“You hear about the dungeon that showed up near Fabchi Village?”
“The goblin dungeon, right? Should we try it?”
In the bustle of a tavern, two men talked without minding the other patrons around them.
The one who’d brought up the dungeon rumors gave a wry smile at the response.
“You’ve got it, but if you’re saying that, you haven’t heard the latest.”
“I thought it was just a decent dungeon near a small village?”
That assumption was correct, as far as it went. Even now, adventurers who thought exactly that kept showing up to try the dungeon.
But the man who’d raised the topic knew what had happened since.
“Go in expecting regular goblins and you’ll get wiped out. Adventurers who’ve taken down Goblin Kings before have gone in and gone missing.”
“So there’s something other than goblins…?”
“No — from what I’ve heard, it really is only goblin types.”
That’s what everyone assumed. And one by one they’d underestimated the dungeon, faced a horde of mutually-buffed goblins while treating them like ordinary opponents, and lost.
“Special individuals — stronger than normal goblins?”
“More like smarter, the way people are talking. Apparently the goblins coordinate with each other.”
“Goblins?! They’re low-tier monsters with barely any intelligence — how could they—”
Unlike wild monsters, who can’t execute complex coordination, the dungeon’s goblins supported and reinforced one another.
A cautious adventuring party had made that assessment and retreated — and their report was what finally got the information circulating.
“So the Goblin King in there is a lot stronger than a wild one, too.”
“Yeah. Honestly their group combat might be better than most adventuring parties.”
“Then we’d probably get wiped out too…”
“Temporarily recruiting help would just mean coordination worse than the goblins themselves.”
“True enough… maybe it’s time to look for new party members.”
They knocked back their drinks like men with few options left.
Ever since the Heroes were defeated, it had been one bad thing after another.
The Heroes had been revived, but dying once had weakened them significantly — they were out in the field grinding wild monsters just to recover their former strength.
And the kingdom, convinced that more power would be needed for the coming battle with the Demon Lord, had thrown itself into tracking down reincarnates brought by the Great Reincarnation.
Those reincarnates needed practical experience, which also meant hunting wild monsters — and adventurers like them, who’d been making their living off low-level wild monster work, had been crowded out.
Which left either dangerous jobs, or cheap, unpopular ones that weren’t worth the trouble.
Choosing the former had cost them their companions.
Now it was the latter keeping them afloat, barely. Needed a drink just to get through it.
“The way things are, we’re just burning through savings.”
“Exactly. If we get a proper party together again, then we could go for the goblin dungeon—”
“I told you, drop it.”
“No, but — as long as we don’t get careless, right? A coordinated goblin horde is rough, but we can hold our own.”
It was true that fighting without complacency, the two of them could go toe-to-toe with a goblin group.
But these were dungeon goblins — made by a skill, a special breed.
However much they’d heard, they couldn’t shake the image of wild goblins from their heads. They kept thinking they’d be different.
Knowingly or not, a dungeon populated by nothing but goblins had become exactly that kind of temptation.
The accumulating evidence of failures didn’t dampen people’s desire to try — it made each one think we’d be the ones to do it.
And clearing a dungeon that had beaten so many others would mean real reward from the kingdom.
But unlike his companion, who was warming to the idea, the other man raised a further concern with an uneasy expression.
“Apparently some groups stronger than us have already been taken out…”
“Come on — however tough they are, they’re goblins.”
“Drop it.”
A new voice cut into the conversation.
They weren’t inclined to object to eavesdropping, but the interruption itself left a small edge of irritation — until they looked at the speaker, and the irritation evaporated entirely.
“You… that equipment. Are you a kingdom soldier?”
“Yeah. I overheard you talking about the dungeon we had to pull out of. Sorry for cutting in.”
The two men exchanged a glance.
Not just adventurers — the kingdom itself had already sent people. And not just sent them, but been pushed into retreat.
The man was clearly a veteran, not some overconfident new recruit.
Someone well beyond what either of them could handle, in all likelihood.
“Why would someone like you…”
“We took on a scouting request from a reincarnate. Figured it wouldn’t come to much, but we had to respond to the requests if we could.”
“And for that they actually sent kingdom soldiers…”
“Is it really that bad? The goblin dungeon?”
“Yes. Boss room has a Goblin King leading a horde — they buff each other and become a serious problem.”
That matched what they’d already heard.
So the rumors were accurate.
“A serious problem, but not unbeatable?”
“Right. Just killing the goblins, we could have managed.”
“What do you mean, just killing them — what else is there?”
Something other than monsters.
The soldiers’ words raised the question.
“Traps.”
“Traps…?”
“The moment it came down to just finishing the Goblin King — boulders, several of them, rolling through all at once. Wounded multiple men. We had to withdraw.”
“Traps triggering while you’re in the middle of fighting the boss…”
“And enough to disable kingdom soldiers in one hit and force a retreat…”
It seemed even their assumptions had been too generous.
Stronger goblin horde than normal — that was what they’d expected. They’d been wrong.
Traps activating mid-fight with the boss. A dungeon that nasty was not worth the trouble.
“That’s… rough. Sorry to hear it.”
“We completed the scouting job. Some injuries, no deaths. But that’s not a dungeon to take lightly.”
“We’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”
◇
“That was rough~”
“I know, I’m sorry…”
Pilukaya’s exasperated tone, and all I could do was apologize — and this was already I don’t know how many times.
“I get that you panicked, but~ — triggering everything at once like that? Of course it looked suspicious.”
Kingdom soldiers had arrived.
Pilukaya warned me in advance, but these intruders were a different level of strength from anything we’d seen before — they tore through the auxiliary dungeon.
Goblins fell one after another and they pushed to the boss room without slowing down. They weren’t intruders. They were an invasion.
The Goblin King’s horde in the boss room was similarly dismantled in quick succession.
I should have let them clear the dungeon. Instead I panicked and triggered the traps we’d set in the boss room.
All of them. At once.
Watching a cascade of boulders roll through left me stunned — but the soldiers on the receiving end must have been even more stunned.
Most of them were incapacitated by that, but one soldier who was left standing managed to get the others out.
They escaped.
After all that careful managing of intruder numbers — this undid everything.
“If we’d at least finished them off… no, the kingdom already knows, and a group of soldiers not coming back would raise even more suspicion. Hmm~ Either way it might have been a dead end.”
“What were they even doing here… did I let too many intruders get wiped out? Is that why the kingdom sent soldiers?”
“I don’t believe Rei-sama’s management was at fault.”
“That’s right. Rei worked hard. I should pat his head.”
“…Thank you.”
Lady Fiona and Primila both said so, but that somehow made it more worrying rather than less.
Why had soldiers been dispatched now?
With that question unresolved and a vague unease still sitting in my chest, I set about restocking the lost monsters and traps.