—
“Little Will, you sotis make this ‘I’m so objective and clear-headed’ face.”
“And so…”
“I’m mad!”
Shuna held Will’s glasses, inching closer to him. The already short distance between them shrank even further.
“Sotis, you don’t need to see everything so clearly! What you really need…”
The closer Shuna got, the clearer Will could see her expression.
Crystal clear…
He could see the smile on her face.
“…is to feel it! To use the perception of living to experience this world—”
“Wait… what?”
Shuna grabbed his hand, and with his glasses off and the slippery ground beneath them, Will found himself being led forward.
As she moved, Shuna spun him halfway in the air, positioning his back toward the surface of the ice lake.
Then, with a gentle release, she let go of his hand.
The distance to the ground wasn’t far, and Will landed softly on the ice lake thanks to the thick clothes he was wearing for the ice-elent dungeon.
And just like that—
He was lying on the ice lake, surrounded by the reflection of the aurora above.
“See? Only like this…”
Shuna said as she circled around to his head and lay down beside him.
Only…
They were lying in opposite directions.
“Yes, only like this…”
Shuna reached out and gently placed his glasses back on his face.
The aurora beca sharper, its swirling colors more vivid, but the spinning sensation made it feel even more surreal. Yet the cold of the ice beneath him grounded Will in the natural chill of the mont.
“—can you rediscover how beautiful this world truly is.”
Will gazed upward, stretching his hand toward the aurora in the sky.
Indeed…
As Shuna had said.
For this world, this was the “miracle of the omnipotent dungeon,” a spectacle laid before him, seen with his own eyes.
Whether it was the greenish-blue aurora reflected in his pupils or the icy chill beneath his back, at this mont…
It all felt “real.”
So this was it.
Shuna had said all this to help him imrse himself in this world, hadn’t she?
As expected…
No matter what “gender” S was, they were his “ntor.”
As Will thought this, he turned his head and found Shuna watching him.
Her black eyes were filled entirely with his reflection, as if she were deeply “studying” him.
No…
Not just “now.”
From the mont he had first seen her in the tavern, standing by that potted plant, she had been watching him.
“Hmm, now this expression looks much better.”
“Ah… you… you’ve misunderstood!”
Will felt a bit shy under her gaze and quickly sat up.
“I wasn’t ignoring the aurora just now. I was just… just thinking about sothing else for a mont.”
Will instinctively tried to brush off his “outsider to the story” status.
“Oh? Is that so…”
To his surprise, Shuna also sat up, but she didn’t stand or turn to face him.
Instead…
She leaned her back against his.
“Speaking of which, since it’ll take so ti to reach the 60th floor, how about we train your basic skills on the 20th and 30th floors?”
“Shuna… you’re still fixated on that.”
“I told you, my blessing was just a ‘trial card.’ You’ll have to rely on yourself in the end.”
—I’ve already tried countless tis on my own.
But Will didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm.
If she was so determined, he’d let her see what it was like to teach an unteachable student.
“Alright, but I’ll need to pick up the staff first. Even though it’s ant for soone else, I can test its feel.”
“Are you just trying to delay?”
“N-no, of course not!”
Speaking of blessings…
“That blessing, Shuna, are you a… ‘Divine Condenser’?”
“Hmm… is that the thing where the goddess Reivirs gazes upon you, granting you more fortunate blessings in dungeons? I think so nuns at the church ntioned it to once.”
Shuna stretched lazily, seemingly indifferent to the title.
“You’re really ‘unconcerned with fa.’ For many people, having that title is equivalent to being favored by the dungeons themselves.”
“Doesn’t feel like it’s worth much. At most, it adds buffs in dungeons—what kind of useless goddess is that? Probably the type who’d get kidnapped and couldn’t even fight back.”
“Show so respect for the goddess, will you!”
Will said this out loud, but internally, he was deep in thought…
In the original story, “Divine Condenser” was a title reserved for “key characters,” as it was intricately tied to the ecology of the dungeons.
From what he rembered, even from the fragnted notes in his Task System, the original story had clarified before his death that the “Divine Condenser”…
Was limited to the protagonist, the deceased forr leader of Morning Star who was also the protagonist’s friend, and a witch nad Yal from 500 years ago—the ancestor of the current witches.
Moreover…
The most defining trait of a Divine Condenser wasn’t just being favored by Reivirs and receiving her blessings.
The defining trait was…
Will tilted his head slightly, observing Shuna’s eyes as she gazed forward at the door leading to the ninth floor. Her expression carried a natural yearning.
—An uncontrollable curiosity and desire to explore dungeons, an intense drive to keep clearing them.
Shuna… could she really be…
“Alright, to help Will train faster, let’s go nudge that blacksmith about the weapon!”
Shuna gave a thumbs-up, her energy as vibrant as ever.
“I can see you’re very eager to whip into shape.”
Will sighed, leaning back against her.
Will thought to himself, maybe this was just how it worked—he nurtured others, and now S was nurturing him.
It seed like everyone wanted a taste of the “nurturing” experience.
—
“Don’t rush ! This is the first ti I’ve made a staff out of iron. Working with tal is a lot trickier than processing wood, and you gave raw materials that hadn’t even been treated.”
The blacksmith scratched his head, clearly exasperated by their impatience. They had only delivered the materials yesterday and were already back today asking for the finished product.
“Sorry… it’s just that we need it urgently.”
Will scratched his head awkwardly.
“Alright, alright. You ntioned wanting a recognizable emblem engraved on it. What should it look like?”
“Oh, right, that’s still on the list…”
Will was quite satisfied with the iron used for the staff. Since it might eventually serve as the shaft for the “Ancient Fla Staff,” he didn’t plan to alter it further.
With that in mind, he considered engraving sothing symbolic of Leah—sothing that would make it easily identifiable.
After so thought, he decided that engraving her na would be too plain—and her full na was far too long.
“Well, we went to the town library and found this: it’s the emblem of the Witch’s Association.”
Will had actually seen the emblem before.
It was a simple sketch of an oversized witch’s hat, identical to the one depicted on the coins featuring the profile of a witch.
But just describing it wouldn’t be enough for the blacksmith to engrave it.
So Will had gone to the library to look it up—thankfully, rumors about the Witch’s Association were everywhere. It wasn’t hard to find a book with the emblem, or even a ntion of it in the newspapers.
Especially here in Yavik Town, for so reason, the newspapers seed to have an unusually high number of stories about “witch-related incidents.”
“Oh, so that’s what you were doing at the library last night?”
Shuna crossed her arms, sounding a bit annoyed that he had snuck off to the library without telling her.
“But…”
When Shuna saw the emblem Will had found, she froze.
“…This emblem. I think I’ve seen it before.”
“Huh?”
“The dark red fabric we thought was just a random piece used to wrap the box—when frozen below zero degrees, it shows this emblem.”
Shuna pulled out the fabric.
“What?!”
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