“This is the last warning I’ll give you guys. Next time, I won’t even care about doing any of this stuff. Remember this, I won’t be repeating this again.”
“….”
“Just. Huh, Don’t.”
“Just whatever happens.” I was intending this kind of thing to be my last words, but I just swallowed it. I had intended to have a much more serious attitude, but the situation wasn’t that severe. And also from that moment, without my realization, it seemed like the kids’ attitude changed a little.
A kind of sharpness that I had in my body previously, returned a while ago. The kids started to shrug. I didn’t just do this to stop their play. It’s because we have ended up wasting a bountiful amount of time in this dungeon. I’m not sure if they understand, but I want to reclaim the lost time.
The kids took a breath and looked at me with ruffled faces. The heartbroken look in their eyes and the lack of their colorful voices made me feel bad instantly. I spoke once again with a strong voice.
“The voice that you heard earlier is that of a Ramik. The explanation Yoo-Jung gave earlier is more than enough. But, on the left and right are two stone statues. Those are the immediate traps we need to disable before they activate.”
I don’t want them to play around and allow them to slowly gather experience; I want them to adopt the most effective method. Once I was done talking, I began to walk immediately. The kids started to walk behind me without making much noise. Without an inkling of hesitation, I moved faster.
As I started to walk fast, the ones behind me also changed their way of walking. With eagerness, I drew my sword. ‘Chang.’ A pleasant sound came out. At the same time, the lights dispersed. From now on, I decided that I was going to be a little more aggressive.
We were moving forward silently and all our eyes were focused to the front. As expected, there was one player lying on the floor with a broken right arm. The sword that I threw hit this one.
“He… Help me…..eugh!”
Without giving the kids any instructions, I just cut off the Ramik’s head. Beside the Ramik’s beheaded body, stood two stone statues. They weren’t Gargoyles, but statues that resembled a Kappa.
Things didn’t end with just the death of the Ramik, so I moved my sword towards the stone statue. With cracking noises, the stone statues began moving their legs, while light shone from all visible cracks along the statue’s body. And that’s it. My sword penetrated its centre cleanly and smashed its core. After that it didn’t move anymore.
“Hyat!”
An Hyun was not silent about this either. The statue slowly, quietly, emitted energy around itself, displaying the shape of the metal armor that firmly wrapped around its body. An Hyun took out his lance and passed behind me, heading towards the last statue. Without feeling any pressure, he broke the stone and went in. The stone made a cracking sound as the lance penetrated the centre of the stone statue, leaving behind a huge hole.
“Next. Let’s go immediately.”
This time, there wasn’t much physical damage and I immediately moved from that position. While An Hyun was walking behind me, both Yoo-Jung and Sol looked on with blank faces. Those girls were silently watching the fight unfold from the battle against the Ramik until the stone statues. As we moved farther, they ran towards us.
“Next… It could be goblins. All of you, get into formation. This time, let’s do it the same way we did with the Rengas.”
The next obstacle would be goblins. There are also Hobgoblins which are just as strong. If other players were to encounter goblins, they might have had a hard time, but it wasn’t going to be the same for me.
I immediately peeked into the passage and saw a horde of goblins including a goblin ruler and several hobgoblins. The other goblins present were just bait to lure in unprepared players. Although there were quite a few goblins, I had experience dealing with such difficult monsters when I was with the Black Scorpion in the past That experience will be useful right now. Moreover, goblins who lose their leaders are to easy to slay.
After the battle was initiated, we all cursed under our breaths after Hyun was poisoned. An Sol left formation to cure An Hyun, while Yoo-Jung circled around and rummaged through the goblin corpses. Since these guys loved shiny objects, there was a high possibility of finding interesting things. The armor worn by goblins are worthless to me, but they would surely be profitable.
The kids sat down, which set the atmosphere. After bringing down the deceitful goblins, they went through the stuff that the goblins found. We couldn’t find more than 30 gold coins and a few jewels. An Opal was found amongst the jewels along with a goblin cane.
I picked up the Opal and opened my lips.
“See, see. Though little is know about Opals, this is a fascinating thing. By selling this one jewel, you can get around 20 gold. If it’s two, you can get 40 gold. This thick red sapphire can get us around 70 gold? It usually ranges from 30 gold to 140 gold. Combining our four members’ coins from the time in the Player Academy, it is just a little over 10 gold. With just this one incident, we could get over fourteen times more.”
