Replay Analysis (3)
The artificial dungeons on the surface level of the Dungeon Hall exist solely for the education and testing of students.
Dangerous elements are almost nonexistent, and even where they do exist, multiple layers of safety measures stand between the students and harm.
The most representative example is the ejection system that instantly forces a student out of the dungeon the moment a critical injury is predicted.
The dungeons leading deep below the Dungeon Hall, on the other hand, are another matter entirely.
They are part of the countless labyrinths that gave this island its name — Dungeon Island, where the Dragon Slayer Academy was built.
Everything that happens inside them is the real thing.
If something goes wrong mid-conquest, injury is a given, and depending on the circumstances, even your life may hang in the balance.
In exchange, rewards commensurate with that danger are on offer.
Which is to say, you can acquire items.
Some are granted as clear rewards, some dropped by boss monsters, and some hidden with cunning care throughout the dungeon itself.
Go Hyeon-woo's eyes lit up as he listened to my explanation.
"Then that would mean..."
"Weapons drop too."
C-Rank ones. B-Rank ones, even.
The expression on Go Hyeon-woo's face grew much the same as it had been when he first heard about the Special Meditation Rooms.
And yet he did not leap up from his seat at once.
He had evidently realized something along the way.
He looked at me and put the question aloud.
"But... it would be impossible just now, would it not?"
"It's still PvP assessment week."
The Dungeon Hall only opened for conquests the week after next.
In other words, we would have no choice but to wait, motionless, for several days.
And there was one more, far larger obstacle besides.
"Even next week, we can't go underground."
"How so?"
"We don't have the qualification."
No academy in its right mind would throw freshmen fresh off enrollment into life-or-death real combat.
If one of them suffered an injury serious enough to leave lasting damage — or lost their life outright — the pool of future hero candidates would shrink by one.
Only those who accumulated sufficient experience on the surface level and proved themselves prepared, both inside and out, earned the right to descend.
And so the minimum condition for going underground — that is, the entry requirement for an F-Rank dungeon — was as follows.
"Five thousand cumulative points from conquest assessments. Pure dungeon-clear points only, regardless of the separate point system."
"Hmm..."
Go Hyeon-woo took out his student ID, checked the back, and let out a low hum.
There was no need to look to know he fell painfully short.
The same went for me.
My conquest assessment total currently stood at exactly 2,266 points.
683 points from the Fixed Zone, putting me in the upper-middle bracket.
728 points from the Goblin Swamp duo with Seo Ye-in — the very top of the rankings.
And 855 points from the solo run, undisputed first in the year. Though I hadn't saved the replay.
My combined ranking sat somewhere between the top 5 and 10 percent, and even at this pace I would need to grind through conquest assessments for several more weeks before I could so much as set foot in an F-Rank dungeon.
What's more, my targets weren't anything so humble as F-Rank, but dungeons of far higher tiers.
E-Rank, D-Rank, and beyond all required progressively more points or passing additional qualification tests — meaning that, realistically, none of it would be possible within the first semester of first year.
Go Hyeon-woo asked,
"Then there is no way at present, I take it?"
"Officially."
"Officially...?"
Go Hyeon-woo echoed my words.
It took him only a moment to grasp the implication, and a sly smile crept across his face.
No law said we had to do things strictly the way the Dragon Slayer Academy had laid them out.
"We sneak in."
This was exactly what the academy's errand service existed for.
The Thief Club dabbled in banned item trading and all manner of other rule-bending enterprises.
Sneaking underqualified students into dungeons they had no right to enter was one of them.
I sent a message to Shin Byung-cheol.
"You're calling for Shin Byung-cheol?"
"Yeah. He'll be here soon."
While we waited, I stole a glance at Seo Ye-in's reaction.
I had announced, point-blank, that we were about to violate academy regulations, and her attitude amounted to a shrug.
If anything, she seemed far more interested in the iced tea she was sipping.
Figures...
Just as I'd expected, she showed no particular objection to breaking the rules.
Come to think of it, "doesn't care about the rules at all" might be the more accurate way to put it.
In that case, the day might well come when her own needs called for us to conquer the underground floors together.
What exactly a rich heiress like her could possibly need remained to be seen, but the possibility was there.
Less than five minutes after I'd sent the message, Shin Byung-cheol came bounding over.
For an errand service, his speed was second to none — and he'd fight you for even that second place.
"There you all are. What can I do for you?"
"We want to get into a dungeon."
"A dungeon? You know it doesn't open till next week, right?"
"I'm thinking Monday evening."
"Monday evening, no problem. What's the number?"
"388."
"Let's see, let's see... 388, that'd be..."
Shin Byung-cheol pulled out something resembling a notebook and flipped through it for a moment.
Checking dungeon information, apparently.
"...The Feathered Serpent Altar? That's D-Rank."
"Yeah."
"It's a four-person dungeon. Who's going in?"
"Me and him. Just the two of us."
Shin Byung-cheol looked back and forth between me and Go Hyeon-woo.
Then his face settled into an expression of no small concern.
"...You sure about that? D-Rank, four-person dungeon."
Half his worry was for us, half for himself.
If we went into the dungeon and something went wrong, Shin Byung-cheol — the one who'd smuggled us in — could hardly escape responsibility.
With an ordinary D-Rank, our skills would carry us through well enough, but doing what four people were meant to do with only two? He couldn't help harboring his doubts.
I shrugged.
