MTC 11

Chapter : 11

The First Dungeon Begins, and the First Successful Defense

The first dungeon had been opened, and its first defense had succeeded.

For the monsters, who had always been beaten up by challengers, this seemed to be an incredibly precious victory.

“We wonnn!”

“Woooo!”

Everyone hugged one another, jumping up and down as they celebrated their success with one heart.

In that situation… I couldn’t exactly ruin the mood by pointing out that their opponents had been nothing more than two little children.

As soon as I confirmed on the monitor that the children had collapsed, I headed to the first floor.

“What are we supposed to do with unconscious challengers?”

I hurriedly checked the children’s condition. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to have suffered any serious injuries.

“Obviously, we should take anything valuable they have!”

Brownie declared proudly, and for a moment, I doubted my own ears.

“What…? Isn’t that basically robbery?”

“It’s their own fault for bringing good stuff into a dungeon!”

But what if they sued us or something? Ah, this wasn’t the world I used to live in, so perhaps that sort of thing wouldn’t happen here…

“Besides, there’s an unspoken rule that you get stripped of everything when you’re knocked out. All adventurers know that. They rummage through monsters’ pockets after defeating them, so why can’t we do the same? Some of them even strip monsters down to their last pair of underwear! Those vicious bastards!”

The monsters, who had been celebrating their victory moments earlier, approached me with tears in their eyes. I hurriedly took off my glasses, hooked them into my pocket, and greeted them.

“Administrator, thank you. Thanks to you, I finally got to experience what it feels like to win.”

The goblin who had worked so hard to act like a vicious monster against the children wiped away his flowing tears with his arm.

So it didn’t matter who their opponent was. They were simply that happy to have won for once…

How many times must they have lost for this victory to mean so much to them?

For a moment, a wave of sympathy washed over me, and my heart swelled with emotion…

“Come on! Hurry up and loot them! Rummage through everything! We can fill up the reward room, too. Isn’t that great?”

Brownie’s shout immediately chilled my heart.

“The reward room, ah…!”

The reward room was a place prepared as a decoy to protect the sacred relic.

At present, it had nothing to offer as a reward. It was so empty that dust was practically the only thing rolling around inside, making the room completely useless for its intended purpose.

So this was another way to fill it up temporarily—by looting adventurers who had been knocked unconscious.

“Or you could give the loot to the ones who worked hard as spoils of war.”

“Oh, I see…?”

The only monster wearing anything that could reasonably be called equipment was a skeleton.

If I assigned identification codes according to the order in which they had been interviewed, it would be Skeleton 1.

When I asked whether they had any proper names I could call them by, everyone reacted with shock and horror.

Apparently, names were bestowed upon monsters by the Demon God once they reached a higher rank.

That meant all the monsters here were simply Lesser Goblin 1, 2, 3… and Skeleton 1, 2, 3…

In any case, giving the monsters usable equipment would cost money, too. With fixed expenses already piling up from labor costs alone, providing equipment for every single monster would be a luxury I couldn’t afford.

Even Brownie had advised against it. They were weaklings anyway, so what difference would giving them equipment make?

What a truly heartless, cold-blooded fairy.

“Let’s see if there’s anything worth taking…”

Trying to soothe my nagging conscience, I first collected the weapons the children had been carrying.

Two crude wooden swords, worn smooth from handling.

No matter how I looked at them, they weren’t the sort of items worth placing in the reward room, so I gave them to the skeletons as spoils of war.

Even after receiving such terrible weapons, the skeletons were apparently so delighted that they danced and swayed with joy.

I couldn’t bring myself to touch the leather plates they had tied around their bodies in place of armor, so I cautiously reached toward the children’s pockets instead.

Zap.

I felt a sharp static shock at my fingertips, along with the sensation of being blocked by something.

“Ouch…”

“That’s the sacred relic warning you. If you provoke it any further, the curse will be lifted, and the challengers might wake up.”

Brownie spoke with unmistakable disappointment in her voice.

“What? A moment ago, you were talking as if we could strip them of absolutely everything!”

“If we had a monster with a looting license, we could have cleaned them out completely. They know how to steal an adventurer’s belongings quietly, quickly, and with as little disturbance as possible. They even know all the best places to hide expensive items. What a shame. I thought we might at least get a potion out of this.”

Looting was a term used in games to describe the act of taking items from a defeated target.

“You need a license for that, too…?”

I had thought it was one of the most basic things imaginable, but apparently, it required a qualification.

