Jujutsushi 281.1
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Chapter 281: The Unexpected Someone They Ran Into
TL : Cnine
ED/PF :
R1[1-3], R2[4-6]
Part 1
「AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?」
From within the black abyss, Shimokawa’s heart-rending scream tore through the void.
But even despair screamed at full force soon burns out. In less than a minute, his throat gave out, and the cries dissolved into ragged silence.
「huff, huff... Huff... Huff...」
His chest heaving, Shimokawa struggled to pull his thoughts back together, calming the mind that had gone stark white with fear and confusion.
「Where... am I?」
The world around him was swallowed by absolute darkness—no shapes, no distance, no light. And as an aquamancer, Shimokawa had no skill that could grant him sight in such a place.
But the utter absence of light alone told him the truth. This was not the tower where he had slept just a while ago.
「Dammit... So I really was banished somewhere...」
The names of Ueda and Nakai rose to his lips, almost spilling out, but he stopped himself. If this place was a dungeon, shouting would be the same as ringing a dinner bell for monsters. He forced the sound back down his throat.
At least his head was working well enough to figure that out.
「Ah, hell… damn it... Takanashi, that b*tch...」
He had never imagined Takanashi would take such a blatant, reckless step. Regret and bitter helplessness surged through him, his whole body trembling, but... No matter how he felt, the real culprit was gone, and so were his friends.
The thought that Takanashi, his guilt now undeniable, was calmly carrying on alongside their classmates filled him with dread. Still, Shimokawa barely had the capacity to worry about anyone but himself. Concern was all he could spare; action was beyond him.
If Takanashi was telling the truth, then he had been forcibly cast away by teleportation magic.
He had no clue how far he’d been displaced. But from the way Takanashi spoke, it didn’t feel like a simple relocation within the dungeon.
No, this felt deliberate. As if he’d been hurled somewhere absolute, somewhere that ensured he would never reunite with his classmates.
And even if it were merely another dungeon sector, Shimokawa alone had no realistic way to catch up with the others as they pressed onward.
「C-calm down... I’m alive. My body’s intact. I still have magical power... It’s fine. As long as it’s just survival, I can definitely pull through」
The harsh dungeon survival experiences he’d endured until now anchored his reason, even as despair pressed in on all sides. Panicking was pointless. Despair was useless.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was surviving.
「———— Ngh, huff… Alright. I’m calm now.」
With water magic he could now use as instinctively as breathing, he produced a measured amount of water, drank it, then splashed his face clean.
The darkness ahead remained absolute, but at least he felt refreshed.
「For now, this place... Definitely feels like a dungeon.」
He soon realised he was lying atop a hard stone floor. Touching it with his hand, he felt evenly patterned grooves, proof that the ground was paved with stone tiles.
「It’s a bit warm, but not unbearable. No weird smells either… So at least I’m not dropping dead on arrival.」
He could have ended up in far worse. A volcano vomiting fire, a frozen wasteland of endless ice, a swamp that killed you just for breathing. The world was full of places where survival was a joke. By comparison, an enclosed space, something dungeon-like, felt almost merciful.
「Just don’t let this be one of those sealed-off prison setups...」
That was the true nightmare. No doors. No cracks. No clever solutions. Just a perfect box where all he could do was wait for hunger to win. A slow, stupid, hopeless way to go.
He could handle danger. Monsters, traps, cursed hallways. Any of it. Anything but being boxed in with nothing but his thoughts. Clutching that thin thread of hope, Shimokawa crept forward, step by careful step, hands sweeping the darkness like he was apologising to it.
Somewhere along the way, time quietly gave up being counted.
He kept feeling his way across the stone floor, stubbornly persistent, but all he managed to learn was that he seemed to be standing in a pretty large hall. That was the sum total of his discoveries, when—
「Huh? What’s this? Why’s it suddenly getting bright—」
Before he could process it, his vision began to clear.
Light. Real light crept into the suffocating darkness.
「Oh! That’s a passage!」
Upon a closer look, he saw a corridor leading into the hall, sunlight spilling in like a quiet promise. It wasn’t the cold, artificial glow of dungeon panels. It was warm, gentle, and undeniably real.
「Yes! I can totally get outside from here!」
Pulled along by hope like a fool chasing a mirage, Shimokawa sprinted down the passage.
What awaited him beyond it, however, was a fresh and merciless vision of despair.
「————Hold on… you’re kidding me… seriously… this place… don’t tell me… it’s a desert.」
Under the pale light of dawn lay a barren panorama: serrated ridges of rock and an endless stretch of rust-coloured sand, so lifeless it seemed to repel green itself.
