Raon, Liria, and the unidentified man, who had barely managed to hold back the goblins swarming toward them, stared blankly at Dorn as he rampaged ahead.
Wielding a club and a one-handed sword, Dorn was running wild, scattering goblin blood and flesh.
Just as Dorn had nearly killed off the mass of goblins, he left a single goblin alive and stopped his slaughter, his upper body swaying back and forth.
“Haaah, huff! Haaaah, huff! Haaaaah, huff! Haaaah!”
Dorn, gasping in and out, unable to control his breathing at all, collapsed backward.
It had only looked as though he were swaying his upper body because his breathing had grown so ragged.
“Brother Dorn!”
Raon shot out like an arrow to help Dorn, and Liria, who had also been about to rush forward, saw there was only one goblin left and glanced at the nameless man.
As Liria slowly backed away and tried to aim her spear, the man glared at her, let out a small groan, and slid down against the wall to land on his backside.
Liria’s round ears perked up as she looked him over, and she saw that he, too, was a mess, scratched all over by goblin claws.
After swiftly finishing off the goblin Dorn had failed to deal with, Raon headed toward Dorn, who was lying flat on his back with his head resting on a dead, bleeding goblin.
“Brother! Party leader! Are you all right?”
“Breath… Haaah, huff! Haaah… breath.”
Raon understood that Dorn was saying he was out of breath and felt relieved.
Raon wiped Dorn’s filthy face, splattered with blood and fat, with his own clothes.
The goblin blood that sprayed droplets from Dorn’s nostrils each time he inhaled and exhaled was wiped away, leaving red streaks behind.
Dorn was satisfied that the bothersome droplets of blood had been cleaned off.
Once he kept catching his breath and became able to move little by little, Liria came running over with the potion for the first floor that she had desperately protected.
Goblin corpses lay everywhere, bleeding all over the place, so Liria had to hop over the obstacles to keep from injuring her ankles.
Seeing Liria bring the potion, Raon helped Dorn sit up and supported him by slinging one of Dorn’s arms over his shoulder.
“Sister Liria. We can’t use the potion here, so let’s move to where the bags are.”
“All right. I’ll help support him too.”
While the two of them were absorbed in helping Dorn along, Dorn looked at the nameless man who had brought the goblins with him.
He had one leg, scratched by goblin claws and oozing blood, sunk in a pool of goblin blood, and was only letting out small groans.
His shadowed eyes seemed to meet Dorn’s gaze.
Dorn did not bother to say out loud what anyone could see: that the man was the more urgent case, and that if they intended to save him, they had to treat him first.
In the meantime, Raon and Liria laid Dorn down on a part of the floor not stained with blood, lifted his torn quilted armor to check his wounds, and cut away the pants that were clearly damaged below the thigh to expose the injured area.
As Raon looked back and forth between the wounds and the potion, Dorn, whose breathing had recovered considerably, said,
“Raon. Dip your finger into the potion bottle, then touch it to my wounds and apply it.”
Dorn had many wounds, and the potion did not look like it would be enough.
When Raon took off his glove and reached for the potion, Dorn hurriedly stopped him.
“No, no! First you have to wash my wounds and your hands with water from the waterskin.”
When Liria quickly brought over a waterskin, Dorn leaned against the wall and stood.
He wanted the water he poured to pass over as wide an area as possible.
The water poured below his solar plexus washed away Dorn’s blood and the bacteria invisible to the eye.
Perhaps it was fortunate that they had faced this variable on the night they entered.
If this had happened on the third or fourth day, even after killing all the goblins, they would have died of infection because they had no potions or waterskins left.
They used several waterskins to wash even inside the wounds.
When Dorn nodded his permission, Raon, after washing his hands, moved his finger back and forth between the potion and Dorn’s wounds.
“Ugh…”
Dorn clenched his teeth and endured the pain.
“Raon, you bastard… Don’t rub it in. Dab it on…!”
“Yes, yes!”
The wounds dabbed with potion began to heal faintly.