“The problem is that the sacred relic’s power is too weak. For now, it seems you can only perform looting yourself once.”

“Only once?!”

If I had known that earlier, I should have searched their pockets instead of taking those pathetic swords! I might have gotten at least one coin out of it…

Wait, what was I thinking? I was starting to sound like a despicable thief!

I had become a wicked adult who was seriously considering rummaging through little children’s pockets without a hint of shame!

I sighed silently.

“Administrator, we’ll carry the challengers to the respawn room once the looting is finished.”

The Lesser Goblins carefully lifted the children into their arms.

The respawn room was a separate space beside the lobby where unconscious challengers woke up.

According to the rules, monsters were not allowed to set foot directly inside the lobby while challengers were present in the dungeon. However, leaving incapacitated challengers lying around inside the dungeon indefinitely was hardly an option, either.

So, instead of passing through the lobby itself, unconscious challengers were transported through a secret passage connected to the respawn room. Once they woke up, they could immediately leave through the lobby.

Perhaps because the monsters had experience with instanced dungeons, they understood the dungeon’s layout better than I did. They naturally knew where to take the children without even needing to ask.

“What if the children realize we took their wooden swords and come back to attack us…?”

“They can’t return to the dungeon until the sacred relic’s curse wears off.”

“Oh…”

So there was a penalty preventing them from re-entering for a certain period.

“They shouldn’t be trying to challenge a dungeon again with injured bodies, should they? It’s a system designed to protect adventurers, in a way. On the other hand, it also means there’s no fun in looting the same guy twice, so they should go outside, fill their pockets a little, and come back later.”

This dungeon really was run according to a remarkably systematic set of rules…

The goblins carried the children to the respawn room, where they lay asleep on the cold floor. Before the cold could leave their mouths crooked, they regained consciousness and left the dungeon.

Their drooping shoulders made them look so pitiful.

They seemed to have come to the dungeon with some grand ambition, but the newly opened dungeon had crushed their dreams before they had even begun.

After all the visitors had left, the monsters fetched their old cleaning tools without being told and began tidying up after the battle.

Judging by how practiced their movements were, this must have been something they did regularly.

“Scrub that spot properly! Blood starts to stink when it dries! Cleanliness comes first! Cleanliness comes second! Do you want to live in a filthy dungeon?!”

“Yes, ma’am! Understood!”

Incidentally, Brownie had apparently collected all those old cleaning tools from a garbage dump and brought them here. As a result, they were in such poor condition that they weren’t particularly effective.

“If there are any cracks or dents, fill them in! It’ll be a disaster if something causes problems during your next battle!”

“You’re absolutely right! What wise words!”

Watching Brownie drive the monsters to work, I fell into thought.

This battle has given me a great opportunity to examine the dungeon’s entire system, from beginning to end.

Although our opponents had been far too weak for me to gather much useful data about combat itself, hearing about how the dungeon operated was one thing. Seeing it all with my own eyes was an entirely different matter.

When a challenger entered the dungeon, they fought the monsters. Once their fear reached its peak and they were defeated, the sacred relic’s curse activated immediately, causing them to lose consciousness.

During that interval, we collected whatever spoils we could without breaking the curse, then transported the fallen challengers to the respawn room in the lobby.

Since the awakened challengers could not challenge the dungeon again until the sacred relic’s curse wore off, they had no choice but to leave the dungeon and return another time.

Once we have more employees, we’ll need to divide them into departments and manage things in greater detail. There’s no guarantee every battle will be as relaxed as today’s.

Besides a combat team responsible for fighting, it would be good to have a facilities team specializing in preparing the dungeon environment, such as installing traps.

Come to think of it, the slimes already qualified as part of the facilities team.

We would also need a support team to handle everything after a battle.

A recovery team to collect spoils and transport challengers, a cleaning team to clean and repair the dungeon after battles left it in a mess, and so on…

If I divided the work into departments and ran the place like an actual company, it would be easier to manage and allow us to operate the dungeon more efficiently.

“For now, we don’t have enough people to divide them into separate departments, so each person will have to handle several jobs… Everyone will just have to work a little harder.”

Just like me in my previous life, when I had to handle everything myself: human resources, accounting, general administration, cleaning, preparing lunch, washing the dishes, doing the company president’s son’s homework for him…

The list seemed to be getting further and further removed from actual company work, but anyway, I had been the one forced to take care of all of it.