Dungeon Hunter - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Episode 6. 2000vs800 (2)

‘I should do this.’

It was my role to make the impossible possible. I already knew that it wouldn’t be an easy fight, but if I won this, I would get even more pleasure from it.

“Humans are on the third floor; you all know that already, correct?”

The nine leaders of the packs nodded all together.

Anyways, those intruders were on their nerves.

“Me know.”

“I no like.”

“We want to kill them all.”

They had amazing hostility. Since they were against a common enemy, I didn’t have to worry about them fighting each other.

“Those creatures were arrogant enough to walk into my dungeon to steal the treasures. As a Dungeon Master, I can’t ignore such a thing, so I want to give you a chance.”

“What is ignore?”

“You stupid Goblin, ignore is food name.”

“No. Ignore is my friend’s name.”

I realized I shouldn’t use any difficult words.

Until now, I thought Lyhee was the simplest creature, but they were on the next level. They made Lyhee seem super smart.

I showed my endless patience and told them, “That means I can’t forgive them. I’m not going to let them walk around in my dungeon like this.”

“God. Me hate humans!”

“We show Kobold brave!”

“Krrr! Human hate but delicious.”

They all wanted one thing.

They needed better motivation. If they thought humans were their arch-nemesis, I was sure they would have attacked them already. They didn’t because they were being a bit careful for some reason.

‘I should use a reward system.’

Treating them like slaves wouldn’t be efficient.

A carrot-and-stick approach worked not only for humans but for all creatures that can think.

“I will give a reward to the leader of the pack that brings the best results. Is there anything you want?”

Giving them what they wanted would be the best way to do so.

As soon as I asked them, the Goblin leader on the far left answered right away. “Female! We all male. I want baby.”

“Agree. We no have female, we will make baby with male.”

“I can make baby myself!”

They ignored the last one that answered, and all the other leaders agreed.

It was clear that there were 1700 Goblins and Kobolds, and they were all males.

I’d summoned a few female Orcs to make them repopulate, but I hadn’t done it for Goblins and Kobolds yet.

They both were very liberal and didn’t mind incest, so they were very good at reproduction compared to the Orcs. All that, of course, results in dystocia and possibilities to have a mutant, so half of their newborns would die in a year.

They were continuing until now, but if they overpopulated the Orcs, they would try to hunt them, so I didn’t summon females for them.

‘Goblins and Kobolds are from the same root anyways. They hate each other but also accept each other’s existence. Unlike Carnivore Bats or Aisle Snakes, Orcs could threaten their lives, so they would attack Orcs if they could.’

I needed more Orcs to keep balance in my dungeon ecosystem.

‘With this war, many Goblins and Kobolds would die, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea.’

If they repopulated like this, that would cause a problem, but after the war when a significant number of them were dead, giving some females wouldn’t hurt the balance.

I nodded. “Okay. The pack that kills the most humans will get the most females.”

“Krr! We work hard, promise!”

“We kill more than Goblin!”

“I kill very many.”

These guys didn’t have the intelligence to lie about numbers, anyway. They could only count to ten with their fingers and toes.

It would be a bit of work to make them bring the head every time they killed, but I left that to Lyhee.

Thinking of Lyhee counting blood-dripping heads made me laugh. That wouldn’t be Lyhee’s favorite thing for sure.

“So now, I will reorganize the unit.”

They had no chance if they fought the heroes face-to-face. Even if Orcs joined, we’d still have 40% chance of winning. I had to organize the units and manage them efficiently.

I was trying to remember the battles I’d participated in during my former life and assigned leaders different tasks.

There were 800 awakened heroes around the entrance of the third floor.

They grouped in five or six and sat around small bonfires.

Everyone looked down, maybe because they’d lost most of their members while clearing the second floor.

The Chinese awakened heroes were totally fine.

They placed awakened heroes from other countries on the front line, so they didn’t get much damage compared to others.

“Hao! Hao!”

“Hahaha!”

One of the Chinese heroes put the head of an Orc on his spear and danced, and others were cheering.

