Chapter 19
【Wave defense successful.】
【Rewards will be tallied according to difficulty.】
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The hobgoblins were taken care of.
There were more of them than last time, so I’d held out a little hope just in case, but the difficulty was easy after all.
If I said it was stingy, Secha-ham would probably burst into tears and say he’d kill himself, right?
I decided to keep that to myself.
The problem was this woman, who had entered before the hobgoblins.
"I didn’t come here on purpose! Really! It’s a long story if I explain the circumstances, but I’m a constable who came to catch criminals—uh, I mean, my job is to catch bad people, but I’ve never once thought of dungeon masters as bad people, and, o-oh, rather, I think they’re wonderful people? Anyway, I heard that a criminal was in the Roujinrat Great Mountain Range, so I came with my colleagues, but while we were fleeing after getting attacked by monsters… I really just happened to find the dungeon entrance, so I had no choice but to come in! As a newbie constable, I sincerely apologize for having stepped into the dungeon of the dungeon master-nim! I’m reflecting on my actions, so could you please spare my life!?"
Did she win an oratory contest or something?
She defended herself briskly and with no wasted motion, in stark contrast to how she’d been trembling moments ago.
She’s damn eloquent.
Hmm.
At least to me, she looks harmless.
I logged into Dungeon Gallery.
I needed to check the veterans’ reactions too.
Magic Hero : Kind of annoying that our concepts overlap...
ㄴShoutShoutYeah : This guy’s gone pitch-black too...
ㄴKingJjangGhost : D-d-don’t do that.
ㄴMagic Hero : hehe...
NoMinionsForMe : I don’t think it’s a lie either.
ㄴAnonymousButcher : What kind of pathetic constable is this? The South Kingdom really is in a hopeless state.
ㄴSealedConqueror : Judging by her looks, she seems pretty young too, so that makes sense ㅇㅇ
SlyLoveDog : Really mad that she was hitting on Newbie...
ㄴGolem King : What the hell X
ㄴDIP : What exactly about that conversation counts as flirting?
Ant Queen : But I have a question, Newbie-nim, why do you want to keep her alive?? Are you planning to make her lay eggs or something??
ㄴPsychWardChiefPatient : Hahahahahahaha please hold your breath for just 365 days...
ㄴSealedPhilosopher : Let’s wait and see for now. We should respect their choice.
ㄴAnt Queen : I can’t believe this, why aren’t you guys stopping him................
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"Is that so?"
"Yes…."
"The reason you didn’t leave the dungeon immediately was…."
"Because there are a lot of monsters outside! Sorry for cutting you off! I really didn’t come here with any bad intentions!"
This pathetic constable’s name is Restia.
Normally, the system would classify her as an intruder, but for now she’s being treated as a dungeon minion.
Among a dungeon master’s powers is a hiring function that can turn outsiders into minions, and I could even check their stats.
Restia’s level was a mere 5.
Simply put, she was strong enough to go toe-to-toe with a hobgoblin.
According to the veterans, I could easily beat her even if I were asleep, or if she ambushed me.
There’s an absolutely unbridgeable gap in strength.
Anyway.
"Please spare my life…."
How should I put it... I’d never been in the superior position in my life before, so it felt strange.
Was this how a small-business owner felt watching someone desperately brown-nose?
Sure, I was in a position where I could decide whether she lived or died.
"From now on, \"Please spare me,\", \"I’m sorry,\", and \"I apologize\" are forbidden."
"Ah, understood!"
"For now, stand up. The more I look at you, the more frustrating it gets."
Flattery only works on some jerk abusing power.
For a humble citizen like me, it had the opposite effect.
I asked Restia, who was awkwardly getting to her feet.
"Do you want to leave the dungeon right now?"
"Y-yes, yes! I’d really love to if I could...."
"Even if you go outside, there’ll still be a ridiculous number of monsters out there, like you said."
".........."
Restia lowered her head.
"Haaah."
I sighed.
I did save her, sure, but I had no intention of becoming a babysitter too.
Unlike me and the others, who can live just fine without eating, drinking, or sleeping, minions are different.
Didn’t Nabuja say it at the start? Minions need to be fed, have their poop cleaned up, and be taken on walks or given playtime so they don’t get stressed.
That’s why he’d kindly explained that all the dungeon masters who chose human-themed dungeons, with their strong drive to climb higher, had ended up dead, hadn’t he?
This woman was the same.
To live, she needed drinking water and food.
Of course, there was also the jerky left behind by the black mages.
