Chapter 58
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: The Woodcutter's Mountain Cabin (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fairy tales often feature a certain type of character.
Woodcutters, living apart from the villagers, making a living by cutting trees deep in the secluded mountains.
The Tin Woodman from *The Wizard of Oz* is a case inspired by just that.
“Goodness, you're a real lifesaver. I was sure I was trapped here, doomed to die...”
The man before me had that same feel.
He even bore a strange resemblance to the Tin Woodman.
A square, rugged face, with round eyes that didn't quite seem to fit.
And a thick body that tapered into an inverted triangle.
Of course.
[The Sage has confirmed through Special Analysis that the individual before you is one of the dungeon's objects.]
This man was no ordinary human.
An object necessary to complete the dungeon's mission.
To put it more simply.
‘An NPC.’
It wasn't an unfamiliar concept.
Nine times out of ten, any human-like being inside a dungeon was an NPC.
Either that, or a monster disguised as a human, waiting to stab you in the back.
NPCs were often directly tied to the dungeon's mission, and they would only repeat actions related to that mission.
So, the actions of this man who resembled the Tin Woodman...
[Welcome to the Woodcutter's Cabin. The mission will now be explained.]
...were all part of a series of systematic elements designed around that mission.
[The woodcutter and his elderly mother are currently isolated, unable to leave the cabin. Protect the woodcutter and his elderly mother as you head down the mountain.]
“Hmm.”
The mission itself wasn't hard to understand.
A sort of escort mission, to get the NPCs to a safe zone.
But, as expected of an A-rank dungeon.
[You must exit the mountain within 5 days. Failure to do so will result in the challenger's death.]
There was a time limit, with the penalty of death for failure.
I quietly mulled over the mission.
The penalty was merciless, but it was a common pattern in dungeons.
“Mercenary, are you all right?”
As I stood there silently, the woodcutter before me scratched his head and asked.
His innocent blue eyes were fixed on me.
“Yes, I'm fine. And you are...?”
“Ah, please call me Pol. The villagers call me Pol the Fool, but you can call me that too!”
Despite it not being a very nice nickname, the woodcutter answered with a broad smile.
For someone who had just been trapped and on the verge of death, he seemed to have a remarkable lack of urgency.
Was it because he was just a mechanism designed to fit the dungeon's mission?
“I'll just call you Pol. I'm Kim Hanul. You can call me Hanul.”
“Understood, Mercenary!”
“...Yes, or you can just call me Mercenary.”
Failing to recognize a name was one of the typical traits of an NPC.
I'd had a sliver of hope, but this woodcutter was no different.
So, I decided to follow the typical pattern for conversing with an NPC.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
“Ah, yes. I'll tell you right away.”
Pol's blue eyes shone.
It made him seem more like a person with a real personality, which felt strange.
The uncanny valley, was it?
“From now on, Mercenary, you just need to escort my mother and me to the village at the foot of the mountain. I'll take care of guiding the way.”
“So I don't need to find the path myself.”
I thought I'd have to navigate, but apparently not.
That was a relief.
Because in this place, surrounded on all sides by giant trees, I had no idea how I would've found my way.
I could have used the Beholder's Espionage skill to its fullest, but...
The dungeon didn't seem small enough to map out multiple paths in just a few hours.
“That's right! All you have to do, Mercenary, is escort my mother and me safely until we reach the village at the foot of the mountain.”
Pol replied with a smile.
And then he fell silent.
Meaning he had exhausted all his responses to my question.
So, I input a new question.
“Then what am I supposed to protect you from?”
“You just need to protect us from the things that block the path.”
The answer came back immediately.
But it was a slightly puzzling answer.
Usually, NPCs provide the most precise information possible.
That's why they were treated as a kind of help text or guideline for clearing the dungeon.
But Pol's answer wasn't clear.
The things that block the path.
A vague and ambiguous response.
If it was monsters, he should say monsters; if bandits, bandits; if beasts, beasts.
If he didn't know for sure, an answer like ‘I don't know either’ should have come out.
“What are these things that block the path?”
“The things that block the path are the things that block the path!”
I see.
The dungeon had no intention of giving any more hints.
“Do you have any more questions?”
“...No. Let's head out right away.”
“Yes, please wait just a moment.”
Pol immediately turned and disappeared into the log cabin.
As soon as his back vanished, I once again took a slow look at my surroundings.
A forest of what looked like coniferous trees, soaring so high they blotted out the sky.
Weeds and branches rose to my ankles, and a biting wind blowing through the trees brushed against my cheek.
It was the epitome of a forest.
With one exception.
