The Dungeon Explorer

Even the Shadow Summons—the sharpest of the lot—had never pulled off anything like this. Dumb luck was the likelier explanation, or a false report... and yet there was another possibility. The Army Summons might actually be getting smarter.

If that's really it, this is a jackpot.

If their intelligence kept climbing until they could take the sloppiest order he tossed them and understand it perfectly, how much easier would everything become? He didn't even need them that sharp. If they would just catch the gist of what he said, he'd be satisfied. Kill something, destroy something—those orders they followed well enough. Tell them to find an item or scout a stretch of ground, and they glitched. Junk came back instead of loot. The wrong monsters turned up instead of the ones he'd named. And so on, and so on.

Honestly, if they fight well, they've earned their keep. Summons existed for combat. Nothing strange about that. Search, recon, exploration—I can leave all of that to Kkami.

Jin-soo decided he'd look into it later and threw himself back into the hunt. A few hours on, though, one of the Army Summons—an orc shaman—reported that it had found a restricted zone. He set that aside for later as well. Then, from the day of that first report onward, two Demi-Liches and two orc shamans kept filing the same kind of report, one after another. A holy-attribute Demi-Lich would report, and next up a dark-attribute orc shaman. Then a dark-attribute Demi-Lich, and before that report had even finished, a holy-attribute orc shaman would chime in.

They're not duplicates. The four were hunting in separate sectors. False reports after all? The rest of the Army Summons stayed quiet while only the Demi-Liches and the orc shamans kept talking, and they talked far too often. It smelled wrong. I can check it myself soon enough.

The party kept shifting hunting grounds as they hunted. Unless an achievement was a first clear, there was a ceiling on how much achievement work would pay, so once a monster's achievement was already theirs they turned their attention to finding hidden dungeons and clearing open dungeons.

Open dungeons just don't pay. Anything whose location was public knowledge could be had for the price of a map at the village shop. The trouble was that an open dungeon didn't vanish when you cleared it, and the clear reward was miserably thin. And you can't even go in as many times as you want. If entry had been unlimited, he would have farmed them for blessing growth alone. You only get the one entry.

Unlike a hidden dungeon, failing the mission didn't trap you inside. Walk out on your own two feet and you were free. You just can't come back. One chance, thrown away. If only there were an open dungeon that spawned monsters without end, like the anthill or the Undead Hidden Dungeon. Open dungeons fixed the number of monsters the mission required. Those monsters sat at about field level, and there weren't many of them. If a place like that existed, it would already be famous as a landmark hunting ground. Strip away the mission reward, and most open dungeons were hardly different from hunting in the field.

Jin-soo took the party to the sites the Demi-Liches and orc shamans had reported. So that's why the locations were so close together. What waited at the first of them was not a hidden dungeon. It was an open one. We have to clear it once anyway. No real loss. Still, a little disappointing.

"Let's clear it fast and get out."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Yeah. Let's."

They wiped the open dungeon in a flash and moved on. The next site was another the Demi-Liches and orc shamans had flagged, and—another open dungeon. Let's knock these out quickly. Jin-soo drove the party through them at speed.

This one's not marked as an open dungeon. The next location had no open-dungeon marker on the map at all.

"Huh?"

This time he was genuinely startled. That's an actual hidden dungeon. At a site they had reported sat not an open dungeon, but a real one. The party stepped inside.

A Demon Spirit Divine Pill? Generous, for a dungeon of this difficulty. Only one of them, though. Honestly, a normal party would have needed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about ten people to clear it, and a single reward was guaranteed to start a fight. Everyone would want it for themselves. A Player who had already taken a Demon Spirit Divine Pill might rather sell it at the auction house and take the points. Nasty little setup.

Sometimes a hidden dungeon scaled its rewards to the head count. Other times, like now, it tossed out something that couldn't be split among more than one person. Almost as if it's stirring up trouble on purpose. The cleanest fix was an auction among whoever wanted the pill, with the winner dividing what remained among the party. That's the usual method. It still went wrong often enough. The better the reward, the bigger the mess.

What if the drop was something absurdly rare—a high-tier class-change tome, a skill book, a weapon—so expensive that pooling every party member's points still couldn't buy it? Listing it and splitting the proceeds was the rational choice, but an item capable of turning a life around would always tempt someone. And someone might promise to sell it and share the points, then simply run. Even a moderately valuable item causes the same kind of friction. The loser of an internal auction might stew over it. Someone else might insist the winning bid was too low and demand the item go to the auction house so the points could be divided. And every other kind of mess besides.