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The conclusion was unavoidable. This ruin stood in the very heart of a desert. Whether it belonged to a dungeon’s desert zone or the natural world remained unclear for now.
The ruins he’d been cast into sprawled wider than expected, yet they lacked the endless depth of the dungeon he’d survived before. There were no bottomless corridors, no dark promise of deeper layers. If such places existed, he hadn’t found them.
「Damn it… so the monsters follow me even here.」
His exploration was barely underway when hunger took shape. A pack of monsters emerged, drawn by the promise of prey.
They were hounds, red-dog in form, their sand-coloured fur broken by pale markings. Creatures born for the desert, blending perfectly with the wasteland around them.
The pack he instinctively named the 『Sand Dog』 showed no trace of magic, no arcane threat.
「Even on my own, I’m not losing to this kind of small fry anymore!」
He talked big, sure, but Shimokawa wasn’t stupid. He ducked into the ruins’ corridors so he wouldn’t get surrounded, slapped up an 『Aqua Shield』 to slow them down, and then calmly sniped them one by one with 『Aqua Sagitta』. Textbook, safe, zero heroics. Result: sand dogs defeated.
「Huff… Man, this sucks. Not having a tank is stressful as hell. Even dealing with weak mobs feels like my heart’s doing sprints.」
Now that he thought about it, he’d basically never fought solo. Dungeon runs had always been a three-man operation, the teamwork was also so smooth it felt automatic.
This battle made him painfully aware of just how much he had relied on his companions until now.
「Anyway, if it is just small-time mobs like these hanging around, this does not look like one of those ‘everyone dies instantly’ zones.」
His dungeon experience kicked in, quietly mapping out the ecosystem. In the darkest underworlds, even the weakest creatures were werewolves. The mere existence of weak monsters said everything. This was a land where even the frail could scrape by.
「Even if the monsters can be dealt with, survival itself might be another matter….」
Even allowing for being flung here with only the clothes on his back, Shimokawa had far too little on him.
At best, he was wearing a tracksuit that doubled as sleepwear, and at least he had shoes on so he could move quickly if needed.
Nothing else. Not even his glasses. He had been asleep, after all, and left them by the pillow.
「Yeah, not worrying about water is nice and all, but how the hell am I meant to light a fire?」
Had he possessed Momokawa’s emergency survival kit, the answer would have been simple. But now, he did not even have a knife to his name.
Before him lay the sand dog he had fought and slain. Meat, hard-earned and precious. And yet, without a blade to cut it or fire to cook it, it was useless. Shimokawa had endured countless survival situations, but the thought of eating raw monster flesh chilled him more than hunger ever could.
「Ugh, if this was going to happen, I should have gone all in on learning that 『Simple Alchemy Formation』! But nooo, Momokawa just had to make me do potion development instead!」
Momokawa, damn you. The idea that he might be the hidden mastermind was nothing more than bitter fantasy, but it offered brief relief. Reality, however, showed no such mercy.
「Also, why is it so hot!? What is this place, a sauna!?」
It was a desert. Heat was inevitable. The only reason it had seemed tolerable when he awoke was because night had still ruled the land.
Now the sun stood high, blazing without mercy. A flawless blue sky stretched overhead, not a single cloud in sight, as though the world itself were declaring this place a desert in the purest sense. Heat poured down without restraint.
「Ughhh… seriously, thank god I am an Aquamancer… If I were a Pyromancer, I would have face-planted from heatstroke already.」
Splash. With a casual use of magic, cold water washed over him, cutting through the heat.
Even drenched, the intense heat and dry air dried his clothes in moments. It was not worth worrying about.
At this rate, even leaving the shade of the ruins and heading out into the open sands would not be much of a problem.
「…Welp. There is nothing else that looks remotely edible, so I guess I am butchering the sand dog with water magic.」
Deciding that food could not be put off any longer, he temporarily halted his exploration of the ruins and dragged the sand dog back to the hall where he had first awakened.
Now that the sun had risen, light streamed into the chamber, finally revealing its full form.
As expected, it was a vast hall. At its centre lay the remains of a circular fountain, reminiscent of a fairy plaza. There was no water left within it, only dry, exposed stone.
「Honestly, might not be a bad place for a wash.」
With a light-hearted thought, Shimokawa poured water into the dried fountain. Its volume was about the same as the bath he had once created in the academy tower. Filling it required little effort and hardly any magical power at all.
Water poured out in heavy streams, and the fountain filled up in no time at all. Just as he turned to face the sand dog’s corpse, ready to finally get to work, it happened.
「... Who's there!?」