Chapter 161
Our dungeon progression was completely different from the other parties.
With two overwhelmingly strong all-rounders, there was nothing for Alessia and I to do in the first place.
I even had a moment of guilt where I thought, “Are we really doing this?”.
“Everyone stop──”
Antonio, who was leading the way, raised his right hand and shouted.
At the same time, tension began to build around us.
Until now, if Antonio sensed an enemy before Parnello did, Parnello would rush over and wipe them out, but this time, Parnello kept his head down and watched the situation silently.
Slowly, we made our way to Antonio’s back, and we could see why he had seen us and asked us to stop.
The dark forest had ended and a white desert had emerged, as if a line had been drawn to indicate a new place.
“Don Vivaldi. Have you ever seen a dungeon like this before?”
“I’ve never seen a dungeon with such a dramatic change of environment. A white desert.”
“…… This texture. I think it’s bones.”
Alessia murmurs with her hand on the white sand in front of her and the others are stunned.
“A desert made of bones, that’s horrible.”
“Has Lord Parnello ever seen a dungeon like this?”
“I’ve not been sent to many dungeons in the first place, so I’ve never seen anything like this.”
At the sight of it, a dungeon with these characteristics popped into my head.
“……The Undead Lair?”
The words slip out of my mouth and Parnello turns his head to look at me.
“The Undead Lair?”
“Yeah, I think I heard about it in the Academy.”
I actually remember going into it in the game, but it doesn’t matter.
Of all the dungeons in the game, there’s only one A-grade dungeon where the forest terrain ends and a white desert emerges.
The Abyssal Forest, created by the grudges and fears of the dead.
The other is the Desert of Bones, created by the crumbling of their flesh.
This is what we gamers used to call them.
‘The Undead Lair.’
At first, the dark map and mobs assault the player’s eyes and senses, and then the bright backgrounds and endless hordes of undead.
It was a scourge of sorts, spewing undead out of the dungeon if you didn’t take care of it.
‘But why are they coming out of here?’
According to the original story, the grudges of powerful creatures are built up, so it’s a mass destruction event or something like that, and it’s practically an unpredictable catastrophe that comes after the disposal of a being with such high morale….
Ah, I remembered.
“Parnello, the waste disposal site was definitely near this dungeon, right?”
“Yes, but why did it suddenly become…….”
“It’s just, I think I know why this dungeon is here.”
The materials from Fafnir that we recently brought here and thoroughly dismantled.
I couldn’t think of any other connection than the waste in the process.
“I’ve heard that dungeons like this are created by the accumulation of vast amounts of resentment.”
The snow-white desert that emerges after the steaming forest of grudges looks beautiful on the surface, but it’s anything but.
“Get ready, everyone! From what I’ve heard, the undead will be here soon!”
Bone Desert, which is basically the second phase of Undead Lair, is played in a defense format.
Hordes of undead spawning infinitely from the bones, and players fending them off.
A dungeon so full of malice that even if you manage to escape the undead onslaught, you’ll never be able to do so thanks to a nasty rule that says you can’t escape unless you kill a certain number of them.
As I pulled out the Tommy and prepared myself for what was to come, Antonio trudged toward the bone desert.
“Don Antonio?”
“Don’t worry.”
He walks out into the desert in silence, his hair whipping in the harsh desert wind.
And then.
“This is enough.”
He mumbles something unintelligible.
-Kirik──.
Countless bony hands began to rise up from the vast white desert.
-Kirik.
-Kirik?
-Kagak!
Thousands, tens of thousands of skeletons, twisting and turning, rising from the ground like a horror movie from the past.
It was a violence of numbers that could hardly be called a catastrophe but Antonio is unmoved by the shocking sight.
“It’s light, so it should fly well.”
As he looked at the scene as if it were nothing, he snapped his fingers.
Whizz, whizz, whizz──
──The desert began to move.
It wasn’t an expression, or a description. It was just the wind blowing from the desert, and the endless bone desert began to move.
Kie-e-e-e!
-Crackle! Crackle!
In the process, skeletons that would normally crawl out of the ground are swept up by the wind and blown into the air, then torn apart by the wind and turned back into bones.
With a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, he maneuvered the terrain-destroying winds with aplomb.
“This is……Bevalt bloodline ability.”
The Bevalt Family didn’t just control the wind, but ruled it.
The wind swirls around him, sharp enough to crush his enemies, causing skeletons to spawn and evaporate at the same time.
After only a few minutes of the wind tearing through everything around them, the skeletons were no longer there, and there was nothing but silence.
This is a relief for me but I know that this isn’t everything the dungeon has to offer.
───────!!
-Krrrrrrrrrrrrra!!!
The desert explodes, revealing the massive figure of a skeletal dragon.
One look at him and I could tell he was the boss of this dungeon.
“Hmph……undead dragons are a bit of a mismatch.”
The wind he manipulates roughly pierces the bone dragon’s surroundings, but its thickness and the undead dragon’s resistance prevent it from making more than a few scratches.
Antonio frowns.
“I see, that’s going to be difficult.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
Parnello, standing behind him, steps forward, unbuttoning his sleeve and I remembered that have just the thing.
“Parnello, take this!”
I pull “it” out of the cube and toss it to him.
“This is…….Are they chopsticks?”
“What do you mean chopsticks, aren’t they awls?”
