Shujinkou Janai! - CH 46
As we moved on through the dungeon, the difficulty of the dungeon increased.
The Skeletons are becoming more and more sophisticated in their disguise, and the number of Skeletons appearing at one time has increased from the initial four to the current eight.
However, the payoff is also just as great……
[Ah, I leveled up!]
[M- Me too!]
Radd and the others had just reached the halfway point of the dungeon, and all of them had already leveled up.
[Seriously? We’ve only been in this dungeon for less than an hour……]
[I’ve already told you. The enemies here are brittle, but they give a lot of EXP.]
Of course, the monsters are good for leveling up, assuming that you have the means to respond to their surprise attacks and have an advantageous attack method against the Skeletons.
It isn’t as fast as their first exploration, but thanks to the Level-up Recovery, they’re able to go deeper without depleting their MP.
In the beginning, I was involved in the fighting too, but that stopped happening once Radd and the others got the hang of battling in this dungeon.
So far, I would say everything is going well.
……However, it’s precisely when you get used to it that B&B lays out its traps.
[……Stop. It’s an ambush.]
[Eh?]
Radd and the other gave me a dubious look when I suddenly stopped them in the middle of nowhere, but still obediently stopped.
The room we arrived in was a little spacious, but empty.
Radd and the others tried looking around, but didn’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary.
[Isn’t it that you had some sort of mistake? I can’t find anything here……]
[No…… Look up.]
Lured by my words, everyone in the room looks up.
[Uwaahh!]
A scream rose from Radd and the others’ mouths.
The center of the ceiling of the room, which was fairly high, was covered with several Skeletons.
[They were probably placed there to fall down when you walk directly under them.]
[For there to even be such a trap……]
It’s a trap set up after making everyone pay attention to the ground all this time.
The dungeon is dimly lit, so if you were to normally explore it, you would probably overlook it.
However, once you find them, this situation becomes an advantage.
[Calm down. The fact that they are all in one place makes it easier to deal with them. Aim at them from a long distance, and finish them off when they fall.]
[Y- Yeah.]
The group was still shaken up from discovering the Skeletons on the ceiling, but Radd and the others were Adventurers that were competent enough.
They shot down the Skeletons and dealt the finishing blow to them one after the other.
[Take this!]
Radd swung his sword down at the last Skeleton struggling on the ground.
Even as they had won without injuries though, the sweat on Radd’s forehead didn’t go away.
[Old man, how did you even notice those things up there?]
[With this.]
Saying this, I showed them my Decoy Gun.
The device, which had never been used in this dungeon run, now had a blue light on its switch, indicating that it was ready for use.
[But you see, the moment I stepped into this room, this light turned “red”.]
The Decoy Gun, just like the escape item “Recall Plume” is an item that “can’t be used while in a state of combat”.
So, I was taking advantage of that limitation.
While I have it out at all times, if I find myself in a situation where I can’t use it, that paradoxically proves that “the enemy is nearby”.
For me, the Decoy Gun isn’t an item that can only get the enemy’s attention once every 30 minutes.
It’s more like an excellent “exploration item” that can be infinitely used in any dungeon.
After hearing my explanation, Radd looked as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard.
[W- What the heck is going on inside your head……!]
[I was just using whatever I can get my hands on.]
And because it allows for that kind of ingenuity and tricks, I consider B&B and this world as a “god-tier game”.
Besides……
[……The real surprises are yet to come.]
[Eh?]
Shaking my head at Radd who asked back, saying it was nothing, I hurried them on.
And then……
[……We’ve arrived. This is our target.]
Soon after, we finally arrived at our target location.
※ ※ ※
It was a place with a distinctly different atmosphere from the other rooms.
It was larger than any of the other rooms we had been in, and at the far end of the room sat a large door.
[That door. Is that a puzzle?]
As Radd murmured, the door at the back had a meaningful pattern painted on it, and in front of it was a lever.
Next to the lever, there were four rotating relief carvings, two on the left and two on the right, embedded in the door.