“Sage.”
*Whirr.*
The Beholder's eye turned toward me.
“Can you use Espionage to map out the dungeon's overall structure?”
[The Sage informs you that it is not impossible, but there is a problem.]
“What is it?”
[The Sage reports that the current dungeon is in a state of excessive mana suppression. The performance of Espionage will be degraded, and mapping the structure will take a considerable amount of time.]
“Can you do it within five days?”
[The Sage reports that it cannot say for certain.]
“Just try it. It's fine if it takes a while.”
I didn't expect to clear this in a single day anyway.
My intuition was telling me.
This dungeon was no pushover.
“It doesn't seem like an ordinary forest, after all.”
The one thing out of place in this otherwise typical mountain forest.
Was the heavy silence.
The surroundings were quiet.
There were no birds chirping, no animal sounds, not even the common buzz of insects.
It was as if the entire mountain were dead.
“I'm ready, Mercenary!”
Pol came running out of the cabin.
He wore a leather pack of some sort on his thick chest, and on his back, he carried a small woman.
The woman's eyes were closed, as if she were asleep.
Her appearance bore a strange resemblance to my own mother, making me feel uneasy.
“Let's go.”
In the forest, sunken in silence, my voice echoed emptily.
In many ways, this dungeon was a rather uncomfortable place.
* * *
While we made our way through the forest, I didn't speak with Pol.
“So anyway, you wouldn't believe how much Philia from the village likes me! Ah, I wrote it down in my journal here. Last time I went, I gave her a bracelet I wove from clover...”
To be more precise, I didn't respond to Pol's chatter.
If this were a game, his stories were nothing more than flavor text.
A device meant to add life to the situation.
With his mother on his back, he held a journal in one hand and chattered on endlessly.
“Hey, would you take a look at this? I drew my favorite view from around here. What do you think?”
In the end, I had no choice but to look at the drawing Pol shoved in my face.
It was a charcoal drawing on a low-quality piece of paper in a hand-span-sized journal.
The entrance to what was clearly a deep cave.
The vitality of the plants standing around the entrance, as if embracing it, was palpable.
It was a faultless landscape drawing.
“You're a good artist.”
“Right? It's my favorite place. Hehe...”
That was the extent of our interaction.
I turned away from the grinning woodcutter and spoke.
“Gono, you don't sense any presence nearby, do you?”
“Kiruk.”
At my question, the goblin beside me nodded.
I was moving with Gono, with Odolph's marble slotted into the Emperor's Remnants.
I hadn't summoned my other monsters.
The reason was simple.
“Oh my, I'm sorry, Mercenary. The path is quite rough, isn't it?”
The path Pol was guiding us on was exceedingly narrow.
It wasn't a man-made road but a narrow trail, like a stampede trail.
A path formed naturally by the passage of people and wild animals.
Jen Karuk might manage, but it wasn't a path that Odolph or the Lizardman army could easily navigate.
“If we go a little further this way, there's a rope bridge connecting the cliffs. The path widens once we cross it, so please bear with it for just a little longer.”
A rope bridge connecting cliffs.
It seemed this really was a mountain, after all.
With the endless forest, I had been wondering if it was a flat sea of trees rather than a mountain.
“Oh, we're here. Do you see that? We just have to cross that rope bridge.”
And the moment I followed Pol, pushing through the bushes obscuring my view and taking a step forward,
my vision opened up.
About thirty meters away, a long rope bridge connecting two cliffs came into view.
A bridge made of twine and wooden planks woven together.
“Once we cross that rope bridge, it'll be easier than before... Huk.”
The woodcutter, who had been speaking triumphantly, suddenly froze stiff.
“A m-monster...!”
There was a monster in front of the bridge.
The very thing that had isolated the woodcutter and his mother on this mountain, the 'thing that blocks the path' Pol had mentioned.
‘What is that?’
I frowned, looking at the creature.
I could tell it had the shape of some kind of four-legged beast.
But that was all.
The creature was enveloped in something like a pitch-black shadow.
All I could make out was a jet-black demonic energy rising like a heat haze, and a pair of glowing red eyes in the area where its head should be.
And including the part covered by the shadow, it was huge, its shoulder height reaching at least two meters.
“Sage.”
Even without my call, it was already casting Special Analysis.
But then, a baffling status window popped up.
[The Sage has failed to analyze the information of the monster that has just appeared!]
“What?”
It had analyzed not only mystical things like the Phoenix Egg but also all the items I'd obtained from the Lord's Castle.
It couldn't analyze the cat that guided me here, but that was a kind of illusion, so it was understandable.
