The Party That Doesn't Return (1)
Meni and Pyutel, walking at the front, were about to pull out luminous stones and fasten them to their spear tips when Priest Pelani unhooked a glass bottle from his staff and attached it to Pyutel’s weapon instead. A blue, watery light spread in every direction—far brighter than the dim glow of the luminous stones.
“Undead take damage just from exposure to this light. It’s why the Church of Rius always gets priority for undead dungeon raids.”
Hearing that, it reminded me of UV light used for sterilization. In movies, vampires were weak to ultraviolet rays, and it seemed undead monsters suffered the same weakness.
Originally I had planned to harvest some glowing mushrooms to use as portable lights, but with Priest Pelani accompanying us we skipped the Aiparak side where the mushrooms grew. Since the goal was reconnaissance, we headed in a different direction.
Unlike the open expanse of the Green Dungeon, the Undead Dungeon lived up to its name. It was a genuine maze with countless branching paths, which kept the two rangers completely occupied with drawing maps.
“Traces of people staying here,” Pyutel announced. True to his hunter background, he had spotted the remains of a campfire and judged it to be three or four days old.
The only monsters we had encountered since entering were skeletons and zombies, so the campfire was odd.
“The previous party has been inside for nearly a month, so this can’t be theirs. There must be another entrance somewhere.”
Pyutel’s reasoning seemed sound. Just as there was a hidden passage from the Aiparak Dungeon, other routes could lead into this place from different sides.
“Now that you mention it, when I served as a ranger I heard rumors that cultist groups frequented the area near this undead dungeon. We were clearly guarding the known entrance, yet people kept appearing as if they had sprouted from the ground.”
“Then we have one more problem to consider. We need to decide how we’ll respond if we run into cultists inside the dungeon. What’s the standard procedure when you encounter other people in a dungeon?”
“In mercenary training, they teach you to treat anyone outside your own party as an enemy—even if you know them.”
Inside a dungeon you could never be certain whether a death was caused by monsters or by other people, so even familiar faces had to be regarded as potential threats.
“Even parties from the same guild stay wary of each other and go their separate ways. Unless they’re extremely close, they don’t join forces or travel together. If the other group belongs to a cult, they must be treated as enemies.”
Priest Pelani, who had plenty of dungeon experience, agreed that regarding them as hostile from the start was the safest approach.
“Moreover, launching a preemptive strike the moment you meet someone else isn’t considered a problem. The guild makes an exception for that.”
The idea of attacking on sight felt excessively brutal. Yet if that was the established rule, I had no choice but to follow it.
If this had been a game, I could have shrugged and thought, Well, it can’t be helped. But knowing this was the reality of another world, not a game, made the idea of murder sit heavily in my stomach.
At the same time, the cold realization that I might have to kill to survive left me in a tangled mess of emotions.
And just as I was wrestling with those worries, we encountered people.
“Looks like ghouls and what appear to be cultists are fighting. Orders?”
Pyutel, who had crept forward after hearing the clash of weapons, returned and asked for instructions. Both the experienced Cezanne and Priest Pelani gave firm nods, as if the answer were obvious. They wanted us to kill them all.
“Even if they’re cultists, couldn’t we help them fight the monsters, then part on decent terms?”
“You’d get stabbed in the back. Cultists don’t think like we do. They might thank you while you’re helping them kill the monsters, but the moment the fight ends they’ll attack from behind to protect their secrets.”
“She’s right. If multiple churches have branded them as heretics, it’s not a normal religion. The people who follow it don’t think like ordinary folk.”
“Exactly. Helping them would be like carrying a zombie on your back without knowing when it might bite.”
With Cezanne and both priests in complete agreement, there was nothing more I could say.
“Then we wait until they’ve finished fighting the monsters and are exhausted before we strike.”
When I checked the map, the monsters were clearly marked in red, but the cultists had no markers at all. The system apparently did not register them as enemies.
“The fight with the monsters seems over. Move in.”
The two rangers and Pyurie loosed bolts and arrows. Meni and Pyutel advanced behind their shields.
“Ugh…”
“This can’t be… God, why do you burden us with such trials…”
“Bastards…”
“R-run!”
Four cultists had survived the ghouls. One died instantly to an arrow, another was crippled by a bolt and could barely move. One tried to flee while the last charged at Meni in desperation. He bounced off her shield and was impaled on Pyutel’s spear.
It was almost embarrassingly anticlimactic, as if the universe wanted to prove that all my heavy worrying had been pointless.
“If you renounce your cult and swear to worship the true god, I will heal you. Will you deny the evil deity you serve?”
Priest Pelani of the water god Rius demanded conversion from the cultist who had been hit by a bolt and could no longer move properly.
