The Mineral Fortress
A monster shaped, by continental standards, like a turtle — its whole body armored in a shell of living mineral.
It was a little on the large side, but Simon had hunted every manner of vicious monster the continent had to offer, and he'd assumed this fight would be an easy one.
He was wrong.
"Hoo... haah. Haah!"
The battle had already been raging for thirty minutes.
Simon hadn't managed to take down a single monster, and he was panting and straining just to keep up.
Clang! Clang-clang!
The skeletons swarmed the beast, hacking away with their blades, but every strike simply bounced harmlessly off the ore-like shell covering it from head to toe.
From the rear, Skeleton Archers loosed volleys of arrows while a Skeleton Mage flung Dark Blaze beside them. Neither the arrows nor the fire made the slightest impression on the monster.
Its defense was, frankly, close to an iron fortress.
'Open Gate!'
While the skeletons split the monster's attention, Simon directed Overlord's tentacle-blades at its joints.
The blade slid razor-sharp along the monster's leg — and left no wound at all. It wasn't just the shell. Every inch of its hide was made of the same ore-like substance.
'Fine, then!'
Simon fell back a few steps, completed a magic circle, and extended his index finger. If physical attacks wouldn't work, he'd win with curses.
⟨ Sickness ⟩
Ting!
But even the curse was deflected by the mineral encasing the monster's body.
"...What is this thing?"
He had never imagined an attack set this thorough would fail completely.
Then the monster barreled straight through the skeletons, charging directly at Simon.
Simon swiftly concentrated jet-black into both legs and tore open a subspace gate.
"Please! Herseba!"
[Hey, brat!]
The wand shot out of subspace and smacked neatly into Simon's palm. In the same motion he straightened his knees and launched himself into the air.
The Life Vessel's jet-black recovery rate was slower than an ordinary human's core. Pulling her out this early was a waste — but there was no other choice.
Airborne, Simon brought Herseba down with everything he had onto the monster's upturned shell.
"Goldenization!"
CLANG!
And yet.
Even Herseba's special ability failed to turn the shell to gold.
[Yowch! That hurt, brat!]
"Kgh!"
His attack having failed, Simon tumbled and rolled right off the shell.
'How is this even possible?'
Physical attacks, magic, curses — even a special ability. Nothing worked.
And this wasn't even a Dungeon Lord. Just some random monster.
A faint wave of frustration washed over him — everything he'd worked so hard to learn was useless here — but Simon steadied his mind quickly.
'This is a dungeon.'
Before coming here, Simon had read stacks of books about dungeons in the Kizen library. And one thing, surprisingly, was drilled into him by every single dungeon explorer who'd ever put pen to paper.
It wasn't the power to protect yourself. Not experience in reading a dungeon. Not even the intuition to make sound judgments.
It was, so to speak, a matter of mindset.
"A dungeon is a separate world."
"Do not assume that the rules that governed the world you lived in will apply here."
"No matter how large and mighty a creature may be on land, once it falls into the sea it is weaker than a fistful of flopping sea anemone."
"Reset every piece of common sense you possess, and think from zero."
Just as a hazy understanding began to form in his mind, the monster realized Simon was on its shell and began thrashing about violently.
"Whoa—!"
Simon flailed his arms to keep his balance. If he fell, he'd be crushed under those massive feet in an instant.
[Ugh! Mmf — brmmph! Brat!]
Herseba, determined not to be knocked loose, had clamped her mouth down on the hem of Simon's clothes and was shouting through gritted teeth.
"Let's pull back for now. I need time to think!"
There was no need to stubbornly force the kill right this second, he decided.
Simon recalled Herseba into subspace, then hurled a Cloud toward a tree visible in the distance.
The emerald cord coiled around the trunk, and Simon pushed off from the shell with both legs and zipped up along the line.
The monster, still convinced Simon was clinging to its back, kept shaking itself in a frenzy.
Roc Island.
The Kizen Main Auditorium.
"This is an absolute disaster."
Konrad, the announcer, clicked his tongue.
