「……Wow, so it’s like this? Well, it wouldn’t be strange for this to happen in normal caves, but still.」
Rei muttered inside the dungeon.
In front of him, there was no path to be found.
Following his intuition at the previous Y junction, Rei had went down the right path. He had followed that single winding path for about twenty minutes.
But, after walking for all that time, he was met with a dead end.
Perhaps because it was a cave like dungeon floor, there wasn’t a clear, flat wall marking the dead end. However, the path itself simply narrowed down until it was obvious he couldn’t go any further.
「Do I have to spend all that time walking back now? ……If this is meant to sap an adventurer’s motivation, it’s a pretty effective form of harassment.」
There was no denying that all the time he had wasted carefully advancing while checking for traps had taken a mental toll on him.
Thinking that, Rei immediately turned his gaze back the way he had come.
A smile formed on his lips, but it wasn’t the wry smile from a few seconds ago, but a ferocious grin when facing an enemy.
「I see. A dead end also means there’s nowhere to run…… Maybe the goal wasn’t mental fatigue, but this right from the start?」
He readied his spear as he waited for the enemies approaching him to show themselves.
If this were a straight corridor, he could launch a preemptive strike by throwing his spear like he did when he encountered the Orcs, but in such a winding cave, that was a bit more difficult.
「Well, actually, maybe not impossible?」
Muttering to himself, his eyes turned from the spear in his hands to a rock on the ground.
If he only wanted to injure and not kill them in one hit, he didn’t have to use a spear
That said, even if a rock didn’t have have much killing power, it could still hurt a lot depending on where it hit.
Or rather, considering it was a rock thrown by Rei, it was safe to say it was still more than lethal.
……However, since the shape of each rock was slightly different, the difficulty of hitting an intended target was higher than throwing a spear.
「Well, if they die from a rock like this, that’s actually better for me.」
He picked up a few rocks from the ground and waited for the monsters to appear from around the corner of the corridor.
「Gyagyaggya.」
「Gyogyogya!」
「Gagyagya?」
The moment he heard those voices, an annoyed expression appeared on Rei’s face.
He had already heard those cries countless times since entering this dungeon, so he knew exactly what kind of monsters were approaching without even needing to see them.
(Goblins again? Seriously, aren’t there too many of them? ……Well, I did hear there were a lot of weak monsters here. I can see why this dungeon isn’t popular. No one would willingly enter a dungeon just to fight Goblins.)
In Rei’s case, he possessed an abnormal amount of magic power, and his stamina far exceeded what an ordinary adventurer could ever have. Furthermore, he had the Misty Ring to store everything, so he never had to worry about resupplying.
But an ordinary adventurer wouldn’t want to dive into a dungeon like this just to fight Goblins.
No matter how weak Goblins were, fighting them drained stamina. Using magic drained magic power, and there was a chance weapons could break.
And after all that, the only things they could get were materials and magic stones that were barely worth any money.
It certainly wasn’t enough to make anyone want to challenge this dungeon.
(Well, unless they had another goal like I do……!)
The moment the Goblins rounded the corner, he threw the rock in his hand.
The rock flew straight, smashing into the head of a Goblin that had just shown itself and pulverizing its head before it could even understand what had happened to it.
Having lost its head, the Goblin naturally collapsed to the ground……
「Gya!」
The Goblin that appeared right behind it cried out, seemingly unable to comprehend what had just happened either.
However, that cry was clearly a mistake.
As a result, the next rock Rei threw pulverized that Goblin’s head as well.
The last remaining Goblin shrieked as it turned to flee.
It was a textbook display of a Goblin’s typical nature, aggressively attacking the weak, but immediately running away from the strong.
However, a Goblin recognized as an enemy by Rei had no chance of escaping. Rei ran to where the two headless Goblins lay and threw another rock, killing the final Goblin as well.
