After finishing my transaction at the shop, I pulled out the [Notebook] and showed it to the old man before he could deliver his usual scripted line.
“Do you know anything about this notebook?”
“Hmm?”
For once, I had done something I had never done before, and the old man made an expression I had never seen before either.
“Where did you get this?”
Even the old man, who had never once raised his voice, spoke louder than usual.
As if he did not know just because the run had changed.
But just as the old man pretended not to remember, I could not exactly start talking about the previous run either.
“……I do not remember very well myself. That is why I am asking. I thought you might know something.”
I gave him a vague excuse, and the old man glared at me with open disbelief.
“You? You do not remember?”
I had been making an effort to remember everything since coming here, but my memory had always been worse than the average person's.
Even now, I only managed to retain so much because I repeatedly drilled everything into my head.
If my father saw me putting in this much effort, he would probably tell me to study that hard instead.
“If I remembered everything, I would probably remember why I am suffering in this place too.”
Assuming there even was a reason to remember.
The old man stared at me for a long moment before apparently accepting my flimsy excuse. He nodded.
“I suppose that is true. But I do not know much about it either.”
Then why had he acted as though he knew something?
It was hardly the first time this old man had baited me like this, but…….
When I glared at him irritably, the old man hurriedly waved his hands and added,
“But I do know that this item is strange.”
“This? What exactly is strange about it?”
“It exists, but it is not something that should physically exist like this.”
Was there really a difference between existing and physically existing?
Either way, the conclusion was that something that should not exist had appeared.
Which meant this item really was a ‘bug.’
“So be careful. If you rely too much on that item, you will end up dead as well.”
“Yes, yes.”
How was I supposed to rely on something I did not even use?
And of all the threats he could make, he warned me that I would die.
I could not tell whether he genuinely wanted to warn me or merely wanted to sound as though he was warning me.
‘What does that matter when I come back to life every time I die anyway?’
I let the old man's warning go in one ear and out the other as I left the shop.
Run 1123
Floor 51 starts with a trap, and the trap deals almost enough Damage to kill me instantly.
I cannot decide whether I should be relieved that it is not technically instant death, or miserable that it is so powerful I can barely survive even after clearing every room for all the Experience I can get and covering myself in Buff Items and Defense Items.
Is this why it told me to run away?
But where the hell am I supposed to run?
. . . . . .
Run 1134
I saw a door that looked distinctly different from all the others, so I saved it for last.
Inside, I found another NPC.
She was so completely different from the old man that it almost felt as though the developers had deliberately designed her to be his exact opposite.
They had already made an old man into one NPC, so did they decide to make the next one a young woman?
Unlike that wrinkled old man, whose face almost looks like a monster's, she really is beautiful, but she is completely useless for clearing the dungeon.
She talks too much, she is terrified of everything, and on top of that, she interferes with everything I do.
She is not even confined to one place. She actually follows me around everywhere.
She keeps talking about something, but I am not particularly interested in this game's worldbuilding.
All I gained was extra baggage.
Run 1135
Can NPCs get caught in bugs too?
Or are NPCs simply not supposed to reset in the first place?
The old man and this woman are the only NPCs I have met, so there is no way to tell.
She is still just as frightened, still talks just as much, and is still so weak that I have no idea how she ever made it to floor 50.
Then again, the old man never appeared to change on the surface either.
He stays shut inside his shop, so I suppose there is not much opportunity for him to change.
So what exactly is this female NPC's role?
Explaining the game's worldbuilding?
And they are only starting that now?
Why?
Do I need to know it before I can progress?
Run 1136
I am certain this woman has never met the old man.
She seemed to be seeing [Maru Stones] and [Mana Stones] for the first time too.
She had been confined to a room for different reasons than the old man, but…….
Either way, neither of them ever left their designated locations, so maybe that is why they never met.
Run 1137
Does this woman have courage or not?
This time, she actually came out of her room and waited for me.
I was so dumbfounded that I reflexively asked why she had been waiting, and she said it was because I was the only person here.
……Does the old man not count as a person?
Run 1138
Something was strange.
According to the woman, she had been trapped in the dungeon, while the old man had entered the dungeon later…….
Then how had she survived all this time?
. . . . . .
Run 1140
Come to think of it, I survive without eating too, and I never get tired even if I stay awake all night.
In my case, it is probably because of the game System, but why is the same true for her?
Is this woman not an NPC?
Or is it precisely because she is an NPC?
Now there were murals too.
“This is…….”
Ignoring the woman, who was already acting as though she knew all about it, I carefully examined the mural.
Like most murals, quite a few parts had been exaggerated, but it seemed to depict something related to the dungeon.
And it depicted the exact same story that the talkative woman had been going on about incessantly.
“…….”
As far as I knew, murals were usually created to commemorate and boast of victories, but the murals in this dungeon seemed to have been made so that people would never forget a history of defeat.
The monsters had been painted to look even more threatening than they truly were, while the people suffering at their hands had been depicted with painstaking, almost disturbingly vivid detail.
Leaving the fallen behind, the survivors fled into the dungeon, and the monsters chased after them…….
“So they drove themselves into a dead end.”
