Beyond M-Eclipse: Easy Mode LIVE

———Munsz———

“What? Does the wine taste funny to you?” Scien asked, seeing me staring into the reflection on the wine surface. “Or are you just mesmerized by how plain your face is?”

“N-No. It tastes great, really! I was just lost in thought for a while.” I quickly said so she doesn’t get any weird ideas.

“Feels like a lot of people are like that nowadays. What’s up?” She asked as she leaned heavily against the sofa. “Things have been getting crazier and crazier after the initial fad of the first few weeks causing things to quickly cool down. Maybe we’ll reach another breaking point soon.”

“Please don’t say that.” I really don’t want anything else to happen. I know we got disproportionately lucrative jobs due to the unknown third party sponsoring this place, and the others at least not having to worry about a possible terrorist attack by a single unstable individual, but people outside our and a few other bubbles do not have that luxury.

“It’s gonna happen, dude. There’s no stopping that.” She casually said. “As things stand, we just have to accept that things will happen. We certainly can’t do anything about it.”

“It’d be nice if we could.” I remarked.

“That’s on you more than anything. You haven’t really been contributing anything to change the outside world. Then again, none of us have. It’s way too dangerous for anyone to step outside such a safe town.” She pointed out. “I doubt the bubble of protection on this town is gonna dissipate as long as those guys stay here. We’re certainly very lucky.”

“...So would you also be planning anything?” Since she’s the one who even bothered to point out that I am not really up to the task to do… anything supernatural, basically.

“Nah. I value my life quite a lot. I’m not gonna play a slot machine on whether or not I’m gonna die today.” She answered. “But back to you. You have certainly been keeping yourself out of trouble every single time. Not a shred of might on you.”

“You’re saying like that’s a bad thing. At least I keep myself pretty healthy.” I barely practiced magic, and I’ve been doing fine.

“As if that amounts to much nowadays. Do you even have basic self-defense down? Unless you’re strapped you might as well walk around with a ‘kill me’ sign taped to your back.” She mockingly said. “Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were required to be more physically capable going forward. If nothing else, the special jobs for when they go on trips need someone with some experience in combat. You do know you get a bonus for participating, right?”

“Yeah, but the pay for our regular schedule is already good, and the price for groceries and rent aren’t that high.” I’m doing pretty well with how surprisingly light the workload is. “I’m actually kinda surprised they even keep us around when they can set up a lot of automatic systems. If it can do something complex like a virtual reality that you don’t need a headset for, just imagine what else they could do.”

“It’s pretty clear whoever is in charge still understands the idea of human connection, which is why we stuck around.” She speculated. “If they were just taught by bots and nothing else… They’ll still have each other to keep company, but there’s only so many things that aren’t considered human can do, regardless of their intelligence.”

“If that’s the case, then that’s rather reassuring.” I remarked.

“...One thing for sure. There ain’t any robot P.E. teachers. I don’t think those positions are ever gonna be taken up by them.” Scien pointed out. “They’re gonna have it hard for sure. I know for a fact that if they were caught slacking, things might get dicey.”

“But no one has been fired yet, right?” So far there hasn’t been any incident regarding the teachers of any subjects. Kind of a miracle. Even in the previous iteration there were teachers who went out of line, even if you could count it on one hand.

“It’s probably because those fitness nuts have always been prioritizing their health and strength unlike you. I doubt those guys are gonna get replaced.” She replied. I don’t interact with them that much despite being employed under the same school. The subject they teach is obviously too different for there to be much talking point, and if we were just talking about the students… Honestly it feels kinda bad to talk about them behind their back, but something you just have to share some opinions with others.

“What even is the threshold for that? We got a ranking and numerical system in place, right?” I asked, since they could actually set a standard for those guys. With magic in the mix the gap between each person in terms of experience and strength is greatly expanded.

“It’s probably not something that lofty. I think in general they’re supposed to be stronger than the students…” She said with an expression that tells me the caveat to that statement.

“…Why are they so damn strong, actually? That class…” We’ve all heard the others complain about them millions of times at this point. We still don’t know what makes them so different.

“No clue. I’m just glad those guys don’t need to worry about reaching that lofty standard. Rico is doing a good job keeping them in check, it seems.” That just raised more questions of why she’s also so darn strong!

“It certainly feels odd to have someone like her running around stronger than we are.” Pellek suddenly spoke up after being quiet for the entire conversation. “I know it’s probably due to the secrets she held, but it still feels embarrassing, honestly.”

“At least you can admit it. I think part of surviving in the new world is knowing your limits. Back in the past you could technically beat an athlete or a wrestler if you could catch someone off-guard using cheap shots. Nowadays even that isn’t guaranteed to work.” Scien pointed out. “There are also guns. Hard to beat those, and now you could tank it with no equipment. Crazy ain’t it?”

