"Hehehe, we finally made it to Floor 12!"
Laurier bounced out of the floor passage with a cheer. Then something occurred to her, her face flushing with excitement, and she hopped over to Leon and grabbed his sleeve. "Leon, Leon! I heard there are dragons on this floor! Real dragons!"
Leon's mouth twitched.
Dragons.
The word carried weight in any world. Absolute power, ancient majesty, undying legend. The final wall in every hero's epic, the calamity in every myth, the shadow in every child's nightmare. Every civilization that had ever told stories put dragons at the top.
Power, majesty, terror, despair. Every one of those words fit dragons perfectly, and none of them felt like exaggeration.
In the hero's city of Orario, that weight was heavier still.
One of the Three Great Quests: Slay the One-Eyed Black Dragon, King of the Skies.
The yellowed parchment bearing that challenge still hung at the very top of the Guild headquarters' quest board. The iron nail holding it up, stamped with a black dragon-claw emblem, had long since rusted over the ages. To this day, no one had taken it down.
That silent testament said more than words ever could about what "dragon" meant in Orario, and in the soul of every Adventurer who lived there.
And now they stood at the edge of the Dungeon's upper floors: Floor 12.
Here, for the first time in the shallow levels, dragon-kind appeared.
Curious? That didn't begin to cover it. A cocktail of anticipation, disbelief, and nervous energy buzzed through every member of the party.
Even Leon, a man living his second life, felt his pulse quicken. Dragons. Living, breathing dragons. So what if the intelligence reports coldly labeled them "Infant Dragons"?
Since when did "infant" make something less of a dragon?
"Dragons..." Leon smacked his lips, something complicated flickering in his eyes. "Yeah, they're here. Though let me be precise: there's an extremely small chance of a dragon-type spawning on both Floors 11 and 12. They're called Infant Dragons. Floor 12 just has better odds."
He looked around at the group, his voice carrying an uncharacteristic gravity mixed with barely concealed eagerness. "Infant Dragons are one of the rarest spawns in the upper floors, with a potential rating of Level 2. That's why Adventurers call them the floor boss of the upper floors."
What nobody noticed was that while his mouth was talking about reverence and his face wore the appropriate solemnity, the thoughts running behind his eyes told a different story entirely.
Dragons, besides being the embodiment of power, represented what else exactly?
Money. Obviously.
An Infant Dragon wouldn't have a hoard, but if they were lucky enough to encounter one and managed to kill it, even a handful of dragon scales or bone fragments would fill his coffers enough to live comfortably for a good while.
Especially now. He had a feeling that once this Dungeon expedition ended, he'd need to start spending big again to keep up with his own growth. Scholar's Heart was a blessing and a curse: his Basic Abilities were climbing fast, and if he didn't invest money into raising his potential ceiling soon, he'd be right back where he was a few months ago, hitting walls.
The cheat system being too strong had its own problems.
Leon made up his mind. If they ran into that Infant Dragon, he'd take the risk and bring it down. No way he was letting some other party walk off with a windfall like that.
Floor 12 wasn't enormous, but it wasn't small either, and his team wasn't the only one down here. Watching someone else strike it rich would hurt worse than losing money himself, and Leon refused to suffer that kind of indignity.
If the others knew that behind all his talk of dragon reverence he was mentally calculating resale value per kilogram, he'd have earned himself a collection of dirty looks.
Once the shock of the word "dragon" had faded, Jeanne turned to him. "Leon, what's the call?"
Every pair of eyes followed hers.
The eagerness in the air was obvious. Leon pressed his lips together, thought for a moment, and spread his hands with a half-resigned grin. "Well, we're already here, right? Nobody's going to feel good about leaving without trying."
He shot his hand up before Laurier could launch into her victory cheer. "But! Let me be clear about this up front. If, and I mean if, we actually stumble into an Infant Dragon... the second it looks like we can't win, the second it even feels like we can't win, you disengage immediately. No heroics. No fighting to the last. You run. Are we clear?"
"There's an old saying where I come from: as long as you're alive, you can always try again. Burn that into your heads. Just because we can't kill an Infant Dragon today doesn't mean we can't kill one tomorrow. There'll be other chances, but we only get one life."
His gaze sharpened and fixed on Aura and Laurier. "Especially you two. Stay calm and think. Don't let the adrenaline turn you stupid. I don't want to hear anyone screaming 'I'll take you down with me!' like some idiot in a bad movie and then dying for nothing. That's how you become a Dungeon punchline."
Aura and Laurier both scowled at that.
Aura in particular glared at Leon, her eyes clearly saying: I'm not that childish! The only one dumb enough to say something like that is the hot-headed idiot standing next to me!
"I-I would never do that! I value my life, thank you very much!" Laurier fired back immediately, face red, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"Sure, sure, yes, yes. Our Laurier is the most level-headed, most cautious member of the team." Leon waved her off with an easy smile and clapped his hands to pull everyone's focus back. "Don't get tired of hearing me repeat myself. When it comes to staying alive, I'll say it a hundred more times and it still won't be enough. Safety first. That's the iron rule. So yeah, I'm going to keep being a nag about it."
He pulled out his brass pocket watch, checked the time, and pivoted to the professional. "Jeanne, what do you think of this spot? Good enough to set up camp and eat lunch?"
Jeanne stood on the platform between the floor passage exit and the stairs, surveying the area. She could easily spot several other Adventurer parties scattered around nearby.
This junction connected Floors 11 and 12, so the foot traffic was constant. The area they'd been calling the "buffer zone" stayed fog-free, and plenty of other parties had clearly had the same idea of using it as a base of operations. The density of teams made hunting harder, but safety went up proportionally, which was exactly why so many groups had gathered here.
Any party capable of reaching Floor 12 had enough sense to figure out the same tactics everyone else had.
Jeanne confirmed the security situation and nodded. "Here's fine. It's safe."
[Read 50+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]