Clear It First - 1
Clank. Clank… Thud. Thud…
With every step I took, a swarm of footsteps trailed faithfully behind us. When I stopped, they stopped. When I walked, they walked.
The presence hovering on the floor directly above us clung to our trail with the relentless focus of hunting hounds closing in on prey.
“They really are following us, aren’t they?” Renya asked, clutching her crude wooden staff tightly to her chest. Her voice trembled.
“Yes. It certainly looks that way.”
“But why…? We’ve never even met that large party before. Why would they…”
“Simple. After we had that loud conversation earlier to clear up the misunderstanding, they must have picked up on our presence. Now they’re sticking to us like glue while they look for the stairs down to the fourth floor.”
We had practically announced ourselves with that extended, overly loud exchange. Unless the other party was exceptionally dense, there was no way they could have missed us.
In a dungeon crawling with danger, sharp hearing was the most vital sense of all. They were probably even more on edge than usual.
“So these people… they’re seriously here to clear the fourth floor?”
“They wouldn’t have brought this many bodies otherwise.”
“That’s insane. Why not just farm the third floor like normal people? Why risk the fourth when it’s clearly lethal…”
“That’s the adventurer’s instinct for you. The fact that no one has ever cleared it only makes them crazier.”
Their original goal might have been the third floor. The fourth was probably never even on their radar. But the moment they reached the third, they suddenly sensed human presence coming from the forbidden zone below—one that no explorer had ever set foot in.
“I would have done the same,” I said flatly, almost to myself. “Eyes would have gone wide.”
“…Pardon?”
“To skilled adventurers who’ve already reached the third floor, an uncleared fourth floor is basically El Dorado—a legendary city of gold just waiting to hand them glory and riches.”
Renya stared up at me with a puzzled frown, as if I’d spoken in another language.
“What’s El Dorado?”
“A mythical city of gold where everything is covered in the stuff. A golden paradise from legend.”
“Everything… covered in gold?”
“Exactly. It means there’s a massive payoff waiting. Any adventurer worth their salt would drool at the chance to claim it.”
The phrase must have struck a chord. Until now Renya had reacted to everything I said with mild disinterest, but the moment I mentioned a golden paradise her eyes began to sparkle. Her grip on the staff tightened noticeably.
“A legendary city of gold? There’s really a story like that?”
“Lady Renya, it’s best to let half of what Sir Tin Knight says go in one ear and out the other,” Adelaide cut in dryly.
“Huh? Why?”
“He mutters about things only he understands sometimes. I’ve never heard of this El Dorado before today either.”
Adelaide’s blunt remark came the instant Renya finished asking. She sounded almost offended.
“If there were a legend about a city made entirely of gold, I would definitely know about it.”
“R-really…?”
“No matter how urgent the situation, how could you try to lure Renya in with such ridiculous nonsense?”
Adelaide’s scolding followed right on its heels. I hadn’t been trying to lure anyone. Somehow I’d been cast as the shameless scoundrel attempting to manipulate Renya’s innocence for a dungeon clear.
“I think you’re misunderstanding. That wasn’t my intention at all.”
“At the very least, let Renya make her own choices. Her mind is already complicated enough with everything concerning the Empire.”
Adelaide spoke quietly, then drew in a small breath.
“I’m… not fully prepared myself yet, either.”
The fact that Renya was the younger sister of Elise la Rose, the Empire’s Saintess, still weighed heavily on her. After all, that same Saintess had stolen her place and nearly driven her to death.
A short conversation wasn’t going to erase that kind of trauma, even if Renya herself had nothing to do with the grudge.
Still, the blood connection was undeniable.
“At the very least, let Renya…? I didn’t drag you here by force,” I said.
“What? N-no, that’s not what I meant…”
“I thought we came this far because our goals aligned. If that wasn’t the case, I’m a little disappointed.”
At my flat remark, Adelaide blinked several times in visible panic, then hurriedly waved her hands with an apologetic expression.
“Ah, no! That’s not it at all! I followed you here of my own free will, I—”
“It was a joke. The mood was getting too heavy, so I tried to lighten it.”