“I still wouldn’t recommend not wearing protective gear though. Even cheap stuff can be surprisingly useful in a pinch.” Pellek said… Did something happen that we weren’t aware of?

“Uhh… So anyway!” Scien seems to realize the implication as well but keeps it shut. No need to bring that up. “How have you and the others been doing, grinding and all that?”

“Been pretty good, actually. I used the free day to go as deep as I could, around sixty floors.” Pellek answered. Sixty? Alone? I think I have heard that the ceiling for most people is around forty to fifty. “This bastard here got deeper though. Homari, what’s the count again? It was a month or two back, right?”

“One hundred and ten.” She recounted. I don’t even think the kids in that class can even go that far? Right? Or am I misremembering something…

“Yeesh… Do we even know how far those kids can go?” Scien asked.

“Not that we know of.” Pellek replied before he began eating stuff on the charcuterie board. “There’s no way to even accurately tell which level you’re on. Chances are you’re gonna lose count. No one can even bother to double check since we can’t double check. There’s no way to do it.”

“…There’s actually a database for it.” Homari suddenly exclaimed.

“Excuse me?” Scien said, clearly taken aback by the news. “Since when? Why did you never tell us? Can you actually show us?”

“It’s on my datapad, wait a moment.” She said before unfolding the school pad thing they gave out to us. I’m surprised she kept it with her right now. We’re not really doing anything today.

She then suddenly tapped on the section that was blacked out for me at least, then pressed on a few other options I didn’t recognize, and then the screen changed to show a list. What in the world?

We all leaned in to get a better look at the display, and it seems to be a log of who entered the dungeon and how far they go down. Most of it seems to end on 0 and 5, which isn’t surprising with the teleport circles. It really incentivizes people to clear the dungeon until they reach a checkpoint, making them more likely to be more bold.

“How did you gain access to this?” Scien asked what everyone was thinking as she scrolled through the history of dungeon runs. It can make out if an expedition was in a group of people stumbling upon each other coincidentally, and more importantly if they fight solo. She scrolled until we saw the one with the number she said she achieved.

“Just need to get higher level access. This is only a single above what you guys got by default, and even then there are a lot of options missing.” She explained. I honestly thought those blacked out options were more of a joke than anything else. I mean, why even let us possibly be able to get access to certain juicy data like this one?

“How in the world? There has been zero information on that.” Pellek pointed out.

“I came upon it by chance. They told me to be quiet about how I obtained it.” She explained. They? I guess someone had to grant her that level of access in the first place, but that just brings more questions as to why they want people to figure it out themselves.

But why? Shouldn’t every teacher have the same level of access and have no need to do this… side quest? It’d be less convoluted that way.

“Just what in the world are they thinking?” Scien couldn’t help but say as she scratched her head. “Who in their right mind would have the time to do a side mission? Did you even get anything outside of access?”

“I got a bonus that I can’t disclose.” So there is a tangible reward!?

“What the hell is up with this school, dude. Why are they deadass paying people to do a side quest when we are also employed to help students? Isn’t that kinda crazy?” Scien said, edging on complaining. It’s hard to actually be mad when it’s optional and the base payment and work environment are already good. Obviously all these extra bits will drain their coffers and don’t actually affect us, but it’s hard to ignore when they are also our employer.

“A hundred and fifty five…” Pellek muttered as Homari scrolled to a record of someone hitting that number, and the ID attributed to them alongside the fighting style that was somewhat recorded and put into the database, there’s only one person who fits such an unorthodox fighting style. “This Emmie girl is still as crazy as ever… Is that Kenni? She’s ten floors ahead of you.”

“...Huh? What’s this?” Scien said as she saw a very odd entry in the record. It simply read ‘Can’t be bothered to count’. What in the hell is that message?

Homari then tapped on the ID and checked their previous runs as well, most of them having the same result with only a few having a definitive floor count.

“Fighting style is also not definitive?” Pellek said, since that also gave a similar message. It’s a bit weird that they can choose to obfuscate the result as well, even for a person who has access. “Is there anyone else with that sort of characteristic?”

“I only found two more.” She said before she continued scrolling.

“...Did that say four hundred and thirty?” Scien quickly grabbed her hand to stop her from scrolling, seeing a very old record from a couple of months back. “It’s a two person job. One uses a staff, one uses twin spears… Who are they?”

“...You know, I see why they don’t want to make this public.” Pellek remarked, seeing our shocked expression. “Oh, look, the doctors are fighting!”

“What? Really?” Scien and I then turned to see the two actually fighting. Cevin and Leb have always been rivals since forever, albeit more one-sided on Leb’s part. “If it wasn’t for the surprisingly large play area then I would’ve bet on Leb to easily skewer Cevin with that weird twin spears style of his. A spellcaster really needs quite a distance to make their fighting style work.”