Chapter 14 – Raid: Backyard Dungeon
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Once I opened my eyes, a grassy plain sprawled in front of me. A gentle wind teased the blades.
One part of my visual field was filled with light green, the other with azure blue. The sky.
Not a single tall tree as far as I looked. Only a stupidly vast plain. It looked almost like a savannah━━though I’ve never seen one myself.
“It told me that it’d be a dungeon….and yet grassland appeared?” I muttered, even though I was alone.
The telephone pole dungeon I had entered before had a structure that would have totally allowed me to call it a very RPG-like dungeon. In contrast to that, this place is nothing but an open field.
Opening DS, I checked the dungeon info.
Miyagi Prefecture, Sendai City – 82nd Labyrinth
Class: D
Type: Grassland
Floor: 1/3
――Undisclosed due to lack of authorization――
The class went up from E to D, but the number of floors apparently hasn’t changed. Yet, I feel like the size is overwhelmingly different. Floor suggests that you should go up or down, but I have no clue where to find something like stairs.
I clasped Dragon Eater in my right hand after manifesting it, and scanned my vicinity. Thereupon, I spotted something that looked like an earth mound. But…somehow I couldn’t clearly tell its size because it was so far away.
“Hmm…?”
I heard the rustling of something approaching me within the grasses that had grown slightly beyond my knees in height. What appeared as it pushed its way through the light green grass was a pack of light brown ants which looked pretty disgusting.
The dungeon’s interior was being flooded by fake sunlight. The awfully thin legs growing out of their glossy bodies were eerie at best. The three attacking ants were around as big as border collies. They were sharply clicking their mandibles as they stared my way and moved their antennas.
For ants to be the fifth sort of monster after goblins, slimes, orcs, and ogres sure is unexpected. But, it doesn’t change the fact of them being monsters.
Victory goes to the one who makes the first move.
I brandished Dragon Eater, hitting the head of the first ant.
“Uooh!”
At that moment, another ant raised its butt, pointed it my way, and shot some mysterious liquid at me. Is this what they call formic acid? Either way, it doesn’t look like a bright idea to get hit by that, so I’ll dodge it.
I somersaulted to the right by supporting my body with one hand on the ground, and then I jumped. Even though I succeeded at evading the liquid for the most part, some drops came flying at me. Just before they could touch my bare body, the deep blue coating around my body prevented it, repelling and evaporating the formic.
So this is the effect of Barrier Coating, eh? It absorbs the attacks I cannot fully block and it won’t break unless I receive a powerful blow.
“Hahahahahaha!”
I unleashed Dragon Eater in return, crushing the remaining two ants. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a notification about leveling-up, but I feel like these guys might be some yummy exp.
I felt grateful for being able to enter the battle stage once more, and I was delighted over the ability to become stronger. That acid might have been dangerous if I got hit directly.
Great, it looks like this is going to be fun.
While smiling due to the reassuring weight in my hands, I watched the three ants turning into dust, just to hear a swarm of ants, incomparable to the three from before, rustling my way.
At once I readied Dragon Eater.
A group of beagle-sized ants in such a number that it looked as if they were carpeting the ground all the way to the horizon. It made me recall a movie I saw about ants where they overran a huge insect.
That stupidly huge mount I spotted earlier, and this army of ants.
“That thing’s an anthill, eh…?”
I lightly tapped my shoulder with the back of Dragon Eater’s blade. I think I’m currently around one kilometer away from the anthill. Seeing the ground buried with ant troops all the way to the anthill, I wondered just how much experience points they’d give me.
Somehow it felt like Dragon Eater was also rejoicing as he rested on my shoulder. In his wish to eat a lot, lot more enemies, he apparently wasn’t overly picky in regards to what he ate.
It’s my first time to use this guy against monsters, but Dragon Eater’s 『functions』 had many uncertain parts to them, so I wanted to check them out.
Also, my level has risen quite a bit compared to my first dungeon crawl. It’s 26 now, so it’s necessary for me to check my current capabilities.
I held the katana to the right and started to sprint across the battlefield. The ants in front of me leaped widely, jumping me from all sides. They numbered eight.
