Chapter 84
Chapter 84
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 84
Chapter Title: 27. Human Hunter (3)
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5.
“I’ll stay on the 1st floor and hunt.”
Everyone was stunned by El Pam’s words.
“Boss, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Are you insane?”
El Pam’s presence in his own party was absolute.
And they were excluding him?
Not just excluding him, either.
El Pam had declared that he would stay on the 1st floor himself.
By adventurers’ common sense, this was utter madness.
In adventurers’ common sense, “staying behind” meant one of two things: sacrificing yourself or falling behind.
It could never be a rational choice.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, Boss, you’ll be fine, of course.”
Naturally, El Pam’s companions weren’t worried about him being left alone.
They hadn’t even considered such a thing.
“We’re the ones we’re worried about.”
The issue was everyone else, without El Pam.
“There’s no way we can pull it off properly on our own, right?”
As mentioned before, El Pam’s role was absolute—and now he was being excluded?
El Pam responded.
“No problem.”
“Huh?”
“Even without me, the four of you are more than enough to clear a Yellow-rank gate.”
He wasn’t just saying it.
“Our goal isn’t hunting the boss monster. It’s finding the prince’s remains and the exit.”
*The prince’s tomb is tough. But if you know how to avoid the monsters instead of hunting them, it’s clearable.*
For starters, El Pam knew the prince’s tomb didn’t require killing monsters to clear.
“The four of you can handle that much.”
And El Pam knew his companions had more than enough skill to survive there.
To be precise, he had forged that skill in them.
If they didn’t have it—if they hadn’t achieved it—he never would have brought them here in the first place.
“I guarantee it.”
At those words, El Pam’s companions fell silent.
Their chests swelled with emotion. Not from anyone else, but from El Pam placing his trust in them.
And they trusted him in return. Because it was El Pam who said it.
But one fundamental question lingered.
“Boss, wouldn’t it still be better if we all moved together?”
Why was El Pam going this far?
El Pam answered the question.
“Because the Hassassins are coming.”
That response.
“I don’t have the confidence to protect you from the Hassassins while hunting them down.”
Everyone fell silent at the curt reply.
They knew the Hassassins’ reputation.
Of course, what truly silenced them was this:
*He can take down Hassassins without us?*
What El Pam meant utterly defied common sense.
*If the Boss says it, then it must be true.*
And El Pam had never once spouted nonsense or empty bluster.
No one raised any more questions about “why” in that moment.
They just spat it out.
“Fine, let’s do it.”
El Pam’s party moved out.
6.
Queen Areida’s objective was simple.
“Prince Kasha is gunning for the prince’s tomb, so smash it flat.”
Leave no margin for error.
“Everything, without exception.”
“Understood.”
But the moment she read the message from Will, the Black Mage’s legion commander, that objective changed.
“Ebob, keep this in mind. Stake everything on this mission.”
She entrusted everything to Ebob.
With full authority in hand, Ebob made his preparations.
“Do we really have to go this far?”
When Ebob finished his preparations, Queen Areida was shocked.
She had no choice.
“One thousand adventurers?”
The number of adventurers Ebob had hired was one thousand.
And they weren’t some ragtag bunch, either.
These were a thousand elite adventurers who had reached the 4th Circle—ones with proven fame and skill.
Honestly, it was hard to comprehend.
The prince’s tomb only allowed 213 adventurers to enter.
One thousand was nearly five times that number.
“And ten Hassassins on top of that.”
He even had ten of the world’s top assassins—not just one—standing by, despite not being adventurers.
The cost was far beyond the realm of common sense.
Of course, money was no object for Queen Areida.
Her wealth was effectively King Abdullah VIII’s.
The only one in the entire Maple World who could even gauge its scale was Goldrich.
It was just a question.
“In the end, eight hundred of those adventurers will be useless, won’t they?”
Ebob answered the doubt.
“It’s to prepare for any possible contingency.”
Those words.
“No matter the situation, our adventurers will enter.”
With every conceivable scenario accounted for, Queen Areida asked no more questions.
Preparations commenced.
Full preparations, naturally.
Ebob had already stationed over three hundred adventurers at Malgur Oasis.
Truth be told, they alone could force an entry if they were willing to take the losses.
Even so, Ebob held them back.
“The Sand Shadow Group is at Malgur Oasis. They’ll interfere with everything they’ve got this time. So we wait for the rabble adventurers—the mediocre ones—to show up at Malgur Oasis.”
They waited for the right moment.
“For the moment when we can blind the Sand Shadow Group.”
To pursue perfection.
That was why he leaked information about some of the one thousand hired adventurers—specifically, that they were in Queen Areida’s employ—to the Sand Shadow Group.
He even used them as bait.
Over two hundred of them.
All possibilities covered in every direction.
“In all this, we’ll play our best card: the leader of the Red Scorpion Group.”
The surest bet of all was Sing, leader of the Red Scorpion Group.
He struck a deal with him.
Explained the plan, and promised protection from the Ariant Kingdom upon success.
Naturally, Sing assembled the finest adventurers suited for the job.
And he chose Yellow Scorpion Chio as their leader.
Yellow Scorpion.
The meaning was straightforward.