Liria bit her lower lip and checked Dorn’s wounds that had been treated, the number of wounds that had not yet been treated, and the amount of potion remaining, then took another potion out of her own bag.
From what Dorn could tell at a glance, it did not seem to be for the first floor, but for the third floor.
“Raon, once you use up that potion, use this one too.”
Raon did not notice the subtle difference between the potions and simply nodded.
“Liria. What floor is that potion for? It doesn’t look like one for the first floor.”
“This one is for the third floor. My father said I mustn’t die in the labyrinth.”
“Thank you, Liria. Should we pay for it out of the party funds?”
“What do you mean, pay? I just had my life saved! It wasn’t my money anyway, and besides, more than the potion, you played a bigger role than any potion, Brother Dorn. Anyway… let’s just say it never existed.”
“All right.”
Dorn smiled as he watched his wounds heal.
He could not feel them healing through sensation, but seeing it with his own eyes, they really were closing up.
When Liria held the area around a somewhat deeper wound and pressed the split flesh together, even the larger wounds healed easily.
Once all the treatment was finished, Liria held out the remaining potion.
“Just in case, drink the little bit that’s left.”
“Did neither of you get hurt?”
“We have two more potions for the first floor.”
“All right. Thank you.”
Dorn decided he would at least compensate them for the first-floor potions from the party funds.
Wearing a top riddled with holes and pants that had been cut into hot pants, Dorn approached the man leaning against the wall without moving and placed a hand beneath his nose.
The breathing of the man who had been groaning only moments ago had stopped.
If Dorn had acted as coolly and swiftly as he did when he woke from sleep and gave precise orders to his party members, this man might have lived too.
‘But… to that extent? It’s not like I’m Jesus.’
For Dorn, who was just a “person,” it was truly a matter of, “Me? Right now? Why?”
Not Jesus, not Shakyamuni, not Confucius, not Socrates—just “Dorn” had no obligation to risk his life to save the man who had brought that enormous goblin wave upon them.
However, he did not turn away from the fact that he had indirectly killed a person.
He would not mentally flee from the slaughter he had committed until now, nor from the slaughter he would commit in the future. He would acknowledge it and move forward.
That was the mindset of Dorn, who did not overestimate himself.
…Separate from that, he still had to search the man’s pockets.
◆ ◆ ◆
After spending a long time reorganizing atop the traces of the goblin wave, Dorn’s party shouldered their bags, held their lanterns, and gathered in one place.
“There are two options.”
Raon and Liria silently focused on Dorn’s words, which seemed a little hurried.
“First, we move in the direction the wave came from. The advantage is that, unlike us, we can collect the equipment of the explorers who fell victim to the wave. The disadvantage is that we almost certainly won’t be able to find an exit portal. There’s also the hope that we might be able to replenish the many waterskins we used up.”
Dorn looked at the one-handed sword the goblin had been carrying and the one-handed sword of the man who had brought the wave.
“The second is to move in the opposite direction of the wave. The advantage is that the odds of finding an exit portal are high. The path the wave passed through probably doesn’t have an exit portal, so if we go the opposite way, there might be one. What do you think?”
After thinking for a moment, Liria spoke first.
“I think we should go in the direction the wave came from. First of all, we’re tired now and short on sleep, but I think there are losses we need to make up for. In reality, the number of goblins we killed was thirty-two, and compared to the number of goblins we could have killed during a normal exploration, that’s very few. In contrast, the supplies we used up were enormous.”
Liria spoke while looking into Raon’s eyes, which seemed to show he was not thinking much at all.
“So, if we leave like this, it’s a total loss!”
“Ah, we can’t take a loss.”
Receiving Liria’s gaze, Raon nodded.
“Good. Then let’s start farming against the wave right away. Other explorers might take things first, so we need to hurry.”
With two one-handed swords tied to the side of his bag, Dorn strode forward, lantern light leading the way.