But that thing was clearly a monster with a physical form.
[The Sage will now formulate a hypothesis and determine the reason for the analysis failure!]
Of course, I didn't have the luxury of waiting.
The creature's red eyes were fixed on me.
“-----.”
A bloodcurdling cry emerged from within the black shadow.
Something between a ‘grrrr’ and a ‘krrrruk’.
But the creature didn't move.
It just stood there, unmoving, as if guarding the rope bridge.
“It doesn't look like it's going to step aside willingly.”
It was an obstacle I had to overcome to clear the dungeon.
I took out the Emperor's Remnants and spoke.
“Gono.”
“Kiruk.”
[Carrion Crow's Wingbeat (A)]
The goblin, who had been in a combat stance for a while, shot forward.
Boosted by the skill's effect, the goblin's small body closed the distance in an instant.
Even then, the black monster didn't react.
And the moment Gono's club slammed into the part where its head should be,
*CRACK!*
*POW!*
“Kereuk?!”
A series of surprising things happened.
Gono's club had clearly pierced the black haze and struck the main body.
The *crack* of breaking bone was proof.
But immediately after, the creature casually lifted a foreleg and swatted Gono.
*THWACK!*
Gono was sent flying.
His small body rolled across the dirt ground, kicking up dust.
“Kereuk, kiruk?!”
Covered in dust, Gono got up and tilted his head in confusion.
Fortunately, he wasn't seriously damaged.
But his long, slanted eyes were filled with bewilderment.
I was just as bewildered.
‘A spiritual-type monster? No, I definitely heard a bone break just now. An undead, then? No, that can't be it...’
Undead were generally weak.
A monster that could fight on equal footing with Gono one-on-one would have to be at least B-rank.
For an undead, that would mean a Skeleton Knight or Wizard or higher, and that thing didn't fit any of those descriptions.
No. In the first place, no undead monster looked like that.
This was no easy opponent.
However.
“Still, it definitely took damage.”
Whatever it was, I could land effective hits on it.
For now, that was enough.
Conveniently, the area near the cliff was clear of any vegetation that might hinder movement.
*Clink, clink, clink!*
A series of multicolored marbles dropped to the ground.
In an instant, my summons filled the clifftop.
There was no need to test the waters and fight cautiously.
If one wasn't enough, I just had to overwhelm it with numbers.
* * *
*WHOOSH!*
Jen Karuk's sharp stream of water tore through the jet-black body.
“----!”
As the creature let out a monstrous scream and twisted its body,
“Hiss!”
the Lizardmen lined up behind immediately fired their crossbows.
*Thwip-thwip-thwip!*
Sharp bolts slammed into the black monster's chest.
*Whoosh!*
Then, a green meteor shot up from the creature's left and dug into its flank.
It was impossible for it to block Gono's attack and counter as it had before.
*CRUNCH!*
The foreleg it had raised to swat the goblin was caught by the log swung by the Ogre.
*THWACK!*
“----!”
In the end, the green meteor slammed directly into its flank.
A cry burst from the snout shrouded in black shadow, along with the sound of impact.
The battle between the black monster and my summons was decided quickly.
No matter how much pain it could endure or how it was able to overwhelm Gono,
it was helpless against an attack of overwhelming numbers.
Nevertheless, the black monster was tenacious.
It held on for a full thirty minutes, withstanding the assault.
But that, too, was now over.
*CRASH!*
“----.”
Odolph's log struck the monster's snout squarely.
The finishing blow.
There was no further counterattack.
The black beast's body staggered about before falling off the cliff.
*THUD!*
Only after a sound like a sack of flour hitting the ground echoed from somewhere far below,
did I break the returning silence and catch my breath.
“Hoo.”
I never found out what it was, but it was a manageable opponent.
‘If this is the level of the 'things that block the path','
then unlike my initial concerns, I might be able to clear this dungeon quickly.
“Good work, everyone. All of you except Gono, return for now.”
After sending everyone but Gono back to the Lord's Castle,
I gathered the marbles and inspected the rope bridge connecting the cliffs.
Traces of the fierce battle remained here and there, but fortunately, the structure itself was intact.
I nodded and turned to speak to the person behind me.
“The bridge seems to be fine. Let's get going again, Pol.”
But there was no reply.
“...Pol?”
Come to think of it, I hadn't seen the rugged woodcutter while I was fighting the black monster.
“Pol!”
No way.
I'd assumed he was hiding somewhere safe.
“Poooool!!”
[The woodcutter and his elderly mother have returned to the cabin. Resume the escort mission!]
This woodcutter's initiative is extraordinary.