＜ 8. Duel is a big deal in town (1) ＞
“I’m so sorry, Marco. Marco-san should get some rest too…”
“Don’t talk like that. Because my body is already fine.”
What Andrea was worried about was Marco’s mental state, not his body.
Marco watched everything until the end of the battle with all his bones crushed. It wouldn’t be strange if a normal person went half crazy.
‘I don’t show it, but there’s really no way it’ll be okay. On the next floor, I’ll have to make you feel comfortable.’
Andrea was carrying Marco through the aisle.
Marco and Andrea were both seriously injured, but all injuries were healed by Marco’s reverse summoning and then summoning again. Tricia wasn’t very fit either, so Marco had to carry Andrea.
Tricia asked, looking at Andrea.
“But why the hell do you have a dagger like that stuck in a roast turkey?”
“I don’t know either… It must have become an invincible turkey.”
At the stupid answer, Trisha burst into laughter. When Andrea first learned about that strategy, she wanted to ask the development team what kind of sense it was.
As they made their way down the aisle, Marco stumbled upon something.
“There’s a treasure chest over there.”
Again, there were two boxes. Andrea was unable to move, so she asked Marco to open it for her. Trisha had already opened the box while Marco was laying Andrea down.
“What is this? Andrea, do you know what this is?”
“It’s a rainbow lantern. It’s an artifact that allows you to gain 1 more mana for only 1 turn.”
Tricia waved it around with a gentle smile, apparently liking the multicolored twinkling lanterns. The colorful shadows cast on the wall followed Trisha’s hand.
“beautiful.”
“…”
“What, what, look at what.”
Sensing the stare at her, Trisha gave a shy shot.
‘Ji called first…’
Andrea turned her head to Marco. However, Marco’s expression when he took out the card from the box was a bit strange.
“What card is it? Can you read the effect, Mr. Marco?”
“No, um… you’d better take a look for yourself.”
Andrea, who received the handed card, couldn’t help but have the same expression as Marco.
‘[unique] ??? (? Cost): ??? (This card is revealed the first time it is used in battle.)’
‘This···?’
“What is it?”
Trisha also intervened, unable to overcome her curiosity. Then all three of them had the same expression.
“What is it, do you have all these cards?”
It wouldn’t have been that kind of card from the beginning. Only Andrea had ever seen a card like this before. But even Andrea had no idea what the hell was going on.
‘Isn’t this… a card that only appears when you accept the blessing of the Shadow God?’
Andrea hurriedly pulled out her status card.
[Name: Andrea]
[Class: Shadow Follower]
[Level: 36]
[Max Mana: 2]
[Muscle Strength: 34]
[mana: 40]
[Resistance: 36 + 1]
[Luck: 40]
[eccentric: miserly]
Classes and quirks were added.
While exploring the dungeon, if you enter the temple of a certain god, you will be presented with the option to accept your faith and receive blessings. A challenger who has received a blessing will have the accepted attribute of the god added to the front of the class name, and can receive benefits according to the blessing.
However, there is no reward without a price in a dungeon. The challenger who accepted the blessing had to also accept ‘eccentricity’ according to the compatibility with the god or the whim of the god. A few quirks have a positive effect on exploration, but most quirks make exploration more difficult.
To sum up, Andrea became a ‘believer’ who accepted ‘the blessing of the shadow’ in return for the quirk of ‘miser’.
And one of the representative blessings of the Shadow God is that instead of increasing the rarity of the reward card, its identity is hidden unrecognized.
‘why? I haven’t even set foot in the temple since I came here.’
There was only one reason for pointing out. That, too, was a difficult reason to understand.
‘What, no way… Because of lying about accepting the revelation of the Shadow God?’
Had this happened during the game, I would have thought it was a bug. However, in this world, mysterious things could be packaged as miracles of God.
In other words, the gods would sometimes do wonders that were beyond comprehension.
Moreover, the god mentioned as an excuse is Khalicis, the shadow god who loves conspiracies and secrets.
‘What class is a believer? This is a class I’ve never seen before in the game…’
Andrea hid her status card for now. It was his intention to figure out what had happened first and then inform his colleagues.
“It looks like the shadow himself was playing a joke. Ugh, anyway, let’s take this card. If it’s a unique grade, it’s more likely to be better than the cards I have now.”
Andrea couldn’t help but frown. As time passed, the pain was getting deeper and deeper. Marco nodded and picked Andrea up again.
It was time to leave for the 25th floor.
*
Marco took a deep breath.
The scenery on the 25th floor was unlike anything I had ever seen in a dungeon. There were no cramped walls, no shaggy bushes, no gloomy corridors.
The warm sunlight shattered on the river, and the smell of dry grass tickled the tip of the nose carried by the wind. If you stretch your gaze along the road, you can see the gabled roofs gathered in a row at the bottom of that hill. Smoke billowed from every chimney.
“God of the Sun, this place is… so beautiful.”
It was a quiet landscape that made it hard for a wanderer tired of the weary journey to hold back their admiration.
Adsel, the town where the challengers first encounter in the dungeon, where the ‘people’ live.
“But how does a dungeon have a space like this?”
Marco asked Andrea, who was sitting on his back. The answer came quickly.
“Kkeueuk, the 25th floor was originally an empty field with only one merchant. The challengers who borrowed the power of the Earth God and the Wave God created this town.”
“Then are all the people living here challengers?”
“No, most of them… are descendants of challengers. This town is older than I thought.”
