WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Dungeon Gallery's Terrifying Newbie ◈
Chapter 13: Manticore (2)
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The Manticore stood before Dreamland's entrance with nine mages from the Dark School.
"It's definitely a fledgling dungeon."
"Good thing the ten of us came."
"Yeah. If twenty of us had come, we'd have started fighting before we even entered the dungeon."
They had joined forces temporarily for their shared benefit.
A Magic Stone worth an enormous sum.
Getting their hands on one would change their lives completely, one way or another.
"Let's head in."
"Fine."
Of course.
None of them trusted one another.
How could anyone trust bastards who killed people to use and study magic?
And besides.
They were the sort who had rushed here without a shred of guilt the moment a criminal who had become a monster by killing a child tempted them with the prospect of a Magic Stone.
They had no illusions about themselves.
Every one of them was a villain, their eyes gleaming with greed and desire.
If they obtained the Magic Stone, a fight was almost guaranteed to break out.
Most had already accepted that as a given.
The Manticore knew that too.
Still.
This offered the best chance of obtaining the Magic Stone, so there was no helping it.
They had enough supplies and manpower.
The Magic Stone was practically theirs already.
What they needed to prepare for was the battle over it afterward.
Mages could use countless spells.
Most of those spells were useful for exploring dungeons.
The group led by the Manticore entered Dreamland.
* * *
Day 1 of the dungeon exploration.
"What a strange sight."
The Manticore looked at the stark white corridor stretching out ahead and offered that brief assessment.
"Now I see why the Trolls and Goblins struggled."
Goblins were the weakest of the weak, so that much was understandable, but this maze should have been a poor match for Trolls.
The Manticore had not seen it while brainwashing the Goblin back then.
A maze stood before them.
With their stupid brains, they probably could not have solved such an enormous problem.
They surely had not brought supplies, food, or drinking water.
Still, the Hobgoblins bothered the Manticore.
They were not particularly intelligent either, but had every last one of them been wiped out by a single maze?
That made no sense.
There had to be something else.
That was the Manticore's conclusion.
"Hey, I've finished detecting the area. Stop spacing out and gather over here."
Zeko, the oldest of the ten who had entered the dungeon, spoke up.
Everyone gathered in a circle around the paper where Zeko was drawing a map.
"It's complicated, but not impossible to solve."
"Judging by the corridors' lengths, we should be able to reach the Core Room in about three days."
"We brought fifteen days' worth of food and water just in case. This is pretty anticlimactic."
They were right.
The maze was vast and difficult, but not unsolvable.
As long as they left a trail and kept going, they would eventually reach the Core Room, even if they made mistakes.
"We will not need any more supplies, right?" Zeko asked the Manticore.
The lion considered it for a moment, then nodded.
They had only half a day left, their sole window to leave the dungeon without an Escape Scroll.
Escape Scrolls were absurdly expensive.
Zeko was the only one among them who possessed one, thanks to having the most money and being the oldest.
"Let's keep going. The Core Room is only two days away anyway."
Everyone nodded at the Manticore's suggestion.
"Hey, Zeko."
"Yeah?"
"Did you find anything unusual when you used Detection Magic? Traps or Minions, for example."
Zeko rubbed their chin.
"You said this is a fledgling dungeon, right? Assuming it has no way to conceal Mana, nothing showed up with Detection Magic. There are definitely no Minions, and even if there are traps, they will not be as powerful as magical traps. But..."
"But?"
"It's a little strange that I can't sense the Dungeon Master's Mana."
Mana was proof of life.
Every living creature possessed blood and Mana.
The Manticore had seen it through the Goblin's eyes.
The Dungeon Master in a white lab coat.
"What an incomprehensible bastard."
"Hm?"
"It's nothing. Let's get moving."
Whatever ability that bastard had.
It could not stop me.
* * *
Day 2 of the dungeon exploration.
"Puddles have formed on the floor. Is that bizarre device dripping liquid?"
"It looks like ordinary water. I can't sense any poison or acidity."
"Hey! I can't destroy it no matter how hard I try! What the hell is this thing!?"
The Manticore stared at the Sprinkler.
It was only dripping water, yet something about it felt deeply unsettling.
"Who kept watch?"
"Herman and Zeko."
"Nothing else happened?"
"Nothing."
"Other than it dripping tiny amounts of water, that is."
Perhaps it was animal instinct.
Something deep inside warned the Manticore that the device was dangerous.
Destroying it before moving on was obviously the best option.
Yet none of the methods they possessed could even scratch the Sprinkler.
"A device even the Manticore can't destroy... Fuck."
"They say dungeon structures can't be destroyed in the first place. We should consider the possibility that it's a structure, not a trap."
Even if they found the Sprinkler strange, there was nothing they could do about it.
They could no longer turn back.
Two whole days had passed.
"Let's keep going. We aren't far from the Core Room now."
"At this pace, we'll definitely arrive within a day."
The other nine agreed with the Manticore.
They were already more than halfway there.
The Magic Stone was within reach.
