Chapter 7 (1/2)
“s.h.i.+njo-kun…. s.h.i.+njo-kun!”
When I opened my eyes, Seki Midori was shaking me, trying to wake me up. It felt really good after a deep sleep.
Perhaps I felt more relieved because k.u.miko was sleeping beside me. The only place that I could sleep comfortably like this was probably the inn and the town.
“Sorry to wake you, but I was in the town and there’s an emergency there!”
“What do you mean an emergency?”
The emergency Seki mentioned could only be if something abnormal happened to the town. He said Nanami Shuichi’s battlegroup armed themselves and went off to rescue the sixty students and teachers left in the cla.s.srooms.
And they came back tattered. They should already knew where the traps are and monsters shouldn’t be a big problem now. What everybody who came back said was that there was an immensely powerful monster.
“They said a dragon appeared out of nowhere.”
“A dragon….”
I had the game knowledge, so I knew that an “invasion” had happened immediately. For an invasion to start almost as soon as we were teleported, the group who stayed behind at the cla.s.srooms was not lucky at all.
One of the hallmark event in Geno-Real was an “invasion”. It was a random, but regular event that had monsters from lower floors wander up to the upper floors.
Geno-Real had specific type of monsters that lived on each floor. For example, first floor was for pig faced orcs and tiny goblins. The second floor was populated by dog faced kobolds.
Furthermore, the orcs and kobolds had separate organization, and as if the monsters had rivalry between them, they fought every time they met each other. Thus the pigmen and dogmen lived separately on the first and second floor.
The upper floors maintained balanced between each monster factions like that, but stronger monsters come from lower floors via invasion to gobble up the weaker monsters. Any player who gets caught up in the invasion and couldn’t escape invariably died as well.
If it was a dragon invasion, I suspected it could be either a Lesser Dragon from the fifth floor or a Mustard Dragon from the sixth floor.
“Did you hear what colour they were?”
“They said it was dirty reddish-brown.”
I should praise Seki who brought back important information despite being fl.u.s.tered, but that was not enough to go on yet. Lesser Dragons were foggy rouge in colour and Mustard Dragons were poisonous purple.
The torches in the dungeon was insufficient source of light to properly illuminate the area. It would be hard to discern between monsters in the darkness. Lesser Dragons were low-end dragons that could only use weak physical attacks, but if it were Mustard Dragons which sprayed out poison, Nanami’s entire party could have been wiped out.
It was needless to say which one was more dangerous and I could only hope that it was the Lesser Dragon.
“Seki, you’re not going to say you’re going to help them?”
“But they asked everybody for help…”
A nice guy like him would definitely help. I shook Seki’s slender shoulders and reminded him.
“Seki, you will get killed immediately if you go. One hit and you will be dead. I can tell you for certain that you are just rus.h.i.+ng to your death.”
“Then what should I do…”
You simply needed to abandon them. To run into an invasion from the get go, they were simply unlucky…… was what I was hoping to tell him, but Seki wouldn’t understand.
“I’ll go save them. So you… you can… make potions for me. I don’t need any health potions, but make as many stamina potions as possible. You know how to make it, right?”
“Of course. I’ll do anything to help you out, s.h.i.+njo-kun! But don’t do anything dangerous, alright?”
I would die with just a single strike from a dragon, too. There was no reason to have any health potions in situations like that. Whether I try to run or fight, what I needed was stamina potion to keep me going.
“Of course. I always keep my safety as a priority. I’m going to scout out and if I can help them, I’ll help them out. k.u.miko and you three, don’t follow me. You guys will just slow me down.”
My words didn’t make sense. Helping them while it was dangerous. But, it seemed k.u.miko and Seki understood.
They both knew that I was not the kind of person who’d risk my own life to save others. Did they really trust me or not? I couldn’t help but smile bitterly.
“Seki, you’re a priest, so keep making the potions. Remember to practice until you can make higher ranked ones.”
“Alright.”
Not only Seki, but k.u.miko and the girls made the potion, too. I received ten bottles of beginner stamina potion, donned my hard leather armour, knee protectors and boots. Leather armour felt thin to be going up against a dragon, but lightness was the key. I wore my backpack and headed down to the dungeon with the samurai sword in my hand.
There were people already gathered by the staircase leading to the first underground floor. Several of the guys from Nanami’s group offered to go with me, but I rejected them all. It was admirable that they were willing to go back after running away, but a large crowd was only a hindrance.
“Nanami’s not here?”
“Nanami-kun’s still down there….”
Is that so. If it was Nanami, he probably wouldn’t have died yet… I didn’t need any hindrances, but I needed baits with me who would distract the monsters.
However, my calculation told me that there were plenty of baits already down below. If they weren’t already dead that is.
“Lo Light”
This was the spell for the simplest magic torch. In this game, you combined Moon Runes to invoke magic.
In the settings of Geno-Real, mana flowed via wind from the moon. The mana a body could receive and retain became the mana you could use.
Enough of the details for now. Your mana and mage rank went up by successfully casting a spell. Even with my weak mana, there was enough to use simplest light spell once.
It was still dark, but I didn’t have to hold a torch, and it was a cake walk since I already knew everything about the dungeon layout. The first floor was like my own backyard. I could stroll along the floor and use the traps to kill the monsters.
There were no monsters that came out to attack in the first place, but only corpses with gigantic bite marks. The idiots probably managed to bring the dragon almost to the entrance of the stair while running away.
The orcs and goblins, which would only be a prey for the dragon, were probably shaking in the other end of the dungeon. After carefully sifting through the corpses, some were just an arm or an leg, I realized it was a mixture of human, orc and goblins remains.
It was devouring everything at a ravenous pace. Total annihilation was probably only a matter of time.
“Let’s go take a look at the cla.s.sroom first!”
It was probably headed there or in the midst of attacking the cla.s.srooms. It was difficult to say whether they’d still be alive by the time we get there.
There were around sixty people left in the cla.s.srooms plus the people who split up and were going around on their own. If Nanami’s battle group added their force, we just might have enough people to take that thing down.
Lesser Dragons had several critical weakness which became apparent if you observed them carefully. If we respond calmly, we could figure them out. Worse comes to worse, I could run back to town while it was attacking others.
However, there was no way that an untrained bunch of people would work in sync with others. There were also students left in the cla.s.srooms who barely had the strength to move. There probably weren’t even that many people who could think about throwing rocks or slas.h.i.+ng at the dragon with a sword while people around them were getting eaten.
That meant the chance of finding anyone alive was even grimmer..
They should have split up in all direction and ran. If they hid in the cla.s.sroom thinking it was safe, they would have been ma.s.sacred with nowhere to run to.
As we got closer to the cla.s.sroom, the number of corpses increased. I feared for the worst. If they were being slowly killed one by one inside the cla.s.srooms, it would be the worst case scenario.
“Arrrrrrgggghhh, stop, sto- ku” “It’s burning! It’s burning! Guaraaaagh” “My eyes! Eyes!!”
Just around the bend where the cla.s.srooms were located, an absolute cacophony sounded. With these screams, I could confirm that it was indeed a Mustard Dragon and not a Lesser Dragon.
Burning and eye wounds…. Definitely a poison attack.
We had the worst luck.
To think that the day I decided to start adventuring, a monster worse than the one from the fifth floor, the one from the sixth floor, ‘invaded’. It wasn’t impossible, but we really were unlucky.
I ran into the hallways and found the poisonous, purplish-skinned Mustard Dragon occupying the middle of the tunnel with its huge body while spraying its poisonous breath everywhere.