Chapter Two Hundred and Eighty-Four: Reaching the Sixth Dungeon Floor
“—Did something happen?”
Licht, looking at the sky with a stern expression, muttered this when the group reached the sixth floor in just three days.
The Forest’s Edge Dungeon in Ehlertt, sixth floor.
What appeared immediately after exiting the dungeon’s black gate was a cave gaping open in the mountainside. The fifth floor had been a mountain trail climbing a snowy mountain, and for some reason, hardly any monsters appeared, but the gradient was quite steep, and the riding dragon alone couldn’t pull the wagon.
The knights ended up pushing the wagon, and Karen, who could no longer leisurely ride in it, had gotten down and walked, so her breathing was labored for the first time in a while.
Just as Karen caught her breath and was about to ask Licht what he meant, a knight who had gone to scout ahead in the cave returned and said:
“Knight Captain! This is serious!”
“What happened?”
“Here—it’s an adamantite deposit!”
“What!?”
It was Alban who shouted.
Led by Alban, the knights filed into the cave in a group.
When she noticed, Licht’s figure was gone too.
Left behind, Karen exchanged glances with Sepl and Urte.
“Magic metal deposits are found above the tenth floor of dungeons, in the shallow floors…?”
“No, it’s quite rare. Normally, magic metals like adamantite, mithril, and orichalcum are said to only appear in the deep layers of dungeons.”
“Once Master Julius conquers the tenth floor, this place will quickly become a popular dungeon with adventurers.”
At Sepl and Urte’s words, Karen gulped.
If the current deepest layer, the tenth floor, were conquered once, monsters would stop overflowing from the dungeon’s depths for a while.
If they didn’t conquer the twentieth floor, which would become the next lowest level, monsters would eventually overflow from the dungeon’s depths again—but for several decades, or perhaps even hundreds of years until then, this dungeon would continue to be popular.
If he conquered such a dungeon, Julius would once again claim the name of a hero.
—And yet, Julius, who should have reached the tenth floor already, still hadn’t conquered the dungeon.
There were still no signs suggesting a conquest.
“There’s also talk that when you conquer an unexplored dungeon, the entire sphere of influence of that dungeon becomes the conqueror’s territory, meaning if Master Julius conquers it, you will become the wife of this territory’s lord, Little Karen!?”
“No, if it’s conquered with the lord’s request for cooperation, it should become that lord’s property. Since it’s being conquered under the lord’s name with the hunting festival as the pretext, if Master Julius conquers it, the rights to this dungeon and its sphere of influence should rightfully become Earl Ehlertt’s.”
In other words, the Ehlertt Earldom would become powerful again.
Although she did not belong to the House of Ehlertt, Karen nodded with satisfaction, her thinking now completely aligned with them.
“Haa. They should’ve just conquered it on their own.”
“That would just cause friction with neighboring territory lords. You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“I’ve never even dreamed of trying to conquer a dungeon’s boss floor myself!”
“Is that something to say with pride? …Well, I guess it’s much better than being reckless.”
At Urte’s exasperated words, Sepl laughed carelessly.
Because Sepl knew his limits, he was alive—and Karen’s father hadn’t come back.
Karen nodded deeply.
“Really, knowing your limits is so important.”
“Look, I know this myself, but if you keep saying ‘know your limits’ over and over, I’m gonna cry, okay?”
An adult man about the same age as her father, trying to weaponize tears.
Just as Karen sent him a lukewarm gaze, someone shouted inside the cave.
“What was that?”
“One of the knights’ voices.”
“Maybe a monster appeared! …I should stay here, right?”
“Obviously.”
Sepl and Urte nodded simultaneously.
If something had happened, Karen shouldn’t go.
Since all three agreed, Karen approached the riding dragon.
She’d been told to cling to the riding dragon if something happened.
“Lumi, are you okay?”
“Gyuru.”
The riding dragon Lumi tilted its head, looking at Karen. Though a domesticated monster, being a monster, it was sensitive to the presence of other monsters. Lumi became somewhat restless when monsters appeared. But now it was calm.
