Nada Volume 2, Prologue

Volume Two – Wedge

Episode 0 – Prologue

It happened while the night was still deep.

The dungeon city—Inferno. This city holds three dungeons, each named Tohe, Toro, and Podie. All three have their own traits, and the city itself is divided into three sectors based on them.

Among them, the most famous is Podie, around which the academy spreads out, as well as Larva Academy—the only adventurer-training institution in the country, established about a century ago.

There, people from all over gather with the aim of becoming adventurers. Day after day, they hone themselves and train relentlessly.

But—the place the “child” reached was different.

It was the Tohe district, where rough and violent adventurers gather.

Around him was a pleasure quarter. Though the sky was still black, the area overflowed with lights fueled by burning Calvaon.

Many kinds of people wandered there—courtesans, adventurers, a man who looked like a noble, and even students wearing the Larva Academy uniform. Their statuses were all different, and whether they carried weapons depended on the person.

Students are generally discouraged from entering the district, but there is no strict enforcement.

According to the first Academy Headmaster—who believed that to stake your life fighting monsters daily, you needed one or two sources of “comfort”—this policy has remained unchanged for a hundred years.

There is also an old tale that the headmaster once said, “Knowing how to hunt monsters is not enough to be considered a full-fledged adventurer. Find your reason for delving into dungeons, relieve your frustrations in moderation, learn to handle pleasures well—only then can you call yourself a first-rate adventurer.” But the details are unclear.

“Uhh… ah…”

The child looked to be around seven years old. His exact age was unknown, but his height was very small. His hair reached his shoulders, long but unkempt, dull, and filthy with dirt and sweat.

His condition was so bad that one couldn’t even tell if he was a boy or a girl.

His cheeks were sunken, likely from not having eaten a proper meal in days.

His legs already staggered, and he barely managed to stand by leaning on a wooden stick he held.

His clothing was nothing but a single piece of ragged cloth—worn-out and filthy.

Drawn like an insect to light, the child stepped into the entrance of the pleasure district, perceiving it as a place where beautiful lights gathered.

But he never went inside. At the corner of the entrance, he collapsed as if dead.

Yet, he was still breathing.

He was alive.

But he no longer had the strength or will to stand. All he could do was groan in pain.

And—at that moment, someone approached.

An adult.

Whether it was a man or a woman was impossible to tell. They wore a robe entirely black, and their face was hidden beneath a deep hood.

Hearing the child’s groans, the adult approached. After confirming he was still alive, they curled their dry, cracked lips into a grin visible from the small opening under the hood.

Taking advantage of the child’s lack of consciousness, the adult lifted the far-too-light child and carried him away.

The child no longer had the strength to resist, nor even the capacity for coherent thought.

For now, he simply slept—almost like dying—in the arms of the black-clad figure rocking him like a cradle.

Confirming the child had fallen asleep, the adult let out a suspicious “hihih” laugh.

No one knew where the child went afterward.

No—no one in Inferno even knew the child existed in the first place.

And then, the black-clad adult did not return to the pleasure district, but vanished into the night’s darkness with the child still in their arms.

◆◆◆

Larva Academy’s academy city is home to a young man.

He wasn’t born to any special lineage—he came from a farming family. He didn’t seem blessed with comrades or fate, and even within the academy, he was one of the people who lingered in the shadows.

The man woke up in his room. His large frame made the small bed look a little inadequate, but he slept there nonetheless. Early in the morning, when he heard a bird call from somewhere, he roused himself and sat up.

Even sitting up, the man remained large. His shoulders were unusually broad, his arms as thick as tree trunks, and his hands looked like large leaves.

He was a young man called Nada.

He had no family name—he hadn’t been born into a household that had one.

When Nada woke in the morning, he didn’t head to one of the nearby eateries; instead, he cooked breakfast in the small kitchenette in his room. The nearby dining halls served large portions, but they were a little pricey. Considering money alone, he thought cooking for himself was far more economical.

“Cook” for Nada didn’t mean anything elaborate. He knew he wasn’t good at cooking. What he made was simply: he took a large pot, put in oats and a lot of water, lit the stove (which burned Calvaon as fuel), and simmered. The oats absorbed the water and swelled into a porridge; when it was ready, he added a pinch of salt and stirred slowly. He put it in the largest dish he owned and stuck a wooden spoon in it.

Then he took some fruit from the kitchen, fruits that looked like apples, called ajed, pale yellow-green in color. But Nada didn’t much like those fruits. True, ajed was cheap and nutritious—eating them alone prevented beriberi, and sailors, travelers, and even adventurers had long favored them as an all-purpose nutritious food, but their taste was horribly sour.

One bite would contort the face from the sourness. Some people got used to and even came to like that tart taste, but Nada never could.

As an adventurer who went into dungeons, he ought to care about his health, and four ajed at breakfast would be fine, but he restrained his hand and only grabbed two.

He put them on the small round table in his room and first ate his oatmeal. With only the salt seasoning, it wasn’t very tasty, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and he finished it in less than ten minutes. Then he glowered at the two ajed on the table.

He hesitated to reach for them. He really didn’t want to eat them, it seemed.

Still, he forced himself and brought an ajed to his mouth with the peel on. Whether peeled or not, the sourness didn’t change; peeling was just a bother, so he ate it with the skin.

Biting into the taut skin like a water balloon, his teeth sank in and produced a sandy, crunchy sensation—not a pleasant texture. If it had been sweet, it would have been good, but sweet ajed was expensive, beyond what Nada could afford.

When his teeth sank into the flesh, sour juice leapt across his tongue. At that instant, he grimaced and stopped eating. After his mouth adjusted a little, he resumed chewing and worked the fruit around the pit to strip the flesh away.

His pace of eating the ajed was slow compared to the oatmeal: for only two fruits, it took longer than the oatmeal.

When he finished, Nada put on his school uniform. Larva Academy’s student uniform is simply a black jacket emblazoned with the blue rose crest—the symbol of the first headmaster—and you may wear whatever you like under it. Students planning to enter the dungeon aren’t required to wear the jacket.

The academy provides uniforms but doesn’t force them on people; for Nada, whose body was large and for whom clothing was scarce, just having a uniform was a blessing. He put on a wrinkled white shirt with a cheap jacket bought from the academy and black trousers of the same sort, and then pulled the jacket on.

He grabbed a simple rucksack and rushed toward the front door, ready for class—and there, he found a letter.

He didn’t remember writing it. So someone had sent it, but Nada had few acquaintances and couldn’t think who would send him mail. Iris didn’t have a hobby of writing letters; Dan would come directly to the apartment if he had business, or talk to him during shared classes.

That left the academy or a senior from when he left Aghiya, but when Nada picked up the letter, it seemed not to be from any of them.

Because the back was sealed with wax. And on the front, there was a crest that looked like one belonging to a noble family.

The crest depicted a rose.

Nada only knew one noble acquaintance: Iris. But he also knew that Iris’s family crest was not a rose.

Who had sent this letter, and why would a noble send it to him? Nada turned the envelope over and opened it, thinking deeply.

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