Mapping: The Trash-Tier Skill That Got Me Into a Top-Tier Party: Volume 6 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The New Ace of the Arrivers

  The Other Navigator

  The Young Prodigy and the Phantom Sage

  The Tyrant Princess

  The Loyal Knight

  A Play Behind the Curtain

  One Step Forward, One Step Back

  Wild Card

  Defeat

  The World Wasn’t Kind to Me

  Ghost in the Rain

  The Weakened Knight

  The Worst Combination

  Afterword

  Color Illustrations

  Bonus Short Stories

  About J-Novel Club

  Copyright

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  The New Ace of the Arrivers

  Fame, fortune, magic, wisdom... Endless treasure and bounty lay within the otherworldly depths of the land—depths yet to be conquered that beckon people with the intangible power of curiosity. Be it in the name of hopes and dreams or greed and self-interest, adventurers from all walks of life risked everything to challenge the dungeons.

  One of many daring groups was the Arrivers, our party who once held the remarkable claim of being the closest to actually clearing a dungeon. With five top-tier adventurers in their respective fields and me, our navigator with Mapping, we conquered one impenetrable floor after another. We soon broke the record for furthest floor reached in the Dungeon of Puriff, yet our smooth sailing was doomed to come to an abrupt end.

  Jin, the backbone of the party, lost his life in a tragic turn of events on floor 21. The other members soon left town one after another, effectively disbanding the party. I too decided to retire from adventuring, but found myself unable to forget the glory of our heyday.

  And so I gathered up our scattered members and reformed the Arrivers. After resolving challenge upon challenge that had stood in our way, the five of us were finally ready to get back in the dungeon. But...

  “What should we do about this...?”

  There was one last problem keeping us out of action—we were a member short. Boss rooms in the dungeon normally allowed a maximum of six people to enter at once, so that was naturally considered the ideal party size. But with Jin gone, the Arrivers were only five strong.

  A year ago, the Arrivers had been unable to conquer floor 21. Our lack of offensive power was a major contributing factor in our failure, and despite the fact that we’d all grown stronger since, there was still no point in challenging the dungeon with just the five of us. In other words, we had to find our number six.

  The warp crystals on each floor of the dungeon would only transport users to floors they’d reached before. That meant onboarding a new member would involve getting them through every floor we’d already cleared so far, essentially doubling the work. And for that reason, we had decided to make finding a capable sixth member the new Arrivers’ top priority.

  We’d posted a recruitment advertisement at the dungeon guild a week ago, and now we had a mountain of applications to sort through. They detailed each potential recruit’s name, role, skillset, career history, and any other notable features of interest—these were the points we’d inquired about in our wanted ad.

  Although the Arrivers hadn’t been active for the past year, we were once the front-running dungeon party in town. Our reputation preceded us to this day, so we’d received a ton of applications. I’m not sure how word had spread, but we even had them coming in from other cities. Now, having a large pool of candidates to choose from wasn’t a bad thing, but there’s such a thing as too much. We were never going to get through all of these...

  “There were even more in the mailbox,” Roslia reported as she came inside. Roslia was our paladin and tank, wielder of the Holy Sword Fractus. She was once feared throughout Puriff as a partywrecker, but she eventually came to settle down with the Arrivers. She placed a bundle of envelopes on the table, along with the groceries she’d brought home from shopping.

  That added another ten candidates to the pool. We’d just finished sorting all the applications we’d received so far, but now it was back to work for us... I wanted to sigh, but this wasn’t Roslia’s fault. In fact, I should’ve thanked her for checking the mail. I split the bundle of envelopes in two and handed half to the silver-haired girl sitting next to me.

  “I’m exhausted, Note...”

  This whiner was Erin Fortlord, our mage and the talk of the country right now. Why, you ask? She’d beat out the favorite to win at the Seventh Sage Selection only to withdraw from the competition and walk away from it all. Why, you ask? Well, it was mainly because of me, but I tried not to think about that part too much. I still felt kinda bad about it.

  “C’mon, let’s take a break. Roslia brought food,” she suggested, slumping listlessly over the table.

  I’d just been thinking about taking a break myself, honestly. We both eagerly reached for the grocery bags Roslia had left on the table, only for her to smack Erin’s hand away.

  “These are ingredients for tonight’s dinner! No snitching,” she barked.

  “Okay, but...” Erin made a displeased face. “Why are you only fussing at me? What about Note?” Her gaze was fixed on my bread-stuffed cheeks.

  Roslia cleared her throat and looked straight at Erin as she continued, “Eating before dinner is a bad habit, Erin.”

  “But why am I the only one in trouble?!”

  “Just because other people are doing it doesn’t make it okay for you to do it too.”

  “That’s valid, but you need to stop Note already! He’s going for seconds!”

  “Do you want some, Miss Neme?”

  “Yes, please!”

  “And now he’s sharing with other people! Are you going to stand for that, Roslia?!”

  “I’m scolding you right now, Erin! Don’t try to change the subject!”

  “Again, why me?!”

