Chapter 407: Inevitability (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 407: Inevitability (3)
The online game I used to enjoy before finding Dungeon and Stone was a game with PVP as its main component. In the game, you chose from one of two factions and grew up in a different continent depending on which one you selected, then went to the other to fight for dominance. I remembered the feeling of leading a small army into enemy territory and stealing the level's boss right from under their noses was very gratifying. PKing passionately, taking down the boss with a big, awesome blow, and getting to hear all kinds of rave reviews in the voice chat from players in the enemy faction?
It was a pretty fun game.
If I hadn't come across Dungeon and Stone, I might've still been playing that game. Of all the games I played, it was the best one.
Wait, if I kept playing that game, I wouldn't have been dragged here...
Aside from those regrets, the reason I had suddenly remembered a game I had almost completely forgotten about was simple. In a way, there were a lot of similarities between it and our current situation. Currently, the Dark Continent was occupied by Noark, and our expedition team had secretly set foot on their territory.
And more importantly... The method I used there works well here too.
I felt the same feeling I felt while playing that game here.
"...A-Ambush!"
"How the hell did they get here?!"
"Take care of the monsters up front first!"
"A-Ahhh!"
Our panicked enemies didn't know how to react.
"Eeek! You cowards...!"
"Taking advantage of a moment like that!"
"I'll take you with me!"
Praise poured in.
[You have defeated a Bone Dragonian. EXP +7]
On top of that, I killed a bunch of rank-three monsters like it was a piece of cake. Of course, the icing on said cake was something else.
"A-An essence!"
Not only did we succeed at ambushing and PKing a whole bunch of people without a single injury, but as a bonus, one of the monsters dropped an essence—the second rank-three essence we had acquired during this expedition. To be honest, I was more dazed than happy.
What is this...?
Rank-three essences weren't something that could be obtained this easily. That was because there were very few rank-three monsters on the seventh floor. Taking into account both here and Ice Rock combined, the total number of rank-three monsters we'd hunted didn't even reach twenty.
But two already, huh? Is luck on our side? Well, I'm sure this is a net positive.
"Ashed, go collect the essence."
"Okay."
I sent our wizard over to store the essence in a test tube while I took stock of the battlefield. The essence wasn't our only loot. As always, the piece de resistance of PKing was something else.
Choke...
"H-Help..."
"You know I can't save you."
Why was this guy talking to a corpse? "Stop babbling and get out of the way." I hefted my hammer to press the happy button on the bastards still clinging to their lifelines.
Smash, smash, smash!
As flesh was pounded, bodies went limp. After personally confirming the kills myself, I had the crew strip their equipment and store it in the expedition's shared sub-space.
"Whew, considering the equipment they'll have in their sub-spaces, this is no joke."
"Everyone will get a good share once we get back."
The crew seemed to have done the math and were now burning up with enthusiasm. It made sense. A rank-three essence was valuable, too, but not as valuable as the equipment of fifteen people who were active on the seventh floor. More importantly, the effort we had to put into the battle was minimal.
"We finished collecting the loot," said Akurava.
"Any injured?"
"None."
"I see." I couldn't hide my pleasure and raised the corners of my lips. The battle had ended cleanly without a single person injured.
"...Do you plan to continue fighting like this?"
"Is there a problem?"
"No. But..." Akurava trailed off and pursed her lips. Having experienced it for herself, she now knew that this was the best way to ambush an enemy when they were hunting in their territory with their guards down. Well, that didn't mean there weren't drawbacks.
Thirty minutes, huh?
The battle itself had ended in five minutes, but the time it had taken for our opponents to first encounter a monster was considerable. Of course, the disadvantages weren't worth considering compared to the advantages. If someone got hurt or died during a fight, that was a far bigger loss, right? But it seemed there were still some regrets to be had.
Kaislan offered a bit of cautious advice. "Schuitz, killing everyone was hasty. We should've captured at least one to obtain information."
Ah, that's true too.
"We'll do that starting with the next ambush." Kaislan's expression suddenly brightened, probably because I was considering his advice. "Wizards, burn the bodies and erase all traces of us!"
