132. Dungeon, Explosion, Reward (End)
132. Dungeon, Explosion, Reward (End)
The plan was simple.
While the highly sensitive Cerberus was distracted, I would burrow underground, dig a pit deep enough to hold it, and make it fall in.
A depth of about ten meters.
With a body that massive, a fall from sufficient height should have left it unable to regain its balance.
I would smash its heads during that opening.
A very simple plan.
"!(@)*&()$#!!"
"Persistent."
I pulled the shovel out of the middle head. The middle head lay utterly motionless, its eyes rolled back.
Was it dead?
I looked away from the middle head and glanced at the two remaining heads as Cerberus struggled to rise. It truly was troublesome. Despite falling into a pit deep enough to knock most creatures unconscious, it remained stubbornly alive.
Just what you'd expect from a mid-to-late-game mob.
If I'd fought it head-on, I would have had a rough time.
"I coated the shovel with a deadly poison, but I wonder whether it went down well. Bark once if you liked it."
A single drop of the poison was said to kill a person. I'd poured nearly an entire bottle over the blade, so it should have been spreading through the monster by now. Perhaps it would slowly die even if I left it alone.
"Yohan!"
"Shuri! Prepare a spell from above!"
"!@()!($#&*!!"
Read the room. I chuckled as the two remaining pairs of eyes glared at me with murderous intent. The fight had been decided the moment Cerberus fell into the pit. All that remained was deciding how to finish it.
I used a Skill on Cerberus as it tried to rise.
"Craft."
A dog needed a leash, after all.
I made a thick stone ring and fastened the dead head down so it couldn't be raised. Because the lifeless neck could exert no strength, the monster's movement was completely restricted. Escaping would take considerable time.
The easiest answer would have been to destroy the pit with its breath, but nobody was going to give it twenty seconds to charge. It also knew that releasing one inside the cramped pit would injure itself.
In other words, it was checkmate.
I crossed Cerberus's back, broad as a soccer field, and climbed onto its immobilized right head.
It resisted, but the impact of the fall had left it unable to control its body properly. I adjusted my grip on the shovel while standing atop the gently swaying head.
"Goodbye."
A fight was not won through strength alone, you mutt. I drove the mithril shovel into Cerberus's thick skull. Befitting the finest metal in the world, the blade sank in without resistance.
The shovel blade was halfway buried.
Not enough yet.
I stomped on the shovel head and drove the entire blade deep into its skull. A roar. A scream. Then blood poured over me like a wave.
Ugh, it reeked of blood.
I'd definitely need a shower the moment I got back.
Covered in blood, I twisted the wound in the crown of its head. The wider it became, the faster Cerberus would die.
As if responding to my intent, I heard wind tearing above me and felt a rush of heat.
Still wrenching the wound open, I looked left. Lewis had landed on Cerberus's broad back, while a fireball burst against the left head and tormented it.
What attribute had the left head been?
It was going to die either way, so the answer hardly mattered. I leaned against my shovel and quietly watched its left head burn.
The battle was over. It had been anticlimactic, but also nearly ideal.
We'd defeated a powerful monster without suffering any serious damage. Once Cerberus stopped moving entirely, I pulled out the shovel, took a cloth from my pack, and roughly wiped its blood from my body.
"Is it... over?"
"As you can see."
"W-we defeated Cerberus!"
"Didn't we just add a little help after Yohan had already wrecked it?"
At times like this, you were supposed to accept the credit, Thief Cat. Watching the delighted youngsters, I lay down on Cerberus's back. Its fur was prickly, but not enough to prevent me from resting there for a while.
My entire body ached from Shoveling like a madman.
No matter how efficient or fast my Shoveling was, I was still relying on a human body's physical abilities.
"I'll rest a moment, then we'll check the reward chest."
"But how do we get back up?"
"If there's no path, I'll just make one."
I would make a suitable staircase and climb out.
Ignoring the overpowering smells of blood and gamey animal musk, I closed my eyes.
I was used to stuff like this.
----------------------
"Whoa... the reward chest is huge!"
"Wouldn't a chest this size mean a huge reward? We might make at least 1,000 gold coins—"
"Hold on. Don't open it yet."
"Why?"
"It could be a Mimic."
"Ah."
Tension entered the faces of the party members who had been celebrating only moments earlier.
"I'll check whether it's a Mimic first, then we'll open it."
I poured the paralysis reagent Viola had given me over the chest. If it was a Mimic, the reagent should have paralyzed it and left it unable to move. Probably.
Either way, even partial paralysis would have been useful.
But the chest showed no reaction.
So it was not a Mimic after all.
