Artificial Dungeon (2)
Kireuk
Kirreuk kireuk—
Just as the wet, phlegmy sounds growing louder in the pitch-black darkness began to turn truly nauseating, Rosaria and her party finally got a look at what was making them.
Long pointed ears. Green skin. Jagged, uneven teeth and faces that looked like they'd been slapped together with zero regard for symmetry.
Four goblins in total, drooling freely, each clutching a toothless sword or a crude spear as they appeared before the group.
"They're here."
"Those are golems?"
Rosaria and Rachel muttered as they immediately settled into combat stances.
Then—
Chak—
"I've got this."
Gren stepped forward, waving off Rosaria with her staff and Rachel with her fists.
"Huh? We're not fighting together?"
"The monsters here aren't anything special. I can handle them alone, so you brats just sit back and watch."
About time I show these kids how good I really am.
Artificial monsters — golems, more precisely.
The golems scattered throughout the Artificial Dungeon were one of the things that made the place feel convincingly real. But their limitations were clear. No matter how close the exterior resemblance, they were still artificially constructed golems rather than actual goblins, which meant they weren't particularly threatening.
Gren had fought plenty of artificial monsters in the previous exam and decided his own skill was more than enough. And if he got to shove that cocky underclassman's nose in the dirt while he was at it, all the better.
"Well, if you say so…"
Eh… I've fought them myself. Wasn't much of a problem.
Rosaria accepted it without further argument. She'd sparred with a number of artificial monsters as a warm-up before the exam, so she had a decent sense of their level.
"Stay back."
Shring—
Having decided to take the goblins alone, Gren finally drew the sword at his hip. It was less a textbook longsword than a scimitar-style blade built for one-handed swings, and the edge flashed with a cold, well-maintained gleam.
—Kerek… Kreeeek!!!
—Kireuk! Kireuk!!!
The moment Gren showed steel, the goblins kicked off the ground and charged.
The first one to hit the front line raised its toothless sword and came barreling in—
The pattern's obvious.
Gren thrust his blade straight out with the ease of long practice.
—Kerek?!
The goblin abruptly stopped mid-charge, shuffling in place in front of him, clearly flustered.
"Now!"
Thuk—
—Keeek!?
Gren didn't waste the opening. He lunged forward in a flash and drove the raised blade straight through the goblin's chest.
"That's it!"
The goblin, run through, gave a full-body shudder — then went limp.
The goblin pattern was simple. Point a weapon at them and they freeze up. Don't miss the gap — stab. Academy students who'd fully mapped the artificial golems' patterns had concluded that was all there was to it.
—Clink
The collapsed goblin crumbled the way burnt-out firewood collapses into ash, and something dropped to the floor. A mana stone — the core component used to manufacture artificial monsters.
"Next!"
Having dropped one goblin so quickly, Gren looked almost giddy as he locked onto his next target.
—Kerreuk!!!
"Not a chance!"
This time a goblin with a spear came charging in, and Gren thrust his blade forward the same way as before.
"That's two!"
He was already lining up the kill, ready to plant his sword in the empty chest of a goblin that should have frozen in place, flustered—
But.
—Kerreuk!!?
Clang—
"…Huh?!"
This goblin was different.
Despite Gren executing the correct pattern response, instead of freezing and fumbling, the goblin crouched even lower, leveled its spear, and charged straight in.
Caught by the sudden break in the script, Gren barely managed to bat the spear aside.
—Kieeeek!
"What?! Hup! Hngh! Damn it…! Shit…!"
And the surprises didn't stop there.
The goblin in front of him breaking pattern was bad enough — but another one had been creeping up behind him, and now it was lunging with the broken edge of a dagger.
The goblins' raw power was pathetic, but dodging and parrying weapons flying in from two directions while his stance was already broken was a genuinely hard situation.
"Uh…? Uhhh…?"
"What's he doing?"
"All that boasting, and look at him."
Watching from the rear, Rosaria and Rasel stared at the goblins in confusion, while Rachel looked on with open contempt at the guy who'd strutted forward so confidently only to get manhandled by goblins.
This was Rachel's first exam, so she didn't fully grasp the situation — but Rosaria and Rasel had both faced artificial monsters at least once. And their assessment had been the same:
Crude golems that only look like the real thing.
They repeated fixed patterns. Know the pattern, and as long as your stamina held out, you could drop a hundred of them without breaking a sweat. The weakest ones — goblins — even more so.
But the goblins Gren was fighting right now felt like someone had dragged actual wild goblins into the labyrinth and planted them there.
