The person who had summoned me to the castle was, as expected, someone dispatched by the Imperial Court.
“So you’re Evan. I’ve heard a great deal about you—a proven talent who won the tournament.”
“I see.”
“With skills like yours, you’d be more than suited to mercenary work worthy of the Hero’s Party, and…”
And so the man stood before me, rambling on for quite some time with exaggerated gestures.
He was a man with an exceptionally long tongue.
So much so that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many people he had won over with it.
He kept going on about how remarkable I was, how with my abilities I could carry out any mission,
what honors I could seize in the Hero’s Party, and how glorious an opportunity I had been granted.
It didn’t really work on me, but for someone who liked being flattered, his eloquence was probably lethal.
I’d occasionally seen mercenaries who were dumb but absurdly strong get taken in by that sycophant type and suffer for it,
and now I understood that this was how it happened.
For some reason, I thought that old man would look good with a mustache.
***
About ten minutes later.
The man finally stopped talking and got to the point.
“Ahem. Now then, you’ll need to enter a dungeon!”
A dungeon.
I feel like I explained this before,
but back then, I think I only said something along the lines of, “A Dungeon Break might happen,” so this time I’ll explain in a little more detail.
A dungeon is a dwelling place for monsters that appears in areas where demonic energy has accumulated beyond a certain point.
No one knows the principle behind it.
Why demonic energy gradually accumulates in lands where humans live, despite it not being the Demon Realm.
Why a dungeon forms there once demonic energy gathers.
Countless hypotheses have been studied, but not a single one has reached the level of a proper theory.
Unless research on this matter is completed, perfectly controlling the occurrence of dungeons is effectively impossible.
The history of humanity and the history of dungeons have always flowed together.
That didn’t mean they were completely impossible to control.
The Church of Lunia had formed a dungeon disaster prevention team, and wherever they could reach, they used holy water and the church’s rituals to prevent demonic energy from accumulating as much as possible.
In areas where demonic energy frequently gathered, they even built watchtowers, barely managing to stop the exponential increase of new dungeons.
However, as a matter of principle, when a dungeon appeared, the noble who ruled the nearby territory was supposed to send troops to deal with it.
After all, that was an imperial law created to prevent the Church of Lunia from expanding its influence.
Because of that, nobles either managed dungeons for appearances’ sake or outsourced the work to mercenaries like me.
***
When people receive this kind of request, there are two methods they can use.
1. Clear the dungeon.
2. Periodically kill the monsters inside the dungeon to reduce the demonic energy within.
The first method was practically impossible in most cases.
Dungeons had difficulty levels of their own.
A dungeon’s difficulty didn’t become harder because of some specific condition or anything like that; it was generated with a difficulty assigned at random when the dungeon first formed.
They were divided into lower-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and highest-grade.
In the case of lower-grade dungeons, mercenaries like us were fully capable of clearing them.
To clear one, you had to enter the boss room inside the dungeon, defeat the boss, and destroy something called the dungeon core.
In lower-grade dungeons, the boss was usually something like a goblin shaman, so it was possible to defeat it and destroy the core.
Of course, that didn’t mean clearing one came without casualties, but the reward for clearing it was much greater, so it was often worth attempting.
As for how much the reward was…
There were the monster byproducts split with the employer—the noble responsible for dealing with the dungeon—at a set ratio, plus the additional gratuity received upon clearing it.
From the perspective of the mercenary corps that took the request, it was enough to make them grin from ear to ear.
At this point, someone might ask, “Wait. If mercenaries can clear it, then shouldn’t nobles just use their own private soldiers instead of spending money?”
But that question comes from not really understanding the general position of private soldiers.
Private soldiers… that is, in the case of the private troops of a large-scale or high-ranking noble, the groups called knight orders were far superior to mercenaries.
Even among ordinary private military groups, unlike mercenary groups, which were a mix of Runners and Users, the minimum level was User.
On top of that, they had at least one knight, and in many cases several.
If private troops were already at that level, then knight orders were on another level entirely.
Aside from a few exceptions, knight orders were groups of superhumans composed entirely of those who had reached the realm of Sword Expert.
Of course, their operating costs were so steep that one generally had to be at least a count or marquis to maintain one…
In any case, the point was that they were groups above mercenaries.
Within a noble’s territory, there were various dungeons besides lower-grade ones.
Naturally, among them were mid-grade dungeons, and if they were unlucky, even high-grade dungeons.
In that situation, deploying already precious troops into a lower-grade dungeon?
There was no loss quite like it.
A knife for slaughtering chickens was most efficient when used to slaughter chickens, and a knife for slaughtering oxen was most efficient when used to slaughter oxen.
Now, upon hearing that, there should be one thought that immediately follows.
From mid-grade dungeons onward, mercenaries could not clear them.
Even entering them was, for all intents and purposes, a dog’s death.
An elite soldier in a lower-grade dungeon became a mere mob in a mid-grade dungeon, and a boss in a lower-grade dungeon became an elite soldier in a mid-grade one.
