Taboo-Class Dungeon (3)
The man of bizarre, monstrous strength who had lifted the boulder alone.
Passing him by, the adventurers stepped into the darkness-shrouded passage and advanced slowly, holding even their breathing in check.
This was a Taboo-class dungeon.
Unlike dungeons ranked below it, from Taboo-class onward traps could appear without warning, and monsters no prior survey could account for might suddenly burst forth.
And the five elite parties gathered to conquer the Ruins of the Cliff knew this better than anyone.
Scrutinizing the path carefully as they pressed forward, they soon discovered a staircase leading upward.
Estelle's party, holding the vanguard, began the climb first, followed by Rohan's party and the remaining three.
The stairs were finely crafted, as though someone had carved them from stone with deliberate care.
After a long ascent, they faced a new passage at the top. Estelle, arriving first, couldn't help but swallow hard.
A space so still not a breath of wind stirred — oppressively silent.
What filled it were massive golems, as if boulders had been fused together into towering forms. Their bulk rivaled that of a Stonehide Ogre.
But the golems themselves weren't the problem. Having passed the first gate, it wouldn't have been strange for monsters stronger than an ogre to appear.
The problem was their number.
Too many. Far too many.
The vast passage stretching before them was wide enough that dozens of ogres could have roamed freely with room to spare — yet now, packed wall to wall with golems, it looked almost cramped.
…
Before long, all five parties had ascended onto the passage and found themselves face-to-face with a golem horde beyond counting.
No one could find words. They all felt it instinctively.
The dungeon's monsters were at saturation. A Dungeon Break would not have been surprising.
The Ruins of the Cliff had remained hidden from the world for a long time, only recently taking its place among the Taboo-class dungeons after another had been conquered.
Given how long it had gone undiscovered, they had expected a certain degree of danger — but never imagined it would be on the verge of a Dungeon Break.
Then one of the golems nearest the raid party turned its head and looked at them.
From the eye sockets of that expressionless stone face, an alien red light bloomed.
"Everyone, prepare for combat."
In a low but clear voice, Estelle drew her sword from her hip.
Having come this far, she had no intention of turning back.
Thud.
The floor trembled. The golems had begun to move.
Led by the one that had first spotted the raid, the swarm filling the space came thundering toward them.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Every dungeon had its own characteristics.
They hadn't expected golems specifically, but through encounters with Stonehide Ogres and Cliff Spiders they had roughly gauged the dungeon's nature and prepared accordingly.
Thieves and archers were kept to a minimum; instead the focus was on front-line fighters to hold the line and rear-line mages to unleash powerful magic.
As if rehearsed, the formation settled into place in an instant, without chaos.
At this point there was no need for each party to claim glory separately. The various parties mixed according to formation roles.
Estelle took her place just behind the shield-bearing vanguard. Then she immediately summoned her mana.
From deep in her heart, from her core, mana rose. It flowed straight down her arm and into her blade.
Red mana — utterly unlike the color of her hair — began to shimmer along the sword.
It had not yet taken complete form, but that mana carried power that approached the threshold of an Aura Blade.
Crash!
A front-line warrior caught a golem's strike on his shield.
"Ghk."
He was an upper-rank adventurer himself, yet a groan escaped him unbidden under a blow whose sheer weight felt ready to pulverize bone.
These were no ordinary golems.
These golems, too, were corrupted monsters.
From Taboo-class dungeons onward, corrupted monsters frequently filled the interiors. The Stonehide Ogre had been one of them.
Ordinary monsters, corrupted and appearing in mutated forms. The Stonehide Ogre, too, was a creature whose hide had grown unnaturally hard under the influence of corruption.
What exactly caused the corruption was still debated. The leading theory pointed to mana — that some unknown phenomenon corrupted mana itself, and that corruption then affected the monsters.
While the vanguard struggled to hold off the golem's attacks, Estelle's blade drove toward its joint.
When the golem's movement faltered, she shouted as if she'd been waiting for that moment.
"Same as fighting ordinary golems! Aim for the joints!"
Of course the blade didn't sink in easily, but the structure itself was no different from a normal golem. Joints were a weakness shared by all of them.
Just as they had against Stonehide Ogres, the shield warriors absorbed attacks and halted the golems' movement, and in those openings the swordsmen struck at the weak points. From the rear, the mages poured out their magic.
They had come fully prepared for a Taboo-class dungeon, and so the front line did not give ground easily.
Even with so many golems, the number that could charge the raid party in this passage was limited.
As the assaults continued, some among them fell, unable to hold — but just as many golems fell to the mages' attacks.
And at the moment the battle was racing toward its climax—
Thud.
With a sudden rumble, the dungeon's structure shifted. The walls that had formed either side of the passage collapsed without any warning.
"What the—!"
Stone dust and grit rose like a wind.
The already chaotic battlefield grew even murkier as dust billowed thick through the air.
