MIDDLE STRATUM EXPLORATION REPORT

I am an adventurer.

I’ve been exploring the Great Elroe Labyrinth since I first started out, and now I can even roam around in here without a guide accompanying me.

I hate to brag, but I think I might be better acquainted with the Great Elroe Labyrinth than any other adventurer out there.

But the Great Elroe Labyrinth is enormous, and even I can get lost right away if I stray onto an unfamiliar path.

There’s no way around that, of course.

Even a veteran guide can’t memorize all of the routes through the labyrinth.

In fact, we still don’t have a full picture of the Great Elroe Labyrinth at all.

It’s divided into several strata, with the one we normally explore being the Upper Stratum. And this Upper Stratum is also the limit of human exploration.

While an entrance to the Middle Stratum has been discovered, it’s a hellish area boiling with magma.

It’s not the kind of environment where humans could possibly survive.

Even deeper than the Middle Stratum is the Lower Stratum, which can be reached by descending through a cavernous pit.

But few humans have ever gone down there and returned to tell the tale.

According to the small number of surviving witnesses, the Lower Stratum is crawling with tremendously strong monsters.

Rumor has it that there’s also a Bottom Stratum, where even more terrifying monsters dwell, but the truth of that is unknown.

Neither the Middle nor the Lower Stratum is a place where humans can tread.

We haven’t even completed the mapping of the Upper Stratum.

That just goes to show the enormity and terror of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

If you’re wondering why I would explain all this, it’s because I’ve been recruited as a member of a Middle Stratum exploration team, of all things.

It’s under the orders of our kingdom, leaving a mere adventurer like myself no option to refuse.

I have no way of knowing why the kingdom would decide to undertake something as absurd as exploring the Middle Stratum.

Naturally, I objected to the exploration and explained the dangers of the Great Elroe Labyrinth at length. But they refused to listen, and I was forced to undertake the fool’s errand of exploring the Middle Stratum.

Our troop’s first order of business was to strengthen our Fire Resistance skill levels.

This makes perfect sense; it is a necessary skill to survive in the Middle Stratum for any length of time.

Then we packed plenty of water and rations into storage bags imbued with Spatial Magic, girded ourselves with heat-resistant gear, and set out as prepared as we possibly could be.

The other members of the exploration team were determined that we could surely conquer the Middle Stratum with all this preparation, but as someone with a great deal of familiarity with the labyrinth, I knew that we stood no chance of succeeding.

To make a long story short, the exploration ended in failure.

Perhaps you could call it a success in that we returned unharmed; however, the only information we managed to bring back was the simple truth that conquering the Middle Stratum is impossible.

I doubt that you could call such a thing a success.

First of all, we suffered setbacks while still in the Upper Stratum.

I pleaded that we should at least be permitted to explore the Upper Stratum a few times first to allow the team to gain some experience, since those without familiarity with the Great Elroe Labyrinth can struggle even on that level. Aside from adventurers like myself, there were many members of the exploration team who had never even stepped foot in the labyrinth before, like kingdom knights and scholars.

But my plea was summarily rejected as a waste of time.

As a result, around half of the members dropped out while we were still in the Upper Stratum.

While they fortunately did not perish, they were unable to keep up and had to turn back.

This is what I warned them would happen.

The Great Elroe Labyrinth is a place of perpetual darkness, where one cannot tell day from night.

One must first get accustomed to that darkness, or it will take a serious toll on the mind.

After all, we have to sleep and wake in darkness and press onward for days on end.

I knew that those who were not used to such conditions would quickly fall behind.

In the end, the ones who made it to the Middle Stratum at all were mostly those like me who had experience with the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

Out of all of those who had never entered the labyrinth before, only the knight who was chosen as the team’s leader managed to function properly on the journey.

Even in this predicament, we had no choice but to press on into the Middle Stratum.

In a word, the place was hell.

It was a world of perpetual blinding light, the polar opposite of the Upper Stratum.

The heat constantly assailed our bodies and senses.

Most of the monsters that sometimes attacked us did so at great distance from within the magma.

We could not venture into that magma, of course, and the warrior types who specialized in close combat were all but useless from that point on.

The one silver lining was that the monsters were not significantly stronger than those of the Upper Stratum.

We only ever encountered monsters that were equivalent to danger level D.

