Chapter 24 - Plunderer (1)

One rank-9 magic crystal bought one loaf of stone bread. In other words, each was worth about 20 Stone.

What about a rank-8 magic crystal, then? Unfortunately, a single deathfiend was worth only five goblins.

“What? You're saying it's only worth a hundred Stone?!”

“... Three hundred Stone if you include the drops from the summoned ghouls.”

Even taking that into account, there was no denying it was a pittance. We'd just risked our lives for it, after all.

“Bjorn... how much was that bread we ate at the inn?”

“... About three hundred Stone, as I recall.”

“Then... that still means we get a taste of sweetness every time we kill a deathfiend!”

Apparently, the cream pie she'd eaten earlier had become Aynar's new unit of measurement. Of course, with our eight-to-two split, she'd get 0.2 tastes of sweetness per kill... but I was better off keeping that to myself.

“Bjorn! We have no time for this. Hunting! Let's hunt!”

Her disappointment at the unexpectedly meager sum was short-lived. I smiled as I watched Aynar brimming with enthusiasm again.

Traveling with another barbarian wasn't bad in that respect. My former companion Erwin had been great in every other way, but she had the drawback of being passive about everything. Motivating Aynar was far simpler.

“All right, let's go!”

We continued roaming the area, hunting deathfiends. If every kill took over twenty minutes, even earning 300 Stone could almost be considered a loss... but the first attempt always had to be treated as an exception.

“Gwooooo!”

“VEHELLLAAAAAA!”

Whenever we encountered a deathfiend, we charged together, crying out to our ancestral god. Then we each grabbed a leg, lifted it up, and slammed it into the ground. I called it the Double Barbarian Tackle.

THUD!

A downed deathfiend was easy prey. We stood companionably at its head, out of reach of its arms, and pounded away as though making rice cakes. Before long, it dissolved into light.

The whole process took about three minutes. It was difficult to cut that down any further, since the thing sensed danger and summoned ghouls the instant it hit the ground.

“Woooo!”

Our crystal pouches filled faster as the hunt went on, but we weren't satisfied. We pushed ourselves harder still, because hunting deathfiends would become impossible on the third day.

If I hadn't exploited a bug to reach the second floor before anyone else, I wouldn't even have considered fighting these things. Normally, they didn't travel alone. We might somehow manage two, but groups of three or four would be too much for just us.

[14 : 27]

After checking the time, I took a short break. They said to row while the tide was in, but rushing was always what led to accidents.

“Bjorn, I'm thirsty.”

“Drink sparingly. The corpse flowers won't bloom until tomorrow.”

“Corpse flowers?”

They were the only way to replenish our water in the Land of the Dead. When the time came, flowers bloomed on the vines covering the ruins of stone buildings. Split them open, and there was water inside. When I explained this, Aynar's expression turned serious.

“Bjorn, isn't that a little unhygienic?”

She certainly had a point. I'd heard the water was safe to drink, but even I felt uneasy about it. Still, that wasn't something I wanted to hear from people who took turns sleeping, unwashed, ten to a five-person room.

“Do you have another solution, then?”

“No! I'll drink it!”

After resting for about twenty minutes to recover our stamina, we resumed hunting. By the time we were on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, we'd killed a total of seventy deathfiends. That meant we'd earned over twenty thousand Stone in a single day.

'At this rate, it's better than only hunting rank-9 monsters, isn't it?'

Unfortunately, the Essence I'd secretly been hoping for never dropped.

* * *

Calling Essence drop rates abysmal didn't begin to cover it. That was why building your character around whichever Essences dropped was fundamental to the early game... and how well you did it was what separated skilled Players from the rest.

In that sense, I'd been quietly hopeful. A deathfiend's Essence ranked among the very best available early on.

'The problem is, there's no sign of one dropping.'

Its active skill, Call of the Dead, summoned ghouls and was honestly of questionable use. But its passive, Body Preservation, was good enough to more than make up for that. Of course, absorbing its Essence wouldn't give me the same absurd regeneration it had... but it would synergize well with my regeneration multiplier, which the Immortal's engravings had already increased.

[02 : 57]

I checked the time while listening to Aynar snore. Before I knew it, a day had passed, and the second day had begun.

We would have to fight two deathfiends at a time from now on, but there was something reassuring about that, too. At least we wouldn't look suspicious if we encountered other explorers. As I've said before, explorers scared me the most.

“Aynar, wake up.”

“... I-I didn't eat it!”

“Time to switch.”

Three hours each. After resting for six hours in total, we resumed hunting deathfiends on the second day.

“Gwoooo!”

Two of them at once. Their active skills alone summoned twenty ghouls, but we could still manage somehow. We'd learned the ropes by fighting them countless times on the first day.

THUD!

We rushed in and slammed one to the ground before it could react, then worked together to topple the other.

A single slipup during this process could put us in a nasty spot... but whenever that happened, we simply ran like hell without looking back.

“Aynar, let's bolt!”

“Yeah!”

Deathfiends moved slowly and wouldn't pursue us far from their territory, so we'd yet to find ourselves in any real danger.

SHHHHH!

Each fight took about ten minutes. We even failed three out of every ten attempts, but since we were killing two at a time, our earnings were similar to the first day's. We'd spent quite a bit of time searching for enemies that day, too.

As the afternoon wore on, however, we began occasionally encountering groups of three, and those encounters grew more frequent as time passed.

“It's about time we left.”

“A wise warrior must know when to withdraw.”

With the second day drawing to a close, I put my regrets aside and left the deathfiends' territory. We returned to the squelching mud and looked for a suitable campsite.

That was when it happened.

