## Chapter 38 – Dungeon
The heavy scent of decaying leaves clung to my face like a spiderweb. The dust-filled, ancient dungeon evoked the sensation of insects crawling on my skin, making even the most seasoned adventurers hesitate at its entrance.
“Let’s go in.”
With the fearless Elise leading the way, we entered the dungeon. A cold wind blew from within. That deathly chill made me tense up immediately. My grip tightened on my sword.
“I can’t see anything. We need to light a lantern.”
“Where do you put the oil?”
“Just a moment… it goes in here, I think.”
The inside of the dungeon was pitch black. Seriously, it was dark as hell. Not a single ray of light penetrated. Less than twenty seconds after entering, Copson pulled out a lantern. At this rate, there was no point in coming down in the morning. It would be the same whether we came at midnight or midday.
Since we were underground, with no sunlight, we had to rely entirely on the lantern for visibility.
“There. Now to light it.”
After filling the lantern with oil, I split the tinder and used the spark to light the lantern. The orange flame of the lantern created a decent, medieval atmosphere.
“Ooh, the light is orange! Orange! Can you see it? You barbarian! The light is orange!”
“C-calm down.”
Copson shouted with joy for some inexplicable reason. This guy is definitely not right in the head. Maybe the dungeon’s ominous magic had driven him mad.
Anyway, relying on that small light, we descended into the underground. Down stone steps, endlessly. Not knowing what lurked beyond the darkness…
That’s when it happened.
“Aah!”
“Shit!”
Meria, who was behind me, suddenly screamed and grabbed my shoulder, startling me badly! A primal curse word erupted from my mouth. An attack! I quickly turned around, grabbed Meria’s shoulder, and pulled her behind me.
“Which bitch is it!”
Then, with my sword raised, I thrust it threateningly towards where the enemy might be. At the sight, Copson and Elise also approached with grim faces, their weapons drawn.
“Barbarian? What’s going on?”
“Is it an ambush?”
But there was nothing behind us. I wondered if it was a flying monster or a dark-colored creature, so I slowly scanned the surroundings. I searched until my eyes almost popped out, but I couldn’t see anything.
I turned to Meria and asked.
“W-what is it, Meria? What’s wrong… there’s nothing here? Don’t tell me it’s a ghost?”
I was most afraid of ghosts in the world. They can’t be cut down, which sounds cool if you say it like that, but I’m just a damn coward and always scared of ghosts. My hands and feet started to tremble. Undead were supposed to appear, but were ghosts coming out too? I guess ghosts are monsters included in the undead category.
“Ah… sorry.”
“Huh?”
“I tripped…”
“Oh.”
Meria said, sounding embarrassed.
It seemed I had overreacted because I was too tense. I started to feel more embarrassed than Meria. I even shouted loudly to intimidate the enemy…
“Heh heh heh, your battle cry was full of energy. Barbarian. I can certainly rely on you.”
“Damn it.”
“If it’s not a big deal, let’s continue down.”
We went down the stairs again. I didn’t know how far we had come down because I didn’t have a watch, but it seemed we had descended quite a bit. As I was going down, feeling a little less tense, Meria spoke to me from behind.
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Th-thanks for earlier.”
She suddenly thanked me. What had I done that she was thankful for? All I did was curse loudly and swing my sword in the air.
“You reacted as soon as I screamed and pulled me back. If there had been a real enemy, you would have saved my life.”
Meria seemed grateful that I had reacted immediately and pulled her behind me. Isn’t it common sense to protect injured comrades during battle? It was a semi-reflexive action, so I didn’t expect to be thanked.
“Ah, that. It’s nothing. I just thought you were being attacked when you screamed, so I pulled you back. The injured should be sent to the rear.”
“Still, thank you.”
As we chatted, we finally saw the end. Had we finally arrived at the first underground floor? It was indeed as they said, quite large. It was incredibly deep. We had probably descended dozens of meters.
“This seems to be the first underground floor.”
“It seems so.”
The first underground floor was very spacious. Roughly holding up the lantern and shining the light around, it looked like a huge cavern. You could set up a market here and it would be a huge success. Despite being so deep underground, it was enormous.
“Are these traces of other adventurers?”
Feeling slightly overwhelmed, I searched the floor. All sorts of used consumables were scattered around, probably left by other adventurers. Judging by how recent they seemed, there was a high possibility of encountering another party during our exploration.
Anyway, I couldn’t see anything among the consumables that could be reused or was worth any money. Unfortunately, it was all trash.
“Hmm… there are so many forks in the road.”
“Indeed.”
This first underground floor seemed to have a circular structure, and roughly counting as we walked around, there were fourteen other entrances leading to deeper underground levels. In other words, this was a waiting area. A gateway to rest before entering the full-fledged dungeon.
