Chapter 22
#22. Underground Dungeon (3)
Monster Studies is a mandatory subject taught throughout elementary, middle, and high school.
Although it is not a subject with its own exams, no one who has properly internalized its principles would simply neglect it.
Even in modern society, where technological advances have made it possible to know when gates will appear, deaths caused by monsters never cease.
It is something that occasionally happens even in the capitals of developed countries.
No matter how many Hunters, heroes, mages, and other superhumans are stationed there, misfortune never ceases.
Just as ordinary people learn the Heimlich maneuver and basic self-defense, they need to maintain a general knowledge of monsters to survive the misfortunes that will one day come, since they cannot fight monsters head-on.
Grrrrr...
I remembered seeing the creature's muscular, bipedal doglike form in a textbook.
“...Kobold Warrior.”
Kobolds, along with goblins, are weak(?) monsters—so weak that an armed ordinary person is said to be able to kill one somehow.
But even among such monsters, there were special individuals known as elite specimens, famous for displaying combat prowess vastly superior to that of other monsters of the same species.
The most famous and notoriously vicious of them was the Kobold Warrior, which wielded a greatsword with consummate skill.
Its rank was D+, and if you asked whether it was something I could easily handle, the answer was that I had no idea.
This was my first time fighting a monster. D+? Until recently, I had been an ordinary person.
“Having something like that show up right from the start is a bit much.”
Despite the lament that escaped automatically, every resource in my body was already prepared for combat.
The Kobold Warrior was no different. Its grip on the greatsword and its stance, ready to charge me at any moment, heightened the tension.
“Weakness Insight.”
Vwoong—The moment I activated the skill, an intangible wave brushed past the creature.
As expected, the weaknesses the skill revealed were nothing more than the obvious ones any ordinary living creature would have: the brain, heart, and lungs.
“What a pathetic showing for an Epic rank...!”
Raaaargh!!!
Perhaps it thought the skirmish was over when it saw me do nothing, because the Kobold Warrior immediately began charging toward me.
The distance between it and me was less than thirty meters.
Even on two legs, a dog was still a dog, and it was much faster than a human.
The deerhound, the breed known for the fastest sprinting speed, could reach sixty-four kilometers per hour.
Of course, that did not mean the Kobold Warrior was quite that fast. But it was close, and before I knew it, its greatsword was already swinging toward my head.
Bang!!
The greatsword, propelled by its momentum, collided with the barrier and produced a deafening boom and a shower of sparks.
The creature seemed not to have anticipated the barrier, and the moment its attack was blocked, dismay appeared on its face.
“Die.”
Before I knew it, the wooden wand was pointed at its head.
Immediately afterward, a magic circle emitting red light appeared at the tip of the wand.
“Fire Spear.”
A straight, compressed spear of flame pierced the Kobold Warrior precisely between the eyes and burned away its entire head.
From the fatal damage, the Kobold Warrior collapsed onto the floor, scattering its brain, cooked through.
“Phew...”
Anyone watching might have called it a dull battle that ended in the blink of an eye.
But to me, it had been a fierce clash fought on the boundary between life and death.
What if I had failed to cast a barrier the moment I saw the Kobold Warrior?
What if it had been able to sense mana and realized that I had cast a barrier?
What if the first attack had been a feint, with another attack prepared afterward?
What if the mana contained in the barrier had not been enough to stop its downward slash?
If even one thing had gone wrong, I would have been the one lying on the floor right now.
Thinking about it made cold sweat stream down me like rain.
“That used a ridiculous amount of mana...”
I had put far too much mana into the barrier, and the same was true of Fire Spear.
As a result, less than half my mana remained.
I had no choice but to pour the rest into the barrier, then meditate to recover my mana by taking in the mana of nature.
No matter how much of a buff I had for mana absorption, rapidly recovering my mana without meditating was difficult.
When I reached the Second Circle, I had accepted an enormous amount of mana while prepared to die, but I could not do that now.
I had to take it in slowly, little by little, in amounts my body could handle.
It would take about thirty minutes to replenish my mana. I gritted my teeth at the thought that I had expended so much strength in my very first battle.
Ding—
[You have defeated the Kobold Warrior]
[First Defeat Reward: 100 Coins]
“...This fucking thing is supposed to be a dating app.”
I felt as though the app's identity was becoming stranger and stranger.
***
The dungeon exploration continued alongside the mapping.
Of course, so did the battles with monsters.
Kieeeeeeek!!!
The Poison Spider melted its prey's limbs with acidic venom before devouring it alive.
Its rank was D+, just like the Kobold Warrior's.
It approached with forelegs capable of cutting steel and gave me trouble by breaking my barrier twice in succession, but I caught it in the moment it spat out its poison, rolled forward to evade it, then dove straight into its guard and fired a barrage of fireballs.
True to its nature as a bug, it burned to death with a horrible stench without ever overcoming its weakness to fire.
[You have defeated the Poison Spider]
[First Defeat Reward: 100 Coins]
I had used thirty percent of my mana here.