After we finished cleaning up the surrounding area, we slipped back into the darkness and got moving. But because our surroundings were so silent, I was able to hear a conversation between some crew members that made me chuckle to myself.
"Did you see that earlier? Their equipment?"
"If we do ten more of these... how much will that be?"
I don't know, I guess we'll find out soon enough.
***
Our routine since arriving on the Dark Continent was as follows:
Step, step.
We traveled while shrouded in darkness.
"The enemy."
We waited until the enemy fought a monster, giving us an opportunity to strike.
"Now!"
Then, we took advantage of their distraction to launch an all-out ambush.
Bang, bang, bang!
Whiiip!
Boom!
Things got even easier once we started bombarding them with long-range firepower at the get-go and blowing up the entire rear guard first.
"Let's go!"
"Wipe them all out!"
Even when our close-range warriors closed in, their front line wasn't free to offer their rear guard support thanks to the monsters they were dealing with up front. For that reason, the battle ended fast this time as well.
Smash, smash, smash!
As flesh was pounded, bodies went limp. After personally confirming the kills myself, I had the crew strip their equipment and store it in the expedition's shared sub-space.
"Whew, considering the equipment they'll have in their sub-spaces, this is no joke."
"Everyone will get a good share once we get back."
The crew seemed to have done the math and were now burning up with enthusiasm. It made sense. A rank-three essence was valuable, too, but not as valuable as the equipment of fifteen people who were active on the seventh floor. More importantly, the effort we had to put into the battle was minimal.
"We finished collecting the loot," said Akurava.
"Any injured?"
"None."
"I see." I couldn't hide my pleasure and raised the corners of my lips. The battle had ended cleanly without a single person injured.
"...Do you plan to continue fighting like this?"
"Is there a problem?"
"No. But..." Akurava trailed off and pursed her lips. Having experienced it for herself, she now knew that this was the best way to ambush an enemy when they were hunting in their territory with their guards down. Well, that didn't mean there weren't drawbacks.
Thirty minutes, huh?
The battle itself had ended in five minutes, but the time it had taken for our opponents to first encounter a monster was considerable. Of course, the disadvantages weren't worth considering compared to the advantages. If someone got hurt or died during a fight, that was a far bigger loss, right? But it seemed there were still some regrets to be had.
Kaislan offered a bit of cautious advice. "Schuitz, killing everyone was hasty. We should've captured at least one to obtain information."
Ah, that's true too.
"We'll do that starting with the next ambush." Kaislan's expression suddenly brightened, probably because I was considering his advice. "Wizards, burn the bodies and erase all traces of us!"
After we finished cleaning up the surrounding area, we slipped back into the darkness and got moving. But because our surroundings were so silent, I was able to hear a conversation between some crew members that made me chuckle to myself.
"Did you see that earlier? Their equipment?"
"If we do ten more of these... how much will that be?"
I don't know, I guess we'll find out soon enough.
***
Our routine since arriving on the Dark Continent was as follows:
Step, step.
We traveled while shrouded in darkness.
"The enemy."
We waited until the enemy fought a monster, giving us an opportunity to strike.
"Now!"
Then, we took advantage of their distraction to launch an all-out ambush.
Bang, bang, bang!
Whiiip!
Boom!
Things got even easier once we started bombarding them with long-range firepower at the get-go and blowing up the entire rear guard first.
"Let's go!"
"Wipe them all out!"
Even when our close-range warriors closed in, their front line wasn't free to offer their rear guard support thanks to the monsters they were dealing with up front. For that reason, the battle ended fast this time as well.
This makes ten, right?
Repeating this process as we moved, the number of ambushes we'd pulled off reached double digits right as we were getting out of the Dragon Pit.
"Wizard! Put up a soundproof barrier first!"
"Hey! Be careful when you take the gear off! It keeps coming with flesh attached!"
When the battle ended, the squadron began collecting the loot and erasing our tracks again. As I oversaw the process, one of our team members dragged a survivor in front of me.
"Commander! Here is the survivor you asked for!"
"Good job."
"It was nothing."