The low-resolution Observer footage, beamed straight out of the dungeons and onto the screen, showed a scene that could only be called a total catastrophe.
The students had been brimming with confidence. They had grown beyond all comparison to the first-years they'd been at enrollment, and they carried enormous pride in their own abilities.
But that pride, that confidence — it had all been shattered to pieces within minutes of entering the dungeons.
Kizen students who had swaggered around declaring they'd take down a Dungeon Lord themselves were now wallowing in frustration, unable to catch even a small rabbit of a monster.
The greater a student's confidence and arrogance, the harder that fall hit.
"Die! Die, damn you!!"
"No, why won't you just fall already?"
One student, furiously dumping dark-flame magic into a monster, was already showing symptoms of jet-black depletion.
"AAAAAAGH!"
Another had fought recklessly from the very start and was now fleeing with a broken arm barely hours in. The watching parents murmured their sympathy.
"Professor Hong Peng! What is your assessment of this situation?"
"Where I was born and raised — the Grassland — we have a saying."
Hong Peng continued in a calm voice.
"Follow the law of the Grassland when you are in the Grassland."
"...Pardon?"
"Plenty of mainlanders come to the Grassland and stir up trouble in our villages and trample our nature, waving around their homeland's titles and fortunes. That saying is for people like them."
In the Grassland there is no rank, no nobility. Above all people stands only the great nature itself, and beneath it, every human stands equal, one by one.
"It's the same for the students who entered the dungeons."
Hong Peng rested her chin on her hand and sighed softly.
"If you've entered a dungeon, you must follow the dungeon's law."
Day two in the dungeon.
Crunch, crunch.
Sitting on the ground, Simon was gnawing on a high-calorie chocolate bar.
'And here I thought I was rationing.'
He'd brought exactly two days' worth of food.
Unless he somehow managed to hunt a monster and eat it, he might well starve. Having savored his precious calories, Simon turned his attention to the artifact resting on the ground beside him.
The so-called Spring of Life Artifact — leave it anywhere overnight, and it would gather moisture from the air and condense it into clean drinking water.
Kizen had issued one to every student, but they had to be returned the moment the exam ended. Lose one, and you'd owe the academy 2,000 gold.
'Thank goodness water isn't a problem.'
Simon drank the water pooled in the artifact with genuine gratitude. His thirst vanished in an instant, and his condition revived along with it.
He transferred every last drop of the remaining water into his canteen, then rose to his feet.
"Alright. Let's try this again!"
Saying it aloud as much to steel himself as anything, Simon approached the tree standing before him.
After a full day here, one thing had become certain: nearly every plant and animal in this world was coated in some unidentified mineral.
With the plants, it was everything — the roots, the branches, even the fruit and the leaves.
There were subtle differences in hardness and flexibility from part to part, but it was all the same mineral substance. The interiors were impossible to breach or damage from the outside.
And why do the plants in this dungeon look so unsettlingly creepy?
Faint traces of something like eyes, a nose, and a mouth remained on them, which was needlessly unpleasant to look at.
Simon shook off the stray thoughts, laid his hand on the mineral bark, and carefully, gently, let a thread of jet-black flow out.
Ting-! Ting-!
The dark-green energy slid right off and crackled away into the open air. The mineral deflected — or outright expelled — any external force of any kind.
If there had been even a sliver of a chance to penetrate the shell with jet-black, his strategy would have been settled. Instead, he'd been shut out at the very first gate.
'It's not a defensive mechanism. The material itself simply repels forces from outside the dungeon.'
Simon withdrew his hand and drew a magic circle on his palm.
Call Fire
He pressed the small flame that bloomed against the tree's surface, waited, then touched it.
The surface was hot — but moments later even the heat was vented away, and the bark returned to its original temperature. No burning, no contraction response, nothing.
Cold Bolt
The cold fared no better. Temperature, it seemed, was a dead end too.
Beyond that, Simon tried applying electric shocks, and even dripped the contents of a deadly poison potion onto it. Nothing worked.
