The Porter's Strategy
The dungeon sat just past the village outskirts, at the end of a path that cut straight through the northern forest.
I had only just possessed this body, yet I knew the way without a second thought—because there was not a single dungeon in this game I had left uncleared. If it was a hero-adventure RPG, I had played it. Dungeon in Evil was no exception.
I had already cleared every other difficulty. The only one left was Extreme Hell, which only a tiny handful of players had ever beaten. That was the state of things when I got dropped into this world. Naturally, this dungeon was one I knew inside and out.
Far ahead, at the dungeon entrance, stood a stone statue of a lizard beast crowned with sharp horns. The moment I saw the symbol of the boss that ruled this place, there was no doubt left.
“The boss here… was the Lizard Lord, right?”
It was a boss that first appeared on Extreme difficulty—one step below Extreme Hell. I remembered it as one of the nastier early bosses. The fact that we were raiding this place now meant I had possessed Allen not long after the hero’s party had first formed.
But traces of the Demon King’s army here? There had been nothing like that on Extreme difficulty…
I had been muttering to myself, and the elf with the absurdly sharp ears overheard me. Ser-Aria stopped mid-swig and turned to look at me.
“Hmm? How do you know that, Allen? I was just about to tell you at the entrance.”
“Looks like he was eavesdropping on our conversation earlier. So sneaky♡”
What the hell was this now… If you were going to listen, just listen openly. Why make it sound like I was peeping?
Still, knowing the boss’s identity could look suspicious, so it seemed smarter to just play along with Erinn’s line.
“…Your voices carried up here.”
“Ah, I guess we were talking a little loud.”
“We were the only ones in that inn, after all.”
Letisia and Freya backed up my story. Good. I was just starting to relax, thinking I had not raised any red flags, when Erinn suddenly stepped closer.
“Scrub♡ You wanna sit in on the meetings from now on? Not that that empty little head of yours would be much help~♡”
Your head and mine are not that different, you know…
Even so, the chance to join the meetings was welcome. I gave a light nod, and Letisia spoke up as if she found it unexpected.
“Allen, didn’t you say it was better to stay out of the meetings so you could finish packing and get us moving faster?”
What? …I had volunteered to sit them out? I had just assumed they left the useless porter out of combat meetings on purpose.
Apparently the original Allen had figured that since he could not fight anyway, he might as well use the meeting time to organize the gear and get the party ready to leave sooner.
But that was then. Right now I was still useless in a fight, sure—but the conversations in those meetings would give me more information about this world. I needed that time.
“…I did say that, but thinking about it, it’s a pain having you all come all the way to the dungeon entrance just to brief me again. Might be easier if I just sat in.”
“Ah, well…”
“Mmm! He’s got a point there.”
Ser-Aria took a long, noisy pull from her bottle and agreed with me. We were standing at a dungeon entrance and she still would not put the damn thing down…
“Then from now on, Allen, you’re in!”
“Hold it, Aria. I’m the party leader. Whether the scrub joins the meetings or not is up to me.”
“Ahh, right. Sorry, Erinn.”
What?
Of course… the one leading this hero’s party was none other than our tiny little mesugaki hero. The others did not seem opposed to me joining, but Erinn’s gaze had turned a little cold.
“Scrub♡”
“…What?”
“Why the sudden urge to sit in on meetings~?”
“I just explained the reason…”
“That’s all?”
“…Yeah.”
Did she need some other reason? While that thought crossed my mind, Erinn kept staring at me, then opened her mouth again.
“And why should I let you~?”
“…What?”
“Pfft♡ Why should I let a useless scrub like you into a combat meeting? What does our party gain from it, hmm? Unless you actually know something about fighting—which you don’t. All you’d do is add one more mouth and drag the whole thing out longer~♡”
“You…!”
Her cutting words made me flare up for a second, but when I thought about it, I had nothing solid to fire back with. These people were not some ordinary party. They were the hero’s party.
