Dungeon.

Unknown to the people of Grand Land is the true identity of the dungeon.

Only the author of the book reveals its true and hideous identity.

A dungeon is a parasitic monster.

When it was born or unleash by the rift.

It is a pure energy monster, it travels the land in search for a powerful host.

What the dungeon (monster) search for is a powerful monster that will protect him forever.

It can latch on to a golem. It can latch to a unique wolf. It can latch to a dead body full of negative energy. It can latch on a lost demon in Grand Land. It can even latch on into a human and completely contaminate him.

That is the instinct of this parasite.

However, this parasite will not directly connect itself to the host.

Instead he will provide that host a base, a new power and energy for its food.

Upon making the base, the energy type monster, will release the large amount of energy that it store in its body and will slowly receive its physical form, known as the dungeon core.

The dungeon core will make the target monster comfortable until every identity and every information of the monster were copied by him.

In addition, it will also attract the nearby monster to come inside his body. This way all of them will be copied and used by the dungeon core.

Soon, those monsters will be the ‘cells’ of the dungeon.

When an adventurer/virus visit and killed the monster/cells of the dungeon. The dungeon core will automatically recover and replenish its ‘cells’ by gathering mana. Though it still need enough time and mana to create the monsters that it copied.

That is why dungeon can reproduce monster inside them even without breeding.

 

The expedition begins.

After we pass the regular size bone door, we go down the stairs and we walk into a narrow winding corridor, maximum of 3-person width. As we move along the corridor it became wider and wider until we got into our formation.

I saw a big opening in front of me, from the distance I could see that there is a city in this place.

Surely, a field dungeon.

Then I notice something.

I tighten my grip on the shoulder bag that I am carrying.

I wait for it.

I wait.

I waited.

But when the vanguard entered the city.

I was surprise.

There is no contact? No… I can feel it there are enemies in front. I can clearly feel them.

I put my guard up as I walk into the entrance of the city.

I immediately move my head.

I look at the left side, right side, on the top.

I move my head, looking for the enemy ambush.

I can feel it… I can feel it… they are just around us.

“Hey!”

I notice Norm walk up to me and tap my shoulder.

“Don’t get nervous. We have great adventurers around us they will surely protect us, focus on holding your bag.”

“Oh thanks!”

“Hehe, don’t mention it. I just notice that you are shivering when we enter the cave.”

Why wouldn’t I shiver?! I notice a large amount of enemies in front!

“You might be a newbie in this kind of quest, so I’ll give you a tip. ‘RELAX’.”

Norm even made a rainbow gesture and made a relax face.

Relax! How can I relax?! There might be a hundred… no not just hundreds maybe thousands enemies around us!

“Ye-yeah thanks for the tip.”

Tsk! How can his be?

I look at the Holy Mage, I am looking for their reaction but… they are just calmly walking together with their guards.

This might be my imagination, even the Holy Mage doesn’t have any reaction.

Then suddenly.

One of the holy mage shout.

“Enemy in front.”

The vanguard immediately raises their shield and prepare for combat.

After few second.

Clack! Clack!

Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!

Clack! Clack! Ting! Ting! Clack!

Ting! Ting! Clack!

Hordes of skeleton charge towards the main group.

“Attack!”

One of the vanguard shouted.

Then the clash begins.

‘Argh!’

‘Die!’

‘Go back to the grave’

I look at the people around me.

I notice a weird calmness in them, it seems like they are just waiting for it to finish.

I get it, as a mercenary sometimes we trade assignments on the march. Some people will rest and some people will fight. However, this time I cannot do that because of the overwhelming number of enemies that are ready to ambush us anytime.

But when I look at everyone, and I look at the Holy Mage it seems like they cannot feel the presence surrounding us.

Am I wrong? Is it just a hallucination?

Still I can’t shake the feeling that we are going to be ambush.

I didn’t let my guard down.

After they finishing the fight, we continue moving deeper in the dungeon.

We will comb this area per group. Each group will have a vanguard, support, one holy mage and baggage carrier.

We check all the building, go to the top floor of every building, we check each basement, we inspect every room and we didn’t let anything left unturned.

Yet, we didn’t find anything. Our group isn’t successful so we meet back at the meeting place and setup camp.

When I got my free time after dinner, I left the group the with the excuse of ‘nature call’, just to feed my pets and prepare some things.

Jewel and Viper are staying at the subspace for now, which I learn they can stay inside it without any problem.

So, to feed them I would just pick up some meat inside the dimensional bag and throw it inside the subspace.

After that, I return to the group and rest.

However, I cannot sleep even though most of my teammates are already sleeping. I feel like there are multiple eyes staring at me at this very moment.

When I’m thinking about that, suddenly all of the presence disappear.

Like a switch that automatically turn off.

I cannot feel them anymore.

Soon I was overtaken by drowsiness.

 

A man with brown hair wearing a vest and white coat over it is walking through the forest towards the ruins that they are currently investigating.

After he push the branch away, he saw the ruins with a group of people seemingly brushing the stone slab carefully, like how a parent carefully pat his child.

“Scott, your back! are you alright!?”

The chubby man wearing a white coat over casual dress, Billy, welcomes me.

“Yes, I’m alright… I got the Mite rush…”

…

…

…

“What!? At this time of the year? Wha… Whe … How?”