It was almost a dance-like movement, and most of the Chinese awakened heroes were enjoying it.

There were others who didn’t enjoy that at all.

“Are they having a party?” Daniel complained as he sat in front of the bonfire.

Daniel came here with five other American heroes, and two of them died on the second floor, so obviously he wouldn’t feel comfortable with anything at the moment.

“Leader. Why don’t we work separately? They will take all the treasure even if we find any. We will never have a chance to take one,” a guy with red hair said, repairing a huge halberd. All the scars all over his body told his rough life history.

Daniel shook his head. “No. We don’t know what kind of monsters are waiting for us on the third floor. Until we know, we cannot operate separately. If there are worse creatures than the Orcs, we will be dead in a second.”

“You mean the monsters like Beholders or Gargoyles that came out during the monster wave in the Middle East?”

These two joined as mercenaries during the monster wave in the Middle East. There, they had to fight against monsters other than Kobolds, Goblins, and Orcs.

A Beholder with only two huge eyeballs floating around or two-meter tall Gargoyles were some monsters that they couldn’t even try to fight against.

Beholders shot short-range beams, and those beams were sharper than blades. As soon as the beam touched the body, that body part was cut off.

Gargoyles were not very threatening apart from their sharp teeth, but they had incredible healing abilities. In a matter of seconds, they would recover any damage they got.

More than ten awakened heroes were killed by them. A few dozen fighter aircraft attacked them at once to kill them, but just thinking about those monsters made them shiver.

“If you think of the fact that this was the only dungeon where people found treasures, it wouldn’t be weird to have stronger monsters than Beholders or Gargoyles. If we are all by ourselves, we will be annihilated in a heartbeat.”

Daniel had a reason.

As a team leader, it was natural for him to worry about his team members.

The guy with red hair complained, “I’m not a big fan of them anyway. Their guild…what was the name? Dark Society? They killed one or two Orcs, and now they’re having a party. That will only provoke the monsters.”

“I don’t like what they’re doing now, but we need to keep it down. We should see how it goes.”

“Hey. Do you think there are real treasures? All we found on the second floor was that one cane. That only improved the efficiency of your magic spell by a little, didn’t it? I don’t think that can be called a treasure.”

“If there’s a cane, there must be better things hiding. What the Guild of Heaven’s Will found weren’t ordinary treasures. The scroll that helps you go over space is priceless. If we find one of those things, this quest would be a great success.”

The scroll that allowed you to leap over space was a very useful thing. It could give you an extra life and be used for really malicious things as well.

If you sold it on the secret auction, there would be a lineup of potential buyers.

The guy with the red hair scratched his head. “But people are really not that different anywhere in the world. There are so many people who want to turn their life around in the dungeon.”

Daniel smiled and answered, “Humans are all greedy. We can’t just blame those Dark Society guys. Anyways, they were the guild that collected all of us…thanks to them, we were able to reach the third floor.”

It was almost impossible to have a thousand heroes together in the dungeon. The Dark Society brought awakened heroes from all around the world to have a joint raid.

They had no idea how the Dark Society guys had found them, but it was thanks to the Dark Society that they’d made it to the third floor. Even if they’d lost one of their unit members on the way.

The guy with the red hairstyle was still disgusted by the festive ambiance on the Dark Society side.

“I don’t care. I just don’t like them at all. Daniel, this time we should really find something. For Jack who died on the way; we need to make something out of this.”

“We should.”

Jack was the name of the member who died on the second floor.

The air became heavy for a while, and they sipped on the soup in their bowls.

“Ugh!”

That moment, there was the sound of death throes.

Daniel and his team members picked up their weapons and looked around to see what had happened.

The Dark Society guy who was dancing with an Orc’s head just now had an arrow in his head.

“Wu Chao!”

It happened in a second.

All the Chinese heroes picked up their weapons and stood up.

Daniel and his team were on guard as well.

Kree.

Kughhhh.

They were able to see a few hundred Kobolds drooling while looking at the humans.

There was an adult-sized Kobold that was leading the Kobolds, standing with a bow and arrow and aiming at the human side.

