106 Dungeon Delving
The morning of the fifth day, Allen and his friends departed bright and early to head to their very first dungeon.
As they were still Rank E adventurers, they could only choose a Rank C dungeon. As they approached the entrance, they saw a whole line of adventurers already out front. Apparently it would get crowded at this hour. Some groups were pulling carts loaded with their luggage. In contrast, Allen and his friends had all their hands free, thanks to the Storage function of his grimoire.
"It's the dungeon!" Krena exclaimed excitedly. "It sure is!" Allen replied enthusiastically, the grin on his face equally as dazzling as hers.
Cecil stared at them in turn. "What do the two of you look so happy for?" Dogora, as usual, merely looked on in silence.
'This looks like a three-story building...which seems quite short, considering the lady at the Guild said that Rank C dungeons usually have four to six floors.
'That's a rather awkward height if the dungeon is going up...so does that mean it's underground?'
After a while, it was finally the No-life Gamers' turn in line.
"You appear to be students. Do you have your adventurer cards with you?" the staff member on duty asked, to which all four of them then produced their cards. He nodded and said, "Looks like you've got yourselves proper equipment too. That's good. You be careful in there."
All together, it had cost two hundred gold to gear everyone up. A hundred went toward a mithril ax and greatsword—Krena had gotten really excited at seeing the giant sword—leaving the remaining hundred for Cecil's Ancient Wood Wand and three sets of protective gear. Now, Allen only had two hundred gold remaining.
Allen told the staff member, "It's our first time here today. Do we just go straight in?"
"Oh, first time! In that case, go to Room 205. You can ask all your questions there."
"...Yes, sir. Understood."
'"Room 205"? What, is this actually an apartment building and not a dungeon? And what does he mean by "ask questions"?'
Allen had figured that they would be fine with adequate gear and a general idea of the strength of the monsters they would encounter. As it turned out, however, there was more that he had yet to learn.
The second floor was accessible both by stairs and by ramp. Allen and his friends followed behind another group that was pulling a cart along.
When they reached the landing, they walked down the corridor until they found the door labeled "205." They pushed their way inside and, to their surprise, found a cube roughly a meter across floating in midair in the middle of the room. It was blinking red, green, yellow, and other colors while giving off soft mechanical clicks.
"Please close the door after you come in," said a robotic voice like the kind featured in older movies.
Krena jumped and exclaimed, "Whoa, it talked!"
The group obediently closed the door after themselves and gathered before the cube.
"Please present your adventurer cards."
There was no point in staying surprised, so Allen held out his card, prompting his friends to follow suit.
"Rank E adventurer Allen, Rank E adventurer Krena, Rank E adventurer Cecil, and Rank E adventurer Dogora. Is this correct?"
"Yes," Allen said on behalf of his party.
"Welcome to this Rank C dungeon. I am General Dungeon Operating System C205."
'How very Interesting. Still haven't the faintest idea how this works, but it sure is a fancy setup.'
"Do we enter the dungeon from this room?"
"That is correct. I will transport you to the dungeon, which is in a separate dimension."
"...A separate dimension? You mean the dungeon's on a different server?"
In Allen's previous life, he had often played games hosted on multiple servers that players could freely move between. For example, if a certain town, hunting area, or dungeon was particularly crowded, players could access the same area through a different server. This term suddenly popping up in Allen's mind gave him the uncanny feeling of living within a computer game in person.
"A server, is it? I'm afraid that word is not in my data bank."
"I see. Don't worry about it; I only meant to say that I understand the thing about different dimensions. Please send us to the dungeon, then."
"Understood. However, according to your adventurer cards, this seems to be your first time entering a dungeon. Would you like me to give you a brief explanation beforehand?"
'Since I'm here with everyone else, I probably ought to listen, just in case there are things I should know.'
"Yes, please."
As Allen and GDOS C205 continued their conversation, Krena watched excitedly while Cecil visibly struggled to understand how he could talk with a cube as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
"The dimension you are sent to changes depending on who you are with and the number of the room you are entering from. Other adventurers will be unable to follow you. This also means help cannot arrive, so please prepare thoroughly beforehand."
"That sounds exactly like going to separate servers! More like, these are instanced dungeons!" Allen was obviously excited. 'So I can use my Summons as much as I want! Thank you so much, gods!'
"S-Seriously, what's been with you all this time?!"
"Do you not get it, Cecil?! The cube is saying everyone's playing on different servers! Different instances!"
"Oh no... I've always thought you were a bit strange, but it looks like you've gone completely mad..."
Allen then continued to ask a few more questions, such as how to return, whether they needed to watch out for traps, how to head to different floors, and what the conditions for clearing the dungeon were.