"We won't die. If it goes south, we bail immediately."
I had zero intention of running, but that was the line he needed to hear.
He'd only take the job if he could be certain no fallout would land on him.
Shin Byung-cheol turned to Go Hyeon-woo for confirmation as well.
"And you? You good with this?"
"I trust Brother Kim. I imagine he has everything thought through."
Go Hyeon-woo's answer was so resolute it bordered on blind faith.
Shin Byung-cheol, the one who'd asked, ended up feeling awkward instead.
"...Ah, fine then. I'll have it ready for Monday evening."
"The fee?"
Getting smuggled down into the underground floors was a complicated, high-risk affair.
Naturally, a set fee had to be paid to the Thief Club — sometimes upfront, sometimes as an agreed share of the dungeon's clear rewards.
But Shin Byung-cheol waved a hand.
"Aw, forget a fee between us. You still owe me from before, right? Consider that debt repaid."
Back during the Ban Wave, he'd been on the verge of having his entire stockpile of banned items confiscated — until I hid them all inside the Life Cube for him.
Thanks to that, Shin Byung-cheol had escaped a fate of being beaten black and blue by the seniors, settling for a moderate thrashing and a yanked-out hair or two.
He was proposing to square that debt against a free guide down into the underground.
I put on a look of feigned surprise.
"Never thought I'd hear you bring up a debt first. I'm impressed."
"Hey, anyone listening would think I'm some ungrateful bastard. A man named Shin Byung-cheol can freeload on everything else, but honor is honor — that's my motto."
"Is that so."
I nodded slowly.
So he freeloads on everything else.
Definitely never lending that guy anything.
There was, in fact, one more very important reason Shin Byung-cheol had raised the subject of free service himself —
"And honestly... this'd only be my second time going underground. Went down once with Big Sis Dang. Figured I'd get some experience this time around."
"..."
He was a first-year too, after all — experience in short supply.
One single time "going down" under Dang Gyu-young's wing, and his first customer as an unseasoned guide was going to be us.
Go Hyeon-woo shot me a look asking whether this was really all right.
If we wanted absolute certainty, hiring someone second-year or above would be the correct call.
But I wasn't overly worried.
Shin Byung-cheol's skills left something to be desired, yet as a Thief Club member, he'd have the fundamentals covered.
And if it came to it, I could always step in myself.
"Fine by us. Just don't slack off because it's your first time."
"Aw, you wound me. I'll see to you with the very best of my ability. Will that be all, customer?"
"No, one more."
"Another dungeon? Which one."
"104."
"104...?"
Shin Byung-cheol's brow creased quietly.
With a look that said surely not, he checked his notebook — and his brow creased deeper still.
"104... the Black Snake Chamber. That's B-Rank. You feeling all right?"
"I saw it right. The Black Snake Chamber."
"That one's a Deep Layer dungeon... Hey, honestly? That one I can't help you with."
Shin Byung-cheol scratched the back of his head vigorously.
Dungeons between S-Rank and B-Rank existed in the deepest part of the Dungeon Hall — the Deep Layer.
Ordinary students couldn't so much as approach it; simply loitering nearby, if discovered, invited the harshest level of disciplinary action.
With Shin Byung-cheol's abilities, even escorting us there would be a stretch — and even if he could manage it, it was hardly a matter a first-year could handle on his own authority.
So his answer was only natural.
"I know. Ask your club president."
"Well, that much I can do, no harm in trying. I'll find out and let you know. Anything else?"
"That's all."
"Okay. I'm off then. Later, folks~"
Business concluded, Shin Byung-cheol rose from his seat practically radiating urgency,
and sprinted off exactly as fast as he'd come.
I watched his retreating back for a moment, then drained the rest of my iced tea in silence.
Then I summarized the whole conversation for Go Hyeon-woo.
"Here's our plan in broad strokes. Monday evening, we enter a D-Rank dungeon — the Feathered Serpent Altar. That's where you'll get your weapon."
To cut to the conclusion: it was a dungeon where a serviceable longsword could be obtained.
That longsword would serve Go Hyeon-woo's needs more than well enough for the time being.
At the same time, I had my own designs on harvesting a profit or two.
That was precisely why I'd picked the Feathered Serpent Altar from among the many dungeons that dropped longswords.
"Then comes a few days of preparation. We'll negotiate with the Thief Club and buy the items we need in advance."
As Shin Byung-cheol had pointed out, Deep Layer dungeons were beyond his authority to arrange.
We would be negotiating with, at the very least, a third-year of the Thief Club — almost certainly Dang Gyu-young.
And there was no need to entertain the possibility of talks falling through.
If they wouldn't work, I'd make them work.
"The more thorough the preparation, the better. That's a place where a single careless mistake could cost you your life."
"I am resolved. What would you have me do?"
"Your role is critical."
I wasn't bringing Go Hyeon-woo along merely as a skilled blade.
Inside that dungeon, he would have to become, in every respect, another me.
And for that to happen,
"You'll need to know these dungeons as well as I do."
I handed over the thick bundle of documents I'd brought.
As he received them and turned the pages one by one, something unusual flickered in Go Hyeon-woo's eyes.
"...!"
Complete conquest guides for the Feathered Serpent Altar and the Black Snake Chamber.
The structure of each dungeon, the enemies that appeared and where, the routes we would take, how we would reach our objectives —
Every last detail was laid out across those two guides.
"Memorize them. Not a single word left out."