“Hold on a minute, you guys! You’re stealing our prey!”
“Huh!? Don’t mess with us! When did we ever steal your prey?”
As usual, one evening while keeping watch at the cave entrance, a dispute broke out between parties in front of the stalls.
“What are you playing dumb for! You snatched the Giant Bat we were fighting on the 5th floor from the side!”
“You’re the ones playing dumb! You weren’t fighting, you were running away! Shouldn’t you be thanking us for saving you?”
“Haaah!? We weren’t running, we were luring it! Can’t you even understand that, you weaklings!”
The leaders of the two parties were arguing like that, but as they got more and more agitated, they finally drew their weapons, and the members nearby, instead of stopping their leaders, followed suit.
The other Adventurers watching the scene unfold around them just grinned and watched, with no intention of stopping them. The guards nearby rushed to intervene, but they couldn’t restrain the agitated parties.
The brawl began with the leaders clashing swords.
One of the guards who had been checking at the entrance must have thought that the guards present wouldn’t be able to contain it, so he went to help. The other guard who remained was also distracted by the brawl.
(This is my chance!)
I seized this opportunity, silently descending from above, and managed to enter the Underground Labyrinth unnoticed.
The inside of the Underground Labyrinth felt like a slightly large cave. Since there are many Adventurers on the shallow floors, I fully utilize Life Detection and Magic Detection to move without encountering them. After all, I’m a Monster now, so I should be a target for subjugation. I don’t want any unnecessary battles in a place with so few escape routes. Or rather, I don’t want to fight humans, to be honest.
Fortunately, the Monsters on the shallow floors are only Rank G or F, so I was able to easily defeat them and head to the lower floors.
The Monsters in this Underground Labyrinth aren’t that strong, but each floor is unnecessarily large, taking about an hour to descend one floor. It’s a bit of a drag.
Since there’s no distinction between morning and evening in the Underground Labyrinth, I don’t know what time it is, but I got sleepy when I reached the 5th floor. So, I squeezed my silver body into a ‘horizontal hole near the ceiling that was not visible from below’ that I found in a slightly open area. I haven’t seen any flying Monsters here yet, and even if Adventurers notice me, they have no way to climb up here, so I judged it to be safe. Not absolutely, though.
Just in case, I deployed Life Detection over a wide area and confirmed that there was no immediate danger. Then, I took out some tree honey from my Item Box, ate my fill, and fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke up safely, confirmed that no one was around, crawled out of the hole, and started moving towards the stairs leading to the lower floor.
Around the 5th floor, Rank E Monsters started to appear, and by the time I reached the 10th floor, Rank D Monsters were becoming more noticeable. Rank D Monsters give a decent amount of experience points, so I try to defeat as many as possible while moving forward. Besides, Monsters that gradually get stronger are perfect for leveling up. Viva Underground Labyrinth!
By this point, I hardly saw any Adventurers. Still, my Life Detection occasionally picked up Adventurers, and when I found the stairs down on the 11th floor, I stopped for a group of Adventurers.
(This is a bit of a problem…)
Those Adventurers are on the 12th floor below the stairs, and they seem to be dashing towards these stairs. Yes, towards the stairs right in front of me.
They’re probably being chased by a horde of Monsters or something. So, I hid in the shadow of a rock so they wouldn’t see me when they came up the stairs, but then the Adventurers were hit with even more bad luck.
Just as they were about to reach the stairs, another Monster stood in their way. They were forced to stop, sandwiched between Monsters.
The ones chasing the Adventurers were a Goblin Knight and his entourage, including a Goblin Mage and his Goblin minions. Both the Goblin Knight and the Goblin Mage are Rank D Monsters. And the one waiting for them in front of the stairs seems to be a single Rank C Ogre.
Since they’re running away from Rank D Monsters, the Adventurers must be of an even lower rank. If that’s the case, I don’t think they can defeat a Rank C Ogre, even if it’s just one. It’s a mystery how they got this far with that rank, but this might be their graveyard.
However, I’m hesitating about whether to go help them this time. Adventurers entering the Underground Labyrinth should be prepared for this kind of situation. If I help every Adventurer who gets into danger, I’ll be putting myself at risk. After all, I’m a Monster now. I need to avoid being seen by people as much as possible.
It’s not like I’m so conceited that I think I can help everyone who asks for it, let alone if they’re not asking for help right in front of me. But, I guess I can at least remember the Adventurers’ names. If they’re wiped out, I might be able to tell someone they died. It might be a bit harsh, but it’s better than being missing.
