arc01 · 013-ep13
Episode 13: A First
With the Dungeon Research Club's survival secured, I no longer had to think about club stuff at all. Seriously, all the thanks in the world to Aizawa.
On the way home, I checked my phone and found messages waiting in the Dungeon Research Club group on my chat app. Best to reply properly.
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Makoto (President): Reported to the advisor without a hitch, and the Dungeon Research Club's survival is officially decided. Glad to have you both aboard!
Midori: Looking forward to it~
Takeru: Looking forward to it. By the way, did you still want to grow the membership?
Midori: Um, if possible, I'd honestly be happier if we stayed a small group, just like this……
Makoto (President): I'm not dead set on growing it either, honestly? Maybe I'll just take the poster down from the bulletin board
Takeru: Same here—new members mean greetings and hassle, so that'd be a big help
Makoto: Rooooger
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All set. Everything's running smoothly—feels great.
◇
Now then—your humble narrator has arrived at the dungeon.
Today I'd finally take my first crack at floor 7. With 【Plunder】 at last ready for action, the occasion felt pretty momentous.
So I blazed through floors 1 through 6.
Just the travel takes a good two hours or so. If I totally ignored the monsters and just sprinted, maybe I could get it down to one?
Honestly, I'm running at a pace that would smash the full marathon record, and it still takes this long. Really makes you feel how massive dungeons are.
"Alright, made it."
I'd reached the entrance to floor 7.
Inside, floor 7 was a bit more convoluted than floors 4–6. It was still a wide-open space, but large rocks jutted up blocking sightlines, and I could see water here and there—ponds and the like. Plenty of spots to hide in, too, so I'd better watch out for ambushes.
The monsters on floor 7: goblins and slimes. Sounds thin, I know—it's not. Each goblin carries a different weapon and moves differently. And slimes come in all sorts of colors—red, blue, light blue, green, yellow, brown—and each color uses the magic that goes with it. Like night and day compared to the monotony so far.
"And one's already out to greet me."
A ways off stood a single goblin. Armed with a short sword, by the look of it. It hadn't noticed me yet, though… First, I'd pitch a nearby rock to lure it my way.
Fwoosh!
"Gigi!?"
Maybe I'd thrown from too far, since it missed—but it noticed me all right, and came charging. Pretty quick, too.
It closed in wildly flailing its short sword, so I checked it with the steel pipe and froze it in place.
"Wide open."
I circled to the opposite side from its sword hand and touched the goblin with my bare hand.
(Plunder!)
No response. A fail, then.
Once another opening showed, I slipped around into its blind spot—
(Plunder!)
『Successfully plundered the target's weapon』
There it is! And just like that, the short sword appeared in my empty hand. It clung to me unnaturally, like it was drawn there—so this was what plundering felt like.
Weapon gone, the goblin panicked—I stabbed it with the stolen short sword and disengaged.
That one blow had apparently finished it: the goblin broke into particles of light and vanished.
The goblin was gone, but the short sword in my hand remained. In other words, the plundered weapon was now fully mine.
Normally, a weapon a monster uses vanishes along with the monster when it dies. Instead, there's an ultra-rare chance it drops alongside the magic stone as a rare drop.
"Now this… could come in handy for lining my pockets."
Still, even with my levels up, I never expected it to die this easily.
If this was how it went, goblins should be no trouble to hunt, and selling off a pile of stolen weapons ought to cover a nice new one. I'd half planned to just use whatever I plundered, but this thing looked beat to hell at a glance. And if I was going shopping anyway, I wanted to be picky about the looks, too.
But that raised the question: skip the slimes and focus on goblins?
I did figure I ought to fight a slime at least once, but from what I'd researched beforehand, the matchup looked bad. I could probably beat one, but… I wasn't exactly thrilled about it.
Maybe because I was thinking that—speak of the devil. I ran into a light-blue slime. Light blue was ice, if I remembered right.
Boing, boing, boing.
"W-what an incredibly deflating sound…"
Once I got somewhat closer, it fired palm-sized chunks of ice from its mouth (?). Surprisingly sharp—get hit and they'd pierce you no problem.
"Hup."
I dodged with ease and struck the slime with the steel pipe.
Boing.
"Knew it…!"
That's right. Blunt blows get absorbed by all that softness. Which meant—
"Oraah!"
I stabbed the short sword I'd just acquired, aiming for the faintly visible core.
The tip hit something hard—it must have dealt damage.
"Skweee!?!"
Furious, the slime blasted cold air from its entire body. Whoops—it clipped me for an instant, and even that took a bite out of me. First hit I'd taken in a good while.
"That's an insane cold. Prolonged exposure and you'd freeze to death for sure, huh."
That attack didn't last long either, though—one more stab with the short sword, same as before, and the slime turned into particles of light.
Looking at the short sword afterward, it had melted a little. That's the effect of 【Corrosion】, present in every slime. A skill that melts whatever enters a slime's body—weapon or person, no questions asked, it just melts you. Dammit. Yeah, really not worth the trouble…
Decision made. Slimes: skipped, same as the turtles.
For floors 7–9, I'd hunt goblins—farming weapons and levels in parallel.
For now, I'd stick with the steel pipe—the weapon I knew best.
I wrapped a towel around the bare blade and stowed the short sword in my backpack.
While I was at it, two slimes came bobbing closer.
Sorry, folks—not in the mood to deal with you two.
Putting 【Martial Arts】 and my AGI to full use, I dashed clean past the pair of them.
"Later!"
And so, to the sound of boing boing behind me, I went looking for my next quarry.