  Seeing Erin and Roslia bicker like this was old hat around here. There was no point in reacting to it. If anything, it was actually kind of heartwarming. I mean, they mainly bickered because of me, but I tried not to think about that part too much. I knew I was really to blame.

  For the record, the little girl happily munching on bread I’d given her was Neme Pargin, our priestess. She both looked and acted like a child, but she was actually older than me. She’d gained some younger adventurer fans of late, though, so it was fair to say she was maturing. There was finally some hope for our party mascot.

  “Want some too, Force?” I offered.

  “No way. Not even I could eat right now... Don’t you feel sorry for Erin?” he responded by saying something considerate for once. Shocking.

  Force, the man still diligently going through the pile of applications, was our leader. He was an irresponsible skirt-chaser not long ago, but he’d recently developed some common sense that the party was otherwise sorely lacking. No, really, what had happened to him? I was pretty sure this was the first time he’d ever shown concern for Erin.

  “How does it look? Anyone promising?” I asked.

  “Nah. They all leave something to be desired.” He tossed the papers in his hand back on the table and sighed. “All of the applicants we’ve gotten are mid-rank adventurers. None of them even have any particularly good skills...”

  A person’s lot in life was largely determined by their skills—abilities divinely granted to them. One glance at someone’s skillset could tell you a great deal about their potential as an adventurer. I used to worry that mine would never cut it in combat, yet here I
was now judging others for their skills. How ironic.

  Of course, I’d come to learn that skills weren’t everything. There were obviously adventurers out there like Jin, who compensated for his skills with other talents and techniques. Still, looking at someone’s skillset was a quick and dirty way to get a read on them. We made sure to factor in applicants’ career histories and other merits before making a final call, but it was evident at this point that Jin had truly been in a league of his own.

  In reality, there weren’t many top-tier adventurers around to apply in the first place. The best of the best were already members of other parties. They weren’t going to shirk their current affiliations just to join up with us. If that’s what we’d been hoping for, we should’ve been scouting instead of fielding applications. We should’ve been taking direct action instead of waiting passively.

  But at present, the Arrivers didn’t have the personnel or funds for headhunting. If someone that good was interested in switching teams, they’d be better off seeking out another dungeon party in terms of benefits and pay. In the year we’d been on hiatus, both the Labyrinth Knights and Liberation had broken the Arrivers’ furthest-floor record. All the ambitious adventurers in town had already joined up with them.

  “I’ve managed to narrow it down to two, maybe three people... But it feels like I’m settling,” said Force. “I’d really prefer to pick someone that makes me go, ‘This is the one!’”

  “I agree. If we’re going to get past floor 21, we need the best candidate possible. We can’t afford to settle here.”

  We knew exactly how deadly the dungeon could be. Even with Jin at our side, we’d gotten crushed on floor 21. That was a mistake we could never take back, and one I never cared to repeat. To that end, we couldn’t compromise on our sixth member.

  “I guess I’ll put the candidates I just picked out in the no pile, then,” Force continued. “We’ll hold off until we find a new member that feels right.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s for the best.”

  I felt bad for turning so many people down, but we were going to pass on this round of applicants. I was certain none of them wanted to throw their lives away in the end floors of the dungeon either. If we picked someone half-heartedly at this juncture, it would hurt us all.

  “Then it’s a plan. Maybe some fresh-faced fifteen-year-old will get some incredible skill from their presentation ceremony soon. We can always take on a total newbie,” Roslia suggested.

  “Come to think of it, Roslia,” Force said, stretching his arms and sighing, “did you get the paperwork taken care of?”

  “Sure did! We’re all set.” You see, Roslia hadn’t just gone out shopping. She’d taken care of another important errand for us too. “I turned in everything to the guild, so we’re clear to go dungeon diving again.”

  Dungeoneering may seem like a chaotic endeavor, but there were actually a lot of regulations in place. One such regulation required every dungeon party to register with the guild and go through an approval process before they were allowed to enter the dungeon. The system existed to protect the adventurers themselves.

  Adding a new member to the party wasn’t cause enough to reinitiate the process, but reuniting a previously disbanded party was a different story. The paperwork had been what was holding us back from the dungeon now that we were all together again. Neme was the only one of us exempt from it, as she’d continued to dive with the Ultimate Invincible Partyz all this time.

  “Welp, shall we go for our first dungeon romp in a while?” Force suggested.

  “Sounds good to me,” I readily agreed.

  After several days of nothing but sitting and staring at applications, I was feeling stiff. I was plenty anxious to get out and move around some. More than that, I was anxious to find out just how much everyone had grown over the past year. Force had honed his blade in Swordmaster’s Sanctuary. Neme had formed and led her own party while learning how to be a better priestess. And Erin had reached the pinnacle of magehood by dominating the Seventh Sage Selection. I really wanted to see what they could all do firsthand.

  “I’m in!” chimed Roslia.

  “Gosh, you’re so hasty. But I’m in too,” Erin put forward reluctantly.

  “Neme wants to be included as well,” our tiny priestess piped up.

