"Am I even needed in this party?"

"Hm?"
"Huh?"

As I muttered, two voices responded simultaneously from behind me.

"What are you saying?"
"You're reliable, totally reliable~"

"No, I mean, I haven’t even drawn my sword from its scabbard properly..."

A month had passed since then.

The adventure was going incredibly smoothly.

Eunice joining the party didn’t just mean adding another damage dealer.

At first, he humbly kept pace with Ziel and Lililia, saying, "I’m not used to this, so I’ll just follow along for now." But eventually, he found his footing.

Now, a gentle rain constantly surrounded the three of us.

But, of course, it wasn’t actual rain dripping from the cave ceiling or soaking the ground. It was Eunice’s magic. An advanced spell that begins with the intricate incantation Rain Becomes the Scale of Light.

Since he started using it, minor magical beasts had stopped appearing altogether.

Just touching that rain was enough to dissolve and erase them.

At this point, walking through the labyrinth felt no different from strolling down a normal path.

"I’m just a guy who swings a sword, so if I’m not even doing that, I’m seriously useless."

"Now that you mention it, maybe I don’t need to be here either. I mean, I don’t get injured, and Eunice can probably do something similar to my sanctification spells, right?"

"And our light-based abilities overlap," Lililia added.

Come to think of it, even my secret sword technique is named after the moon. With stars and the moon, our characters overlap a bit too, Ziel mused, realizing it after Lililia pointed it out.

"…Don’t say such sad things," Eunice said, his voice sounding the saddest of all.

"Don’t say such sad things!!!!!!"
"Whoa."
"What’s wrong? Why the shouting?"
"Sorry, I suddenly felt lonely..."

"It’s fine," Eunice said in a faint voice.

"Sure, it’s true that my powers are probably the most versatile, and, oddly enough, I have the best sense of direction, but..."

"Oh, a crossroad."
"Eunice, which way next?"
"Don’t know."
"He’s sulking."
"Don’t sulk~"

In the end, Eunice said "right," but added,

"Can you not say things like that again? Honestly, I accepted the church and magic guild requests while secretly looking forward to meeting two people with abilities sharp enough to rival mine. Walking around with the two of you is like a school field trip with friends I’ve never had before, and I’m so ridiculously happy about it that I could die."

"…Sorry. Didn’t mean to ruin the mood."

"Eunice, you’re adorable~"

"Right?" Eunice huffed through his nose.

"A field trip... a field trip, huh."

Ziel nodded secretly at Eunice’s words.

Indeed, their current situation was not far removed from such an excursion.

Thanks to Lililia’s divine magic, there was no need to worry about physical grime.

And Eunice’s magic kept the winter cold from being a significant threat.

Moreover, while the labyrinth had become more challenging beyond the sealed area of the apocryphal magic, Ziel alone could still manage parts of it. With Eunice now part of the party, the dangers they faced were minimal. Even the floor boss they fought three days ago had fallen to a single swing of Ziel’s holy sword. Eunice’s firepower support hadn’t even had time to kick in before the fight was over.

Aside from their consistently awful meals and the fact that they kept looping back to the same places (they frequently encountered their own markers), the adventure had hardly been burdensome.

They had descended fifty floors.

While they didn’t know how deep the lowest level was, complete exploration didn’t seem far off.

"Did you all ever go on field trips?" Eunice asked.

"Or rather, did you attend school?"

"I went to church school~. I actually attended properly."
"I guess I went, sort of. A wise person in our village taught us reading, writing, and arithmetic. We had field trips, more like picnics, I guess."

Although it was just to places they always visited, the simple act of naming the outing made it surprisingly exciting, Ziel thought as he reminisced.

"Sounds nice. I entered the Grand Library early, so I never had the chance for that."

"Is that the kind of place you get into early?"

"Not really. I’ve never even seen anyone my own age there. Normally, to become a mage, you’d attend a magic school or apprentice under an independent mage. Going straight to the core like I did is pretty rare. Such places are dangerous and generally meant for advanced practitioners. I only got in because I had a mentor deeply connected to the Grand Library."

"I see," Ziel nodded.

Stepping outside one’s own field revealed an endless world of unknowns, he thought.

"Then it’s Eunice’s first field trip. Isn’t that exciting?"

"Totally. Honestly, I feel like yelling at any moment. Woooooooahhhhhhh!"

"I’d tell you not to let your guard down... but I won’t bother," Ziel sighed.

The tension he’d felt when challenging the labyrinth alone had also slipped away.

It was unreasonable to expect Lililia or Eunice, who’d started their exploration together from the beginning, to maintain that level of vigilance.

"This is supposed to be the hardest labyrinth..."

"Well, it can’t be helped. We’re probably all the type who ‘max out one ability at the expense of everything else,’ right?"

"Way to put it bluntly."
"No denying it."

