Equipment Farming (4)
After I headed down the right path alone while Theo and Faye took the left path together, a group of shady figures soon emerged from the entrance.
“Boss. You sure this is really okay?”
It was the pack of dungeon thieves who had fled just moments ago. The ones who had scampered off like rats were now creeping their way back.
“Of course it’s okay. Didn’t you see how many of those brats there were? Only three. We outnumber them five to one.”
The reason they had bolted without looking back the instant they spotted us was simple. It was obvious Theo’s party held the first exploration rights as mercenaries, so they naturally assumed there would be more mercenaries waiting in the wings.
First explorations had zero intel. The danger justified sending about ten people as standard procedure. That was why they expected more enemies and ran immediately. But when they checked later… well, shit. It was just three rookies who looked like they had barely reached adulthood.
“How dare they mess with our Twilight and Dawn Crew. I’ll avenge our fallen Kevin.”
“Boss. Wasn’t our name the Dawn of the Dawn? And the dead guy wasn’t Kevin, it was Cabin, sir.”
“…….”
Smack!
“…Sorry, sir. My memory failed me. It is Kevin, sir.”
“Good.”
The boss corrected his vice-boss’s faulty memory with a solid smack to the head.
After the minor scuffle, the thieves entered the dungeon and trailed after Theo’s party. The passage was a straight corridor with no forks, and Theo’s group had already cleared out every monster, so the path was wide open.
“Boss. We’re going pretty deep. These rookies might be stronger than we thought. Shouldn’t we bail while we still can?”
“Ha. Don’t be stupid. Look over there.”
The boss pointed at the shattered remains of a gear golem scattered in the corner.
“It’s completely smashed. They couldn’t finish it cleanly in one hit, so they basically beat it to death. They’re pushing themselves too hard. We just follow at our leisure and pick off the exhausted bastards.”
The boss’s surprisingly logical explanation drew awed murmurs from the thieves. If they had known the wreckage was actually the result of me furiously smashing the thing until the horrible metallic screech finally stopped, they might have reconsidered. Unfortunately, there was no way for them to learn that fact.
“And you. Vice-boss. You gonna keep killing the mood with that weak shit? Huh? You got a death wish?”
“No, sir! Sorry, sir!”
“Yeah. Let’s do this right. It’s only three people. What the hell are you so scared of? Unless they’re from the Academy, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Come on, boss. Why would those fancy Academy types come to a dump like this?”
“Exactly! So we’re good! Kahaha!”
I often forgot because I had passed the Academy entrance exam right after possessing this body, but to normal people, being an Academy student was an elite status that went way beyond “special.”
And that perception wasn’t far from reality. The Academy gathered the greatest geniuses from across the vast empire and trained them through dungeon practicums that were practically real combat. A single diploma was enough to walk into any decent noble house and land at least a knight’s position.
Of course, graduating was just as brutally difficult.
Because of that elite reputation, the thieves believed no one from the Academy would bother with a minor dungeon like this. At least, that was the common-sense assumption.
“Boss. Fork in the path ahead.”
“Hmm. Two routes.”
The boss, a veteran of many dungeon raids, immediately saw through the setup.
“There are three of them, so two must have taken one path. Probably the two girls together.”
“Girls!”
The mere mention of girls got the thieves riled up. They hadn’t gotten a good look earlier because they were too busy running, but both had been stunning enough to make anyone’s eyes pop. The thought of capturing the exhausted beauties and enjoying them in place of their dead comrade already had their lower halves standing at attention.
The vice-boss, who had been carefully examining the ground, called out to the boss.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“From the footprints, it looks like two went left and one went right, sir.”
“Oh, for real?”
Given the combination of two girls and one guy, the boss had naturally assumed the girls went together. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part. The boss couldn’t care less about the male. Revenge for a comrade? He had only dragged the others along to pad their numbers anyway. He never considered them real comrades to begin with.
What mattered were the girls. He intended to capture those two no matter what it took.
And today, there was one particularly annoying bastard among them.
“Hey. Vice-boss.”
“Yes!”
“You take the right path.”
“Yep. How many men should I bring, sir?”
“Go alone.”
“Yep! …Yep?”
“Idiot. Someone’s gotta open the doors.”
“Then splitting the group half and half… No, never mind! I’ll go, sir!”
The vice-boss was seething with dissatisfaction. Go alone? Even if the brats were tired like the boss claimed, winning a one-on-one fight was impossible. After all, the vice-boss was still just a common thief.
Was this a death sentence? Of course he was unhappy. But voicing that unhappiness might get him killed on the spot.
Left Path: Boss and fourteen thieves
Right Path: Vice-boss alone
“Oh? Isn’t this a mana stone?”
I pulled a blue-glowing stone from the body of the gear golem I had just destroyed. Blue meant it was an 8th-grade mana stone. Not exactly a fortune, but enough to buy a few decent snacks at the market.