Having come to that conclusion, I appraised the Adventurer who seemed to have the highest level.
Race: Human
Name: Eric
Rank: F
Level: 17
HP: 58/65
MP: 16/16
Attack Power: 78
Defense Power: 66
Magic Attack Power: 15
Magic Defense Power: 46
Agility: 60
Skills:
Swordsmanship Lv5
(It’s you guys!!)
I take back what I said. I can’t just abandon acquaintances to their deaths. Well, they’re only acquaintances in the sense that I know them, but still. We traveled together for a week, even if I was just secretly following them.
I have no choice but to show myself and descend the stairs.
~Side Eric~
“Damn it! Things were going so well until just now! Are we going to die here?”
My name is Eric. I’m an Adventurer based in the town of Weber. I’m the leader of a party called ‘Gale Wind’. What? You’re saying that ‘Gale’ already implies ‘wind’? I know that! You don’t have to think too hard about these things, you just decide based on how it sounds! How it sounds!
Anyway, getting back to the point, we, Gale Wind, are a party of four, all from the same village and the same age. There’s me, a swordsman, Thomas, a shield bearer, Mary, a Mage, and Helen, a Healer. We’re a pretty well-balanced party.
It’s been about three months since we became Adventurers, and we’re a Rank F party. If I do say so myself, I think we’re a party that the Adventurers Guild has high hopes for, and we’re about to move up to Rank E. That is, if the receptionist’s talk wasn’t just sales talk.
The reason we chose Weber as our base was because it was close to our home village, and there was an Underground Labyrinth right next to the town. That Underground Labyrinth is called the ‘Labyrinth of Beginnings’, and it’s a beginner-friendly Underground Labyrinth with 15 floors. Even though it’s for beginners, there are Rank B Monsters on the lowest floor, and even mid-rank parties can be wiped out if they’re not careful. However, the shallow floors are full of Rank F and E Monsters, making it an ideal Underground Labyrinth for beginners to mid-level Adventurers to level up.
We usually level up on the 4th and 5th floors, so why are we dying here? Well, the story goes back two days…
We were leveling up on the 5th floor, and we were talking about heading to the 6th floor when a Rank C party happened to pass by. They had weapons and armor that were far superior to ours, and they went deeper into the Labyrinth as if the shallow floors were beneath them.
We figured that they didn’t have a scout, so we decided to follow them to the 6th floor. If they didn’t have a scout, they wouldn’t notice us following them, and we were planning to go there on our own anyway, so we thought of ourselves as guides to keep them from getting lost. As we expected, they went deeper and deeper without noticing us.
Then, in front of the stairs leading down to the 6th floor, the situation changed when they annihilated the Monsters that were waiting in ambush.
“Hey, if we leave these monster corpses here, they’ll just get absorbed by the Dungeon, right? So, wouldn’t it be okay if we took them?”
It was Thomas, the shield bearer, who muttered that.
I was about to say, “Surely not…” but I stopped myself when I looked at everyone’s equipment. Ragged armor and chipped weapons. If we took the materials from these monsters, we could make a decent amount of money. What’s more, if we kept following these C-Rank Adventurers, maybe we could get materials that would sell for even higher prices?
Any party has a limit to how much they can carry. There are magic bags that can hold more than they look, but they’re so rare that buying one would cost as much as a mansion in the royal capital. Even before that, they’re so rare that they’re hardly ever sold.
Those who possess such things are probably royalty, famous merchants, or high-ranking Adventurers. There’s also a skill called Item Box that’s even rarer, but it’s a legendary skill, and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone who has it.
In short, the Adventurer Party ahead of us is likely to leave the monsters they defeat behind until they get the materials they need. If we keep following them, we might be able to get materials that sell for even higher prices for free.
When I thought that far, I met the eyes of my companions. Yeah, it seems everyone had come to the same conclusion as me.
From there, things moved quickly. We quickly stripped the valuable parts from the monsters left in front of us and hurried to follow the C-Rank Party. Every time they defeated a monster, we immediately replaced our current materials with better ones. After repeating this several times, our material bags were filled with materials from monsters that we could never defeat on our own. At this point, we should have realized it. That we had gone so deep into the Dungeon that we could no longer return on our own…
And then, thinking, “Just a little more, just a little more,” we reached the 12th floor, and that’s when the thing we feared happened.