Rays of sunlight leaked through the gap in the curtain and gently graced Kibo’s face. The slight warmth slowly woke him up. He let out a large yawn as he stretched out his arms.

 

‘I can’t even remember the last time I slept that well.’ He opened the curtains and looked outside. He noticed the sun was still low in the sky and was thankful he didn’t sleep in for too long. ‘I have a dungeon today and need to meet up with Ryzeu this morning in the Guild Building.’ Right after he finished thinking he heard a knock on his door. ‘I wonder who it is?’ A cute but loud voice came from behind the door.

 

“Breakfast is ready! Come downstairs. It’s going to get cold.”

 

‘Oh, it’s just the little girl, I didn’t remember asking for breakfast, maybe it’s part of the deal when you buy the best room in the Inn?’ Kibo wiped the dust off his cloak, which he was still wearing from yesterday and headed downstairs, through the open doorway on the other side and into what would be the dining room.

 

“Great, you’re he...gross” Her joyful expression diminished as an expression of disgust took over her face.

 

Kibo became confused at what would warrant such a reaction and replied, “What?”

 

“Did you sleep in that?”

 

Kibo looked down and noticed the dirt on his cloak.

 

“I guess, yeah.”

 

“That’s disgusting! How gross do you have to be? Ugh, just follow me!” She ordered.

 

She went over to Kibo, and as she got closer, she started to smell a foul odour which wafted from his cloak. She pinched her nose with her fingers and led Kibo out the back door.

 

She made him stand in the middle of the alley as she headed into a nearby shed, picked up a bucket of water, and then began to empty the contents onto him.

 

“Hey!” Kibo shouted as cold water poured down his body. He shivered in the cold until he felt a strange sensation on his back, he looked over his shoulder and noticed he was being rubbed by some rough object behind him and flinched.

 

“Stop being a baby and stand still.”

 

‘What the hell is going on?’ He looked behind and realised the little girl was scrubbing the cloak to remove the dirt.

 

“Relax, give me that I can do it myself.” Kibo insisted.

 

She looked up and bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes, telling him to back off. Kibo sighed and gave in, not wanting to fight with a little girl. He stood there, embarrassed as the little girl scrubbed his cloak clean. 

 

“Do you know wind magic?”

 

“No.”

 

Not soon after, Kibo was hit by a strong gust of cold wind as it quickly dried up his wet cloak and he shivered once more.

 

“You’re crazy. I’m getting out of here.”

 

She continued to give Kibo an angry expression as she furrowed her brows.

 

“Fine, get out now.”

 

She pushed Kibo with her tiny hands as he slowly entered the building and exited through the main entrance.

 

Kibo sighed and thought to himself, “Will I never meet normal people here?”

[Capital City Fialis, Guild Building]

 

Kibo entered through the doors and noticed Cecilla behind the desk and made eye contact, she waved and smiled, but he gave her the cold shoulder as he proceeded to look around the guild building for Ryzeu.

 

“Hey, Kibo glad you finally made it.”

 

Kibo looked to his left and noticed Ryzeu and the sisters approaching him.

 

“So what’s the plan?”

 

Ayano was already fuming because he was over an hour late, but just before she could scold him, Ryzeu put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head. She became embarrassed by Ryzeu’s touch, and she looked towards the ground.

 

Ayano thought to herself, “What is it with him and letting Kibo get away with things like this? Is it because he is a summoner? So what. We were just unlucky we had lost most of our summoners in the portal, and now the very few who are still alive get special privileges when they join the Kingdom’s military. If it weren’t for that event, he would just be another normal person.”

 

“Hmpf.”

 

Ryzeu lets out a sigh.

 

“Why don’t we just head over to that table and discuss our plan in a more comfortable setting?”

 

They all headed towards the other side of the building and took a seat closest to the entrance.

 

‘Seems like Ayano still hates me but I don’t care, I just need to focus on getting stronger.’ Kibo thought.

