Just then, noisy voices from outside drew closer.
It would be troubleso if she was caught. Esperanza tensed her back and looked down through the window from between the holes in the worn curtains.
"Harbor guys ca into Cooper District......"
"There are already tons of police station guys on the outskirts. The ones who didn't get caught might crawl over to this side."
"They're pushing out Volter District too. At this rate, aren't we really going to end up like the harbor guys?"
Voices artificially raised to hide anxiety passed in front of the house and gradually faded away.
Esperanza let out a sigh of relief and carefully approached the desk. After opening several creaking drawers, she discovered a bundle of roughly tied papers.
She floated several pale lights and roughly skimd through the papers. The first few pages were illegible so she skipped them, the next ones looked useless so she skipped those too, and at the last page she found a map.
A map of Nine Holder city. On the outskirts of the roughly scribbled map, red ink dots were marked. Four places total.
New contact points?
The magic item shop owner seed to have made contact with leather suppliers here, but the place where those suppliers obtained leather would be sowhere else entirely. A faint smile appeared and disappeared at her lips.
'Found it.'
Between low-grade and high-grade leather, asking specifically about the distribution route of low-grade leather was ultimately to find this.
High-grade leather was byproducts from strong monsters. This could only be distributed by Daria or Cyrus hunting them directly. Naturally, the distribution volu was small, and there was a high possibility it was pre-collected leather.
But low-grade leather with high distribution volu was a different story. This was designed to lead directly to dungeons.
Esperanza took out pen and paper from her inventory and copied the map.
'Should I go check it out?'
She could return ho for today. But....... Esperanza looked back at the faint traces of intrusion that remained.
The finely shattered glass could be attributed to thugs causing trouble while drunk, and the traces of stepping on dust on the floor were to such a degree that they couldn't be recognized without close inspection. But if soone clever and sensitive noticed, the information she had worked hard to obtain would beco aningless. In that case, it would be better to go check now.
She threw the copied map into her inventory and jumped down to the first floor. Dirt dust rose up shallowly and settled. Esperanza, who had landed lightly, got up from her position.
The locations of the four red dots. She had the feeling they were familiar sohow, but she couldn't rember well. In any case, she had no choice but to go check.
It was getting dark. She had to hurry.
??????°??☆????°??????
The choice was simple. Starting from the closest place.
The streetcar crossing the city headed toward the outskirts. The sparkling yellow streetlights gradually thinned out, and people with tired faces got on and off like ghosts. The number of people gradually decreased.
"Where is the young lady getting off?"
The streetcar driver asked loudly. Esperanza pulled her hood deeper to avoid exposing her well-maintained hair and said.
"I'll get off at the next station."
"Ah."
If she had said she was going to the final station, he would definitely have been annoyed. But since she said just one more stop was fine, the driver relaxed his expression and obediently stopped in front of the station.
Getting off the streetcar, Esperanza looked around the station surrounded by thick grass due to being far from the city center with its pointed clock towers. Not even as empty flattery could this be called a place where a young woman of this era should co alone. It was fortunate that the streetcar driver hadn't pried into this and that.
"It should be around here......."
Since it was a map depicting all of Nine Holder, the exact locations of the red dots weren't detailed. But in such an empty place like this, it should be imdiately noticeable.
Ah, that's it.
A pitch-black brick building protruding between thick trees caught her eye. Esperanza headed there without hesitation.
It was farther than it looked. As the building with walls that appeared black from soot drew closer, she could hear so kind of sound. It was human voices.
"Stick to the door side! Go in lined up two by two!"
"Shipman crew, collect your daily wages from this side! Those who couldn't find anything, go to the side!"
What is this?
Esperanza carefully looked around while being careful not to be caught.
The station had been empty, but there were lots of people only around this building. They generally looked like poor laborers. Those lined up two by two were coming out of the building in turn.
And thuggish n standing guard in front of the door took items from the hands of workers coming out carrying sothing.
"70 pieces!"
"Ooh, Shipman. Good harvest today?"
"It's luck, luck."
Large n having trivial conversations with small workers. Among the people receiving small wages and returning, several were severely injured.
Wait a minute. This wasn't the kind of picture she had expected when coming here.
Sothing felt strange. Esperanza hid her body behind a tree and took out a dungeon detector from her inventory.
The detector was showing a reaction. Though the status window was quiet, Cider's dungeon detector had never been wrong so far.
That ant the inside of that gloomy building really was a dungeon.
But they could freely co and go through that open door?
Having thought that far, Esperanza rolled her eyes with a feeling that sothing was about to co to mind. So, what was this again.
"Ahhhhh, everyone get out of the way!"
A scream that cut off her thoughts. It was a sound coming from inside the open door.
The people coming out in lines beca tangled in an instant. Dozens of skinny arms flailed toward the outside of the door. From far away, she could feel screams being swallowed.
