9 The Best Place

Verhund was standing in front of what was called 'the dungeon', its entrance was fairly big, reaching over ten meters high.

Looking at its design, it could only be called a temple, though it lacked any statues and gods to worship.

Still, the white - yellowed and greyed by age - support pillars, walls, and ceiling gave a clear contrast to the grim greyed darkness of the floor and stair ahead, building a suffocating feeling upon anyone who was not ready to risk their lives.

The entrance was big, but it still had no way to accommodate all adventurers entering and leaving at its busiest hours, so several lifts were constructed to allow other adventurers' descent without them waiting in long lines.

Verhund had his trusted - and kidnapped - short sword under his sleeve and a small bag on his new belt. Although he had no armor, he was confident that, at worst, he would just die.

Stepping down the stairs that were relatively empty, he finally set foot on the first floor of this humongous yet weak-for-its-size beast.

The first floor was painted a sunny yellow, maintained by crystals that closely resembled the those inside the city's lanterns, although visibly bigger and with no weird magical language written on them.

The place itself, though, had nothing much going on for it besides its maze structure. Because it was the first floor, monsters seldom spawned from the walls and it was, therefore, hard to encounter them there.

Verhund was unlucky enough to reach the stairs to the second level without fighting anything, although he did spot a pretty big party returning from what were most likely the deeper floors.

He simply let them pass, as he had no way to start a proper fight against people who could make tomato sauce out of him with a slap.

He also ignored the contemptuous stare of a Rando and the pointed one from an elf, and green-haired too. Verhund was starting to understand these 'uncommon existences', of which he only met two. It was really hard to spot someone with an unnatural hair coloration in this world.

The second floor was a bit bigger than its predecessor, its maze also seemed slightly more complex, and monsters obviously spawned more frequently. Right in the not-so-far distance, Verhund could spot an adventurer party casually beating some goblins down.

The poor green midgets, not even their dwarven cousins would spare them. And here comes the racism.

Verhund himself didn't have to walk for long to have an encounter of his own, it was probably close to halfway into the floor that some goblins jumped out from some white cracks on the walls, three to form a party against him.

Aside from the nails on their fingers, however, they didn't have any weapon on them, and the little nosy monsters obviously had no height advantage.

Their bland strength was no help, either.

So when they took no further advantage of their formation other than to scare their unfeeling predator before each moved on their own frantic pace towards Verhund, their fate was sealed.

It wouldn't have ended differently even if they knew how to properly fight, however.

The first was in the middle, it had its throat sliced open by Verhund.

The other two came right after the first, sandwiching it.

Verhund dashed towards the beast to the right, punching it in the face before it could use its pointy nails, the body of his first victim - still falling to the ground - gave him cover against the predictable attack from the other - still unharmed - monster.

He stabbed his short sword in the goblins midriff and used its spasming body to hinder the last survivor's jump, making it fall with its butt on the ground while its fading brethren stood on top.

Verhund threw his sword below it sternum before it could properly sit up, ending the fight and acquiring three cheap monster cores.

This was probably enough to buy some lame candy for Cinthia.

Apparently, this was all the fight he would have on this floor, and another walk through the park later, Verhund found himself looking down the stairway to the next floor.

"Perhaps this place attacks with boredom first?"

Lowering people's guards before jumping in for the kill seems like the go-to tactic of dungeons, as they have to be strictly controlled by someone to actually do something different.

If this dungeon were to be controlled by something competent, though, Verhund suspected that humanity would either cease to exist or a couple of dozen gods would have to sacrifice their descent and suicide bomb this thing down.

It was almost like the world favored monsters and abhorred the divine.

And perhaps it was because of a god that nothing ever came out of here by itself to terrorize the lands above.

Now on the third floor, Verhund noticed that the place was darker, the light crystals either missing or glowing weakly on the walls.

Another thing to notice was the difference in the monsters.

Four goblins arrived from the walls, taking their time, relishing on the thought of terrorizing their victim as they crawled out of the walls.

