2-7 Fighting Monsters

The next day came, making this my eighteenth day in another world.

At last, we entered a full-scale labyrinth expedition.

Today’s plan was a full day’s work and returning the same day.

I launched a large number of lighting pods, and under the dazzling light, the party pushed forward briskly.

And about thirty minutes later, we found monsters.

When something tripped my detection skill and I checked with radar, it even displayed the monster type and count.

“Six goblins.”

Thief Dennis reported it, confirming the readout.

Six at once, huh.

That was a bit much for a first real fight.

“Let me handle the first one alone. I’ve got defensive magic up, so I shouldn’t get even a scratch against goblins. If it looks bad, I’ll retreat immediately.”

“Understood. Be careful.”

Lois, my assigned guard, stayed behind me.

Dennis backed him up.

“I’ll start with the spear.”

I declared it and set my spear.

For now, I’d go with an ordinary iron spear.

Green, ugly figures immediately appeared from around the cave corner.

The goblins came out making creepy, incomprehensible noises—about a meter tall.

If the enemy was short, that might actually make it harder to fight.

If those fast, monkey-like things slipped inside my reach and aimed for my legs like invisible blades, it would be troublesome.

It gave me a slight moment of hesitation—like the instinctive wariness you had of a boar’s tusks, which could threaten a major artery in the thigh if it charged.

Though it was probably impossible for them to harm me now, with my enhanced body.

I dashed to close the distance, lowered my hips, and swept the spear low.

Three heads flew off in an instant.

Looks like the training had paid off properly.

With the power of Physical Enhancement, I swung through with zero resistance.

Normally, blood and fat would make the blade slick and bones would resist—this wouldn’t be so easy.

But thanks to reinforcement, the spear took no damage either.

Green blood sprayed out, turning the scene brutally gruesome.

Seeing it up close made my face twist.

Truthfully, I wasn’t good with splatter.

The raw sensation of the spear blade cutting through bone and flesh for the first time was vividly real.

In everyday terms, it was like cooking poultry without buying chicken at the supermarket—like grabbing a live chicken from a coop and thunk, chopping its head off in one stroke without even strangling it first.

Apparently, chickens sometimes try to run even after their heads are cut off.

If you took it far enough, you’d start joking that maybe the auxiliary brain near the legs was bigger than the one in the head.

They weren’t called birdbrains for nothing.

No—no way.

Until now I’d only dropped blades onto enemies or thrown them.

But I couldn’t afford to dwell on trivialities like that.

It was too late for “now I’m bothered.”

I had to do it.

Because now I had a clear goal: master the dungeon’s spatial transfer and return to Japan.

I put some force into it and whipped the bloody fat clinging to the spear tip away.

Since I was a beginner, I’d left an awkward split—two on the right, one on the left.

Like a bowling split.

Since they’d already been struck, the remaining ones wouldn’t hesitate.

If I went for the two on the right first and got bogged down, the left one could flank me.

Theory said I should quickly take out the lone one on the left first.

I skewered it in one hit and finished it, then swung toward the pair.

With two opponents, sweeping might be better to drop them in a single strike—but I deliberately tested thrusts instead.

At first I’d been deliberately swinging the spear around to reduce their numbers, but now, if I missed, they could slip inside my reach.

So I tried targeting them one by one with thrusts.

That way, whichever of the two came at me next, I could respond.

If the remaining goblins rushed me all at once, I’d have to improvise.

If I could sweep them away, I would.

If not, I’d stab rapidly as planned.

And if that still didn’t work, then it would be time for magic—but this was training to fight with weapons, so using magic would defeat the purpose.

In the first place, you didn’t swing a spear around inside a cramped dungeon.

The point of a spear was to kill safely by thrusting from outside the enemy’s reach.

Spears were fundamentally piercing weapons for attacking at range.

In that sense, facing six alone, this approach wasn’t a bad one.

If you started by poking slowly with thrusts, you’d get surrounded and die.

“A classic rookie mistake. Even if it’s goblins, don’t let them surround you. Instead, break their coordination!”

That was Guildmaster Armon’s lesson.

Anyway, I’d tried close combat, and the conclusion was obvious: against multiple monsters, it was better to reduce their numbers from a distance.

Why did I have to risk dangerous melee against trash mobs like these?

For this kind of enemy, guns or magic were better than swords or spears.

Rather than flashy direct spells, a rapid-fire gun style was ideal.

If they closed in, using a spear or sword with a magic sword skill might be effective.

For defense, instead of a Shield that created walls, I’d rely on the power of a more mobile Barrier—my plentiful magic power should cover my body’s surface.