◆ ◆ ◆
Dorn examined the goblin claw marks left at the intersections, chose their path, and thought,
‘Rebar is good, but it’s a shame I can’t run for long.’
On Earth, it was close to common knowledge.
The fact that the incomparable strength “humans” possessed over other beasts was endurance.
The current Dorn had lost one of the strengths of “humans” and gained one of the strengths of “beasts.”
In any case, it was enough that he fought well.
After passing through an intersection and walking for some time, they saw the “traces of fallen explorers” they had been searching for.
It seemed these people had also encountered the wave while camping.
One had died after running a short distance, and two had been attacked and killed while sleeping.
The reason was that they had set up camp near the next corner.
They would only have seen the wave after it turned the corner, and whether the night watch had dozed off or not, their response had been late.
The three of them felt somewhat uneasy as they searched through the explorers’ belongings.
Quilted armor in decent condition, spare pants, intact weapons and shields, lanterns unbroken by goblin footsteps, several potions for the first floor, full waterskins…
The magic stone pouch was thin.
Comparing the waterskins and the magic stone pouch, it seemed these people had also met their end on the first night after entering the labyrinth.
Dorn first changed his pants and also swapped his quilted armor for an intact set.
Raon and Liria threw away blankets, statues of unknown use, broken lanterns, and the like, and packed items of value compared to their weight and volume into one of the explorers’ bags.
After roughly finishing the cleanup, Dorn’s party gathered in one place and chewed on jerky.
“Considering the number of goblins we dealt with, I’d say there’s at most one more group of victims.”
Thirty-two goblins meant the fleeing man had encountered roughly ten groups of goblins, and if so, he would have encountered explorers no more than twice.
If there had been more explorers than that, Dorn would have run into more explorers while exploring alone.
After they farmed the supplies of one group of fallen explorers, the path led to a four-way intersection.
They could see lantern light pouring out sharply from the right side, which was hidden by a wall.
It was so bright that it was embarrassing to compare it to Dorn’s party’s dim lighting.
Dorn stopped walking, whispered to his party members to turn off all their lanterns, and pressed himself against the wall.
A group of explorers shining a powerful light stopped in the middle of the intersection.
The explorer at the front shone the lantern he was holding toward Dorn’s group.
“Ugh!”
Dorn squinted against the powerful beam of light and raised one arm to cover his eyes.
“You there! Why are you hiding? Aren’t you going to the second floor?”
A rough voice asked.
Dorn could not see because of the backlight, but he thought the speaker was probably a dependable warrior.
“Wait! Please just go on. We aren’t going to the second floor!”
“…Dorn?”
“…? Who are you?”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Wahaha! You formed a party to explore the second floor? Good thinking!”
The identity of the explorers with the strong light was the party of “Kerolf,” someone Dorn had met in the labyrinth city.
“Kerolf! That’s enough. Let’s go. We have a long way ahead of us.”
“Uh! Yeah! Got it, I’m coming now!… Dorn. Make it back safely. For reference, if you turn two corners in the direction we came from, there’s an exit portal!”
When a woman holding a staff shouted, Kerolf, who had been talking with Dorn, hurried back to the middle of the intersection.
“Thank you, Kerolf!”
Without even looking back, Kerolf waved and ran to the side of a very tall warrior.
After Kerolf’s party left, Dorn’s party also relit the lanterns they had turned off and set out.
“That was cool.”
“Yes… it was cool.”
The sight of a party formed by gathering several different classes in one place struck a chord in the men’s hearts.
To Dorn, it also looked like a “superhuman melting pot.”
Liria asked in an indifferent tone,
“Are we exiting as we are?”
After thinking for a moment, Dorn shone his lantern toward the right, where Kerolf’s party had come from, and said,
“Let’s do that. There’s no need to deliberately ignore an exit portal we’ve found.”
●
Stamina: 10/70
Status: Sleep Deprivation, Fatigue
●
This was Dorn’s status window as viewed through Self-Reflection.
Even his stamina, whose maximum had increased after gaining Rebar, was hitting rock bottom.