Starting from the second battle, we made sure to always keep one person alive to extract information from them. You never knew. Anything could happen in the labyrinth at any time. We couldn't neglect regularly collecting intelligence. I wasn't the one conducting the interrogations, anyway.
"Jun."
"Leave it to me."
If I just left it to Jun, the expedition's official information extractor, the information tumbled out of them on its own, and all I had to do was piece it together. For example, the people hunting on the eighth floor were Noark's most elite fighters. Because of that, their main base was currently empty. Useful information like that came to light. The problem was none of the recent survivors knew much more than that, so we hadn't gotten any new intelligence in a while.
"Schuitz, please come here a moment. It's urgent."
It'd been a while since Jun called for me during an interrogation. I wondered what was up, so I quickly headed over and found that the tied-up survivor was still alive. This meant some important information had come up during questioning.
"Go ahead. What did you find out?"
"It'd be a bit inaccurate to say I found anything out."
"Inaccurate...?"
I tilted my head and Jun's eyes shifted to the side. When I followed his line of sight, I could see a stone glowing and vibrating faintly nearby—an item any adventurer was bound to recognize.
"A message stone...?"
"It was in his possession."
"That means..."
"Yes, someone is trying to contact this man. What are you going to do?"
The moment the question left Jun's mouth, the message stone vibrated once more.
Jiiiiiing!
I wondered how many more times it would ring before stopping. There was no way to know, which was why I had to make a decision, fast.
Slide.
I raised my hand slightly to ask for some time, then gathered my thoughts.
Is this communication from nearby, or somewhere far away?
The radius of a message stone was limited, though the exact range depended on the quality of the stone. But this was Noark's territory, which meant this call could very well be coming from far away. This was tied to the reason the palace had formed an expeditionary force to attack the main base in the first place—the mana wave emitter.
To put it in modern terms, a mana wave emitter was a structure that operated similarly to a transmission tower. These guys had used their cheat code to enter the seventh floor directly and then upgraded their forces by bringing along a huge device that had to have been too big to ever fit into a sub-space. Thanks to that, Noark was able to freely communicate with troops scattered across the continent and actively hindered the royal army.
This makes ten, right?
Repeating this process as we moved, the number of ambushes we'd pulled off reached double digits right as we were getting out of the Dragon Pit.
"Wizard! Put up a soundproof barrier first!"
"Hey! Be careful when you take the gear off! It keeps coming with flesh attached!"
When the battle ended, the squadron began collecting the loot and erasing our tracks again. As I oversaw the process, one of our team members dragged a survivor in front of me.
"Commander! Here is the survivor you asked for!"
"Good job."
"It was nothing."
Starting from the second battle, we made sure to always keep one person alive to extract information from them. You never knew. Anything could happen in the labyrinth at any time. We couldn't neglect regularly collecting intelligence. I wasn't the one conducting the interrogations, anyway.
"Jun."
"Leave it to me."
If I just left it to Jun, the expedition's official information extractor, the information tumbled out of them on its own, and all I had to do was piece it together. For example, the people hunting on the eighth floor were Noark's most elite fighters. Because of that, their main base was currently empty. Useful information like that came to light. The problem was none of the recent survivors knew much more than that, so we hadn't gotten any new intelligence in a while.
"Schuitz, please come here a moment. It's urgent."
It'd been a while since Jun called for me during an interrogation. I wondered what was up, so I quickly headed over and found that the tied-up survivor was still alive. This meant some important information had come up during questioning.
"Go ahead. What did you find out?"
"It'd be a bit inaccurate to say I found anything out."
"Inaccurate...?"
I tilted my head and Jun's eyes shifted to the side. When I followed his line of sight, I could see a stone glowing and vibrating faintly nearby—an item any adventurer was bound to recognize.
"A message stone...?"
"It was in his possession."
"That means..."
"Yes, someone is trying to contact this man. What are you going to do?"
The moment the question left Jun's mouth, the message stone vibrated once more.
Jiiiiiing!
I wondered how many more times it would ring before stopping. There was no way to know, which was why I had to make a decision, fast.
