Chapter 25 – D-Class Dungeon RTA
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I finished my light meal at a fast food restaurant in front of Sendai Station while placing pins on the locations of the dungeons I discovered inside the map app. It’d have also been fine for me to go to a restaurant in the nearby business district, but I didn’t feel the need to be so picky about getting delicious food this time.
With a hamburger in one hand, I opened Dungeon Seekers. I had expected that all the dungeons might have already been cleared because I was in front of a crowded train station, but I found three D-Class dungeons and two C-Class dungeons.
I didn’t feel like charging into a C-Class dungeon, but I thought I ought to take a go at the D-Class dungeons. Satoha had mentioned it before, but right now there are almost no other DS players in Sendai. According to her, a part of the playerbase noticed the movements of that serial killer and feeling it’d be dangerous to stay here, they either moved to the north or went to Tokyo to set up their base of operations in other places.
Vortexes are military bases, but they also provide resources. If the players come back to Sendai, it might trigger a scramble for those very resources. Granted I’m focusing on only training myself, I have to farm D-Class dungeons. This will also hinder the growth of other players.
I opened the skill list and used the SP I had to acquire another skill.
『Galloping Rider』
Grants you a high aptitude for mobile battle by boosting your movement speed. Drastically raises your abilities when you are facing an army by yourself. Riding equipment of the Type: Mount or Type: Car strengthens the effect even further.
Today I needed quite a bit of time to clear the D-Class dungeon because it was my first time and also because I fought with Satoha. I acquired this skill to shorten the time needed. I’ll clear them dungeons in one go.
I opened the Dungeon Seeker’s setting screen. Previously I thought I might not use it much, but today I got my hands on some gear and thus it’d be best to set it up properly.
But, for that I should move elsewhere, I’d say.
With that in mind, I headed towards the station.
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Inside the station’s premises I entered a free multi-purpose toilet and locked it. No one would be able to see me here and even though I felt pangs of guilty conscience for misusing it for a purpose it’s not intended for, I used the diaper-changing-station as a substitute for a table and placed the combat gear I bought earlier on it.
Fiddling around with Dungeon Seekers, I reached a certain entry. It had been introduced in the manual as 『Shortcuts』. Pressing it opened up another list. I tapped on the 『Costume』 entry.
I’ll fix it up later, but for now I set my current wear as 『Costume 1』.
Afterwards I started to take off my current clothes, changed into the black combat uniform and the other stuff I bought today, took out Visor of the Dragon, and put it on.
It’s not that I’ve already registered it as a shortcut. I was just looking at myself in the mirror while holding Dragon Eater in my hand.
Black, camouflaged clothes, a belt, a grim visor, and a katana; the reflection in the mirror showed a modern ninja as Hollywood would come up with. One who looked like he was fighting in Little Tokyo at night. My appearance was overall quite atrocious.
…I think it’s pretty cool, though.
I registered my current outfit as 『Costume 2』, saved the setting, and switched to Dungeon Seekers’ home screen. Over there a new entry called 『Shortcut Panel』 had been added. I opened it by tapping on it.
Alright, it’s been properly registered.
As soon as I tapped the panel 『Costume 1』 on the smartphone screen, my current clothes were dyed in a glossy black, before returning to my previous casual clothes. I mean, I cannot afford to be mistaken as a suspicious Hollywood ninja outside a dungeon, so I would need to slowly change clothes after entering the dungeon. But, if I were to carefreely play around with dressing myself up in hostile territory, I’d get attacked in the middle of it, resulting in me having to fight in underwear.
Accordingly, I’d make use of the equipment change shortcut as a function. Right now I had opened the panel displaying the shortcut keys, but apparently you could also trigger the shortcut through a specific registered gesture.
…That serial killer woman had used the same feature when she activated her skill by snapping her fingers. But although she could invoke the skill with a snap of her fingers, the function seemed to only work if the one snapping their fingers was consciously trying to access the function. As such, the possibility of causing accidents by misfire seemed rather low.
Right now I only need this feature for changing my clothes, but I think a shortcut for taking out weapons might be quite handy, too. Like, instantly taking out throwing weapons and attacking an enemy with them. At present I don’t have such weapons, so I won’t have any opportunity to use such function, though.
｡ ₊°༺🫀༻°₊ ｡
Anyway, all my preparations are done now. I don’t plan on messing around.
I checked my smartphone’s locked screen for the clock on it.
Right now it’s just 8 p.m. I’ve got school tomorrow, and I do plan to attend, so I’ve got to hurry back home. The last train heading back to my station departs at 11:59 p.m.
…Can I clear all three D-Class dungeons before the last train?
Guess I’ve got no choice but to give it a try.
The first dungeon was a forest type. It was a weird dungeon with just one floor, filled with groups of apes with oddly long arms and packs of wolves with abnormally thick tails.
If I only focus on clearing the dungeon, there’s no need to kill each and every single mob.
“Don’t run away, you shitty monkey!!!!”
I activated 『Galloping Rider』 inside the forest and concentrated on finding the boss. As soon as I discovered it, I cut the huge ape with white fur into two with Dragon Eater. Killing the small-fries didn’t move my experience bar at all, and I only leveled after killing the boss and escaping the dungeon. The reward room was kinda like a loghouse, but then again not. I grabbed random items like a storm and left it.
It took me 36 minutes in total. I think that’s a pretty nice record, but once I looked on the map app for the next dungeon, it was around 20 minutes away by foot. Looks like I cannot slack off, so let’s run.
｡ ₊°༺🫀༻°₊ ｡
The second dungeon reminded me of my very first. It was an old stone fortress. Maybe because it’s an Inner World castle, it’s got a damn ugly design, if judged based on our world’s standards. Somehow, it was randomly winding and it came with several tentacle-like towers.
The actual castle itself…to put it very bluntly, it had a shape similar to that of a poop emoji.
Up until now I’ve always descended in the dungeons, but over here I had to go upwards for the first time. Even though I mainly encountered high-ranking goblins in leather armor on my way, they all were changed into something between grilled skewers and fried food in front of Dragon Eater.
I had a battle with a skeleton warrior, the boss of this dungeon, on the top floor, the rooftop at the peak of the poop emoji. Seeing that thing ready its sword and shield, I revealed a smile as it seemed it’d be a good battle, but the opponent’s sword was pulverized with one blow of Dragon Eater and then gobbled down.
…Hey…
Receiving my stare which teemed with reproach, I feel like the sword actually burped at me then and there.
Clearing the dungeon took one hour. On top of having the special trait of the floors extending upwards, it took me a lot of time because it had many spots that required me to be cautious and vigilant. The place was riddled with pitfalls, spears lunging out of walls, and other such traps. As such, I couldn’t use 『Galloping Rider』 either.
The reward room was a mysterious rock area with red and purple, thorny urchin-like things floating around. I checked whether I could actually store the thorny ones away, but their capacity was way too huge for that.
What the hell!?
…I just stored some extremely smooth and pretty poop emoji stones and left.
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I arrived in Kokubuncho, Sendai’s pleasure quarter. Exhausted salarymen, men wandering from one bar to another, women walking the street while busily texting on their smartphones; I dashed through such a crowd of people. The third dungeon wasn’t that far away.
But, considering the time it took me to get there, I might get into trouble to reach the last train in time, if the third dungeon took as much time as the previous poop castle. Will I make it?
“Wrong! I’ll get it done in time! Period!”
I rushed into the dungeon while time for the last train crossed through my mind.
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