A blinding torrent of light—it probably lasted less than a second.

When Megumi Saitou finally forced her eyes open, the scene before her was… unbelievable.

The dragon had been sent flying.

It looked like it had just taken a devastating right cross from a boxer, its body helplessly hurled backward—a simple, overwhelming loss of force, and yet it was happening right before her eyes.

And then—sword strikes.

Someone was fighting, though Megumi couldn’t immediately tell who. A blonde swordswoman, judging by her build.

She wielded a sword slightly smaller than Megumi’s greatsword, a one-handed longsword perhaps. The blade glowed pale blue, streaks of light trailing with every swing. Each strike looked like she was smashing meteors of light across the battlefield.

Meteor after meteor, one, two, three strikes.

The dragon, once proud and nearly indestructible, was now crumpled like a crushed tin can. It almost seemed like some kind of joke.

“…What… is this?”

Megumi muttered under her breath, noticing the sound was her own voice. Not a dream—this was real.

Chizuru, still in her iai stance, had her hand on the hilt of her sword, mesmerized by the glowing swordswoman’s battle. It was understandable.

She was… far too strong.

This dragon had been so powerful that it took both Megumi and Chizuru at full effort just to maintain a stalemate. Yet this swordswoman’s strikes, each like a falling star, were reducing it to scrap within moments.

“Whoa, that’s a pretty expensive-looking camera. Is this streaming right now?”

A man’s voice spoke suddenly.

A little behind the dazed Megumi and Chizuru, a young man in work pants and a T-shirt had picked up the streaming camera that Sanagi had been using. His stance was lazy, almost indifferent, like he had wandered in from some summer construction site for a casual visit.

“Uh… hi? Nice to meet you… you, uh, dropped this.”

He walked over awkwardly and, still looking slightly stunned, handed the camera to them. Megumi, carrying Sanagi in one arm and gripping her greatsword in the other, hesitated for a moment—so Chizuru took it.

“Ah, yes. Certainly… ah, yeah, it is streaming.”

Chizuru muttered as she checked the rear monitor of the camera.

So it was streaming… If that’s the case, Megumi thought, she’d just shown everyone a completely embarrassing side of herself. A mix of wanting to cry and laugh bubbled up inside her. But that feeling of letting her guard down lasted only an instant.

It wasn’t over yet.

That black knight was still holding Airi.

“Y-you… you’re an explorer, right? I’m sorry, we’ve just met, but… that black knight should be over there, and my comrade… is being captured…”

“That one, huh.”

Megumi clung—no, not just clung, she practically begged for help, and the man in work pants, looking as if Megumi didn’t matter in the slightest, just stared toward the back and muttered.

Somehow, the battle between the sword-wielding warrior and the dragon had moved to the far end of the large chamber. With each meteor-like strike of the sword, the dragon retreated further back.

Perhaps thanks to that, the black knight that had been hidden in the dragon’s shadow came into view.

Airi was no longer in its grasp.

She was lying at his feet.

Whether she was alive or dead was unclear—but probably, the black knight had judged that taking a hostage wouldn’t work against that swordswoman of light. Or perhaps, it had simply decided that a hostage was just a burden.

“Tia… tsk, still messing around. Fine, it’s impressive she’s handling a dragon like that, but… is she really the type to get carried away? Well, whatever. Let me give this a try…”

Muttering under his breath and clicking his tongue with a mildly annoyed expression, he took a few steps forward in a seemingly careless manner and positioned himself to shield Megumi and Chizuru.

But no matter how you looked at it… he seemed weak.

It was obvious.

As an explorer, he likely didn’t even qualify as C-rank. The way his magic radiated, the stance he held, the slightest hint of gaps in his posture—most of all, the atmosphere around him—it all said he was not strong.

Megumi’s keen observation as an A-rank explorer immediately marked him as weak.

She had instinctively clung to him, but maybe he was just some kind of attendant to the sword-wielding warrior. If so, she had put him in an impossible situation.

Should she stop him?

As she debated whether to set Sanagi down on the floor, cradled in her left arm, the next instant arrived.

―The world was cursed.

Shivers ran violently through her body—an intense chill that screamed through every nerve.

A sense of revulsion as if merely being in this place would taint her.

A feeling of dread, as if just breathing here would corrode her lungs.

It had to be an illusion.

No—could it really be an illusion?

It didn’t feel that way at all.

A mysterious chill slithered along her spine, a horror that felt as though snakes were writhing inside her backbone, appearing with a suddenness that left her reeling.

But the source of this chill was not the black knight.

Looking closer, the man in work pants was pulling something out from his left palm.

Like a grotesque magic trick.

Something that shouldn’t possibly come out of a hand.

And yet, what was being dragged out was—a katana, black and red.

A cursed blade with a red-and-black ominous edge. The guard was black, the hilt black as well.

The long decorative cord attached to the pommel had wrapped itself around the man’s right arm, coiling tightly. Until a moment ago, it hadn’t been wrapped there at all.

She clearly saw him drag the katana out of his left hand.

That’s what she thought. There was no other explanation. Perhaps there could be some other reasoning if she really thought about it—but having seen it with her own eyes, it was just a fact.

The black knight moved.

As if sensing the threat of the red-and-black katana in the man’s hands.

And the man who had seemed so weak just moments ago now held the katana with both hands, lifted to head height, the blade parallel to the ground.

It wasn’t a stance that a katana user like Chizuru often used… but it was the Kasumi stance.¹

A masterful form with not a trace of opening or weakness.

“I see how it is.”

He muttered, a smile mixed with a chuckle, and slowly swung the sword.

The black knight was still at a distance, out of reach.

Yet somehow, the approaching black knight was bisected.

Clang! The sound of armor hitting the ground, and as is the fate of dungeon monsters, its core remained before it disappeared.

“――The Cursed Sword ‘Kagetsu,’ huh.”

The man spoke almost as if it were someone else’s matter, while the sword he had been holding shimmered with red particles, dissolving into the air.

He waved his right hand irritably to sweep away the red particles lingering in the air, then turned to Megumi’s group and said, somewhat awkwardly:

“Ah… we’re kind of lost… do you know the way back?”

1. Something like this.