Knowing that a precious treasure lay before them gave them courage.
The group hurried onward.
* * *
Day 3 of the dungeon exploration.
"There are more puddles now."
"You don't need to rush so much. We're almost there."
Herman was right.
According to the maze map Zeko had drawn, they were near the end.
Not long after that, the group found a corridor leading to the Core Room.
"We found it!"
Everyone was overjoyed.
Dreamland was fundamentally a creepy, unpleasant place.
No matter how far they went, it never felt like they were making progress.
The unchanging scenery could easily make someone believe the space went on forever.
But they could see the end now.
They would finally escape these damned white corridors.
Just as everyone began thinking about how to take Dreamland's Magic Stone for themselves, something changed.
Rumble-
The dungeon walls moved with a violent tremor.
Just like with the Hobgoblins, the exit vanished completely.
"......"
The path to the Core Room had closed off entirely.
* * *
Day 5 of the dungeon exploration.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
"Hey... Calm down."
"How the hell am I supposed to calm down!? Every time we struggle to find the corridor leading to the Core Room, the walls move, and those fucking puddles keep multiplying! I'm going to go insane from seeing the same goddamn corridors every day!"
Herman, the least patient member of the group, exploded in anger.
Herman was right.
Dreamland's maze refused to let the Dark Mages reach the Core Room.
Even after they painfully struggled their way to the destination, the walls moved and sealed the path completely. It was enough to drive anyone mad.
They only had nine days of food and water left.
No, could they even survive for nine more days?
The steadily growing number of puddles was driving them crazy.
"There must be something we're missing."
The Manticore calmed the group.
Ordinary dungeons had a simple structure. There were Minions and traps, and if one broke through them, the dungeon was cleared.
But Dreamland was not an ordinary dungeon.
They could not approach it with ordinary thinking.
The Manticore was patient.
No matter the situation, the Manticore tried to make the most rational judgment possible.
That was why the Manticore had survived despite being branded a vicious criminal and a monster.
"Let's think about this differently. Until now, we've been obsessed with reaching the Core Room. We kept walking without paying attention to our surroundings. If we assume this situation is a dungeon trap, then continuing forward or fighting among ourselves would be no different from dancing to the Dungeon Master's tune."
The maze did not change randomly.
The trigger was reaching the corridor before the Core Room.
In that case, it was reasonable to assume there was a rule governing the maze's changes.
The Manticore's deduction temporarily put an end to their fear.
In the quiet, subdued atmosphere, the Manticore continued.
"I think we should inspect the maze as a whole first. If we investigate, we'll definitely find a weakness."
Everyone agreed with the Manticore.
"Phew. Yeah. This isn't the time to sit around. We need to take that Magic Stone."
"That's reasonable. Let's move quickly. We don't have much time."
From that point on, the Dark Mages began investigating Dreamland in earnest.
* * *
Day 6 of the dungeon exploration.
Because inexplicable puddles kept appearing, the Dark Mages stopped investigating the dungeon as a group and began exploring separately.
The Manticore's rules for the exploration were as follows.
1. Never go toward the Core Room corridor.
2. Store supplies such as food and water at the meeting point.
3. Everyone must return to the meeting point ten hours after starting their investigation.
4. Report any anomalies or unusual findings through the Communication Crystal.
The rules had been hastily made, but everyone followed them surprisingly well.
If they divided the maze into north, south, east, and west and investigated it, they could inspect everything within four days.
They focused on the north first.
Unfortunately, no luck.
The Manticore was the first to finish investigating and return, followed by Zeko, then Philip.
Four people, five people, six people.
Seven people, eight people, nine people.
They arrived at the meeting point one after another in the order they finished their investigation.
But.
The final two people arrived.
Ten people.
Eleven people.
"Unfortunately, no luck."
"Ah, this place is fucking huge."
"Can we really take the Magic Stone out of here?"
"Forget the Magic Stone. I just want to get out safely. Does anyone have an Escape Scroll?"
"You think anyone does?"
The group talked among themselves.
Their faces were hard to see beneath their hoods.
People felt safer when there were others beside them who could solve a problem together.
This was a grotesque, creepy place, but the sound of human voices soothed their unease.
But.
"Wait."
"Hm?"
"What's wrong all of a sudden?"
The Manticore spoke in a trembling voice.
"Why are there eleven of us?"
-Good thing the ten of us came.
-Yeah. If twenty of us had come, we'd have started fighting before we even entered the dungeon.
The Manticore was the first to notice the anomaly.
Only then did the others realize it too.
There had definitely been ten people exploring the dungeon.
They had taken into account that this was a fledgling dungeon that had only recently appeared.
That was why the Manticore had contacted nine useful Dark Mages.
They answered the call, arrived in Lowjinrat, and entered Dreamland together.
Everyone remembered that.
They all looked at the impatient Herman.
Herman was startled.
Not because everyone's attention had turned toward Herman.
It was because someone with Herman's exact face was staring back with an equally bewildered expression, as though they were the real Herman.
Footnotes:
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