Garbage Pit Survivor
"Hello?" I called out carefully to wake the woman.
"...!" Her eyes darted around frantically. She was filthy, her clothes torn to rags, and after being trapped for so long, she looked painfully emaciated. Roa approached slowly and slipped off her robe, draping it over the woman and gently pulling the hood up. Only then did the woman react.
"Um..."
"It's all right. We're explorers who took on the request."
Clear tears began to stream down the woman's face. "Aah..."
I watched her and thought to myself. For over half a month, she had survived alone in this garbage pit, hiding from the ants. Surviving in a trash heap while avoiding ants for fifteen days... I couldn't even begin to imagine how that was possible. Yet this woman had done it. She had to be a survival expert.
Once she had calmed down, I slowly began to ask questions. "What happened?"
More than anything, I wanted to know how she had stayed alive.
"I'm an alchemist affiliated with the Elixir Alchemical Artisan Union, Oricil Guild. My name is Maya."
That ridiculously long name was the official title of the Alchemist Guild. Alchemist Maya. She had been escorting a merchant caravan under an explorer party's request when the carriage suddenly sank into the ground, stranding her in the middle of the Ant Cave.
"It was... truly horrific," Maya said, her voice hoarse and cracking. When Roa offered her a canteen, she gulped the water down greedily, several times.
"We were trapped underground. There was nothing we could do. Our only option was to run blindly toward the exit. The ants... they came from everywhere. Walls, ceilings, floors—any hole was enough for them to appear. They ate the horses first, then the merchants... Our party members tried to escape while protecting the merchants."
The escort party members were all Level 2. Maya herself was a Level 2 Alchemist. They weren't experienced enough to handle a sudden disaster. Maya had been caught up in the fighting and couldn't escape.
"You couldn't run because you were next to the leader?"
"Yes. While everyone else fled, the leader held the ants back alone. He was trying to buy us time. The other party members didn't even look back."
A sigh escaped me without thinking.
"So what about you, Maya?"
"I... I wanted to run too, but my feet wouldn't move."
While the leader held off the ants, the party members had fled. Maya had tried to run as well. But the leader was surrounded by the swarm faster than expected, and without help, he wouldn't last even a minute. The closest party member at the time had been Maya—because she was the slowest runner. So Maya had been forced, half willingly and half unwillingly, to join the leader in his sacrificial stand. But as everyone knew, throwing your life away like that only meant certain death. It was a heroic sacrifice, but... the leader died anyway.
Left alone, Maya had to find a way to survive.
"I played dead somehow. There were ant corpses nearby... I extracted reagents from them and used them."
Roa and I both nodded at the same time.
"We used the same method."
"You were lucky."
After reaching the garbage pit, Maya had begun surviving while avoiding the ants' notice, waiting for a rescue team that might never come. As an alchemist, she knew how to turn trash into food. She squeezed drinking water from rotten meat and mixed slime with cockroaches to make nutritional jelly. She endured like that for half a month, surviving in the garbage pit while waiting for a rescue that would never arrive. Until she met us.
"Thank you so much..."
It was a huge relief.
"We're looking for a way out of the dungeon."
"There's a mechanism not far from here. It looked like some kind of elevator to me..." Maya said with a dark expression. "There's no way to activate it from this side."
"We already tried messing with that elevator."
"...What?"
"More precisely, my party members did."
Maya's eyes widened into perfect circles. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Who could have predicted things would turn out like this?
"Then..."
"Where is that elevator? My party members are probably trapped there."
"Just a moment. I'll get the key."
Maya hurried off and returned with the key to the elevator. She said she had locked it in case the ants came through. She quickly prepared to depart.
"Maya, when you were attacked by the ants, did you see the gem pouch?"
"I'm not sure. Everyone was in chaos. But it's definitely not here in the garbage pit."
"..."
This was quite bad news. We needed to find the gem pouch to complete the request, but if it wasn't in the garbage pit, then where could it be? The ants certainly wouldn't have any interest in material possessions.
...Wait a second.
"Roa, do you remember? At the fork between the palace and the cathedral. You said the palace would be better."
"Ah. Yes, I remember."
There had definitely been an event trigger then. An event that I couldn't see, but Roa, as a Guardian, knew about. The future-sight event that was both the specialty and strength of Guardians.
"Could that have meant the gem pouch was somewhere in the palace?"
Roa thought for a moment, then nodded. "It might have."
A Guardian's foresight was ambiguous. The higher the level, the more specific it became, but at Roa's low level, it was little more than educated guessing. She had clearly foreseen that we needed to go to the palace. But all we had encountered there was a horrific swarm of ants. We'd have to check again later.
"For now, let's regroup with the others."
We quickly finished preparing to move. Maya took the lead to guide us.
"This way, then."
She had also searched desperately for a way to escape on her own. But no matter how much she thought about it, she hadn't found any solution.
"It's over there."
At the end of the passage, a rusty iron grate came into view. This was probably a waterway the subterranean people had once used. Dried, filthy clumps clung to various spots along the walls.
"Who's there!"
A familiar voice called out from a distance.
"It's me."
"Hajun?"
As we approached, we saw a man leaning against the wall on watch duty, his helmet removed. It was Sion, without a doubt. When he saw us, he looked overjoyed.