Slide.
I raised my hand slightly to ask for some time, then gathered my thoughts.
Is this communication from nearby, or somewhere far away?
The radius of a message stone was limited, though the exact range depended on the quality of the stone. But this was Noark's territory, which meant this call could very well be coming from far away. This was tied to the reason the palace had formed an expeditionary force to attack the main base in the first place—the mana wave emitter.
To put it in modern terms, a mana wave emitter was a structure that operated similarly to a transmission tower. These guys had used their cheat code to enter the seventh floor directly and then upgraded their forces by bringing along a huge device that had to have been too big to ever fit into a sub-space. Thanks to that, Noark was able to freely communicate with troops scattered across the continent and actively hindered the royal army.
Jiiiiiing!
The damn ringing echoed once more. I finished thinking things over and asked a few questions. "Hey, you, where do you think this call is coming from?"
"...I-It's probably a routine communication. To check on the status of each troop!"
Hmm, I see.
"Jun, what are the chances this guy is fucking with us?"
"I think it's very unlikely." If he was able to sound that certain in a situation where it was difficult to be sure about anything, that meant he was very confident.
"...I-I'll do it! I'll do as you say! S-So, please, k-kill me...!"
As I listened to the guy plead for death instead of life, I passed my judgment. Yeah, I was willing to trust that. "All right, pick up the call. If they ask if anything's wrong, tell them nothing is." I grabbed the message stone and shoved it in his face.
Click.
The moment I pressed the button to take the call, a man's voice rang out from beyond the glowing stone. "Finally reached you." It was a deep, bass voice, and the second it hit my ears, my heart started pounding violently.
Thump, thump, thump!
That voice was one I could never forget.
"R-Regal Vagos... is that you?" stuttered our prisoner.
Grit.
So, you're somewhere on the eighth floor too.
I'd encountered many enemies since coming into this world. Most got their heads bashed in, but unfortunately, I lacked the strength to take care of some of the others. Riakis, the Lord of Chaos; Abed Necrapeto, the Corpse Collector; Belbev Ruingenes, the Fallen Scholar. Those names immediately came to mind, but the person I held the biggest grudge against was this guy—Regal Vagos, the Dragon Slayer. As soon as I heard that voice, my mind went blank and my blood boiled.
Squeeze.
Now wasn't the time for that, though. Clenching my fists even tighter, I cooled my head and concentrated on the conversation.
"Meiras, where are you right now?"
"I-I'm hunting with the other members of my team in the Dragon Pit!"
"...Really? Then do you know something?"
"Know something about...?"
"We can't reach anyone who went into the Dragon Pit."
"I-I-Is that right? I'm not sure. W-We're doing all right and haven't run into any issues. Really!"
His tone was over-the-top and practically begging for Vagos to catch on. I could let the stuttering slide, but wasn't this way too much?
Just then, Jun quietly picked up an awl next to him, immediately straightened up, and got his act together.
Slide.
"But that's weird. No one is reachable? Perhaps they were attacked by monsters?" His pronunciation was clear as if he'd never been stuttering at all.
"No matter how pathetic they are, there's no way all of them were killed."
"...That's true. But is there any news on your end?" The guy took things a step further and even showed an interest in asking for information from Vagos.
"Not yet."
"I'm glad. I'll look around and check to see what's happened on this end, so don't worry."
"You? Don't do anything stupid and just wait. We've already sent troops over there. Join them and do as they say."
"Yes, all right."
"Tsk, useless bastards." The prick then tutted and cut off the transmission.
"That's a shame," said Jun. "It would have been nice to know how many troops were sent this way."
"Yeah, it would have..."
"...Is something wrong? You don't look well."
"Don't worry about it. It's nothing." It was just getting harder to hold back my anger. While I was listening to that voice, the events of that day flashed through my mind in vivid detail.
Just then, I heard a sound from behind me. "N-No."
Whip.
When I turned around, I saw Erwen standing there.
Tap.
It looked like she had been holding something in her hands, but that item fell to the ground. Normally, if it were a regular mistake, she would have bent down to pick it back up again, but Erwen instead just stopped and stared at me.