Not that they were real goblins. The first one had followed the pattern, gone down to Gren's sword, and left a mana stone. The problem was everything after that.
The remaining goblins had watched how the first one fell — and then attacked in a completely different way.
It was almost like…
"They're… learning?"
The artificial golems seemed to be learning.
"Damn it…!"
Meanwhile, Gren gritted his teeth as he desperately dodged their weapons and swung his sword whenever he could. Caught between the sudden pattern shift and an ambush he hadn't prepared for, he was literally rolling across the ground.
Looking pathetic was irritating enough — but the thought that if he'd just treated them as real monsters from the start, it wouldn't have gotten this bad only made him angrier.
At the end of the day, a goblin was still a goblin. Farmers with chains and sickles could beat them. They were no match for Academy students training for actual combat. But the openings he'd left were far too large.
To put real power behind a sword stroke, you needed a proper stance. Gren had never reached the level where he could swing effectively while tumbling across the floor. And he couldn't exactly yell for help from the party standing around watching, either.
He'd boldly declared he'd handle it alone and told them to stay out of it. Begging for help after that was something his pride would never allow. If anything, he found himself thinking that if the others just jumped in on their own, he could swagger about it afterward and demand to know why they'd interfered—
Thwack—
—Kweeeek!?
"…!?"
A rock came flying out of nowhere and struck the goblin that had been about to drive its spear into Gren. It staggered with a short scream.
"Got it."
Gren whipped his head toward the source — Rosaria, still in a throwing stance.
Gren had insisted on handling it, so she couldn't just charge in openly. But a little help like this seemed fair. The goblins' sudden change in behavior was a factor, and if Gren could just seize the momentum, he really should be able to finish them alone.
"Hah… Hyaaah!!!"
Rosaria's rock throw gave Gren the opening he needed. He immediately swung hard at the goblin beside him, forcing it back, then charged the one still reeling from the stone to the head and drove a full-power kick into its neck.
Crack—
A goblin's durability was roughly on par with a young boy's. Its neck snapped clean through, the head lolling at a grotesque angle before the whole body crumbled to dust.
"Hoo… These things are really pissing me off."
—Ke… kerek….?!
Gren muttered as he faced the last goblin, now fully set and ready.
As he'd said earlier — the gap between an Academy student and a goblin was night and day.
"I'm going to tear you limb from limb."
Remembering how they'd made him roll around on the floor, Gren tightened his grip on the sword hilt.
"Those goblins' patterns were weird."
After the Artificial Dungeon's first fight was over and the group had paused to rest and regroup, Rosaria spoke up.
What the battle with Gren had made clear was that the artificial golems' performance had jumped to a completely different level. Compared to the easy, deliberately simple targets she'd seen during her experiments with Felix, these felt like genuine dungeon-dwelling monsters — the dangerous kind.
"Y-yeah…! This seems… kind of off…"
Rasel, surprisingly direct for once, backed her up with real conviction.
"Is it that strange? They're just goblins, right?"
Rachel, who'd never been through an exam before, didn't grasp how serious the problem was. From her perspective they were just goblins — and Gren had still taken them down alone, aside from that brief stumble.
"There's no risk of dying, and the whole point of this exam is to put us through the kinds of situations you'd face in a real dungeon. So the goblins started acting like actual goblins. Is that really a problem?"
"……"
"Or what, are you scared or some—"
"What?! Scared? Ha — give me a break. Hey. Watch your mouth. Like hell I am."
Rachel's light jab finally cracked Gren's silence. He snapped back hard. He'd already humiliated himself enough for one day — having a junior years below him needle him on top of it was more than his pride could take.
"Right! At the end of the day they're just goblins and monsters. What's the big deal? We stick to the plan."
"Hah… but… this dungeon doesn't only have g-goblins…"
"Shut it. You just keep your mouth shut and do your job."
"Eep…!"
Rasel tried to rein Gren in a little, but the barked order crushed him flat.
Then—
"But… that one earlier. Was it okay to let it get away?"
Rosaria had been bothered ever since the fight by the single goblin that had fled the moment the other three went down.
"Something about it… feels like we shouldn't have."
It didn't feel like simple fear after watching its companions die. Something more unsettled sat in her gut.
"Instead of fretting over some coward that ran with its tail between its legs, get ready yourself. We're moving out!"
Gren snorted and didn't spare her concern a second of attention.
"…It'll be fine."
Rosaria turned it over alone for a moment longer, then gave up thinking about it, gathered her gear, and prepared to head back into the dungeon.
And that night, they tasted hell.