A Proud Member of the Top-Tier Raid Party

“Wow….”

So that’s what it meant to be an A-rank Hunter—it’s not like I could fight on my own, after all. The moment we stepped into the Desert Mausoleum, a chill ran through me and goosebumps rose on my skin.

“For about 1.5 km from the entrance, our route overlaps with Team B. After that fork, it’s unexplored territory, so let’s warm up a bit and take it slow.”

As soon as the Nova Guild raid party entered the dungeon structure, they gathered all the information and set their rules of engagement. There didn’t seem to be any monsters that used magic-based attacks, and the interior was all a bright yellow structure that gave off a clearly desert-like feeling.

A sand temple, maybe? Come to think of it, “Desert” was just a desert.

“Since mummy-dog-type monsters show up, I think we should be a little more mindful of infection.”

“Apparently there are mummy-like ones too, but they’re far less aggressive than beast-type monsters. Let’s prioritize the four-legged beasts first.”

“Eagles show up sometimes, and there are a mix of ones that can fly and ones that can’t. It depends on how corroded their wings are, but I haven’t seen any of them flying when we meet them. Maybe because flying burns too much energy, the ones that can fly probably only start moving once they can actually see a person.”

A step-by-step briefing on the monsters inside. For now, we slowly walked along C Team’s route, which overlapped with another team’s, looked around our surroundings, and let our bodies adapt to the mana flow, which was a little different from outside.

“Eve, you okay?”

“Ah, yes! I’m fine for now.”

“Princess, if walking gets hard, I’ll carry you.”

“Heehee... I’ll try walking a little more.”

There was no way I’d get tired after just a few minutes of walking. In fact, if I only counted how far I could walk, it almost felt like I could go farther now than I used to? Is this what a child’s energy is like?

“Dangdang, you come down and walk too.”

ㅡBeep-bip!

Dangdang, who’d been sitting on top of my head, climbed down and walked with us too. The clothes Ophelia made for me looked uncomfortable, but surprisingly they were easy to move in, light, and warm too.

Since it was an underground structure, I’d thought it might be a bit cold, but the inside seemed warmer than outside. The floor was made of something like glinting golden tiles—could this be gold?

“Mmm...”

“It does not appear to be gold.”

“Gasp, how did you know..?”

“Which are you referring to? The material of the flooring? Or the princess’s inner thoughts?”

“Uh... my inner thoughts..?”

“You said them out loud.”

“Ah.”

As I looked down at the floor while walking, I must have said it without realizing it.... A little disappointing if it isn’t gold. I want to see a golem made of gold. Though I probably couldn’t make one anyway, since I don’t actually own it.

ㅡWhoooosh

The entrance to the Desert Mausoleum was slightly embedded in the ground, so heavy equipment like excavators had come in and dug away the earth so people could enter through the entrance. Entrances to structures like this rarely end up in proper, convenient places.

The route we were taking began at an entrance about two basement levels deep, on a section that rose up like a hill, so breezes blew in from here and there. Apparently the structure may have formed with cracks and holes everywhere as it came into being.

ㅡThud! Thud!

“Eek... what was that sound...?”

“Team B will probably be on the floor directly below us. Maybe that was the sound of fighting?”

“Ah.... I see.”

About fifteen minutes after leaving the entrance, we reached the fork where our route split from Team B’s. In the cavern with the spiral staircase, we would go up to the upper floor. Team B would head down.

By the time we got here, there had only been three or four fights. The gap between us and the frontline raid party was almost thirty meters, and the monsters we met mostly came from ahead, so we barely even got to see their faces before it was bye-bye.

“We’re going up. We’ll go first, so follow when we signal.”

After the vanguard team tapped the spiral staircase structure a few times with their fists, they nodded to one another and climbed up the stairs. The floor-to-ceiling height looked to be at least ten meters; had they said our route was toward the top?

‘So we’re just going to keep climbing stairs... I hate stairs.’

About three minutes after the five frontline members climbed the stairs, voices came from the floor above.

“It’s empty up here! You should be able to come up ㅡ !”

