Chapter 217: D-Rank Adventurer Party (9)

* * *

War hero. There were heroes who were called that in the past.

Bai Qi of the Qing Dynasty had slaughtered more than one and a half million enemy soldiers. Han Xin made an enemy nation fall into ruins by wiping out an army of 100,000 with only a rabble of 20,000 soldiers. War heroes were people who carried out wars that went beyond common sense like this.

“It seems the goblin scouts have discovered the enemy.”

Laura got up. This very girl was fated to become a war hero in this world.

Laura de Farnese. She was born in a duke household within the Kingdom of Sardinia and ends up becoming a sex slave, but after about a decade of gnashing her teeth with vexation, she murders her master with her own two hands.

Afterward, she is taken in by Queen Henrietta who has a good eye for talent. She proceeds to climb up the chain of command within their military while having a secret relationship with the Queen.

The Queen’s subordinates disregard Laura because they know that she was only appointed by orders from above. However, Laura de Farnese manages to take out Habsburg’s army of 60,000 with only 20,000 soldiers. She starts to obtain overwhelming victories with men that had been inferior to the enemy.

If the hero didn’t appear, then Laura would’ve probably remained as an undefeated general.

The hero who destroys strategies with tactics and tactics with duels. Only a nightmarish human weapon was able to fight back against Laura de Farnese.

And, no one knows of this yet, but that very hero was currently under the care of Dantalian.

“We will now divide and conquer the adventurers.”

There was no one who could stop Laura de Farnese now.

She was wearing a thin dress that looked like sleepwear. Rather than wearing it, it felt more like she just had it draped over her. There was more bare skin than skin covered by the white piece of cloth. The girl who was going from 17 years old to 18 years old had a body that was as radiant as a bouquet.

Adventurers had occasionally invaded during Dantalian’s several months of absence. Every time they did, Laura would command the goblins that had just started to migrate to the dungeon and repel the invaders with ease. About forty adventurers had become corpses on the cavern floor.

Laura collected the forty skulls separately and piled them up in a corner of the Demon Lord room. It was a terrible hobby for a girl to have, but Laura would clean the skulls with a towel whenever she was free.

The adventurers weren’t aware of two things.

First, the Demon Lord castle being of the lowest grade was already in the distant past. Second, every single adventurer that had invaded was slaughtered brutally, so no one was able to report that the Dantalian’s Demon Lord Castle had an increase in rank.

As a price for that ignorance, Laura was now going to gain an additional 150 skulls in her personal collection.

“Blingy, I will be in your care today as well.”

-Kerurk.

Demon Lord Dantalian’s first monster, the low-ranking goblin nodded his head. This goblin was in charge of acting as Laura’s envoy to deliver orders to the monster soldiers.

Laura spoke.

“First, we will take care of the adventurers that have entered area Alpha 31. Stop them with our 3rd goblin platoon. Afterward, retreat back to Alpha 11 and ambush them together with the ambush team.”

– Keruk.

Blingy gave a firm salute.

Blingy proceeded to pass the orders down through a magic orb. There were 18 magic orbs lined up on a table. An endless stream of status reports came in while Laura sat silently and drew the battle out in her head.

This was Laura’s headquarters. She was sitting at the entrance of the Demon Lord room and giving orders to the troops throughout the dungeon.

She was unable to see the areas directly and the language wall prevented her from giving her orders straight to the monsters. Despite these two major shortcomings, Laura de Farnese continued to give orders without hesitation.

“The adventurers in area Alpha 23 should have been repelled by now. 2nd platoon, immediately make your way to Alpha 12.”

“The adventurers in area Gamma 13 are not moving. They may be aiming for a prolonged battle, but attack them from both ends of the tunnel and wipe them out.”

“Chase down the adventurers that are running away from Beta 12. However, do not wipe them out and only pursue them. We will be making them join together with the adventurers at Beta 24. Force them into a state of chaos.”

The orders were being given so fast that it was a struggle for Blingy to pass them all down in time.

