Chapter 37
Chapter 37
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 37
Chapter Title: Chapter 7: Enemies Underground (3)
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Halt!
Regardless of race, the kobolds and goblins that had been devouring each other froze in place.
Then, as if by prior agreement, they all whipped their heads around at once, their gazes locking with Martin’s and Sien’s.
Roars followed, shaking the dungeon’s interior.
“Kee-e-eek!”
“Kuh-e-e-eek!”
The monsters stopped fighting among themselves.
They twisted toward Martin and Sien, charging straight ahead.
Hundreds, thousands of them—all of them.
“Doesn’t it look like a tidal wave?”
“What tidal wave? Look at them cramming through that narrow pass without a care. They’re just stupid.”
Martin asked in a playful tone, but Sien just snorted.
At the same time, she activated her unique ability.
Wooong.
A subspace opened to her right rear, and the hilt of a zweihänder protruded from within.
She gripped the hilt hard with her right hand.
While she readied herself for battle, Martin pointed his right index finger at the monsters.
“Yeah, they’re pretty stupid.”
Snap.
His index finger flicked from top to bottom.
That was all it took.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
A massive whirlwind writhed like a dragon as it hurtled forward, smashing directly into the monsters.
The fifty or so monsters in that spot vanished without a trace.
Yet they charged on, heedless of their kin’s deaths.
The instincts screaming in their heads demanded it.
Kill the humans in front of you—now.
Martin didn’t budge. He simply stood there, right palm extended.
“I’ll leave it to you, Sien.”
“You’re always so bossy.”
Swish.
Grumbling, Sien drew the zweihänder and stepped out in front of Martin.
Then she swung the blade clutched in her right hand down with all her might.
Slash!
One strike cleaved a goblin’s head and torso clean in half.
A kobold seized the opening, leaping with full force to sink its teeth into Sien’s right arm.
But Sien herself—and Martin watching from behind—betrayed no reaction whatsoever.
If anything, the attacking kobold looked flustered.
Crunch.
All its teeth had shattered.
“Get lost.”
Sien flicked its forehead with her left index finger.
A playful snap, but the kobold’s head burst on impact.
She pivoted on her right foot, whipping out her left in a twist.
The kick lashed out like a whip, slamming into a goblin’s gut.
Crack.
The goblin’s belly ruptured as it rocketed away like a cannonball. The monsters in its path tumbled across the ground, drenched in blood.
“Kiik!”
“Kieeek!”
Five goblins beyond the attack’s reach closed in on Sien.
They swung stone axes, stone swords—crude weapons forged from rock—with every ounce of strength.
Goblins weren’t normally that strong, but these had been massively empowered by mana stones.
In raw muscle power alone, they outclassed an ordinary orc. And that was before factoring in mana reinforcement.
Even so, Sien ignored defense entirely.
Boom!
A stone axe hammered her right side.
A stone sword plunged into her left thigh, a stone spear into her abdomen.
But that was it.
The goblins’ weapons failed to pierce her flesh and shattered outright.
Sien, meanwhile, was unscathed.
Even the uniform she wore showed not a single tear.
Martin, watching it all, could only shake his head in disbelief.
“Seriously, your family defies all reason, Sien.”
“Hey, even I’m floored sometimes.”
Sien shrugged lightly.
The goblins, by contrast, flinched in panic, bodies trembling.
They couldn’t think, driven purely by instinct—yet they felt fear.
Of course, far more monsters charged mindlessly, slamming into her in a bid to knock her down.
“It’s pointless. I keep telling you.”
Sien stood firm as an iron bastion, utterly unmoved. She pressed her attacks with ease, sending kobolds and goblins flying.
Her sheer dominance drew every monster’s focus to her.
*She’s the best partner anyone could ask for.*
Martin praised her silently.
With her holding all their attention, he could build his power undisturbed.
Whirrr!
A pure white orb spun furiously above his right palm.
It voraciously sucked in the surrounding air, swelling larger with every passing second.
“Sien! Fall back.”
When the orb’s spin ground to a halt, Martin called out a warning.
Sien stayed locked on the monsters, so Martin just smirked and unleashed the compressed air.
He’d already confirmed no other adventurers nearby while charging it up, so he committed fully to the strike.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa!
A ferocious gale tore through the dungeon’s interior.
“Kae-eek!”
“Kiiik!”
Goblins and kobolds began wailing in agony.
The gale’s razor winds shredded their bodies.
Their muscles, skin, and bones had swollen unnaturally from nonstop mana stone consumption, but they were powerless against the rampaging storm.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
Stalactites and stalagmites crammed into the dungeon were obliterated.
The resulting shards rained down or whipped through the air, engulfing the panicked monsters.
One minute.
That’s all it took to drop every monster packed into a 200-meter radius.
“You okay, Martin?”
“Yeah. This is nothing nowadays.”
Sien voiced her concern, but Martin just grinned.
Back then, sure—but now, a single attack like that didn’t even leave him with internal injuries.
“Man, Sien... I’m legit speechless.”
Martin shook his head.
He’d moved past awe or shock.
She’d stood amid winds that heralded death and ruin.
Yet she didn’t have so much as a scratch.
Unlike when the goblins struck her, her uniform’s collar and cuffs had frayed slightly—but that was the extent of it.
Her toughness defied explanation.
At this rate, it was hard to say who the real monsters were...
“You didn’t just think something rude, did you, Martin?”
“N-No, of course not.”