And beyond the walls, a hidden space was revealed. A chamber as large as the passage itself had opened — and it, too, was packed with golems.
A number so overwhelming it stole the breath from their lungs.
"Fall back!"
Estelle shouted. It wasn't a calculated decision — it was instinct.
It was a scale they could not face while holding the line.
And she wasn't the only one who felt it.
"To the stairs! Back down!"
The other party leaders shouted to their own members as well, beginning to pull the formation back.
Starting with the mages in the rear and then the warriors, they withdrew step by step, descending the stairs they had climbed.
The passage where the stairs stood was too narrow for the golems to pass. That they couldn't follow was a stroke of fortune.
"Hah… hahh…"
Gathered before the boulder they had first passed, the raid party caught their breath.
A short while later, the party leaders gathered separately and a council began.
"What if we recover our strength and head back up?"
Opinion split two ways.
One side wanted to leave the dungeon as they were, reorganize, and return later; the other, as Rohan proposed, wanted to recover their stamina and climb the stairs again.
Rohan was the more aggressive in pressing his case.
"It's not as though our forces can't handle them, is it? Stamina is the only issue. And since the golems don't seem able to come down here, what if we gradually thin their numbers?"
Estelle nodded at his words. In truth, every party leader present would have preferred to conquer this dungeon among themselves alone.
If they left now, a dungeon showing signs of a Dungeon Break would have the guild itself assembling a full force.
But before they could settle on a decision, every party leader jerked their heads upward.
Thud.
A ceiling so high that even two ogres standing atop each other couldn't have reached it. That ceiling was trembling.
"Duc—!"
Before Estelle, sensing the omen, could finish shouting, the ceiling began to cave in with a roar.
Fortunately, the collapse wasn't where the adventurers had gathered, but in the forward passage where the stairs opened.
The problem was the golems that fell with it.
Boom. Crash. Thud!
Golems rained down in a cascade, the impacts shaking the ground.
"Back! Hurry!"
As a cloud of dust obscured everything ahead, the raid party scrambled backward.
And when the swirling dust cleared, the sight of countless golems arrayed beyond it was revealed.
The golems looked unharmed despite falling from that height. At most, a few had been crushed under those that fell after them.
"Oh, god."
"We're… fucked…"
The adventurers murmured blankly, each to themselves. And still the golems kept falling.
There was nowhere left to retreat. The passage directly behind them was blocked by the boulder.
Perhaps the ceiling's collapse had been inevitable. The thought even crossed them that it had been bound to happen — with those massive golems swarming about, the ground was bound to give way.
But why did it have to be when we were here…
In an atmosphere thick with spreading despair, Estelle turned her head and spoke to Metten behind her.
"When was the stone door supposed to open?"
Where Estelle gestured was the passage sealed tight by the boulder that the man she'd hired had lifted alone.
"…About ten minutes left."
"Hold out for ten minu—"
Estelle's words cut off mid-sentence. Then, as if a thought had struck her, she changed course.
"Commit everyone we can spare right now and push that boulder out of the way."
She didn't think they couldn't push it.
Everyone here was an elite adventurer who could wield mana. They couldn't possibly be weaker than the fifty laborers she'd hired separately from outside.
But those adventurers who could use mana were ultimately the force needed to conquer the dungeon. Committing them to lifting a boulder would have been a waste. That was why she'd hired fifty strong laborers separately.
In the end, a single man had lifted it alone.
But precisely because of that, the thought that they couldn't push it never occurred to her.
"If we push it forward, the people waiting on the other side could be crushed under it."
"We only need a gap people can pass through. Push it a little, lift it — whatever it takes."
"…Understood."
"In the meantime, we hold the golems at the front however we can."
While Estelle spoke to the other party leaders, Metten gathered twenty adventurers strong enough for the work and headed for the boulder-blocked passage.
Metten briefly checked for signs of life beyond the boulder. But as if something unknown blocked his senses, the other side was utterly still.
With no choice, Metten had his people put their hands on the boulder and, together, use their mana to push.
But the boulder did not budge.
"Damn it, how heavy is this thing? Are you even using your mana properly?"
"Shut up and pour everything you've got into it!"
They pushed with all their strength until blood seemed ready to burst from their faces — but the boulder did not so much as twitch.
"Bring more people!"
More and more adventurers crowded before the boulder. Except for the essential vanguard needed to hold the golems, every remaining shield warrior gathered there.
Meanwhile, the golems had begun to move. They started charging toward the raid party.
They had to hold off the golem assault until the escape route was cleared. But with manpower concentrated on pushing the boulder, they were short on combatants.
In place of the insufficient vanguard, the swordsmen dodged the golems' attacks as best they could and counterattacked.
But that wouldn't last long either. They needed to deal with this boulder somehow, and fast.
The strong men packed tight against the passage and shoved at the boulder, but it did not budge. Not even a tremor.
Metten, who had been pushing with everything he had, pressed his forehead against the boulder and thought—
…How the hell did that man lift this?