Chapter 6: Entering the Dungeon

"Remember what we talked about in the van, Lucas. Stay close to us and don't make any loud noises even if you see monsters." Jenny said to Lucas after they entered the dungeon.

"Okay," he responded.

"All of the monsters around the entrance should be cleared out by now so if we want to hunt some monsters we would need to go deeper into the dungeon. Let's follow the path for a bit before we enter the woods." Darius then said.

As they traversed on this single path leading to somewhere, Lucas looked around with slight awe in his eyes.

After entering the portal, they were taken to the wilderness that had nothing but trees and bushes in every single direction.

'So this is a dungeon, huh? It's like I'm in another world...' Lucas thought to himself.

Although this isn't his first time inside a dungeon, he doesn't really consider the Calamity-rank dungeon a real dungeon, as it had a totally different atmosphere.

The first dungeon appeared around 100 years ago, but nobody knows why they appeared in the first place, and shortly after the first dungeon appeared, more and more dungeons began appearing around the world.

Nobody knew how to deal with these dungeons at first, but when they entered one, they were shocked to find powerful creatures dwelling within these dungeons, and every dungeon had a different environment and location, almost like they were each a world of their own.

When news of monsters living within dungeons spread, people naturally stopped entering them.

However, humanity quickly regretted their decisions to avoid them when the monsters inside the dungeons began coming out of their dwelling and wreaking havoc around the world.

The damages done were unreal, and the monsters nearly destroyed the entire world.

Fortunately, some humans awakened their Character Status, acquiring the powers to fight these monsters, and the dungeons that appeared were mostly Novice-rank dungeons— the weakest dungeons with the weakest monsters. If there had been even a single Calamity-rank dungeon, the world would've ended long ago.

Eventually, the world got used to dungeons and even began treating it as though it was just part of life, and with the creation of the Players' Association and the Guild, the world began treating dungeons as a source of income and resources.

"Stop."

After walking for about half an hour, Darius suddenly raised his hand into the air and closed it into a fist.

He then retrieved the shield from his back and said, "There are three monsters ahead of us. All green goblins."

Lucas narrowed his eyes to focus on the three figures sitting about a hundred meters in the distance. They had the figure of a human, but they were also short, ugly, and had green skin.

These ugly creatures were known as green goblins, and they're one of the most common and weakest monsters found in Novice-rank dungeons.

"Three green goblins... That's a little over a hundred dollars. Not bad considering that we've only just got here." Jenny licked her lips.

In her eyes, these three green goblins looked like money.

"I'm going to aggro them, and once they're distracted, I want both of you to take out one green goblin each, then we'll take care of the last one together," Darius instructed them.

They both nodded.

"Newbie, you stay here. We don't want you to get in our way." Darius said to him.

"Okay." Lucas nodded with an innocent-looking face.

A moment later, Darius began making his way straight towards the three unsuspecting green goblins while John and Jenny circled around them.

Once he was close enough, Darius shouted, "Come get me, you ugly bastards!"

Darius' loud voice startled the green goblins, causing them to jump to their feet.

Once they realized that it was a human that just messed with them, they immediately began running at him with their rusty weapons raised while making weird enraged noises.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Darius skillfully blocked the green goblins' attack.

After defending a couple more strikes, Darius shouted, "Now!"

It was at this moment John jumped into action and slashed his sharp sword at one of the green goblins' neck from behind.

The blade went through the green goblin's neck cleanly.

At the same time, Jenny, who was standing a few meters away from the remaining green goblins, raised her arm with her palms facing them.

"Fireball!"

A ball of flame the size of a soccer ball suddenly conjured in front of her palms before shooting itself at one of the green goblins.

The green goblin hit by the fireball was immediately engulfed in flames and began rolling on the ground, but it did very little to nothing, and the goblin died shortly after with its remains burnt to a crisp.

Seeing its companions die before it could react, the remaining green goblin stopped attacking Darius and turned around to run away.

However, right as it tried to run away, its body suddenly froze, feeling as though its movements were being restricted by an invisible force.

"Where do you think you're going, you ugly bastard?" Darius' voice resounded from behind the goblin, and when it turned around, all it saw was a large shield flying at its face before its vision blacked out.

"Great job, you two," Darius said to them afterward.

"You too, Darius," John said.

A few moments after the green goblins died, their corpses began to disintegrate into tiny fragments, almost like they were turning into sand before disappearing into the thin air.

Once the corpses were gone, a small green crystal the size of a pebble appeared at where they disappeared from.

Jenny picked up these crystals and immediately tossed them into a small pouch before putting them away.

Sometime later, Darius and the other two returned to Lucas.

However, when they returned to where they left him, Lucas was nowhere to be seen.

"Where the heck did that newbie go?" Darius spoke with a frown on his face.

"Hey! Newbie! Come out! We have slain the monsters!" John shouted in a moderate voice.

After a few moments of silence, Jenny muttered in a low voice, "Could it be that he ditched us?"

"A level 1 newbie who just registered at the Guild would dare to ditch his first party inside a dungeon? Impossible!" Darius said, his voice filled with disbelief.

However, as much as he doubted that they had been ditched by a newbie, it was a fact that Lucas was nowhere to be seen, leaving them only one conclusion— that Lucas, a level one newbie, had ditched them!