“There are fourteen entrances.”
“Which way should we go? Barbarian, let me hear your savage intuition.”
“This guy is talking nonsense again.”
“Well, I think it doesn’t really matter which way we go since there are fourteen of them.”
We don’t really know anything, so it seems okay to just pick one and go in. There might be traps, but we don’t know what’s where anyway. It seems like there’s no other way but to go in.
“Sister Elise, which way do you think is best?”
“…I don’t know.”
Still, I asked Elise, who was clearly the most experienced among us. But she didn’t seem to have any brilliant ideas either.
“Our order’s lucky number is four, so how about the fourth entrance from the left? I’m drawn to that one.”
I absolutely couldn’t agree with the fact that the lucky number was four. In our culture, four is a number that symbolizes death. There’s no way that kind of Korean superstition would work even in this other world. Copson didn’t seem to care, and Meria counted the entrances.
“Okay, let’s go that way.”
“One, two, three, four. Is this it?”
As Elise said, we chose the fourth entrance and headed deeper underground again. This time, we didn’t go down as much. We arrived at the second underground floor before long. This place didn’t seem like a huge room, but rather like a passage stretching out to the sides.
“Another fork in the road here. Left or right.”
I should start recording the path we’ve taken. Seeing the path stretching out to the sides, if a corner suddenly appeared, this place would literally turn into a maze. It probably will. There’s a reason it’s called a dungeon. It was common knowledge that dungeons are mazes.
“Does anyone know how to draw a map? We should draw a simple one.”
“I’ll draw it. Leave that to me.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Elise’s map was suspicious in many ways, but if she could understand it herself, that’s all that mattered.
Since there were no left-handed people in the group, we agreed to go to the right. As we went straight to the right, another fork in the road appeared before long. This time, there were three directions. Straight, left, and right.
“Wow, another fork in the road?”
“It’s completely a maze.”
“Aren’t we screwed?”
I sensed that we were screwed. This dungeon was a complete maze.
There were three options. Among them, the unique thing was that going straight would lead us to another underground level. Already the third underground floor, where does this dungeon end?
“If there were any monsters on this floor, we wouldn’t have missed them. I think it’s better to go underground.”
Elise was right. We couldn’t find any traces of monsters on the first floor, and there were no signs of them on the second floor either. Perhaps the adventurers who came before us had already cleared out the monsters in the early parts of the dungeon.
“Let’s go down. Hey, Copson. How’s the lantern?”
“How much have we used it? This much oil can last for several more hours.”
We moved towards the third floor. This time, we were greeted by a stone door. The party members looked at each other and nodded. The door barely opened after the combined strength of the four of us. It would be impossible for anyone to open this door alone unless they were some kind of superhuman.
“Hmm… a room? There are many rooms.”
Opening the door, we saw numerous rooms on both sides of the path.
Was this actually some kind of ancient boarding house? Maybe it was a dormitory where soldiers waited. The rooms were small enough to be considered individual rooms, and there were traces of rotten furniture and boxes scattered around.
“Ooh, this seems better than the inn room I usually stay in.”
“What kind of pigsty are you living in?”
“I’m saving on accommodation these days because of various things.”
Copson and I were the same when it came to being frugal. The group members each expressed their impressions. Meria peeked into the rooms, and Elise touched the wall and looked at the ceiling, saying.
“Hmm, what is this place?”
“It smells like people lived here… but it doesn’t seem like a prison.”
“It looks similar to the living quarters in our church. It seems ancient people weren’t that different. This is probably where people lived. They’re all individual rooms… hmm, what kind of status did these people have?”
There seemed to be dozens of rooms on both sides of the path. Still, since people lived here, wouldn’t there be something lying around? Ancient books or daily necessities. I had no doubt that we could make a decent profit if we found such things.
“Let’s search the rooms one by one.”
“Alright, Barbarian.”
“Understood.”
We started searching from the first room on the left. In fact, it would be good to operate in two groups and search both sides at the same time, but unfortunately, we only had one lantern. There was also the option of shining light with Elise’s holy light magic, but we had to save that for emergencies.
“There’s nothing here.”
“Hmm… I don’t see any useful traces.”
As expected, there was nothing special. We couldn’t see anything that could be worth money, and there was nothing to see except for the almost rotten wood. Contrary to our expectations, there was no particular gain. Perhaps this place had already been looted by other adventurers.
That’s when it happened, as the tedious search continued.
“Oh, what the hell is this!”
A scream burst from my mouth! I was so surprised that I almost flew all the way home!
“Did you find something?”
Copson asked. With trembling hands, I pointed to what was in front of me.
It was an old treasure chest.
