Chapter 9
“Ugh, disgusting!”
Marian shook off the muddy clumps clinging to her boots nonstop.
“Elvish greeneries in a dungeon… Surprising. Really surprising.”
Whenever Marian shrugged, I noticed the metallic clinks from Kieran’s shoulder armor grated on my nerves.
“Shh!”
We had reached the entrance to the Garden of the Damned.
The second floor of Clovan Dungeon, known as the Garden of the Damned, was officially divided into three danger zones.
The first was the Botanical Garden of the Damned.
Just hearing the name, you’d assume it was some peaceful green oasis. Not even close.
Here, under thick mud, lurked colossal carnivorous plants that crawled out to swallow prey whole, spitting acidic saliva with a single snap of their heads.
The ancient tree-like giants towering overhead made the place look like a ghost city from legend.
How plants could grow this massive without sunlight was beyond me. Watching them live and breathe, though, made it clear.
“Ugh.”
Behind us, another hunter group tossed a massive worm from the city onto the ground.
The plants slithered out from below, jaws full of sharp teeth, spraying corrosive fluid and devouring the bug in seconds.
Since they fed on protein as their primary energy source, their growth was inevitable.
“Ah… it’s hot…”
The clumsy rookie hunter had brushed against the plants’ saliva.
He should have dropped the worm and made space, but he hadn’t.
The armor on the hunter across from us was already hissing as it corroded.
This was annoying, but most attacks followed a set pattern.
Feed them one protein and they waited five seconds.
During that pause, the hunter stood on the scattered stones and tossed another worm.
The stones on the ground here were special cement brought in by the very first dungeon explorers.
They’d complained endlessly about the plants’ acidic spit eating away at weapons, so the dungeon hunter headquarters had painted two-thirds of the Garden of the Damned with cement.
Still, the giants punched through it easily.
But compared to before, it was way more pleasant.
The cement lumps looked silly, but they weren’t.
They were proof of the Gilorian Empire’s top-tier magic.
Creating fixed landmarks inside a dungeon that reset every entry showed how advanced their magic truly was.
Even if the underground second floor had low monster mana density.
The second zone was the Field of Lamentations.
After crossing the Garden of the Damned like frogs jumping on lily pads over a lake, you hit an open area full of crumbling stone ruins from ancient architecture.
It was eerie, even giving off the vibe of a funeral dirge.
And it was.
“Wuuuuur…”
“Kiiiiieeeek…”
It was the choir of banshees.
Sharp, agonizing wails sliced through the air.
The deep sorrow in their voices made the shadows around us flicker.
At that moment, something hazy and translucent appeared in the sky, long white hair whipping wildly.
Then the unmistakable stench of decay began to spread.
“Oh, here come the crazy ones.”
“Wash up or die already.”
Banshees and ghouls had arrived.
In my personal ranking of the worst monster match-ups, ghouls would never fall out of the bottom three.
This stench was beyond endurance.
“Ugh.”
Piaje, the administrative officer, started gagging.
“Leonik, hurry.”
He pinched his nose and urged us on.
A cleric’s blessing was desperately needed.
“Lady Eria, goddess of blessings, bless us with the scent of salvation.”
Leonik intoned the blessing in a low voice, and a faint coolness spread through the air.
It smelled faintly of pine trees.
Or maybe a pleasant floral note.
“Ahh, now I can breathe.”
Here, there were no answers.
We couldn’t endure it bare-handed, and we couldn’t waste the cleric’s blessing like air freshener.
The only choice was to hurry past.
“Senior, what’s that over there?”
Following Marian’s finger, I saw a giant windmill rising in the middle of the Field of Lamentations.
Multiple windmills of consistent size.
More than a few.
No wind to spin them, yet here they were.
“Ah… the ghouls’ expert hunters.”
Looking closer, I saw hunters pulling long ropes and cranking the windmills nonstop.
Between them, others bent over with miner's lanterns on their heads.
That scene was all too familiar to Piaje.
“The stench is poisonous, but honestly, they’re just moles.”
Piaje swung his mace, smashing the wriggling ghoul corpses rising from the ground.
Whenever a rotten hand shot up, he bashed it down and collected the mana stones.
Again and again.
It looked like a cross between a mole-hunting game and those women reaping wheat.
“Let’s stop here.”
After the cleric’s blessing, countless mana stones littered the ground.
A huge advantage for short-statured dwarves.
That was why most ghoul experts were dwarves.
If Piaje hadn’t been watching, he would have stayed there playing mole-hunting all day.
“Inspector Marian.”
“Ah!”
Piaje called out, patting his back, and Marian, still dazed, quickly used magic to gather the stones.
“Ugh, it’s heavy. I’ll put it in my mana stone pouch’s spatial pocket.”
“Still, with Sir Leonik’s blessing, it’s much easier than swinging a hammer.”
Piaje bowed deeply toward Leonik, who then bestowed another blessing on the administrative officer.
Now Piaje smelled faintly of daisies.
