26 - a hole in the back of a forest

"I think I'll go for the armored boar today."

Deep in the forest in the late afternoon.

After lunch, Thor told the members about today's plan.

"Wild boar!　Yeah, yeah, it's a feast-like crack!"

"Leave everything to Moe!　Tor-chan."

"Don't be so naive!"

The armored boar is a huge beast, standing as tall as a man's shoulders.

As its name suggests, the front part of its body is protected by a hump-shaped skin composed of thick subcutaneous fat and bristles.

Its sturdy defense makes it almost impervious to damage by level 1 martial and magical techniques of the lower branch skills.

Defeating this boar meant graduation from apprenticeship, or promotion to rank F, since it required skills raised to level 2 or 3 or higher.

The minimum number of party members encouraged to defeat the boar was five.

Only one person could be promoted for each tail, the proof of defeat.

Therefore, it is a monster that must be hunted more than once in order to get the number of people who participated in its defeat.

Therefore, if you leave in the middle of a hunt, you may be dishonorably nicknamed the "rogue boar".

The reason for such a specification is that this test is not only a test of combat ability, but also a test of party cooperation.

The friends gained through this series of battles tend to be the ones that last until the end of the game.

It is, so to speak, a chance to form a party of five.

Therefore, Thor did not have the opportunity to kill the armored boar.

He had challenged them three times on his own, but in each case, he was defeated without being able to inflict a serious wound.

But now Thor has two reliable men, Sora and Mu.

In the morning, he had already checked the condition of his iron sword by wielding it against the horned mole and goblins.

It was time to fulfill a long-held desire.

"I see, when you kill a wild boar, Thor's plate turns blue..."　

"Moo wants a blue one too!"

"Yeah, sure, we'll get them all."

Armored boars are solitary monsters, but their territories are often adjacent to each other, and once you find one, it is rather easy to find the next one.

They also have a habit of scraping the surrounding trees with their tusks, making their territory relatively easy to distinguish.

And with the addition of Moo's electric search, it would be even easier.

Two hours later, however, Moe discovers a strange cave entrance rising out of the ground.

"What is that?　Is this the nest of the Innocents?"

"No, it's full of goblins. I'm sure it's a goblin den, Moo-chan."

Sola's words were not far off the mark.

A green-skinned humanoid shadow and a few slightly larger goblins were loitering around the hole.

There was the cave of the kobolds - a time-generated dungeon.

An underground labyrinth (dungeon) is a hole that leads to the depths of the earth, a lair of powerful monsters.

In other words, they are very similar to "coma pits".

As a result of the investigations to date, the dungeon is considered to be an alter ego of the "Coma Hole" and to play the role of a sharpshooter or an outpost for the purpose of expanding the miasma area.

The evidence for this is the black fountain called "miasma hole" that exists in the deepest part of the dungeon.

Some people believe that these holes exist in all dungeons and that they lead directly to the "Coma Hole".

The holes are guarded by the master of the labyrinth, and they are known to emit a thick miasma that fills the dungeon with monsters.

If left unchecked, the monsters will eventually overflow to the surface.

When this happens, hordes of monsters rush to the inhabited areas, creating an "outbreak.

There is another type of "outbreak" that occurs when the number of monsters on the ground continues to increase without being exterminated.

This is a pattern in which monsters that have undergone further transformation in a narrowed territory cause a stampede.

And worst of all, the overflow of underground monsters may squeeze the territory of above-ground monsters, resulting in the possibility of both of these happening at the same time.

"............ This is not good. You're on the verge of an overflow."

Thor muttered to himself when he saw a hobgoblin, a subspecies of goblin, around the den.　

Normally, there are almost no monsters inside near the ground.

It is possible that quite a few have already been unleashed.

"Don't they taste good?　Tor."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Thor responds with a raised eyebrow at the child who gives him a thumbs-up and a wave of his hand.

Fluid dungeons that occur spontaneously at regular intervals are reported as soon as they are found, and qualified parties are invited to challenge them.

However, since the locations of these dungeons are not fixed, they have been overlooked in rare cases and their discovery has been delayed.

This time, however, Thor's intuition told him that this was not the only case.

Thor's party, which had only G-rank members, had no right to challenge this cave of kobolds.

