“Hurry up. Meiris.”
“Y-yes…”
Our party leader Kairan is in a bad mood because we failed our last job.
We’d been so close — and then a Kobold Lord crashed in and we couldn’t finish off the Goblin King.
We ended up running, so no reward, and we’re in the red after combat expenses.
Which means we need to take something easy and make reliable money.
“But of all things — a dungeon near some backwater village? Probably just monsters that wandered into a cave, right?”
“Actually, apparently the interior is fully built out. At least ten monsters, they said.”
“Still, it’s goblins. Ten of them isn’t any kind of threat.”
Riona the mage and Sarios the scout are talking over the job.
A dungeon appeared near a village — investigate and suppress if possible.
According to the report, a few goblins and Goblin Soldiers per room, and something that looked like a treasure chest.
“Treasure too, apparently.”
“A treasure chest in a nothing-but-goblins dungeon? Low-quality consumables at best. Mimics won’t even bother showing up.”
I think so too. A dungeon with only goblins probably means the Demon Lord just rebuilt it.
The Heroes were defeated by the Demon Lord, but the Demon Lord must have been pushed to the brink by them too…
So just like the Heroes are waiting to be revived, the Demon Lord is probably spending everything right now just getting the dungeon and the Army back in shape.
Which means this newly-born dungeon is probably something even we can handle.
“I don’t want to fail two in a row. Pushover enemies are fine by me.”
“Can’t be helped… the chest probably won’t have anything worth taking, so let’s just grab the suppression reward and be done with it.”
“Right, let’s get some spending money before the kingdom soldiers show up. Before anyone else beats us to it.”
Suppressing a dungeon means a reward from the kingdom.
Even if it’s nothing but goblins, it’s still one of the Demon Lord’s footholds — chipping away at that power matters, even in small ways.
So for manageable monsters like these, adventurers like us are usually the ones who handle it first.
The kingdom’s soldiers, let alone the Heroes, shouldn’t have to be bothered with something like this…
◇
“Oh, here they come.”
Pilukaya seems to have spotted intruders inside the dungeon.
Sharing his field of view is useful, but I’m still not used to it…
Closing my eyes loosely helps me focus on the shared vision, but eventually I should probably get to where I can track multiple viewpoints at once like the two of them do.
“First it was just the occasional villager, but these ones have proper gear.”
“Expected. The villagers probably decided a few tries in that it was over their heads. So now we’ve got actual adventurers sent on a job.”
“Adventurers… a guild of jack-of-all-trades types, right?”
“Yes. The village wouldn’t have a guild, so they must have gone to the nearest town with a branch and filed a report.”
So things are going according to plan.
This is where the management gets tricky.
“Should we just let them all go down?”
“Hmm~ …Yeah, that’s probably fine for now.”
Good — nothing we need to actively do then.
Letting them escape would mean giving the monsters simple orders, and in the worst case actually building walls to bail the intruders out.
None of that this time. Much less work.
Four of them. Two men, two women.
A warrior type, a light-footed man, a woman with a staff, a small girl.
Ignoring the sign and walking right in — they must have some confidence in their ability.
Probably make it to the boss room at least.
◇
Just like the villagers described — proper corridors and rooms inside.
Rooms had a few goblins each, occasionally with a higher-tier one mixed in.
Definitely a dungeon. The Demon Lord… the Army got torn apart by the Heroes, but you haven’t given up…
“Nothing but small fry.”
“Don’t complain. Think of it as easy work.”
“Kairan could’ve handled this alone, couldn’t he.”
“Sure, no hidden passages, no locked doors, no traps so far — but that doesn’t mean the rest is the same.”
There really is nothing here.
Corridors, rooms, goblins. That’s it.
The treasure chest from the report was there, but the contents were just recovery items, like expected.
If Kairan wanted to, he could probably have this cleared in under an hour…
Right — the Demon Lord didn’t have the capacity to build anything proper.
So they hid it somewhere hard to find, hoping to stay under the radar until their strength came back.
Demons really are foolish… hiding it out here, and the villagers still found it right away.
“Hm? The paths merge here.”
“You’re kidding~ So it doesn’t matter which way you go, you end up in the same place? Not even a chance of getting lost? This barely qualifies as a dungeon.”
“It’d make good practice for new adventurers, I suppose~…”
Everyone sounds done with it.
The anticlimactic nature of this place seems to have knocked the motivation right out of Riona.
“Next room. …Not that it’s surprising, but this might actually be a fair fight for us.”
What Kairan was pointing his sword at: a Goblin King.
Various other goblins surrounding it.
Right — this is exactly what our failed job looked like.
Everyone seemed to make the same connection. They snapped into focus and each moved into position.
“I’ll take the Soldiers.”
“Then we’ve got the Mages. Meiris, buff us.”
“Y-yes!”
While Kairan holds down the King, Riona sweeps the Soldiers, and I put magic resistance on Sarios so he can take out the Mages.
That’s the best way to fight this, so we moved into it without hesitation.
“Th-that’s impossible… why, why?! The magic isn’t working!”
Riona’s spell engulfed the Goblin Soldiers in flame.
Last time… that wiped them out. But these ones are walking straight through the fire.
“What the — why is the Mage not going down?!”
Sarios drove his short blade into the Goblin Mage’s throat, but it’s still alive.
It’ll die soon, but it’s still casting — still attacking Sarios before it does.
…Why? Why? Soldiers are weak to magic. Mages are weak to physical attacks. That’s how this works.
“This thing — it’s stronger than the Goblin King we fought before!”
“What do we do, what do we do…”
Riona’s been slashed and stabbed by the Goblin Soldiers, bleeding everywhere…
Sarios has taken concentrated magical fire from the Goblin Mage — he’s not moving…
Oh… the Goblin Mages are casting… right. The Mages are buffing the entire group together.
Like I buffed Sarios — every goblin in here has been buffed…
“Not… here…”
Of course. The Goblin King’s been buffed too…
I never imagined the Goblin Mages would be doing support buffs on top of attack spells…
“I… I don’t want this. I wanted to help the Hero… I wanted to help kill the Demon Lord…”
◇
“Well — they were humans, so wanting to kill Lady Fiona and the demons makes sense.”
“They probably thought this dungeon was a new base the Demon Lord set up and came to knock it down.”
“I meant it to be a small-scale dungeon, and they still assume it’s Lady Fiona’s work.”
“Well, only the Demon Lord can make dungeons. No one’s going to imagine an exception like you exists.”
“With the Demon Lord having defeated the Heroes, they may have assumed she was expanding her territory and come to stop it.”
Right — the villagers might not know the Heroes were defeated, but a town with a guild would. Information flows freely there, and adventurers attached to the guild even more so.
“Got everyone this time. More intruders will follow from here.”
“And if we wipe them out every time, stronger adventurers will eventually come. Whether to defeat the strong or cull the weak appropriately — I leave the policy to you, Rei-sama.”
“Understood. Then I’ll keep watch on what this dungeon can handle and decide as we go.”
Trap and monster ratios. Full wipes, repelling them, or letting some get through — time to start running this place properly.