Chapter 41: Is It Wrong to Seek an Erotic Situation in a Dungeon? (10)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 41: Is It Wrong to Seek an Erotic Situation in a Dungeon? (10)
Streaks of light flowed across the wall.
Like cracks spreading across its surface, the streaks winding their way along the wall were pure mana.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Shin Yu-jeong, who had been walking ahead, turned to look at me quizzically as I stood there staring at the ceiling.
“Uh… I think I found something.”
“Found something? What?”
“Not sure yet.”
I guess I’d have to figure that out now.
The streaks of mana spread across the entire wall, but they all originated from a single point.
Luminous stones were embedded here and there in the cavern ceiling, emitting a faint glow.
Of them all, the one in the very center was the starting point for every single streak of light.
“Hmm.”
It was clearly playing a central role in whatever phenomenon was surrounding me.
The problem was, I didn't know what to do about it.
“Hey, I asked what you found.”
Losing patience, Shin Yu-jeong poked me in the side, demanding an answer.
Honestly, she has no patience at all.
I was about to snap at her to wait, but I stopped myself.
The scowl on her face made whatever I wanted to say vanish.
Instead, I pointed a finger at the luminous stone on the ceiling.
“That luminous stone. Something’s off about it.”
Following my finger, she looked up at the stone and frowned.
“What’s off about it? It looks just like any other luminous stone you'd find in this type of dungeon.”
I know they look the same.
After a moment of deep thought, I made a decision.
The ceiling was over five meters high.
They probably didn't design it to be pressed like a button.
So, I’ll break it.
I immediately gathered my mana and formed a single orb.
「Magic Missile.」
A common, basic magic spell with no elemental properties.
Its only unique feature, I suppose, is that despite being magic, it attacks enemies with the physical force of condensed mana.
“Hey, what are you doing all of a sudden?”
Startled, Shin Yu-jeong backed away.
Without a word, I fired the Magic Missile at the luminous stone that had caught my eye.
Pow!
The orb flew powerfully and shattered the stone to pieces.
“Hey, why are you breaking a perfectly fine luminous stone—?”
Before she could finish her sentence, a change began.
Once the stone that supplied mana to the entire wall was destroyed, the web-like streaks of light flowing across it grew faint and then disappeared completely.
Rumble…
At that moment, the entire ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.
“Wh-whoa… What is this? What’s happening?”
Rumble-rumble-rumble…
The sound of something crumbling stirred a sense of foreboding.
“Everyone, be careful!”
Yoon Ji-an, who had been watching, quickly ran over and stood in front of us.
“Stay right behind me and don’t move,” she said, her body tense.
Struggling to keep her balance on the shaking ground, Shin Yu-jeong grabbed my shoulder and shook me.
“Hey, what did you do? This is because of that Magic Missile, isn’t it? Right?!”
I felt sick.
The shaking ground was bad enough, but instead of helping, she was making me want to puke.
Crack!
An even more ominous sound echoed through the cavern.
The source was the walls surrounding us.
“The walls are cracking…!”
Just as Yoon Ji-an said, the sound and vibrations were byproducts of the walls cracking apart.
The cracks started from the bottom, near the floor—the furthest point from the mana-supplying stone—and slowly crept upward until they finally reached the spot where the stone had been.
A thought crossed my mind.
Disassembly is the reverse of assembly, or so they say.
The reason I thought this was because the ceiling, the last part to crack, was the first to start collapsing.
“Shin Yu-jeong, shield!”
“I know! Just duck your head!”
I couldn’t do that.
I layered my mana over the shield she raised toward the falling debris.
「Shield.」
A thin barrier of mana, centered on her shield, enveloped us.
This probably wouldn’t be enough to block all that debris.
So, one more.
「Ice Shield.」
I created another barrier, this one made of ice, over the mana shield.
Yoon Ji-an, who had been clenching her fists as if to intercept the falling rubble, subtly relaxed her stance.
“Hey, if you were going to use a defensive spell, why’d you center it on my shield?” Shin Yu-jeong asked, glaring at me with an annoyed expression, her shield now fixed in place by the spell.
The reason was simple.
“Because it’s sturdier this way…?”
Even with two layers of shields, I was still a little anxious.
