38 – Club Time (3)
A full day passed after witnessing the girls’ underclothes.
Fortunately, the girls didn’t make a big deal of it.
It seemed they also knew it was not entirely my fault.
Now,
‘So Elaine ended up catching the cockroach, they say.’
Elaine, unlike the others, who hadn’t paid much attention to the bug, easily caught the cockroach.
Thus, the commotion ended thereafter.
Anyway, all of that aside.
‘As expected…’
I quietly watched the entrance to the dungeon.
And then, out of curiosity, I posed a question to Dab, who was on his last guard shift.
“Did the adventurers who went in yesterday come out?”
“They haven’t come out yet, even when their time is up.”
“······.”
It takes some time to investigate a dungeon. However, there’s no denying the unease with no sign of them emerging.
Especially since there hasn’t been a single survivor from that dungeon so far.
‘Well, we’ll see once we get inside.’
There’s no guarantee that my intuition is always right, after all.
With that thought, I charged the magic into the alarm crystal ball.
-♩♬♪
The next moment, the alarm resonating from the crystal ball.
The students rub their eyes as they rise.
I opened my mouth as I watched them.
“If you don’t get up within 10 minutes, there’s no breakfast.”
With the end of that sentence, all of the students, excluding Dab who was on night shift, hurriedly started to move.
***
Fully prepared, Cael and his team approached the dungeon entrance.
The next moment, the students were sweating with rigid expressions on their faces.
They seemed quite tense.
“You don’t have to be so nervous. You’re strong enough as you are now.”
“Oh, yes!”
They replied in stiff voices to my words.
Well, they’ll understand once they encounter it themselves.
“Let’s enter, then.”
With the end of that sentence, Dab and Lowe took the lead and entered the dungeon.
As the place was indeed a dungeon, it was quite dark inside.
Maria predicted this, and quietly began to chant.
-Shining
A bright light appeared in front of her.
Thanks to Maria’s magic, the surroundings brightened in an instant.
The students continued walking with tense expressions.
-Thump. Thump.
The sound of footsteps resonated loudly in the dungeon.
And then,
-Thud!
Something tripped Dab.
As everyone shifted their gaze, the sight of an Ogre’s corpse, one of the superior monsters, caught their eye.
Everyone was taken aback at the sight.
I quietly scanned the ogre’s body.
‘This is…’
At first, I thought it might have been killed by an adventurer who had entered earlier.
However, such a long-deceased body.
Looking at the wounds on the guy’s body, it definitely wasn’t killed by a human.
And wasn’t it something only he felt?
“This wasn’t killed by a human.”
“It certainly seems so.”
Dav and Eli arrived at the same conclusion.
While it seems the former surmised this from intuition, the latter came to the answer by coldly reasoning.
‘What on earth did it die from that made the ogre have such an expression?’
Even until death, the ogre’s face was one of abject terror.
At this point, it appeared something was indeed present in this dungeon.
‘We’ll find out if we go a little farther.’
With that thought, Kael continued walking.
Then, at that moment.
-Grrr!!
The distinctive roars of beasts echoed in his ears.
The students all turned their heads at once, checking if they heard it right.
The following moment, a group of ogres started approaching.
The students quickly assumed combat postures.
And then, simultaneously.
-Gyaaa!!
An ogre at the front charges.
Row drew his sword and swung it horizontally.
-Swishhhhh!!
The sword cut through the air and moved forward.
The following moment, a fountain of blood spurted out of the ogre’s body.
-Chyaaa!!
The ogres halted in their steps watching that.
Row too was left gaping at the fallen ogre.
“Huh?”
Actually, he just carelessly swung the sword to put them off.
However, they didn’t expect Ogre to collapse so easily with just a single sword strike.
It wasn’t just that they themselves felt this way, the other students also couldn’t hide their confused expressions.
Shortly, Dave, who was standing next to him, asked a question.
“Were you hiding your strength all this time?”
“Eh, no. That’s not it?”
Upon hearing that, Dave immediately realized he wasn’t lying.
Just then.
“Are you going to just stand there in a stupor?”
Kael said in a cold voice.
At Kael’s words, Dave, who came to his senses, turned his head forward.
