WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Irevi

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Chapter 81: Undead Dungeon (2)

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"No! The thirty-six strategies I'd worked out...!!"

"...Why did you come up with so many in the first place?"

What a waste of effort.

Alicia pounded the ground and wailed.

"But it's strange... When I entered before, the door definitely didn't close even after more than twenty people went in."

"The number of people may not be the issue."

'The number of people isn't the issue.'

I thought so too.

I'd entered dungeons with dozens of civilians in the past.

Then why hadn't the soldiers been allowed inside this time?

Assuming this worked like a game, when did something like this usually happen?

'When there was a balance issue.'

It was a question anyone who'd played an RPG had probably wondered at least once. Why did only a small party enter a dungeon instead of an elite unit?

The answer was simple.

Because it wouldn't be fun otherwise.

Kaizel was stronger than I'd expected.

Though he wasn't on Adeline's level, he was at least as strong as an instructor, as befitted Alicia's personal guard.

The other soldiers weren't inferior to the academy students either. They even had Abyss Cores.

If they'd joined us, clearing the dungeon would have been far too easy.

Maybe that was why the dungeon had allowed Pasha and Mar to join our six-person party, but no one else. It had judged that any more would ruin the balance.

Still, I had no way of knowing the exact criteria.

I didn't even know why it applied only to this assault.

'Maybe each dungeon has a set limit on the strength it allows inside?'

Either way, what mattered now was the difficulty level the dungeon was designed for.

'Is it barely clearable with six people? Or do six people make it easy?'

There was no way to know.

"So what will you do now? Without Sir Kaizel and the soldiers, we can't keep both sets of torches lit at the same time."

"Ku, kuhuhu... How brazen...! But if our options have narrowed, doesn't that make what we must do all the clearer?"

Alicia said, opening her fan.

"Pasha and Mar will take one side, while Aren Bright takes the other. We'll proceed according to plan..."

"Senior. That's impossible."

It was efficient and rational, but it failed to account for Pasha and Mar's strength.

The two of them weren't as strong as the three of us.

They'd struggled even in a Tier 2 Upper Dungeon.

They'd grown a little since then, but the two of them couldn't fully handle the monsters of the Undead Dungeon alone.

We couldn't separate them from Aren Bright.

Of course, our options had narrowed.

More accurately, only one remained.

"Aren Bright."

"..."

"Can you handle both sets of torches by yourself?"

I wasn't asking for her opinion.

I was asking about her resolve.

Once we set foot in the dungeon, we couldn't leave until we killed Negaloun.

In the end, Aren Bright and I were the only ones who could handle the torches.

One of us had to guard them.

Which meant Aren Bright was the obvious choice.

The problem was that, from what I remembered, the distance between the two walls was considerable.

On top of that, until the mid-boss was defeated, the monsters of the Undead Dungeon would keep reviving.

That meant she would have to cut down an endless stream of monsters while racing back and forth between the two walls.

Until we defeated Negaloun.

"You need me, right?"

"Of course."

"Then I'll do it. As long as you need me, I'll do whatever it takes."

After answering, Aren Bright looked toward Pasha and Mar.

The sudden collapse of the original plan had left them confused as well.

Still, as aspiring Raid Corps members, they seemed to understand the situation soon enough. Both nodded with grim expressions.

"...Good. I'll trust my junior's judgment. But Aren Bright, don't let the two of them die. They only got caught up in my poor judgment."

"I'm asking you too."

At Alicia and Mine's request, all six of us soon finished preparing.

When it was time to leave, Alicia spoke again.

"We'll handle the torches that way, then... As for the strategy you proposed, junior, are you truly certain it'll work?"

"It will."

Because it had worked in the original game.

"All right. Since the plan I prepared has fallen apart anyway, I suppose trusting you is the better option."

Alicia took five torches from her bag and handed one to everyone except Mine.

Holding our torches, we rushed into the corridor.