Considering how much stronger my attack magic had been than I expected, I figured my defensive magic would also be more effective, but that was just a guess.
“You’re not doing this just to mess with me, are you?”
“O-of course not.”
I was so wrongfully accused I could barely speak.
Because I had cast the spell centered on her shield, she was forced to hold her arm up toward the sky, but I really hadn't done it on purpose.
Seriously.
Thud! Thump! Thud!
Debris rained down on the solidly frozen ice.
As the ceiling collapsed, another ceiling was revealed above it.
I lowered my gaze to look past the crumbling walls.
Glimpsed through the shower of falling rock was a large stone statue.
It stood there, looking resolutely in one direction, one hand adjusting the glasses on its face and the other holding a book.
“…A goblin?”
As I stared blankly at the statue, a message appeared.
[You have entered Kallashu’s Trial (True).]
So the hobgoblin from before wasn’t the boss, but a mid-boss.
It happens sometimes.
Dungeons with mid-bosses also have two safety rooms.
I think I remember hearing that parties whose specs aren’t high enough to fully clear the dungeon sometimes use a strategy of just killing the mid-boss, taking the reward, and running.
This place seemed to be one of those types of dungeons.
“Hey… did you see that too?”
Shin Yu-jeong, having finally noticed the message window, asked me with a half-dazed expression.
“Yeah, just now.”
“Hitting that luminous stone earlier was…”
“Probably the clue to finding this place.”
“Ha, haha.”
What filled Shin Yu-jeong’s eyes as she laughed awkwardly was pure elation.
When a dungeon first appears, guilds pay a large sum of money to purchase the rights to clear it.
The reason for that is…
[You are the first to enter Kallashu’s Trial (True).]
[Upon clearing the dungeon, the grade of your reward will be increased by one rank.]
This is exactly why.
Dungeon rewards are divided into five ranks.
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond.
It felt like they had just copied the ranking system from a game that was popular when I was a kid.
The ranks referred to the border of the wooden reward chest.
A brown border meant Bronze, a silver border meant Silver, and so on.
Depending on the color of the border, the rewards inside varied drastically.
The chest from before, which contained only a single mana stone, was obviously Bronze.
“Then that means the reward will be at least Silver…!”
A Silver-grade reward.
Some people dismiss it because it’s just one step above Bronze, but if you get a mana stone plus one good piece of equipment from it, you can earn anywhere from millions to ten million won.
It’s mostly because Hunter equipment is so expensive, but for aspiring Hunters like us, earning several million won from a single dungeon run is a huge deal.
Finally, all the debris finished falling.
“Hey, hurry up and take down the shield, quick!”
Unable to resist her excited nagging, I immediately withdrew the remaining mana from the shield.
The transparent barrier blocking our view disappeared. Now free, she slung her shield onto her back and strode quickly toward the completely out-of-place goblin statue.
Watching her, I couldn’t help but think that a kid is a kid.
This was, for all intents and purposes, a new dungeon. How could she just run off like that without knowing what dangers might be lurking?
If one of my old raid members had done that, I would’ve kicked them square in the shin.
“M-Ms. Shin Yu-jeong! Please wait a moment!”
Yoon Ji-an called out urgently, but Shin Yu-jeong, her steps light and brisk, didn’t seem to hear her as she forged ahead.
I guess we have no choice.
“Let’s follow her. It’s better than leaving her alone.”
“Hmm… I understand.”
After a moment of hesitation, she followed Shin Yu-jeong with me.
Once we crossed the boundary of fallen rubble, a cavern far larger than the previous one came into view.
“Hey! Get over here, quick!”
Shin Yu-jeong, who had already reached the goblin statue, called out to us, having discovered something.
Watching the reckless girl run wild, Yoon Ji-an and I both shook our heads at the same time.
This was clearly the territory of a new dungeon.
We hadn’t confirmed anything—not the difficulty, the monsters that might appear, or the layout of any traps. And yet, she was acting so carefree.
“Ah, hurry up!”
Her incessant nagging finally got us to trudge over to the front of the goblin statue.
“No matter how I look at it, this just doesn’t seem right.”
A goblin wearing glasses and holding a book.
As I said before, there are many types of goblins.
Among them are shamans and sorcerers.