「So the strategy was really to drive the target into this dead end where they have no escape, and then relentlessly attack them without a moment’s pause? I guess that would be effective against normal opponents.」
The corridor itself was narrow, only wide enough for two people to somehow fight side-by-side.
If one were forced to fight Goblins endlessly in such a situation, unless they possessed a certain level of strength, the mental exhaustion alone would eventually get to them.
「Well, conversely, if you do have a certain level of strength, you’ll manage somehow.」
Like himself, Rei thought. He glanced at the corpses of the two Goblins lying on the ground, jumping lightly over them.
Rei then made his way back along the path he had just taken, encountering Goblins a few more times before finally returning to the Y-junction.
「Alright, this way then.」
Perhaps because he was getting irritated by the continuous Goblin encounters, Rei’s tone was a little frustrated.
Still aiming to obtain the treasure known as the dungeon core, he went down the left path at the Y junction.
Then, for some reason, he proceeded to not see a single Goblin as he made his way along the path.
「Why? There were so many monsters……no, Goblins on that side, so why is there absolutely nothing on this side? Well, it’s easier this way, so I don’t mind.」
It was certainly easier, but compared to his time in the dungeon up to this point, the lack of enemies felt unnatural.
While harbouring such thoughts, he continued down the corridor until he eventually saw stone doors embedded in the cave wall……three of them.
The three doors lined up neatly on the wall were blatantly suspicious.
「No matter how you look at it, this is a trap, right? ……Considering it hasn’t been that long since the dungeon was formed, I doubt there are any fatal traps, but I can’t say for sure.」
He observed them from a distance for a bit, and after confirming that nothing in particular was happening around them, Rei slowly approached.
He moved closer while ready to respond to anything with his spear, but he ended up reaching the doors without anything happening at all.
「……There has to be a trap, right? No matter how you think about it.」
It was absolutely unthinkable that doors would be lined up like this without a single trap among them.
Rei muttered his thoughts out loud, but unfortunately, he didn’t possess any thief skills to investigate or disarm traps.
He did have the magic 『Faint Flame』 for scouting, but since the doors were closed, it was impossible to investigate what lay beyond them.
The only thing he could do was forcefully destroy the doors along with any traps they might hold.
「It’s not going to explode or anything, right? Well, even if it does explode, it shouldn’t be a problem if I keep my distance.」
He stored the spear he was holding in the Misty Ring and took out the Death Scythe.
Because the area in front of the doors was fairly spacious, it wasn’t difficult to swing the Death Scythe.
However, Rei didn’t approach the doors even with the Death Scythe in hand. He took a few step back before swinging it.
「Flying Slash!」
A flying slash shot out from the Death Scythe along with his words.
The slash flew straight, hitting the rightmost door exactly as Rei intended……and sliced right through it.
「More fragile than I thought.」
Flying Slash was a skill Rei used often, but it didn’t possess enough power to be called a one hit kill skill.
If anything, it was a skill better suited for testing opponents.
Because of that, Rei was surprised to see the door sliced apart by that single strike.
But his surprise only lasted a moment.
Deciding he needed to see what was behind it, he headed over to the door.
He suspected that some kind of trap might now activate, or perhaps had already activated, but he ended up reaching where the door had been without anything happening.
「……There’s nothing inside.」
What lay beyond the door was a sight that made him hesitate to even call it a room.
It was a rectangular space about two meters deep. It was narrow, and it felt more accurate to call it a closet or a storage space rather than a room.
「Is that it?」
While tilting his head in confusion, Rei checked inside.
Lying on the ground was the door that had been sliced in half by his Flying Slash just moments ago.
There was nothing else. ……It was a room that made him wonder if there was even a point in it being here.
「This really makes no sense. ……Hm? Wait a minute. Then, could it be?」
A thought suddenly crossed Rei’s mind, and he directed his gaze towards the leftmost door of the three.
Since this was what was behind the right door, he wondered if the left door would be the same, making the middle door the correct one.
Thinking that, Rei used Flying Slash again to investigate, and his guess turned out to be correct.
