Interlude: The 'Perfect' Dungeon

Azrael and Kali were perfect twins in all except one facet of their lives. While both had awoken classes, lady Azrael had been gifted with the necromancer class while Lady Kali had been blessed with the dark elementalist class. While the classes were quite similarly themed, they were in no way the same class nor were they the ideal match-up for a party of two. Luckily, as the daughters of a marquise, they had strong, well-trained knights to rely on.

As nobles, it was their responsibility to become strong adventurers who wouldn't let their people down. Their kingdom was a monarchy, but all positions of nobility had to be earned. Rather than noble titles being passed down to the oldest male child or whoever had the best skills when it came to managing a territory, the children of nobility had to prove themselves first as adventurers. Nobility needed to have excellent strength, knowledge, and territory management skills to guarantee they would be able to maintain their position as nobility.

Anyone who became an S-rank adventurer, regardless of their previous social status, would end up being offered the chance to be granted their own noble title. They would then proceed to receive marriage offers from the current nobility. Having a strong adventurer marry into one's family would almost guarantee that a noble family would be able to maintain, if not increase, their social status for the next generation or two.

If a child was born into a noble family without a class, the best they could hope for was to be used as a political pawn for marriage. However, even that rarely went well. High-ranking noble families wanted to maintain their prestige by having strong heirs who married other strong and talented individuals. Even a craftsman class would be more valuable than someone born without any class at all.

That was actually why Azrael was here, in this dungeon, today with her twin sister and three of their family's knights. She needed to farm experience so that she could level up and grow strong enough to marry into a decent family. Luckily, since they both had a class, they weren't at risk of being disowned and being thrown out. At worst, they would become knights if they couldn't become the heir of the family or find a decent marriage partner.

One of the three guards with them paid the fee to the dungeon guards and they finally made their way into the dungeon. There were likely several other parties already in this dungeon, but this was one of the better ones to level up in. For whatever reason, the dungeon master of this dungeon seemed to be obsessed with efficiency. The dungeon was filled with as many rooms as possible to ensure there were plenty of monsters to defend the dungeon as well as making sure very little of the dungeon space went to waste.

Almost all of the rooms were 16 meter x 16 meter square dungeon rooms. This gave the otherwise cave-like dungeon rooms a rather artificial appearance. However, there were also some other room styles, where necessary. For example, straight ahead of the dungeon entrance, there were two rectangular rooms in a row. The first was the room for putting tributes, which was where they were heading now. The next was an altar to the patron deity of the dungeon.

Azrael pulled a small, intricately decorated chalice out of her magic bag before placing it on what little room was remaining on one of the several wooden tables in the room. Despite it still being rather early in the day and there being an entire six large tribute tables, the tables were full. This wasn't surprising as the dungeon was always busy and several hundred people came through here on a daily basis.

After the others finished placing their items as well, their group moved on to one of the rooms. As this floor of the dungeon hadn't changed in years and they could easily afford a map, it was easy to navigate the traps. Almost every room, save for the boss room, tribute room, and altar room, had three goblins in them. However, after walking around the wooden barricades, jumping across the pitfall traps, and avoiding the wall push traps, they still didn't see any monsters. While they could easily stay in the room and wait for the monsters to respawn, it would likely be better to head deeper into the dungeon.

Unfortunately for the dungeon master, this combination of traps was not exactly unique. Many other dungeons had these sorts of traps so most adventurers knew how to look out for them. The pitfall traps tended to have a natural-looking covering over the top of them to hide their location, but things like leaves or grass tended to stick out like a sore thumb in a dungeon that was nothing but stone.

The push wall traps were a little bit more difficult to spot, but they were always placed in the wall next to the pitfall traps, so they were still easy to avoid. It was likely the intention was for the wooden barricades to guide adventurers to walk in a certain direction and then the push wall trap would ensure that people were more likely to fall into the pitfall trap, even if they walked against the wall.

However, these traps were far too weak to be effective against people. The wooden barricades could be climbed over or destroyed without any consequences. Even if one fell in the pitfall trap, they were likely to only end up with minor injuries. A lesser health potion could easily heal such injuries or someone could just rest at home for a few days until their twisted ankle healed.

This dungeon had traps in about half of the rooms and they were used in a variety of different ways, but they were all equally ineffective. The next room was also free of monsters and so was the next. There were tar traps that were difficult to avoid and would easily ruin one's boots, if you couldn't jump over it. However, it wasn't until they went a few dozen rooms in that they finally ran into some monsters.

Azrael let Kali fight this group alongside the knights. They'd be setting up camp in this room anyway and Azrael required some setup before she could use her class abilities. As a necromancer, she had to either bring along the bodies of the dead or kill the available monsters before she could resurrect them. While she could have done so before they entered the dungeon, it was seen as wrong socially to do so. Most people found undead monsters disturbing, so necromancers were encouraged to only use their abilities in the dungeon or when absolutely necessary otherwise.

Doing so as soon as they got in the dungeon would have been fine since no locals could be bothered by it. However, it would have held up other adventurers who would likely be right behind them. Waiting until they were deeper in the dungeon and had a spare moment was mostly just done to be polite. However, once these goblins were killed, Azrael would be able to help out with all of the consecutive fights.

Since the goblins were only beginner monsters, they didn't require much magic to resurrect nor did they require any special class skills. However, they also tended to die rather easily. Of course, most beginner necromancer skills also didn't tend to last very long either. The monsters would end up running out of magic and return to their disabled state after a certain amount of time, it was just that higher-level class skills could increase that duration.

The room Azrael and Kali had chosen was a trapless room that was about halfway through the dungeon and otherwise a dead end. They were less likely to be disturbed by other adventurers and were unlikely to have anyone else trying to force them out. Since there weren't any challenges or resources on this floor, there was less need to be mindful of other adventurers, but it was still best to camp out in a more out-of-the-way room.

Azrael and Kali hardly needed guards to protect them, but they were there as a safety precaution. It would be bad if the dungeon master got mad about something or decided they wanted this floor clear of adventurers and decided to make their [Monsters] chase the adventurers out. Three goblins at once was one thing, but it would be another story if several rooms worth came at them at the same time. Well, it was less likely to be an issue on this lower floor since so many adventurers were coming through and killing the [Monsters] off, but it wasn't like they'd never be moving on to a higher floor with more dangerous [Monsters].

Azrael and Kali spent a couple of hours farming experience before finally heading home for the day. They would likely return tomorrow as well, but they still had a schedule to maintain. Time had to be set aside to train in the dungeon just like time was set aside for etiquette training or socialization. As nobles, they couldn't afford to be lacking in any way, after all.