Then...

"Let's go!"

At Alicia's shout, all six of us began sprinting through the corridor at full speed.

Our formation had five people surrounding Mine at the center.

Everyone was holding a torch instead of a weapon.

"Kirik. Kiririk."

Red eyes flickered to life throughout the darkness.

With the chilling clatter of bones striking together, skeleton soldiers emerged.

Unlike the fodder near the entrance, each one was comparable to an elite monster from an Upper Dungeon.

Normally, we'd have to fight them one at a time as we advanced.

But.

"Mine! I'm counting on you!"

"Y-Yes!"

This dungeon was exactly why I'd chosen Mine as my Follower.

'The Undead Dungeon is designed for Mine.'

"Haaah!"

Mine used Heal. A mass of holy power flew toward the nearest skeleton soldier.

Boom!

The moment Heal struck it, the monster's head exploded with a deafening blast, scattering white bones everywhere.

"Insane...! What absurd power!"

Games had a concept known as content designed for a specific character.

It referred to content made easy when a character had skills that directly countered its core mechanics.

The Doll Dungeon was designed for Cecilia or Luna, while the Undead Dungeon was designed for Mine.

But this was taking it too far.

People even said that if you brought Mine along, you couldn't help but clear the Undead Dungeon.

Could you use Heal on monsters?

You could.

There was usually no point.

What was the use of healing a monster you needed to kill?

Undead monsters were the exception.

Heal used on the undead transformed into an attack that dealt damage equal to 300% of the amount restored. It was practically an instant-kill skill.

This dungeon was blatantly telling players to use Mine.

The Undead Dungeon was the kind of place where not using Mine felt like defying the developers' intentions.

"I can't believe Heal works on monsters... How did you learn such an important fact?"

"Instructor Adeline told me."

"Are you sure we don't need to verify it?"

The only problem was that the fact Heal worked on the undead wasn't common knowledge in this world.

If Alicia hadn't let it pass so easily, I might have been accused of being a spy.

Before beginning the operation, I'd told Alicia about this and proposed our current formation.

The others would light the path with their torches and call out the monsters' positions, while Mine alone handled the attacks.

It was a solo DPS setup that preserved everyone else's Health and Mana while consuming only Mine's abundant reserves of holy power.

At the same time, it would keep Mine from seeing the monsters as much as possible, since she still had trauma from the Undead Dungeon.

That was the goal of the strategy I'd proposed.

"Mine, two approaching from three o'clock."

"Yes!"

Boom! Boom!

"Saintess! Three are approaching from behind!"

"Got it!"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

With Aren Bright's and my ability to sense presences combined, Mine was practically a siege tank.

And she could move, too.

Dozens of monsters burst apart like fireworks the moment they touched holy power.

Now this was a Saintess.

"I thought it was a crazy strategy, but it's working perfectly. I should learn from my junior."

"Is there any strategy crazier than raiding the Imperial Family's secret vault?"

"Isn't there one right here?"

The allure of a dungeon had a way of firing people up.

We were riding the momentum.

At some point, all of us had given ourselves over to the mood and pushed forward without looking back.

Pasha and Mar had also become absorbed in their roles.

"Enemy at nine o'clock!"

"Leave it to me!"

Boom!

The skeleton soldier that had nearly reached Pasha had its head blown apart.

"Are you okay, Pasha?"

"...Yeah, thanks."

"I'm the one who's grateful."

How long had we been running?

"We're here! The three-way fork starts from here!"

We had finally reached the entrance to the three-way fork, our intermediate checkpoint.

"The monsters aren't chasing us anymore."

"It was... like that last time too. After we... entered this room, the monsters stopped chasing us."

"Perhaps some kind of rule is at work."

Mine braced herself against her knees and panted heavily.

Her mental strength couldn't keep up with her holy power.

"Good work, Mine."

When I patted her shoulder, her expression eased a little.

Footnotes:

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