“...!”

For the first time, we encountered another group of explorers.

The three humans were wandering the darkness by the light of a single torch, just like us... but we only noticed one another after coming within ten meters.

“What are you looking at? If you've got no business with us, get lost.”

“Ahem. Pardon us.”

At Aynar's cold words, the other group passed us and disappeared back into the darkness. It was a little strange.

TRUDGE, TRUDGE.

They'd only gone about twenty paces, and we could still faintly hear their footsteps. Yet the light of their torch was already invisible.

I'd heard that most floors of the Labyrinth swallowed light. So this was what that meant. Apparently, something as bright as a torch became invisible to the naked eye from just ten meters away... While I was mulling over this phenomenon, Aynar spoke.

“Bjorn, we must move.” Her voice was firm.

“They know where we are. Having walls is convenient, but finding a new campsite would still be safer.”

That was certainly true. I'd been planning to do just that. Still, I couldn't get used to this.

What was with her? First she'd snarled at the other explorers to get lost the moment she saw them... It was like her whole personality had suddenly changed.

“Bjorn, those humans can't be trusted.”

“... Agreed.”

Now that I thought about it, we had something else in common besides being barbarians: a distrust of humans. Something must have happened during her first expedition, too. I'd have to ask her about it sometime.

“Let's move, then.”

We packed up and set off again. But finding a campsite as well situated as the last one proved difficult. Should we settle for a single wall to protect our backs? Just as I was thinking that...

“Ughhh...”

A groan came from not far ahead.

“Gah! Hhng!”

It wasn't a banshee. For one thing, it wasn't a woman's voice...

“... W-wait!”

And it was distinctly speaking words.

“P-please, spare—”

Damn it. We should've just settled down anywhere and gone to sleep.

“...”

Silence followed the abruptly cut-off scream.

Aynar murmured in a near whisper, “That wasn't a monster's doing.”

I had ears, too. People generally didn't beg monsters to spare their lives. The circumstances were clear: someone had killed someone else.

Fuck, what kind of bullshit was this now? It wasn't like I was some kid detective.

Not wanting to get involved, I grabbed Aynar's wrist and slowly backed away. But had someone sensed us?

“Who's there?”

A cold, subdued voice rang out. Rough as it was, it belonged to a woman.

Without either of us needing to signal, we held our breath and froze. But at that moment...

FWEEEE! POP-POP-BOOM!

Something like a flare shot into the air, casting a soft light over a radius of about fifty meters. Thanks to it, I met the eyes of the woman who'd spoken. She was less than fifteen meters away.

... If Erwin had been here, she would've sensed her from far away, and we could've avoided this.

“Hmm. Beginners?”

The unidentified woman took one look at us and reached a swift conclusion. So did I.

A dagger dripping blood. Four bodies sprawled on the ground.

“... A plunderer.”

The woman asked casually, “Never seen one before?”

“Hard to say.”

This was my first time seeing a fucker who looked as professional as you.

“I see.”

You'd think she'd be flustered at having her murder scene witnessed, but her face was utterly calm as she gave a meaningful nod. Somehow, I felt I knew why.

* * *

Plunderers. That was what they called people who specialized in hunting fellow explorers rather than monsters. They earned substantial sums not from magic crystals, but from looting explorers' equipment.

Of course, if caught, they'd be executed the moment they returned to the city... but that rarely happened.

Just as I'd killed six explorers without facing any investigation, even if it had been self-defense, there was no way for anyone outside to know what happened inside the Labyrinth. Unless someone told them.

“... You're not wearing a mask.”

That was the most fucked-up part of this situation. This psychopathic bitch was openly showing her face while working as a plunderer.

A little over 170 centimeters tall, with a slim build. Shoulder-length red hair, a tattoo beneath her eye, and the upper part of her right ear half cut off. With that much to go on, identifying her wouldn't be difficult.

In the modern world, she could've denied it and demanded proof... but I was in a world where magic existed. There were genuine ways to distinguish truth from lies, even without physical evidence.

“... Were they your companions?”

“Who knows?”

The woman shrugged as she looked at the bodies. “Perhaps they thought so.”

So that was why she'd left her face uncovered. Even as I asked a question whose answer I could already guess, I quickly sorted through the information before my eyes.

Four bodies in total. Judging by the quality of their equipment and the presence of a mage, they were explorers who operated on at least the fifth floor.

Three of the bodies had no external injuries. But all of them had traces of vomited blood and stomach acid around their mouths...

'Did she poison them? And the man she finished off herself had some resistance, so he held out a little longer?'

I desperately hoped that guess was right. If she was skilled enough to kill four seasoned explorers alone without taking a scratch, our situation would be even bleaker.

CLATTER, CLATTER.

The woman crouched and deftly stripped the bodies of their equipment, putting the pieces into a bag one by one. It must have been a magic item; even bulky objects slipped inside without any trouble.

Fear came before envy. The mere fact that she owned something like that drove home the gulf between us.

“Barbarians.” The woman called to us.

I didn't answer. Aynar quietly asked me, “Are we fighting?”

She really was something. Erwin would've been terrified and stammering by now. Was thinking of fighting first, no matter how vast the gap, some kind of warrior's pride?

I gave a brief reply. “I'm thinking.”

Honestly, I wanted to avoid fighting. Our equipment alone made the difference obvious. And if her skill matched her gear, well... even accounting for our two-to-one advantage, our chances of winning would be much lower than hers.

WHOOOSH!

The light overhead went out, its duration apparently exhausted, and darkness returned. I made my decision immediately.

“Run. Full speed.”

Pride wouldn't save our lives.