Chapter 36: I Might as Well Tell You, You Are the Challenger! (Please Follow) (Patreon)

Was today's objective to explore?

Of course not.

The Dungeon's very existence let him draw a perfect close to this confrontation — he wouldn't even need to invent an excuse.

Tailing behind an Adventurer party, Rozz made his way down to the starting floor, the designated safe zone. Rather than stay passive, he wanted to keep a firm grip on the initiative himself.

After all, they had him outnumbered. If he could use the Dungeon's terrain to play the ambusher and strike first, instantly thinning Nwankwo's group, everything afterward would go a lot smoother!

"Let's head to Floor 3 next. Adventurer traffic splits up there... there won't be too many bystanders, so it'll be easier to handle things."

He glanced at the Supporter girl standing tense beside him.

Rozz wasn't wearing a serious face at all. He grinned and offered, "When the time comes... if they go after you, just run."

After these past few days exploring together, he'd come to understand that as a Supporter, her combat ability really was pretty lousy.

Basically nonexistent.

Arranging things this way meant he'd be the one facing Nwankwo's men head-on, but that still beat the alternative — Lili getting caught and used to threaten him into surrendering without a fight.

"What about you, then?"

Even...

Even in an environment this dangerous, why was his first concern her safety, when she was nothing but a burden to him?

The girl couldn't make sense of it.

And yet someone like Rozz — someone with an unmistakably bright future ahead of him — still chose to get tangled up in the mess of a lowlife like her.

She had to admit it —

No matter what, Lili couldn't bring herself to dislike someone like him. She looked up. "If something happens to you in the Dungeon..."

"I'd be in trouble too."

"Don't worry. Would you believe me if I said you couldn't outrun me in a marathon?"

"?"

Don't say something that ruins the mood with nonsense at a time like this...

Lili's mouth twitched, her expression straining to hold together. She firmly changed the subject: "Let's just head to the target floor like normal."

"Nwankwo..."

"He probably has a Skill for tracking the scent of fellow Familia members. One way or another, he'll find our location."

As for that ability —

Lili remembered it all too well. Even with her own Cinder Ella magic, so long as the scent her body gave off stayed unchanged,

she could still be recognized, no matter how well the magic disguised her.

...

"They've gone into the Dungeon."

"Follow me."

Once he reached the starting floor, Nwankwo used his Skill to sense the scent in the air, and soon picked up that pungent, shabby smell.

In Orario, with Ganesha Familia's guard corps watching, there was really nothing he could do.

But down here in the Dungeon, where the strong preyed on the weak, the middle-aged Adventurer was honestly curious where Rozz and Lili got the nerve.

He'd lost count of how many rookies like this he'd dealt with... but he had to admit, Rozz was easily the wealthiest one he'd ever come across.

Following the trail the scent left behind, he pressed forward with his Familia lackeys in tow, deliberately avoiding fights with any monsters they ran into, conserving his strength as much as he could.

Even a lion hunting a rabbit goes all out.

That was simply how cautious Nwankwo was by nature. But as they kept advancing, he began to sense something wasn't right.

They...

it was as if they'd known all along they'd be tracked. Going by how strong the scent was, he could tell Rozz hadn't lingered anywhere at all — almost as if he were waiting for him to arrive.

Fine by him. Nwankwo had no interest in playing hide-and-seek with some rookie — he just wanted the gear in hand so he could dump it on the black market for valis.

"..."

Before long, the middle-aged Beastman Adventurer and his lackeys tracked their way to Floor 3. Maybe because Lili had lingered here longer than elsewhere, Nwankwo could tell the scent was even stronger in this spot.

His eyes swept over the tangled cave passages ahead. The scent didn't spread in any other direction, which left only one conclusion.

Trying to ambush him here?

Nwankwo drew the battle-axe from his back. The scar across his eye socket made his grin look downright vicious as he spoke.

"Don't even think about a sneak attack."

"That runt's shabby stink turns my stomach just from the smell. Behave, and maybe I'll make it quick for you!"

—

Did this guy seriously not realize he was being tailed by an Adventurer?

Hmm...

Even now, Tsubaki Collbrande still hadn't fully figured out why her own goddess wanted her tailing this rookie Adventurer.

The good news:

She'd seen this rookie named "Rozz" once before, the day she delivered weapons to the shop's branch, and he'd left quite an impression on her — mostly because they shared the same black hair.

Since it was a request from a god, Tsubaki went along with it even though she didn't really understand the reasoning, treating it as a two-day vacation of sorts.

The job itself was simple.

She wasn't supposed to explore the Dungeon alongside Rozz — just stay close and make sure he didn't run into danger over these two days.

But the condition was: don't show herself unless absolutely necessary.

That wasn't hard for Tsubaki. Setting aside her reputation as "Orario's Strongest Blacksmith," she was also a Level 5 Adventurer in her own right.

Compared to some green rookie,

reining in her presence a little was more than enough — there was no way she'd be spotted!

But over the course of tailing him, Tsubaki gradually realized this job wasn't quite as simple as she'd imagined.

Along the way, against Goblins, Cave Lizards, and other monsters,

the strength Rozz displayed was nothing like a rookie's — not his combat technique, not the sheer physical power he showed.

"There's no way this guy is a rookie!"

Especially since...

once Rozz reached Floor 3, he stopped exploring entirely and simply hid in the shadows, waiting.

"This guy..."

"Don't tell me he's noticed me tailing him?"

But just then,

the Adventurers who'd been tailing Rozz all the way from Central Park into the Dungeon — from some Familia she didn't recognize — arrived in the area.

That completely cleared up the confusion in Tsubaki's mind.

This job had never been about babysitting Rozz's Dungeon exploration at all — it was about him clashing with a group of unfamiliar Adventurers.

Her real task was to step in and save him if he ended up in real danger.

"In a situation like this..."

"The Supporter has no combat ability either, so they'll definitely try to ambush him — thin his numbers first... that's probably the only way Rozz stands a chance, right?"

Drawing on her own experience exploring the Dungeon, Tsubaki made a quick read of the situation.

The simplest solution, really, would be to just step out herself and kill every Adventurer stalking Rozz.

But,

she didn't do that. To become a truly qualified Adventurer, one had to go through battles like this — fights where life and death hung in the balance.

"I'll get a little closer..."

"That way, if he runs into real danger, I can step in right away!"

As she closed the distance, though, things unfolded far outside Tsubaki's expectations — especially once the middle-aged Adventurer saw through the ambush plan.

Rozz —

this guy didn't even bother pretending. He walked straight out in plain view of his enemies. She was too far away to make out what they were saying.

But once she got closer,

Tsubaki caught the grin spreading across Rozz's handsome face: "Looks like you've gotten the wrong idea about something. Let me set the record straight."

"You're the challenger here!"

"!"

Tsubaki: ???

—

[Author's Note: Meant to rest for just two hours — accidentally overslept, meow~]