Professor Nini's arrangement had, in fact, also thrown a wrench into Dark's plans.
His original intention had been to find an opportunity to act alone — to see whether "Greed Slime I" could turn up anything worth finding.
In other words, to try his luck, as the common saying went.
Unfortunately, the rule of grouping in threes had tied his hands.
Left with little choice, he cast his gaze toward Diana and Rose at his side.
Diana, noticing him looking over, only raised her head with a slightly bewildered expression, then dug a milk candy out of her pocket and held it out: "Here."
Dark blinked for a moment before taking the candy from her palm, peeling off the wrapper, and biting into it.
No kidding — it really was sweet.
...
Since things had come to this, Dark stopped fretting over it.
Relaxing his mind, he observed the group formations of each House with interest.
First was the Noble House.
Teddy Doron, who — apart from Dark — was the most well-connected boy among the Noble House first-years, possessed a particularly fierce competitive streak. Naturally, he would be looking to form a group.
Although Professor Nini hadn't set any requirement regarding the strength of the monsters they had to hunt, the moment there was a goal, there was competition.
Whether between the Houses or within them, the silent jockeying had already begun.
In addition to the little chubby Pistan, Doron's group had also invited a girl who carried a "Mana Needle" — just enough to form a three-person team.
When Dark glanced over that way, he happened to meet Doron's gaze coming back the other direction, and so he gave a slight nod.
Doron, somehow misreading whatever he'd seen, abruptly shot a fist up and clenched it hard, radiating a thick aura of fighting spirit.
On the other side…
Knight House had never been one to lose out to anyone in the competitive-spirit department.
Aside from Virt and Robert searching for teammates, that ever-attention-grabbing sunny young man, Justin Wayne, was also out hunting for a group.
However, since Justin Wayne carried a "Mana Needle" of his own, he had far more leeway in choosing his companions, and quickly picked out the two most outstanding members from his own little clique.
Our very own Miss Know-It-All Emma Metis, on the other hand, had run into trouble.
Her two deskmates, Susan and Lucy, were truly nothing remarkable as students, and neither of them was particularly keen on leaving the safety of Professor Nini's protection to go off adventuring.
Knight House was, of course, branded with the labels of bravery and honesty.
But so-called bravery and honesty had, all along, taken on many forms.
Some people looked brave on the surface, only to run faster than anyone when the crucial moment came.
Some were timid in everyday life, yet never flinched when bravery was truly called for.
Emma had always firmly believed her two friends were girls who were brave at heart — that if she pressed the matter, they would surely muster up the courage and come along.
But she was no longer the kind of immature person who would do such a thing.
Dealing with others is what makes one grow.
She knew she ought to start considering finding someone else to group with.
The ideal candidate…
Her gaze flitted absentmindedly over the Noble House crowd, and then she sighed.
She hadn't been able to find a place for herself in that particular group.
The next best option, then.
Emma turned her gaze once more toward the Magic House crowd.
The top student of Magic House — Sarah Swati — was speaking in low tones with her staunchest supporter, Heidi Euphemia.
Heidi was a girl with raven-black hair and bright eyes, who always tied her hair into two thick braids draped over her chest.
As one of the students of Magic House, while her excellence didn't quite measure up to Sara's, she was nonetheless of a considerably high caliber herself.
Now both of them had "Mana Needles" in hand, and seemed to be looking for a third member to round out the group.
"If it were the two of them…"
Emma couldn't help feeling tempted.
Even though they weren't from the same House, those two were unquestionably the most suitable choice.
But she nipped lightly at her lower lip, and in the end, she pulled her gaze away.
Grouping up with Sara was simply not within the range of options she was prepared to consider.
...
Professor Nini didn't give the students too much time to linger. Once she'd confirmed her message had been conveyed clearly, she gathered everyone together and set off toward the second floor of the dungeon.
The students, entering the dungeon for the first time, suppressed the excitement bubbling within them. Reminding one another, they pinched their Magic Guide Cards in their hands, kept in a state where they could summon at any moment, and followed closely behind Professor Nini's steps.
Dark Demon walked at the very back of his own accord. On his head was DemiDevimon, still gripping the lunchbox; to his left was Gatomon, carrying the backpack; and ahead of him were Diana and Rose.
He, too, was entering the dungeon for the very first time. But perhaps because he had played plenty of RPGs in his previous life, he felt a peculiar sense of familiarity with this type of dungeon.
St. Marian's dungeon was extremely unusual, but that peculiarity increased layer by layer as one descended from the upper floors.
