The class watched in horror as the ground crumbled under Hajime’s feet and dropped him into the Abyss below. From where they stood, he looked small, helpless as he tumbled together with the thrashing Behemoth. The once terrifying beast was now tumbling with him to their mutual demise, the pale orange glow from its body provided the only light in the vast sea of darkness below him. His class stood there, silent, as there forms shrunk ever smaller, until both their shapes were consumed by the hungry void.

* * *

The class was deathly quiet as Meld led the shell-shocked students out of the Orcus Dungeon.

It wasn’t a difficult climb up. It had turned out that the bridge was simply a secret room on the 20th floor, and after wiping out most of the monsters on their way down, nothing bothered to attack them as they climbed the stairs to freedom.

When they came into the main hall, many of the students were blinded by the morning light that filtered through the open windows. They’d only spent one night in that hell-hole, but they felt like they’d been there for years.

They all turned their status plates into the receptionist’s desk in an almost mechanical fashion. Many of them had to present one their partners plates as over a third of the class was either to wounded, to fatigued, or were simply unconscious and could do little besides be carried by one of their fellows.

As they got ready to leave the receptionist called out to them in a cheery voice.

“Wow! You guy’s cleared 20 floors in one night and even challenged a behemoth with only one casualty. You really are Heroes! Just a shame you couldn’t recover its magic stone, you could have made A-lot of money off of it.”

She then returned to work as ever, either not noticing the dirty looks the students gave her or just not caring in the least. However, whether or not she knew it, her words had bitten deep into their moral. They were realizing for the first time since their summoning just how hostile this world is, and how hostile it will continue to be.

Without replying, they marched quietly out the doors of the Orcus Dungeon aware of one cruel truth. They’d slipped up, they’d lost, and because of it they’d lost one of the few real heroes they had. And in this world, if it happened again there would be no such forgiveness.

* * *

It was only noon by the time the students got back to the inn, but everyone was herded back to their rooms to rest and receive medical attention.

Hiyama Daisuke entered his room alone. His roommate, Kondo Reiichi, had been critically wounded and was rushed off to the infirmary in front of his eyes. Daisuke could still remember him as he tried striking a conversation about football just the night before. He could still remember how annoying the guy he seemed that night, as he was trying to get some sleep at the time.

Daisuke went up to his desk and placed his hands on it as he tried to lean down and catch his breath. In front of him laid on a stand, was a beautifully carved sword. It was the shape of a traditional long sword with a somewhat thinner blade, its hilt and sheath were inlaid with silver and ivory swirls like a dancing flame.

I was a gift from the king’s treasury that he, like many other students, had received after completing the first two weeks of training. It was supposedly able to create flame of exorcism that damaged a creature’s soul rather than its body, limiting its use of magic. Though he’d been proud to receive it, he’d found that its enchantment prevented him from using it for spells. It’s done little more than sit on his shelf ever since.

“Fuck.”

He said as the emotions of that day started catching up with him.

“Fuck!”

He cried out, throwing everything off his desk with a sweep of his hand and sending the priceless blade skittering across the floor. He sat down heavily on his bed, his head in his hands as he remembered everything that happened.

They’d gotten caught in a hypnotic trap, were transported to a room full of monsters too high level for them, and were forced to watch as their strongest “heroes” got curb-stopped by the scariest monster he’d ever seen. Like most people he’d panicked, he’d ran to the stairs with all his might only to be blocked by a wall of skeletons. He’d fought and chopped and cast all the spells he knew, but not a single of the fuckers went down and he watched as his roommate got carved up like a cow in a slaughterhouse right in front of him. Finally he watched Hajime, fucking Hajime, the bastard who’d abandoned him, framed him, and gotten him four years of juvenile detention, die saving his life.

There were no words to describe it, just…

“fuck.”

He said quietly as he leaned back onto the bed. Why did he do it? Especially after everything Daisuke after everything he and Hajime had done to each other. Why would Hajime of all people do it? Why?

He dreamily remembered everything that had happened since they’d been brought to this world. With everything that’s happened it all seemed like a lifetime ago.

