Chapter 220 The Truth About the Girl
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
The air in the office grew heavy, thickened by the silence imposed by the soundproofing barrier. The girl with ink-black hair bowed deeply. Only the three principals and the girl remained inside. By Count Alegria’s order, the other knights had been stationed outside to stand guard.
”Once again, I offer my gratitude for your consideration,” she began, her voice formal and restrained. “There is no longer any need for concealment, so I shall properly identify myself. My name is Suzuri. I am fortunate enough to have been granted the honor of assisting my master in the conquest of the Royal Capital Labyrinth.”
Black hair and black eyes—a rare combination within the Kingdom of Restea. I had suspected she might be a highly capable outsider drawn here by the Labyrinth, and, as expected, her name did not follow this country’s naming conventions.
”Hmm. That is not a name I have heard in these parts,” the Count remarked, his tone analytical. “Are you not from this land?”
”Indeed. I was born in a distant place and came to the Royal Capital after completing my training,” she replied, maintaining the same ritualized politeness.
Although the sounds of her words were unfamiliar, they slipped into my mind with unnatural ease. A strange sense of déjà vu tugged at me, as though I had heard her voice somewhere before.
”Very well,” the Count continued. “Where, then, did you encounter my daughter?”
”In the depths of the Royal Capital Labyrinth. She rescued me while I was suffering from petrification, and afterward I entered her service as a scout.”
The Count continued his questioning, carefully drawing out additional details. Though it appeared to be a cordial conversation, I could see the practiced techniques of a man who thrived in politics. The sharp edge had vanished from his voice. His questions remained concise and measured, punctuated by a gentle expression that put his subject at ease. By separating the information he sought into small pieces, he could quietly observe which questions produced which reactions behind her calm gaze.
”I see. For someone of your skill, you were remarkably careless. No matter how capable one may be, the Labyrinth is not a place for a lone explorer.”
”No, sir,” Suzuri replied respectfully. “I was abandoned by my companions after they used me as a shield. …Please do not make such a face. In the end, it allowed me to meet both my master and your daughter.”
Whenever someone spoke of misfortune, the Count furrowed his brows as though sharing their pain. Suzuri, perhaps sensing the performance behind the gesture, paused briefly before each answer. Nevertheless, she responded without hesitation.
”To claim I felt nothing while waiting for rescue that never came would be a lie. However, I now feel only gratitude for the encounters that followed. I bear no resentment.”
”Hmph. Even so, discarding a valuable asset such as yourself…” The Count tapped his finger lightly against the desk. “Capable people are precious in any organization. Even if they made a mistake, would they not normally organize a rescue immediately? Tell me, Roeni-dono—Roeni-dono?”
His focus on the subject of abandonment was deliberate. It exploited the human tendency to seek agreement when discussing injustice. He wanted her to affirm common principles and, in doing so, reveal even more of herself. He had called on me to verify whether her account aligned with ordinary Labyrinth practice, yet her story felt so strangely familiar that the memory lodged in my throat.
”Basilisk,” I finally managed.
”You are well informed,” the Count observed.
”Is that the monster’s name?” Suzuri asked.
The Count was accustomed to conversations veering off course. Rather than showing irritation at my distracted response, he smoothly altered his approach. My single word had clearly triggered a reaction from Suzuri, and he immediately seized upon it. Whether he truly knew little about the creature or was merely pretending ignorance, he had sensed that the key to her story lay nearby.
”Yes. It inhabits the fifty-eighth floor,” she explained. “It was also the monster responsible for forcing the Marquis of Aprelton’s party to abandon their expedition. Following that incident, the floors beyond were popularly referred to as the ‘Deep Levels.’”
”Wait a moment,” the Count interrupted. “Paradis-sama was a Marquis? I distinctly remember him complaining about inheriting the title because it interfered with his desire to challenge the Labyrinth.”
”Hm? What does this mean?” I asked. “Are you acquainted with the Marquis as well?”
As I synchronized my understanding with the Count’s, the pieces fell into place.
It was not strange at all.
Yuuri and his companions had conquered the Labyrinth. Naturally, they had discovered a method of dealing with a Basilisk. Somewhere along the way, they had found Suzuri, still petrified, restored her, and welcomed her as a dependable ally.
The problem was that the failed expedition had taken place eighty years ago.
Could someone truly retain their sanity for that long while petrified?
