“—Uh?”
* Ray's Desire has increased by 2d10=8. Current Desire is 8/100. *
I had been chasing that line of thought when I came to my senses, right after Ray, who had been walking ahead, suddenly stopped.
She seemed to sway a little, then spoke in an annoyed voice.
“What is this? Poison?”
When I approached the stopped Ray, only then could I tell.
A sticky liquid was flowing down her pale cheek.
Not just her face, but her entire body was covered in the stuff.
Unable to wipe it off—perhaps because of her gauntlets—she grumbled.
“We had antidotes in the supplies, right?”
“We do, but… I don’t think it’s poison.”
No poison icon was visible on her interface in my sight, so it probably wasn’t poison.
If that was the case, there was only one possibility: a trap.
More than that, though—‘Desire’?
It was supposed to be displayed as ‘Stress.’
Come to think of it, when Valerie had been attacked during the fight with the hounds earlier, a similar message had popped up then as well.
I hadn’t had the leisure to examine it closely at the time, so I’d glossed over it with a feeling of ‘I guess stress built up,’ but had it been ‘Desire’ even then?
I carefully read down the interface, which was now faintly disappearing.
Was this another part I had changed in Sexstone?
“Ugh, it smells weird…”
Frowning, she soon turned her cheek toward me.
“Don’t just stand there watching. Wipe it off for me.”
“Huh? Ah… sure.”
I was thrown off because her face was suddenly so close, but she wouldn’t be able to rub her face with her gauntlet-clad hands.
Without realizing it, I gulped, then cautiously brought my hand to her face.
N-now that I looked at it like this, she was in quite a precarious state…
“Mmn…♡”
H-huh? I hadn’t done anything. The moment my fingertips touched her cheek, a strange sound suddenly slipped from between her lips.
Perhaps surprised herself, her eyes, like pomegranate seeds, went wide.
“Uh, well. I really didn’t—”
“Ah, y-you could just use a handkerchief.”
“R-right, haha.”
While I stitched together excuses no one had asked for, Ray jerked her head away, avoiding my gaze as she spoke.
She clearly looked embarrassed, so it didn’t seem to have been intentional; if so, was it because of the mode after all?
As I hurriedly rummaged through my pocket to pull out a handkerchief, Valerie’s low voice caught me from behind.
“…Bullshit.”
“Stop spouting nonsense and help too.”
She seemed to be looking at us in contempt, but Ray paid her no heed and gestured to her.
For some reason, she also looked like she was trying to hide her embarrassment.
“Whoa, it’s all over your chest too. Hey, my lord, why don’t you wipe here too?”
“Huh?”
“H-hey, quit talking nonsense and you do it.”
“Well who told you to come out in your underwear? You dumped all the armor you usually wear, so this is what happens.”
“It’s not underwear. And that’s because of shamanistic factors—”
“And yet you’re the one who didn’t even wear any underneath.”
“Wh-what? Hey, it’s still better than coming out in just underwear!”
“P-please, both of you, stop…”
If left alone, they seemed ready to start bickering right here, so I stopped the two for now.
Setting aside Ray’s, well, difficult situation for the moment—normally, traps came with additional damage, such as inflicting status ailments along with stress damage, or directly eating away at life tokens.
But, at least for now, aside from stress being displayed as ‘Desire,’ there didn’t seem to be anything else.
“Says the one who didn’t even wear underwear.”
“Wh-what? Hey, it’s better than coming in just underwear!”
Leaving the two girls who kept arguing despite my attempt to stop them once, I quietly bent down to find the trigger of the trap Ray had sprung.
In a game, you either found it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, you simply stepped on it, so there was neither need nor way to know the details—but this was reality.
If I studied the operating principles and installation methods of traps to some degree, I could reduce non-combat losses.
For example, in this case—ah, is that it?
A withered rod-like object that seemed to have already served its purpose.
It looked unpleasant, and I suspected it had fired that unidentified liquid from there.
The trigger was probably this pressure plate.
At a glance, it looked like nothing out of the ordinary, but upon closer inspection, it was slightly unnatural.
Ray’s footprint was stamped on it, and since the trap had already been triggered, its exposed shape was quite obvious, making it easy to identify.
“Look here, Miss Ray. This is probably the trap’s trigger—”
“U-uht…♡”
“Hey, you suddenly—”
The moment I turned my head, what I saw was Ray, who had stopped arguing and collapsed onto the ground.
Seemingly quite flustered right beside her, Valerie hurriedly supported her.
But the moment her hand touched her, Ray swallowed a moan as if in agony.
