The first-year students crowded onto the plaza in a dense mass, either checking their gear or gathering in small groups to chat. Several supervising teachers stood at the front to maintain order, and only after quite some effort did they finally finish the roll call and read out the requirements for this dungeon trial.
【Old Radiant City】, a dungeon located roughly directly beneath the academy. Its shallow levels were often used for freshman assessments, while its deeper depths served as practical training grounds for upperclassmen. This time, the freshmen's range of activity was restricted to the first two floors, and they had three objectives: survive self-sufficiently for fifteen days with limited supplies; collect a sufficient number of specified magical beast crystal cores; and map out a designated area of the dungeon.
Teams were capped at three members. In principle, solo action was permitted, but very few people actually did so.
“This might be the first time most of you have entered a dungeon,” the supervising teacher emphasized at the end. “I don't want you to take this lightly. Teams that complete all three tasks will receive extra credit toward their grades.”
Behind him was a grayish-white stone gate half-buried in the ground. An already faded coat of arms was carved into the lintel. Amidst the ruined walls, a flight of stone steps led downward, stretching into the gloomy depths. This was one of the entrances to Old Radiant City.
The students began to form teams on their own.
Nora stood in front of Erich, tugging his hand and swaying it back and forth. “Erich, join my team, okay?”
“Nora, I've already decided to go solo.”
“Why? A three-person team is so much better, and I'm really strong too!” She took a step forward. Behind her, several maids tried to follow, but she waved them away.
Erich rubbed her hair a couple of times. “I know you're strong, but I have my own plans. I'll do my best to let you know I'm safe every day, how about that?”
Nora fell silent. Her sapphire-blue eyes stared stubbornly at him for a moment before she finally just let out a huff and walked away dejectedly.
In the end, Nora teamed up with Lorraine. Neither of them was someone to be trifled with, so they made a decent match. Celine, the Holy Maiden, teamed up with Irene. Erich didn't ask too closely about how those two had ended up together; they probably shared some sort of tacit understanding. As for Isabella, that girl ended up teaming up with Alicia, though he had no idea what they were plotting.
Erich registered by himself. The teacher in charge of registration frowned when he saw Erich's name. “Are you sure you want to go solo? Although the first two floors are entry-level, it is still a dungeon, after all.”
“I'm sure.”
What a joke. A dungeon of this level was child's play to Erich. Although he was a story-skipper who mashed his way through most of the slice-of-life plot, he naturally remembered combat segments like dungeons very clearly.
The first two floors didn't have any good loot—just a labyrinth, slimes, and skeleton soldiers, which weren't even enough to serve as a warm-up. But the third floor was different. Besides the floor boss guarding the path to the fourth floor, there was also a hidden room. The boss inside that hidden room was Erich's real target. Fighting it was a visceral, fist-to-flesh affair, perfect for helping him temper this body.
More importantly, the reward in that hidden room was incredibly enticing.
Well, actually, it wasn't that enticing. It was a ring that could enhance psionic magic.
It sounded like something designed specifically for Lorraine. Over the past few months, that girl had resolved several incidents within the academy and become quite a favorite of the principal, receiving a lot of good stuff. She would come over to Erich's place to show off every other day. If Erich could get his hands on the ring ahead of time, he could definitely pry some good things out of her when the time came.
Daydreaming, Erich walked down the stone steps into the underground.
The scent of Old Radiant City rushed to meet him—dry, mixed with the smell of decaying dust. Below the stone steps was a wide corridor, with ancient reliefs still remaining on the walls on both sides, though they had been worn down by time until they were almost unrecognizable. Walking through the corridor, he officially entered the first floor of 【Old Radiant City】.
The first floor was a labyrinth built of stone blocks. The stone walls were seven or eight meters high, separated by narrow passageways. Overhead was a single, thick layer of bedrock. The light was very dim, but at regular intervals, glowing ores were embedded in the walls, emitting a faint luminescence that was just enough to let one see the path beneath their feet.
The layout of the labyrinth was incredibly winding. Many students walked for most of the day only to end up right back where they started, letting out wails of despair. Erich looked at the parchment scroll in his hand, compared it with the route he had taken, and drew a few lines on the paper.
His drawings were very rough, but the structure of this labyrinth wasn't much different from the game map in his memory. Furthermore, the magical beasts on the first floor posed no threat to him whatsoever.
Slimes were essentially harmless, sluggishly wriggling through the passageways and not even running away when they saw people. Skeleton soldiers looked intimidating but were slow-moving. The sharp fangs of carrion rats gleamed in the shadows, but unfortunately for them, they were heavily countered by Erich's area-of-effect ice magic.
Only the trigger-based traps scattered throughout the labyrinth were a bit troublesome to deal with.
But they couldn't be called too difficult either. The hardest part was still the labyrinth itself—it was simply too winding.
Erich wandered around the labyrinth for half the day before finally finding the stairs leading to the second floor in an inconspicuous corner.
Descending the stairs, the air began to grow damp. There was no light here; only the staircase itself stretched downward, ending at a pitch-black doorway.
Erich stood at the entrance of the doorway, looking at the world before him.
The second floor was a dark forest.
Unlike the vibrant forest in the snakefolk territory, every single tree here was severely twisted, looking like some kind of living creature that had been forcibly wrung into a spiral shape as it grew.
The trunks were grayish-brown, their bark dry and cracked. There wasn't a single leaf, but hanging in large clumps from the branches were gray, woolly tufts that looked like a mix of moss and fungi.
The entire forest was shrouded in a bottomless darkness. Only in a few places did floating luminescent bodies light up tiny, scattered patches.
Producing a light source in a place like this was practically announcing one's position to predators.
Erich stuffed the mana lamp he had been about to pull out back into his pocket. Closing his eyes, he let his vision adjust for a moment, and then simply entered the dark forest under the cover of pitch-blackness.
Rate on N.U.
