WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Irevi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 25: Trap

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“Get down!”

When the Expedition Team Member at the front shouted, a massive chunk of metal came flying in from the left.

It was headed straight for me, standing at the far left. I could dodge it, but then someone else would get hit.

-Bang!

I pulled out my shield, lowered my stance slightly, and blocked it. The chunk of metal was so heavy that my arm went numb even through the block.

“Fuck...!”

How many times had this happened already? This dungeon was packed with traps instead of monsters.

The Open Community had said it was just a place where Lizardmen roamed, but since this was its first discovery, there were far too many differences.

Would the Lizardmen move in and settle here once the dungeon was cleared?

“Tch, this is annoying.”

I knocked the chunk of metal aside and rolled my shoulder. It throbbed, but I'd barely lost any HP.

“Are you all right? Nothing broken?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“That's a relief. You're incredibly strong, aren't you?”

Windsor sounded impressed. The other Non-Player Characters moved ahead without a word and dismantled the trap.

The ruins exploration had been going like this for a while now.

The Expedition Team Members could read the writing in the ruins and operate its various mechanisms.

They moved through the ruins in positions similar to mine, finding traps ahead of time and dismantling them to clear the way.

Of course, they set off far more traps than they dismantled, so I was the one constantly getting put through hell.

There were traps like the one just now, which hurled chunks of metal or rocks at me. Others fired blades or arrows, and at one point, the floor had even collapsed.

Still, I could handle them well enough on my own. These traps were probably designed with third-floor Challengers in mind in the first place.

And surprisingly, this barrage of traps wasn't bad for improving my skills.

I was getting faster at responding to traps that activated without warning. It felt like I was starting to get the timing down.

[Intuition Lv.1]

Maybe this [Intuition] skill was helping. If I kept dodging traps by feel, its level might rise.

“Enough already. Let's get moving.”

Of course, that was one thing. It was still annoying as hell.

Come to think of it, I'd been speaking casually to them for a while now.

* * *

The dungeon exploration was bound to be slow even without the traps.

“Hmm, this section is quite complicated. That's the third time already.”

We had passed through the same place three times already. This dungeon wasn't just a simple maze.

It was a shifting maze where several mechanisms operated in real time, changing the paths.

According to Windsor, the correct path would only open if we passed through certain rooms in a specific order.

The Expedition Team Members were reading the writing on the walls and trying to work out the sequence, but even that wasn't going smoothly.

They had to go through trial and error several times to find the right route, and every failure brought another barrage of traps.

“Are you sure we're going the right way?”

“Ahem. We're doing our best.”

I wasn't good with mazes or puzzles either, so there was nothing I could do except complain to the Expedition Team Members.

[Third-Floor Ruins Dungeon Map (Complete)]

Even the completed map posted on the community was useless in this dungeon, where everything kept changing.

We'd probably have to clear the dungeon completely and disable the mechanism that changed the layout.

-Pew, pew.

I heard two arrows being fired from somewhere. Quietly, I raised my shield.

I'd been sharpening all five senses to react to traps in time, and now I could even do this.

-Ting!

The arrows bounced away, and the Expedition Team Members, who noticed them a moment later, jumped in surprise.

“W-What was that?!”

The silent arrows must have creeped them out, because every Expedition Team Member's face went pale at once.

I was the one who'd almost gotten hit, so why were these guys so terrified?

Windsor and the other Expedition Team Members had never even come close to getting caught by a trap.

Most traps seemed to activate as if drawn toward me, standing in an awkward position, while they noticed the larger traps and avoided them easily.

Yet they were still panicking like that. Maybe they were just cowards or something.

For people who had crawled into a place crawling with Lizardmen to hunt for treasure, they were way too scared.

Then again, they were all just Non-Player Characters. Complaining about them was probably pointless.

* * *

After several more hours, we arrived at a huge cavern.

It was much wider than any of the areas we'd passed through so far, and the elaborate writing and murals carved into the walls stood out.

This place, which looked almost like a massive temple, was somewhere I'd seen in an Open Community strategy post.

It was one of the few safe zones in the middle of the ruins dungeon.

With how the dungeon's layout constantly changed, it was hard to call it the middle, but it should still be a safe zone.

