Chương 198: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 198 - Entering the Underground City

The scroll recorded an ancient story. At least, that was Medraco's assumption, the thing looked ancient. Its paper edges were so brittle they crumbled to powder at the slightest touch. Whoever it had once belonged to, whatever ruin it had come flying out of, he had no idea. [Legend holds that deep within Silvermoon Forest lies a magnificent underground city, a dark labyrinth of winding passages, terrifying and eerie statues, the Dark Monarch grinning from the shadows, and ferocious monsters preying on the living. Only a true warrior can pass through the dungeon's layered trials and claim its inexhaustible, limitless treasure...] [Will you be that warrior?] [Dark Underground City, your challenge awaits!] The moment he finished reading, his map changed. The system map had shown nothing but dense black fog in every direction. Now, a lit zone materialized within that fog. Medraco zoomed in. A purplish-black vortex. Complex terrain. And at the center of the vortex, a solemn, imposing palace.

Below it, two words: [Dark Underground City]. Medraco processed this quickly. First: the world they were operating in was real, just semi-digitized to make it legible for players. Second: their mission system triggered at random, with no main storyline to follow. Their only standing objective was to invade and develop this continent. A mission had just triggered. That meant one thing. This underground city mattered. Possibly it was tied to some deeper secret of the "game world" itself. Decision made.

He'd check it out, and the dungeon's location appeared to be along the same route as the Dragon's Nest. That probably wasn't a coincidence. Medraco shared the map data to the team channel. Every player present watched their system maps flicker and partially illuminate, identical to his.

"Can't share it to the world channel?" He tried. It wouldn't post. He hadn't actually intended to broadcast this to the entire server, just a test.

"So this quest has a player cap," he murmured.

"The global player count definitely exceeds it..." Scarcity creates value. If this dungeon was large enough for thousands of players but locked out the entire world, the rewards had to be worth it. He took the scroll and brought it to Freya. She was a critical asset. He needed her on this expedition, and he'd already begun rehearsing the pitch in his head, expecting pushback. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. He didn't need it.

The moment he produced the scroll, the powerful mage's eyes sharpened with immediate, undisguised interest.

"An underground city?"

"Inexhaustible, limitless treasure?" Freya thought of her country, small and struggling. She thought of her position within it, and how tenuous it still was. Treasure on that scale would cement her throne. Add Medraco's firearms and Kayaal's absurdly overpowered healing, and the surrounding kingdoms became realistic targets. Anlius. Even Ayrland. None of it was unimaginable.

"That's what the ancient scroll claims, at least." Medraco shrugged. He wasn't going to believe anything until he saw it with his own eyes.

"Then let's go take a look," Freya said.

"I've read a fair amount of dungeon history in the royal library. Most underground cities were originally built by powerful monsters — whole civilizations of them." She paused, and her expression shifted to something hard to read.

"But in ancient times, there was a legendary mage named Gou Fugui."

"He devoted his entire life to the Fireball spell. By the time he ascended to Legendary rank, his Fireballs had reached a truly incomprehensible level."

"He also had a peculiar hobby."

"He liked throwing Fireballs into dark holes." Freya let out a short breath, the way a person does when recalling something they still can't quite decide whether to find funny or appalling.

"So most of the underground cities that existed during that era were destroyed by him. If this one is real, it's probably just a ruin. Whatever monsters are inside now, they're not the original inhabitants. They won't be anything extraordinary."

"Either way, it's worth investigating." Nobody argued. If Freya was willing, the decision was made. Even Salister, the Lightning Archmage, said nothing. She was thinking about her sister. Monsters who settled in underground cities were almost always intelligent, humanoid, and that kind tended to hunt human women. The most infamous cannon-fodder species in any dungeon was the goblin, and everyone knew what goblins did. She already knew, in some corner of her mind, what had probably happened.

But she held onto a sliver of hope anyway. She needed to see her sister alive, or bring back a body. Even if her sister had been defiled — even then — as long as she was still breathing, Salister would get her out. With that, the group shifted objectives: dragon slaying could wait. They were going to the dungeon. Under Medraco's lead, they set out. What struck them as strange was the silence. The entire journey, not a single monster. Only ordinary animals.

That was deeply wrong, and they didn't fully understand why until they arrived at the map marker.

"The Dragon's Nest is directly above the underground city!" Medraco's eyes lit up.

"That's why there's nothing out here." As an analytical mind, he'd already narrowed it down to two possibilities. One: the dungeon faction had emerged and absorbed, or wiped out, the Dragon's Nest's monsters entirely. Two: the Dragon's Nest's monsters had relocated into the dungeon and become its new inhabitants.

"So," he said, hesitating.

"Do we go in? There's genuinely nothing left out here." If the dungeon faction had slaughtered the black dragon's forces, they were dealing with something that might be well beyond their pay grade. Going in could mean not coming back.

"We go in." Freya looked at him with barely concealed contempt.

"We came all this way. Obviously we go in." She had something Medraco lacked: a thorough education in monster sociology. Any established dungeon maintained layers of external defenses, scouts, surface tribes, rings of cannon fodder spreading outward from the entrance. Underground cities weren't purely underground; they had above-ground structures, and those structures were always ringed by monster settlements.

You had to slaughter your way through all of them before you even earned the right to approach the dungeon entrance. There was nothing here. No tribes. No sentinels. Not a single monster of any kind. That told her one of two things: this was a newly formed dungeon, still building itself up, or its lord was a complete amateur who had simply moved into someone else's territory. Like, say, a black dragon. Either way, Freya decided, it was good news. ➤ Next: The Terrifying Maze (1)