Billy was shock so as Ann and Rita.

“How did I survive?”

Billy nodded.

It’s understandable Mite Rush came from a small insect bite that hibernate whole year and resuscitate on the winter.

Mite Rush is a deadly sickness if you cannot cure it but the cure is very common.

Seven Whites, the flower that blooms in winter, and it can be found anywhere in Kilswin.

In short, if you got a Mite Rush in winter, in just a short minute you can get the medicine if you just walk around.

However, I caught the Mite Rush recently in spring.

“That is thanks to my little sister, she looks for Seven Whites all over the place, she told me she went into a cold cave and found several Seven Whites inside.”

Billy touch his chest and took a deep breath.

“Scott, Amy is a god send.”

“Yes, Scott.”

Billy said, Ann follow thru and Rita nod her head vigorously.

I tap Billy shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m really thankful to her.”

I look at the sky for a bit and then look back at the ruins.

There is almost nothing left in this ruins. All rumble of once great civilization.

White stone walls with strange writings. A small mirror resting on the broken pedestal and a leaning 3-meter pillar that is covered with vines.

I clear my throat.

“Now what are you currently doing? Did you find something interesting?”

 

The expeditions continue.

We are now 3-days deep in this dungeon.

The stairs going to the second floor was found inside the large building that we tough was owned by a noble. Then the stairs going to third floor were found in an alley.

On those three days, we only found a single artifact in this expedition so far.

On the other hand, the enemies continue to attack us none stop, skeleton with rusty sword, spear and axe rush forward and attack the vanguard. Skeleton with bow and arrow started to shoot on distance. Sometimes, there are zombies that will charge the side to attack the other adventurer.

There are also skeleton animals like wolves and tiger that attack from time to time.

The only challenging one that we meet is the Abomination, a disgusting lump of meat, a humanoid monster that looks like the Hulk, in zombie mode, with four abnormally big arms.

This monster is abnormally strong and the vanguard was even hurt fighting it. However, because of their strength and teamwork, the enemy easily fall.

So far, the tour on my first dungeon is really great.

It’s gloomy and dark but the overall experience, including the sudden monster attack and camping, is great. I think the large amount of presence that pop up once in while really made the experience unique.

It feels like I went inside a bigger hunted house amusement park.

We though that we need to stay another day on this floor when we found another door in a distance.

This door looks like a castle gate, the design is also different and out of place.

There are countless hands protruding out on the door, like a multiple people trying to reach out for help but got stuck behind the door.

The door looks eerie and the atmosphere suddenly turn cold.

“Everybody!”

The voice amplified with the help of magic.

“We will attack the boss area in one hour. Prepare yourselves, shift the formation and check your equipment!”

Everyone automatically move out.

So as I.

I check the crossbow that was given to us if it is working properly, I pull out the potion supply that was provided by the kingdom and there are even mana potion mix in this bag to provide support to the mages.

Lastly, we change the formation.

Group 1 and 2 of the baggage carrier will now be located at last part of the formation and Group 3 and 4 will be located on the middle-side part of the formation.

I am now assign to supply another group of support adventurers.

These adventurers are mostly composed of archers and mages with warrior to protect them just in case the enemy break the formation.

 

After an hour we hear the signal to attack.

“Everybody! Let’s go! AND CONQUER! THIS! DUNGEON!”

When they open the spooky looking door, fog suddenly burst forward and welcome us.

Slowly we move pass the door and there is a circular stairs going down.

Step! Step! Step!

We have hard time maintaining our formation but we keep it slow and steady.

Until we arrive at the last room of this dungeon.

 

A big space welcomes us, a very big cave with various items and rubbles on the floor.

There are stone pillars, some are hardly standing on and some are broken down to piece and lying on the floor.

There are ruins that you could see in the upper floors, there are broken boxes and scattered weapon everywhere.

Different cloths are scattered on the field and there are some clothes hanging on the walls.

If the upper floor city experiences a hurricane, this place experience a nuclear bomb.

Both place are devastated by tragedy but this place has harsher experience.

We continue to move forward until.

Huh!

I look up… I started to shiver.

What the hell? Why are there so many presences here?

Some people look at what I’m looking but they just scowl at me when they found nothing.

I move my head looking left and right, looking for someone who could also feel that presence but…

No one! No one can feel that?!

There are thousands of presence above us and they are even surrounding us. There are more presence here compared when we just enter this dungeon.

For the past few days, I cannot rest easily about this presence around me. I stare at the place that I can feel them but there’s nothing there. I even use my Enhance Sense – Scope, a made up name for my zooming eye ability, but even with that skill I cannot find a single bug.

So, got an idea about the kind of monster that is surrounding us or at least its type.

I’ve prepare various potions before coming here but I just prepare some addition potion, on my free time, upon having a hunch on the type of enemy that is lurking in the dark.

I pull out a potion in pocket, I open it secretly, pour the liquid in my hand and rub it on my skin.

I put some in my face and in my arms.

I’m still preparing when…

“Time to die!”

A chorus voice, like a hundred people speaking at the same time suddenly startled us.

Everyone was on guard, then they immediately shift to their fighting stance.

A dark cloud burst in front of us slowly started to form, the clouds are growing, going higher and higher above the ground.

A dark wall made up of hundreds of faces, open and close their mouth at the same time.

“I am Legion for we are many.”

 

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