"Ouch!"

"Be careful."

Skir quickly grabbed Pola's arm, who had almost tripped on a protruding rock.

"T-thank you."

Pola awkwardly put his arm down.

'Something's strange...'

Lucas couldn't shake off his doubts as he passed through the dungeon.

Even if it was a dungeon created by the academy, it was too peaceful.

Except for a few similar simple traps that they had passed in the beginning, there wasn't even a single monster.

"It's the same as before. Step only where I step."

The pattern was also similar. Lucas wanted to step on the traps at least once to see what they were, but he suppressed the urge.

"When will this end...?"

An hour had already passed since they had entered the dungeon, and the tension that had been maintained was gradually loosening.

"You can't know the length of a dungeon until it's over."

"Haa..."

The children were getting tired of the tension.

"Should we rest for a bit?"

"No. I'm fine."

Pola shook her head firmly at Lucas's words.

"Yes. I'm fine too."

"I'm fine too."

The other children also shook their heads at Pola's answer.

"Alright. Let's go then."

The narrow alley appeared and disappeared several times.

A smell different from the musty smell of the cave began to waft from somewhere.

"Ugh... what's that smell?"

The deeper they went, the stronger the smell became.

"Ugh... I feel sick."

-Saaak

As the children were in pain, Lucas quickly created a small wind and blew the smell away.

"Just bear with it for a little longer."

"Uh-huh..."

It was when the smell became so strong that their noses were paralyzed.

"T-there...!"

The corpse of the person that Naias had seen was lying there.

Fortunately, there was only one corpse, not several.

"Wait here."

There was no need to show the children something unpleasant.

"A-are you sure you'll be okay alone?"

Skir, who was reluctant to let Lucas, who was four years younger than him, go ahead, quickly grabbed him.

"Yes. I'm fine."

Lucas nodded his head firmly.

Lucas, who had spread his detection magic wide, confirmed once again that the place where the children were standing was safe.

"If you think I'm in danger, please help me."

The children nodded their heads at Lucas's request.

In fact, he didn't need the children's help.

The reason he said this was to give the children a sense of being on a mission together.

The closer he got to the corpse, the stronger the unpleasant smell became.

'It's not just the smell of a rotting corpse.'

The smell coming from the corpse was disgusting.

But Lucas knew.

This was not just the smell of a rotting corpse. It was a smell that seemed to be mixed with something impure.

'...What is this?'

Lucas, who had approached the corpse, felt something strange.

The corpse's legs were strangely withered, and although the corpse didn't seem to have been there for long, the smell of rotting was particularly strong.

When he lifted the corpse's eyelids, the white eyes met his.

'Blind...?'

And the corpse's hands were also strangely twisted.

Not as if someone had intentionally twisted them, but as if they had been born that way.

And when he looked closely at the legs, they looked like the legs of a person who had never walked in his life.

'A blind... person who can't walk... came all the way to this dungeon?'

It was too strange.

No matter how abandoned the dungeon was, it was not a place that a person in this condition could easily come to.

And there were traps hidden everywhere on the way in.

'...What in the world happened?'

***

"Leader. It's time to eat."

"Ooh... yes. Pamela. Thank you."

The woman who had entered the leader's room was a rare beauty with light brown hair and eyes close to gold.

The woman, who was wearing a red sash that signified a middle-ranking priest, had a youthful appearance as if she had just turned twenty.

"Today's meal has been prepared with soft food as you requested."

"Yes... yes. I'm not feeling well today for some reason."

The man, who had smiled benevolently, stroked his beard, which had some white hair.

The old man, who was the leader, was getting younger day by day, unlike at first.

"Then..."

"Pamela. Who said you could leave before I finished my meal?"

As the woman, who had set the meal on the table, turned to leave, the man's voice turned sharp.

"T-that is..."

"Khukuk... our Pamela..."

Pamela flinched as the old man's hand swept up the back of her hand.

"Come closer."

"..."

"I said come closer!"

The leader, who had roughly snatched Pamela's wrist.

"Khukuk..."

The leader's disgusting laughter echoed through the room as he forcibly sat her on his lap.

"Hmm... our Pamela always smells so good..."

"..."

"What did I say you had to do to avoid being punished?"

"..."

"You should know that the punishment will be more severe if you don't answer."

"I'm sorry."

A voice that seemed to be crawling.

Pamela's body was trembling more and more severely.

"Yes, yes. You're a good girl. Shouldn't you listen to me? If you don't want to get a scratch on your soft skin."

"...Yes."

"It would be good if our Pamela fed me herself today. Then I would feel much better."

Pamela, who was sitting on the leader's lap, picked up a spoon with a trembling hand, and the sound of the utensils clattering was heard in time with the trembling of her hand.

"Yes, yes..."

Pamela, who had carefully scooped up the soup in the bowl, held the trembling hand with her other hand and carefully brought it to the leader's mouth.

"Ugh!"

A single groan burst from the leader's mouth, as if the soup was hot.

-Crash!

"Aak!!"

Pamela, who had been sent flying with the table that had been overturned in an instant, fell to the floor.

"Pamela...! You're testing my patience."

At the leader's sharp gaze, Pamela prostrated herself on the floor and rubbed her hands, without even feeling the pain.