But there’s no such thing as a scholar-like goblin.
“Look at this, look.”
Unable to wait even that little bit longer, Shin Yu-jeong grabbed my shoulder and led me somewhere.
At the foot of the giant statue lay a stone slab inscribed with unreadable text.
“This is… UnKnown Text.”
Yoon Ji-an, who arrived a moment later, said as she looked at the slab.
UnKnown Text.
It was a general term for the language found written on stone slabs or walls that were occasionally discovered in dungeons.
Scholars use this as evidence to argue that dungeons are parts of another world connected to Earth.
They claim that the existence of a language implies a civilization existed, and since this language doesn't exist anywhere on Earth, it must be from another world.
Well… for Hunters like us who work hard in the field, it doesn’t really matter if this is another world or Earth.
What caught my attention now was the mana flowing steadily along the letters carved into the slab.
“Hmm…”
Curious about what this could be, I placed my hand on the slab, and something very interesting happened.
The mana flowing along the first line was sucked into my hand.
And that mana didn't give me strength, but knowledge.
“Greetings, you who have proven your worth. I am the creator of this dungeon, the Goblin Alchemist, Kallashu…?”
I recited the words as the mana tickled my mind, and both of their heads snapped toward me.
“What did you just…?”
“Don’t tell me you just read that text…?”
“No, I didn’t read it…”
I looked at the stone slab again.
I still couldn’t read a single letter.
I had simply spoken the meaning conveyed by the mana.
“Hold on a second.”
I calmed the two excited women down and placed my hand on the slab again.
This time, the second line.
“The fact that you are looking at this slab means you have brilliantly solved the device I created using a small clue.”
Sorry, but I didn’t find any clues.
I just used the power of my ridiculously overpowered eyes to force it open.
I immediately moved my hand to the third line.
“Within this dungeon lies a treasure I have spent my entire life creating. Only you, who have proven your worth by overcoming my device, will have the chance to obtain it…”
Then, the fourth line.
“Those without worth cannot accompany you…?”
The moment I read that part.
Clunk! Clunk!
Two doors, one on each side of the goblin statue, opened.
“Why did those doors suddenly open?”
“I don’t know…?”
I shook my head at Shin Yu-jeong’s question.
Why did I have such a strange feeling about this?
I guess I’ll read the next line.
“Those without worth, enter the open doors… If you do not enter before the doors close, you will be trapped in this dungeon forever… it says?”
Whatever the method, I was the one who had unraveled the secret of this dungeon.
That meant I was the one who had proven my worth, which naturally made the other two the ones without worth.
Creeeak—
The doors began to close at an agonizingly slow pace.
Seeing as they didn't even give us proper time to think, I knew one thing for sure.
That this Kallashu guy was an incredibly stingy bastard when it came to time.
“I think it’s best we go in.”
Yoon Ji-an opened the door on the right and went inside first.
Shin Yu-jeong hesitated for a moment, then walked not toward a door, but toward me.
“Hey. Seeing how things are going, it looks like our fates are in your hands.”
“…Looks like it.”
Ah, I really don’t like situations where the weight on my shoulders gets heavier.
Shin Yu-jeong raised her fist and lightly punched me in the chest.
Thwack!
“Ugh…”
She definitely hit me lightly, so why did it hurt so much?
Her fists are just naturally hard.
The term ‘natural-born hard puncher’ must have been made for her.
As I grimaced in pain, her scent suddenly wafted into my nose.
Mwah!
In an instant, she had closed the distance and kissed me on the lips.
It lasted only a fraction of a second, but the sensation lingered vividly on my lips.
“Th-that’s the reward for clearing the dungeon earlier.”
After her shocking act, she turned her back, her face blushing.
“If you clear this dungeon safely too… there’ll be an even better reward.”
With those words, she slipped through the half-closed door on the left.
“……”
I stood there, lost in thought.
What comes after a kiss?
Touching her breasts, sucking on them, or maybe a blowjob… or if not that, could it be a titty-fuck?
“Ah, damn it.”
Too many things were coming to mind.
Shin Yu-jeong, that sly little minx.
“You should’ve told me what it was before you left…”
If I can’t clear this dungeon, you can bet it’ll be your fault for leaving me with all these distracting thoughts.