"Erwen? Why are you here?" As I got closer, I realized something was very wrong. "Wait, you're shaking..."
"Th-that v-voice..."
"Calm down. Are you okay?"
"Just now! Th-th-that was... him, right? T-The Dragon Slayer, Regal Vagos..."
I didn't know why, but Erwen was terrified.
Jiiiiiing!
The damn ringing echoed once more. I finished thinking things over and asked a few questions. "Hey, you, where do you think this call is coming from?"
"...I-It's probably a routine communication. To check on the status of each troop!"
Hmm, I see.
"Jun, what are the chances this guy is fucking with us?"
"I think it's very unlikely." If he was able to sound that certain in a situation where it was difficult to be sure about anything, that meant he was very confident.
"...I-I'll do it! I'll do as you say! S-So, please, k-kill me...!"
As I listened to the guy plead for death instead of life, I passed my judgment. Yeah, I was willing to trust that. "All right, pick up the call. If they ask if anything's wrong, tell them nothing is." I grabbed the message stone and shoved it in his face.
Click.
The moment I pressed the button to take the call, a man's voice rang out from beyond the glowing stone. "Finally reached you." It was a deep, bass voice, and the second it hit my ears, my heart started pounding violently.
Thump, thump, thump!
That voice was one I could never forget.
"R-Regal Vagos... is that you?" stuttered our prisoner.
Grit.
So, you're somewhere on the eighth floor too.
I'd encountered many enemies since coming into this world. Most got their heads bashed in, but unfortunately, I lacked the strength to take care of some of the others. Riakis, the Lord of Chaos; Abed Necrapeto, the Corpse Collector; Belbev Ruingenes, the Fallen Scholar. Those names immediately came to mind, but the person I held the biggest grudge against was this guy—Regal Vagos, the Dragon Slayer. As soon as I heard that voice, my mind went blank and my blood boiled.
Squeeze.
Now wasn't the time for that, though. Clenching my fists even tighter, I cooled my head and concentrated on the conversation.
"Meiras, where are you right now?"
"I-I'm hunting with the other members of my team in the Dragon Pit!"
"...Really? Then do you know something?"
"Know something about...?"
"We can't reach anyone who went into the Dragon Pit."
"I-I-Is that right? I'm not sure. W-We're doing all right and haven't run into any issues. Really!"
His tone was over-the-top and practically begging for Vagos to catch on. I could let the stuttering slide, but wasn't this way too much?
Just then, Jun quietly picked up an awl next to him, immediately straightened up, and got his act together.
Slide.
"But that's weird. No one is reachable? Perhaps they were attacked by monsters?" His pronunciation was clear as if he'd never been stuttering at all.
"No matter how pathetic they are, there's no way all of them were killed."
"...That's true. But is there any news on your end?" The guy took things a step further and even showed an interest in asking for information from Vagos.
"Not yet."
"I'm glad. I'll look around and check to see what's happened on this end, so don't worry."
"You? Don't do anything stupid and just wait. We've already sent troops over there. Join them and do as they say."
"Yes, all right."
"Tsk, useless bastards." The prick then tutted and cut off the transmission.
"That's a shame," said Jun. "It would have been nice to know how many troops were sent this way."
"Yeah, it would have..."
"...Is something wrong? You don't look well."
"Don't worry about it. It's nothing." It was just getting harder to hold back my anger. While I was listening to that voice, the events of that day flashed through my mind in vivid detail.
Just then, I heard a sound from behind me. "N-No."
Whip.
When I turned around, I saw Erwen standing there.
Tap.
It looked like she had been holding something in her hands, but that item fell to the ground. Normally, if it were a regular mistake, she would have bent down to pick it back up again, but Erwen instead just stopped and stared at me.
"Erwen? Why are you here?" As I got closer, I realized something was very wrong. "Wait, you're shaking..."
"Th-that v-voice..."
"Calm down. Are you okay?"
"Just now! Th-th-that was... him, right? T-The Dragon Slayer, Regal Vagos..."
I didn't know why, but Erwen was terrified.