We wait for an hour, but there are still sixteen teams ahead of us.
Then Egg returns to the training area. His mouth loosens into a smile when he notices us looking at him, and he stops in front of the door to the boss room.
There are fourteen people, who go in until it’s Egg’s turn.
Three parties have two members, one has three, and another has five. Egg is with one other person.
Each party takes less than ten minutes to enter and leave the boss room. Egg’s in particular is out in five minutes.
“Those Jetblack people are great.”
“Keh, showing off. If it’s so easy, go further down.”
Is what I hear around me. Some look up to them, and some are jealous I guess.
“They probably are showing off their power.”
“Exactly. Keh, they say they’re one of the top five clans in the empire, but they’re all a bunch of weaklings that couldn’t make it in the capital.”
Says a middle-aged adventurer to Guilford’s whisper.
We’re surprised when he suddenly responds, and he also has an expression like he thinks he shouldn’t have. Apparently he didn’t mean to, it just came out.
He looks awkward when we look at him, but…
“Can you tell us more?”
Asks Guilford, and the adventurer reluctantly nods and talks.
Once he gets going, everything he was holding back comes out.
This adventurer is a veteran who has been coming to this dungeon for a long time, and doesn’t seem too fond of how it is now. There are a few like him who agreed to stay quiet, but don’t like it.
He keeps going until his friend calls him. According to him, there are five big clans in the empire, Jetblack being the newest of the bunch.
However, major clans are based on the capital, and while Jetblack was also there before the turmoil there happened, the moment it got going, they left some personnel there and moved here.
And since they have more people working here now, they’ve been getting more and more arrogant.
“Well, more than half of it is jealousy.”
“Why do you think so, Guilford?”
“If they can hunt properly, they don’t have to keep going to this boss room, right? I don’t know how things are like with the other boss rooms, but if there are fewer people there, it would be easier to keep going there.”
Says Guilford, but you also have to hunt a certain number of monsters to get in. It makes sense that there are more people making the rounds on the first floor.
The dungeon gets wider the further down you go, so people can’t reliably hunt monsters without good tracking abilities. If they don’t have what it takes, they’re going to have to stay on the easier floors.
Also, some people might be challenging this boss as a way of taking a break.
When I tell Guilford this, he smiles awkwardly.
And after another hour and a half of waiting, there are five teams left.
“I’ll go call the others.”
Just as I’m thinking it’s time to do that, Rick gets up and leaves
Ten minutes later, the others arrive. We tell them what we heard, and another hour later, it’s finally our turn.
“Let’s take it out quickly and leave. From what I’ve heard, finishing this fast is a good way to show our abilities to the others waiting.”
And so, we’re going with magic this time.
That makes it harder to retrieve materials, but it’s a goblin anyway.
The moment we get in, Chris and I fire area of effect magic, and the boss is down.
We check the treasure chest that appears, take what looks like a hunting horn, and go back.
I think it took us less than three minutes to enter and leave the boss room.
Once we’re back in the inn, we gather in Argo and the others’ room, and check what we got from the treasure chest.
“In a way, this is a good item for us.”
Argo says that this item used to be considered a dud, and only works in this dungeon.
Shamal horn, an item exclusive to Zuirya’s dungeon. It calls monsters, and has eight uses left.
Calling monsters saves us the trouble of looking for them, so it is useful.
“But what is it like?”
“It’s like it makes monsters appear nearby. The maximum number that appears at once varies, and we need to be ready for battle. I’ve heard that sometimes it’s more than ten, but I think we should be fine. And after a few uses, it breaks.”
So it’s limited. We could use it proactively starting from the next floor, but I want to see what it’s like.
If I knew how far down those monster sellers go, that would make it easier to decide where to use this.
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Thanks for the treat.