly, you’re a member of the Seven Detectives for a reason.” I gave a non-committal, awkward smile, unsure if Jin was mocking me or praising me.