There was a dungeon map spread out in front of Laura, but she didn’t even look at it. She had a clear picture of the current battle in her head. There wasn’t only a map in the corner of her head, but a number as well.

It was the approximate number of the adventurers that were still alive.

The number would decrease by the tens whenever Laura gave a new order. The number that started at 150 slowly decreased to 140, 130, 110, and so on. Laura’s eyes remained shut as she subtracted from that number indifferently.

That nonorganic number was soaked in the blood and screams of adventurers.

The adventurer parties were confident at first because they had a large number of people.

They had more than enough manpower for a dungeon that was supposed to be the lowest grade. They laughed confidently as they dealt with groups of two to three goblins every now and then.

When they came out from a narrow passageway and into an open area, the adventurers were happy as they thought they would finally be able to have a decent fight. There were about a dozen goblins in the open space. They could take care of them without incurring any losses as long as they didn’t lower their guards.

Sure enough, the goblins started to flee after being pushed back for about five minutes.

“They’re running! Chase after them!”

“Today’s the day we make bank!”

The party of 10 pursued the goblins energetically. Monsters would instinctively run to the center of the dungeon. If they followed the goblins, then they would be able to go straight to the Demon Lord room without getting lost. After a few minutes of pursuit, the party arrived at another open area.

It was right when they thought they only had to push the goblins back a little further. Goblins started pouring out from another passage connected to the open area. The adventurers panicked because of the sudden ambush. A few of the humans even got cut down because they couldn’t react in time to the unexpected situation.

“Don’t falter! They’re still nothing but goblins!”

The leader of the party shouted. They managed to create a slightly awkward defense formation.

It was hard for goblins to get through their defenses since they were smaller than humans. However, once a fireball came flying at the adventurers from the goblins on the side, the party fell into great disarray.

“M-Magic?”

“The goblins are using magic!”

One monster was holding a staff and being defended by a bunch of goblins. It was a <Goblin Shaman> that could be hired once Demon Lord Rank D was reached. They were a unit that cost 1,000 gold each, but Dantalian poured in a large sum with no reservation.

“No way……I-Isn’t this dungeon supposed to have the lowest ranking!?”

“What have the evaluators been doing!?”

The effectiveness of the investment was clear. The adventurers’ morale dropped exponentially once they realized there was a magic caster among the monsters. The people of this era were extremely afraid of beings that could control magic according to their will.

The goblin shaman could only cast fireballs, but once an unlucky person got hit by the fireball and caught on fire, the other adventurers’ will to fight was brought down. Most of them were rookie adventurers who didn’t have much sense of camaraderie anyway. They ran away without any hesitation.

“Those idiots! We’ll all die if you run away now! We’re all going to die!”

The leader of the party shouted at them. They had used up a lot of their stamina pursuing the goblins. How far could they possibly go if they started to run now?

Goblins may be small, but they have great stamina. If the adventurers run away like that, then they were definitely going to get caught by the goblins and killed! It’d be better to just charge at the shaman even if it meant life or death.

“―Guaaaaah!”

The party leader opened his mouth to tell them this, but the only thing that came out of his throat was a scream. A fireball had enveloped him. The party leader immediately rolled on the ground, but the fire grew more intense rather than die down.

“H-Help me! I don’t want to die!”

The leader reached his hand out to his fellow party members. Even his hand was on fire. The adventurers’ faces grew pale as they witnessed this horrendous sight and the individuals who were still maintaining the defensive formation ran away. The leader let out a terrible scream as the others ran down the tunnel they had come from.

“You―sons of bitches, after all―I’ve done for you!”

The flames eventually burned his mouth and throat to the point where his screams were no longer coherent. Shortly after, only the sound of a corpse burning could be heard within the cavern.

Keruk! Keraruk!

The goblins let out a cry as they chased after the stragglers. The quietly burning corpse was all that was left in the open area now.

These kinds of situations happened all throughout the dungeon.

Laura de Farnese carefully lured the adventurers into the deep areas of the dungeon before using the terrain to launch an ambush. Being ambushed and the appearance of a goblin shaman afterward was enough to make the parties run away with their tails between their legs.