“If we go further in….”
“Yes. There could be more valuable things than this. How about that? Now, how much does this make you feel about going on an expedition?”
Seeing this, Yoo-Jung’s eyes shined. An Hyun was so surprised with my revelations that he just nodded his head. All their eyes were dazzling so much that nothing apart from that went into their minds; they weren’t into my words anymore. Seeing the kids like this, I laughed a little on the inside. It came into my head that they did come here by placing their trust on me. So, since the atmosphere now is very lively, I’ll let this continue and dismantle the severe atmosphere from before.
Renga, Ramik, Goblins; I watched them fight these monsters without saying anything. An Hyun had been cured, so he got up immediately. The kids haven’t complained until now. Because of the huge direct revenue that we acquired some time ago, they were eagerly anticipating about the things that they would acquire in the future.
Another passage came afterwards. What came next was a den of spiders. They had hairy bodies and spit out black ink – these spiders were very different creatures. They leave slimy yellow liquid when they run around.
Although this is hard to deal with, by my calculations, I felt that I would arrive at the destination soon. I have seen quite a lot of dungeons in the past and I can still feel them. The long awaited alchemist. As soon as I entered the dungeon, I wanted to clear it very quickly.
Thud! Threek!
“Buia!”
Suddenly, a bead falling from the ceiling, brushed past Sol’s head. Hearing that cute shriek from Sol, I went into a state of frenzy. While I intended to just rush through, I looked up. And….
“Euh…”
“That, that…. what’s…”
Out of reflex, the kids also lifted their heads, their faces filled with surprise and shock. I don’t know how long they stood there with their mouths covered by their hands, while no other words were spoken for a short duration.
The body of a female player was hanging on the ceiling. Both arms were tied together with a white thread that looked like it came from a spider’s web. The problem being the female player’s stomach was inflated abnormally.
Seeing this situation and after confirming it, I frowned. But there was nothing that I could do at the moment other than just look at it. I could bring her down, but I don’t know how to unwrap her while she was still hanging in the air. This place was probably occupied….
Without waiting for very long, I activated my 3rd eye. The body seemed to be in good shape and still human-like, so it was possible to retrieve the player’s information. I went through her stats thoroughly.
Name: Jung Jiyeon (2 years)
Class: Normal Mage Runner
Nation: Babara
Clan: –
Affiliated Nation: Korea
Sex: Female (20)
Height . Weight: 161.3cm . 54.5 kg
Alignment: (True: neutral)
[Strength 45] [Resistance 26(-12)] [Agility 34] [Vitality 17(-12)]
[Magic 28(-49)] [Luck 58]
This is the condition of someone who’s been made the target of a joke. Resistance and vitality have reduced a lot.
The main body has mutated at the perineum. It’s in a forced conception state.
From the body of this female player, there is a chance for spiders to be born into this world.
“ Eh… ah… euah… ah…”
As I heard those sounds from Jiyeon, my face had an unreadable expression. After the girl woke up from her daze, she was scared upon realizing that she was hanging. The eggs were falling down onto the floor, and the long-legged creatures emerged out from behind. Seeing this sequence of events, the kids who couldn’t say anything at first, now started to have a breakdown. It’s the influence of inclination.
Jung Jiyeon’s something was falling from the air, no, the spiders eggs were. The kids also saw where these eggs were falling from. I was thinking whether I should leave this place or not. Seeing a female player who was the same as Yoo-Jung or Sol suffering so much made my stomach churn uncontrollably.
Even I was feeling pity. Surely, she still has a 20 percent chance to live, but the cries from her weren’t regretful sounds of a beautiful woman who had the time of her life. She had been here for two years, so dying now wasn’t such a bad thing. Moreover, in our party, we still needed a mage. In addition to the lost stats that I saw, I don’t know how she could survive until now, but her growth is quite good.
However, these were things of the past. Now, I need to be aware of the spider monsters. I first thought to use an elixir, but I dropped the idea. It would be a waste to use it now in this scenario. Then for all that she had went through, I thought of giving her a quick death.
Surely, there was no other way no matter how hard I tried to think about it. Honestly speaking, this is the most reasonable way. However, she was still pretty healthy and didn’t have many bites, so I couldn’t, in my heart, decide to do it. I didn’t want to give the precious elixir to a player whom I wasn’t confident will make it. I felt like going back to the city after finishing the dungeon. I was genuinely wishing for it in my heart.