Saitama Dungeon by Yamaguchi Yuuko

Episode 14: Akigase Warriors Part 2

The leader of a group of college-aged men who had picked a fight with us was forced to leave the battlefield after apparently tripping over his own feet. Wanting to get this farce over quickly, I taunted the remaining three idiots hoping they would all come at me at once.

"Oh, he just fell down by himself. That was kinda disappointing. Anyway, next please."

Sadly, only the biggest guy stepped forward to accept my challenge. He was wearing what looked like an American football helmet on his head, you know, the sort of helmet with a grille across the lower part of his face? It seemed like a silly thing to wear for protection in the dungeon, to be honest.

From what I could see of the man's face behind his mask, he had a square chin and a squashed nose. If I had to sum his appearance up in one word that word would would be “ugly”. I refrained from saying that out loud of course since it would be rude and the fellow might feel insulted.

The man crouched down and spread his arms. "I'm really gonna crush you for that. You need to learn respect for a football defensive tackle." He then rushed me.

If this man really was an American football player and got into trouble fighting or whatever it could be a big problem for him. You see, adventurers weren't allowed to compete in sports and physical competitions such as American football. If this kind of thing became public it's likely he'd end up being ejected from his football team. Maybe he didn’t actually play in a proper team, or perhaps he was just an adventurer cosplaying as a footballer? Either way, it wasn’t my concern.

For a moment, I thought about dodging his attempt to tackle me and then I’d knock him down from behind with a kick, but since I was standing in front of him anyway I just took the impact straight on.

The man probably wanted to use the momentum of his large body to flatten me, but instead I simply pushed him over onto his back and then I dropped down to kneel on his chest, pinning him to the ground. I could have punched the guy in the face at that point but since the girls were watching, I decided not to. Instead I punched the ground right next to the idiot’s left ear, sending my fist deep into the hard-packed soil.

The sound of the impact was clearly enough to frighten the man. I looked up and saw the two remaining men step back as our eyes met. They were obviously in no mood to fight me now, which I took as my win.

I stood up, looming over the fallen football player. I couldn’t resist the temptation to gloat though.

"Is it normal for a defensive tackle to get knocked down by a high school student?"

"What?! Just you wait!" With that empty threat the men scuttled off, literally. It was the first time I'd actually had someone threaten me with "Just you wait!", and with that, everything was settled.

"Hasegawa-kun, you’re good at fighting too!" Saito-san exclaimed. The other two girls said things like "Cool!" and "Amazing!"

I shrugged, somewhat discomfited by their adoring looks. "I think my opponents were just weak, that’s all." I demurred.

"But they looked like university students and that one guy wearing the helmet was really big. And yet, Hasegawa-kun, you didn't seem scared at all, in fact you seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing."

"It seemed like he was used to fighting." Hidaka-san added.

I had fought humans, beast people, demons and all sorts of dangerous creatures in the other world and I had gotten very good at winning over the ten years I spent there. Because of that experience I had to work hard to hold myself back in this world and I had to say that it wasn’t easy. If I faced more low-level opponents like those guys I had to be careful to not maim or slaughter them by accident. There was no point in worrying about that right now though.

"It's about time we resumed monster hunting." I said and the Akigase Warriors agreed. After tidying up our picnic site and packing away our belongings we began our afternoon monster hunting session. We moved around the first level in a rather random way with the girls defeating any monsters I located. After we decided to finish for the day at 3 o'clock it took us about thirty minutes to walk back to the vortex. We managed to collect six more monster cores that afternoon, so including the slime core and two beetle cores we obtained in the morning, that made a total of nine monster cores between the four of us.

After re-entering the Saitama Dungeon Center building via the vortex, we headed towards the dungeon materials purchasing area. There were a large number of people in front of us in the queue but since there were lots of Dungeon Center staff on hand to cover the end-of-day purchasing rush, it didn't seem like we'd have to wait too long. By the way, the purchasing counters where higher-ranked adventurers sold monster meat and other dungeon materials were in a different part of the building so the adventurers using these particular purchasing counters were almost all A-rank individuals.

After about five minutes in line, it was our turn to sell our cores. Each purchasing counter was located in a separate room for privacy reasons so the four of us filed into the room together. I added my beetle monster core to the other cores we had collected after I had joined the girls. That made a total of ten monster cores which we put on the counter along with our Adventurer ID cards.

Regarding the payment for these ten cores, Saito-san said that I should receive half of it and they’d split the rest among the three members of the Akigase Warriors but I insisted that we split the money equally among the four of us.

A Dungeon Center employee dropped the cores one by one into the appraisal machine’s hopper on the counter. I had been told that the cores fed into the machine would be transported to somewhere else in the building for safe storage. The appraisal was completed quickly and each of us received a printed receipt along with our Adventurer's ID. The receipt listed the current purchase price for each core and the cumulative purchase amount. The purchase proceeds were automatically credited to our individual Adventurer bank accounts.

The ten cores were purchased for 38,000 yen in total which we divided equally between the four of us so we each received 9,500 yen. I’m not sure that could be described as a decent amount for high school students to earn in a day, but the girls seem satisfied. After the exchange was over, the three of them went to leave the room but they stopped when I said to the counter employee, "I have another core to sell and I'd like to cash it in now."

