Don't Teabag Carelessly
The moment we hit the fifth underground floor, the fighting began.
"Get ready, Edwin!"
My brother shouted as he carved through the enemies around us, carving out space as he went. I watched the way he moved, broke it down, and settled on the most efficient approach.
"Waaaaargh—!!!"
A heavy stomp rang out as I slammed my foot down and fired off a taunt. Every monster that still had working ears snapped its gaze straight to me.
"Don't do anything reckless! I don't have the leeway to— ghk!"
Even monsters rated for level 25 were a serious threat to anyone whose defense stats ran on the low side. And we had just walked into a field of them so thick you could trip over the things. Even my brother, a Warrior built for pure chaos, couldn't help but tense up.
Creating variables was my job.
"Kwaaaaaargh—!!!"
Every monster that could hear me piled on. The sheer noise of the horde set my body trembling on its own. With almost no Agility correction, a Guardian couldn't simply shake enemies off. But that wasn't a real problem.
Three, two, one…!
I ducked low and slipped past the onrushing tide by a hair's breadth. The wave of monsters, now fused into a single living mass, crashed straight through its own ranks. Their own weight crushed and trampled one another, carving out gaps all by itself.
"Edwin! Over here!"
In a free-for-all, the most important thing was not getting swallowed by the enemy's flow. Everything came down to shaping a battlefield where I could put my combat power to full use.
In that short a time?
My brother was fighting exactly the way a level 35 Warrior should. He didn't finish the enemies that came at him. Instead, he used them—turning corpses into barricades, cutting off the lines of advance. He hobbled the big ones by slicing through their legs, then used the fallen bodies as walls, building a pocket where the fights never got worse than one-on-three.
It was brilliant. Watching the bottleneck form and the monsters start thrashing one another, I almost wanted to applaud.
And that beautiful fence my brother had built—
Crack! Crack! Crack!
—I set about enthusiastically smashing to pieces.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"You kill them too, hyung. Experience goes up."
"Edwin!!!"
How was a sparrow supposed to just walk past a mill, dear brother? A monster with its legs cut off, unable to move? That was an experience vending machine with the glass already broken.
Because a level 35 had joined the hunt, experience loss—or exp loss, for short—was a factor. But my brother had only nicked off a few legs. I was the one actually finishing monsters higher-level than me. Who came out ahead on the experience split was obvious.
"You lunatic…!"
There was a reason my brother had left the monsters alive on purpose.
Fsssshhhh—
The monsters that spawned here in the Abyssal Spawning Pool all carried the named tag Decayed. Living things rooted in an underground cavern thick with an ancient tree, eroded by the power of the Abyss until they turned into monsters—that was the lore. And if they died, and that Abyssal energy got drawn back into the spawning pool? The strength of the fence my brother had built would plummet.
"Uwaaaaagh—!!!"
My brother howled and glared at me like he fully intended to murder me. A flicker of fear ran through me—the same feeling you get watching a beaver whose dam has just been demolished by its own keeper. In other words: I wasn't scared at all.
"Waaaaargh—!!!"
Brother bellowed and went right back to beaver mode. And I went right back into taunting-screaming man mode, drawing aggro to thin the monster density. Then we did it all over again.
After about three rounds of that, the concentration of monsters had thinned enough to see with the naked eye.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
My brother slumped against a monster carcass, dragging air all the way up from his gut. He'd been burning MP—Spirit—to keep the fight going. On top of the physical exhaustion, the mental fatigue had to be brutal.
"You absolute bastard…"
He wiped the sweat off his face with the look of a man already done after a mere three repetitions.
"If you want to get stronger, this is the bare minimum. Isn't that how you hit thirty-five at your age?"
He waved a hand at me with the expression of someone too tired to even answer. Enough. Drop it. That was the vibe.
"Pretty good experience, though, right?"
Level 25 monsters didn't offer my level 35 brother much of an edge. But how did the people of this world hunt? They party-farmed monsters three levels under their own for safety. So if he was solo-slaughtering level 25s, this dungeon wasn't exactly a bad deal for him either. Warriors specialized in free-for-alls hit hard in short bursts, so his experience gain would have been flying.
"…Shut up."
He dug a fresh sword out of his pack in a hurry. After swinging endlessly, the edge on his current blade had gone completely dead.
"Alright, hyung. Experience fever time. Get ready."
Fever time was all about the cycle. There weren't enough monsters left underfoot to trip over anymore, so we needed a proper loop.
① A pack of enemies appears
② Taunt, run, and drag the aggro
③ Once enough mobs are stacked, toss them to hyung
"Could you do that a little less—!!!"
After each storm passed, there was a short window of rest before the monsters respawned. We'd flop down using a corpse as a pillow, and the second the respawn kicked in, we'd run the cycle again.
① A pack of enemies appears
② (see above)
③ Combat ends → Rest
Run that cycle like a maniac all day long. That was the plan.
Unfortunately for the plan, my brother hit the wall first.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
At my current stage, the only skill I had that burned MP was Battle Cry. I was swinging an iron kite shield like a mace, so equipment damage from combat was barely a concern. But my brother's MP drain was enormous, and even the spare of his spare swords had edges worn completely dead.
It was time to pull out.
"Let's head back, hyung."
I suggested we extract from the dungeon to a brother already past his limit. He managed a weak nod, then trudged over and hauled himself onto the rope. After a stretch of climbing, we were back in an ordinary room whose traps had already all been spent.