“Eve, let’s go up.”

“Ah, yes!”

“Princess, may I carry you? The stairs are rather high, so with your height, moving on them may be difficult.”

“Ah, it’s true. The stairs are high.”

In the end, Ophelia carried me princess-style, and I slowly followed behind Chaerin unnie. Dangdang also faced stairs higher than its own height and fell into despair, so Chaerin unnie was carrying it under her arm.

Fortunately, I’ve got Minyum’s core in my arms, so I’ll carry you next time.

“Is Suri okay? Should I call her with a skill?”

ㅡKiiit

Suri was following us well from a good distance behind. Sometimes it disappeared from sight, but if I turned my head a few seconds later, there it was again.

Because the stairs were high and the entrance to the upper floor was narrow, Suri was called up to the upper floor with a summon skill.

“Wow.... It’s spacious.”

“All right, from here on out, let’s all tighten up a bit. Monsters are going to start popping out a lot.”

And so the real fighting began. It wasn’t just the frontline team swinging their weapons around, swish-swish, and wiping out the leftover stragglers; monsters were really going to start pouring out in droves.

“At the end of the T-shaped corridor ahead, there are 21 four-legged beasts on the left and 33 on the right.”

“Confirmed.”

In the quiet corridor’s end, after the frontline scout reported the detection results, the rear-line mage unnie cast a spell and launched it, hitting the corridor’s end dead on.

ㅡPaaat!

It was a type of illusion magic, a spell that had the function of drawing nearby monsters’ aggro. A decoy effect in the shape of a scarecrow that made a loud rattling noise.

The bandage-wrapped hyenas swarmed in instantly, trying to bite the magic decoy, and then the decoy exploded—about half of the hyenas caught in the blast went pop and rolled across the floor.

“They’re coming, get ready.”

“Yes.”

There weren’t any especially powerful monsters, but whenever a loud noise was made, the monsters sleeping around us kept waking up and a war of attrition would start. The information that there were lots of them but each one had low individual combat power seemed to be exactly right.

“Team Leader Yoo! Is the rear line okay?”

“Don’t worry! We can endure even if ten times as many come!”

As Chaerin unnie placed her fingertips against the floor, thorny vines shot up in an instant from the gaps between the tiles and began surrounding the area. Beyond the firmly grown thorn vines, hyenas shoved their muzzles in, and you could see in real time how their bandages got tangled or their bodies were torn apart and neutralized.

“Unnie, clear this side for me!”

“Okay!”

In response to the mage unnie’s signal, Chaerin unnie compressed one side of the thorn-vine wall downward. Then the arrows made of mana instantly skewered the hyenas that had rushed in, turning them into kebabs as she advanced.

I’d wondered why there didn’t seem to be anyone acting like a tank in the raid party, but with Chaerin unnie’s ability, a tank was almost unnecessary.

ㅡSwoosh!!

Over in the distance, Suri spread her broad wings and swept along the ground like a broom, slashing through the dozens of hyenas rushing in. They were called the frontline, but each member was basically an A-rank bruiser, and they were skillfully spreading out to defend their own sectors.

ㅡBeep! Beep-beep!!

Dangdang was pushing its butt way back and growling and yipping with all its might. It didn’t really have any amazing effect, but it was funny to watch.

ㅡRrrrrk...!

Bang ㅡ !!

Chaerin unnie’s thorn vines, pulled tight like a tense bowstring, swept once across the surroundings like a whip and mowed down dozens of mummy dogs in one go, like the parting of the Red Sea. So this was the dignity of an S-rank Hunter.

“Hoeeek.”

Unlike other mages, who became defenseless while casting, Chaerin unnie had no such weakness. While protecting the rear-line members with thorn vines, she was also squeezing in wide-area attacks here and there, never losing her spot at the top of the damage charts.

“Unnie! The corpses are piling up over here! They’re climbing on top of them!”

“Got it!”

“I’ll go.”

“Please do, Ophelia!”

As mummy dogs clung to the circular thorn-vine barrier surrounding the rear-line members and piles of bandages built up, the thorns restraining them began to get neutralized.

