Chapter 13
Manticore stood before the entrance to Dreamland with nine dark mages.
"It’s definitely a newborn dungeon."
"Good thing we came with ten people."
"Yeah. If we’d come with twenty, we would’ve fought before even entering the dungeon."
They had temporarily banded together for a common benefit.
A mana stone worth a fortune.
If they obtained it, their lives would change drastically in one way or another.
"Let’s go in."
"All right."
Of course.
They did not trust one another.
How could they trust the kind of people who kill others to use magic and conduct research?
And—
They were the kind of bastards who, the moment a criminal who had turned into a monster after killing a child coaxed them into going to fetch a mana stone, rushed over without a shred of remorse.
They were pretty self-aware.
Every one of them was a villain with greed and desire glittering in their eyes.
If they managed to obtain the mana stone,
most of them had already decided that a fight would probably break out.
Manticore was not unaware of that.
But—
among the methods available to him, this had the highest chance of obtaining the mana stone, so it was an unavoidable choice.
They had plenty of supplies and manpower.
The mana stone was as good as theirs.
What they needed to prepare for was the struggle over the mana stone that would follow.
Mages could use a vast number of spells.
Most of those spells were useful for dungeon exploration.
The group led by Manticore entered Dreamland.
***
Day 1 of dungeon exploration.
"What a bizarre sight."
Manticore gave his brief impression as he looked at the pure-white corridor before him.
"Now I see why the trolls and goblins had such a hard time."
Goblins being the weakest made sense, but trolls were also a bad match.
He hadn’t seen this when he brainwashed the goblins back then.
In front of him was a maze.
With their stupid brains, they probably couldn’t solve such a massive problem.
Surely they hadn’t brought supplies, food, or drinking water with them either.
Still, the thing that bothered him was the hobgoblins.
Even if they weren’t a particularly smart race either, did they really all get wiped out just because of a single maze?
That made no sense.
There had to be something more.
That was Manticore’s conclusion.
"Hey, I’m done with the detection. Stop spacing out and gather over here."
When Jeko, the oldest of the ten who had entered the dungeon, said that,
everyone gathered in a circle around the paper Jeko was using to draw the map.
"It’s complicated, but not impossible to solve."
"Judging from the length of the passages, three days should be enough to reach the core room."
"I even prepared fifteen days’ worth of food and water just in case, but this is pretty pathetic."
They were right.
The maze was large and complicated, but not impossible to solve.
If they left traces and walked honestly, they’d reach the core room eventually, even if they made mistakes.
"We won’t need separate resupply, right?"
Jeko asked Manticore.
Manticore thought for a moment and nodded.
Half a day from now.
Their only chance to get out of the dungeon without an escape scroll.
Escape scrolls were unbelievably expensive.
Among them, only Jeko, who had the most money and was the oldest, had an escape scroll.
"Let’s go with this. After all, it only takes two days to reach the core room."
Everyone nodded at Manticore’s opinion.
"Hey, Jeko."
"Yeah?"
"When you used detection magic, did you notice anything unusual? Like traps or minions, for example?"
Jeko stroked his chin.
"You said this was a newborn dungeon, right? Assuming there’s no way to conceal mana, nothing showed up on the detection spell. At the very least, there are definitely no minions, and even if there are traps, they probably won’t be as strong as magical traps. However..."
"However?"
"It’s a little strange that I can’t sense the dungeon master’s mana."
Mana was proof of life.
Every living creature should have blood and mana.
Manticore saw it through a goblin’s eyes.
The dungeon master in a pure-white coat.
"What a baffling bastard."
"Hm?"
"It’s nothing. Let’s get moving."
Whatever abilities he had,
he wouldn’t be able to stop me.
***
Day 2 of dungeon exploration.
"There was a puddle on the floor. Is liquid dripping from that bizarre device?"
"It looks like ordinary water. I don’t sense any poison or acid."
"Hey! No matter how hard I try, I can’t destroy it! What the hell is this thing made of?!"
Manticore stared at the sprinkler.
It was only dripping water, so why did it feel so eerie?
"Who was on night watch?"
"Hermann and Jeko."
"No other abnormalities?"
"None."
"Besides dripping water like some pathetic little trickle."
You could call it an animal’s instinct.
Instinct was telling him that device was dangerous.
Destroying it and moving on was definitely the best choice.
But no matter what means they had, the sprinkler didn’t budge.
"A device even Manticore can’t destroy... fuck."
"Aren’t dungeon structures supposed to be indestructible anyway? We should also consider that this might be a structure rather than a trap."
Even if they found the sprinkler strange, there was nothing they could do about it.
There was no going back anymore.
Two whole days had passed.
"Let’s keep going. We’re almost at the core room anyway."
"At this pace, we’ll absolutely arrive within a day."
The remaining nine all agreed with Manticore’s opinion.
They had already gone more than halfway.
The mana stone was right in front of them.
The fact that a precious treasure was right before their eyes filled them with courage.
The party quickened their pace.
***
Day 3 of dungeon exploration.