“What’s, what’s wrong? We really need to get her the antidote, fast!”
Having sat her down for the moment without knowing what to do, Valerie hurriedly reached a hand toward me.
Th-this is strange. There’s no poison icon on the interface…?
Just in case, for now, as Valerie said, the antidote—
“I-I’m fine…♡ Hnngh.”
Just as I was about to open my backpack, Ray spoke from where she sat.
Her face was bright red, and she was pressing her thighs together tightly with both hands… honestly, no matter how you looked at it, it was a lewd sight.
Still, what she’d said about being fine wasn’t entirely a lie; after a moment, though she swayed slightly, she managed to stand up under her own strength.
“Are you really okay? Just in case, do you want to drink an antidote?”
“N-no. I’m really fine now. Honestly, it didn’t hurt or anything, it’s just… a sensation I’m not used to.”
“What the hell, so I worried for nothing.”
Valerie grumbled, but she probably didn’t mean it.
Perhaps because my desire to ask what it had been showed all over my face, Ray, who had seemed to ponder for a moment, spoke haltingly.
“W-well, what should I call it… It feels like my lower half is all clenched up…”
I-I see. I felt like I’d just heard something I wasn’t supposed to.
Valerie whistled sharply and suddenly approached.
“So, hmm? Is it still itchy here?”
“H-hey, wait, hiiing♡”
As Ray’s cry tickled my ears, I immediately turned my body forward.
For some reason, I felt that if I kept watching and lost my composure, reacting the wrong way would lead to something irreversible.
So frightening, the darkness of the Labyrinth…!
*
The Labyrinth is a small world unto itself.
However, in Tombstone, the bizarre phenomena stemming from differences in that accumulation are called ‘Biomes.’
Clearly, if you look at coordinates alone, the Labyrinth is underground, and topologically speaking, you might as well call it one giant hollow space.
Nevertheless, the Labyrinth maintains completely different environments on every floor; while you could view this as a game concession for diverse experiences, Tombstone had embedded just such a setting.
Considering what the ‘Labyrinth’ symbolizes in Tombstone, and what lurks at its final destination, it is a truly fitting setting.
“Hah, it just keeps getting better and better. Is this really underground?”
Valerie said, as if dumbfounded.
Just as she said, the sight of plains unfolding in a place where not a single ray of sunlight could reach made it impossible to think that this was the gloomy underground Labyrinth.
Of course, light was limited to the embers I held, so there was a somewhat eerie feeling, but even that wasn’t so unpleasant if you thought of it as a ‘night forest.’
This was the effect of the ‘Biome.’
It looked as if one of the ordinary surface environments had been crammed into a single floor, but of course, since it was inside the Labyrinth, its danger was in no way comparable to that of the surface.
Maintaining appropriate tension, I followed behind Ray, who walked ahead.
“The Labyrinth is already an anomalous phenomenon in itself. No matter what happens, it isn’t strange.”
Ray’s shoulders flinched, having unintentionally become living proof of those words.
Just moments ago she had made quite a spectacle of herself at Valerie’s hands, but seeing her walk in silence with only her ears dyed bright red, she seemed to be fine now.
I wanted to shout, ‘Is the Labyrinth playing some kind of joke?’ but honestly, I had no right to talk, since I too was walking with my eyes fixed forward, reciting the national anthem with all my might to endure.
Valerie said, fiddling with her dagger handle.
“We’ve walked quite a bit, but nothing’s coming out.”
“Don’t worry, we’re slowly getting closer.”
Rather, it being peaceful was a good thing.
Except for the mandatory fight against the Floor Lord that we had to pass through, all combat was a loss the moment you engaged in it.
Of course, if you defeated a special monster, the rewards weren’t entirely nonexistent, including the ‘gift’ you could obtain, but more than such things, completing the expedition safely was unconditionally the number one priority right now.
Especially in a situation without a healer like now, the accumulation of minor damage could prove fatal to achieving that goal.
The biome was also proceeding without issue, growing darker just as I knew it would, so we were probably heading in the right direction.
“So, if you see something that looks like a trap trigger like before, please examine it carefully. If we spot it in advance, we can avoid damage, so—”
“Shh.”
I stopped speaking and held my breath.
Valerie’s eyes had turned sharp at some point; seeing her bring her index finger to her lips, I had instinctively sensed danger—and that judgment was accurate.
“Combat ready.”
Ray raised her longsword to head height and soon aimed it toward the enemy.
If it had been a surprise attack like the first battle, she would have rushed in before doing something like that, so this meant the enemy was clearly aware of us as well.
Well, we had been chatting away until just now, so of course it would be.