Taboo-Class Dungeon
“You’re the party leader Estelle, right?”
“That’s right.”
“….”
Deep blue eyes fixed on me, piercing straight through. Beyond those star-bright, vivid irises flickered a sharp appraisal, measuring me up.
Something about the seasoned air she carried made it impossible to see her as merely a beautiful woman.
That aside, though, I still couldn’t figure out why everyone here spoke so casually to me right off the bat.
We didn’t even look that far apart in age.
Maybe it was the gulf between apprentice adventurer and veteran.
Back in the kingdom I’d climbed all the way to Special Class Warrior in the king’s personal guard, so the difference felt even stranger.
Well, new place, new rules. I’d dealt with the same sort of thing plenty of times before I ever became a warrior.
“You said you came for a clear answer. Chainber told me.”
“Yeah. I heard the authority rests with you.”
“….”
Understanding didn’t mean I had to bow and scrape.
I’d only shown Chainber respect because his face practically radiated years of experience.
This blue-haired woman… well.
The quiet that had settled the moment I stepped inside sank even deeper into silence at my single remark.
In short, the atmosphere turned ugly.
“This bastard….”
Someone sitting nearby shot to his feet, but Estelle raised a hand at once, stopping him cold.
“Enough.”
The mood that had been about to boil over was pressed flat again.
A faint regret brushed past me.
Pride fights like this weren’t rare in the kingdom either. The difference was that back there everything eventually got settled with fists. Watching it play out this way felt oddly stifling.
Estelle set down her cup and rose. A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she lightly clapped her hands together.
“No wonder Chainber got so pissed. Makes sense he’d call you over just to knock you down a peg.”
So Chainber really had set this up on purpose.
What a pain.
My gaze drifted toward him before I realized it. He sat stiff-faced in a corner; our eyes met dead-on.
…Yeah, this is starting to get on my nerves. I’d rather he cut out the annoying games.
A flicker of irritation rose.
I looked at him with a blank face. Chainber suddenly flinched, then his expression turned puzzled.
He didn’t even seem to know why his body had locked up for a second.
In that interval Estelle stepped right up to me.
“An apprentice with this kind of presence is rare. …Or maybe it’s just the recklessness of someone who doesn’t know a thing.”
“I came for a clear answer. Whether helping with your job will raise my adventurer rank.”
Estelle studied me a moment, then gave a ready nod.
“It’s possible. But first we have to see if you meet the standard we want.”
“How do I show you?”
“Metten, guide him.”
“Yes.”
The man who’d been sitting beside her rose quietly and gestured to me.
“Just come out the back.”
The door he pointed to was different from the entrance I’d used.
I nodded and followed him. One by one the people inside the inn stood and trailed after us in a noisy crowd.
We pushed open the rear door of the inn and a courtyard opened up. Large stone slabs lay scattered across one side.
“We’ve been gathering people for quite a while. We set this up as a rough benchmark. Stack as many slabs as you can lift and try. The record so far is thirteen.”
“….”
For a second I had nothing to say.
…Are they joking?
I seriously wondered.
Even if they were “slabs,” maybe they were some special material rather than plain rock. I picked one up to check.
It was far too light. Just an ordinary stone slab.
And the most anyone had lifted was thirteen of these?
The atmosphere around me was too serious for a prank.
I scratched my cheek and started stacking the slabs one by one. When I finished, thirty of them stood in a pile taller than I was.
“…You’re going to lift all that? Better not overdo it.”
Someone muttered under their breath. Worry or mockery—either way, disbelief colored the tone.
Without a word I bent, slipped one hand under the stack, and lifted.
I gave it a couple of easy shakes up and down, then set it back down.
Thud.
The stacked slabs toppled in a clatter, kicking up a cloud of dust from the ground.
“….”
Until the dust settled again, the entire courtyard held its breath.
Estelle was the first to break the silence.
“Chainber. Could you do that right now?”
“…If I used mana, yes.”
“Did this man just use mana?”
“…No.”
Chainber’s answer came out dry, like words he hated having to spit out.
Estelle lowered her eyes in thought for a moment, then lifted her head and looked at me.
“Have you trained your body specially?”
I’d trained steadily ever since I woke up in this place.
I nodded. Once more Estelle fell quiet.
Then the man named Metten who’d brought me here stepped up to her and spoke.
“If we have this one, I don’t think we need to gather anyone else.”
“True…….”
Estelle gave a small nod, then looked at me again and opened her mouth.
“Come back in a week.”
“The promise….”
“I’ll keep it. Thanks to you we don’t have to recruit more people. I’ll guarantee you the pay that would have gone to them as well.”
Standing there like an outsider, unable to share the mood running through the group, I turned without lingering the moment she made the promise clear.
Even as I left, the surroundings remained strangely, unnaturally quiet.
Taboo-class dungeon.
Among the seventy-two dungeon ranks the Empire used, it sat at the third tier.
The two ranks below it—Anomaly and Threat—could be cleared with relative stability by a single well-formed party. From Taboo-class onward, the story changed.
Taboo-class dangers were more than one or two parties could handle, so on average at least three parties cooperated on a raid.
Among them, the dungeon Estelle’s party was preparing to clear—the Ruins of the Cliff—had been pre-assessed as high difficulty even for Taboo-class, so five elite parties had been assembled.