I could also spend points to buy other food and water.
But did I really need to go that far?
I was already so strapped for points from the dungeon expansion that I was dying.
Judging by the look of things, I could clearly see a future where I’d have to take care of her until the monsters disappeared.
Hmm.
I crossed my arms and thought about it.
Was there a way?
A little while later.
Ah.
A good idea came to me.
With this, we could help each other out.
Follow me.
Yes!
We went outside the dungeon.
?????
Great, the minion can go outside too.
Restia stared at me, utterly flustered.
Never seen a dungeon master come out of a dungeon before?
Ah, right. It would be your first time.
"I’m going to give you a task. Can you do it?"
"A, a task of what kind...?"
"From now on, can you lure the goblins, trolls, and hobgoblins around here into the dungeon?"
"What on earth does that even mean...?"
"Please answer only with Yes or No."
Restia nodded.
"If you do a good job, I’ll treat you to top-quality water and food. For the record, running away halfway through would be meaningless. Don’t forget that this is the Roujinrat Great Mountain Range. And I can track your location too. You can see I’ve come outside the dungeon, right?"
"O-of course. I-I never once thought about running away...."
If Restia did her bait role well,
I could take care of the enemies nearby, earn points, and give her water and food as payment for her labor.
This was the ultimate win-win—digging a ditch, catching crayfish, and eating the pheasant and its eggs all at once.
Heh-heh-heh.
The dungeon master has acquired a decoy.
Look at those hobgoblins who got all worked up over humans and brazenly entered Dream Land.
I didn’t know what kind of conspiracy they’d cooked up or where, but for some reason these bastards were avoiding my dungeon.
You’re dead.
Stupid creatures let instinct lead before reason.
If Restia wiggled her hips around a bit, goblins or trolls should come in too, just like the hobgoblins did this time, right?
Even in the games I used to play, the 300-gold trash mob at sliver HP was always the nastiest.
I had no idea how long this would keep working.
Time to duplicate points.
They say goodwill comes around.
That was exactly that.
***
Three months passed after that.
The minion labor contract was a huge success.
I thought she’d whine about having to come into the dungeon crying every day, but surprisingly, she didn’t.
There was an incident where an ogre came in partway through, but it was stupid too, so the maze handled it and that was that.
Restia worked harder than I’d expected.
Thanks to that, I was able to get my hands on an enormous 200,000 points.
My level had risen all the way to 40.
At level 80, I’d be able to purchase a 4-star minion, but I still had a long way to go.
Anyway.
The bait operation no longer worked.
This whole area seemed to be completely quiet.
That meant it was time to let Restia go.
"It’s time to say goodbye."
"Thank you so much for everything until now, Dungeon Master-nim...."
We’d gotten closer than we had at first.
But we still weren’t the kind of people who would bare our hearts to each other.
She was just an ordinary human.
And I was a dungeon master who had once been an ordinary human.
I guess you could say there was still some distance between us.
Even though we’d spent a long time together, we still couldn’t act as familiarly with each other as the gallery users did.
"Sir."
"Yes."
"You’ve worked hard all this time. Once you’re outside, don’t struggle and just live comfortably."
As a gift, I gave her the old gold necklace I’d looted during the manticore wave.
Restia, who received it, made a strange expression.
Was she happy, or was it making her uncomfortable?
"Let’s not meet again next time."
"…I’m not, no, it’s nothing."
With that, Restia left the dungeon.
And just like that, we each went our separate ways and lived happily ever after.
It would’ve been nice if I could have ended it by thinking of it as such a happy ending.
Newbie : Ant Queen-nim
ㄴAnt Queen : Yep.
ㄴNewbie : You remember the terms of the bet, right?
ㄴAnt Queen : ㅇㅇ If Newbie-nim wins, I’ll hire 30 badass minions. But if I win, then from now on you have to kill every intruder that comes here ㅇㅇ
There was someone who wasn’t pleased with this situation at all.
It was Ant Queen.
***
The veterans all respected my choice.
Even SlyLoveDog, who had disliked it at first, did too.
But there was one person who kept looking at it with disapproval to the very end.
That was Ant Queen.
As for Ant Queen,
in a word, she seemed to see the world in black and white.
Everyone outside the dungeon is an enemy.
That mindset lay at the core of her worldview.
She didn’t like that I was keeping Restia alive.
When I even went so far as to feed her and let her sleep in Dream Land under a so-called labor contract, she seriously advised me to quit dragging it out and just kill her already.