"What is it, you said there were no big monsters?"
"Everyone retreat!"
"What about the people inside?"
"Abandon them! Retreat, retreat! Do you all want to die?"
Though they said to retreat, what the large n gathered and took away was only money and leather.
The gang that squeezed onto one large van disappeared while spewing steam, leaving people behind. The sound of the departing carriage wheels mixed with the groans of the injured and anxious murmuring.
Fortunately, monsters didn't escape outside the door, but there were still people left inside.
"Are you crazy?"
Since things had co to this, there was no point in hiding. While erging from behind the tree and approaching the front of the door, no one looked this way. Everyone was either too exhausted or too terrified with fear to do so.
Esperanza decided to move boldly. She jumped up with a light running start. Stepping on the shoulder of soone who looked robust among them, she ran over their heads like brushing past.
"What, what is it?"
When people who were flustered by the sensation of their heads being pressed down looked up, she had already entered far inside.
She passed over the heads of people struggling to get out the door and instantly entered inside the building.
Seeing the interior as pitch-black as the exterior walls, she finally seed to understand roughly what the situation was. The fact that she seed to understand was annoying.
'First solve the imdiate problem.'
Thin swords held one in each hand pierced through the head of a not-large monster. The ferociously pig-like ugly head was sliced off like tofu.
"What, what is it?"
However, there was no leisure to look back. People didn't miss the mont when the monster hesitated and escaped from the dungeon.
Even while pushing and being pushed forward, several tried to confirm the identity of the person who had suddenly appeared, but they couldn't match the pushing force from behind of people who felt threatened for their survival.
Because they were in too much of a hurry, ti was actually delayed due to getting tangled up and falling over. However, even during this, Esperanza's back wasn't pushed back even slightly.
Esperanza, who had been swinging her sword, paused for a mont.
"Ah, easy."
It was too easy. Like throwing off sandbags tied to her arms, even with light attacks the opponents died easily.
Even if the wild boar might have been a fairly powerful monster equivalent to a mid-boss inside here, to the eyes of a 7th-year hunter, it was about the difference between bread and tofu.
Eventually, when a boy who looked about seventeen threw his body out the door as the last one, Esperanza relaxed her tense muscles slightly and glanced at the status window.
[Dungeon Occurred!]
Type: Prison
Grade: F
Danger Level: F
This is an entry-type dungeon. Find doors throughout the dungeon and try to escape.
Hunter, we wish you luck!
Gray bricks as dark as the exterior walls. The sound of water dripping could be heard from sowhere. Drip. Drip. And the sound of claws scratching bricks. Low cries of beasts.
It was an abandoned prison.
Esperanza proceeded deeper while gripping her thin swords.
Actually, she could just turn around and simply open the door and leave. But those day laborers who had gathered in front of this prison, and the large n who absolutely didn't look like people earning money in a healthy way, were bothering her.
Of course, among those gathered there seed to be quite a few individual hunters....... but it was obvious they were using people who clearly needed money urgently as shields to obtain leather.
It would be comfortable to appropriately turn a blind eye to the dark side of this era and only enjoy pretty and flashy things, but she couldn't ignore even the shadows thrust before her eyes.
That said, she had neither the ability nor the will to save those poor people. The bad guys had already run away.
'In the end, I couldn't achieve the purpose of coming all the way here either.'
All the targets she could extract information from had run away. Those workers outside wouldn't know anything either.
Esperanza let out a big sigh and thrust her thin sword. She stabbed monsters charging from both sides and pulled out the embedded thin sword while throwing her body into the air. Sticky streams of blood spouted like fountains.
Too easy. It was so easy that she even felt repulsion like fighting with a child. Even while Esperanza stabbed and slashed without hesitation, she couldn't enjoy the battle. Battles should have thrills, but this was just one-sided slaughter.
Esperanza, standing on the last floor of the prison, faced the boss. The boss of the F-grade dungeon was far too weak compared to its hideous appearance.
After 10 minutes of battle, the boss's body collapsed.
[You have defeated the dungeon boss, 'Goblin'! Rewards are being accumulated.]
After brief consideration, Esperanza collected the byproducts that ca from the boss's body.
When she crossed the corridor thick with iron bars and ca out to the dungeon exit, no one was left outside. The area around the building was just desolate.
It seed they had decided to all squeeze into the remaining van and leave together. There didn't seem to be anyone left behind.
Well, it doesn't matter. As long as only Daria gets in trouble.
Esperanza pulled back the deeply worn hood and pulled up the corners of her mouth. Actually, it wasn't sothing she had done after thinking. It was closer to sothing she had committed in a mont of anger. Still, it felt refreshing.
But sothing flashed through Esperanza's mind as she looked up at the closed abandoned prison.
This isn't originally a dungeon that exists to be eliminated.
'Why was I forgetting?'
Only now did she realize the identity of this dungeon.
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