  “Then let’s get ready,” Force commanded. “While we’re at it, we should have a little contest to see who’s gotten the strongest.”

  *

  “Uhhh... I know I suggested a contest, but...” Force stammered.

  He and I both were standing stock-still in slack-jawed awe. Pretty much everyone else was in a similar state of stupor. Everyone but the cause of all this.

  “What?” the culprit said casually as she glanced over her shoulder.

  It was none other than our party mage, Erin Fortlord. But her reaction really didn’t do justice to the spectacle she’d just put on. You see, we were currently on floor 16. The very same floor 16 where we’d once struggled against wave after wave of a horseman army.

  Except now, the entire floor had been wiped out by a single one of us. Every last monster in the town area was defeated, and we were now surrounded by a burning wasteland. Erin’s rapid-fire barrage of insanely powerful magic had reduced the town to ash.

  What... What is this? She’s way too overpowered. Completely broken.

  I knew that Erin had practically limitless magical energy, but her training in the magic city had given her the stamina to put it to good use. She could now continuously cast a wide variety of spells she’d mastered. And the result? She was able to conquer floor 16 single-handedly. Clearing one of the later middle floors solo was virtually unheard of. A back-line mage doing it had to be unprecedented.

  Honestly, Erin’s power surpassed all reason. She’d already proven she was one of the top seven mages in the nation, but this was on a whole other level. Forget the country. I would’ve been surprised if there was any mage stronger than her in the entire world.

  That was something I’d only come to understand after seeing her perform outside of the limited rules of the Seventh Sage Selection. In the dungeon, she had free rein to fight as she pleased. She was the pinnacle of magehood, and the most terrifying thing of all was that she still had room to grow. Erin was now the MVP of the Arrivers. With her, reaching floor 30 was no longer a pipe dream. The question was whether or not she realized that for herself...

  “After defeating this many enemies, can we just say I win?” she asked.

  Erin had introduced herself to me by saying she’d become the best mage in the world, and now she was frighteningly close to that goal. She’d later admitted while we were fighting for our lives on floor 20 that it was just bluster, yet here she was... Her delusions were becoming reality.

  “Yeah, you win...” Force conceded. Even he was overwhelmed.

  With the exception of me, the Arrivers were all best in class when it came to their respective battle styles. Everyone played a different role, but their individual strengths within the party were pretty clear-cut. Force and Jin had always dominated, followed by Erin and Roslia. (Neme didn’t rank because, as our healer, she didn’t fight.)

  But that order had since changed. I couldn’t say for certain without seeing Force go all out, but I was pretty sure he now took second place behind our mage. Indeed, the Arrivers had themselves a new ace. The party once famous for Force and Jin’s handiwork would soon be spearheaded by Erin.

  This was going to shake up our strategy in finding a new member. Because I’d gained some competence on the front line, we’d been considering finding another back-line attacker. But with our firepower now concentrated in the rear, we’d be better balanced if we added to our front-line team. I had the feeling that our expeditions on future floors would go as smoothly as possible if we built our party around Erin.

  “What do you want to do? Shall we hit the boss room?” I asked Force.

  He shook his head and replied, “What’s the point? Erin wo
uld just steal the kill again.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. There aren’t any other monsters left here, so let’s move to a new floor.”

  The Other Navigator

  Until we secured our sixth member, the Arrivers couldn’t progress in the dungeon. As such, we decided on three intermediate goals to pursue. First was searching out potential candidates. We’d hoped to find someone promising by having an open application, but that hadn’t yielded any results. So instead, we were turning our efforts to scouting.

  The job fell to the party member with the most connections—Force. I’m not saying he had an incredible network or anything, but he was better suited for the task than the rest of us. Erin had zero friends, Roslia had her infamy, Neme was shy, and I was basically still the new guy in town. Yeah, there was pretty much no contest... I mean, Force had lived in Puriff the longest and he did have a considerable number of male friends. And with his personality now, he wouldn’t just try to pick up the first cute girl he saw. I figured it was safe to leave the task to him.

  Our second goal was replenishing our coffers. Since we’d been apart for a year, our funds were spent and we had squat to speak of for income. That had to change since we’d need capital to scout a new member, so we decided to put together a detachment to raid the dungeon for sellable loot.

  This assignment fell to Erin and Roslia. Erin had the power to blast through most any monster, and Roslia had the defenses to lure them together and act as a shield. They were the ideal tag team, perfectly capable of handling the middle floors together. To prepare, Erin was currently learning monster and trap detection magic. While she couldn’t cast both spells at the same time, she should be able to stay abreast of any and all threats by using them in turn.

  My biggest worry was how the girls were going to get along. Sending Erin and Roslia off into the dungeon alone together was kind of scary, you know? They were always at each other’s throats, but surely they’d lay off when their lives depended on it, right? Right?

  Our third goal was essentially figuring out how to run a dungeoneering party. Jin used to manage everything for us, so, candidly speaking, we were in pretty dire straits. What kind of supplies did we need? How did we account for resources? There was just so much we didn’t know. Relying entirely on Jin had come back to bite us.