Even if this dungeon was early-game content in the game, it was still a place only the hero’s party was expected to clear—a disaster zone for ordinary people. That was exactly why the pre-dungeon meetings had to be careful and important.
Looking at it from Erinn’s or the others’ perspective… letting me into the meetings was not a good idea. If some guy who did not know the first thing about combat started spouting nonsense, the quality of the meeting would tank and it would just waste more time.
“Got a comeback? Or is everything I said so true you can’t even talk~?”
Her tone had an edge to it, but I understood this was not just her being mean. She was serious.
Of course I had planned to sit quietly and just listen if they let me in… but asking them to trust me on that was a stretch. People change from moment to moment. Coldly speaking, every word she said was right.
Still, I can’t give up on the meetings.
I could not afford to miss a chance to carve out a place for myself in this party. Time would solve some things, sure—but I had no idea how long I would be stuck as a completely useless porter if I waited.
“…I get what you’re saying. I was being too hasty.”
“Oh my, you actually understood? For a scrub, that was surprisingly quick~♡”
“Then all I have to do is prove I’m useful in the meetings, right?”
“Hoh, and what does that mean?”
Erinn looked interested. There was not much I could do in an actual fight right now, but…
“This dungeon. Want to clear it exactly the way I say?”
Teaching them the strategy was something I could do.
Fortunately, Erinn and the rest of the party accepted my proposal. The process, of course, was not smooth.
“How does Allen know so much about this dungeon?”
“Isn’t it too dangerous to leave command to someone with no combat experience?”
“…I agree.”
Convincing them took real work.
I tried the excuse that I had researched this dungeon thoroughly on my own, but turning the party’s hearts around was genuinely hard… until Erinn, of all people, unexpectedly sided with me and made it possible.
“Pfft, a porter with zero combat experience wants to command a dungeon raid~?”
“Yes, that really does sound difficult…”
“Yeah. Sounds fun. Go ahead and try.”
“Erinn?”
“I don’t know how far a scrub like you can go, but♡”
Of course there was still opposition.
“Erinn, Allen doesn’t know the first thing about this!”
“She’s right, Erinn. It’s too dangerous.”
“He said he researched it a lot, didn’t he? He might even know more than we do.”
“Knowing something and having actual experience leading a party are completely different.”
“But he’s asking for a chance to prove himself, right? I get what you’re worried about… but it’s rare for this scrub to actually push for something. Doesn’t that mean he’s confident?”
With a single word from Erinn, the rest of the party had no choice but to fall in line.
“Your party leader thinks so. What about you?”
“Mmm…”
“…Understood.”
“But if you fail, scrub, you’re taking full responsibility♡ Because if you’d just kept quiet, we would’ve cleared this dungeon just fine—and you ruined it by running your mouth.”
Even while supporting me, Erinn made sure to deliver a clear warning. When I nodded as if that went without saying, she spoke in that arrogant little tone of hers.
“So you’d better take this seriously. Act stupid and it’s over right there♡”
I never did hear exactly what that “responsibility” meant… but either way, I took command and the dungeon raid began. The process, however, was anything but smooth from the very start.
“There’ll be a lot of traps from here on. Don’t touch anything that looks even a little suspicious—just avoid it. Yeah, for example, that brick sticking out over there like— Aria?”
A concealed mechanism has been triggered!
“Huh? Why are arrows suddenly flying at us?”
“I just said that was a trap!!”
“Puhaha! Dodge, dodge~!”
You crazy bitch!!
Disaster right out of the gate. Drunk Ser-Aria had just stomped on the exact trap I had pointed out. Dozens of poison-tipped arrows came screaming straight at us.
“Erinn, can you cut them all down?”
“What do you take me for~? My arms are a little different from those two arms of yours that are only good for jerking off~♡”
“Then hurry up and block them!”
“Pfft, that sounded more like a request than an order~?”
“Block them!!”
“Yes~♡”
Erinn shot forward and drew her sword.
Hero Erinn has activated Hundred Flower Sword Dance
A message only I could see floated up, and Erinn’s blade flared with light.
Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash—!!!