“Whoa, continuous blessings.”
It was the perfect moment to highlight the chairman’s outstanding judgment.
Continuous Blessing
“Good man, one person to recruit.”
With that thought, the chairman had brought in an entire team of Eria Church clerics.
Leonik’s white-and-gold robes marked him as a mid-level cleric even among Eria followers.
Even from the same Harvard, not everyone could become Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
Becoming a cleric of Eria didn’t automatically make you mid-level.
Innate talent and ruthless effort were required.
The chairman had brought in a mid-level Eria cleric—known as a ruthless effort genius—for the investigative team.
“So, just the spider cluster remains?”
As Kieran said, the third threat zone on the second floor was the Spider Cluster.
Full of giant spiders, just as the name suggested.
“Let’s rest a bit. It’s only a little farther to the hunters’ cabin.”
We had been underground for five hours.
The dungeon’s lack of light and low oxygen made movement exhausting.
Proper stamina management was essential.
The Dungeon Hunters Association recommended three hours of rest every six hours for regular hunters.
That led to the creation of the Hunters’ Cabin, built jointly by the Capital Defense Force’s dungeon headquarters and the private guild association.
They had searched for safe areas and cast special magic circles to guarantee hunters a place to rest.
Of course, you didn’t have to sleep only here, but it was safer with a group.
It wasn’t common, but murders and robberies could happen anywhere.
Humans were always the biggest threat.
“There it is.”
At the edge of a hill stood the hunters’ cabin.
“Those money lumps.”
Kieran stared at the cabin with a grim expression.
Everyone knew the cabin had been controversial for a long time.
Fixing its position required astronomical magic circles.
“I think people these days are too impatient. Life should come first, before economics, right? The bureaucrat who pushed for the cabin got fired.”
Piaje shuffled his short legs quickly as he spoke.
Factually, building that kind of special magic circle required pouring in more than a year’s budget of the Gilorian Empire.
So the question had raged for years: was it worth investing massive funds in less than one percent of the population for dungeon hunters?
Marian alone gave a faint smile, silent as always.
She looked quite tired.
We opened the door and found many hunters already resting inside.
We had rushed through the first floor, but being too absorbed in the mole-hunting game had made us late.
We spread out in a suitable space, pulled dried meat jerky from our bags, and started eating.
“It really is different from other dungeons. Something feels off here.”
“Feels good to have my muscles pumped again after a long time.”
Unlike the exhausted Marian, Piaje’s face was full of life from the long-awaited dungeon dive.
Due to their dwarf physique, sitting in an office and fidgeting with paperwork probably wasn’t comfortable for them.
“Each of you rest. We’ll depart in three hours.”
I leaned against my bag.
The hunters’ cabin buzzed with people.
Everyone was checking weapons, reviewing strategies, hoping to gather more mana stones and find good treasures than others.
It felt nostalgic, like the old days.
“I heard Blaze Clan is going all the way to the fifth floor.”
“Blaze Clan is really something lately.”
Familiar names drifted from the group of hunters gathered.
Blaze Clan.
Hunters naturally cared more about stronger people, since the stronger you were, the more money and fame you got.
“Hey! What are they going to do about the Named Thief in the fourth floor? Blaze is a big clan, they shouldn’t worry, right?”
“The thief’s fame is way too high… they don’t need to take that kind of risk. They won’t go near the Mushroom Cave.”
“Yeah, even if they live lucky, they’ll just create more problems for others.”
And anyone who could put a blade to your throat at any moment had to stay on guard.
The dungeon was the place where you had to be most careful.
Among dungeon hunters, Mosquito was already a legendary nightmare.
Probably everyone called him the thief.
“Hey… where is the thief on the fourth floor? We just have to avoid there, right?”
I stuck my butt out and slipped into the conversation.
The more information you got, the closer you got to finding the right way to clear it.
“Are you a complete beginner here? Then even if you go to the fourth floor, don’t go near the Mushroom Cave. You never know when or how you’ll be caught.”
A hunter who had lost an eye gestured at his own throat with his hand.
“He’s so agile he doesn’t even move like a person. In the dark, it’s like he can see everything. He was like a rat. A rat living underground.”
Fear and contempt flashed in his eyes.
A rat hiding in the dark, stinking, and snatching hunters one by one, stealing everything and killing them.
Just as people hunted ghouls, that guy was hunting people too.
“Rats aren’t something to avoid, they’re something to poison.”
I gave a faint smile.
That expression probably didn’t fit the tone of someone who had spoken of murder.
But did he sense my aura?
Few people tried to stop me, and most just looked interested.
“Maybe we’ll get some real entertainment for once.”
“We rushed the fourth floor fast, but this time we’ll have to head to the Mushroom Cave.”
The hunters whispered to each other.
— The Rogue Prosecutor’s Survival Guide in Another World Chapter 9: Mosquito (4) —
Looking at the scene, I clasped my hands behind my back and slowly leaned against the wall.
After all, executions for criminals should be grand and spectacular.