“Miss high-ranking adventurer, you should have struck me down the instant you laid eyes on me.
So what is it you want from me?” The monster before her posed the question that way.
So he really is still on his guard against me, Adi thought.
She didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, either.
Just as he said, adventurers and monsters were natural enemies, as incompatible as fire and water.
In ancient times, the monsters that had welled up from underground had stolen countless human lives, and in turn, from that same age onward, humans had hunted every monster without distinction.
No monster would ignore weak prey scattered so freely within reach, and no human would entertain the fantasy of coexisting with a savage beast that coveted their life.
Before meeting the Artorias in front of her today, she had always believed exactly that as well.
But if the other party was an intelligent being capable of communicating and understanding one another, then perhaps everything ought to be considered in a different light.
“Nice to meet you, Mr.
Artorias.” A friendly smile rose to Adi’s face.
“I’m Adi Varma, a Level 2 adventurer of the Ganesha Familia.” She had meant to borrow her friend Alise’s opening line and make a memorable self-introduction, but the sheer seriousness in his eyes left her feeling oddly, inexplicably nervous.
“I heard at the Guild that lately there’ve been a lot of strange incidents on the upper floors, rookie adventurers falling into bizarre states of unconsciousness, so I came all this way to investigate.” “I found you, Mr.
Artorias, on the third floor, and I saw that you’re very different from an ordinary monster, so I called out to you.” “I have no other demands.
I only want to know just what sort of existence you are, Mr.
Artorias, a monster who deliberately shows mercy to adventurers.” A monster who didn’t take human lives, who had even gone so far as to protect the adventurers lying fallen on the ground, ones there had been no reason for him to care about at all.
This anomalous phenomenon was worth stopping for, worth seeking out the answer within it.
“What I am doesn’t matter, does it?
Isn’t cutting down monsters simply an adventurer’s duty?” The eyes of the Goblin reflected in the water’s surface were filled with self-mockery.
“No, no, no.
Now that I know you’re someone I can have a proper conversation with, Mr.
Artorias, doing that would be far too strange.” Adi waved her hands again and again, an earnest look surfacing on her face.
It was perhaps a little rude to the defeated rookie adventurers to put it this way, but the Dungeon was, after all, that kind of place, kill or be killed, you die or I do.
As long as adventurers kept adventuring, they were bound to meet moments of life-and-death peril.
This held true between humans and monsters, between monsters and monsters, even between fellow adventurers of the same kind.
She wasn’t about to demand that Artorias, a creature of another species entirely, bare his neck and submit when enemies came attacking of their own accord.
“If anything, the fact that you could have taken their lives, Mr.
Artorias, yet only made off with half the magic stones on them, already counts as remarkably generous.” On two sides locked in extreme opposition, the neutral act of choosing not to take the other’s life had, in a sense, already amounted to picking a side.
“If you don’t intend to become our, humanity’s, enemy, then of course I’m not going to kill you outright without hearing a single word, Mr.
Artorias.” “Even if you’re a Goblin, a Goblin who actively avoids conflict is a kind Goblin.” So in that case, an Artorias who took no lives would never be the target her blade pointed toward.
There was no fundamental opposition between the two of them, Adi conveyed this view of hers to Artorias.
Don’t readily bare your hostility toward someone you can communicate with; don’t let fixed impressions color your judgment before the fact.
This was the lesson she had gained from her time among that band of same-aged girls in the Familia of justice.
“Isn’t the only good Goblin one that never shows itself before humans?” A line she couldn’t quite follow slipped out of his mouth without warning.
“Hahaha, maybe that really is how it is.” She didn’t grasp the deeper meaning behind his words, but sensing that Artorias’s once-taut nerves had loosened considerably, Adi finally began to set her own worries down at last.
She had a feeling this might be the very first peaceful conversation between human and monster in all the history of the Lower World, that perhaps it could reach an ending everyone would be happy with.
……
The conversation between them went unexpectedly smoothly.
Artorias, who had held a certain wariness at the start, had never imagined that the first time he spoke with a woman since crossing over would be a scene like this.
It seemed his initial read on the girl had been right, this adventurer named Adi Varma really did appear to be a genuine soft-hearted soul, on par with the protagonist Bell Cranel.
“Here, this was just a backup weapon from back when I was still Level 1, but I think it’ll serve you a bit better than a frying pan, or gear from the labyrinth armory, or the like.” The girl drew a small knife from the satchel at her waist and held it out to Artorias.