Just as Karen was looking at the cave, wondering if perhaps no monsters had appeared, a knight came flying out from inside. It was the knight who appeared the oldest among those led by Alban.
He was carrying a black stone about the size of a pickling weight in his arms.
When he recognized Karen and her supporters, he shouted with a desperate expression:
“I’m going down! I don’t want to be a knight anymore! I’m sick of dungeons, monsters—everything!”
“Ahh, he’s lost it.”
“Yeah, there are always people who go crazy in dungeons.”
Watching the knight yelling wildly, Sepl and Urte had relaxed attitudes.
Karen had also seen people who, having entered a dungeon, became too frightened.
Sepl laughed and said:
“I mean, he’s not going down; he need to go up. To get out of here.”
“Shut up! You’re the crazy ones for being so calm in a place like this!”
The knight shouted at Sepl and clutched the stone to his chest. He was probably pouring magical power into it.
Probably adamantite. It should be terribly heavy, but magic metals felt lighter than their actual weight when magical power was poured into them.
When he found his rucksack that he’d left outside the cave, he stuffed the adamantite into it.
“With this much adamantite ore, I can live comfortably for a while… What premonition? What trap!?”
“Noble sir. When you get back, you should check your magical power density. You might be suited to being a mage.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
People with naturally high magic density are less prone to magical intoxication, but they may become fearful inside dungeons.
Waltride was probably this type too.
In return, those with high magic density were often highly skilled in using magic.
…Though Waltride couldn’t use magic because she couldn’t understand magical theory.
Urte’s advice didn’t seem to reach the current knight either.
“Uncle Sepl, Urte, we have to stop him—”
The knight, who had stuffed the adamantite in his rucksack and shouldered it, turned around at Karen’s unfinished words.
“How dare you bring me to a place like this! You poisonous woman!”
The knight glared hatefully at Karen, then ran toward the dungeon gate connecting to the fifth floor and disappeared.
“We have to chase him!”
“Ah, wait, Little Karen!”
Karen crossed through the gate chasing the knight.
Urte and Sepl also crossed through and came back to the fifth floor’s snowy mountain slope.
The knight hadn’t gone far.
It was an open, steep, snowy mountainside.
With good visibility, they immediately spotted him.
He seemed to be struggling to descend the snowy slope while carrying the heavy adamantite.
And he immediately noticed that Karen, Sepl, and Urte had chased after him.
“I’m not going back!”
“Karen! He’s saying that, so leave him alone. With D-rank level strength, he can easily get back from here alone. There’s no point trying to hold back someone whose eyes have been blinded by greed at the sight of magic metal.”
“Urte’s right, Little Karen. In this dungeon, even an E-rank could make it back. This fifth floor doesn’t even have monsters. All that’s left are the shallow floors above the fourth floor.”
“Even so, it’s a dungeon, isn’t it? When we don’t know what might happen—”
“If you’re going to act selfishly in such a place, you need to be prepared, Karen.”
Intimidated by Urte, Karen bit her lip tightly.
Originally, the knights had not planned to enter the dungeon at all. They had decided to enter the dungeon in response to Karen’s request.
Among them, this man had likely followed along, unable to refuse.
If he had a constitution that made him fear dungeons, just how frightened must he have been?
Karen clenched her fists.
“I dragged him into this… I can’t leave him alone.”
“Little Karen, hey.”
“Anyway, let’s catch him until Sir Gottfried and the rest come back—”
Just as Karen was about to propose discussing what to do with the panicking knight, the man ahead suddenly tilted sideways.
“Waa—AAAAAAHHHHHH!!?”
The knight’s figure disappeared, but his scream continued to be heard while receding.
Sepl grabbed Karen as she tried to rush forward in panic.
Urte went to the spot where the knight had disappeared and said:
“—It’s a big crack in the ice. Looks like his foot got caught in a hole covered by snow, and he fell.”
“A crevasse…!”
Karen gasped and approached the edge of the crevasse, looking down into the pitch-black hole.