Nice. Snack money secured!
I tucked the mana stone into my pocket and continued down the path. I had already made decent progress. Even accounting for the time I wasted getting turned around at another fork earlier, the end didn’t seem too far off.
- Creeeeak….
“Whoop.”
The instant I heard that grating noise, I leaped sideways. A razor-sharp spear shot up from the exact spot I had been standing, stabbing uselessly into empty air. The thought of what would have happened if I stayed put sent chills down my spine.
So underground architectural dungeons really are dangerous. This place was full of traps like these.
Whether I had simply picked the path with the most traps or not, almost no monsters had appeared, yet I kept running into one trap after another.
“Works for me, though.”
It meant I had to listen to less of that godawful metallic screeching. That alone made choosing this path solo worth it.
The traps were genuinely dangerous, but fortunately they weren’t much of a problem for me.
- Creeeeak….
Hear the sound, then jump to the opposite side.
- Whoosh!
See? The arrow flies right past me.
Monsters barely showed up on this route. Now that the horrible metallic noise from the gear golems was gone, I could finally remove the cotton balls I had stuffed in my ears.
And if I heard a creak with no golem around? That meant a trap was activating. All I had to do was react quickly and dodge.
Traps being traps, the triggering sounds were usually too faint for normal people to hear. But for a rabbit beastman like me, even tiny noises were crystal clear. And because the sound was so irritating, I never missed one.
After safely clearing this arrow trap too, I was about to start walking again when—
“Uwaaaaagh!”
A scream came from behind, where the arrow had flown. It was a voice I remembered hearing.
Not exactly familiar, but I had definitely heard it recently… Who was it again?
I was getting bored of walking the path by myself anyway. Might as well go see the face.
With that casual thought, I doubled back toward the scream. What I found was—
“P-please spare me! I’ll do anything, sir!”
There was a strange middle-aged man pinned to the wall like some grotesque decoration, an arrow piercing his clothes and holding him in place.
“…Ah. I remember now. You’re one of the guys who ran away earlier, right?”
I didn’t remember his face, but those shabby clothes definitely rang a bell.
“I generously let you escape, but you followed us anyway? This time you really must want to die.”
I generally didn’t like killing people. But I wasn’t soft enough to spare someone who had tailed us with the intent to attack.
I hated killing, but I hated dying even more.
I yanked one of the nearby arrows out of the wall. One good stab would end it.
“N-no, sir! I was, um, forcibly dragged here, I swear!”
“Forcibly?”
“The boss threw me down this path, sir! Told me to open the doors!”
“Aha. So it’s about the fork in the road.”
“Even if I stayed put, I had no choice, right? It’s not like I could win if I attacked your side alone… So I was just following quietly from far behind, sir.”
Hmm. Was he telling the truth? At the very least, he had definitely been far enough that I didn’t notice him until he screamed. I could believe he hadn’t been planning a surprise attack.
But so what?
I twirled the arrow between my fingers and asked, “I still don’t see any reason not to kill you. Got anything else to tell me?”
“The boss took all the rest of the guys to the opposite path! The people over there are in danger, sir!”
“And?”
“…Yessir?”
The guys who ran away had come back to ambush us. Hmm. Yeah. Distracted by all the constant creaking, I hadn’t even considered that possibility.
But would it even be a problem? Faye and Theo together could probably slaughter normal thieves without breaking a sweat.
“Nothing else to say? Well, I’m a nice person, so I’ll make it painless. Close your eyes for a second?”
The thief’s face grew even paler. Weird. I thought I sounded pretty kind.
The thief started desperately listing everything he could do, but none of it really interested me.
…Wait. Actually, one thing did catch my attention.
“You know how to navigate dungeon paths?”
“Yes, yessir! I’m confident!”
The paths in this dungeon weren’t that complicated, but getting lost and hitting dead ends was still annoying as hell. If he could prevent that, well… it might be worth considering.
“Fine. I’ll spare your life.”
“Thank you, sir! I’ll serve you as my big sis from now on!”
“No need for that. Still, I can’t risk you attacking me. Mind if I break one of your arms real quick?”
“No, no sir! There’s a rope at my waist, so please just tie me up with that!”
“A rope? It’s the real deal. Why the hell do you carry this around?”
“It’s essential for thieving, sir…”
After tying the thief up nice and tight, I pulled the arrow out of him. Even though his entire upper body was bound, he seemed genuinely happy just to be alive.
It was a bit early to celebrate, though. Since I had him tied up anyway, I might as well hand him over to the soldiers later. I wonder if there’s a bounty on him.
Still… on one side of my heart, there was a part of me that felt relieved I hadn’t killed a person.
Yeah. Good is good, I guess. But I can’t keep worrying about stuff like this forever.
This time I had a convenient excuse to let him live, but I couldn’t count on luck like that forever.
I thought I had gotten pretty used to this world, but I still have a long way to go.
I let out a small sigh.