Chapter 12 - The Robbing Evil God

I’m surprised that nobody has criticised me yet for trying to sell expensive bear drawings. Could it be that I rooted out all the humourless people with that 200USD half-chapter thing? Or is it just that my bear pictures are unexpectedly good?

After driving out the survey team-looking people, starting from two days later, the number of intruders suddenly jumped up. On a normal day, 3~5 parties will come to raid us. And because I got fed up with hearing the alarm each time, I changed the settings so that it would only ring once they reached the 4th floor.

At the moment, 80% of the intruders are defeated on the 1st floor, and most of the remainders fall on the 2nd. The only party that made it to the 3rd floor was the survey team from the other day who had come to challenge it again, and nobody reached the 4th floor.

『GYAHHHHHHHH!』

『G-, God dammit… To… in a place, like this…』

Also, regarding observing through the dungeon core, it needs quite a bit of mana, but I managed to reform it so that I could hear sounds too.

The result was that I found out the reason that the survey team ‘s pace suddenly got worse on the 2nd floor. Apparently there’s miasma floating in this dungeon. Certainly now that you mention it, I do get the vague feeling that that word was mixed in amongst the attributes for the dungeon, but I want to believe that in the end it’s just the characteristic of the dungeon and not something that’s my fault. ‘Miasma’ or whatever kind of sounds stinky, so I’m absolutely denying it.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

『What a sinister dungeon. The dungeon master has gotta be a pretty dangerous guy.』

『Yeah, we gotta brace ourselves.』

By the way, based on what I heard while eavesdropping on them, there are apparently lots of different types of miasma, but the miasma in this dungeon doesn’t do physical harm like a poison, but apparently has an effect on your mental state. Speaking simply, it amplifies fear, and is a troublesome thing because although this dungeon is one that you need to progress through really carefully even at best of times, the miasma increases your mentral strain right away. In the end it’s just a mental effect and can’t do anything to you physically, so apparently you’ll be alright as long as you keep yourself together, but the act of bracing yourself in itself brings about mental strain, so it’s a nasty one.

『Kuh-, the miasma is too thick! It’ll get dangerous if we go any further!』

『We’re only on the 2nd floor yanno!? If it’s like this on such a high level, just how terrible are the lower levels!?』

Perhaps as an effect of being linked to the exit, the miasma is thin enough that there’s almost no effect, but in comparison to this, the 2nd floor and below has thicker miasma by the level.

…Is it really because I’m on the lowest level?

No, no, the Evil God Aura is supposed to have a weak effect on humans, so it’s probably something else. That’s why I’m not in the wrong.

..*

Proportional to the amount of invading adventurers, the amount of collected items have increased too. Honestly speaking, it’s taking quite a bit of time to sort the items that were collected. Even at a glance there seem to be some things I didn’t really understand mixed in there, so I had to throw them into the item box and check the name… and after I did all this, it ended up taking a surprising amount of time.

And even though I did the work with all my might, sadly, despite the amount of time it took to organise everything, there were a lot of things that I didn’t need. For things like mass-produced swords, no matter how many dozens of them I had there was no use for them, so I think I’ll have them brought to town and sold for money, but if people who should have lost their items in the dungeon saw them while shopping, it would definitely be suspicious so I can’t. In that case, I could just stop collecting them, but now that I’ve already started doing this, it seems that it’ll give birth to some weird speculations in the public if I stop halfway, so I’m hesitant to do so.

I should have told them just to collect the gold. I’m sick of seeing swords already.

『Aah… I’m done, my consciousness… A-, All I want… just my sword… this sword that took me two years of saving up for, can’t…』

And so, I’ve decided to try putting them in treasure chests.

Using the Dungeon Create skill, I created and installed a treasure chest creation box. The treasure chest creation box is a wonderful thing that places the things inside it into treasure boxes randomly around the dungeon. The treasure chest creation box is something that’s used to lure in prey, since normal dungeons steal mana by killing intruders. Placing things like strong weapons or expensive gems into the treasure boxes, they lure in prey using greed.

In my case, I throw in nothing but unnecessary things like weapons, so it’s almost used like garbage collection though.

But still, having said that they’re unneeded, weapons or whatever can be sold for fairly high prices, so it’s not as though it doesn’t attract customers. Moreover, once the news spreads that you can get back the things you lost in the dungeon from these treasure chests, it’ll be possible to sell things under the pretense that we found them in the chest. Well, if we do it too much, as you’d expect things would get suspicious, so we can only sell a few at a time though.

Also, I wasn’t really sure about having only these unneeded consolation prizes, so for roughly every ten, I’d mix in one with enchantment. They might be cursed, but looking at just my tantou, the stats should be good.

『T-, This sword is!?』

『We’d better report this to the church, or else, huh?』

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“I am back, Anri-sama.”

“Welcome back.”

Tena had returned from selling things in the city.

Also, since the number of adventurers dropping by had increased, I created a backdoor for Tena to come and go through. I might be a little prejudiced, but about half of all adventurers are rough-looking men. If it were in town then it might be another matter, but I can easily imagine that if they met a girl like Tena in a place with few people, she’d definitely get mixed up with them in a bad way.

Of course, since I can’t say that she’ll be absolutely fine in town, I instructed her to buy a robe for herself to use in town, and not show her face too much.

“I have put the ingredients I bought in the food storeroom.”

“Thanks. And so, how about the thing I asked for?”

“Yes, please have a look at this.”

I asked Tena in an indirect manner like that, to go have a look and see how the Adventurers Guild was treating this dungeon, while she was out shopping. When I asked her about the result, she presented me one sheet of parchment.

This was written on it:

Request: Suppress the dungeon master of the new dungeon south of Riemel, the “Wicked Cave of the Robber”

Reward: 30 gold coins

Requirements: Present the dungeon core

Time Limit: None

“Wicked Cave of the Robber?”

Did they discover some other new dungeon?

“It seems that the Adventurers Guild has named this dungeon as such.”

Wai-, they’re talking about this dungeon? Thinking about it, neither the adventurers nor the guild have any way of knowing the official name of this dungeon, so if you had to ask if it was obvious that they’d give it its own name, then yeah, it’s obvious I guess.

But still, by “robber”… Well, I mean, I certainly do take the items and gold of the intruders, so it’s not as though you can’t call me a “robber”, but even though I thought that we’d have a more positive image than other dungeons, the impression they have of us is cruel.

“Unlike other requests, this one does not need to be accepted, so as long as you meet the requirements, it seems that you can receive the reward. This paper has been distributed to all parties.”

Rather than a request, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more accurate to say that it’s basically a bounty already. That I’d have a bounty on my head is not something I could even have imagined when I first came to this world… is perhaps not something I can say, since the moment that I saw the skill explanations.

A reward of 30 gold coins is quite a large amoutn, so I can assent to the sudden surge of intruders. If the conquering of the dungeon doesn’t progress, then the guild will probably raise the reward, so the intruders will probably keep increasing from now on.

If this was a normal dungeon, then the intruders would die once they fell anyway, but as long as you don’t have a series of terrible coincidences, you won’t lose your life in this dungeon. In other words, unlike other dungeons, as long as you don’t give up you can try again, so even if the number of intruders increases, there won’t be much decrease.

I need to strengthen the dungeon to stop them from breaking through to the lowest level, at any cost. Having decided this, I decided to return to the office.