As it turned out, the boss of a Rank C dungeon was, as could be expected, a Rank C monster. Aside from the boss, all other monsters within were either Rank E or D.
When the cube finished explaining, Allen asked it to go ahead and send them to the dungeon. It wished them luck and obliged.
All at once, the appearance of the room shifted. Its size remained the same and C205 was still there, but a path had opened up.
"Is that the entrance to the dungeon?" Krena asked.
"Most likely," Dogora answered, hefting his ax.
"All right, everyone," Allen said. "Let's go."
Everyone nodded, then stepped out into the dungeon.
***
The party of four proceeded through the first floor of the dungeon while taking care to remain in formation. Krena and Dogora led the way, Cecil stayed in the middle, and Allen brought up the rear. They had discussed and worked out this formation at their base beforehand.
Soon, they came upon a fork in the road.
"Which way do we go?" Cecil asked.
"The right leads to a dead end. Let's take the left," Allen replied. 'This is quite the labyrinth, even though it's just a Rank C dungeon.'
The moment they had stepped inside, Allen had sent out four Bird Es ahead for scouting. Thanks to them, the group could confidently push ahead without worry of getting lost.
Krena, who did not quite get what was going on, cried, "Allen's amazing!"
This specific dungeon was composed of lots of small rooms connected by winding passages. In order to head to the next floor, they had to find the cube managing the floor and have it teleport them. Just like with armored ant nests, Allen was currently creating a map of this dungeon floor. He wanted to find the shortest way through.
"Let's only fight monsters when we've got no other choice and ignore the treasure chests altogether," Allen suggested. "We're better off prioritizing clearing three Rank C dungeons so we can enter Rank B dungeons as soon as possible."
The cube had told them that some treasure chests were actually monsters in disguise, while others could fire arrows or spray poison when opened. No one in this party knew how to disable traps, and drops from chests in Rank C dungeons were likely nothing impressive anyway. Given all this, Allen decided to just pass everything by. Everyone indicated their agreement.
There were several things Allen wanted to accomplish in these dungeons. He wanted to raise his and his friends' levels, of course, plus earn some cash and magic stones. However, the monsters in Rank C dungeons were so weak that trying to earn money or levels from them would be just plain inefficient.
Furthermore, he wanted to get his hands on an MP Recovery Ring, which could, supposedly, only drop from a Rank A dungeon boss. As he had no idea which specific dungeon, he wanted to earn the right to challenge the Rank A dungeons as quickly as possible. This would also widen the range of monsters the party could encounter. For all these reasons, he was now focusing solely on completing speedruns of Rank C dungeons.
'All right, let's first take a good look at everyone's Statuses.'
Allen looked through his grimoire while walking on. The moment the party had been registered, he had gained the ability to see his party members' info.
___
Name: Krena
Age: 12
Class: Sword Lord
Level: 21
HP: 880
MP: 330
Attack: 880
Endurance: 620
Agility: 595
Intelligence: 350
Luck: 415
Skills: Sword Lord {1}, Slash {1}, Sword Mastery {5}
Extra Skill: Limit Break
XP: 2,850/3,000
Skill Levels
Sword Lord: 1
Slash: 1
Skill Experience
Slash: 0/10
_
Name: Cecil Granvelle
Age: 12
Class: Wizardess
Level: 1
HP: 25
MP: 25
Attack: 10
Endurance: 16
Agility: 16
Intelligence: 30
Luck: 16
Skills: Wizardry {1}, Fire Magic {1}, Sparring {2}
Extra Skill: Petit Meteor
XP: 0/10
Skill Levels
Wizardry: 1
Fire Magic: 1
Skill Experience
Fire Magic: 10/10
_
Name: Dogora
Age: 12
Class: Ax User
Level: 21
HP: 464
MP: 248
Attack: 610
Endurance: 404
Agility: 258
Intelligence: 170
Luck: 276
Skills: War Ax {1}, Full Might {1}, Ax Mastery {4}
Extra Skill: Heart and Soul
XP: 2,850/3,000
Skill Levels
War Ax: 1
Full Might: 1
Skill Experience
Full Might: 0/10
___
Allen had long finished analyzing his companions' Statuses. First, as he had deduced, all classes had a fundamental skill tied to their class, the equivalent of what Summoning was to him. He personally called these "class skills." For Krena, this would be Sword Lord, whereas for Cecil, it would be Wizardry.
Although Cecil had earned some Skill XP, her skill had yet to level up. The magic tutor had said that in order to use more powerful magic, one had to overcome Trials of the Gods. Allen planned on observing her Status to figure out exactly how base level and skill level were connected.