Ordinarily, petrification was not viewed as especially terrifying because the victim’s body and equipment returned to normal when the curse was removed. Yet once the process fully set in, the victim could see nothing, hear nothing, and perceive no direction whatsoever. They were trapped in absolute darkness, stripped of every sensation.
Most people lost their minds within days.
Their spirits gradually faded until they became little more than empty shells returned to the Labyrinth.
It was impossible to believe.
And yet the girl sitting before us matched every legendary description.
She was the person everyone had assumed was dead.
The scout abandoned by the Marquis.
”The legendary scout!” I blurted out.
”Is that how the story is told now?” she asked quietly. “How romanticized.”
”Wait. Slow down,” the Count said, raising a hand. “I am no longer following this discussion. Explain everything from the beginning.”
The Count had assumed the matter could be explained through events from the past few months.
Instead, its roots stretched back eighty years.
Without explaining what had happened then—and how those events had been recorded—we could not proceed. Guild records were notoriously unreliable, especially when powerful people had reason to shape the narrative. Even so, I recounted what I knew to both the Count and Suzuri, who had been completely isolated from the outside world.
”…I see,” the Count said at last. “Yet that only deepens the mystery.”
He folded his hands together.
”If they had rescued Suzuri, the Marquis could have continued his schemes more effectively. The route to the fifty-seventh floor was already known. Why not simply prepare anti-petrification magic stones and challenge the depths again?”
”Indeed,” Suzuri replied. “Only recently, my own companions reached the exit of the fifty-seventh floor. While our primary objective was locating the Princess, the data collected by Suzuri-san and preserved within the Guild unquestionably contributed to that success. I cannot imagine the Marquis of that era being unable to make use of such valuable information.”
Ultimately, the Marquis’s decision to abandon Suzuri had indirectly aided Yuuri’s group.
Yet one question remained.
Why had a calculating man like the Marquis abandoned someone as useful as Suzuri?
He had protected Arman even at the cost of opposing royal authority. Why had he shown no similar attachment to Suzuri, who carried no such burden?
”With all due respect,” Suzuri began softly, “I find it difficult to believe Paradis-sama would sacrifice another person’s life for his own convenience. He was passionate and led us with conviction. During my travels, I heard Marina-sama mention the Marquis of Aprelton several times, but I assumed another man had inherited the title. …Now that I think about it, perhaps he hoped to spare me the truth, knowing I would have no means of confirming it until I returned to the surface.”
Suzuri was wrestling with the contradiction as well.
The man she remembered did not align with the man described by the present.
Yet people change.
Just as Arman’s sense of righteousness had twisted into violent criminality, others could be transformed by fear.
Suzuri had endured eighty years within a prison of stone and somehow turned that ordeal into the prelude to meeting Yuuri.
Perhaps the Marquis had not been so fortunate.
Perhaps a much shorter encounter with petrification had shattered his convictions completely.
The Guild records stated only that he never entered the Labyrinth again after withdrawing from the Deep Levels. His failure disappeared beneath a mountain of celebrated accomplishments. A man said to possess four skills, he may never have confronted true mortality until that day.
Then he learned a terrible lesson.
Death comes equally for everyone.
Perhaps that realization extinguished the passion he once possessed.
The difference between the hero Suzuri remembered and the man who existed now may have been born from the same terror she had overcome.
”Hmm. Even someone as unfamiliar with Labyrinth affairs as I am knows that the Marquis’s work benefited those who followed,” the Count said. “However, it remains a fact that he has dispatched assassins against your master’s teacher. Therefore, while I do not wish to suspect a benefactor of my allies, I must understand why you chose to serve a commoner named Yuuri instead of the Princess. Even if he contributed the most to your rescue, could you not have served the Princess alongside him?”
While I struggled to reconcile these conflicting images of the Marquis, the Count returned to a question that had troubled him from the beginning.
From the perspective of the Princess’s Faction, only the present threat mattered.
The past was secondary.
Suzuri undoubtedly cared about the changes in her former comrades. Yet these revelations also forced her to justify her own conduct.
Why place a commoner between herself and her loyalty to the Princess?
Understanding the implication immediately, she fell silent and met the Count’s piercing gaze without flinching.
”In the end, discovery was inevitable,” she said. “However, the details must be revealed directly by the Princess herself. Therefore, I can only say this: everything began with my master’s skill.”
I glanced involuntarily at the Count.
The statement made no sense.
All I understood was that critical facts remained hidden from us.