Keeping party morale from tanking was one of the leader’s duties. We were about to enter the boss room. If we went in with heavy hearts and clouded heads, things would go south fast.
“A j-joke…? In a situation like this, what kind of joke is—”
“Let’s catch our breath here for a moment. The boss room is right ahead.”
I stopped in the middle of the corridor and tilted my head, listening carefully. The underground tomb dungeon had a much slower monster respawn rate than the Lucky Cow King dungeon.
We had cut down every monster in our path, so we were probably safe for now. Still, caution never hurt. Dungeons were places where anything could happen at any time.
“I’ll pull aggro from the front again, just like last time.”
“Then I’ll analyze the boss’s patterns from behind like before?” Adelaide asked.
“Yes. Stay back no matter what. Watch safely and relay the boss’s behavioral patterns to me.”
On the surface it was the same brute-force plan as before. But this time we had one crucial new variable.
“…What about me?”
That variable was our healer.
“Heal me when I give the signal.”
“You mean recovery magic, right?”
“Correct. And I have one more question—what kinds of buffs can you use?”
Renya blinked at my serious tone, then tilted her head slightly in confusion.
“Buffs… do you mean blessings?”
“Yes. What blessings can you cast?”
Renya counted on her fingers as if the question was unfamiliar.
“I can increase strength and defense… and I can make you a little faster, too.”
“Strength, defense, and speed…”
“I’m still inexperienced, so those are the only three blessings I can use right now.”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected much, but that was a pretty solid kit. We had everything we needed.
“Good. How long do they last?”
“One minute.”
“All three?”
“…Yes.”
One minute. Short if you thought about it one way, long if you thought about it another. Personally I would have preferred longer, but considering the chaos of a boss fight and Renya’s current skill level, one minute was honestly a blessing in itself.
“All right. We don’t know what boss we’ll face, so the moment we enter the boss room, cast the defense buff on me.”
“Defense buff… the one that raises defense, right?”
“Yes. Use the other two buffs in coordination with my signals, just like the heals.”
Renya nodded firmly at my concise instructions, her expression turning resolute.
“Do you have enough mana?”
“My magical power is more than sufficient. If there’s one thing I’m confident about, it’s my mana reserves.”
“That’s reassuring. We won’t have to worry about you running dry mid-fight.”
“In all my years adventuring, I’ve never once run out of magic power.”
She was talking more than usual. The tension must have been getting to her. Understandable. We weren’t tackling some ordinary dungeon—we were about to challenge the boss of the fourth floor of the underground tombs, a place no one had ever cleared.
“Once we clear this dungeon, they’ll probably force us back to the Empire…”
I was just about to give one last warning before we entered the boss room when—
“────!!”
“──!!!!”
From somewhere beyond the dark end of the corridor, multiple screams suddenly erupted in a chaotic burst.
“─────!!”
“────!!”
Come to think of it, the footsteps we had been hearing from above had gone completely silent. Had they found the stairs and rushed down together?
“It sounds like it’s coming from the staircase leading to the fourth floor,” Adelaide said, frowning slightly as she sensed the same strangeness I did.
“Looks like they finally came down after all.”
“There’s reckless, and then there’s this… This dungeon isn’t the kind of place numbers alone can solve.”
She was right. This dungeon actually favored smaller, elite parties. Every path from the first to the fourth floor twisted like a maze, and the narrow, convoluted corridors meant that anything less than a highly skilled small team would wipe out long before they even reached the boss room.
“Something… feels like it’s heading toward us,” Renya said suddenly. She had been staring hard in the direction the noise was coming from.
Her trembling words made my brow furrow. I turned my gaze toward the far end of the dark corridor and stared into the blackness.
At that moment—
“Huff… huff…”
From the pitch-black depths of the passage, several figures emerged, gasping like rabbits fleeing a predator.
“There’s… there’s nothing here… This place is safe…”
A low, heavy male voice followed.
“We’ll rest here… All troops, halt!”
Every one of them wore battered, ruined armor. Their faces were thick with terror and exhaustion. Among them, one knight stood out—his armor in particularly bad shape.
“How many survivors?” he demanded.
“More than half have fallen, Knight Commander…”
The imperial crest was clearly engraved on his badly dented breastplate.