Hayasaka Tooru was a cleaner of labyrinths.1
Twenty years old, male, single. This was his third year on the job.
Since the world had merged with an “other world,” labyrinths—so-called dungeons—had appeared across the globe. Within them were monsters once spoken of only in fantasy fiction, along with exceedingly rare treasures, magical relics, and monster materials.
Those who challenged these dungeons were called explorers, and a first-rate explorer was nothing less than a modern-day hero. Everything they brought back from the labyrinths was extraordinarily valuable; in some cases, their discoveries were enough to completely transform people’s lives.
There was hardly a day when S-rank explorers did not appear on television or in newspapers, and some explorers even carried out activities not unlike idols.
There had once been a prophecy that a Great King of Terror would descend in 1999, but instead, at the turn of the millennium, the world itself had changed. It merged with a different world and became one.
And now, a quarter century had passed since then.
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“Ah—ah… this is Tooru. Starting the stream.”
Hayasaka Tooru—Tooru—switched on his body camera at the entrance to the Sugai Dungeon. He pulled a mobile terminal from his pocket, confirmed that the broadcast had begun, and then trudged into the “labyrinth” with a conspicuous lack of motivation.
Descending the slope from an entrance wide enough for a large truck to barely pass through, he soon emerged into the dungeon’s corridors. The walls, floor, and ceiling glowed faintly, making any light source unnecessary, yet the darkness was deep enough that he could not see beyond about thirty meters.
Tooru continued to amble along in a lethargic manner when he sensed a monster emerging from the right side of a crossroads and swung up the weapon in his right hand.
It was an iron blunt weapon.
More precisely, it was a homemade club: five thin steel rebars cut to a length of one meter thirty centimeters, bundled together and welded, with burlap tightly wrapped around the grip.
Leaping toward Tooru with a sharp whoosh was a monster known as a “Furball,” ranging in size from a tennis ball to a volleyball.
Its method of attack was a body slam.
The impact was about as strong as a high school athlete hurling a basketball with all their might, and a beginner explorer might panic if surrounded by several at once.
But for Tooru, it was routine.
He sidestepped the leaping body slam by only half a step, swung the club, and knocked the Furball out of the air. When it hit the ground, he crushed it underfoot.
He repeated this three times.
“Furballs, three.”
He muttered into the body camera microphone, just loud enough to be picked up, yet in a voice utterly devoid of spirit, and then searched the spots where the defeated Furballs had been.
In principle, unless dungeon monsters dropped materials, they vanished without leaving corpses. What they left behind instead was a “magic core.”
This was a condensed mass of magical power, and in the modern age it was used as an energy source superior even to electricity generation. That said, the magic cores of monsters appearing in the upper layers of the Sugai Dungeon were no larger than grains of rice.
Even so, every little bit added up.
He picked up the three rice-sized magic cores and tossed them into his waist pouch. Then Tooru once again set off walking in the same unmotivated manner, dispatching every monster that appeared along the way.
The monsters that appeared in the upper layers of the Sugai Dungeon were Furballs, giant rats, and demi-goblins. None of them posed much of a challenge unless one was an absolute beginner; they were trash mobs that even fledgling explorers quickly stopped bothering with.
“Rats, four.” “Furballs, six.” “Demi-gobs, two.” “Rats, two.” “Rats, three.”
As he wandered through the labyrinth, he struck down every monster he encountered with his blunt weapon—smashing them, stomping them, kicking them aside.
Frankly, it was mind-numbingly dull work, but it was a job, so there was nothing to be done.
After the world had merged with another world, dungeons had appeared across the globe. The continent of Atlantis had surfaced in the east-northeast seas off Australia, sea levels had risen, and several volcanoes that should have erupted were spared devastation by the breath of an ice dragon.
Dungeons—labyrinths—possessed a trait: if left unattended, they would go berserk.