It was the Kobold that hit the guy who was dancing around the bonfire.

“Kill them!”

A group of Chinese heroes was in a rage, and they ran toward the Kobolds. They looked like they would kill everything in their way.

They were only protective of their own people, but still, it was quite a scene to see 500 people running toward the Kobolds.

Ping.

Crack!

When the Kobold shot another arrow, a Chinese hero on the front cut the arrow into half. Kobolds were not very good at shooting arrows, and no awakened heroes would be hit by such lousy shooting skills.

“Krrr! Kughhhh!”

As soon as its arrow was stopped, the Kobold leader turned around and started to run.

It didn’t even look back as if that was all he had to do.

Kobolds started to run away from the heroes.

Some awakened heroes thought it was a good idea to hunt the fleeing prey down and follow them.

Even if they couldn’t get the treasure, the Core was still a valuable thing to get.

It could be a good chance to get a lot of Core without much effort, so many heroes followed them.

“Daniel, don’t you think we should join them?”

The red hair guy was watching the Kobolds and angry Chinese heroes and then asked Daniel the question.

Daniel shook his head.

“No, we stay here. Something is wrong.”

“What are you talking about? Those are Kobolds. Aren’t they running away because they don’t think they can handle this?”

“No. The one on the front was the leader…it could plan some basic tactics.”

“Hey, but Daniel, it’s just a Kobold.”

Kobolds were Kobolds.

It was a well-known fact among the awakened heroes that Kobolds were less than idiots.

It was hard to believe that a leader of a pack of idiots could lure the awakened heroes to fight against them.

“Something doesn’t feel right.”

Daniel had an amazing intuition. They all knew that Jack had died on the second floor because he was not listening to Daniel.

“We don’t know anything about the third floor and what is here. If this is their tactic, many of us will die here.”

“Shit. Okay. Okay. If you say so. Don’t you think they will blame us later?”

“I am not planning to go with them until the end. We are with them only to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. As soon as we understand what is going on and what to do, we will be separated from them.”

The redhaired guy looked happy with Daniel’s answer. “That’s why I like my leader!”

Daniel didn’t care; he was keeping it cool and trying to understand what was going on. “Richard, you are the fastest among us, so I want you to go and find out if this is a trap or not.”

“Sure.”

“Andy. Guard us.”

“Okay.”

“Parsons, bless us.”

“Not a problem.”

“What about me? What do you want me to do? Huh? Daniel?”

The redhaired guy’s eyes shone as he waited for Daniel’s command.

Daniel hesitated for a second and then looked at the pot half-full with the soup.

“Finish the soup. We still have too much.”

The number of heroes following the Kobolds became smaller.

The cave was like a labyrinth, and there were heroes who couldn’t keep up with the speed.

500 heroes started to follow the Kobolds, but now there were only about a hundred left.

The front group realized something was wrong and tried to turn around, but it was a bit too late.

Bash!

Bash!

The awakened heroes on the front were in a panic.

Monsters were coming out from everywhere, and those were not Goblins or Kobolds.

They were 200 Orcs!

Everyone was in despair.

‘That’s more than I thought.’

I was observing the battlefield with my crystal ball.

The two crystal balls were a set. When I used my Mana to activate them, one would show the scene around the other one.

I had an Orc was holding another crystal ball to show me the battlefield so that I could observe the battle from a distance.

It was a magic gear that worth more than 5,000pt.

‘They are quite simple.’

I had to laugh at the100 awakened heroes. I was sure they didn’t imagine that the Kobolds would try to lure them out.

They thought Kobolds would be scared and run away.

Most of the heroes who followed them were Chinese awakened heroes; it seemed like they didn’t think a step ahead.

It was the worst possible scenario that was brought on by prejudices.

‘It wasn’t bad as a one-time deal. Now, I should slowly make them frustrated to death.’

The force was not that different, but I was fighting on my home ground.

My plan had worked, so now we had the upper hand.

Now, how should I torture them?

I couldn’t help but laugh.