In fact, one of the most common reasons a party broke apart was hurt feelings over how a hidden-dungeon reward was handled. None of which applies to us.

They cleared the hidden dungeon with embarrassing ease.

The reward was a single Demon Spirit Divine Pill.

"I'll hold on to this. If we recruit someone new later, they can have it."

"Understood."

"Okay."

That was the end of it. Shin Sua and Cheon Museong had both already received a Demon Spirit Divine Pill from Jin-soo, so neither of them thought twice.

"Then let's head out."

They left the hidden dungeon and moved on to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the next. Jackpot. Another hidden dungeon.

"In we go."

At his word the party entered and cleared it just as easily, and from then on the dungeons came in a rush. Most of what the Demi-Lich and orc shaman Army Summons had found were open dungeons, but a fair number of hidden dungeons were mixed in among them. Not a single one of those reports was anything but a dungeon. From where Jin-soo stood, it was as good as finding hidden dungeons without lifting a finger. A little more intelligence, and this is the result. He had never dreamed that raising the class levels of Dominator Necromancer and Sovereign Necromancer would pay him back like this.

So why haven't I heard from the others? The Bone Dragon, the demons, the Basilisk, the Sand Worms, the variant lycanthropes, Han Man-ok, So Chanseong—not a word from any of them. The rest I can understand. The demons, Han Man-ok, So Chanseong—their originals were plenty intelligent.

He was tilting his head over it when the thing the Demi-Liches and the orc shamans had in common struck him. It isn't just intelligence. These are summons that command summons. The Demi-Liches drove undead. The orc shamans drove ordinary monsters. Of course their search range was wider. But a summon getting smarter and the summons under it getting smarter ought to be two different things. A question was only worth as much as the time it took to answer it.

"Kkami."

He told Kkami to tail one Demi-Lich and watch.

"Kkaak! Kkaak!"

Kkami took off in a flutter of delighted wings. Jin-soo kept hunting and clearing dungeons, watching the Demi-Lich through Kkami's eyes. That's not how I command mine. Of all his summons, only Kkami could share vision in real time and take live orders. The rest got pointed at a hunting ground, told to kill monsters, and that was the end of it. I can talk to them in real time. I can't see what they see. He had assumed the undead under the Demi-Lich worked the same way. They didn't. They're outside its line of sight, and it's still giving orders as if it's looking right at them.

He sent Kkami on to an orc shaman and kept watching. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Same with the orc shaman. Until now he had thought of the Demi-Liches and the orc shamans as nothing more than summons that happened to command other summons. They weren't. Many, and yet one. To the Demi-Lich and the orc shaman, those summons were new eyes, ears, arms, and legs they could steer in real time. They were this capable the whole time. The thought that they had been controlling that many summons individually, moment by moment, was astonishing. I don't stay linked to Kkami every second either. Maybe it isn't quite that absolute. Easier to think of them as semi-automatic machines he could seize whenever he wanted. Even that much is extraordinary.

A bright smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Push the Demi-Liches and the orc shamans as far as they'll go, and hidden dungeons will turn up on their own. Among the host of summons, those four had always sat a little lower in importance. Numbers, sure. Combat power, not so much. Measured by hunting efficiency, the Demi-Liches and orc shamans were at the bottom of the Army Summons. They couldn't sweep a crowd with the overwhelming physical might that came of sheer mass, the way the Bone Dragon, the Basilisk, and the Sand Worms could. Set beside the demons, the variant lycanthropes, Han Man-ok, and So Chanseong—smaller, but individually powerful, and deadly with a spread of skills—they fell short there too. I figured a crowd was their only advantage, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and not an efficient one.

Numbers meant nothing if the fists behind them were weak. No amount of effort would make the hunting efficient. Show him this kind of return on dungeon scouting, though, and the calculation changed. Leave the hunting to the others. Turn these four into dungeon scouts. Let the rest handle the monster grinding that wasn't paying. If the Demi-Liches and orc shamans devoted themselves to cleanup and dungeon exploration, the party could move faster than it did now. And the odds of finding dungeons go up with it.

He put the thought into practice at once. Until now he had assigned the Demi-Liches and orc shamans hunting grounds like everyone else. Not anymore. Your job is to search the ground the others have already swept, and find the hidden dungeons.

At his order, the two Demi-Liches and the two orc shamans gathered the summons under their command and set out for the new assignment.