Chapter 8: Handicapped New Game (7)

Shortly after.

“It should, haah, be safe now.”

I spoke while breathing roughly.

“Ehem.”

“Hm….”

The adventurers had become incredibly cautious. Their current behavior was Heaven and Hell compared to their previous gold-lusting demeanor. They kept trying to push someone else to go first. I barely managed to stop myself from laughing out loud.

“Fuck it! You’re all cowards.”

Eventually, the person in the leader position, Riff, stepped forward.

“Why do you guys have anything between your legs!? I should just cut them off with an axe. I pity myself for being so proud about conquering a dungeon with you guys!”

He roared.

“Furthermore, you, Cyclops. You’ve been with me for how many years now and yet you have the gall to hide behind those young’uns? Sheesh. How are you able to save face like that?”

“Riff, it’s because this is also my first time seeing black magic….”

“So are you telling me that it wasn’t your first time coming out of your mother’s womb, thus you were able to do it skillfully? There’s always a first time for everything! Why is the veteran getting all scared, tsk.”

Riff glared at each and every one of the adventurers before approaching the pile of gold without any hesitation. He then reached his hand out and grabbed a handful of gold. He turned around to face his comrades.

“Look! Do you see any curse? Idiots…….”

Riff grinned. He looked like quite the delinquent since his bear-like face was smiling so vulgarly. The other adventurers lost their vigor once they saw Riff’s actions and started to make excuses as they averted their gazes.

On the other hand, I was doing my best to hold back my laughter. It must be because I raised his affection high enough as I could now see Riff’s thoughts on his status window.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Name: Riff Race: Human　　 Faction: Jalsen Village Attribute: Neutral(-15)

Level: 3　　　　Fame: 2 Job: Lumberjack(B), Farmer(D), Adventurer(F)

Leadership: 15　　Might: 30 　　Intelligence: 4 Politics: 2　　Charm: 6　　Technique: 21

Affection: 21 Current thought: ‘Fuck, that made my blood run cold……Magic is the one thing I hate the most in the world! Sheesh, my legs are still shaking.’ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

‘Hah!’

As I thought, Riff was no different from the others who were trembling at the thought of magic. He only stepped forward because he was the leader. I guess you could say that he was very prideful. More importantly, his stats were as pitiful as Dantalian’s. If this is a game, then I feel like dealing with these adventurers is the goal of the tutorial I was given.

The other adventurers started to approach the pile of gold carefully. They were hesitant, but their eyes were filled with greed as they stared at the gold. The adventurers began to count the gold coins before them one by one as if they were afraid that someone would try to take more than the rest.

Riff let out a satisfied laugh.

“Hah, it’s 489 gold.”

Each adventurer took 32 gold after splitting the total into 15 equal parts. I didn’t know how the financial situation in this world was like, so I had no idea how large of a sum 32 gold was considered, but seeing as how all of their faces were grinning from ear to ear, it must have been enough to have ‘made a killing’. There were 9 gold coins that remained after dividing all of it, but Riff pocketed it all as if it were completely natural. A couple of people seemed displeased by this as they frowned. Nevertheless, no one openly voiced their complaints. They had already lost their momentum.

I cautiously spoke out to them.

“Uhm. I know that you all are busy, but there is something I must inform everyone.”

“Hm? Oh, what is it?”

The adventurers responded inattentively. They were busy stuffing the gold coins into their bags and shoes. One of them even shoved a handful of coins down his pants. That made me want to make a disgusted sound, but I calmly said what I had to say.

“The situation I’ve been fearing has occurred. Another party has just now entered the dungeon.”

Their rampaging hands came to a stop.

“What?”

“It might be because there are no monsters, but they’re approaching the Demon Lord room at a fast pace. At this rate, they’ll arrive within an hour.”

“The hell are you talking about?!”

The adventurer, who had the nickname Cyclops, shouted.

I paid him no mind as I continued to explain calmly.

“As you guys saw a moment ago, I can use various spells regarding the dungeon. I’m the owner of the dungeon, after all. It is also thanks to that that I was able to summon those gold coins. I also have a warning spell. In other words…….”

I deliberately trailed off, in order to make them think that I found this situation to be regrettable.

“It’s a magic spell that notifies me whenever someone invades my dungeon. An alarm rang in my head a second ago. It seems that a total of 25 adventurers have just entered…….”

The adventurers panicked.

* * *

“Wow. Chief, this player is pretty unique.”

A handsome blonde man pointed at his monitor. He was holding an apple juice pack in his other hand and was audibly sipping from the straw that was poking out of it.

A woman who was seated a short distance away from the young man responded with an ‘Eh?’. The woman was leaning her back against her chair and resting both of her feet on top of her desk. She was really into the manga she was reading, so she didn’t particularly welcome the young man’s disturbance.

“Who?”

“You know. That guy you got upset by and kept going back and forth with.”

“Ah, Lolilatte?”

She responded in a flat tone. The woman felt herself getting angry once she recalled the thing that happened a couple of days ago.

“That guy’s quite the pervert. He even managed to conquer Baal’s Demon Lord Castle.”

“Baal’s Demon Lord Castle? You mean the one in Dungeon Attack?”

The young man turned pale from astonishment. Baal’s Demon Lord Castle was an impregnable fortress which even he hasn’t beaten yet. It was only natural if you consider the fact that the dungeon wasn’t made to be beaten.

“Dear God, he’s an elite player, then!”

“Elite my ass. He’s an annoying bastard.”

The woman shut her manga.

“How dare he complain to me, the executive director, about the game’s system? I got sick of him, so I gave him his just deserts.”