Why Krena and Dogora's skill levels had remained at Lvl. 1 was likely because they had not expended their MP at all during their playing knight sessions. It could also be said that, until now, they had not been in an environment where they could use their skills.
Allen had shown everyone his grimoire. When he told Krena she had a skill named Slash, she had said she thought she could somehow imagine it. Allen was hoping that everyone's afternoon classes would help them activate their skills.
"Cecil, slime up ahead."
"I see it. Fireball!"
Even while in the middle of thought, Allen was still scouting ahead. When the slime he had spotted earlier came into sight, Cecil attacked it with her magic.
<You 1 8 have defeated slime. You earned XP.>
"Yay!" Cecil cheered after killing her very first monster.
"Thanks," Allen told her. "You're doing great."
Just like Krena and Dogora, Allen now spoke more casually with Cecil. She had gotten used to it by this point and had not brought it up since that first day.
Half of the slime had been blown away by Cecil's spell. The remaining half gave off some smoke, then disappeared altogether, leaving behind only a small magic stone. This was just as the Guild staff had said—dungeon monsters only dropped magic stones, no materials. To save the time and effort of picking the magic stones up, Allen assigned a Bird G with the task.
'I've gotta stock up on Rank E magic stones too, for making Leaves of Life.'
The party had agreed to let Allen manage their magic stones. As for his current stock, he had 2,746 Rank E stones; 6,953 Rank D stones; 9,157 Rank C stones; and 4 Rank B stones. Although he used to have over twenty thousand Rank D ones at one point, he had spent the majority of them making Crops of Magic. Since many of the Rank D Summons were quite useful, he held on to the remaining stones as insurance.
At the moment, Allen had two hundred gold on hand. Two more quests from the Adventurer's Guild to gather twenty thousand Rank D magic stones and he would be pretty much penniless. It would be a while before he had a stable source of money flowing in, and no matter how many Rank E magic stones he gathered, they would never count as Rank D stones.
And so Allen had turned his attention to his Rank C magic stones.
___
The Value of Each Rank of Magic Stone
Rank E magic stone: Almost worthless
Rank D magic stone: 1 Silver
Rank C magic stone: 10 Silver
Rank B magic stone: 1 Gold
Rank A magic stone: 10 Gold
___
The monetary value of magic stones increased tenfold with each successive rank. This was in proportion to their energy output, with a higher-ranked stone providing ten times more energy than the previous rank.
While monsters were often much more than ten times stronger than monsters one rank below them, the price of magic stones was apparently tied to how much energy they could provide when powering magic tools.
Currently, Allen owned more than nine thousand Rank C magic stones. He was planning on selling them in batches of one thousand each to fund his Rank D magic stone gathering. Although he would undoubtedly need Rank C magic stones in the future, his top priority at the moment was leveling Summoning up.
With a few breaks in between, the No-life Gamers finally managed to reach the cube at the other end of the floor before the end of day.
***
"There it is!" Cecil cried out happily. "Now we can go to the next floor!"
Despite having taken ten hours to reach this point, her exhaustion had cleared away after each level up, meaning she was still feeling quite energetic. Due to being in Normal Mode, she had been leveling up quite quickly only fighting Rank E monsters.
"I am Floor Operating System C328-01. Do you wish to exit the dungeon? Or do you wish to go to the next floor?"
"Would we be able to return if we go to the next floor?" Allen asked.
"Floor Operating System C328-02 is on the next floor. It can take you out of the dungeon. Furthermore, should you choose not to continue on to the next floor, you will not be able to start from Floor 2 the next time you enter this dungeon."
'Ah, so it basically saves our progress and lets us start where we left off. That's helpful.'
"Please send us to the next level, then."
"Understood."
The appearance of the room changed instantaneously. Apparently this was now the second floor.
"Welcome. I am Floor Operating System C328-02. Do you plan on staying in the dungeon? Or do you wish to exit?"
"Please return us— Ah, hold on."
Allen took out a stick of firewood from Storage and threw it to the floor.
Then he Summoned a Bird G and ordered it to stand by in the room.
"What're you doing, Allen?" Dogora asked curiously.
"Experiment," Allen replied simply.
Dogora still looked confused. He studied the firewood as if trying to glean its significance.
Allen turned to the cube. "Okay, please return us outside."
"Understood."
Immediately, Allen and his friends found themselves in another room with a door behind them. No floating cube was in sight.
"So this is the designated exit room."
"S-So it seems," Cecil replied, somewhat on her guard after all the back-to-back teleportations.
The group walked down a corridor, then stepped outside to find themselves on the opposite side of the dungeon building from the entrance.
So ended the No-life Gamers' very first day in a dungeon.