But, even while being surprised about the difference between E-Class and D-Class dungeons going this far, I didn’t panic. I killed all the ants in one sweep by swinging my katana to the left. Moreover, I took a step forward, and cut apart another three ants with my katana as I brought it back from my earlier sweep.
“Hahahahaha! With a single blow!?”
Forgetting the pain in my right arm, I solely focused on brandishing my katana while running straight in a beeline towards the anthill. The enemies, who got cut up by Dragon Eater, had parts of their bodies devoured. Thanks to that damage, they turned into dust and faded away.
I cut off heads and blew them away. I trampled over ants who were lying on the ground. I slew enemies with single strokes.
The more ants I killed by wielding Dragon Eater, the more my smartphone vibrated and beeped inside my right pocket. Feeling the times when my level rose, I became fully absorbed in the pulsation of my heart as it pumped blood and something else through my whole body.
“You’re in the way!”
Probably thinking that they wouldn’t be able to kill me by just leaping at me, the swarm of ants lined up, pointed their butts towards me, and simultaneously shot their formic acid my way.
Ants are pretty smart for insects. I could see that they aimed to kill me, whom they couldn’t stop from moving, from a distance.
But, I’ve got this guy here with me, don’t I?
As soon as I brandished Dragon Eater as if to swipe away the formic in the air, Dragon Eater devoured the acid, causing all of it to disappear.
This is one of the 『functions』 of 『Uchigatana Dragon Eater』. 『Gluttony』. It was the same when it devoured the poisonous gas yesterday evening. This guy literally eats everything. Without a care how repulsive it might be. And just like he had done when he had eaten the poisonous gas, the blue veins on the blade released a flickery glow as they devoured the ants’ formic acid.
I had closed the distance to the anthill significantly. Going by 『Intuition』, I could sense even stronger being inside the anthill.
I do enjoy killing one enemy after the other, but at this point it has become a bother. Wondering whether I don’t have some sort of method to get rid of all the trash mobs in one swoop, I recalled the trajectory of 『Hidden Style』 which I had invoked yesterday.
Dragon Eater is categorized as 『Magic Sword』. And 『Hidden Style – Dragon Eater』, the strongest trait of this weapon, basically manifests a sword wave into the material world, if you try to explain it very simplistically. I think the physical sword wave released by Dragon Eater is related to me who has been enhanced by Dungeon Seekers.
My physical abilities have risen as my level went up, but it’s not like I feel my muscular strength has grown or something like that.
The ground’s vibrations were passed on through my right leg’s thigh. I calmly perceived the strong something being pumped out from my heart alongside my blood. In addition, I thought about 『Barrier Coating』, which has been blocking the small attacks launched against me for a while now.
Maybe it’s that? I tried to channel the energy, which has been saturating my body and serves as the source for my vitality.
The blue veins, which had been glowing dimly, started to gleam dazzlingly, leaving behind a night-like coloring on the silver blade.
“Haaah!”
As suggested by 『Intuition』, I swung Dragon Eater after filling him with energy. In response, a deep blue sword wave was released from Dragon Eater, turning into a ranged attack, and kept pushing its way through the army of ants while tearing the bugs apart.
If I had thrust Dragon Eater, I felt like it’d have turned into a beam. Even as I thought that it’d be wonderful if they could include the different abilities not mentioned in the 『functions』 in the weapon’s description from the very start, I watched the sword wave continuing to wreak havoc among the ants.
“Hehehehehehe, hahahahahaha!!!”
During my kindergarten time, I was a brat who loved to step and crush ant nests, but this notion apparently hasn’t changed even now that I’ve grown up.
The anthill in front of me; I’ll destroy the mound of soil that’s bigger than a single house. But, before that I want to infiltrate that place.
I poured even more energy into Dragon Eater. The blade which was dyed by phosphorescence while starting to tremble furiously, seemed as though it wanted to rampage because of a tormenting craving.
As soon as the katana’s trace, which was released as a diagonal slash wave, turned into an afterglow, the ant hill was blown away and ended up getting devoured. The mound itself vanished without a trace. The other ants, which had bustled about on top of the hill, were apparently destroyed alongside the hill. Messages kept notifying me of level-ups while the phone vibrated against my thigh.
All that was left was the descending dust of the dead ants. The path towards the second floor had the shape of a burrow, inviting me to step in.
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