“Don’t tell me… Chief, did you turn him into a player without even forming a contract?”

“Hah, a dog is worried about a tiger. Do you think I’m new to this business?”

A sly grinned appeared on her lips. For some unknown reason, the young man felt a wave of unease wash over him. Every time she smiles like that, an incident occurs……and each time something happens, I’m the one that finds himself going through a lot of work and not her……. Didn’t someone say that ominous predictions always come true? The woman gave an answer which the man didn’t want to hear the most.

“Of course, I let him through secretly.”

“Corrupt……there’s a person who casually does corrupt things right here…….”

The young man started to get a headache. Although his superior was incredibly talented, she occasionally lost her sense of reasoning. Honestly speaking, she would lose it quite often. Additionally, the young man was the one who had to go searching for it whenever she lost it. How unfair is this!?

It really was if you thought about it. The incident occurred yesterday. The Chief was on her computer with a blank look on her face as usual. However, she suddenly got irritated and started pounding away at her keyboard for more than 4 hours. The young man didn’t think much of it since he thought she was just in a trivial keyboard battle again. The problem is what happened afterward.

‘Ah damn it! So annoying!’

The Chief got up and grabbed her perfectly healthy hair. After letting out a bizarre groan for quite a while, she sat back down. She then typed something on her keyboard and left the office.

The Chief came back within 10 minutes. The woman smiled brightly towards the young man’s dubious gaze which was accusing her of having done something bad. Her face looked refreshed.

‘I took care of some work-related matters.’

Her voice sounded so refreshed that it was comparable to a person who was finally relieved after suffering from constipation for five years. When the man asked her what was up, she told him that she had sent someone off with her Reincarnation Truck――This was the name she had given to her beloved car. The young man honestly believed that the Chief’s naming sense was one of the worst.

The blonde man clicked his tongue in his mind.

‘Tsk! She got demoted because of that personality of hers.’

What’s the point if her game developing skill is superb? Her personality is worse than that of a dog. However, thinking about it now, it seems she had acquired the player’s consent through an almost trick-like method.

“Chief, if the higher-ups hear about this, then you might receive a formal reprimand….”

“The Hell I will. I got the person’s consent and I kindly warned him, too. There’s no problem.”

“That’s what you think. What if the player files a complaint to the head office? Furthermore, if that person clears <Dungeon Defense>, then the head office will send someone.”

“Clear?”

The woman grinned.

“Sure he will. I set it to LUNATIC mode.”

“Oh, God.”

Like putting him in the body of the weakest character wasn’t enough? She also set it to the highest difficulty possible in history!?”

‘W-What a terrifying lady…..’

A chill went down the young man’s spine. Contrary to the woman’s charming appearance, she had no forgiveness, mercy, or consideration.

The woman took out a new manga. The woman spoke in a carefree manner.

“If he still manages to clear it, then I’ll get on my knees and beg to him to forgive me. I wouldn’t mind kissing the tip of his shoe as well. He would have genuinely become an elite player at that point, after all.

Well, that’ll probably never happen, the woman uttered with a smirk and immersed herself back into her manga.

The young man stared at the monitor. On the screen, there was a man who had lost his right foot and was struggling. At first, he thought that his stats were terrible for a person the chief had personally selected, but he found out that she had lowered his stats intentionally. How sad.

‘Good luck, guy whose name I don’t know.”

The young man finished drinking his apple juice pack.

He heard the woman’s angered voice behind him. She was rampaging about how they could let White Beard die. As he watched the woman cry out that she’ll hit the mangaka with her truck, the young man wondered how he was going to calm her down this time. He couldn’t let the number of victims increase.

* * *

A heated discussion was being carried out in the Demon Lord’s room. The suggestion to fight back and the suggestion to run away were on equal grounding.

“Ah, like I said, we should fortify the Demon Lord’s room!”

“Are you crazy? There are 25 of them, 25. We lose in terms of numbers. If you’re going to fight, then you go do it. I’m out.”

“Hah! Are you telling me that you’re going to run away?!”

Riff shouted. However, Cyclops glared back at Riff with unwavering resolve. Once the two most experienced members of the party raised their voices, the rest of the party went silent and listened to the two of them talk.

“All things considered, I’m here because I promised to join the expedition to conquer this dungeon, and we’ve conquered this dungeon already. Taking care of monsters is fine, but I never signed up to fight other adventurers.”

“You traitor!”

“Riff. Calm down and think about it.”

Cyclops looked at his surroundings.

“The two of us may be fine, but the rest of our party are greenhorns that have never been to a dungeon before. Just yesterday, they were kids that were preparing for spring harvest. Do you think we caught this Demon Lord because of our skills? Bullshit. We were able to because other parties had already swept through here. All we did was pick up the leftovers. Taking these kids to fight 25 people is absurd. We’d die a dog’s death.”

“You have a fluent tongue for a coward. People have always said that eunuchs were eloquent.”

Riff grabbed his hand axe.

“Shut up and listen to me, you wimpy bastards. You guys don’t know anything. If you’re looked down on in the adventurer world, then that’s the end of the line for you. What will happen if we tuck our tails between our legs in fear of another party even though we conquered a dungeon? I’d rather hold a funeral for you guys than have to watch you guys go through that.”

“You idiot…!”

Cyclops grabbed his spear tightly. This was a touch-and-go situation.

***

TL note: Thanks for reading. This is actually a pretty big difference compared to the LN. There’s been a lot of people who complained about the lack of game aspects, but hopefully, they’ll enjoy the WN since it’s utilized pretty often.