“You mean some of the previous challengers stopped climbing dungeons and settled down?”
“Yes.”
“her.”
Marco thought that if he had created such a mood, it was well deserved. Though Andrea and Trisha had different ideas.
“Hey, Andrea. Isn’t the Shadow God only telling us the history of this place?”
“yes.”
“Sir, then you know what the atmosphere is like here…”
‘Everyone knows…’
Anyone who has ever played ‘Dungeon of Infinity’ will not easily forget this town. Trisha also passed by briefly, but was deeply impressed by the town.
Although monsters do not exist in Adsel, it is a place where madness in a different way from dungeons prevails. Andrea carefully weighed the options she had to make in this town.
When we came down to the entrance of the village, a dark-skinned boy was standing guard in front of the fence. Andrea said urgently to Tricia.
“Tricia, stop it before he yells that we are here…”
“I am a challenger! A challenger guest has arrived!”
One step too late. As soon as the boy saw Andrea and the others, he turned around and ran, spreading a loud cry throughout the village.
With that word as a signal, all the villagers rushed out of their homes. In such a hurry, about half of the residents ran out barefoot.
The area around Andrea and the others quickly became a marketplace. The eyes of everyone around them glistened with hunger.
“Challenger, how would you like to stay overnight at our house…”
“Challenger! At our inn, the beer tastes amazing…”
“…we are at the low price of 100 gold per night…”
“…80 gold per night!”
The act of soliciting guests is so extreme that the soul is completely lost. Andrea’s party didn’t say a word, but they were even competing on their own price.
Terrified, Trisha pushed away those who kept clinging to her. Andrea’s whole body hurts, but facing such an uproar made her troublesome.
‘f*ck… At this point, it’s worth getting into a fight with each other.’
Andrea’s prediction was right on. A villager with a shaggy beard shouted at a short villager.
“What is it, Hans? Did you just push me?”
“What nonsense, man? I was only on this side.”
“No, you bastard! You just pushed me and went that way.”
“Oh, did you already have presbyopia…”
“You bastard, you bastard, are you going to get scolded for ‘duel’?”
“This is what I was hoping for. Don’t give up and cry and cry.”
Then, suddenly, the two sat down on the floor. Their waists were lined with leather pouches that looked just like ‘deck’.
A bearded villager opened one of his leather pouches and pulled out a card.
“I’ll start first! Enhanced blow, black grip, iron wall defense!”
“I will only use Ashen Blessing and Swipe this turn.”
“Ooh, since I only use that card, it must be preserved, right?”
Some of the residents clinging to Andrea gathered and began to watch the two’s ‘duel’. One of the residents who was soliciting customers saw it and shouted as if he had a good idea.
“Everyone, let’s not be like this, let’s decide who will serve the challenger through ‘Duel’!”
“That’s a good idea!”
“Let’s do that!”
The crazy proposal was taken for granted by the villagers. After a while, the villagers huddled together and started to ‘duel’ without paying attention to Andrea and the others.
It was a scene she had already seen, but Trisha was so absurd that she was at a loss for words. Needless to say Marco, seeing this scene for the first time.
Andrea whispered hard to Marco.
“Let’s get out of this gap… I think I’m really going to fall behind…”
Andrea and the others left the entrance while noticing the villagers. Andrea has already decided where to go first. The first thing to do was to go to the ‘merchant’ and buy medicine.
However, the village seemed to have no intention of sending Andrea to the shop. Someone blocked Andrea’s path.
Gray hair, fine wrinkles, and benevolent eyes, but if you look closely, they give off a somewhat insidious feeling. It was a face both Andrea and Tricia knew.
“Heh heh, weren’t the residents a little noisy? There were many examples, Challenger. Is the hunter next to you… Trisha-sama?”
“It’s been a while, old village chief.”
“Looks like you’ve been okay so far, I’m glad. But how did you get back to the 25th floor so quickly?”
Trisha didn’t try to explain, but looked at Andrea. said Andrea in a dying voice.
“I… Kkeueuk, I’m really sick and I’m about to die… Can we have a chat later?”
“As you can see, my colleagues are like this. Let’s talk about it later.”
After hearing what Trisha said, the village chief was delighted and suggested it.
“Then why don’t you stop by my house for a while? Sufficient medicines are available. It’s fate that we met again like this, so let’s give it away for free.”
Andrea could clearly see the village chief’s intentions.
The village chief made this proposal for one of two reasons. Scout offers to the challenger, or give them a quest to do a dirty job.
Free medicine is not free kindness. The village headman was a person who would have enough pressure to collect debts at any cost. Andrea’s rationality was telling her to go to the village chief after treatment.
“Ugh, in that case… let me take care of you for a while.”
However, Andrea’s mouth did not follow reason. As soon as I heard the word ‘free’, my mind did not become the subject.
‘Damn it, because of the quirk of a miser!’
free, free, discount, cheap. These were the words that prevented the challenger with the eccentricity of ‘a miser’ from coming to his senses. Andrea was frightened by the unfamiliar feeling as if another self had arisen inside her.
‘The village chief is not a bad person, but I thought he would think carefully at times like this. After all, does it hurt a lot…’
Tricia looked at Andrea in surprise. Andrea wanted to make an excuse like a chimney, but couldn’t bear to say it.
Eventually, they headed to the village chief’s house. Andrea decided to find a way to get rid of the quirk quickly.
＜ 8. Duel is a big deal in town (1) ＞ End