On top of the regular parties, they had hired fifty extra hands for the heavy lifting. Those people weren’t party members, but Estelle’s party paid them a flat wage and kept them under control. In return for taking on that hassle, her party claimed a larger share of any treasure found inside.
“Aren’t we short on people?”
Beside Estelle stood Rohan, party leader of Silver Moon and a high-rank adventurer.
Estelle shook her head at his words.
“It’s enough.”
“I heard you found one ridiculously strong laborer.”
“You’re well informed.”
“Well, if you say so, then it is.”
Rohan shrugged and turned his gaze to the roughly eighty people gathered nearby.
They were the adventurers belonging to the five parties taking part in this raid.
Not a single top-rank adventurer stood among them.
When multiple parties joined forces on a Taboo-class dungeon, hiring a top-rank was simply inefficient in practice.
Calling one meant paying an enormous fee. Shares, gear, even decision-making rights all had to be handed over.
In exchange, the actual skill of top-ranks varied wildly; aside from the famous names, plenty of them weren’t much better than high-ranks.
Rohan swept his eyes over them once, then checked the separate cluster of fifty as well—the labor force meant to lift the stone door leading to the upper levels.
Confirming a force well over a hundred, he spoke.
“You know we have to succeed this time, right? The pride of the central continent’s adventurers is on the line.”
“These days pride isn’t the real issue.”
“…True enough.”
Rohan’s face darkened as he agreed with Estelle.
The times were chaotic.
Calamity-class dungeons that had gone uncleared for ages, and even the ancient dungeons ranked as Apocalypse-class, were spitting their beasts indiscriminately onto the continent.
Dungeon Breaks had happened before, but what was occurring now had gone far beyond the usual.
Not long ago an entire city in the western continent had been completely annihilated by a Calamity-class beast horde. The noble soldiers, holy knights, and adventurers who’d gone to reinforce it had all been wiped out.
Incidents like that were becoming commonplace. The situation was deteriorating to the point that even the Empire itself felt the crisis.
“No need to look so gloomy already. Right now we have to think about our own situation. We’ve prepared so much for this day.”
Rohan let out a short breath and nodded.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
Soon the Taboo-class dungeon raid force set out.
Their destination was the dungeon called the Ruins of the Cliff.
Travel west across the central continent and a massive mountain range rose, forming the border with the western continent.
Within that range stood a cliff so high its top could not be seen.
At the base of the sheer face, a hole opened near ground level—that was the target of this raid.
A passerby had reported sensing a beast’s presence inside; the dungeon was discovered, surveyed, and classified Taboo-class once part of its structure was mapped.
Estelle took the very front and entered. She herself was a high-rank adventurer, but even within the same rank skill varied. Among the five party leaders she stood out by far.
From the start her party, Blood Blade, was far more famous than the other four.
Not only the leader but a large portion of her members were high-rank adventurers.
The difference in fighting strength made comparison with the other parties almost meaningless.
Of course that wasn’t the only reason she led.
Taking the vanguard in a dungeon raid meant accepting risk while also gaining the first chance at any treasure.
With five parties involved, distribution of finds inside would be based on contribution.
Everything was aimed at raising their share of the treasure and mana stones the dungeon would yield.
According to the preliminary survey, the beasts appearing right past the entrance were stone-hide ogres—ogres with extremely hard outer shells. Medium-sized cliff spiders also appeared from time to time.
That was the information gathered before the upper levels, and it matched reality.
Already familiar with the intel, the raid force advanced without major difficulty.
Then they reached the boulder that had stopped the survey team. It looked like an ordinary rock, but the unknown pattern carved into its center instantly changed that impression.
The boulder towered far above a man’s height. Compared to the cliff it was small, and not so large that people couldn’t lift it—otherwise they never would have gathered labor so crudely.
The survey team had expected a path to the upper levels to open behind it.
They had no choice: there was only one road, and the sole thing blocking that single passage was this massive stone.
The corridor was too narrow to shove it aside, so it had to be lifted.
Breaking it was not an option. The survey team had already tried the easy way. Blades and magic alike were reflected or absorbed and vanished uselessly.
In the end the only method was to lift it—the dungeon’s first gate, designed that way.
Estelle glanced at the party member behind her, Metten. Understanding the look, Metten called forward the laborers who had been hanging at the rear.
Every one of them had passed their own tests; each had a solid, sturdy build.
Of course, against the size of the rock the numbers still looked thin. Estelle herself had planned to hire far more.
What changed her mind was the man with the long, faded white hair.
Estelle spotted him among the fifty, wearing a vacant expression, as if lost in thoughts of his own.
Metten lined them up in front of the boulder and began explaining how they should work.
“You’re not here to show off individually, so focus your strength on my signal. First get the center, then all at once…….”
If they couldn’t lift it, the raid force itself would have to join in. In that worst case the advance party would go ahead while the rest returned with more hands, and everything would tangle.
They could only hope the hired men did well.
But before the explanation even finished, the white-haired man stepped forward alone.
Metten, mid-sentence, panicked and tried to stop him.
The man bent, slipped his hands under the boulder, and stood.
Kuuung.
And the stone rose with absurd ease.
The dark passage that had been hidden behind the rock came into view; the entire bustling raid force froze solid.
Meanwhile.
Bell, who had watched from the rear as the raid force fought fiercely through the beasts and pushed forward, thought after lifting the boulder:
No matter how I look at it, something’s off.