"I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"

"I'll have to punish you. Pamela..."

"L-leader! Please... please..."

"A bad child must be punished, right?"

Pamela, who was looking at the tip of the leader's foot approaching her, was trembling with fear.

"Be grateful for my teaching."

"U-ugh!!"

***

Aman, who had come out to the advanced class's test site, had just heard the shocking news.

"Group 2!?"

"Yes, group 2 has not come out yet. It's been almost 2 hours and 30 minutes since they went in."

All the other groups had finished the test and had come out, but only group 2, which Lucas belonged to, had not come out yet.

"T-this seems to be something wrong...!"

"It's something that can happen. Last year, the group that came out the latest took four hours."

Aman almost threw a punch at the professor's face, who was delivering the news indifferently.

'He's talking nonsense...!'

The Lucas and his friends he knew didn't need this much time for a lower-level dungeon.

Ronaldo Hasen, the new magic practice professor, didn't know them well yet.

So that's why such a carefree sound would come out of his mouth.

"What about the other students?"

"They're resting over there."

When he looked in the direction Ronaldo was pointing, the students were gathered in groups and were talking about the test.

"Students. Did you see the students of group 2 in the dungeon?"

As Aman approached them and asked, the students all shook their heads.

"You didn't?"

Something was very wrong.

"Yes. Well, I met another group... but I don't think I saw group 2. Did you see them?"

"No. I didn't see them either."

"That's right... it's strange..."

"You were in group 3, right?"

"Yes."

The children, who had realized that something was strange at Aman's question, were asking each other questions.

Aman, who felt that something was very wrong, rushed to the dungeon entrance.

It was a distance that could be reached in 10 minutes if he ran, ignoring all the traps.

As someone entered the dungeon, virtual monsters began to appear one by one in the newly reset dungeon.

From ghouls to kobolds, the types were also diverse.

Aman, who had spread his detection and search magic wide, began to search the entire dungeon.

'He's not here...!'

He was not there. Not only Lucas, but also the presence of the other children could not be felt at all.

***

"That's the exit."

After leaving the very suspicious corpse behind and walking a little further, the exit of the dungeon began to appear.

The children, who saw the exit with a faint light, began to get excited.

"Finally...!"

The three hours or so they had been in the dungeon felt like a hundred years.

To think that there were no monsters in the dungeon they had entered for the first time, but just a single corpse lying there...!

The strange appearance of the corpse was not easily erased from the children's minds.

-Flash!

"Huh?"

The children, who had passed through the dungeon exit together, could not help but open their eyes wide at the different scenery that unfolded before them.

Although they knew that the entrance and exit of the dungeon they had entered from the test site were not that far apart, this place was a completely different world.

"Where is this?"

"This isn't a forest..."

"It's a desert!"

It was a desert. Although the dungeon was located in the middle of a forest, the children had been dropped in the middle of a desert they had never seen before.

'Haa... damn it...'

Only then did he begin to understand the whole situation.

It was a common occurrence to use an abandoned dungeon for a purpose.

That's why they often changed the location of the entrance and exit, and there were also often cases where they connected it to another dungeon.

Looking at the current situation, it seemed that the children had squeezed into a space that someone had arbitrarily twisted.

"Let's go back first."

It seemed that this matter would be resolved quickly if he told Aman.

'Damn it...! Of all times!'

And Lucas was now in a state where he couldn't use Aman's mana.

He had told Aman to limit the mana supply in order to increase his own circle. And that was right now.

'But where is this?'

And Lucas also didn't know where this place was.

If they had come out to a place like the opposite side of the continent, he wouldn't be able to teleport all the children with his own mana.

Even if he had teleported all the children, he could have died from mana exhaustion.

"...Wait a minute."

Lucas, who was thinking hard about the safest way, spread his detection magic wide.

If there was a village or something else nearby, he was thinking of going there first to find out where this place was.

'What the hell! There's not a single village?!'

Lucas's brow furrowed fiercely as he spread his detection magic for a long time, and the children's expressions also began to become serious.

"Ah! Nella. Can you call the Naias?"

"Yes. Naias."

Since there was water everywhere, the Naias was also everywhere.

Nella, who had called the Naias, looked at Lucas, as if waiting for the next words.

"...Can you ask her where this is?"

"...Ah."

Nella let out a small sigh at Lucas's words.

'There are things that oppa doesn't know too...'

-This is Raskan.

"Hmm. Raskan? She says."

Nella tilted her head at the place name she had heard for the first time.

Raskan. He had guessed it, but to think it was really Raskan.

Raskan was a kingdom in the west, quite far from the continent.

"Haa... Raskan..."

Lucas let out a long sigh, recalling the Raskan Kingdom.

The Esteril Desert, located in Raskan, was a huge desert that stretched from the western end to the middle of the continent.

-Keeek... keeek...

"Damn it! Nothing's going right."

Lucas, who had been thinking for a long time, let out a loud curse at the strange sound coming from behind.

"W-what's that!?"

"Damn basilisk..."

Lucas's stress, which had been accumulating from the dungeon, finally exploded.

"I'll make a dough out of you."

(End of Chapter)