At this point, the stuff was practically invincible.
If this miracle material ever made it to the surface world, it would throw the entire continent into an uproar.
Of course, it was common knowledge that anything brought out of a dungeon lost its potency dramatically once outside.
"...So what am I supposed to do?"
He was deep in thought when — crack! — a sharp sound rang out, and Simon's face twisted.
One of his thought-links had just been severed.
Which meant one of the skeletons he'd posted as sentries had just been taken out. Simon spun around in a hurry.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The same turtle-shaped monster he'd seen on his very first day in the dungeon was charging straight at him.
Not the same individual he'd fought back then, of course. This species was the most numerous in the entire forest.
"Yah!"
Simon stomped jet-black into his legs and leapt skyward. The turtle monster shot past him and rammed its head into the tree.
KRAKOOM—!
The mineral-coated tree — one Simon hadn't even dared dream of breaking — shattered at a single blow and toppled.
Landing on the ground, Simon broke into a cold sweat.
'That wasn't even a monstrous amount of strength.'
So dungeon flora and fauna could deal damage to one another?
Just then, the monster turned its head toward Simon and charged again, kicking up a cloud of dirt.
Huh?
Simon's eyes went wide. The ore on the monster's forehead was visibly cracked.
"..."
Staring at it, lost in thought for a long moment, Simon finally felt the corners of his mouth curl upward.
"Don't tell me. Is that what it was?"
Whoosh!
He immediately sidestepped out of the charge's path and pulled from subspace the fruit he'd gathered on his first day.
He'd been keeping it in case he needed to eat — assuming he ever figured out how to crack the mineral coating.
"This'll do!"
Simon thrust out his arm. Bones from the skeletons standing by swarmed over his right arm in an instant.
Bone Armour — Gauntlet Mode
With his right arm temporarily reinforced by Bone Armour, Simon hurled the fruit with all his strength.
WHAM!
The mineral-coated fruit smashed into the monster's head and burst apart — and at the same instant, the mineral on the monster's skull fractured in a great web of cracks.
Pitter-patter. Tink.
Watching the debris rain down, Simon's hypothesis hardened into certainty.
"In a dungeon, follow the dungeon's rules."
Simon strode over, picked up the tree the monster had just obliterated, and lifted it.
Jet-Black Internal Ignition
FWOOSH!
A Magic Martial Arts technique, and one he hadn't used in far too long. Jet-black roared to life across Simon's entire body, and his physical abilities surged to their peak. The huge tree came up without the slightest strain — and Simon charged at the oncoming monster.
Tang!
Then, leaping with everything he had, he landed on the monster's shell.
"HAAAAAAAP!"
He brought the tree smashing down onto the shell with every ounce of force in his body.
KRAKA-BOOM!
The instant wood met shell, the two minerals flashed blindingly bright — and both of them exploded.
"THAT'S what it was!"
The two minerals were nearly impervious to outside forces. But the moment they collided with each other at high power, some peculiar wave-interaction occurred — and both shattered, each losing roughly the same mass as the other.
He'd only figured it out because the monster had helpfully headbutted the tree itself. He'd gotten lucky.
Simon pressed his two index fingers together and aimed them at the monster's back, where the shattered mineral now exposed raw flesh beneath.
Then he fired the curse he'd been holding ready — rapid-fire.
Exhaust
Exhaust
Only the outer layer was protected by the ore. Inside, dark magic worked perfectly well.
Stack upon stack of Exhaust piled up, and the staggering turtle monster soon collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.
"I'm sorry."
A moment later, six tentacle-blades burst out of the subspace around Simon.
"I'll end it without pain."
The blades plunged into the monster's head at terrifying speed.
Only when the monster finally went limp did Simon let out a weary groan and drop to one knee.
The backlash of Jet-Black Internal Ignition had left him exhausted and gasping — but a deep smile was spread across his face.
"Now that's starting to make sense."
For the first time, it felt as though he'd taken a great, decisive step forward in this dungeon.