“Aren’t they too thin to be awls?”
……But it was made by beating them overnight on Jeju Island.
“Anyway, attacking with it will help, it’s a holy object.”
“What?”
He looked surprised at the word ‘holy’.
He spun around at the sound of a dragon flapping its wings slowly behind him, and immediately yanked back his grip on Ascalon.
“If it’s a holy object, it should be enough.”
“Eh, wait, hey──.”
Boom──!
Ascalon flew with full force towards the dragon in the sky.
Along its trajectory, a huge beam of light shot out in an afterimage.
Most importantly, it pierced through the dragon’s chest.
-Cr…… Evil?
A creature born in the Desert of Bones and oxidized by light, if he’s at fault for anything, it’s that he met us today.
“Well done Master. I don’t know how you managed to obtain a holy object, but the……effect is obvious.”
Parnello says, and returns the Ascalon he just threw.
His Awakening ability, Retrieve, had been activated.
Its effect is exactly what it sounds like: bringing back an object that has left his hand.
Even though I knew this, I was taken aback by the suddenness of his throwing the Ascalon away.
“……Yes, I wanted it back.”
I put Ascalon back into the cube, and the remains of what used to be the Skeleton Dragon begin to glow brightly, scattering around like snow.
Whoops, that went faster than expected anyway…….
“Alessia.”
“Yes. Master.”
“Let’s pick up all that.”
“……Yes?”
“That’s all treasure.”
A Dragon Stone, it’s a base reward in the Undead Lair.
A gem that contains the spirit of a dragon, it was one of the ingredients used to make elixirs and craft items.
By the way,
“Wow, there are so many of these?”
Maybe it was because it was over as soon as it spawned, but there were more of them than I realized.
The total number of Dragon Stones dropped was 42.
At this rate, it was enough to make me think that it might not be long before I would be able to create a dragon troop for Corleone.
“Master. I also found this in the desert.”
As Alessia and I stroll through the desert, picking up dragon stones, Antonio holds something up to me.
“A dagger?”
As I cautiously accept the dagger from him, the item’s information flashes before my eyes.
[Name: Dagger of Thought (Dragon)]
[Rank: Unique]
[Type: Dagger]
[Description: A dagger imbued with the thought of a dragon, causing a Fear effect against monsters and a Corruption Curse against those it slashes.]
“That’s a nice item, I’d like you to bring this to Jin-woo.”
“You mean this ……?”
“Yes. I’m sure he’ll like it, because in the real world, the more weapons with different effects, the better, right? It has the spirit of the dragon in it, so you could call it a dragon weapon.”
Even in this world, dragon weapons were luxury goods and everyone wanted to own one.
“When I go back I’ll give it to him, but……. I’ve never given him a proper gift before, so I don’t know what to do.”
Antonio is already looking serious and worried about the idea of just giving his son a gift.
I felt sorry for him and decided to give him some advice.
“You just have to be honest.”
“……Honestly?”
“Yeah, like, ‘I picked it up on the way’……”
Call it the classic gift-giving cliché, but sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way.
“I picked it up……Yes. I’ll give it to him with that line.”
As if he couldn’t think of anything else to say, Antonio nods and sheathes the dagger.
For some reason, the sight of him already reminded me of Jin-woo bragging about it everywhere.
‘……Hmm. I’m sure I’ll want to beat the shit out of him later. After all, I got help from Antonio, so it’s better to cut him some slack, right?
As I was giving Jin-woo the three free-pass tickets in my mind.
[Hidden Achievement obtained!]
[Achievement: “Bus Passenger”!]
[You succeed in clearing a Class A or higher dungeon while doing 0 damage.]
[Applaud your conscience!]
[Special Reward is awarded!]
[Obtain the attribute “Human Totem”]
What the hell is this?
[Human Totem]
[1. Human Totem: You help your team just by standing there. Standing without doing anything will slightly increase the luck of your teammates and grant the talent holder a behavior modifier.]
……Was this talent made just for me?
What, all these talents?
I closed the system window because it seemed like a talent I’d never use, and a giant portal formed as white bones began to be sucked toward the floor like a toilet flushing.
The dungeon was cleared.
“Let’s get back to work, I’ll worry about those guys outside.”
Not bad, after all.
I’ve got Dragon Stones, a Dagger…… and a talent I’m not sure I’ll ever need.
My first Class A dungeon went very well.
* * *
The next day Jin-woo arrived at the academy earlier than usual for some reason, and sat in his seat with the expected smirk on his face.
However, there was one thing out of the ordinary…….
“Ahem. Ehhhh! Ehhhh!”
Except that as soon as he got to school, as I expected, he put his dagger on his desk and started coughing weirdly.
“Ehhhhhhhh!”
I’m impressed by his efforts to explain his cough with a look at the dagger, so I decide to give him a free-pass ticket.
“Ehhhhh!”
Free-pass ticket- 2
“Ooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Free-pass ticket – 3
“Who am I? The owner of the Dragon Weapon. Jin-woo Bevalt.”
How did he manage to use up all three free-passes in less than a minute?
He’s a real talent.
I’m clenching my fists, ready to punch him in the face if he does something weird again.
“Eugene! Eugene is here!”
“Uh, sir?”
Kwak Chun-sik shouted as he roughly opened the front door, still wearing his outing clothes.
“Come on, let’s go!”
“……?”
Where?