Then, stamping his foot, he gathered energy in his hand.
Once he swung his fist forward.
-Kaboom!!!
The head of the Ogre in the back blew up like a bomb.
Dave was shocked by his own power.
He didn’t believe that they would die so easily with a lightly thrown punch.
Was it only him who felt that way?
The remaining companions also started attacking, and all the Ogres were swept away.
Not long after.
“Eh, what’s going on?”
“It’s too easy?”
“Exactly.”
The battle was over too easily.
The students stared at Kael in stunned silence.
Then, Kael spoke with his usual calm expression.
“Didn’t I tell you? Your power has completely changed from before.”
The students stared at Kael with incredulous expressions.
Honestly, they thought he was exaggerating.
But, he wasn’t.
He meant every word he said.
“So you’re saying you haven’t been tormenting us all this time?”
At that moment, Maria incredulously exclaimed.
Hearing her, Kael smirked in disbelief.
“What exactly did you think I was?”
“A person who beats his students under the guise of a lecture?”
“Gangster.”
“Legal gangster.”
“Ruffian.”
Even Elaine, who was usually optimistic, called him a gangster.
It was so unjust.
‘Should I hit them once more?’
Kael thought and took a shallow breath.
Then, he opened his mouth.
“I’ve taught you reality. It’s natural to grow to such extent since you’ve followed me this far.”
Upon hearing this, they started to gauge their own strength.
They wouldn’t have been able to defeat Ogre so easily before.
Well, although they did defeat him easily.
‘It would have been impossible to topple him in one blow.’
But, definitely, the hard knocks they’d taken in the meantime seemed to have made a difference. They’re stronger than before entrance.
From Noble mtl dot com
“You understand now, don’t you? Then don’t relax but continue to investigate the dungeon.”
After saying that, the students nodded with faces full of confidence, more confident than before.
It was a good sign.
***
Around an hour had passed since they entered the dungeon.
It was expected to take a long time to reach the center of the dungeon.
However, they arrived at the center much sooner than expected.
“Professor, there’s a door here.”
Elaine quietly pointed at an enormous door.
Judging by the looks, a boss monster must be inside.
Kael squinted at the door in front of him, stroking his chin.
“Hmm, this makes it even more puzzling.”
Despite coming this far, there was no sign of the adventurers’ bodies.
Without a doubt, traces of the adventurers must be inside there.
“What should we do?”
Maria turned her head and posed the question.
In response, Kael answered as he normally would.
“The leader of this party is you. You should make the decisions, not others.”
“……..”
Maria quietly lost herself in thought.
Then, with a solemn voice, she spoke.
“Let’s enter. If it feels dangerous, we can close the door immediately.”
Well, as if that would happen.
Maria glanced at Kael and swallowed her remaining words.
“Then let us go in.”
At Maria’s command, everyone nodded in agreement.
With enough force to reveal the veins in his biceps, Dab opened the door.
-Creak!!
The huge iron gate slowly opened.
The next moment, a man drawing rune characters appeared in their sight.
-Ah!
The demon’s characteristic brown skin and magic.
On top of that, horns sprouting from his forehead.
The students instinctively sensed it.
That man is a demon.
“At last, proper sacrifices have arrived, hehehehe.”
His sinister smile revealed his excitement.
Kael looked at the adventurers behind him.
‘They are all dead.’
Well, it was somewhat expected.
Given that there were no survivors, it was a foregone conclusion.
-Uuwoong.
In an instant, a complex magic circle appeared in front of the demons.
The party felt that the magic circle seemed unusual.
-Uwoong.
In that moment, the adventurers’ corpses completely disappeared.
And then, when a single void space was created.
-Crack!
Kaiel interfered with the magic circle by instilling his mana into it.
Then,
“Eh, what?”
The magic circle suddenly disappeared.
Caught off guard by the unexpected situation, the demons were flabbergasted.
Seeing those, Kaiel opened his mouth.
“Everyone, attack immediately.”
At the end of his words, without a thought of who will go first, all the students rushed towards the demons.
Their expressions gave the impression as if they were going to vent off their resentment against Kaiel right then and there.