Barrier was the kind of magic suited for melee.

Though Shield could be reshaped freely if you trained with it, so it could be useful in combat too.

If I could deploy multiple shields at high speed, I could protect allies while fighting.

If the next enemies were goblins again, I’d try the gun.

That’s what I was thinking—when slimes showed up instead.

Four of them appeared, their bodies bulging and wobbling, and for a second I thought they were kind of cute—then they immediately lunged.

No mercy, no openings.

I quickly backed up and hit them with my fingertip flamethrower spell.

Since it was modeled after a flamethrower, the flame hissed out in a thin jet and spread wider toward the tip.

If you poured in more magic, the flame expanded farther and larger.

It was like pressurizing the fuel supply to shove the flame out farther.

It wasn’t bad to use.

For clearing slimes, I’d set the temperature to about the level of a real flamethrower.

Those used fuel similar to napalm, so it was probably around 1,300°C.

Of course, since it was magic, the temperature could go much higher depending on how you fed it power and what you imagined.

I also quickly burned away two more slimes I’d been tracking on radar—ones that had been clinging to the ceiling and creeping toward us.

For weak slimes, they were pretty clever.

“Nice work.”

Ed praised my handling.

Getting praise from a professional adventurer made this amateur old man a tiny bit happy.

Next came three goblins.

I cleared them by firing my magic rifle from a low, hip-held stance.

They all blew apart cleanly in a single burst.

As expected of a U.S. military-style rifle with a short barrel—more like a carbine—it handled well.

And the power wasn’t that far off from an assault rifle.

Real ones were engineered with that kind of balance.

The effective range was probably shorter, but long range wasn’t that important for infantry weapons.

That was what squad support weapons were for.

Besides, this was a mockup magic rifle, so barrel length didn’t matter much.

All that mattered was that the weight balance felt good.

Power depended on magic anyway, and the projectiles were enormous.

“What is that? Is it a magic staff? It’s shaped… strangely.”

“Well, something like that.

It can rapid-fire magic, so it’s convenient.

I made it in a shape that’s easy for me to use.”

Right—magic in this world was already a ranged weapon.

Guns weren’t truly necessary.

But I was a modern person and a gun enthusiast, so making it gun-shaped simply made it easier to visualize when using it.

By using embedded magic stones attuned to different elements, I could switch modes, and then fire pre-imbued magic repeatedly by pulling a trigger.

The “ammo” was my own magic power, so there was no running out.

And I’d built it so it wouldn’t operate with anyone else’s power.

I made it with the image of a high-tech firearm that only the registered user could shoot.

Having a real weapon as a template made crafting absurdly easy.

Even the modern idea of “only the owner can fire it” had already appeared in ancient, ultra-classic science fiction ray guns.

In the modern era, the technology to implement that concept finally arrived—not with ray guns, but with conventional gunpowder firearms.

The original in that sci-fi even had a self-destruct function.

Maybe someday, real guns would come with a “smart feature” that could blow up the thief with embedded high explosives.

In that story, the protagonist stopped an ally from picking up an enemy ray gun and said something like, “It has a self-destruct device. Never use it.”

Someday, even the Hollywood trope of stealing an enemy’s gun and using it might become outdated.

By the way, my magic gun also had a joke self-destruct device built in.

Yeah—this thing was a pretty ridiculous overpowered weapon.

“I don’t understand what rich people do…”

Ed’s eyes darted around in disbelief.

When I thought, Next I’ll use a sword, another slime appeared.

I casually popped it with a Fireball from my hand and blew it away.

I kept testing different methods of attack.

The dungeon itself was a gigantic training ground.

“We don’t have anything to do, do we?”

Erin was an easygoing type.

But having someone like that in the party was actually useful.

In a dark dungeon, your mood could easily sink into gloom.

Apparently, it got worse if someone was injured or killed.

“I’m the hunter. You’re guides, teachers, caretakers, and bodyguards. If we do any camping, there’s rotating watch duty, choosing a campsite, and setting up camp too. Exploration, vigilance, and combat won’t stick unless I do them myself. I’m still clumsy in a lot of ways, so support from a thief is essential. If things get dangerous, I’ll need combat support too—so this setup is best. If you have advice, don’t hold back.”

“We understand. Erin, don’t let your guard down.”

“I’ll fight for cream puff time!”

“Cream puffs…”

At the words “cream puffs,” Erin looked dreamy.

After we advanced a bit, we found a descent to the second floor.

Here it was a sloped ramp.

Right—structurally, this labyrinth could let you run into strong monsters climbing up from below if you weren’t careful.