So when there were only two of them when the wall cracks closed, the monsters became somewhat dumbfounded. They didn't know how to make a formation without the four of them!

The addition to a small knife and low intellect wasn't of much help to them, as Verhund cut his third quarry of the group and watched the last goblin shriek and dash at him.

A knife in the midriff stopped the monster in its tracks, its body fell to the ground, its disappearance accompanied by cool visual effects that seemed to be wasted on the mob.

Verhund managed to up the quality of Cinthia's candy so it was all good. Perhaps she would like a lot of cheap ones instead...

The new cunning added a sadistic - or maybe narcissistic - quality to the monsters on the third floor, which led the goblins and the new kobolds to take their time and die quietly, continuously improving the taste of Verhund's joke.

The fourth floor also suffered from the exact same problem, with a slight increase in the number of foes, even darker lighting, and a bigger maze.

At the fifth, however, things changed.

The sunny lighting was gone, the walls themselves glowed a soft, haunting blue-green instead; the pathways enlarged, allowing six fat people to walk side by side; rooms were added in between the hallways and there were more differences to the monsters.

The previous child-sized goblins now almost reached the adult height of men, they also had more defined physiques and carried a low-quality short sword on them.

The kobolds also grew, acquiring larger fangs and claws while adopting a more animalistic stance, further increasing their threat.

Verhund found himself surrounded by white cracks once again, he couldn't capitalize as much now, however, because although the monsters were still afflicted by their sudden show-off fever, they themselves spawned quite a distance from their intruders.

So when he charged forwards to lower their numbers with the small gap he had, he could only safely cut down one kobold before the cracks closed and another one after.

The group he was facing had three monsters that were ultimately reduced to a single one, but right behind him was a group with four goblins, their numbers completely intact.

Verhund quickly kicked he last hunching kobold in the ribs, forcefully turning the whining monster's back to him, and stabbed his short sword in its spine, ending it.

The four goblins came while maintaining some semblance of formation, it was a dysfunctional inverted triangle with no symmetry whatsoever.

Verhund picked up a monster core from the ground and threw it towards the head of a goblin to his left and ran to meet the one to his right, short sword ready to stab.

While the goblin that got hit with a stone broke its own formation by suddenly stopping and getting hit by the one right behind, Verhund's opponent gave a blind thrust with its weapon.

Verhund parried the blow and stabbed its diaphragm, still advancing towards the enemy further behind.

When the dead monster burned away, Verhund swung his sword forward, throwing the goblin that barely managed to defend itself to the ground, and paying attention to the other two monsters that finally disentangled from each other and advanced towards him once again.

The goblin in front, still having some twisted idea of teamwork, threw itself to the ground and tried to grab Verhund's legs while its teammate frantically swung its arms to try and nick at him with its sword.

He just jumped and stomped the fallen goblin's head open while exchanging two blows with the other, breaking its already ruined stance before he stabbed his sword in the beast's forehead.

Now there was only one monster alive, which then suffered from Verhund's sword throw and disappeared soon after.

"This dungeon has over fifty explored floors and the first few are already like that, this might be the best place in the world. No wonder everyone wants to be a miner here, they all want to die."

At every new floor, monsters are presented differently and with divergent behaviors. The dungeon was constantly testing them to find the best way to end adventurers' lives with the weakest possible monster.

Verhund was pretty sure that what the dungeon aimed with all of these formations and numerous spawns with slightly greater strength was to more efficiently tire out its invaders.

It was like it knew that blindly throwing stronger monsters at them would only serve to increase the blessed ones' powers.

Only by looking at the earlier floors, Verhund was already suspecting that the dungeon was a sentient being with a good amount of knowledge and common sense, trying its hardest to kill everyone.

Of course, this was all a guess. But it didn't change the fact that this place was enough of a threat to summon many gods to watch over it, and that Verhund was already having some ideas of what to do.

"This is the best place after all. Oh? Perhaps this is enough to stay for a day?"

The inn was a tad bit too expensive, with the way things were going, Verhund would have to live in the ruins, as Tiamat's neighbor.