The sheath was a simple piece of blue leather, the pattern of a Familia name still faintly visible on it, and the slightly worn edges gave off an air of practical dependability.
This was clearly a weapon that had been carefully maintained, one that had accompanied its owner through countless battles.
“And these too, healing potions.” As she spoke, Adi produced several small vials from the bag, each filled with a liquid that gave off a faint blue glow.
“If you get hurt while fighting other monsters, Mr.
Artorias, you can pour this over the wound.
It can heal injuries as serious as a broken bone.” “…Though maybe, for life on the upper floors, it might be a bit of overkill?” The girl tilted her head and murmured, thinking for a moment, then instead deliberately took out a few larger vials.
“If the wound is shallow, mixing in a little of the spring water here to dilute it should just about do the job.” “Oh, right, and this, it’s an antidote that can cure some of the lower-grade negative status effects.
I basically have no use for it anymore, so I’ll give it all to you too, Mr.
Artorias.” “You’re giving me all this… aren’t you afraid I’ll take this gear you’ve handed me and use it to attack human adventurers?” Reaching out to accept the items Adi kept pulling from her pack, a somewhat dumbfounded Artorias couldn’t stop himself from asking.
This was far more precious than everything he’d scavenged off those rookie adventurers over the past month.
“With these items, you shouldn’t need to go out of your way to attack other adventurers anymore, right, Mr.
Artorias?” “For now, the talk about you at the Guild is still mostly just rumor, but if this keeps up, there might well be more busybodies like me coming to find out the truth later on.” For an Artorias who lived on the upper floors, that would be nothing short of bad news.
“You’ve been given such a rare and precious life, how could you not treasure it properly?” “We may have only just met, but I can still more or less tell basic good from evil, and I can see that you no longer have any intention of continuing those deeds, Mr.
Artorias.” “What’s more—” She paused, the corners of her mouth curving into a bitter arc.
“You might not know this, but in the Orario of today, if you’re not sensitive to malice, it can be very hard to stay alive.” “?” Failing to understand what the girl meant by those self-mocking words, Artorias couldn’t taste the emotion within them.
After a moment’s silence, he offered a line that scarcely qualified as truth in return, a simple gift for a gift.
“Not all the monsters in the Dungeon are like me.
Most are the kind of beasts that lunge and bite the instant they lay eyes on an adventurer.” “So don’t just let them off the way you did today, and don’t hold back thinking the other one might speak human words.” Hearing this, Adi smiled, crouched down, and patted his head with a leather-gloved hand.
“Thank you for the warning, Mr.
Artorias.
I’ll keep it in mind.” Just as with the method he had told her about, Level 2 Adi swept her sword arm through the air, and the fragile wall split at once into a crack large enough for a person to pass through.
“Goodbye, Mr.
Artorias.” Before she stepped out of the place, the girl turned her head and waved at Artorias.
“If we get the chance, maybe we’ll run into each other somewhere again.” “I hope that next time it won’t be all drawn swords and bristling like at the start, that we can chat about lighter, more pleasant things.” “Until then, let’s both take good care to stay alive.” Answering her farewell with the very same gesture, Artorias, who couldn’t bring himself to look straight at Adi as she smiled and waved to him one last time, silently watched the split wall knit itself back into the Dungeon’s original shape.
Once he was alone, in this space where not even a fellow monster remained, somehow an urge to laugh suddenly welled up inside him.
He wanted to laugh at the girl’s worldly-innocent naivety, that she would so easily place her trust in another species utterly unlike her own.
He wanted to laugh at himself, too, for being foolish enough to actually take her words to heart, and to earnestly begin considering a major overhaul of his original plans from here on.
He wanted to laugh at how he had, just like his old self back in his student days, felt his heart flutter over an encounter with a member of the opposite sex, the tremor within him not yet fully stilled even now.
The monster covered his face and thought in silence for a long while, and in the end all he let out was a single, drawn-out sigh.
“Maybe it really is just that I haven’t talked properly with anyone in far too long.” It had to be because the month he’d spent living in this sunless Dungeon had felt so endlessly long, that was surely why that slightly strange girl, the one who would offer potions to a monster, had seemed so dazzling and worthy of longing.
Telling himself as much, Artorias closed his eyes and waited for the wall behind him to wrap around him, ushering in a brief respite within a monster’s never-ending destiny of battle.