"H-hahaha! You're alive!"
"Yeah. You're not dead yet either?"
Maya unlocked the iron grate with the key. With a grating metallic screech, it scattered thick rust in all directions as the door swung open.
Thud. Sion came running.
"Good to see you, you bastard!"
I wasn't particularly happy to see him. Sion pulled me into a tight hug. His body reeked of iron and rotting leather. After embracing Roa as well, Sion paused in front of Maya.
"Who is this?"
Maya spoke with a pale face. "I'm the alchemist Maya. I was an explorer assigned to escort a merchant caravan."
Sion seemed to have heard enough to understand why Maya was here.
"I'm Sion. I work as a mercenary for the Iron Brotherhood."
Once their introductions were finished, I asked, "Where's Jangcheok?"
Sion casually pointed deeper into the passage. "Over there. He's probably sleeping."
"Nothing happened while we were gone?"
Sion shook his head vigorously. "Nothing at all. The platform suddenly dropped, and I thought we were done for, but it stopped when we got here. But damn it. It stopped, but there's no way to go back up. The entrance is blocked too."
It was exactly as I had expected. If we hadn't come to rescue them, these two would have starved to death. Or Maya might have stumbled upon them by chance during her scouting.
Sion suddenly asked, "How did you even get here?"
He sure asked quickly.
"We walked."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"How else would we get here, you idiot? We walked. It was a pain in the ass. A real pain in the ass walking all the way here."
I felt irritated for no reason. While some of us had nearly died fighting ants to save our party members, others had been lounging around comfortably. They weren't party members—they were dead weight.
Sion hesitated, then apologized. "Sorry for making you go through all that."
Honestly, when you thought about it, Sion hadn't done anything wrong. He had just fallen with Jangcheok while trying to help him.
...There was no point in dwelling on it. I was just glad they were safe. I patted Sion's shoulder.
"I'm glad you're all right."
We headed deeper into the elevator chamber. Jangcheok was lying on a blanket spread across the floor, sound asleep.
"Jangcheok!"
Jangcheok, who had been snoring loudly, woke up muttering nonsense. Almost reflexively, he drew his sword. He looked pathetic on the outside, but in moments like this, he really did seem like an explorer.
"What the—?"
"Jangcheok. We're here."
"Hajun? Is that you, Hajun?"
Jangcheok stared at us several times as if he couldn't believe his eyes. He was probably suspecting it was some kind of illusion, but we were real. There were no illusions in the Ant Cave dungeon.
"Raider-nim."
When Jangcheok's eyes met Roa's, he looked startled. It was because he had his bare face exposed. The hooded robe Roa always wore was now on Maya.
"This is Maya. She got stranded in the dungeon while on an escort mission."
Maya bowed her head politely. At the same time, Jangcheok's gaze drifted toward Maya's thighs. Through the loose robe, a glimpse of her bare skin was visible. Her underclothes were too thin. Roa subtly stepped in front of Maya and quietly glared at Jangcheok.
So that was the Guardian's gaze, huh.
Anyway, the party was back together. Maya examined the elevator mechanism and then spoke to me.
"Would it be all right if I tried fixing this?"
Alchemists were also one of Dungeon Overseer's representative high-education classes. They could even create steam-punkish things like mechanical golems without much trouble. An alchemist was always welcome.
"Of course."
While Maya worked on the elevator, our party discussed the mission. I spread out the dungeon map and explained.
"I'll be direct. The chances of completing this request are extremely low."
"What?"
The gem pouch wasn't in the underground garbage pit. According to the Guardian's intuition, it might be somewhere in the palace.
...It was a strange situation, but that was the reality.
"That gem in the palace. Tell me more about it."
Jangcheok showed interest. Honestly, forget the gem—we should just grab whatever we could and get out of here. We had already wasted far too much time. Wandering around looking for treasure that might not even exist would just seem like complete madness.
Right. It was complete madness. But explorers were the kind of people who made a living by doing exactly that kind of crazy thing.
Jangcheok scratched his nearly bald head. "The palace is dangerous, right?"
"It's just an ant nest. If you want to raid it, you'd need to bring Silver-rank explorers."
"Damn it. Isn't there any other way?"
Normally, I would have backed off here. There was no point in pushing ourselves and getting someone killed. But I didn't have that luxury. This might be our last request. A risky decision was necessary.
"There is."
"What is it?"
"We sneak in and take it."
"..."
Jangcheok and Sion stared at me with dumbfounded expressions.
"You think it's that easy?"
"While passing through the palace, I got the feeling it might be easier than we think."
Infiltration. And then a quick getaway. It might be difficult for us to pull off. But our party had a specialist in stealth gameplay.
"Roa will go into the palace alone."
"...!"
"She'll use her foresight to find the gem and escape with it."
"That kid by herself?"
Roa urgently tugged at my collar. "Hajun oppa."
Her expression was very dark, as if she were begging me not to give her such an important task. But I had no intention of backing down. Why did we bother assembling a diverse party for exploration? Because each class could compensate for another's weaknesses. Roa was the right person for this. I, who had played Dungeon Overseer for a thousand hours, could guarantee it.