Though perhaps that’s only because we were unable to venture far enough to find any others.

In the end, our exploration did not continue for long.

Our forces had been reduced to less than half due to the blazing heat that chipped away at our stamina just by being in the area, being unable to get any decent sleep in the glaring light of the magma, and having the constant need for water to replace what was constantly being leeched from our bodies…

Our strength, willpower, rations, and water were draining far faster than we had anticipated.

Thus, we made the decision to turn back earlier than planned.

It goes without saying that we were scarcely able to map the Middle Stratum at all.

We certainly experienced the horror of the Middle Stratum firsthand.

But even then, perhaps that was only a glimpse of the real threats contained within.

After all, we were only to explore a tiny fraction of the area.

Perhaps the true terrors of the Middle Stratum lurk beyond the bounds of where we managed to tread.

Excerpted from the journal of Aifen the Adventurer

WHAT IS A SPIDER ANYWAY?

Lately, I feel like I’m starting to lose sight of the meaning of my existence.

I’ll just come out and say it.

Am I even acting like a spider at all anymore?

I thought spiders were supposed to, you know, make webs, lie in wait, and use their poisonous fangs to finish off prey that gets caught in their web or whatever. Something like that, right?

Meanwhile, I’m out here like…

Dodging my enemies’ attacks with blinding speed.

Shooting out magic spells like a damn machine gun.

Countering with my scythes if anything gets too close, or just pushing my way through with more magic anyway.

So, uh…what happened to the spider stuff?

Now I’m basically just a highly maneuverable, mobile, magic artillery unit. Thank you very much.

Or maybe a creature that just happens to visually resemble a spider?

Well, I am a monster, so I guess the “creature” part is still accurate.

Still, ever since magic became my primary method of attack, I feel like I’m becoming less spiderlike by the minute.

I guess it doesn’t help that I learned magic in the Middle Stratum, where I couldn’t use my thread anyway.

Until then, I was still getting by mainly with thread, one of the key tools of a spider.

Like, to the point where I couldn’t do anything without it.

But then I got stuck in a situation where I really couldn’t use thread, so I had to come up with ways of fighting that didn’t rely on it. And that’s where my shift away from spider-ness began.

At first, I was still using poison, which kept me from straying too far out of the “spider” category, but then I went and learned magic.

Especially when I picked up Dark Magic as an offshoot of Shadow Magic. It’s so convenient that I dropped the spider stuff completely.

I mean, can you blame me? You can’t beat convenience.

Nothing wrong with using something that makes your life easier!

At this point, using thread to restrict my opponents’ movements and then one-sidedly pummeling them with magic from a safe distance has become my winning strategy.

I guess, since thread is still involved, you could say that maybe, just barely, technically, theoretically, there’s the teensiest trace of spidery stuff still remaining, probably. Or not.

Yeah, no, please don’t say that I stopped being spiderlike as soon as I started using magic at all.

On the other hand, the Evil Eye stuff is invaluable against small fry but doesn’t really work very well on the stronger enemies.

I’ve been using the fact that I have eight eyes to invoke multiple kinds of Evil Eyes at the same time.

Since that makes use of the unique physiology of a spider, I’m still plenty spiderlike, right?

Yeah, yeah, I know.

There’s nothing spiderlike about the concept of Evil Eyes in the first place.

For that matter, as soon as you start throwing in any fantasy concepts—be it magic, Evil Eyes, or whatever else—I guess you lose the spiderlike status immediately.

Threads and poison are still firmly within the scope of classic spidery-ness, but once you start using all this crazy stuff like magic…y’know?

But still, it’s not like I ever had the option not to use it.

Especially when I was in the kind of environment where I had to prioritize using what was most convenient, if I even wanted to survive.

So I don’t regret that one bit.

Even if the end result is that I’m slowly losing the right to call myself a spider at all.

I mean, this world itself is already a fantasy setting, and I’m a monster, a staple of the fantasy genre, right?

So there’s nothing wrong with me taking on some fantasy traits myself!

My departure from spidery-ness was inevitable, I tell you!

I basically just did a class change from a spider to a full-fledged monster!

And if I’m a monster, there’s nothing wrong with me using magic or Evil Eyes or whatever!

So I’m fine like this, dammit!