Chapter 61 (1/2)
Ch. 61: Arriving After Minding Their Business
Loren’s worries became a reality.
They had found the stairs to the fourth and fifth floor without encountering any monsters, the reason still unknown.
“This is crazy.”
It wasn’t surprising that those words escaped Loren’s mouth.
After all, the exam was about exploring the dungeon, but it had only taken them half a day, according to Loren’s senses, to reach the fifth floor, which was the pa.s.sing line.
It wouldn’t be surprising if it would take much longer, and the speed that they were going through was unnatural.
But that was something that couldn’t be helped.
After all, they didn’t encounter any monsters, and on top of that Ain’s party didn’t come across any traps either.
That meant they had been able to walk all the way down to the fifth floor, which of course wouldn’t take them long at all.
Loren then asked Lapis, who was holding the map.
“Hey…are these guys lost?”
“Good point you’ve realized there Loren.”
Lapis had been looking at the map, making sure that it wasn’t visible to Ain and the others, and made a remark as if she was a detective talking to her a.s.sistant.
“There’s something wrong with them. They sometimes go in roundabout routes, but most of them had been the shortest routes possible. It’s as if they know which path to take.
After being told that, Loren looked at the party in front of them.
The one that was drawing their map was the magician Feim.
But the one who was deciding where the group went was Ain, who was the leader of the party, and he sometimes discussed it with Al.
“This map marks the locations of traps as well…and they should have been caught by a few of them already.”
“They didn’t activate?”
There were only two reasons for the traps not activating that Loren could think of.
The first was the trap not activating.
The other was someone disabling the trap before Ain and his party had reached it.
If it was the first one, it meant that there was something wrong with the dungeon, and if it was the second one it was most likely Parme’s party that did so, but if it wasn’t, they would have to put into consideration a third party.
“Doesn’t seem like we need to worry about the light one.”
“I agree. He doesn’t seem like the type to scheme things.”
The remaining three were all suspicious.
They couldn’t tell if they were scheming something or cheating yet at this point, but one of them possibly possessed information regarding the map of the dungeon that only the proctors were supposed to have.
“Is the exam finished once you reach the fifth floor?”
“No, it officially ends once you find the stairs to the sixth floor. Choosing to go on further is up to the examinees.”
“I see. Hey you guys.”
Loren called out to Ain and the others.
His action wasn’t something to be proud of as a proctor, but to Loren it was something that had to be done, and he was going to have Lapis turn a blind eye as well.
“What’s wrong?”
Ain suspiciously replied.
He was well built, and his crew cut gave him a rugged impression, but his fighting style showed that he wasn’t aggressive, and Loren guessed that he had more of a defensive way of thinking and acting.
Loren started making his point.
“The exam ends once you find the stairs to the sixth floor, right?”
“Well, yeah. Basically.”
“Then can you guys withdraw from the exam here?”
Ain became speechless with surprise on his face at Loren’s sudden proposal, but in his stead, Cloud walked closer to Loren and b.u.t.ted in.
“Hey, what the h.e.l.l are you…”
“You guys started realizing it too, haven’t you? It’s an exam but you only ran into monsters once. It’s also weird that you haven’t been caught by a trap either.”
At Loren’s words, Cloud lost his momentum, and Ain looked away from him.
It seemed that although they thought that it didn’t hurt to have an easy exam, they had realized that something was wrong, and were wondering if pa.s.sing the exam like this would mean anything to them.
If so, Loren thought he could still expect something from them, but Al suddenly joined in.
“That doesn’t make any sense. This exam was prepared by the school. If there was some trouble, the school would have cancelled the exam before it even started.”
“T-that’s right! It’s not cancelled, so there’s nothing to be embarra.s.sed about!”
Cloud found his momentum again and started shouting again, and Loren scratched his head.
“I wasn’t talking about embarra.s.sment. There are troubles you could find before, and there are some that you can’t. Don’t you think that the dungeon malfunctioning during the exam is unnatural?”
“It could’ve been adjusted like this!”
Loren couldn’t understand why anyone would lower the difficulty of the dungeon for an exam.
The school might be able to do so, since it managed the dungeon, but if the school was doing so, they would be a corpse maker, not a training school.
“It’s an exam for students who are going to become adventurers. Why would they want to lower the difficulty?”
“That’s…”
Cloud was at a loss for words, but a helping hand was offered to him.