It was said that the structure of the entire dungeon resembled a "spire" — the deeper one went, the more open the terrain became, and the more complex as well.
At the deepest levels, it was like a small world of its own, with its own independent ecosystem.
At the very topmost level, however, it was the most ordinary kind of maze-type dungeon.
Walls linked one after another carved the entire floor into countless sections, with adventurers threading their way through the passages between wall and wall, pushing ever deeper in.
In a certain sense, it bore some resemblance to the Castle's secret passages.
The moment that thought struck him, Dark couldn't help recalling the "Minotaur" he had encountered in those secret passages.
The appearance of the "Minotaur" had been a sudden, accidental occurrence within the secret passages.
But inside the dungeon, it was a perfectly normal phenomenon.
Of course, the first floor of the dungeon, in theory, wouldn't spawn monsters of that caliber.
Even the Floor BOSS of this level only possessed about five-to-six-star strength.
Which was to say, relatively safe.
Naturally, the dungeon had no automatic illumination magic lamps.
In their place was a special kind of moss-class plant.
Glowing moss could be seen everywhere, sprawled across every nook and corner of the dungeon — and gathered especially thickly along the ceiling.
Professor Nini had once mentioned in class that this plant, known as "Light Moss," was also of the nocturnal sort.
At night, they fed on corpses and other decaying matter; during the day, they went dormant, and during the digestive process, they emitted light.
Most Light Moss was white, but there were several other colors as well — green, red, and the like.
Bathed in the glow of Light Moss, the dungeon took on a strange and otherworldly appearance.
The first floor of the dungeon wasn't entirely devoid of other plant life beyond the Light Moss, either.
In the corners and crevices of the walls, all manner of special plants — ones almost never seen outside — grew here and there.
On careful examination, one could find many flowers and herbs that could be used in potion-brewing.
Professor Nini, while leading the group, didn't walk continuously either. She would occasionally stop to rest in spots where the plants grew thickest.
During those breaks, Dark would take out his sketchbook and draw down the plant ecology in a corner of the wall.
Students doing the same were not few in number, but they were largely concentrated within Magic House.
Personally observing and recording the plant life of the dungeon always yielded some sort of reward.
In the blink of an eye, more than half an hour had passed.
Under Professor Nini's lead, the students wove through the labyrinth of the dungeon. From their initial excitement and curiosity, to the gradual buildup of weariness and boredom, the shift in their moods was plain to see.
As for the reason…
Throughout their entire journey thus far, they had not encountered so much as a single monster!
For those students who held no particular interest in plants, all that filled their field of vision — apart from walls, walls, walls, and more walls — was, again, walls!
Tedious...
Dull...
That initial wariness one feels upon first encountering an unfamiliar environment also wore lower and lower with the passage of time.
So much so that when a monster finally did appear, most of the students screamed in alarm.
But what they didn't know was that the monster, which had so very inopportunely emerged from the wall, was even more terrified than they were!
...
Dark observed with keen interest the monster that had only managed to wriggle halfway out of the wall, thinking that if its head were screwed on right, it surely must be wishing it could just burrow back in this instant.
Professor Nini, with the blood of the Beast King flowing through her veins, was like a terrifying mountain — and within the brain of this poor little monster, she steadily piled up an emotion known as "fear."
"What a lucky break!"
Amid the students' panic and screaming, Professor Nini's eyes lit up. In two great strides she crossed three paces' worth of distance, vaulting right in front of the monster. Then she extended a massive hand covered in long grey fur, gripped the monster by the scruff of the neck, and forcibly yanked it out of the wall.
This scene was just like the way she handled the experimental monsters used as teaching specimens back in the classroom.
Caught up in that sense of déjà vu, the students quickly calmed down, hastily clapping hands over their own mouths, pretending they'd never screamed at all.
"Does anyone know what kind of monster this is?"
Professor Nini turned around with a face of utter innocence, dangling the monster about and not forgetting to teach a lesson even at a moment like this.
The monster had green skin all over, and on its back grew dense, toad-like bumps from which a stream of mucus oozed steadily.
Virt swallowed and raised his hand: "Professor, could that be a Venomous Lizard?"
Professor Nini at once said happily, "That's right, this is precisely a Venomous Lizard."
"Whoa——"
Cries of dismay rose up in waves.
The students hurriedly stumbled back several steps, putting some distance between themselves and Professor Nini along with the Venomous Lizard in her hand.
