CH 162

Episode 162 – Landaust’s Dungeon

After leaving Verski, I went to the next place I had my eye on, which was a kind of inexpensive dining hall for the public. It was just past noon, not even dinner time yet. Even so, the inside of the restaurant was really crowded, so it wasn’t a great time to be asking the employees for any information. However, I happened to get some valuable information from a man who was sitting near me.

As it turned out, this man was some kind of reporter for a business that handled information and news related to the Dungeon, so he knew all kinds of information about it. He told me that all the important pieces of information were a trade secret so he couldn’t tell me, but he did say that he could tell me about the [Azure Alliance].

“Heheh. Seeing that you’re interested in the [Azure Alliance], you must be quite an expert on the Dungeon.” (Reporter)

“The [Azure Alliance] is a newcomer adventurer party that came to Landaust about a year ago. Since they started off as a D-rank party, we thought that they were some ordinary adventurers who moved here from another city… But soon enough, they quickly made it to the 20th layer. Furthermore, just last month they successfully made it to the 30th layer, which is widely considered to be the barrier for intermediate adventurers. Presently, their achievements have been recognized, and they were promoted to a B-rank party. Despite being at a disadvantage in numbers with only 3 people in the party, they are one of the parties that has recently been gaining momentum… That’s just a brief summary, but this is as much as I can tell you free of charge,” the reporter narrated to me with great enthusiasm.

I couldn’t understand about half of what he was saying, but I did understand that the [Azure Alliance] was steadily making great progress. I was glad to be able to at least get some better information than what I had found out at Verski. Based on this information, we might be closer to meeting once again.

“Reporter-san. Thank you so much for the information, I really appreciate it.” (Lewin)

“Heh. Don’t worry about it. If you’re interested in more information, be sure to check out the ‘Laudungeon Newspaper’!” (Reporter)

After that, I thanked the Dungeon reporter and left the dining hall. Currently, I was planning to go to the Dungeon right away. I had imagined the Dungeon to be like the abandoned Dungeon that I went to with Kirty before, but it was apparently different. That reporter told me that the dungeon in Landaust was being perfectly managed by the Adventurer’s Guild and that there were various stores in front of the Dungeon. Also, there were these things called ‘cameras’ that were installed inside the Dungeon up to the 50th layer that allowed one to see what was happening in the Dungeon from the outside in real time, 24 hours a day.

The reporter enthusiastically told me that the use of these cameras in the Dungeon were what kicked off the growth of Landaust as the Dungeon City. To be honest, I had no idea what the Dungeon would be like, but I was very much looking forward to at least seeing what the front looked like.

I returned to the path I had taken before with Edward and went in the direction that he told me to go. This was the road that led the Dungeon. The main street was lively enough, but this road was even more crowded. There were no shops along the street, but there seemed to be a lot of adventurers, tourists, and locals coming and going. As I walked among the flow of people, I saw several large bulletin boards in front of me.

There was an unbelievable amount of people gathered in front of the bulletin boards, and behind the bulletin boards I could see a building that looked exactly like the Adventurer’s Guild I had visited earlier. Surrounding the Adventurer’s Guild building were a series of shops.

“……What a big crowd,” I murmured to myself unconsciously as I saw the overflowing number of people. To my surprise, there were actually more ordinary people here than adventurers. According to that reporter, Dungeon observation had become one of the major local pastimes in the city.

As I got closer, I realized that what I thought were large bulletin boards were actually displaying footage from the cameras installed in the Dungeon, showing scenes from various layers. The projections were clearly showing people battling with monsters, so I could understand why there were so many people crowding around this area.

I mixed in with the crowd of people watching the board where the video was being projected and began to search for the [Azure Alliance]. According to that reporter, they cleared the 30th layer last month, so it was safe to assume they were at least on the 30th layer or higher at the moment.

The projections were nicely divided by level, so I focused my search on the 30th layer and beyond… and I finally found them. I could only see their appearance from behind, but the woman waving the greatsword around on the 31st floor was definitely the Ahmed from my memory.