General Emerald Imperial looked around the vast expanse of land before him before roaring and slamming his hammer into the ground. The very impact sent dirt and debris flying in all directions as a two meter deep crater formed at the impact point. The others behind him did not seem very startled, in fact they looked almost bored. Until he turned towards them that is.
"WE ARE ALL IMPERIAL SOLDIERS!! YET THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY IN DECADES WE'VE WASTED JUST GETTING HERE!!" He seethed turning on all of the troops lined up in rows ten across and five deep. All fifty soldiers just barely fitting in the entrance of the large field they were scouting.
"Sir if--" one started but the General appeared before him with the spike at the top of his hammer centimeters away from the eye.
"Soldier you will listen." He said and lowered the hammer, "We have once again failed to get to the destination in time to protect the ones summoned for our cause! You all have slacked off, it should've taken us four days max to get here by foot, even with the monsters and camps slain and slept in along the way. And yet it took us a week! THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE AND YOU SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES!"
"Sir--" A soldier began raising an arm, but his motion was halted as the General gave him a death stare, it was the same soldier that had spoken up from before.
"Ecclisus Bronze do I need to teach you a lesson?" The General said and the soldier in question shook his head, looking at something happening in the background behind him.
"Well spit it out then!" The General growled and Ecclisus did not staring past his shoulder
"There's two people in the distance behind you, sir!" Ecclisus said saluting as he was taught and the General looked at him for a moment longer before turning around to see two kids under a hill messing around. What are two kids doing all the way out here? He used a skill to enhance his vision to see what they were doing and the boy was over the back of the girl messing with something. He tried (Appraisal) on them both but the only thing that came up was a large area of text in front of the hill:
Side Entrance: Dungeon; Unknown. Rank A: Mutation Based. Trap.
What? An Unknown Dungeon? Side Entrance? That shouldn't be possible. The General stood there a moment too long as the boy pulled something out of the ground and the General finally realized what the trap part meant. All of his skills activated at once, the speed of an S Ranked Human causing the soldiers behind him to brace themselves against the force of the wind alone. General Emerald thrust his hammer forwards to try and prevent whatever was about to happen from happening. A long silver Stake shot out from the side of the girl where the pipe was pulled out and a barrier appeared around an area five meters in radius from where the two were.
A barrier? General Emerald thought, I'm made to break barriers! He pulled his hammer back to strike the barrier when suddenly warnings went off in his head. Something was wrong, there's no possible way he'll make it in time. Wait no it was something else, but why would alarms be going off this badly unless...
General Emerald stopped himself within a few breaths of the barrier and it seemed to pulse. Ah so that's why, it was a Trap Barrier: a barrier type that, when struck, inflicts double the damage upon the attacker at first strike. But to be this strong? It's had to have been around for centuries without anyone's knowledge of it to have gathered this much power for just a barrier.
There was a click and the top of the dungeon entrance sank and the two it held were sent into a lower floor of a very dangerous place. The barrier started disappearing from the far side and folding towards General Emerald before forming a face and fading from view. That was no normal A ranked Trap Dungeon, that was a monstrosity.
The floating face not unlike the grin of a Cheshire Ghost remained ingrained in General Emerald's mind as he stood there shocked. With a situation like that there was nothing he could've done to help or save them, but if they had gotten there sooner this may not have happened all all! The hammer slammed down against the ground with much more force than last time, a crack through the ground thirty meters long and hundreds deep split past the point of impact.
General Emerald went over and grabbed the silver pole sticking out of the ground and ripped it from the ground, a loud screech following the spray of silver ichor as the structure was ripped from the ground, and the dungeon itself. The General gripped it in his hand as he knelt to look at the healing ground underneath him.
"I promise you this abomination. I will find your main entrance, I will tear my way through your floors, and I will rip apart your core with my bare hands after I destroy everything on my way down. You have survived for this long by sheer luck and circumstance, but no longer will you prey on the weak." General Emerald said standing up once again and walking off with the silver stake dripping ichor in hand.
The General soon joined his soldiers still waiting at the entrance, his hammer was magically aligned with his spine, the top of the hammer in line with his head and the handle somehow having shrank to cover the area just above his butt. He handed Ecclisus the silver stake and grabbed his hammer once again.
"It no longer matters that we were here on time or not, we would not have been able to do anything with the dungeon owning this area, but if we slack of next time we have an urgent mission like this I am going to be putting you all through the Hellion Technique for a month!" The General said and everyone internally cringed at that threat. They'd been through that once before, for only a week, and while it had made them stronger it had also utterly destroyed their bodies over and over.
"Everyone is to march back to the Kingdom, I want you there in three days. This is giving you a days delay for any monsters that you come across, so you better make it count" The General said turning around. "Ecclisus you are in charge of getting them there, all of them. If any are not there on time I will double, triple, or strip you of rank on top of doubling everything. Also give that silver pole to the guild as soon as you get back, tell them it's from a side entrance trap of an A ranked Dual Type Dungeon. Tell them where this is, and tell them that I am ordering a ten kilometer raduis search of the area from this point, B rank teams and up only."
Ecclisus paled and looked at the soldiers around him, the front line golds were snickering and the others looked like they felt sorry for the guy, but they all weren't about to get Hellion Training just for being a little late, no one wanted to die either, and that was worse than death in their eyes. So Ecclisus' job just got a hundred times easier.
"Move out!" General Emerald said and everyone saluted before starting to jog off back home, Ecclisus at the front, at least pretending to lead. The General looked at the expanse before him and cracked his neck and looked at the vast area before him. "Okay abomination, it's time to see what secrets you hold."
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