Ophelia left my side for a moment and ran to where the corpses had started piling up, skillfully cutting through the corpses and tangled bandages with fiber-optic strands, then even using a hair dryer’s airflow to blow the bandages away with a whoosh.

“Thank you! That helps!”

“Not at all.”

“It feels like it’s getting narrower and narrower! Should we move rooms!”

“Let’s go!”

As corpses piled up and the floor started getting dirty, the chances of mistakes rose for the melee team, which needed to move quickly. With bandages and corpses piling up and fewer places to step, the raid party steadily led the rear-line members into the next room and advanced.

“Isn’t there a bigger cavern somewhere?! There are too many mobs, so we can’t go to the place we picked out earlier!”

For the same reason, several so-called “fortress spots” we’d marked out before entering the dungeon as places to fight were knocked out of contention. It was time to reassess the route once more.

“Ah! I’ll take a look!”

“Eve, can you do it?”

“Yes!”

I called Suri, who was in the middle of the fight, back into the thorn-vine barrier, then attached a camera that came out of Dangdang’s back and sent it flying.

“Suri! Find a place this big! Once you find one, keep spinning! I’ll call you!”

ㅡKiiit!

Moving with the camera attached to its foot, Suri darted all over the place at incredible speed, poking around here and there until it ran into a flock of mummy eagles.

“Gasp..! What do we do..?”

But contrary to my worries, the camera spun around once and the mummy eagles had their wings cut off in an instant, dropping to the floor. Beyond Dangdang’s tablet-like monitor, Suri’s field of view caught a spacious cavern, and Suri started spinning around.

“Looks like she found one!”

“Really?! Can you guide us there?!”

“Yes! Suri, come back!”

ㅡPaaat!

After finding the spacious cavern and returning in front of me, Suri dropped the camera from its foot and shot back up into the sky.

“Suri will guide us!”

“Everyone heard that ㅡ !! Follow that white eagle ㅡ !!!”

“Yes sir ㅡ !!!”

The loosely tangled thorn-vine barrier tightened in an instant and spread outward around us like a flower blooming. Having swept across an enormous area in one go, the mummy dogs’ assault faltered for a moment.

“Princess, I’ll carry you.”

“W-whoa ㅡ ?!”

Cradled in Ophelia’s arms, I started moving toward the next fortress spot at a speed beyond human limits.

ㅡThud! Thud!!

Over there in front of us, the frontline team members were showing off an incredible feat, stepping on the wall as if it were the ground. In the rear, Chaerin unnie’s thorn vines surrounded everyone in a circle like tumbleweed, spinning at a tremendous speed and making it feel like we were riding a thorn-vine hamster wheel.

The inside had no thorns and was densely woven, so it was safe to step on and jump across.

“Is this the one!? It’s wide and nice!”

ㅡKiiit!

The cavern Suri found got a great reaction. It was wider and less crowded than the place we’d just been in, and it had fewer openings where monsters could come out.

“Mummies! Be careful!”

It was a space where mummies, slower than mummy dogs but bulkier, started appearing. Mummy eagles came out after them too, and even mummies swinging burning staff-like things showed up.

ㅡShaaak..!

To elite warriors, even that was no different from mummy dogs. With the back-and-forth fighting continuing, the number of monsters taken down just thirty minutes after the battle started had already reached four digits.

“Princess, I’ll go out and join the fight too. With Chaerin Hunter on defense, that should be safe enough.”

“Ah, okay, Ophelia!”

“Miss Ophelia! I’ll open it for you!”

“Yes.”

It looked like Ophelia was planning to go out and fight too. But...

ㅡPaaat!

“Hoeeek!!!!!!!”

“Since a long skirt would get in the way in battle, I’ve temporarily deactivated it.”

Ophelia’s body suddenly flashed, and then her skirt vanished. Right after that, with a super jump, she charged straight into the monster horde.

ㅡSshhk..!

“That was actually clothes..?”

I had no idea. I thought it was part of her body.