“Good then. Anyway, you’ve been sticking to air manipulation this whole time. Why’s that?”
“The exam’s just days away.”
It was a secret he’d shared only with her.
The avatar of the founding patriarch in the Tyrant’s Chamber—and how he’d learned swordsmanship and unique ability control from her.
She nodded at once.
“The founding patriarch really is one of a kind.”
“In what way?”
“There are plenty of so-called omnipotent unique abilities out there, like Space Domination. But holders of those rarely dive seriously into other disciplines.”
“Yeah, makes sense. It’s inefficient.”
Wielding power outside your discipline guzzles mana.
The problem? The output’s weaker than sticking to your own discipline, relative to the cost.
Take Distortion of All Things: it can mess with space, sure—but not like Space Domination.
And the power’s invariably inferior to your native discipline.
Small wonder so few bothered seriously developing foreign disciplines.
“But the founding patriarch turned it into a full martial art. And teaching it only to you? That’s wild.”
“I agreed with his core belief.”
“Core belief? What is it?”
“The head of House Adalbert must be perfect. I’m just living by that.”
“You don’t just ‘decide’ to be perfect.”
“Worked for me.”
Sien stared at him, utterly flabbergasted.
That attack he’d just unleashed could crush most wind-discipline users.
He’d picked up swordplay and ability control mere days ago—yet handled them with such mastery. A stark reminder of what transcendent talent looked like.
“Monsters are cleared. Let’s hit the next zone. If the entrance is this bad, the rest’ll be worse.”
“Yeah. Gotta stay sharp with this wave. Feels on another level from anything before.”
“Same here.”
“Sigh. What a pain. Rebellion’s barely quelled, and now this crap.”
“No point griping over what’s done. Focus on cutting losses.”
Martin answered evenly, then stepped forward.
No time to waste.
Long road ahead, endless monsters to slay.
Sien knew it too, so she followed with a hardened expression.
* * *
Martin and Sien’s hunch was spot-on: it wasn’t just the first floor in chaos.
Every floor, starting with the second, teemed with berserk monsters.
Adventurers couldn’t cope with the mana stone-boosted hordes, and casualties mounted.
Martin and Sien carved through the hellish dungeon, saving every soul they could.
Good thing they’d stockpiled top-grade potions in subspace.
They even pulled some barely-breathing victims through, bolstering their ranks.
The less-injured survivors pitched in alongside Martin and Sien to rescue others.
In half a day, they’d reached the fifth floor.
Dozens of adventurers owed their lives to the pair.
“Thank you! Thank you so much, Young Master!”
“I don’t even know how to thank you... We’ll never forget this grace!”
The survivors wept openly, voices raised in unison.
They’d stared death in the face—now their gratitude ran bone-deep.
Martin smiled gently at them.
“Just doing my duty as an Adalbert direct heir.”
“No duty gets you through that. It was pure hell in there!”
“I’ll live only for you from now on, Young Master!”
“I get how you feel. You’re beat already—focus on recovering. No more talk.”
With that, he and Sien left the guild branch’s infirmary.
Branch Chief Bayren waited outside.
“You have our deepest thanks, Young Master. As branch chief of the Adventurers’ Guild, I’ll never forget today’s aid.”
“Anyone staying in Barhain’s under Adalbert protection, same as our territory folk. I just upheld my duty as heir.”
“Even so, the guild’s neutrality stands. You chose to step up regardless—that alone means the world.”
“Means the world...”
Martin gave a wry smile.
Truth was, they’d pushed past the fifth to the sixth floor’s entrance.
But no further.
Even maxing his senses, no survivor signs beyond.
The adventurers who’d followed were in rough shape too.
One slip, and he’d lose the ones he’d saved—so they’d retreated to the guild branch.
He got that it was unavoidable.
Still, the regret lingered.
“Current status?”
“We’ve set up a defensive line at the first-floor entrance. Your foresight was spot-on. Without all those D-rank and up adventurers, it would’ve been a disaster.”
Martin’s call had set hearts racing.
Monster waves meant loot galore—and waived fees to boot?
Only fools would sit it out. In no time, over five hundred had poured in from every nation.
They were battling like madmen in the dungeon right now.
“Adventurers alone won’t cut it, though. Even as we speak, monsters are spawning out of control.”
“Yes. To end this, we need to destroy the core—but we haven’t a clue where it is...”
Bayren sighed.
Before a wave hit, a black sphere manifested somewhere in the dungeon.
That was the core. Smash it to stop the wave.
Problem was, no one knew where it’d spawn.
Pinpointing it in a dungeon that sprawled wider with every floor down? Near impossible.
Martin, though, wasn’t worried.
“We’ll handle the core. Adventurers just keep them from reaching the surface.”
He’d lived through this before regression. He knew exactly where it was.
*Thirty-fifth floor.*
The basilisk nest.
Deepest in, it hid.
“Sien.”
“Yes, Young Master?”
Others present, so she used formal speech.
“Send official notices to every branch house. Grand assembly in two days—all attend.”
“Two days feels tight.”
“Was gonna be today anyway. They’re prepped. It’ll work.”
“Understood. Your orders, Young Master.”
Martin turned toward the dungeon entrance.
The nightmare had begun—but it was just the trigger.
Chaos in the Alteria Empire would only accelerate.
*I won’t play the hypocrite.*
Saving everyone? Impossible.
Never planned to anyway.
For House Adalbert’s glory. For those who revere the house.
He’d overcome this adversity.