If they were going to flee underground, they should at least have properly sealed the entrance behind them.
Instead, they failed to do that and ended up living in the same place as the monsters.
“That is not what happened!”
“What do you mean, it is not?”
I snorted, but the game ended on floor 100.
Reach floor 100, find the door leading out, and that was the ending.
“They said there is a door at the end of this dungeon that leads to another world. It is not a dead end.”
Going through that door was probably the game's original ending.
Just as the woman said, there definitely was an exit.
“That is why everyone came here.”
“That is still nothing but a story.”
What I did not know was whether the door truly led to another world or merely somewhere else in the outside world.
“There are reliable records. One of them says, ‘At the end of the dungeon, I saw people whose speech I had never heard before and whose appearance I had never seen before.’”
What was this, some kind of Columbus story?
Could it not simply have been a door connecting them to people across some distant sea with whom they had never had contact?
It was ridiculous that people had blindly rushed here without investigating that properly.
But the most ridiculous part of all was that the ones who had led that blind charge were members of this world's Imperial Family.
“So what happened to that person?”
“That……”
The woman could not answer.
I could imagine several possible endings myself, but I saw no reason to say them aloud just to upset her.
She already jumped at every little thing I said and made enough noise to draw attention. There was no need to provoke her further as though I were begging every monster nearby to notice us.
“A-Anyway, it is certain that there is a door leading outside this dungeon. And it is at the very end of the dungeon.”
“Yes. I am sure there is.”
According to the old man, there was a way to escape without going all the way to the end of the dungeon anyway.
Since I already knew that, I answered halfheartedly, but the woman apparently thought I was dismissing her again and began fuming.
“It is true! Books written about this dungeon are enchanted so that only the truth can be recorded in them. They cannot possibly be wrong!”
“I understand, so be quiet. Unless you want to celebrate the end of your life with the monsters.”
“…….”
See how pleasant it was when she simply kept her mouth shut?
She was not ugly or anything, but to be perfectly frank, all she did was get in the way, which irritated me.
‘She causes far too much trouble to be an NPC placed here just to explain the worldbuilding.’
It would have been far better if she were an NPC with some ability that helped in combat.
I could understand the world's history just by looking at the murals, so I had no idea why the developers had felt the need to place an NPC here solely to explain it.
‘As if I have ever understood what they were thinking.’
With a game designed like this, it must have failed commercially.
Unless there were enough masochists who sought out nothing but absurdly difficult games.
I glanced at the woman as she tried to follow me and quietly moved into the next room.
Run 1203
The woman can descend, but she cannot go back up.
In other words, as the runs continue, I meet her on progressively deeper floors.
If several runs pass without us meeting, she gets anxious, becomes angry with me, apologizes, and generally acts as though she has lost her mind…….
But if I ignore her as usual and keep walking, her fear of being alone takes over and she quietly follows me.
If she is going to make such a fuss, I wish she would just leave.
Why does she insist on following me?
She is seriously annoying…….
Run 1204
Why does she refuse to enter the shop?
I have asked her several times to come inside with me, but whatever she is afraid of, she refuses absolutely.
The old man also seems to know she is outside, yet all he does is glare toward the entrance. He shows no intention of bringing her in as a customer.
Are they really strangers?
It feels as though they know each other and are only pretending they do not.
Run 1205
Is this really a game?
Neither the old man nor that woman feels like an NPC at all.
“…….”
Another mural.
Unlike the previous one, however, this one had writing beside it as well.
……The King knows all things,
therefore you must not reject the King's words, but accept them.
Yet if you wish to reject the wisdom bestowed by the King,
you must possess wisdom greater still.
But can any being surpass the wisdom of a King who lives for eternity?
Was this ‘King’ supposed to refer to the Final Boss?
There were several other passages besides that one, but every inscription was written in a different hand, as though each had been written by a different person.
Had the people who passed through here each left a few words behind?
“Exia von Grenesian.”
The person who had written the hint on floor 50.
And perhaps the person who had written Run Away beneath it as well.
“Do you know him?”
She was making it painfully obvious that there was some story behind the name, so I asked out of courtesy.
The woman nodded.
“Yes.”
Of course she did.
She had told me her own name was ‘Elessia von Grenesian.’
At the very least, someone among her ancestors could easily have borne that name.
“He is my older brother.”
“What?”
Then had she been the one who wrote Run Away?
The handwriting had looked similar.
“But I definitely have not seen him since we were separated on floor 50…….”
Then had ‘Exia von Grenesian’ really written those words?
I had met this woman near the door descending from floor 51, so she had clearly been waiting for him there.
Why she had insisted on following him despite lacking the ability to survive on her own was beyond me.
“Then why is his name written here?”
And why was it written like a signature, exactly as it had been on floor 50?
It was not as though he were some tourist scrawling, ‘Exia was here.’
And I doubted he had painted this mural himself.
“That……”
The woman hesitated, clearly having no idea.
I stared at her as she delayed answering, clicked my tongue, and began examining the mural itself.
The mural, which seemed to depict what happened after people entered the dungeon, appeared to explain the [Final Door].
And it also seemed to describe the ‘[Final Doors] on other floors’ that the old man had mentioned.