[It’s a typical trapdoor, isn’t it? I think the door opens when setting the four relief carvings in a specific combination and pulling the lever…… but the problem is, so far, there’s nothing that could give us a clue to the pattern……]
Nuku is analyzing with a troubled look on his face, but I moved forward without minding them.
[O- Oi, Old man?]
[You guys wait right there.]
I stopped Radd, who was about to follow me, and made my way to the lever.
[……I told you to wait though.]
[I’m waiting here by Nii-san’s side.]
Sighing upon Resilia’s irrational remark, without hesitation, I put my hand on the lever.
[W- Wait, Old man! You still haven’t set up the mechanism……]
[Yeah. But that’s enough already.]
I shake off Radd’s words and pull down the lever with all my might.
Immediately after that, a grating warning sound echoed through the area.
And the strange phenomenon didn’t stop there.
[B- Bones were coming out from the ground…..!]
Bones started popping out from the ground here and there in the room.
Using the extracted parts of the bones as footholds, they gradually pulled up and revealed themselves.
[Skeletons! But this number……]
As Prana had warned, what emerged from the ground were Skeletons.
Their numbers were a total of “16”.
The number of Skeletons was four times as many as the four Skeletons we first encountered, and they were about to appear on this spot.
[Can you really just absent-mindedly look at them spawning? If you don’t whittle down their numbers before they completely come out, you’d end up being in trouble.]
[T- This b*stard! Everybody! Unleash your ranged attacks! We’ll weaken them as much as we can before they come out, and then we’ll cut their numbers down!]
Radd shout brought everyone back to their senses, and their mortal struggle began.
※ ※ ※
[D*mn it. They’ve got outrageous numbers.]
Breathing heavily, Radd and the others managed to fight off the Skeleton horde on their own and stood their ground.
Although Resilia and I helped them out a bit, it was mostly Radd and his party that fought them off.
They had become much stronger than I had expected.
[You did great. To be honest, I thought it would be more of a struggle at first.]
I clapped my hands at them, and perhaps offended by my attitude, Radd exclaimed.
[O- Old man! When you do something like that, couldn’t you have warned us beforehand……]
[Ahh, sorry about that. However, you better get used to it. There are still lots of enemies ahead after all.]
I said and went to the center of the room once more.
Seeing this, Radd’s face turned pale.
[O- Oi. Oi, Old man! No way……]
[Yes way.]
The “trap” in this room is the reason why this <Undead Labyrinth> is said to have changed the strategy of B&B.
Normally, once a monster has been defeated, it won’t respawn except after waiting for a certain set amount of days.
Adventurers usually systematically defeat a limited number of monsters to level themselves up.
In such a world……
This is a miraculous device that can bring forth an inexhaustible supply of monsters at the flick of a switch.
It’s common in games that monsters attack as a penalty for wrongly activating a device.
It’s also common in games that the same trap is triggered every time a mistake is made, since the penalty for disarming a trap can be solved by a random guess.
However, the combination of those two has caused quite an outrageous situation that shouldn’t have happened in B&B’s system.
As a result, this device allows the player access to “infinite EXP”!
Even though the game wasn’t widely known for its strategies, this technique was picked up by internet message boards and information sites that publish game tricks, and it quickly spread among the players of B&B.
And thus, the <Undead Labyrinth> trap became famous as the most famous level-up spot in the history of B&B.
[Well then, let’s go.]
Lightheartedly saying this, I put my hand on the lever again.
[W- Wait right there, Old man!]
[R- Rex-san! That is……]
While Radd and Mana flusteredly tried calling out to me, I hummingly pulled down the lever.
Immediately after that, a grating warning sound echoed through the area, and then……
And then……
[……………………………………………Arehh?]
Nothing happened.
No matter how long I waited, no bone sprang up from the ground. It was just the inorganic relief carvings staring accusingly at me.
And so it went, in deep, deep silence……
[……Well, I guess that should have been obvious.]
The words Radd mumbled gouged my heart.