I almost wondered if this was really the same Ant Queen who usually stirred up trouble by posting pictures of her minions.
I understand.
If you didn’t want to leave any loose ends in the first place, Ant Queen’s method would be the right one.
But.
I understood it in my head, though.
I just couldn’t bring myself to choose that approach.
When I still wouldn’t listen,
Ant Queen proposed a bet to me.
Ant Queen : The conditions are this: if that woman backstabs Newbie-nim, I win. If that woman doesn’t harm Newbie-nim or the dungeon, then Newbie-nim wins.
It was basically a bet with no real benefit for either of us.
But at least I knew she meant well.
So I accepted.
That way, we could settle this conflict quickly.
I didn’t want to ruin my relationship with a veteran who was helping me.
If we checked the result, then however it ended, we’d both be able to accept what the other had to say.
At first, I told Restia that I could track her location.
That wasn’t a lie.
And it wasn’t the whole truth either.
The surveillance camera in the core room.
Restia’s image was still being displayed there.
It was one of the perks of the Bizarre Phenomenon theme.
I crossed my arms and watched quietly.
No intruders were coming in anyway, so I alternated between that and browsing the gallery.
Restia walked through the quiet mountain range.
She walked and walked.
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Then she encountered a human.
-Restia. Are you all right?
-Ah...
The human she encountered didn’t look like an ordinary human.
That was because blue light was streaming from his eyes.
SlyLoveDog : I’m so uneasy...
SlyLoveDog : Of all people, why did a Blessing Bearer have to be in the mountain range...
SlyLoveDog : Agh, seriously ㅇㅁㄹㅈㅈㅁㄼㅁㄴㅇㄹㄴㅁㅇㄹ
A Blessing Bearer.
An existence that could see a status window, just like dungeon masters.
Bizarre beings just as strange as the phenomenon that lets them resurrect at a temple even after dying.
KingJjangGhost : Isn’t that the bastard who failed when he tried to break into the head mod’s dungeon last time? Why is he in the mountain range?
ㄴKingSlayer : Ah... what was that name again...?
ㄴKingJjangGhost : Sinclair ㅇㅇ Looks like his level has gone up since then too.
ㄴKingSlayer : Ah, I remember now. Thx
Anyway.
Listening carefully to their conversation, it seemed they were here because of the manticore and the missing constable.
Orange★ : This is pretty bad... That’s not someone Newbie should be facing right now.
Orange★ : Restia? How much did you say that woman knows about Newbie’s dungeon?
ㄴSlyLoveDog : She probably figured out Area 1, but fortunately I didn’t place any minions or traps in Area 2 at all, so she probably doesn’t know much about that.
ㄴSlyLoveDog : Even for a Blessing Bearer, clearing it in one go would be impossible, though...
ㄴOrange★ : ㅇㅇ We need to drag this out as long as possible until the position shift. We’ve got about two months left, so if we’re generous that’s eight waves... this is giving me a headache...
ㄴOrange★ : Wait, I’ll post the data I collected later, so check it.
It didn’t feel like an exaggeration.
It was the first time the veterans had ever sounded this serious.
Honestly.
It’d be a lie to say I wasn’t scared.
Even so.
I simply kept watching the screen while posting the live feed to the gallery.
-Sir Sinclair. You’ve truly gone through a lot coming all this way, but... the manticore has already been slain.
-What? You, a rookie constable, slew the manticore?
-It wasn’t by my strength alone. It was thanks to the sacrifices of the constables who carried out the mission with me.
As for Restia,
she presented the old gold necklace I had given her as evidence.
-According to my informant, there was a dungeon here, and that’s why the manticore led the black mages here.
-Ha, a dungeon? I’ve been suffering here for three months, and there was no dungeon—just disgusting goblins and trolls.
-I see.
-I want to go home now. I miss my mother so much....
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After that, they kept talking for a while.
the Blessing Bearer and Restia disappeared from the mountain range.
【Human, Restia’s minion designation has been removed.】
The post went quiet for a moment.
Goodwill comes around.
I’m not really the type to believe in such romantic sayings, but.
The result was right before my eyes.
This time, I decided to let myself be naïvely fooled.
That aside.
I quickly called for Ant Queen.
Newbie : @AntQueen @AntQueen @AntQueen @AntQueen @AntQueen @AntQueen
ㄴAnt Queen : Newbie-nim, can’t you forgive me if I do a naked dogeza... hehe...
ㄴNewbie : hehe
I won.
Now you have no complaints, right?