“Oh, this... looks like some kind of myth.”

Windsor wiped the dust from the wall with his palm and read what was written there with a serious expression.

Curious myself, I slowly examined the murals.

I couldn't read the writing, but I could get a rough sense of things from the pictures.

“Lizardmen?”

Most of the figures in the murals looked like Lizardmen to me.

They were armed, bipedal lizards. Of course they were Lizardmen. What else could they be?

These weren't ruins in Lizardman territory. They were Lizardman ruins.

Well, they were a race with their own society, so it wouldn't be strange for them to have some cultural heritage.

But did that make us grave robbers? Any treasure sleeping here would naturally be a Lizardman artifact.

Not that it mattered much for someone like me, who killed every Lizardman I saw.

“Hmm... I see. It seems these ruins are where the Lizardmen sealed something called ‘lightning.’”

Windsor spoke after reading the writing. Looking at the murals, I'd guessed as much.

The paintings showed armed Lizardmen and a white Lizardman holding a strange-looking sword before them.

Above the white Lizardman was what looked like a depiction of lightning.

That strange sword was probably a weapon that wields lightning. Had it been taken from the white Lizardman and sealed here?

“So it's a unique weapon?”

That was probably the final reward for this quest.

I'd barely even used the weapon I got from clearing the second-floor boss, yet I might be changing weapons already.

* * *

Windsor and the Expedition Team Members spent some time studying the murals before seeming to reach a conclusion.

“It's getting late, so how about we rest here for the night? You must be quite tired too.”

“I'm fine.”

“We've found where the treasure is, but it'll take a long time to get there. Are you really all right?”

I nodded. How long could it possibly take? I could climb over a mountain without breaking a sweat right now.

“Hmm... I'll be honest. You may be fine, but we aren't.”

Windsor scratched his head awkwardly as he said that. If that was the case, I had no intention of forcing us onward.

There was a good chance the quest wouldn't progress without these guys anyway.

“You should've said that from the start.”

A simple camp was soon set up in the cavern. They lit a campfire, pitched tents, and the Expedition Team Members even started cooking.

-Bubble, bubble.

A pale meat soup boiled in a large pot that they'd pulled out of who knew where. They were making something like pork-and-rice soup.

I left the Expedition Team Members sitting together and sharing the meat soup, then took a White Roll from my inventory and ate it by myself.

“What are you doing over there alone? Come over here and have a bowl! You used a lot of strength today, so you need a proper meal!”

“I'm good.”

“Don't be like that. How could a tiny piece of bread fill you up? Don't hold back!”

Maybe Windsor couldn't stand watching me like that, because he practically forced a bowl of meat soup into my hands.

“You know we're in trouble if you're out of energy. I'll keep bothering you until you empty that bowl.”

It looked like he really would keep insisting, so I had no choice but to accept it.

“Good choice! Eat while it's still warm. A person needs to keep both their belly and back warm, after all.”

Ignoring Windsor's chattering, I slurped down the meat soup.

It looked like pork-and-rice soup, and it tasted like it too.

I'd been surviving on nothing but sweet White Rolls for so long that the salted broth felt incredibly intense.

The rich flavor of fat rendered from the small pieces of meat blended perfectly with the saltiness.

“Whew...”

I hadn't intended to eat in a hurry, but the bowl in my hands was empty in no time.

Huh. This was really good.

Had I been eating too many White Rolls until now? I never thought a meat soup like this would taste so amazing.

If I'd eaten something like the Cheese Tonkatsu Lunchbox from the first floor, I would've completely lost it.

“Haha, would you like another?”

I accepted the second bowl Windsor offered without refusing.

* * *

Maybe it was because I'd eaten warm food for the first time in a while, but sleepiness came crashing down on me after I finished the meat soup.

“You must have been more tired than you let on. We'll stand watch, so get some sleep.”

This time, I didn't refuse Windsor's kindness. I took a small tent from my inventory, set it up, and immediately lay down.

It was just a blanket spread over a stone floor, but it felt cozier than most inn beds.

Before I even had time to wonder about it, I fell asleep almost instantly.

-Stab!

A little while later, I woke up with a blade piercing my neck.

Footnotes:

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