* * *

The moment they were transported he was terrified. When strange lights formed around Hajime and Kouki’s feet and began holding everyone down as it spread, his imagination kicked in and began thinking of all the most horrible ways they could die. He wondered if aliens had invaded the planet and if they were the first unlucky bystanders to get vaporized. He terrified himself with the idea that they’d woken up an evil spirit and were being put in a corpse party. He considered it might have been a curse created by ancient magic and they were about to be sacrificed to some demon god.

All of this and more ran through his mind as his entire class was transported to a different world, and as he emerged blinking from the light with everyone else, the first thought in his head was whether or not they were going to be dissected by aliens.

Needless to say, when everything was explained by the priest in a funny hat, he felt completely silly. Like anyone else, he was relieved to know he wasn’t dead and was really excited at the chance to become a hero. He really didn’t understand why many of his classmates were panicked by the fact they couldn’t go home, he really didn’t like their world much anyway. Seriously, screw that place.

Things only seemed to get better from there. The day he got his status plate, he found out he had a powerful combat class. He was a “swordsman”, and as all classes use magic in some form or another, it turned out that meant he was more like a mix of battlemage and spellsword from old RPGs. He didn’t even need a free hand or a magic formation to cast spells either, he could just use the mana in his sword.

He’d made sure to rub it in Hajime’s face when he found out he had some useless “magician” class. “Karma’s a bitch huh?” was the thought running through his head at the time. Though he would later learn just how right he was.

* * *

The next two weeks passed like a dream. He’d trained every day with one of the kingdoms knights and continuously improved his skills with magic. He even trained in his free time, like Kouki, while most of the other students left to play around. He wanted to be strong, stronger than anyone and become a hero like in the comics he read. He mimicked the battle stances they taught him to perfection, fought the knights in practice with everything he had, and ran the group drills as the leader or main tank. He put his heart into everything he did, every move he made and in only two weeks leveled up twice.

Hajime on the other hand gave up after three days. He stopped bothering to show up to practice except when it was mandatory and spent most of his time in the library whenever he just couldn’t be asked. He seemed more content to spent time reading storybooks and drag everyone else down with him when the time came, rather than putting any actual work into making sure he can pull his own weight.

It infuriated him that this guy was still considered a “Hero” by the knights when he was making it clear to everyone that he couldn’t be asked. So he had an idea. If the fucker didn’t care he was going to put his and everyone else’s lives in danger, then all Daisuke had to do was make him care. He’d just scare the shit out of him until he was motivated enough to move his ass.

The next day when Hajime bothered to show up to the training grounds, Daisuke made sure to walk into the warehouse behind him, Take a wooden sword from one of the weapon racks as loudly as he could, and attacked him the moment he turned around. The bastard flailed out of the way like a coward losing his mind before he finally noticed who it was. His dumbfounded look was almost as much gold as his panicked nose-dive moments before.

“Yo, Nagumo. This level up stuff is great right? I’m only level seven and twice twice as strong as I’ve ever been. It’s like magic.”

I gave him the first one-liner that came to mind. Admittedly it was a little stupid but it worked did its job. I’ve never been able to read Hajime well, but I’m pretty sure I scared him shitless. He just stood there staring as I took my sword out of the ground.

“Hey that’s so mean Nagumo, giving your old friend the silent treatment.”

“I kind of want to know why you tried to kill me before we have a casual chat.”

“What old “friends” can’t have a friendly spar now and then?”

And he immediately killed the mood. That has always been one of Hajime most annoying quirks, whenever he was supposed to get angry or surprised he’d just “default” to this blank, passive-aggressive tone. He wasn’t doing it because he wasn’t scared or angry, he just had a weird habit of turning stuff “off” as he put it. It really creeped Daisuke out sometimes.

“Speaking of which, Meet me behind the first tower to the right of the training grounds, and bring a weapon.”

Whether or not he got the reaction he wanted, he still had to go on otherwise. This guy needed a boot up his as if he was going to do anything. So, Daisuke made sure he had that extra boost as he walked out.

“Unless you’re scared.”

And like promised Hajime met him behind the training tower.