The adventurer in the Red Scorpion Group best suited to clear Yellow-rank Mystic Gates.
Yellow Scorpion Chio had set up shop early at Malgur Oasis.
“Boss, this one’s gonna be too easy, right? It’s basically a joke.”
“Shaka.”
“Yeah?”
“Cut off one finger from the bastard who just said that. Right now.”
He allowed no complacency whatsoever.
“Gahk!”
“Get careless, and you die. To the enemy or to me.”
He wrung their tension to the absolute limit, even as he watched his subordinate’s blood spill.
He prepared for every scenario.
“Boss.”
“What is it?”
To the point where nothing would surprise him.
That’s how it was supposed to be.
“Adventurers are moving toward the prince’s tomb.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
“Five, then. We wait.”
“They look like they’re going to enter.”
Even hearing that follow-up, Chio didn’t flinch.
He had accounted for this.
Every now and then, some lunatic adventurer would pull a stunt like this.
“They’ll die on their own.”
The odds of such an adventurer surviving inside a Mystic Gate were effectively zero.
“Before they even reach it.”
Above all, Sand Shadow Group members lurked near the Mystic Gate, lying in wait with traps set.
Five nobodies getting through that alive? Impossible.
“Boss.”
That was plain common sense.
“The portal’s activating!”
But then common sense shattered.
“What?”
Even Chio couldn’t help but panic in that instant.
The problem was that Chio and the other adventurers waiting here—the ones hired by Queen Areida—didn’t have much time to deliberate.
The portal was active. Choices: watch or enter.
Normally, you’d watch.
No way five people could clear a Mystic Gate that even a prince couldn’t.
“The Sand Shadow Group?”
“No idea.”
But with Sand Shadow members hidden all around, entering the portal?
“How many traps have those bastards set!”
Silently slipping past all those traps?
It was one of two things.
“What do you think?”
“Either Sand Shadow members or some absurd monster.”
And whichever it was, they couldn’t just sit and watch.
That’s why.
“We’re entering.”
“Huh?”
Chio made his call.
He wasn’t the only one.
“We’re going in.”
The adventurers around him reached the same conclusion.
It wasn’t pure logic.
“We can’t fail the clear. Too much on the line.”
They couldn’t just stand there and watch the massive reward Queen Areida promised slip away.
It happened in an instant.
Over two hundred adventurer parties surged toward the prince’s tomb almost simultaneously.
Of course, it wasn’t smooth sailing.
“It’s the Sand Shadow Group!”
The Sand Shadow Group’s hidden traps everywhere were ingeniously laid, and the group itself mobilized.
“Kill them!”
Fierce battles erupted as they killed and were killed, and the survivors hurled themselves into the prince’s tomb without hesitation.
And there, they saw it.
7.
“Where’s this?”
Yellow Scorpion Chio and his men, who had pierced the chaos and crossed the Mystic Gate portal, found themselves in a forest.
“Malgur Oasis?”
A forest utterly indistinguishable from the one they’d just left.
It was so identical that they wondered if they were still at Malgur Oasis—if crossing the Mystic Gate had been a mistake.
Everything was the same.
Of course, Chio and his men quickly realized the truth.
“It’s like Malgur Oasis, but different.”
The trees visible here and there, the shape of the soil on the ground—subtle details set it apart from Malgur Oasis.
“But it doesn’t matter if it’s the same.”
For Chio’s party, there was no reason to complain either way.
They had spent days in a place like Malgur Oasis, conducting thorough investigations and tailored training.
So they figured.
The 1st floor would be a breeze.
They weren’t getting careless, of course.
Chio had already rooted out any hint of complacency from his men.
“From here on, we focus purely on clearing. We head to the 2nd floor in the shortest time possible.”
If anything, he saw this as an opportunity—for a faster, more reliable Mystic Gate clear.
No one thought it would be difficult.
After all, they had Yellow Scorpion Chio, the Red Scorpion Group’s top talent for Yellow-rank gates, renowned across the Nihal Desert.
And it wasn’t just them.
One by one, more adventurers crossed the Mystic Gate in their wake.
“Yellow Scorpion Chio?”
“That’s Desert Fox Heshan.”
“Didn’t expect to run into you here.”
The moment they encountered each other, they joined forces.
“You’re on Queen Areida’s payroll too, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Then let’s keep it simple. We team up until the 3rd floor.”
“Contest starts at 3rd.”
With the same employer in Queen Areida, there was no need to compete from the 1st floor.
What’s more, they had a common foe.
“Let’s deal with those five first. They’re definitely not with Areida.”
“Gotta exterminate the rats.”
A public enemy.
They didn’t agonize over it.
“As fast as possible.”
Exterminating some rats would be no issue.
And indeed, it wasn’t.
“They went this way.”
They quickly picked up the five’s trail and gave chase.
Extremely smoothly.
“It’s a Bellamoa!”
“Take it out.”
The monsters that appeared didn’t slow them down in the slightest.
But soon, they sensed something off.
“We’ve been tracking for a full day and only found traces? No matter how you slice it...”
“Feels like they’re deliberately leaving a trail.”
That was the moment.
Fwoosh!
“It’s Fire Arrow!”