"I'm opening the chest now."
I lifted the lid of a chest twice the size of those in other dungeons. Its contents were revealed... and consisted of miscellaneous odds and ends.
"Cerberus was the final boss, yet the reward is rather mediocre."
"Mm, still, I think we could get over 30 gold per gemstone."
"Not bad at all."
Was it telling us to harvest Cerberus's materials to make up the difference?
A few gold coins, several gemstones, and shabby equipment. Were these the belongings of dead explorers?
In this world, the possessions of people who died inside a dungeon eventually appeared in its reward chest. These probably belonged to the dead explorers mentioned during our research.
This was my first time actually seeing that happen.
That made sense. The dungeons I'd cleared until now had suffered almost no casualties.
In most cases, I had been the first person to enter them.
"Seems like the quality of explorers who came in here wasn't all that great."
I scattered all the equipment in the chest onto the floor. Worn-out and dented gear. Obvious cheap stuff at a glance. Unconquered dungeons often accumulated gear like this. The system was bound to pile up the equipment left behind by those who couldn't break through the dungeon.
In the game, that fact had appeared only as a one-line loading-screen tooltip. Seeing it in person felt strange.
If I died in a dungeon, would I leave behind nothing but equipment like this?
"How about we hand it over to the Explorers' Guild?"
"...They won't find the owners anyway. Just selling it off is—"
"Isn't that too heartless?"
"That's just how explorers are. They gamble their lives hoping to strike it rich. When they die, they just become part of the dungeon and fade away."
Sif spoke words worthy of an explorer veteran for the first time in a while.
So she could say things like that?
"You think so too, right, Yohan?"
"Well, yeah, I suppose."
Coldly speaking, selling everything would have been more practical.
Explorers lived precarious lives, and the party that cleared a dungeon had first claim on equipment recovered inside it. Most lived from one danger to the next, so unless the items belonged to a commissioned expedition, no one was likely to challenge us over them.
"It's too much to take everything. Check if there are any personal effects among the equipment. We'll only take those."
Sif nodded with lingering reluctance. The entire party wore complicated expressions.
We swept the gold and boxes of gemstones into our pouches, collected anything that looked like a personal possession from the dead explorers' equipment, and returned to Cerberus's corpse.
The dungeon reward had been disappointing, so I'd at least harvest Cerberus's hide and bones.
They should have been better than steel, at minimum.
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"I'm here to report on the Beast's Tomb."
"Huh?"
"I'm here to report on the exploration of the Beast's Tomb."
At the words of the enormous, menacing man, the receptionist at Velen City's Explorers' Guild looked up at him in fear.
He looked capable of grabbing someone by the neck and snapping it at any moment. The receptionist thought she could smell blood on him and swallowed without meaning to. Explorers with rougher faces were common, but the pressure he gave off exceeded that of most veterans.
"I, uh, that's..."
Before the receptionist could finish answering, the man placed a collection of small objects on the counter, from a pendant to a dagger engraved with initials. She stared up at him and asked,
"Wh-what are these?"
"The belongings of explorers who died in the dungeon. I'd like these returned to the bereaved families."
'D-despite his face, he might actually be a good person...'
The receptionist placed the miscellaneous belongings behind the desk, her expression noticeably more relaxed. The huge man then set down an enormous fang, his Explorers' Guild license, and a small notebook.
"This is one of Cerberus's fangs. I submit it as proof that we cleared the Beast's Tomb. This notebook contains information about the dungeon, so I'll submit it as evidence as well."
"Ce, Ce, Ce..."
"Ce?"
"Cerberus?!"
'Cerberus? That Cerberus? Why had a monster like that suddenly appeared?!'
The receptionist screamed loudly enough to shake the guild.
Naturally, every gaze in the guild turned toward the massive man. Surrounded by curious stares, he continued looking at the receptionist as though none of them mattered.
His gaze demanded quick service. The receptionist turned pale, bowed, and apologized.
"I-I'm sorry! I was just s-so startled!"
"Anyway, I've delivered what I came to deliver, so I'll return in a few days."
"Yes! Please come back at this time in two days!"
Once the man who had left such a powerful impression departed, the receptionist sighed in relief.
'Cerberus and the Beast's Tomb...'
The fang, as thick as a person's waist, was chilling merely to look at.
The receptionist slapped both her cheeks with her palms, then turned around and hurried off to find an appraiser stationed within the guild.
She needed to arrange an appraisal quickly, then send an expedition before the dungeon reset to verify his report.
A few days later, the news that the Beast's Tomb—which had remained an unconquered dungeon in Velen City for five years—had been cleared was publicly announced.