"We're leaving. Need to restock gear."
That was the greatest advantage of a shortcut. I led my brother—who didn't even have the strength to answer—out of the dungeon. We resupplied at top speed, even managed a short nap, and then—
"Alright. Back in we go."
"…Fine."
The nap had restored his MP, and he'd packed the spare of the spare of the spare weapons. Together we headed back into the dungeon and started canning all over again. And again. And again, without end.
"How long do you plan on repeating this…"
"Until the efficiency dries up."
In the span of those short bursts of combat, I had somehow already hit level 17. If we wrung this place dry to the absolute limit of efficiency, my calculations said we'd graduate from this dungeon in about a week.
"Probably graduate in a week or so?"
"A week? Hah… hahaha…!"
My brother laughed with a look of pure disbelief. Fair enough. Knight trainees came into dungeons with four weeks of rations, canned for a full month, and still only managed to scrape up three to five levels. And here I was announcing I'd jump ten levels and walk out in a single week. If I'd been him, I would have laughed like an idiot too.
"Edwin. May I ask you one thing?"
"What?"
"If I hadn't followed you—what was your plan then? A Guardian doesn't have offensive skills that burn Spirit, does it?"
"I was sure you'd follow."
"Reason?"
"If I were you, and my little brother held up three fingers and started talking about three months, I'd follow just out of curiosity."
"…Heh."
He snorted a laugh and shrugged.
"Sly little brat."
"You mean clever."
Not that I was without a Plan B.
The Abyssal Spawning Pool is a famous thermal power plant…
Rotting deadwood roots, earthworms, bats, larvae, mushrooms, and everything else in between—every monster branded with the Decayed name was weak to fire. The mushroom-type Decayed ones even exploded if you set them alight. If my brother hadn't been there, that was exactly what I would have used. Hang from a rope, start fires, trigger explosions. In the chaos of a battlefield drowning in Burn status, butcher monsters like a man possessed, then bolt. Repeat forever.
But no need to tell him that.
There was no reason to spoil the cool version of the story with something that unglamorous.
"Alright. Let's go."
"Why? We could rest a little longer."
"This place is plenty satisfying for me too. So I should overcome a trial of my own at least once."
"Oh. Nice."
And so the canning went on for a full week.
"Hah. You fall asleep, and the cavern that was clean when you closed your eyes is packed full again like it never happened."
"Insane hunting ground, right?"
"Ordinarily, this would be a serious problem."
A place where monsters never stopped appearing was also a place where you got attacked even while you slept. Twenty-three knight trainees canned for four weeks, with one or two knight officers as squad leaders, split into five groups that had to keep watch and fight without rest. It was pure insanity.
"Breakfast is a dish by a ducal house chef. Lunch is a stew of expensive ingredients thrown into a pot. Dinner is the chef again, plus teatime."
"And here we can rest safely—and take a short nap if we want."
That was the terrifying power of a secret technique.
Which was why—
"What are you doing, Edwin? Today's day seven. Target's met. Pack up."
"Ah, hold on."
⚔ Reconstruction Cycle: Weekly
💀 Feature: Abyssal Spawning Pool
The dungeon reconfigured on a weekly cycle. Monster corpses, altered structures—everything snapped back to its original state. Trap rooms restored their traps; pitfall holes sealed themselves shut again. By my estimate, the knight trainees would arrive roughly around the one-week mark. Today was day seven, so if we pulled out now, the reconstruction would erase every trace of us. Leaving immediately was the smart play.
That was how my brother saw it, anyway.
In game terms, level 25 barely cleared the absolute beginner bracket. Here, level 25 was a massive number. A secret technique that could shove you to that height in a blink was worth a fortune even if you priced it at ten thousand gold. And yet I fully intended to hand this secret over to the Viscount's house.
"By your own logic, there's no reason to stay here any longer. So why leave a trail?"
Because in five years, the people on our side need to have grown at least a little…
In the game Path of Guardians, nobody ever talked about secret techniques. The nobles who did get wiped clean five years later. Safety is written in blood—only then did people scramble to share information and cooperate just to survive. The Great Library of Ashcraft, built by the Great Mage Ashcraft, roared into action and vaulted the entire human race up a tier overnight. That was why, in Path of Guardians—a game set ten years into this world's future—the NPCs were so much stronger than they were now.
If a secret technique was going to become scrap metal soon enough, better to spend it as a favor for the Viscount's house, who would become allies. Still, just handing it over felt a little flat. A little prank wouldn't hurt.
"…It's the secret you found. Do as you like."
His face was full of regret, but the look he gave me still carried a thread of pride. Then he saw the writing I'd left—writing that carried the unmistakable meaning of a teabag—and—
"Tsk."
Of course you'd do that. That was the sound of a tongue clicking with pure exasperation.
And so a week plus one day went by.
I'd leveled up quite thoroughly, so for the next few days I needed to fix the cognitive dissonance that came with sudden growth. Spar with my brother—now level 36—and every so often check in on Lady Ariella's progress. That was the leisurely frame of mind I was in the day I went looking for her.
"Um, ah, well…"
As usual, she had been buried in her burrow, reduced to something like a houseplant, and she turned her head away in embarrassment. It struck me all over again. Why did she always act like this?
"Um, so… please don't take this the wrong way, but…"
With visible effort, she forced the words out—
"M-Mother asked me… whether I might be interested in getting engaged to you, Edwin…"
—and a bombshell detonated.