In an instant she sliced every last one of the dozens of arrows clean in half, as if she were cutting through a rain of falling flower petals.
“Haa…”
“Pfft, why are you so scared of something this small, dummy~♡”
Not being scared would be the weird part.
Anyway, once Erinn had finished cutting down the arrows and I could breathe again, I immediately pointed at the culprit.
“Aria, you…”
“Ahaha! Sorry, Allen~!”
“…I was put in command this time. That means you follow.”
“Yeah, yeah, I will. This Noonim just made a little mistake.”
Was that really a mistake…
“…Aria, fall back to the rear. Clara, you take the front next to Erinn and disarm traps as we go.”
“Puhaha, demoted to the rear!”
“…Okay.”
If Ser-Aria triggered another weird trap it would be a disaster, so having someone clear them ahead of us seemed safer. Clara stepped forward and began carefully picking her way along.
Then she suddenly turned back to look at me.
“…Um… I’m only asking just in case.”
“Yeah?”
“Y-you’re not putting me in front as an arrow sponge because I’m useless, right…?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
This insane paranoia case. I could not let my guard down for a single second.
One wrong word and she would start crying again, and we would be stuck for ages in a hallway full of traps.
“R-really…?”
“Really. I’m putting you here because I trust you. You’re excellent at detecting and disarming traps. We need your skills if we want to get through safely.”
“…You trust me? Is that it?”
“I’m counting on you.”
“…Okay.”
That should keep her from spiraling into weird thoughts for a while. True to her place as a member of the hero’s party, Clara found and disarmed every trap—even ones that would have confused me, and I already knew this dungeon.
Looking at it this way, every single one of them is ridiculously talented…
Maybe the god of Dungeon in Evil gave them all their powers in exchange for one mental defect each. There was no other way to explain it.
The trap zone was finally ending, and we were about to enter the area where monsters would appear.
If I arbitrarily called the trap zone Area A and the next monster zone Area B… then Area B was a stretch where ranged attacks and magic had the clear advantage.
But as we all knew, our party had no mage.
What kind of party does not even bring a mage? Did the idiot who built this party have a brain?
Still, it was actually a pretty efficient composition, which was why it had been put together that way. There was someone who could more or less fill the mage’s role.
“Letisia.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about time for the spirits…”
I was almost afraid to finish the sentence.
Why I felt that way would become obvious soon enough.
“Ah, is it my turn?”
The moment she asked, Letisia suddenly smiled. Just looking at that smile already made me dizzy.
Following my request, she began preparing to call her spirits.
“O souls that dwell within nature.”
As Letisia recited the chant, a spirit-summoning circle bloomed beneath her feet.
“In accordance with the pact between us, fulfill the duty of your contract.”
Spirit Mage Letisia has activated High-Speed Summon
The circle blazed with light. Thanks to the High-Speed Summon skill, spirits of all four major elements appeared at once.
Spirits with names you had definitely heard at least once answered Letisia’s call and appeared. Then she lightly lifted the hem of her robe, reached to her hip, and pulled something free.
Crack!
She snapped it against the floor with a thick, juicy sound. Yes—what Letisia had drawn was a whip. You might wonder why a spirit mage carried a whip, but the spirit mages of Dungeon in Evil also had the traits of summoners, so that much was fine.
The real problem was the woman holding the whip.
“Kyahat♥”
…It had begun. That ominous little laugh. When I glanced over, Letisia stretched the whip taut between both hands, then lightly stepped on the Salamander’s head with the sole of her shoe.
“Kyahahahat!! Dear spirits. It’s time to work~! I’m going to whip you so. very. hard. so you’d better work hard too, okay? Otherwise…”
Crack!!
“You know what happens, right? Kyahaha!”
The expression on Letisia’s face as she spoke to the spirits was soaked in pure ecstasy. Both cheeks flushed, her eyes completely gone, her breathing already rough.
I told you, did I not? Every single person in this party had something wrong with their head.
The problem with Letisia—who had looked like the most normal one among them—was that she was an extreme sadist.