"And we all managed to adapt our dominant ability to combat. Moreover—and this isn’t just flattery, it’s based on objective facts—each of us is at the top in our respective fields."

"Wait," Eunice interrupted.

"Don’t argue. Even if there are people better than us out there, that’s theoretical. The only ones likely to surpass us would be our mentors."

"…I guess."

"My ego can’t take this," Lililia joked.

"Also, our abilities complement each other perfectly. As I’ve said, this is probably the strongest team possible. Even though Ziel lacks his glasses, Lililia is away from her church, and I can’t rely on starlight this deep, it’s still hard to imagine assembling a better group in this era."

Eunice sounded smug, but Ziel didn’t argue.

By current standards, it didn’t feel like an exaggeration.

"If we can’t clear this, it just means humanity isn’t at its peak yet. Honestly, our smooth progress feels natural. It’d be scarier if we struggled."

"Eunice, you’re quite full of yourself."
"I might be a bit of a narcissist."
"Figured as much."

Still... Eunice murmured as if pondering something strange.

"It’s odd, though. Previous S-rank parties stopped at the third layer. That’s puzzling."

"Huh?" Lililia asked in response.

"Those adventurers were supposed to be among the strongest of their time, right? Sure, there might have been other factors at play beyond raw power... but even so, it feels like they could’ve made more progress if given enough time."

Eunice wondered aloud if his standards might have been warped from spending too much time in the Grand Library.

"The floor boss on the third layer was probably too strong," Ziel suggested.

"Too strong?"

"Yeah. I agree with Eunice—the labyrinth is tough, but if we’ve managed to push this far with just raw power, those S-rank parties could’ve advanced gradually beyond the third layer. If they had, the labyrinth might have been conquered long ago."

"So, the third layer was that strong?" Lililia asked.

"It was insane," Ziel replied. "Even with my glasses, I seriously thought I might die. In terms of apocryphal magic beasts, that boss was probably top-tier."

"Wait, stronger than Nightmare?"

"Not even close. It was ridiculously—"

"Hold on!" Eunice interrupted with a loud voice.

"What is it?" Ziel asked.

"This doesn’t match what I heard," Eunice said with a panicked tone.

"From who?"

"A supporter in Klaha’s party. They told me the boss was strong, but not to the point where it couldn’t be defeated with teamwork."

"Ah, that must’ve been before its transformation," Ziel said.

"Transformation?" Lililia tilted her head in confusion.

"Yeah," Ziel nodded. "At first, it was as strong as something like Nightmare, but things got really bad after that. It transformed when I got dragged down to the lower layers."

"It was absurdly strong," Ziel continued. "If I hadn’t ranked up my domain with the poison dragon kill, I wouldn’t have stood a chance."

"So that’s when you had your awakening?" Lililia asked.

"Yeah. Honestly, it was a fight to the death, and if that hadn’t triggered my awakening, I would’ve questioned how much more intense a fight would need to be. Still, defeating that boss didn’t even count as an awakening for some reason."

"The criteria are so unclear," Lililia added.

"You’ve had a few yourself?"

"A handful. But I don’t know what the average is, so I can’t really say."

"Same here," Ziel said. "But I bet most people haven’t had any."

"I get that a lot from the little ones—‘I thought awakenings were a myth!’ Even if I insist they’re real, they just don’t believe me, so I end up joking, ‘Yeah, they’re fake.’"

"Hey, come on!"

"Just kidding! I do explain it properly, even if they don’t believe me... Eunice?"

"Sorry, I was lost in thought," Eunice said in a contemplative voice.

"Did something bother you?"

"Yeah... Could it be that the reason Ziel kept backtracking was related to this?"

"That’s right," Ziel nodded deeply.

"I knew that labyrinth bosses are supposed to get stronger the deeper you go, but the third-layer boss was so overwhelming that I wondered if this place followed a different rule altogether. That’s why I kept going back and forth."

"Wait, Ziel, you’ve been beating most bosses in one hit. Can you really tell the difference in their strength?"

"I can get a sense of it, roughly. Though there are times when the match-up is so favorable that it’s hard to gauge."

"Interesting," Lililia said, while Eunice fell silent again.

"Eunice?"

"Stomachache?" Lililia teased.

"No... I think I’m just overthinking something. Never mind," Eunice replied.

"Oh, that’s classic mystery novel logic—the kind where the person dies," Lililia said.

"Really?!"

"Yup," she said playfully, as Eunice hesitated to voice his thoughts further.

Before he could say anything, though—

"Ah."
"Ah."

"What’s wrong?" Ziel asked, looking back at the two of them.

"There’s a door," Lililia said.

At last, Ziel reached for the hilt of his sword, finally sensing it might be his turn.

But—

"No, looks like it’s me again," Eunice said.

"Wait, seriously? I haven’t even had the chance to use my skills properly..."

"That’s not it," Eunice cut in, and Lililia finished his sentence:

"It’s another black door."