 

Ryzeu looked around, and once he saw everyone had sat down, and their attention was on him, he started. “Okay, as you already know we will be raiding a Goblin Dungeon. This is located not too far outside the city walls, and it will only take 30 minutes by carriage once we have left the city gates.”

 

Kibo nodded to show he understood and thought, ‘Just 30 minutes? Which means I can get there anytime myself if I want to practice alone, this is good.’

 

“Goblins are small and relatively easy to kill, as long as they are not wearing armour, pretty much any object sharp enough can pierce their skin. The issue is they always move in groups of 4 to 6. It’s also a fact that the environment for a goblin’s dungeon is a cave.”

 

“We will have to tread through a network of narrow tunnels and caverns. The Goblins mainly reside in the largest cavern. The issue is the tunnels which are narrow and small, making sword fighting or movement very limited.”

 

“The plan is to round them all up and kill them with a few spells. They are weak creatures, but their small size and being in their home territory makes them hard to deal with in numbers, but with our strength, it should be more than enough.”

 

Ryzeu monitored Kibo’s expression to see how he was taking the information since this explanation was mainly for him.

 

‘So the plan is just to round them up and blast them with a few spells, not much of a plan but considering they are Gold-ranked adventurers that’s all they probably need to do. Not bad, I’ll watch them and try to join in where I can.’

 

Kibo replied, “Sounds good to me; let’s go.”

 

Ryzeu smiled, and they all got up to find a carriage to take them to the dungeon.

 

On their journey there, Kibo remained quiet as he thought to himself about the upcoming dungeon raid. On his left was Ryzeu, who noticed Kibo was still keeping his distance from everybody and had not come to trust them all yet. This further motivated him to win him over.

 

Sitting on the opposite side to them was Ayano, and in her thoughts, she didn’t understand why the leader was going so far to make him stay in the team. In her mind, Kibo was stuck up because he had a class which was in high demand by the Kingdom, and due to that, he could do whatever he liked. She then decided she wouldn’t let him get his way. The only one who wasn’t deep in thought was Ayane who was sitting next to Ayano and just munching on her snacks.

 

After a short but quiet journey, they had arrived near the dungeon.

 

Kibo looked around and noticed that guards were protecting the dungeon along with random groups of adventurer’s talking nearby. He thought, ‘They are also planning with their teams on raiding the dungeon. Luckily for us, it seems like Ryzeu gets priority for dungeons thanks to his Gold ranked status.’

 

He looked towards the dungeon and inspected it. It had an arched frame made out of stone along with blue and purple particles swirling in the centre. ‘So the dungeons do look the same as the ones on Earth, there seem to be far too many similarities of magic between the two.’

 

‘As for the dungeon they are just another variant of a portal. There are two types of portals, one which are links to other worlds. These look the same as a dungeon, but they don’t have the arched frame which looks like a door. And the other is the one I’m looking at right now. These dungeons contain monsters and their level of difficulty increases depending on how much magical energy the portal emits. ‘

 

‘Some worlds can detect how difficult a dungeon is with a special tool, seems like this world can too to a certain extent.’

 

He continued to ponder, deep in his thoughts, ‘If a Dungeon is not cleared once within five days the monsters on the other side can walk in and out of it freely. When entering a dungeon, you can’t leave until you have cleared at least 50% of the dungeon where the participants will be given a choice to exit the dungeon if they reject they will need to clear the entire dungeon before they can leave.’

 

‘They also have something called a Lord, which is similar to a boss monster. The odds of them showing up are around 5%, and that’s only if I remember what I had learnt in high school correctly. As for why it’s like this, no one knows because this is how it’s always been like and no one can find out why. After a century on Earth, most people just don’t care anymore.’

 

Ryzeu asked, “Alright, is everybody ready?”

 

‘Even though it’s just a goblin dungeon one of the weakest monsters, adrenaline is rushing through me.’

 

Kibo smirked and clenched his fist, ‘it’s my first dungeon after all.’

 

“I’m ready.”