”She…” I said slowly. “She was supposed to be Skillless, was she not?”
Truthfully, we lacked enough information to reach a conclusion.
If this girl had once fallen to a Basilisk, how could she contend with monsters dwelling even deeper in the Labyrinth?
Judging solely by her performance in battle, she possessed strength surpassing anyone in the Princess’s retinue.
Yet she still did not appear powerful enough to conquer the Royal Capital Labyrinth as a front-line combatant.
There had to be another factor.
A hidden trump card.
And if that trump card involved the ability to grant skills, I could not dismiss the possibility.
”Indeed,” Suzuri replied. “Yet even now, children possessing useful skills are kidnapped. If someone had a skill capable of granting skills to others, which noble house would remain silent?”
”Ridiculous!” the Count roared, slamming his hand onto the table. “No such skill can possibly exist!”
For the first time, the Count lost his composure.
His anger was understandable.
Up to that point, Suzuri’s testimony had remained internally consistent. She had carefully stayed within the boundaries of plausibility.
Now she was describing something that sounded like a fairy tale.
”Please, Your Excellency, calm yourself,” Suzuri pleaded, bowing her head. “It is a fact that your own subordinate confirmed I possessed an extraordinary number of skills!2 Furthermore, the Guild possesses no record of a scout with multiple skills matching my profile. With all due respect, even if my own strength were sufficient for the deep strata, it would have been impossible to reach the dungeon core while protecting three companions who were driven back by Arman. There is only one logical conclusion. The Princess and your daughter received skills just as I did, allowing them to survive the depths!”
”But… if that is true…” The Count began pacing. “Why would Yuuri conceal such a skill? No… perhaps he had no choice. Even I could not protect someone wielding such power forever. The moment multiple new skill-users appeared around him, another noble house would notice. His existence would become an open secret. The entire kingdom could descend into chaos.”
He paused.
”Hmm. If Roeni-dono knew nothing, perhaps he foresaw that danger and sealed those skills before anyone sought his guidance. Either he possesses remarkable foresight… or he is far too clever for his own good.”
Even I lacked confidence in that conclusion.
Yet Suzuri’s testimony aligned with reality often enough that I could not reject it outright.
And when I thought back to my first meeting with Yuuri, he had never felt like a child.
He felt like an adult who had lived elsewhere.
Someone whose mind had already been shaped by another world.
”I kept piling impossible work onto him,” I admitted with a bitter laugh. “Yet he never broke. Before I realized it, he could handle nearly anything. Somehow, ten years passed.”
”Now, now, Roeni,” the Count said with a weary smile. “You are becoming nostalgic again. Your old manner of speaking is slipping through. …Yuuri-kun was always good at asking how things worked, wasn’t he? To adults, he appeared to understand the purpose behind his actions. We only ever needed to provide a small amount of guidance. Yes… if he truly possesses that degree of patience, then he likely also possesses the discretion necessary to conceal such a dangerous ability.”
This was long before I met Silcro.
Long before my involvement with the Baroness.
The memory was so vivid that I had unconsciously reverted to my old speech patterns.
Embarrassed, I lowered my gaze.
”Ah, Suzuri-kun,” the Count continued, his voice growing somber. “While I still struggle to accept the existence of such a skill, I can no longer doubt that you possess numerous skills or that you used them to defeat Fried. But if your master was forced to conceal those abilities, then the Labyrinth would serve as an ideal shield. If that is true… if your presence here, the Princess’s political maneuvers involving the Labyrinth, and Yuuri’s role as the manager of these skills are all connected…”
His voice faltered.
”…Then when the Marquis speaks of acquiring the Labyrinth… of merging with the dungeon core… could my daughter have offered her own body for that purpose…?”
Even as I remained silent, Count Alegria carried the discussion forward.
Yet his voice no longer held its usual strength.
Only the sorrow of a man confronting a possibility he desperately wished to deny.
Was he speaking as the King’s advisor?
Or as a father concerned for his daughter?
Regardless, his eyes never wavered.
Filled with responsibility and dread, they remained fixed upon the black-haired girl seated before him.
—
Summary:
Count Alegria interrogates the mysterious girl Suzuri in a soundproofed office to uncover her true origins and connection to the Marquis of Aprelton. Suzuri reveals she is a legendary scout who had been petrified in the Labyrinth for eighty years before being rescued by the protagonist, Yuuri. The Count remains skeptical of her loyalties, demanding to know why she serves a commoner over the Princess given the current political threat posed by the Marquis.