It was encouraging. This meant I had improved compared to my previous battle, when a single barrier and one attack spell had consumed more than half my mana.
Once the battle was over, an intense fatigue washed over me.
I quenched my thirst with bottled water, replenished my sugar with chocolate, and set off again.
Although this was supposedly only the first floor, forks in the path kept appearing, as befitted a place where the World Tree's sacred relics were sealed and stored.
There were just as many traps.
The first trap I encountered was a classic one: stepping on a pressure plate caused arrows to shoot out of the walls.
“That fucking hurts.”
The fact that it was classic also meant that it worked that well.
I had done my best to dodge, but one arrow had lodged itself in my shoulder.
Fortunately, it was not poisoned.
I administered some first aid and resumed walking. For reference, mages cannot use healing magic. Abilities related to healing are the exclusive domain of priests.
Before long, the path split again.
This time, it split into three.
“This is driving me crazy.”
[Remaining Matching Time: 09:12:41]
About two hours had passed since I entered the dungeon.
Considering that I had already passed three two-way forks by the time I got here, I could say that my progress had been fairly smooth.
But that was also proof of how vast the dungeon was.
I had no idea how much time I would have to spend just clearing the first floor.
Of course, unlike other dungeons, this one did not have hidden treasure chests, so finding the path to the second floor would be enough. The problem was that the path to the second floor might be on one of the forks I had already passed.
“How does it make sense that I don't even know the structure of a dungeon I made myself?”
Even though I complained, I had entered the dungeon for the sake of my growth, so wandering around as much as possible was the right thing to do.
“Let's just keep going for now.”
I could stop here, turn back, and try one of the other paths I had passed.
But that would not be a particularly good choice.
Just as there was a rule for escaping a maze that said to keep moving forward with one hand against either the left or right wall, exploring a dungeon probably was not much different.
I decided to keep advancing as far as I could.
“That is...”
For reference, the torches illuminating the dungeon corridors were lit only around me.
In other words, the torches in places farther away from me automatically went out.
The interval was roughly fifty meters.
Except at forks, that was the limit of how far I could see.
And now, something was emerging from the darkness fifty meters ahead of me.
“This... is a bit much, isn't it?”
Krarararack!!
Krooough!!
Two Kobold Warriors appeared at the edge of the darkness at the end of the corridor.
No, to be precise, they were slightly different.
One of the Kobold Warriors was holding a greatsword like the one I had seen earlier, but the other was holding a bow.
And my concern became reality.
The moment they recognized me, they began howling ferociously. Only the Kobold Warrior holding the greatsword charged toward me.
As expected, the one holding the bow simply dropped to one knee and began preparing to shoot.
“That's fucking dirty!”
About sixty percent of my mana remained. What was the best move here?
I had to keep the archer in check while dealing with the greatsword wielder.
But that was not as easy as it sounded.
Clang!
“Kgh?!”
The barrier shattered as it blocked the greatsword's downward strike.
It was fast enough to make the fifty-meter distance seem meaningless.
Of course, blocking it had not been difficult. The barrier broke because I had used only the exact amount of mana necessary to avoid wasting any.
But then a problem arose.
Thwok—
“F-fuuuck...!!”
The moment the greatsword broke my barrier, an arrow that seemed to have been waiting for that opening flew in and pierced my thigh.
If this had been a one-on-one situation, I would have burned its head off through the opening created when the barrier broke, just as before.
But this was a two-on-one fight.
Compared to when an arrow had struck my shoulder in the trap, the pain that shot up into my throat was incomparably more intense.
Even so, I had to move. While I staggered from being struck by the arrow, the greatsword wielder recovered its stance and charged toward me again.
‘Barrier...!’
Bang!!
The barrier shattered once more under another downward strike from the greatsword.
The problem was that, because I had created the barrier in a hurry, it consumed more mana than I had expected.
Without realizing it, I had been pushed back by the attack's momentum and invested even more mana into the barrier than before.
I was only momentarily thrown into confusion by my mistake before an arrow came flying toward my brow.
The arrow had already reached a point where I could touch it simply by extending my hand.
How much time remained before that arrow pierced my brow? 0.1 seconds? 0.01 seconds?
In an extreme situation, my thoughts accelerated.
There was not much time.
I marshaled every resource in my brain and concentrated on the barrier spell.
The basics of spell modification lay in changing the output: firepower, range, speed, and so on.
But what if I took it one step further?
Ting!
“Fire Sword.”
Using the wand as a medium, a sword of fire rose up and bisected the one holding the greatsword.
The floor was left strewn with its body, cleaved in two, and the arrow deflected by the barrier.
“...Hey.”
“Kreuk...?”
I altered the barrier spell's magic circle so that the barrier would form only over my brow instead of enveloping my entire body.
As a result, both the activation time and mana consumption were drastically reduced.
“It was fun just firing arrows from behind, wasn't it?”
It took me less than three minutes to finish off the remaining Kobold Warrior.