"Dark, Dark, what's wrong with a Venomous Lizard? Why are they all so scared?" Diana turned her head and asked curiously.
Dark said softly, "See those bumps on its back? Those are the Venomous Lizard's venom glands. The venom that flows out of those glands evaporates into the air, gradually forming a toxic mist. It's not fatal, but it will make you dizzy and nauseous."
Diana mulled this over for a long while, then blurted out, "But it's sweet."
Dark: "Huh?"
Diana said, a little shyly, "I mean. When I was little, I touched it a bit. The venom that flows out of those bumps — it's like syrup. Sweet as can be."
Dark's pupils dilated a fraction, and he couldn't help staring at her for a good long moment.
...
"Crack."
Professor Nini gave a pinch with her fingers, snapping the Venomous Lizard's neck.
The Venomous Lizard, which had been frantically hissing only a moment before, instantly fell silent.
Its corpse did not vanish into thin air, but one could clearly see that the color of the vast majority of its body was fading away at a speed perceptible to the naked eye.
At last, a single tooth in its mouth grew slightly longer, giving off a faint dark-green glow.
Professor Nini explained: "As I mentioned before. Our St. Marian dungeon is very special. After a monster dies, the residual power inside its body gathers into a particular part of its body, turning into a high-quality material. Take this Venomous Lizard, for instance — all of its value is concentrated within this one venomous fang."
Professor Nini, with some effort, snapped off the fine little fang. Then she glanced left and right and abruptly flung the Venomous Lizard's corpse away.
The body arced through the air and, with a "splat," came to rest stuck against a wall draped in vines.
In the blink of an eye, that patch of vines — which had looked utterly indistinguishable from ordinary vines — suddenly began to writhe, coiling around the Venomous Lizard's corpse like a snake.
The vine's tip and stem split open into terrifying gashes lined with fine teeth, and at an extraordinarily rapid pace, devoured the Venomous Lizard's corpse down to nothing!
That sight rendered the young Magic Guide users dead silent on the spot.
Compared to the Venomous Lizard, the seemingly threat-free "Vine Monster" that had been hanging on the wall all this time was clearly far more terrifying!
"Those vines were Vine Monsters?"
Dark's pupils contracted, and he couldn't help but become alert.
In his post-class assignments for Monster Studies, he had once written a small paper with the "Vine Monster" as its subject.
And yet he still hadn't been able to pick them out.
Let alone the other students.
Had it not been for Professor Nini's demonstration, who knew how many of them would have suffered for it.
Each activation of a "Dungeon Escape Device" was a sizable expense.
Professor Nini, as it happened, still remembered that he had written that little paper, and so she picked him out from the crowd and asked him to help share the knowledge.
Dark didn't hold anything back, and proceeded to lay out his research in unhurried detail.
By this point, the students were no longer feeling tedious and dull from all that prolonged walking.
Walking through the dungeon's labyrinth, listening to their classmate's detailed explanations, they were finally getting a sense of… visiting a museum!
...
The Vine Monster was, in truth, an extremely dangerous species.
They were spread across nearly every floor of the dungeon, both highly dangerous and difficult to identify.
Adventurers were forever confusing them with ordinary vines — and one careless step would land them at the receiving end of the Vine Monster's venom.
But if one could skillfully distinguish a Vine Monster from a regular vine, they were in turn a quite useful sort of monster.
Their attacks were highly aggressive, yet their attack power wasn't especially high. They had clear weaknesses, and once rooted in place, they could not move.
A Vine Monster's brain was located at its roots. Therefore, all one needed to do was cut through the junction between the vine and the root, severing its link to the brain, and it would cease to move.
At that point, you could chop off the head at the tip, slice open the outer skin, drain out the fresh blood flowing within, and rinse it clean.
You'd then obtain a section of edible flesh-stalk.
The Vine Monster's flesh was soft and fine-textured. Dropped into boiling water, it took only a few minutes before it could be fished out and eaten. It was one of the dungeon's few edible species, and what's more, the preparation was simple and quick — meat, no less.
...
On the other hand, the venom of a Venomous Lizard — for instance — required a detoxification process before it could be consumed as syrup. Extremely troublesome.
Nowhere near as convenient as the Vine Monster.
...
Such was the way of the dungeon.
An adventure that might seem dangerous on the surface could, with careful searching, reveal a great deal of pleasure.
All told, about an hour or so.
Under Professor Nini's leadership, the students very smoothly found the stairway leading down to the second floor.
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