Laura gave orders to the monster units at the perfect moment every single time. Out of the 13 ambushes, she never got the timing wrong even once.

The goblins felt as if they had become the limbs of a single body and experienced almost no losses as they slaughtered the adventurers. This was an impressive accomplishment if you consider the fact that normally 2 to 3 goblins would die in order to kill one adventurer.

An hour went by like this.

“Are there 50 left now?”

Before long, the number in Laura’s head had shrunk down to 50. A hundred adventurers had been slaughtered in roughly an hour. On the other hand, out of the 200 goblins, only 20 of them had died in battle.

The ratio was 1:5.

The 18-year-old girl who had sent the intruders to Hell in the most efficient way possible simply stretched as a way to show that she was pleased with herself.

“Hnnng-.”

Just as she was stretching, another report arrived through a magic orb saying that an additional 30 adventurers had been killed.

“Now only the adventurers with His Lordship are left. Good work.”

Laura patted Blingy’s head. Blingy was currently completely exhausted after having passed down Laura’s orders nonstop. Once the girl patted him gently, Blingy forgot about his exhaustion as he purred like some cat.

“His Lordship really is weird. He could have left everything to this young lady, and yet he decided to join the adventurers because he wanted to see it for himself.”

– Keruru, ruk.

“It is because he is earnest? Hm. Blingy, you are way too blinded by His Lordship.”

Laura responded flatly. Blingy started to jump up and down in anger once she did.

– Karururuk!

“O-Okay. Okay. His Lordship is an earnest person. This young lady misspoke. I apologize.”

– Kiruru.

Blingy gave a satisfied nod.

Laura was fairly familiar with the language of goblins. She couldn’t use it fluently, but she was at least able to grasp what the other party was trying to say.

It wasn’t like she had particularly studied their language. She just happened to learn it naturally after spending time with them for a while. She was becoming one of the extremely few people within humanity who knew how to speak with goblins. With a little more time, she will probably be able to command the goblins with kerurus and keruras.

“Then I will be giving my final orders. All units in Alpha move to Alpha 4. If you discover an adventurer that managed to run away, then kill them immediately. All units in Beta move to Beta 0 and all Gamma units set up ambushes at Gamma 11 and Gamma 12.”

Soon after, the sound of affirming keruks came from 18 magic spheres all at the same time. The goblin shamans received their orders and moved the units under their command accordingly.

Laura displayed a content smile.

“Mm, these sorts of things are more suited for this young lady than things like laws. No matter how much Big Sis Lapis disregards me, generally speaking, every vassal has their own use. Big Sis Lapis is good at internal affairs and this young lady is good at military affairs. This is a splendid distribution of work.”

She muttered to herself and nodded.

“This young lady is not stupid. Yup, this young lady is not stupid.”

Laura de Farnese was one day going to become a war hero and be renowned as humanity’s nightmare. She was more afraid of a single half-blood succubus than 150 rugged adventurers…….

***

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

The player character in Dungeon Attack has a ‘lust’ parameter. This value goes up over time and if you don’t take care of it accordingly, then you could receive a debuff during battles. The chances of being afflicted by ‘charm’ and ‘excitement’ increase as well.

The game is already difficult anyway, but if you receive these kinds of debuffs, then all hope is lost, so players have to do whatever they can to lower their lust value. The problem is the fact that you can’t conquer a heroine’s route until the last portion of the game. In other words, players have no choice but to click the ‘Go to a brothel’ command…….

TL Note: Thanks for reading the chapter. This afterword from the author would’ve probably been better on the chapter where the brothels and stuff were initially brought up. On another note, I think I mentioned it before, but the last few chapters of this segment have been really enjoyable to translate. It’s pretty satisfying, so I hope you guys look forward to them.

Halloween is also coming up. What do most people usually do outside of trick-or-treating or watching scary movies? I’ve been a part of the latter. I sort of enjoy just watching a bunch horror movies even if they’re B-rated.

Welp, I’ll see you guys in the next chapter.