Saitama Dungeon by Yamaguchi Yuuko

 

Episode 11: My First Time in the Saitama Dungeon

　

The dungeon entrance lay beyond the smartcard gates towards the back of the first floor of the main Dungeon Center building. It looked like a black vortex and I was impressed that in the past someone had been brave enough to be the first person to enter it and discover that there was a dungeon on the other side of this scary-looking whirlpool.

There was a constant stream of people entering and exiting the black vortex. Some of the people coming out had bulging backpacks and others were not so heavily laden. The ones with bulging backpacks were mostly older people in their late 20s to 30s. This wasn’t surprising since there were no monsters that can be dismantled for valuable meat or other materials on the dungeon’s first floor. This meant the younger A-rank adventurers limited to working on the first floor wouldn’t be returning with large amounts of monster materials in their backpacks.

Those with bulging backpacks would be adventuring on the second floor or lower where meat and other materials could be obtained, meaning they were B-rank or higher adventurers so it was only natural that such people looked to be in their late twenties or older.

Even for B-rank adventurers and above, monster meat is bulky and heavy, so there seem to be a fair number of adventurers who simply specialized in collecting monster cores. I planned to adopt that modus operandi when I reached B rank.

 

I watched with interest as a crawler carrier piled high with green plastic bags emerged from the vortex. The group of adventurers who had rented the crawler carrier were, from the looks of it, veterans. Looking at the colour of the neck straps around their necks, they were all silver which meant they were D-rank adventurers, not surprisingly.

The crawler carrier entered a passageway through a dedicated exit to one side the vortex. They must have been heading towards a purchasing counter that specializes in buying monster meat and other bulky materials from returning adventurers.

The internet said that S-rank exploration teams will often use two crawler carriers. There is an S-rank team called "Hayate" that was the first team to defeat the gatekeeper on the 21st floor of the Saitama Dungeon. I am aiming to become S-rank myself someday, but it won't be easy. I can definitely do it though, I’m sure.

Seeing the adventurers emerging from the whirlpool gave me a little motivation, so I stepped aside so that I wouldn't get in the way, took off my backpack and retrieved my helmet and put it on. I had been wearing my knee pads and other protective equipment since I arrived at the Center so all I had to do is put on my gloves and I was ready to go. I shouldered my backpack again and followed the flow of people entering the black vortex.

I had learned during the training course at the adventurer licensing center that if you stop short after passing through the vortex and look around blankly you will get in the way of those coming through behind you. Instead you must move aside immediately you exit the vortex, which of course I did. Some people forget this lesson the first time they enter the vortex and they get rear-ended by the adventurers following them and then they have to apologize profusely.

If you block someone on the other side of the vortex and they bump into you, an apology will usually suffice, but if you get in the way of a crawler carrier it might result in injury. Usually an adventurer team member will precede the crawler carrier into the vortex, making sure it’s safe for the machine to follow them into the dungeon. This was one of the things I was taught in the adventurer licencing classes.

If a solo adventurer rents a crawler carrier they will need to ask someone else to lead the way into the vortex for them. If they neglect to do so and an accident occurs they will be penalized accordingly. However, since there are very few solo adventurers who bother to rent crawler carriers, it’s not a big deal.

I looked around the first floor for the first time. Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

Spread out before my eyes is a blue sky spanning a vast green land. The ceiling of the first floor cavern is said to be 5,000 meters at its highest point. I called it a ceiling but it doesn't actually look like a ceiling, instead it’s rather like a slightly hazy blue sky. There isn’t anything like the sun though despite the brightness. There is supposedly no night in the great cavern and this brightness is present 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Modern science has yet to fully explain how this can be.

I turned around and saw a radio tower standing next to the vortex. Compasses and other normal direction-finding instruments cannot be used inside the dungeon so it is possible to easily get lost within this vast cavern. This radio tower broadcasts a signal throughout the entire first floor and by picking up the signal using a special smartphone app you can find the locations of the entrances and exits. By the way, the radio tower is powered by a small fuel cell.

The stairs leading to the second floor are about 500 meters from the vortex. If it were several kilometers away it would be more difficult to get to the second floor but at 500 meters it's easily within reach. The stairs to the second floor are surrounded by a concrete building and at the entrance is an automatic smartcard reader gate identical to the one in front of the vortex in the Dungeon Center. Staff from the Dungeon Center which controls access to the dungeon and its different floors are on permanent assignment there.