They could be blamed for hunting the hobgoblins near the entrance, but it would be suicide to hunt in a place that could be flooded with monsters at any moment.

In the first place, in such a dangerous situation, it is not the time for carefree hunting.

Even a bronze-class monster can become a major threat when it is in a group of several hundred.

The best thing that Thor and his team could do right now was to immediately run to the nearest logging camp to inform them of the situation.

The reason there are three logging camps is for this kind of situation.

Okay, let's hurry back. If we don't, there will definitely be an outbreak.

"That's terrible!　Yeah, let's hurry.

"Hustle!"

As he instructed them to retreat, Thor rummaged in his backpack and pulled out one of the rewards of yesterday's labor.

It looks like a triangular pyramid that fits in the palm of one's hand, with an ignition cord protruding from the top.

It is called "repellent incense," which emits a smell that monsters hate.

There is no guarantee of effectiveness, and since each monster has a different scent that it dislikes, it is a troublesome item that needs to be mixed differently depending on where it is used.

In this case, it is for goblins, so it should also work on hobgoblins, which are similar to goblins.

After lighting the fire and seeing the smoke rising, Thor tosses the empty shells into the bushes beyond the dungeon entrance.

Taking advantage of the moment when the hobgoblins' attention is caught, he quickly throws the incense into the dungeon.

Having succeeded in buying some time, Thor and the others begin to run toward their destination, avoiding the monsters with Moe's .

At the same time.

A party is arguing with each other while walking in a corner of the forest, a little further away from the forest road.

"That's why you're in too much of a hurry, Rickal. We were in danger too!

But it would have been much faster to attack!

The boy, chastised, protested with pouting lips.

Riccar's slightly reddish hair was due to the fact that his father was a Red Tail.

Perhaps because of this, his tree of skill was a red trunk blessed by the god of fire.

"That one just happened to go well. You're always making mistakes.

"Hinck is too scared. You don't know what you're doing until you've done it.

When Hinck was called a coward, he fell silent with a pouty look on his face.

The tall boy with long black hair knew he was indecisive.

He knew he was indecisive, which was why he had not been able to use the bow and arrow skill that Fujin had given him.　

"How long are you going to keep doing this?　It's the same thing every time."

A girl with dark hair and a scruffy face raised her voice as if sulking.

The neck of the girl called Alethea is covered with clear blue scales.

Of the quartet, only this Sorin girl was from another village.

"Oh, Sisan, say something!"

When approached by the water user girl, the lifeblood of the party, Sisang stopped and turned around.

The dark-haired boy with the round shield slung over his shoulder gives a troubled smile.

"Leave her alone. A man can't help it, that one.

The boy who was the leader of this foursome was painfully aware of the impatience and frustration of the other two.

In the past, there had been some light talk and some hateful comments, but there had never been any heated arguments at the party.

However, the mood had changed drastically since the assessment window a few days before, when the girl who said it was her first day of adventure had shown them the fruits of her labor.

It had been more than half a year since the three of us, childhood friends, had left our home village and arrived in this town, where we were lucky enough to add a girl who was a magician to our party.

A shieldman, a swordsman, an archer and a water wielder are the ideal members.

I thought that if I kept on like this, a high ranking and rich life would surely await me, and I had gritted my teeth and worked hard.

However, the reality is that I have only worked hard enough to be easily overtaken by a middle-aged man whom I looked down upon as a mud fisherman, and a girl who is almost an amateur.

Although he doesn't show it in his attitude, Sisan's feelings are still simmering inside him.

There is no way that he can calm down when he is shown the possibility that what he believed to be the right thing to do may have turned out to be meaningless.

What the boy feared more than anything else was to be confronted with the fact that they may not have any talent.

What should they do?

Leaders who do not have an answer are trapped in a roundabout way of thinking, and they tend to overlook the danger signs.

It was a wound where the bark of the tree had been torn off by something rubbing against it.

It was two heads higher than it should have been.

The young men, who had been making loud noises without checking their safety, suddenly stopped their voices when they felt a tremor in the ground.

They finally start to be alert, looking at each other anxiously.

But it was already too late.

".................. Oh!"

Alethea, who had spotted something impossible just beyond the shadows of the trees, let out a small, stunned cry.

The other members of the group looked at each other and lost their voices as well.

What the four of them saw was a huge boar with six legs, far taller than they were.