Apparently, when the magical power stockpiled inside a labyrinth exceeded a certain threshold, powerful monsters that should not originally be born there would appear, and with them as a focal point, the dungeon’s monsters would burst out into the outside world. This was what was known as a “Dungeon Stampede.”
It was said that, like a cat coughing up a hairball, a dungeon would vomit out the excess magical power it had accumulated.
The reason dungeons around the world were discovered in the first place was because a “stampede” had happened. In the early 2000s, when stampedes occurred in all manner of locations—remote mountain gorges, under the sea, deserted islands—the world was said to have become a living hell.
Once discovered, labyrinths were placed under national control, and governments across the world launched large-scale recruitment drives for explorers.
Thus, after the world fusion, humanity rapidly adapted by feeding on the various resources and knowledge produced by the labyrinths. Even so, problems remained.
Yes—even at this very moment, an undiscovered labyrinth might be in the midst of a “stampede.”
Since it was impossible to scour every corner of the world in search of them, undiscovered labyrinths ultimately had to be left to rampage before they could be found.
Given that reality, at the very least, it was necessary to prevent already discovered labyrinths from triggering a “stampede.”
That was why even D-rank dungeons that explorers ignored and had already been fully explored—labyrinths like the Sugai Dungeon—still required cleaners.
“Demi-gobs, three.” “Furballs, two.” “Furballs, four.” “Rats, three.”
Emotionlessly continuing his cleanup of trash mobs, he pressed deeper into the labyrinth.
More than two hours had already passed since he entered the dungeon, yet he was not particularly tired. Being able to swing bundled steel rebar for nearly two hours without issue was due to more than just familiarity.
There was a theory that defeating monsters allowed one to absorb magical power.
In other words, leveling up.
Tooru himself belonged to the so-called otherworld generation, born after the worlds had merged, and when he was in middle school there had even been classes where students defeated monsters in dungeons.
That was because, among humans who absorbed magical power, there were rare individuals who manifested unusual traits.
This was not limited to the otherworld generation; it also included those who had already been adults in 1999—people whose compatibility with the other world had been high. Some saw their physical abilities increase to abnormal levels when they defeated monsters, some became capable of using magic, and some gained abilities that defied reason itself…
Of course, Tooru had gained none of those.
All he had done was continue cleaning up trash mobs endlessly for three years.
Even so, his physical abilities had improved enough for him to be consciously aware of it, and he probably had the stamina to run a full marathon without much trouble.
But that was all.
Needless to say, he was nowhere near S-rank, and even as a C-rank explorer, Tooru would be considered lacking. Active explorers were monsters who ran along walls and leapt from the first floor straight up to the third.
“Rats, two.” “Furballs, four.” “Furballs, four.” “Demi-gobs, two… huh, what’s that?”
After tossing the magic cores left behind by the monsters into his waist pouch, Tooru tilted his head at a sense of unease.
He felt like he could hear something.
Taking his mobile terminal from his pocket, Tooru checked the stream time.
“Uh… four hours and thirty-two minutes. I think I’m hearing a strange noise… maybe. A kind of keeen… like tinnitus. It could honestly just be actual ringing in my ears because of my condition. Still, it feels off, so I’ll report it. I’ll leave a comment too.”
In a stream with zero viewers and zero comments, Tooru typed a comment himself.
He stood there in silence for a while, but the tinnitus-like sound did not fade.
“…Is this getting picked up by the mic…?”
The Sugai Dungeon, which should have felt familiar, suddenly seemed oddly distant.
That said, he had never gone down past the fifth floor.
“Let’s head back.”
If there was anything abnormal, withdraw immediately.
Even though Tooru was not an explorer, that was common sense drilled into him until it rang in his ears, simply by virtue of working in a job connected to labyrinths.
On his way back from the third floor to the entrance, he beat down every monster he encountered.
After exiting the dungeon, he headed straight for the Sugai Dungeon branch office at city hall.
Hayasaka Tooru was a cleaner of labyrinths.
It was his third year, working under contract for city hall.
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