I placed my Adventurer's ID card back on the counter and then I retrieved the rainbow-colored core from my backpack before putting it down next to my card. The attendant’s eyes widened when he saw the core. Saito and his friends were surprised too.

"What is this?" asked the attendant.

Because I didn’t know what I was being asked I said, “It was a core I recovered from a slime I defeated. Is there anything special about it?"

The attendant excused himself before exiting via the employee door at the back of the room. He quickly returned, accompanied by an important-looking man who was obviously his superior. The newcomer picked up the core and examined it closely.

"This is the core of a rainbow slime, quite a large one too.” he said as he put the core back down beside my badge. “The proper assessment of this core cannot be carried out immediately so we must ask you to please wait a day or two.”

The three girls who had remained at the counter started making a fuss. "Hasegawa-kun, did you really find something like that?" Saito-san asked, her eyes still fixed on the rainbow-coloured core.

"I thought it was something I shouldn't show to just anyone while we were still in the dungeon." I explained.

"Y-you're right." Saito-san agreed, remembering her dispute earlier with the boys over the ownership of a regular slime’s core.

The important-looking man operated the appraisal machine and finally returned my Adventurer's ID card along with another receipt. "A provisional sum of 10 million yen has been deposited into your Adventurer's account. When you complete the formalities at the license center you will be promoted to B rank.” Oops! I earned a promotion after just one day? Was this going to completely derail my plans?

The official continued speaking. “I repeat, this is only a provisional payment. Rest assured, the difference will be transferred to your account once the final assessment of the core is completed.” The man looked thoughtful. “A rainbow slime on the first floor, that’s quite an unusual place to find one."

"Where can rainbow slimes be found normally?" I enquired. It was clear the Dungeon Center staff already knew about rainbow slimes and their distinctive cores.

"They aren't a common dungeon monster, but they are usually encountered on the tenth level and below in the dungeon." I see. Basically, I was super lucky today. Since I had surprised him with just the rainbow core, I refrained from bringing out the gold slime core.

As we left the private purchasing room, Saito turned to me.

"Hasegawa-kun, just who the hell are you exactly?” She asked, exasperation in her voice. “You can find monsters even though you can't see them, you easily defeat a group of university students in a fight by yourself, and now you’ve suddenly been promoted to B-rank."

I wondered how to respond and finally decided to answer with an outright lie. "I’m just a very lucky first year high school student, I suppose. Yeah?"

"Yeah, right...." Saito-san didn’t sound convinced but she didn’t press me further. I studiously ignored the suspicious looks on the faces of the other girls too.

Our next stop was the weapons locker area. To store your weapons you place your weapons on the counter and show your Adventurer's ID. An attendant will take your weapons and scan the barcodes and tags on them before placing them in a basket cart at the back of the room. Once the basket is full of weapons, another person comes and takes the cart to the warehouse behind the counter.

The storage fee is quite low, only 500 yen per month regardless of how many weapons you have or how large they are. The fee is normally debited from your account on the first day of the month. In my case, I only started using the weapons locker today so the first month’s fee should have been deducted from the account linked to my Adventurer's licence.

To retrieve your weapon before entering the dungeon again, simply return to the weapons locker counter and hold your Adventurer's ID card against the card reader. Your personal weapons will be handed to you within a few minutes.

The girls all headed toward the women's locker room where they had left their regular clothes. When we were leaving the purchasing counter I was asked, or rather I was instructed by Saito-san to wait for the girls in front of the main building’s entrance so they could meet up with me again.

I had been standing around in front of the main building for about 10 minutes before the three girls, now dressed in casual clothes and carrying large sports bags, hurried out the main door towards me.

"Sorry I'm late." Saito-san said breathlessly.

""sorry"" Hidaka-san and Nasegawa-san chimed in.

"I wasn't waiting that long so it's okay." I guessed that was the right thing to say to girls you were meeting somewhere. It’s not like I really had any experience of that sort of thing before.

"We still have some time and I'm starting to get hungry, so why don't we go to a restaurant?" Saito-san suggested.

I had eaten two rice balls earlier but they were not really enough to satisfy me. I love onigiri so I'd get some more for my lunch tomorrow when I come back to dive in the dungeon again. Since I have more money I'll get more than just two onigiri next time. Getting something else to eat right now though sounded like a good idea.

The four of us went into the hamburger shop nearest the Dungeon Center building. We all ordered ordered hamburger sets and sat down at a table on the second floor with our bags beside us. We talked about our studies and teachers and other high-school-student topics of interest while eating our hamburger sets.

"It would be a pain to have you call me by my family name every time, so you can just call me by my first name." Saito-san said around a mouthful of burger.

""Me too"" the other two girls mumbled.

I felt uncomfortable calling someone by their first name after only being with them for a day. "You can call me by my first name if you want but I’d rather call everyone else by their family names. It just seems the polite thing to do."

The three girls seemed a bit disappointed but in the end they agreed we would call each other "-kun" and "-san."

After finishing our hamburger sets and drinks we went our separate ways. The girls took the bus home but I decided to walk back to my place. The license issuing counter in the Dungeon Center that dealt with promotions was about to close for the day so I would have to get my B-rank Adventurer license tomorrow. I couldn’t wait!