"There are more water puddles now."
"We don’t need to rush that much. We’re almost there anyway."
Hermann was right.
When they looked at the maze map Jeko had drawn, the party’s position was almost at the end.
After not much time had passed,
the party found a passage leading to the core room.
"Found it!"
Everyone was filled with joy.
Dreamland was, by nature, an eerie and unpleasant place.
No wonder— even moving forward didn’t feel like moving forward.
A landscape with no change could easily make you mistake the space for something infinite.
The end was in sight.
They could finally escape this maddening white corridor.
Just as everyone was thinking about how to make off with the dungeon’s mana stone.
Something unusual happened.
Rumble—
The dungeon walls shifted with the vibration.
Then, just like with the hobgoblins, the exit completely vanished.
…….
The path leading to the core room had been completely shut.
***
Day 5 of dungeon exploration.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
"Hey... calm down."
"How am I supposed to calm down!? We finally find the passage to the core room after all that effort, then the walls move, and those damn puddles keep multiplying! Seeing the same corridor every day is starting to make me feel like I’m going insane!"
Among the party, the least patient, Hermann, burst out in anger.
Hermann was right.
Dreamland’s maze simply wouldn’t let the dark mages reach the core room.
Even after they struggled and hobbled to their destination with sore feet, it moved the walls and blocked the path entirely, leaving them on the verge of madness.
They now had only nine days’ worth of food and water left.
No—could they even survive nine days in the first place?
The ever-increasing puddles were driving them mad with worry.
"There’s definitely something we’re missing."
Manticore calmed the group.
Normally, a dungeon was a simple structure with minions and traps, and once you broke through them, it was cleared.
But this dungeon called Dreamland was different from a normal dungeon.
So they couldn’t approach it with ordinary thinking.
Manticore was patient.
He always tried his hardest to make the most rational judgment possible in any situation.
That was why he was still alive despite being branded a vicious criminal and a monster.
"Let’s think differently. Up until now, we’ve been obsessed with only ‘heading for the core room.’ Because of that, we’ve been walking around without paying attention to our surroundings. If we assume this situation is a dungeon trap, then continuing forward or fighting among ourselves would be no different from playing right into the dungeon master’s hands."
The maze never changed at random.
The trigger was when the group reached the passage in front of the core room.
Then it would make more sense to think there was a rule governing the maze’s changes.
Manticore’s reasoning briefly put a stop to the panic.
In the quiet, subdued atmosphere, he continued.
"For now, I think we need to look over the maze as a whole. If we investigate, some flaw will definitely show up."
Everyone agreed with Manticore’s opinion.
"Phew. Right. This isn’t the time for this. We need to get the mana stone."
"That’s a reasonable opinion. Let’s hurry; we don’t exactly have the luxury of time."
From this point on, the dark mages began investigating Dreamland in earnest.
***
Day 6 of dungeon exploration.
Because unknown puddles kept appearing,
the dark mages began exploring the dungeon individually instead of as a group.
The exploration rules Manticore set were as follows.
1. Never go toward the corridor leading to the core room.
2. Store supplies such as food and water at the rendezvous point.
3. Everyone must return to the rendezvous point ten hours after starting the search.
4. Report any anomalies or unusual events via the communication crystal.
The makeshift rules were, surprisingly, followed well.
If they divided the maze into the four directions—east, west, south, and north—and investigated it, they could probably cover everything in four days.
They focused their search on the north side.
Unfortunately, there were no results.
The first to finish and arrive were Manticore, then Jeko, then Philip.
Four. Five. Six.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
They arrived at the rendezvous point one after another in the order they finished.
And.
Finally, the last two arrived last.
Ten.
Eleven.
"Unfortunately, there were no results."
"Aah, it’s fucking huge, damn it."
"Will we really be able to take the mana stone out of here?"
"I just want us to get out safely, mana stone or not. Does anyone have an escape scroll?"
"You think so?"
The party chatted.
With their hoods pulled low, they couldn’t see one another’s faces very well.
People naturally feel reassured when there’s someone beside them to work through problems with.
It was a bizarre, eerie place, but they soothed their unease with human voices.
However.
"Wait."
"Huh?"
"What is it all of a sudden?"
Manticore opened his mouth, his voice trembling.
"Why are there eleven of us?"
-Good thing we came with ten people.
-Yeah. If we’d come with twenty, we would’ve fought before even entering the dungeon.
Manticore was the first to notice the anomaly.
Only then did the others realize it.
There had definitely been ten people exploring the dungeon.
That was because they had taken into account that it was a newborn dungeon that had only recently appeared.
So Manticore had contacted nine capable dark mages,
and they had answered the call, arrived in Roujinrat, and entered Dreamland together.
That was a fact everyone remembered.
Everyone looked at the quick-tempered Hermann.
Hermann was flustered.
What shocked him wasn’t the fact that all eyes were on him.
After all,
there was a guy with the exact same face as Hermann.
He was staring at Hermann with a bewildered expression, as if he were the real one.