Even killing a single lower-grade dungeon boss wasn’t without damage, and they cleared it at the mercenary corps level, practically beating it down as a group.
And now those same people were supposed to face a mid-grade dungeon packed with enemies like that?
To mercenaries, a mid-grade dungeon wasn’t a place where clearing was possible; it wasn’t even a place where they could dream of surviving.
The reason mercenaries were treated like meat shields was all because of mid-grade dungeons.
Anyway,
that was why, from our perspective as mercenaries, method number one could only be used up to lower-grade dungeons.
Well, in the case of private troops or knight orders, they could probably attempt to clear mid-grade dungeons as well.
But from high-grade onward, things were different.
According to records, the boss of a high-grade dungeon was said to be on the level of a corps commander in a monster army led by a Demon Grand Duke.
To face them, one had to bring in a powerhouse of at least Master level.
But were Master-level powerhouses common and freely available?
They were busy managing highest-grade dungeons.
For these reasons, in addition to the fact that attempting a clear was fundamentally high-risk, high-return, method number one was almost never chosen in most situations.
The method usually chosen was number two.
Dungeons had one peculiar law.
Monsters could not move outside the floor to which they belonged.
For example, a monster on the first floor could neither leave the dungeon nor move to another floor.
In the case of bosses, they could not leave the boss room at all.
That made it possible to defeat enemies one group at a time.
Since the reason a Dungeon Break occurred was that the inside of the dungeon became filled with demonic energy and monsters until the law preventing floor movement broke down,
simply sweeping away the monsters on the first floor at regular intervals was enough to prevent a Dungeon Break from happening.
Low risk and moderate return.
On top of that, even without clearing the dungeon, one could obtain monster byproducts, making it a regular supply source as well.
I think that explains far too easily why nobles preferred method number two.
***
I was trying to explain it as concisely as possible, but somehow it ended up too long.
Still, I’ve explained everything that needed explaining.
As for the various gimmicks, they differ so much from dungeon to dungeon, and I can just explain them again when they show up.
Even if I explain them later, I’ve already covered most of it now, so I don’t think there’ll be much else to say.
When that time comes, I’ll try to explain it much more briefly than now…
Anyway, starting now, I had to enter one of those dungeons.
When?
“In exactly two days. Judging by the distance, you’ll have to depart tomorrow.”
How?
“We’ll provide transportation, of course! Here, take this. If you show this token, you should be able to get a carriage.”
For what?
“You’ll enter the dungeon and scout, just as you usually do.”
What was the dungeon strategy?
“You identify any dangers, gimmicks, and other information about that floor, then the Hero’s Party enters and clears it. After that, you scout again. Repeat that, and that’s all there is to it.”
What were the dungeon’s difficulty, location, and name?
“The difficulty is mid-grade. It’s been quite a while since it was last cleared, so it’s probably fairly high even among mid-grade dungeons. That’s why it became the Hero’s Party’s destination. The dungeon’s name is ‘Abraxas’s Nest.’”
“Haa…”
After listening to everything the man had to say, I let out a sigh.
‘Well, I’m glad he didn’t outright call me a meat shield… No, I knew this was going to happen, but still…’
I sighed not because I was nervous or dissatisfied, but because I knew the difficulty of the work this man was demanding.
Scouting was a task that required more advanced skills than one might think.
All you had to do was avoid being detected by monsters, record what was where, and come back out, but the act of not being detected by monsters was itself quite difficult.
Most monsters were beast-type.
Being beast-type meant their senses were several times sharper than those of humans.
Because of that, even a slight mistake could naturally become clear evidence to them that I had intruded.
Meanwhile, the structure of a dungeon changed at set intervals.
The information provided by the advance party could suddenly become inaccurate, and if the changes were severe, scouting from scratch again would consume too much, so the scouting speed had to be fast as well.
Of course, dungeons did have side paths of their own and concepts like hiding places, so if used well, one could scout quickly without combat…
But if that were always possible, mercenaries wouldn’t be called meat shields.
‘In my case, I’m an Expert, so even if there’s a battle, it should be fine…’
For the moment, I pushed aside my miscellaneous thoughts, told the man I understood, and left the marquis’s castle.
***
On the way back to the lodging.
‘In the end, I won’t be able to meet Bell again…’
At first, I had simply been interested because she gave me a sense of déjà vu.
But ever since I saved her last time, I kept thinking of her cuteness and radiant smile, and I wanted to see her.
Affection…
Well, I suppose it would be fine to call it that.
It absolutely wasn’t that I liked her yet.
—Rustle. Rustle.
I entered the lodging and was looking through a book containing the dungeon’s location and information.
Fortunately, it wasn’t that far from Roten.
By carriage, it was the kind of place I could reach in a day.
In that case, it was worth returning to Roten once this job was over.
‘I can just see her again then. It’s not like I’m going to die.’
I sat on the bed, circulated my energy for a while, then fell asleep.
While thinking, ‘It really starts tomorrow…’