“Ptooey! Your god may be noble, but so is mine. Do not presume the holy spirit you received is greater than the one I serve!”
The wounded man shouted his defiance, then drew his own dagger and slit his throat.
Once it was over, the rangers began searching the ghoul corpses for anything valuable. The priests did the same with the dead cultists, discussing which evil god they might have followed.
Watching them, I felt a growing sense of danger. The casual way they treated fellow humans like monsters simply because their religion was different and we were inside a dungeon where anyone could be an enemy left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I had experienced a clear increase in my stats after clearing the Green Dungeon and defeating its boss. That was why I had accepted Baron Mitchel’s request to explore the Undead Dungeon so readily.
But this place was nothing like the Green Dungeon. The thought that dungeon mana could strengthen people yet also erode them into monsters if they never saw sunlight kept resurfacing.
Perhaps the real cause of “monsterization” wasn’t the mana itself, but the way people’s mindsets inside the dungeon carried over once they left. I remembered how Vietnam veterans had brought the brutal rules of the jungle back to America and suffered terrible aftereffects.
Maybe the dungeon mercenaries were turning into monsters for the same reason. From now on, I decided, I would avoid accepting dungeon exploration requests whenever possible.
“The Green Dungeon supposedly had almost nothing worth harvesting, but this place is different. There are plenty of magic stones and other useful materials.”
According to the rangers, this was a genuinely profitable dungeon.
“Stairs leading down to the second floor.”
“Lord Carol. Another mercenary party appears to have entered the dungeon. Please give us your orders.”
“What? Didn’t we declare this dungeon a conflict zone precisely so mercenaries couldn’t enter?”
The youth called Carol had skin so pale it seemed to glow even in the darkness, paired with crimson lips and matching red eyes. His pointed ears and the fangs peeking from between those lips made his nature obvious.
“Yes. This place has long been designated a conflict zone, preventing mercenaries from coming and going freely. However, it seems the situation has changed.”
“Then shall we do as we did last time and strike from behind on the second floor?”
“Yes. Using the death knight to engage them while we attack from the rear seems most effective. If every mercenary team sent to explore keeps disappearing, they’ll eventually abandon this dungeon.”
“Then gather the men at that location on the second floor. We may drink their blood, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Damn it, living armors!”
The moment we reached the second floor the monster types changed completely. Ghost-type creatures began rising from mounds of earth.
These were difficult to spot on the map because red dots would suddenly appear in completely empty spaces and spawn without warning.
“Six of them!”
When Priest Felis’s lantern illuminated the living armors, smoke rose from their armored bodies. The sight of it drifting upward in neat lines made the creatures look even more horrifying.
Clang—clang clang!
“Physical attacks won’t work! Priests, we need you!”
Meni, Pyutel, Pyurie’s arrows, and the rangers’ bolts had all been blessed and coated with holy water, but the armor deflected every strike. The physical attacks had almost no effect.
“Turn Undead!”
The two priests chanted the spell meant to return undead to the earth. Unfortunately only one of the armors collapsed into dirt. Even though it was supposed to be an instant-death spell against undead, the success rate seemed low.
“Holy Light!”
Right after the Turn Undead attempt, a brilliant pillar of white light erupted among the living armors. Two of them melted on contact.
“I can cast it once more, but I’ll conserve my strength.”
Priest Louis, exhausted from the two spells, stepped back. Priest Pelani, true to his role as a water priest, continued dealing with the undead in his own way. He created water, blessed it into holy water, and sprayed it across the enemies. In a sense, it was an almost infinite method of undead extermination.
The living armors weakened by Pelani’s holy water were finished off with blessed weapons.
“Now I understand why undead dungeons absolutely require priests. Haha.”
Pyutel had nearly jumped out of his skin when the living armors suddenly rose right in front of him, but the priests made the fight easy. He was in high spirits. The armor they dropped after being destroyed was made of magic ore—twice as valuable.
While the others cleaned up after the battle, I examined Priest Felis’s lantern. The water inside the glass bottle was emitting light, and any undead it touched smoked and melted as though exposed to intense flames. I studied it closely, wondering if the effect could be weaponized.
The color is exactly like a sterilizing UV lamp.
If I carried a high-output UV light, could I melt every undead in sight? I was curious what would happen if I blasted them with UV rays as powerful as an anti-aircraft searchlight.
“Their fighting style is similar to the last mercenary party that came through.”
“Indeed. The standard strategy for an undead dungeon is to have shield warriors hold the line while priests purify the enemies with holy power. The moment that basic formation breaks down, the mercenaries fall into chaos.”
“Then prepare the death knight and position the archers.”