* * *

The fight didn’t go at all like he’d planned. The start went exactly as he planned and started with Daisuke getting the first hit in, but that’s where everything started crumpling apart.

Hajime, instead of getting up to fight or at least trying defend himself, just crouched over and threw up. Daisuke decided it was probably a bad move, so he kicked the guy over to remind him he was still in the middle of a fight. Hajime slowly got up, but instead of attacking or trying to cast a spell, he just put a basic sword guard up while Daisuke attacked again. Daisuke just waited he shakily got up, and thought he’d try getting a little rougher to goat him into at least defending himself. So Daisuke attacked again and Hajime didn’t fight back. So Daisuke attacked harder, and Hajime still didn’t fight back. So Daisuke attacked again…….

(What the hell is wrong with this guy?)

He was pretty much lost for words. No matter how much he trashed him, Hajime never made any move to defend himself in any way. Did he have a fetish for this or something? Why the hell wasn’t he at least whimpering or something? Yet not matter what he did, Hajime just had a dead-passive look.

Everything was finally and completely ruined when he heard a familiar girl’s voice yelling in their direction. Apparently Hajime’s “new friends” had found them and what a position to be caught red handed. For all intensive purposes Daisuke imagined he looked like a bully beating up some random kid, something he was seriously not going for.

Kaori rushed over and tried healing Hajime’s wounds with magic while the retard of justice tried to ineffectually chew him out. Seriously these guy’s where completely one dimensional, if it were for their looks they’d be the dumbasses everyone made fun of during exams. Why did anyone hang out with them?

Having enough, Daisuke just decided to walk away before things became even more of a mess. That night was the night that Meld announced their little dungeon diving misadventure.

* * *

That night He’d been stuck with Kondo Reiichi as a roommate. For obvious reasons they’d paired roommates of the same gender, so his request to be paired with one of the cute mage girls hadn’t gone over well with Meld.

No one else wanted him and his two westaboo friends already had a room together. So, he made this big fuss about not being able have a room until Meld just stuck his annoying ass on the first person that came to mind( coincidentally, when Hajime requested a room to himself, Meld face-palmed hard enough to crack his helmet. If he’d just given everyone their own room he wouldn’t have had to deal with whiny high-schoolers all day, as they had more than enough).

So Daisuke had to deal with the guy trying to get him to talk about football all night. He didn’t know or care about football at all, but that night he hated the sport more than any evil in the world. When the guy finally got bored and went to sleep was one of the happiest moment s in his life.

That morning they went into the dungeon. It was surprising at first how different it was to his imagination, it was kind of like going to the movie theatre with a reception thing in front, and you had to turn in a ticket to get to the fun part.

Once you were inside however was a completely different story. It was like an older RPGs version of a dungeon with long, winding cave systems that met with ancient ruins of some evil empire. Monsters practically (and literally) crawled out of the cracks in the floor.

It was amazing and just what he’d hoped for. The first few rooms were such a breeze that he didn’t even get to fight most of the time, the times he did were when the knights would occasionally throw a monster they weakened to one of the students. Every now and then it would go Hajime’s way, and Daisuke would look to see his reaction, only to find an already dead monster and Hajime staring at the floor or the walls. Maybe it was an earth magic thing? Like he was trying to read the future in the pebbles.

Anyway, everything was fine until the 20th floor. Though, in hindsight, that probably meant it was the first boss room. That’s where everything went to shit.

Kouki with the stats of one of Hairihi Kingdom’s greatest warriors and armed with its strongest weapon, could barely defeat the first boss, all the while getting his face beaten into a new shape and using up all his mana. A boss that Meld and his men have already beaten and then some, as beating the first 40 floors is the requirement to be part of the king’s royal guard. Not our proudest moment.

The immediate next thing to happen is a hypno-magic trap springs on all the students and causes to vast majority of them to actively try setting it off, with he himself taking the prize for dumbass of the year by being the idiot who succeeds. What follows next was a story about what happens to most people when you lock them in a room with an army of monsters and one OP demon. They flip the fuck out. All ending with the man he hated most in the world showing the class his impression of the lord of the rings “You shall not pass!” scene.

It was a long day.