CH 68

"Well, Let's Go to the Dungeon!"

Translated by Dawn

“Well, Let’s Go to the Dungeon!”

“So this is the dungeon. There are so many people here.”

The day after arriving at Orargrand, I went to the dungeon. The day before, I did not have anything special to explore in the town, and I stayed in the vicinity of the inn because I was not familiar with the area.

However, the city of Orargrand was so large that it would take at least ten days to see it all.

After finishing dinner and my daily routine, I went to bed, and after waking up the next day and eating breakfast, I went to check out the dungeon in this town.

The traffic to the dungeon was fairly high, and even though it was still early in the morning, there were more than a hundred or two hundred people. …Are there a thousand of them?

Then, I came to the reception desk where I could go through the procedures to enter the dungeon, but as I said before, there were quite a few people entering the dungeon, so I had to wait for 30 minutes before I could be accepted.

There were several reception counters, but even so, the number of adventurers trying to register at each one made it difficult to keep up with the line. When it was finally my turn, the woman at the reception desk called out to me.

“Welcome! We are here to accept dungeon visitors. Please present your guild card.”

“Is this okay?”

I was relieved to see a lively girl working the reception desk in a cheerful voice, and when I was asked to present my guild card, I complied with the request.

The receptionist’s eyes widened in surprise when she saw the rank written on my guild card, but she quickly regained her composure and resumed her work.

“I didn’t know you were a C-rank adventurer. I thought you were a new kid.”

“Well, normally people would think so.”

“Yes, this completes the procedure. Just to remind you, C-rank adventurers are allowed to enter up to the 20th level. Please be careful.”

“Thanks.”

I thanked the girl for completing the reception procedures and immediately left the place. The entrance to the dungeon was so large that even a tribe of giants could have entered it if they tried.

There was also a line of adventurers by the entrance, so I looked to see what was going on and found that they were lining up to use the transfer portal.

The portal allows you to jump instantly to a portal that you have already touched once, which is very useful among adventurers.

“Well, I’m never even in the first level right now, so it doesn’t really matter if I use it.”

After taking a glance at the transfer portal that I would be using in the future, I walked through the entrance of the dungeon to the first level.

The dungeon was an orthodox cave-type dungeon, with rock walls covering the four sides as if hollowed out of rock. The passageway was 6 to 7 meters wide, so it did not feel cramped, but there was still a sense of being mentally entrapped, and the atmosphere was a little unpleasant.

A rock-covered passageway continued on in a straight line ahead of my line of sight, and when I reached the end of the passageway, it became a T-junction with a forked path to the left and right.

Not knowing which way to go, I chose the left passage at random and pushed forward, reaching a somewhat wide space.

“There are monsters, but there are too many adventurers. It’s like an MMORPG right after its launch.”

In that space, low-grade monsters such as slimes and goblins roamed about, but there were also more adventurers, so there were numerous scenes of them being exterminated as soon as they were discovered.

One of the most common phenomena in MMORPG online games that I remember from my previous life was that the hunting grounds became crowded. Especially in newly released MMORPGs, there were often too many new players and not enough monsters to appear in the initial hunting grounds, resulting in a phenomenon where monsters were not distributed to each and every player.

The scene happening in front of me now was exactly like that, with adventurers skirmishing over a small number of monsters.

Since hunting efficiency was poor here and the monsters were not significant in terms of experience, I quickly left the place and started moving on to the next floor.

I went further in, but because it was only the first level, the rate of adventurers staying there was high, and there were no monsters that matched my current strength, so it was not worth it in terms of experience or money-making at about the first level.

Having no choice but to keep going deeper and deeper until the number of adventurers dwindled, I came upon a huge door.

In front of it, there was a line of adventurers, apparently waiting for their turn to enter.

“What are you doing here, kid, all by yourself?”

“Yes, but what does it matter?”

“From here on, you’ll have to fight the boss to get to the second level. A kid like you is no match for the boss. I won’t say anything bad, so you’d better turn back.”

The other adventurers nodded their heads in agreement, as if in agreement with the adventurer who had just spoken to me.

I suppose they were worried about me, but as far as I was concerned, they were nothing more than a nuisance to me.

Certainly, a boss is an opponent that you cannot let your guard down. However, if I’m struggling against a low-level boss like this, I will surely be killed next time if I have to fight that female demon again in the future.

The reason I came to this town was to get stronger, not to have fun. I was here to gain experience in battle, no matter how strong the opponent might be, so there was no way I was going to turn back.

“I’ll take your advice. But I think I have some idea of what I’m capable of, so don’t worry about it.”

“Hey! Foster is telling you all this, so it’s only natural that you should turn around and go back!”

Perhaps annoyed by my words, a female adventurer, a friend of the adventurer who had warned me about the situation, attacked me.

Just as she looked, she was a beautiful woman with strong, slanted eyes, and was equipped with such bikini armor and rapier that I wanted to ask her if she was okay with such equipment. I should add, of course, that this question of whether it’s okay is not meant in terms of performance, but more in terms of compliance.

“Hm.”

“W-what”

“It’s my guild card. If you look at it, you should understand that what I’m saying is correct.”

I was reluctant to share this information with someone else, but her chirping was even more annoying, so I showed her my guild card as a way to shut her up.

She received my guild card from me, and as soon as she saw it, her eyes widened and a look of disbelief appeared on her face.

“A C-rank adventurer. No way. This kid is a C-rank adventurer?”

“Now you get it, right? If you understand, please be quiet for a moment.”

“T-this guild card is a fake! I don’t know how you forged it, but as an adventurer, aren’t you ashamed of yourself!?”

“So it came to that. Hey, Foster, right? What about you? Do you also think that the guild card is fake or not?”

I threw a look at the adventurer who first spoke to me, with the implication that I wanted him to stop her, as she was becoming slightly hysterical.

The other party seemed to notice the look and hushed her fellow female adventurer with an apologetic look on his face.

“That’s enough, Martina. The guild card is the only proof of an adventurer’s identity that is absolutely impossible to be forged. If you say that the guild card the boy has is a forgery, then you are saying that the guild card we have is a forgery, too.”

“T-that’s…”

“I’m sorry, kid. I thought you were new, so I must have meddled unnecessarily.”

“No problem. Everyone makes mistakes. What is important is whether or not you can honestly admit that you made a mistake and apologize for it. Don’t you think so? Martina.”

“Ugh. I-I get it, okay! It was my fault!!”

Perhaps she couldn’t take my staring anymore, she finally raised her voice and apologized while handing back my guild card in her hand. It seemed that she herself understood which side was at fault, and she felt that the fact that her friend Foster bowed to me made her feel that she was even more at fault than she had been.

“Oh, it’s our turn. See you later, kid, I think you’ll be fine as a C-rank, but don’t let your guard down.” 

“Yeah, you too.”

In the meantime, it seemed that before I knew it, their turn had come, and after giving me a quick warning, they both went to the door.

It was twenty minutes later when the next door opened, and it seemed that it was finally my turn.

“Now, what kind of monster would that first boss be?”

I walked into the big door, eagerly anticipating what the first boss of the dungeon would be like.