The Dungeon's Growth

(Third Person's POV)

After the day that Shun left to build two capsule inns at the Laverio Empire's capital, the entire dungeon went to a long period of development under the hands of Shun and Rokuko. Of course, it's not only the dungeon that is making a lot of progress.

The capsule inn, the Rabbit's Capsule Restspot to be precise, went into a period of development as well. Haku had ordered Misha, one of her retainers, to spread the news about Rokuko's newly built inn.

While she might have overdone it a little, she did managed to promote the inn perfectly. Literally all the adventurers of Tsia City knew that there's a newly built inn near the foot of the Tsia Mountain.

Because of this rather excessive promotion, Rabbit's Capsule Restspot gained a lot of attention even though it wasn't fully built yet. They were the talk of the whole town for literally weeks even before the inn was built.

Now, about the the dungeon's new name which is now [The Devil's Labyrinth], it's actually the Adventurer Guild's idea to change its name as such. According to the team who was given the task of investigating the dungeon that was once called the [Ordinary Cave], the cave was full of traps that are placed in some sneaky locations while the other traps are just straight up made to kill the one who'll unknowingly get caught in one of them.

But that's not what made the guild convinced that it should be called as [The Devil's Labyrinth] though. The first reason as to why they came up with the name was the entrance. The entrance of the dungeon is very intimidating, to some newbie adventurers who are faint of heart or some newbies who thinks that diving inside a dungeon would be a breeze, that entrance alone made them reconsider their life choices.

It's not like the Adventurer's Guild is complaining though. In fact, they're actually very grateful. Because of this, the number of newbies who died after entering a dungeon lessened by quite a lot.

The second reason is that this dungeon is unusually filled with many traps. Now, it isn't weird for any dungeon to have a trap or two but this one is quite unique as, its traps are carefully hidden so that even adventurers with skills would have a hard time detecting them.

There was the pressure plate traps in the spiral staircase where one section of the stairs would suddenly collapse, resulting in differing traps getting activated. These traps also changes location so the Adventurer's Guild couldn't issue a map regarding the plates and all of its location.

There are also many traps on treasure chests and loots, resulting in many careless adventurer's death. There's also that trap that lures in adventurers with a magic sword on a pedestal.

Speaking of magic swords, this dungeon have loads of them. News about it spread like wildfire in the whole of Tsia City, garnering the attention of many greedy adventurers and aspiring adventurers alike.

Although it could be also called [Cave of Greed] or [Cave of Avarice], the long and devilishly made labyrinth really stuck in the minds of the adventurers who explored the dungeon that they suggested the name to be as such. This was also to warn other people from entering it recklessly, thinking that it's still a newbie friendly dungeon with only one room.

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(Rokuko's POV)

I'm feeling sad. Shun had left a month or so back, telling me that he needs to earn more money but he's still not back.

"Tastes different if Shun's not here…" I mumbled while biting on some hamburger and melon bread. I love the hamburg the most but melon bread is also delicious and sweet.

But, even if I'm feeling sad, it doesn't mean that I'm slacking off. I properly managed the dungeon, just like what Shun told me to do, you know?

Well, I made Seiko, Ichika, and Koharu help BUT, the order came from me and I also did my portion of the job as well so it still counts as me doing those jobs. Ichika, Seiko, and Koharu are my 'retainers' after all.

I learned this from Haku. "The subordinate's accomplishments counts as the boss's accomplishments," she said.

When I asked her if the boss's accomplishments counts as the subordinate's accomplishments as well, she said that it isn't. How weird. I thought it would be the case, no?

Shun and I are partners, so what I achieved counts as his. That also goes the other way around.

Right, back to the newest dungeon improvements, or what Shun called as 'patch'. Since the 'layout' of our dungeon's first basement floor was done already, we only had to add a few more Golem Traps that Shun made in some places.

Shun told us to make the left path even harder so we placed many of the traps there. One person luckily managed to escape because the goblins didn't have any golem armors that can support their legs to run faster.

He eventually died from the pedestal trap that I helped build three days after he fell. His brother looked for him the day after that but I already absorbed his corpse so he didn't find any.

It's free 200 DP, you know?

They even hired Seiko, Ichika, Zenko, and Ikumei to look for the corpse but, of course, they didn't find any. It looks like that search was more like a confirmation that the guy is dead more than anything though.