Seeing the exact same kind of room behind the left door, Rei couldn’t help but sigh.
「Maybe if the dungeon kept growing, these room like spaces would grow too……but is this what newly formed dungeons are usually like?」
For Rei, who was currently inside his third dungeon, he didn’t fully understand exactly how dungeons grew.
Of course, he had read about it in books, but in this world, it wasn’t uncommon for written accounts to differ greatly from reality.
Since most books were handwritten, information wasn’t updated frequently, so such discrepancies were only natural.
「Well, it seems there aren’t any traps either, and I was able to find the correct path easily, so I’ll call it a win.」
Death Scythe in hand, he moved to a position away from the middle door.
(Since there haven’t been any traps up to this point, I think this door should be fine too……but since this is probably the correct path, there’s a good chance it’s trapped.)
Thinking of the possibility that the middle door could also be wrong way forward, Rei swung the Death Scythe.
「Flying Slash!」
The slash flew out, just like before……but the result was different.
The middle door was definitely damaged, but it hadn’t been completely destroyed.
This clearly showed that this door was different from the ones on either side of it.
「……Well, it doesn’t seem like there are any traps, so I guess that’s fine.」
While feeling slightly disappointed that his leveled up Flying Slash hadn’t been able to destroy the door, Rei went over to it.
The space beyond the half-destroyed door had the same structure as the spaces behind the doors on either side.
What was different was that while the spaces on either side were dead ends, this one had a corridor continuing further back, leading to a large room.
「So the middle door really was the correct path.」
Judging that there were probably no traps, he destroyed the door using the shaft of the Death Scythe.
Walking down the corridor, he soon saw what kind of space the large room was.
……However, what he found inside the room was completely unexpected.
Within the room were countless numbers of a certain monster.
They had massive bodies, sharp blade like ears extending from their heads, sharp fangs in their mouths, and long, sturdy, whip like tails.
「Gamelions!? What are they doing in a place like this……」
Seeing the Gamelions occupying the rather spacious room, Rei froze for a few seconds.
It was such an unexpected sight that his reaction was understandable. Lucky for him, the group of Gamelions didn’t attack him right away.
However, once his surprise faded, Rei had a realisation.
「I see. I heard Gamelions seemed to have disappeared this year for some reason……but if they’re all gathered here like this, there’s no way we’d find them on the surface.」
Since returning to Gilm, he had heard from many people that hardly any Gamelions had been hunted this year.
Realising that the room before him was the reason why, Rei couldn’t help but smile.
In the first place, since the Gamelions were inside the dungeon, no matter how much people searched for them on the surface, it would have been a waste of time.
Of course, he didn’t think these were all the Gamelions in the area around Gilm. Rei’s guess was that the Gamelions on the surface had sensed their fellow Gamelions disappearing and had abandoned the places they usually visited at this time of the year.
「Gaaaaaaaa!」
Perhaps noticing Rei entering the room, a nearby Gamelion let out an intimidating roar.
Just at a quick glance, there were about fifty Gamelions in the room.
As if reacting to the first Gamelion’s roar, all fifty of them directed their eyes towards Rei with hostility.
「Did the guys who entered the dungeon before not make it this far? ……They probably didn’t.」
Thinking back on the number of Goblins he had fought since entering the dungeon, he couldn’t help but convince himself.
「Or maybe they kept quiet because they were planning to monopolise these Gamelions.」
With this many Gamelions, the amount of money they would fetch would be more than enough to survive the winter.
Especially since Gamelion meat was scarce right now, the price had gone up.
If he dumped all these Gamelions onto the market, the price would naturally drop from what it was now. But even so, it should still be higher than what they would normally sell for.
「Well, the moment I found them, those plans went out the window!」
「Gaaaaaaaaaa!」
Watching a Gamelion leap at him, trying to sink its fangs into him, Rei gripped the Death Scythe tightly as he shouted back.