Even on shallow floors, you couldn’t afford to relax.

The monster guidebook explained those were called “strays.”

I couldn’t read yet, so Ed read it for me.

Thanks to that, everyone was shocked: “You’re a merchant but you can’t read?!”

I thought, Ah, damn, I did it again, but it was too late.

So I laughed it off as hard as I could.

Well, I’d heard strays were rare anyway.

Next up was a pack of kobolds.

They were the classic dog-headed type, and the kobolds here had fairly human-like builds overall.

They looked like something from a Hollywood movie.

They were about the same size as goblins, but they came as a whole group.

My magic rifle… didn’t spit fire.

It sprayed stone bullets instead.

It was far quieter than a suppressed gun.

You only heard the rushing sound of high-speed stone cutting through the air.

Suppressors didn’t “erase” sound.

They just turned a loud bang into a sharp, unpleasant pew.

Still better than a raw gunshot, at least.

Back when I was at an American shooting range, some people took off their hearing protection because they had suppressors and wanted to chat—and a staff member warned them, “If you don’t wear ear protection properly, don’t complain later when your hearing gets worse.”

With a cheerful smile, too.

“We make you sign a waiver saying we aren’t responsible for anything.”

Everyone hurriedly put their hearing protection back on.

It was scarier to hear it said with a smile than to get yelled at.

Japanese instructors dealing with ordinary tourists wouldn’t say “earmuffs.”

People would go, “What’s that?”

So they’d just call them “hearing protectors” in plain terms.

These days, Japanese visitors at American ranges weren’t gun nuts—mostly regular tourists.

When I fired a real assault rifle at a range, the recoil kicked it up so hard I couldn’t even release my finger from the trigger—like a peaky two-stroke engine bike wheelying uncontrollably after you opened the throttle too much.

But this thing was just launching magic, so it was remarkably tame.

I kept mowing down the kobold groups as they appeared.

But just when I was getting cocky, I got thrown into a panic.

“Alphonse-san! Above!”

Out of nowhere, a slime dropped down from above—apparently it had been crawling along the ceiling, creeping toward that exact spot.

And that little bastard—

I thought I’d dodged it cleanly, but it stretched a part of its body long through the air like whoosh!

That’s allowed?!

Even sci-fi movies don’t go that far.

And the part that stuck to me—like a tentacle made of pure muscle—yanked the main body in with terrifying strength, then slapped onto my face like some infamous alien.

Ugh! Disgusting!

“Alphonse-san!”

I ran a lightning spell outward along the Barrier covering my body’s surface.

The slime charred black, and its remains fell to the ground.

“That was close. Alphonse-san, in a dungeon, you can never let your guard down.”

“Y-yeah. That scared me.”

I actually knew from the illustrated guidebook—one that had cost the equivalent of 100,000 yen—that slimes in cave dungeons were famous for dropping from ceilings, called “ceiling assassins.”

But once you were actually inside the dungeon, this was what an amateur old man looked like.

Truly, no mercy and no openings.

“Normally, you wouldn’t get away with just being scared…”

Staying wary of slime ambushes, I kept moving while efficiently dealing with kobolds using the magic gun.

Then we descended to the third floor.

This was the wolf zone.

If you weren’t careful, they’d use their running momentum to sprint along walls and ceilings, attacking from front, back, sides, and even above.

What even was that?

Yeah—monsters.

Absurd didn’t even begin to cover it.

If you posted that as pet video content, you’d probably make decent ad money.

After one more fight with them, we’d turn back and go eat.

Come to think of it, I’d been so absorbed in fighting that we hadn’t taken any breaks at all.

Not good, not good—those things built up and could get you killed.

Accumulated fatigue didn’t recover so easily.

Then three wolves appeared.

I already knew they were coming from radar, but they were fast.

I dropped prone, braced the magic gun on a bipod, and fired like crazy.

I fired from the edge of visibility, so they charged into the curtain of bullets on their own momentum.

Somehow, I managed to finish them all.

If this hadn’t been a magic gun, I would’ve run out of ammo and missed some for sure.

I was an amateur—my shots didn’t land that easily.

Honestly, normal magic would probably “hit” more reliably on its own.

My magic gun could cheat, if I wanted to, with rate of fire and power—so it helped.

Ed and the others were shocked.

Apparently, nobody killed monsters like this.

The nice pelts were full of holes.

Well, for me, I could just regenerate them later.

So I collected the wolves myself.

By applying the Item Box’s disassembly function, I could butcher the prey inside it.

Alright—time to head back up to the second floor and eat.