Because of that incident, the number of stupid newbies going to the left path was reduced, resulting in a small dip in our total DP earnings, but that's okay. A few days later, the right path of our first basement floor was classified as a good training ground for newbie adventurers by the guild, so that covered our losses.

The left path, on the other hand, was deemed to be extremely dangerous to newbies but was a great place to learn how to detect traps. Some of our traps aren't life threatening so…

"Yo, Rokuko. Woohoo~!"

I was surprised when Ichika suddenly waved her hands in front of me. Ah, that's right, I got out of my room and went to the cafeteria to eat some hamburgers.

"A-Ah, that surprised me, Ichika. So? What is it?"

"Well, you're in deep thought so I didn't want to wake you up but your order has arrived so… The food might get cold at this point."

I looked at where Ichika is pointing at and saw the sizzling hot hamburg steak and the purin next to it. Oh, right, I ordered something and waited for it while eating my own hamburger and melon bread.

"Sorry, I kinda forgot…" Thankfully, there's still no one else around.

"Heeh… But hey, I just wanna ask, when do you think boss man would come back? I mean, the inn and the dungeon is running fine without him around but, you know, the food he cooks is more delicious. Get it?"

"Uh-huh. I get you. I still don't know when he'll come back though. Tsuka came back the other day saying that she and Shun went in an adventure at a far away forest. They seem to have encountered a high rank dungeon and ended up killing a dragon there."

"Dragon!? Where is it!? I want to taste dragon meat! They say that it tastes great!" Ichika got so excited that she slammed the table with both her hands with a loud bang.

"The corpse was stored inside Tsuka's [Storage]. She said we should wait for Shun." Tsuka had an excited look on her face so she shouldn't be lying to us.

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(Third Person's POV)

At a dungeon that looks like the castle of some shady king, filled with malicious looking statues and suspicious looking engravings, a man with medium length white hair stood at the center of what seems to be the audience room, with a huge minotaur's body laying on the ground, dead. This minotaur is two sizes bigger than your regular minotaur, with a black fur and some strips of red ones.

The man is wearing a light silver light armor with a black, sleeveless shirt inside. And on his arm was a lightweight, silver protector, with black and golden fingerless gloves.

On his lower body was a pair of black pants. On top of that was a light leg guard and a metal belt. To top it all off, he's wearing a pair of silver boots to complete his get up.

This made him look like the hero who saved the world from an evil Demon King. The huge cow could definitely pass as one with flying colors.

The cliché castle-like dungeon, the dungeon monsters that are definitely more inclined towards the 'dark element' more than anything, and the cliché humanoid figure sitting in a throne at the end of the dungeon that just so happens to be the demon king. All the boxes were checked, resulting in a stereotypical Demon King who wanted to start his legendary battle against the hero with an equally legendary long-ass speech.

The man got so fed up with all of it that he ended their battle with one swift stab on the giant cow's head using the white katana on his right hand. Then, he twisted his body midair to avoid the minotaur's giant hand from grabbing him before slicing it's head clean off with his black katana.

Voila, a minotaur lolipop is ready. Eat it while it's still fresh.

"Phew. Dealing with a his dungeon is more mentally draining than it is physically. What's with the stereotypical lines and everything…?"

Whilst he was mumbling and letting out all of his frustrations, the throne suddenpy began crumbling, revealing a huge incandescent ball with the same diameter as a car's tire.

"Isn't that…"

Without further ado, the man approached the huge ball and, after a brief moment of unsheathing his katanas and disappearing, reappeared in front of the ball once again. As if on queue, the huge ball then began to crumble into little geometrical shapes like parallelograms and triangles.

Alongside the crumbling of the huge incandescent ball, the castle also began to crumble as the entire building have no architectural integrity behind it.

"Yep. It's the Dungeon Core alright. Looks like this guy have no master… Well, since I pretty much earned a thousand gold, let's head back…" While speaking to no one in particular, the man disappeared from his initial position with a poof and is now nowhere to be seen.

Unknown to the man, his battle against the Demon King has been witnessed by a passing adventurer, making his feat spread amongst the populace. This was the start of a tale involving a man who could move at blistering speeds and slice up anything with his sword.

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※~To be continued~※

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Author's Remarks:

※ One chapter I owe you guys, down. There's a few more to go. While I'm at it, let's also end this long arc of LDM and move on to the next chapter of this fanfiction.