Apparently it's not possible to supply power to the dungeon from outside so these facilities run on electricity generated by fuel cells, just like the radio tower next to the whirlpool. Fuel for the cells is brought in by hand from outside periodically.

 

Experiments have shown that even if oxygen is consumed within the dungeon, the oxygen concentration in the air does not change. This seems to be the reason fuel cells are used to generate electricity since the oxygen is free, sort of.

Putting those thoughts aside, I left the area next to the vortex and walked for about 10 minutes in a direction that seemed less crowded with people, searching for any signs of monsters. It had been a while since I had seriously tried to sense the presence of people and creatures, a skill I had acquired in the other world but it seemed like I was still able to use this skill here in Japan as I immediately sensed two different presences in the bushes about 150 meters from where I was standing. 150 meters? Wow. My ability to sense presences in the other world was normally limited to a range of about 50 meters, but now I was able to sense a presence from 150 meters away.

I think it was safe to assume that something big was lurking there. Luckily, there were no other adventurers around so I ran quickly towards the bush. My sudden movement didn't seem to catch anyone's attention but then again I supposed that newbies like me would often behave in a way that makes no sense to other more experienced adventurers.

As I approached the bushes I sensed yet another presence, making three in total. I learned in the training classes that monsters on the first floor, especially slimes, sometimes hide in bushes and long grass. I was told that monsters on the second floor might run away if they see they are no match for the adventurers fighting them, but from the third floor onward there are almost no monsters that run away.

 

By the way, there were no dungeons in the other world like the ones in Japan, but there were monsters. The other-world monsters never ran away when we encountered them and they kept attacking regardless of the damage they took.

I headed towards the nearest presence and pushed through the bushes where I found a translucent lump of jelly - a slime. It looked pretty much the same as the slime creatures in the world I was summoned to. The slimes over there were troublesome monsters that dissolved everything they touched and they could move quite quickly, but I learned in the adventurer training class that the slimes that appeared on this dungeon’s first floor were mostly harmless. I was careful not to let my guard down though so I further suppressed my presence, carefully approached the slime and swung my mace down on it.

The blow squashed the slime and it lost its shape, liquefying and spreading out before getting absorbed into the ground. All that was left behind was a smear of water and a fist-sized core. Apparently the slime cores on the first floor are usually about the size of a marble, so this was a big win for me. The core’s colour was rainbow-like, shimmering in many colours depending on how I held it to the light. Most images of slime cores I'd seen online up until then had been shiny black balls but this one looked way different. It was also much bigger and I had a feeling it would sell for quite a high price. Since there were no people nearby, I quickly washed the rainbow core with water I created with water magic and tossed it into my backpack.

Now for the remaining two presences I was detecting… I crept up on the strongest presence, pushing my way carefully through the bushes. It turned out to be another slime but different to the previous one. That slime had been colourless and transparent, but this second slime was gold-coloured.

I wasn't particularly interested in slimes so I hadn’t bothered to look up different types of dungeon slimes online. Even so a golden slime had to be rare, didn’t it? I tried to negate my presence as much as possible again as I approached my target and when I swung my mace down, the golden slime was easily crushed just like the first slime I had defeated earlier. The slime’s contents sprayed out and soaked away into the ground like before. The resulting liquid splash wasn't gold-coloured, instead it was clear like water.

All that was left behind was another fist-sized core but this time its colour was gold and not a shimmering rainbow. I washed it using my water magic and threw it in my backpack.

As I snuck up on the third and final presence, I discovered it was a giant beetle. When I say “giant” its actual size was only about 30 centimetres, not as big as some of the insect monsters I had encountered in the other world but it was certainly a lot bigger than regular beetles in Japan. The giant beetle flew towards me buzzing spitefully but one swing of my mace crushed the beetle’s head and it fell to the ground. I pulled my knife from its sheath and plunged it into the beetle's abdomen, cutting through its brittle shell. I stuck my right hand in the wound, feeling around inside its guts and managed to pull out the core.

The beetle's core was about the size of a marble, the normal size for such a monster according to what I had learned online. As before I washed my gloves and the beetle's core with water magic and then put it away in my backpack.

As I left the bushes I looked around and saw groups of two or three adventurers moving around in search of monsters, but none of them had weapons ready to use in their hands. I realized that my ability to detect the presence of monsters was going to be a huge advantage for me as an adventurer.