Suzuri reveals the existence of a skill-granting power to the suspicious Count Alegria and Roeni. The Count is initially enraged by the absurdity of the claim, but the discussion shifts toward the grave political implications of such a power. The scene concludes with the Count questioning if his daughter sacrificed herself to the dungeon core.
—
Trivia:
Suzuri was petrified for eighty years, a duration usually fatal to the sanity of any adventurer.
The fifty-eighth floor of the Labyrinth was the site of the Marquis’s failed expedition.
The Count’s interrogation style intentionally shifts from aggressive to disarming to catch his subject off guard.
Suzuri’s black hair and eyes are anomalous features in the Kingdom of Restea.
Suzuri previously defeated an individual named Fried using her accumulated skills.
Roeni has been acquainted with Yuuri for ten years.
The Count’s subordinate is a trained appraiser who confirmed Suzuri’s status.
—
Translation Notes:
Notes:
• Count Alegria – Count Alegria, a high-ranking noble of the Princess’s faction, presents a strict, aristocratic exterior with short silver hair and immaculate dark three-piece suits. He depends on Roeni for security and political leverage. Beneath his rigid facade, he is a fiercely loyal, deeply concerned father to his daughter Ashley, currently struggling to reconcile facts with the possibility of her sacrifice.
• Alegria – Count Alegria, a high-ranking noble and pillar of the Princess’s Faction, has short silver hair, sharp features, and wears immaculate dark three-piece suits. Known for his resolute attitude, intuitive reasoning, and masterful political interrogation, he is a loyal royalist who protects his daughter Ashley and relies on Roeni for security and leverage to corner the Marquis.
• Suzuri – A tall, statuesque shinobi with ink-black hair and eyes—a rare look in Restea. Possessing flawless pale skin and a toned, well-endowed form, she is a legendary scout who survived 80 years of petrification in the Labyrinth. Mastering vast skills like Darkness Wrap, she lacks a name but remains utterly loyal to Yuuri, fiercely competing for his favor with a mature, selfless devotion to service.
• Restea – Yuuri’s homeland.
• Roeni – Baroness of Confianza, wife of Silcro, and former guild receptionist, she is a sharp, no-nonsense noble with neat brown hair and a time-freezing Concentration ability. Alongside her companion—a man who once managed Yuuri and now seeks the truth behind the Labyrinth and the Princess’s secrets—she was present during the Count’s interrogation of Suzuri. Despite being a protected target of the Princess’s Faction with scars from a recent attack, she runs her family firm with military precision. A former mentor to Yuuri and another girl, she uses her relentless resolve to defeat monsters, face assassins, and uplift her people.
• Aprelton – A composed Marquis, head of the Prince’s faction, wields deep knowledge of Labyrinth mechanics and foreign affairs. He exploits the Princess’s death, now cooperating with the King to undermine the Princess’s faction and weaken the King’s authority.
• Paradis – Mentioned as Suzuri’s companion, he was part of the group that explored the labyrinth and was someone she hoped remained safe after she drew the monster away.
• Yuuri – An arrogant youth who feigned being “Skillless” to hide his high-level garment creation and intimacy-based skills, now suspected as the mastermind behind skill distribution. A student under Roeni, he commands Yui, Suzuri, and a bound girl, treating his wives and servants with a fiercely possessive, dominant aura despite being dismissed by the Count as having no talent.
• Arman – Towering, scar-scarred knight in polished steel armor and a dented helm, cloaked in tattered fabric, wields a greatsword. Once Marina’s loyal escort and the narrator’s closest friend, he was cast out three months ago and now serves Marquis Kimble as an assassin. Missing one hand, he uses Rigid Body to fortify his muscular frame, fighting a losing duel with a mysterious scout while seeking quiet redemption. Currently captured and held within a Packing Box, he has become a target of high-level political tension.
• Marina – First Princess of Restea, a figure of standing within the faction referred to as Marina-dono—needs labyrinth escort.
• Silcro – Baron Confianza, a short, rotund quiet genius, is the head of his house and a loyal Princess’s faction member administering livelihoods for thousands. Behind his unassuming look lies a sharp mind thrust into dangerous politics. Husband to his greatest asset, Roeni—an observer and figure from past memories—he hosts Count Alegria, managing delicate household tensions and volatile power dynamics.
• Fried – A defeated individual mentioned in the context of combat prowess.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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