* * *
The first dungeon opening, and the first successful defense.
For monsters who had always been on the receiving end of beatings from challengers, it seemed to have been an incredibly precious victory.
“We won!”
“Whooo!”
Everyone hugged each other and jumped around, celebrating their success with one heart.
In that situation… I couldn’t pour cold water on it by pointing out that their opponents had been just two little children.
The moment I confirmed through the monitor that the children had collapsed, I headed to the first floor.
“What do we do with the fainted challengers?”
I hurriedly checked the children’s condition, and fortunately, they didn’t seem badly hurt.
“Obviously, we strip them of anything valuable!”
Brownie said in a confident voice, and for a moment I had to doubt my ears.
“What…? That’s no different from robbery.”
“It’s the fault of the one who came into the dungeon carrying nice things!”
And what if we got sued for something like that? Ah, right, this isn’t the world I lived in, so maybe that doesn’t happen….
“And it’s an unspoken rule that you get stripped clean when you collapse. Adventurers all know it too. They shake out our pockets when they defeat monsters, so why can’t we do the same? I hear some even strip them down to their underwear! Those ruthless bastards!”
The monsters, who had been celebrating, came up to me sniffling. I hurriedly took off my glasses, tucked them in my pocket, and greeted them.
“Manager, thank you. Thanks to you, I got to experience what victory feels like.”
The goblin that had worked so hard to act like a vicious monster toward the children wiped its flowing tears with its arm.
No matter who the opponent was, winning must have made it that happy…. How many losses must it have suffered to feel this way….
A pang of sympathy welled up and made my heart ache, but then….
“Come on! Strip them! Shake them out! It’s good to fill the reward room too.”
Brownie’s shout chilled me right back down.
“The reward room, ah…!”
The reward room built as a decoy to protect the sacred relic.
Currently, instead of rewards, only dust rolled around in it—it couldn’t fulfill any of its purpose.
So this was another way—stripping fallen adventurers to fill it as a temporary measure.
“Or you could toss the spoils to the ones who worked hard.”
“Aha…?”
Right now, the only monster wearing anything that could be called ‘equipment’ was one skeleton.
If we distinguished them by the identification codes given in interview order, this would be Skeleton 1.
When I asked if there was any other name to call them by, they all balked in surprise.
They said a name could only be granted by the Demon God once one became a high-ranking monster.
So the monsters here were all just Low-Ranking Goblin 1, 2, 3… and Skeleton 1, 2, 3….
In any case, giving the monsters usable equipment was all money. With fixed expenses already piling up just from labor costs, outfitting them to match their numbers was a luxury.
Even Brownie tried to stop me. It said, what difference would giving equipment to weaklings like them even make?
Truly a fairy with no blood or tears.
“What’s worth taking….”
Soothing my pricking conscience, I first retrieved the weapons the children had been carrying.
Two well-worn, crude wooden swords.
No matter how I thought about it, they weren’t items worthy of being placed in the reward room, so I gave them to the skeletons as spoils.
Even receiving such shabby weapons, they danced and celebrated as if they had received something wonderful.
When my hand hesitated to touch the leather plates strapped to their bodies in place of armor, I cautiously reached for their pockets instead.
Zap.
I felt a sharp static at my fingertips, as if something was blocking me.
“Ouch….”
“That’s the sacred relic warning you. If you stimulate them any further, the curse will lift and the challengers could wake up.”
Brownie said in a voice dripping with regret.
“What? Earlier you made it sound like stripping them bare was perfectly fine.”
“If we had a monster with a looting license, we would have shaken them clean. They can minimize stimulation and covertly, quickly pick through an adventurer’s belongings. They even know where expensive items are hidden. What a shame. I thought we could at least get a potion.”
Looting—that was a term from games referring to the act of taking items from a target.
“There’s a license for that too…?”
I had thought it was the most basic of basics, but apparently it required certification.
“The problem is the sacred relic’s power is weak. As things stand now, it seems you can only perform looting yourself once.”
“Only once!?”
If I had known earlier, I would have searched their pockets first instead of taking those shabby swords! Then at least a coin or… Huh, am I really thinking like some petty thief!
I had become a wicked adult trying to brazenly pick the pockets of little children!
I let out a silent sigh.
“Manager, we’ll move the challengers to the respawn room now that looting is done.”
The low-ranking goblins carefully lifted the children in their arms.
The respawn room was a separate space next to the lobby where unconscious challengers woke up.
By rule, monsters are not allowed to set foot directly in the lobby while a challenger is in the dungeon. But neither could they leave an incapacitated challenger lying in the dungeon forever.
So they moved the unconscious challengers through a secret passage connected to the respawn room, without going through the lobby directly. Once they woke, they could leave through the lobby.
Perhaps because they had indun experience, the monsters understood the dungeon’s structure better than I did. They naturally volunteered to move them there.
“What if the children realize their wooden swords were taken and come charging back….”
“They can’t re-enter the dungeon until the sacred relic’s curse is lifted.”
“Oh….”
So there was a re-entry penalty for a certain period of time.
“They shouldn’t be trying to challenge it again with injured bodies. It’s a kind of system to protect adventurers. On the other hand, it also means there’s no point stripping someone you’ve already cleaned out, so go earn some money and come back.”
The dungeon really was a systematically operated place….
And so the goblins moved the children to the respawn room, and the children woke up before catching a cold on the cold floor, then left the dungeon.
Their slumped shoulders looked so pitiful.
They seemed to have come to the dungeon with some grand ambition, but the newly opened dungeon had trampled that dream.
After all the visitors had left, the monsters brought out old cleaning tools without anyone telling them to and began cleaning up after the battle.
Their handling was so practiced that it seemed they had done this many times before.
“Wipe it hard over there! If blood hardens, it stinks! Cleanliness first! Cleanliness second! Do you want to live in a dirty dungeon!?”
“Yes! Understood!”
Incidentally, the old cleaning tools were all things Brownie had picked up from the garbage dump. That was why they were in poor condition and not very efficient.
“Fill in any gouges! If something goes wrong when you’re fighting later, it’ll be a big problem!”
“Correct, your words are most wise!”
Watching Brownie drive the monsters, I fell into thought.
‘This battle was a good opportunity to check the dungeon’s system from start to finish.’
Though the opponents were too weak to gather much data on the combat side, hearing about how the dungeon operated versus seeing it with my own eyes were completely different things.
When a challenger enters the dungeon, they fight monsters, and when their fear peaks and they are defeated, the sacred relic’s curse immediately activates and they lose consciousness.
In the meantime, we take only enough spoils from the fallen challenger that the curse won’t break, then move them to the respawn room in the lobby.
The awakened challenger cannot re-enter the dungeon until the sacred relic’s curse is lifted, so they leave the dungeon promising to try again next time.
‘If the number of employees increases, I’ll need to divide them into departments for detailed management. There’s no guarantee every battle will be as relaxed as today’s.’
Beyond the combat team that handles fighting, it would be good to have an equipment team that professionally creates the dungeon environment, like installing traps.
Come to think of it, the slime fell under the equipment team.
And a follow-up support team after combat would be needed too.
A retrieval team to recover spoils and move challengers, a cleaning team to clean and restore the dungeon after combat, and so on….
If we divided operations into departments like a real company, it would be easier to manage and allow more efficient dungeon operation.
“For now, there aren’t enough of us to divide into departments, so one person will have to handle multiple roles…. Everyone will have to work hard.”
Handling HR, accounting, general affairs, cleaning, making lunch, washing dishes, doing the boss’s son’s homework for him, all alone…….
It seemed increasingly far removed from company work, but in any case, just like the old me who had to handle everything.
