Becoming an Extra in a Trash Game

Chapter 32

“Suddenly a joint exploration with another party. What are they thinking?”

I shrugged and smiled as I watched Kane storing his dagger inside his robe.

“If we stick too much to ourselves, there’s less meaning in coming all the way here, right? Especially for you, it’s a party without any humans.”

Ruby seemed to be of the demon race, and the rest of the men didn’t look human either. That should be right, I guess.

I made up an excuse while taking potions out of my subspace and putting them one by one into the pocket near my waist.

It would be awkward to open the subspace in front of them, and there were actually other issues too.

‘This is a numbing potion. This one’s for detoxification, and that one’s a healing potion.’

I looked at one of each type, then opened one bottle and gulped it down, sneakily putting the empty bottle back into the subspace as I finished organizing.

“Huh… Shall we go?”

“Yeah. We’re heading to the Labyrinth. Aria, please watch over the lodging. Are you still thinking about it?”

Before leaving, I cast the fishing rod once more and dangled the bait in front of Aria, who had just woken up.

“I told you the salary would be generous. It’s just helping someone out at my family home. You won’t be able to enter the Labyrinth right away anyway if you stay here.”

Aria bit her lip slightly, seeming to hesitate at my words.

“Lodging provided, meals provided. Salary paid on time, and you get days off. You’ll need quite a bit of money to explore the Labyrinth again, and the cost of living is high here.”

“Ugh… I really only need to help for a short while?”

Looking at Aria, who seemed almost convinced, I raised the corners of my mouth kindly.

“Of course. Actually, I could hire someone else, but I’m offering this to you because you’re nice and I want to help. Otherwise, why would I make such an offer to you?”

At my words, Aria groaned for a while before nodding her head. Kane sighed slightly, and Luna discreetly averted her gaze.

Ah, why, what’s wrong?

“Anyway, let’s talk more when we get back. I’ll order some food before we leave.”

“Okay!”

I kept smiling kindly until the moment I left, and only after closing the door did I give my facial muscles a rest and stretch.

“Will it… Be alright?” Luna asked, to which I tilted my head and spoke.

“What?”

“Actually… She seemed like a young lady from a good family…”

Ah, well, I guess so. You can tell just by looking at her hands.

Hands that haven’t done hard work.

It’s different from hands roughened by labor or sword training.

Add to that her upright posture, unconscious etiquette, and how her guard drops when you speak to her kindly.

‘Unless they’re exceptionally wealthy, they’d teach basic common sense, but at that level, well.’

She was raised like a flower in a greenhouse. A gentle lamb without a shred of wariness.

“She probably read some book and came out of adventure, but staying here longer will only bring her hardship. She doesn’t seem to want to go back, so I’m thinking of taking her to my family home to protect her.”

If she had a shadow attached, I would have taken her away before she could cry and cling to the guards outside.

That means she probably used a spirit in Trait to erase her traces and run away, so if we leave her like this, it’s obvious what will happen to a beginner adventurer who has no money and doesn’t know the ways of the world.

‘She’d become a female version of Kane.’

Being beautiful, she’d likely be sold at an auction house or something. Even if not, she wouldn’t encounter anything particularly good.

Later, if her family comes looking for her, they might hunt down and exterminate everyone she’s met out of anger.

‘If that’s the case, it’s better to move her to my family home under various pretexts.’

It could be used as a stepping stone to build a good relationship with her family later, or even if not, it’s not bad in many ways as long as we don’t become enemies.

Ah, of course, the intention to use her as an assistant for Harlon is more than half the reason.

I spread a sugar-coated lie to reassure Luna, who seemed worried about potential trouble.

Caw! Caw!

As we slowly walked towards the central tower, a crow sitting on top of it cawed loudly.

That’s loud enough to be called barking rather than cawing.

As the crow that had been cawing irritably flew off somewhere, I turned my eyes and greeted Ruby, who was waving at us.

“Hello.”

“Welcome. You came right on time.”

After looking at her smiling brightly, I started a brief introduction with the men standing behind her and waving as well.

“This is Karl, Hals, and Joby.”

Karl was thin with a dagger, looking sharp. Hals was muscular and wearing gauntlets. Joby wore a hood and made clinking sounds of potion bottles like me when he moved.

I memorized their characteristics and then looked at Kane and Luna as I spoke.

“I’m Adelian, that’s Kane. And this is Luna.”

“Alright, introductions are done, shall we move then?

We have to sneak in, so…” Ruby whispered, and I nodded before slowly walking into the labyrinth dungeon.

“The location is between the lower and middle floors? It’s quite secluded. They seemed to have stationed guards in the early days, but that drew more attention, so there aren’t any these days.”

“Ah… I see…”

“In my time, everyone was so busy surviving that they didn’t care for beginners, which was really tough. So I decided not to live like that. I’ll tell you lots of things, okay?”

“Ah… Yes. Yes…!”

Ruby seemed to be the type who enjoyed talking, chattering away on her own, but her companions were silent, so Luna was enthusiastically responding.

Actually, about half of her words were directed at Kane while speaking, but Kane was walking silently with his hood on, and as for me, well.

‘It’s bothersome.’

As I followed behind Ruby, slightly twisting my fingers or flexing my wrists to check various things, we descended well without encountering any monsters. True to the word Labyrinth, we went round and round for quite a while.

Since there isn’t just one staircase that can move up and down, where you come out depends on which way you go up or down. As if there was a set path, we passed by several corridors intentionally and arrived at a dead-end alley deep inside where there were no monsters.

‘They could finish us off here and no one would know?’

But it seemed they had no such intention. As Ruby gestured, Joby’s robe rustled, and a pale hand holding a bottle full of red liquid emerged from within the robe.

“The method to enter is simple. You just need to sprinkle monster blood.”

Ruby explained with a smile, while Kane remained silent as usual.

Drip―

As Joby’s hand tilted, the thick blood fell to the ground.

A strong smell of iron. Soon, the blood flowed into the cracks in the floor, and with a small ‘grung’ sound, the blocked wall creaked open, creating a gap just wide enough for one person to pass through.

“Let’s go in. So, are we one party inside here?”

Ruby said playfully, trying to hold Kane’s arm, but Kane slightly avoided her. Seeing this, I spoke.

“No, we’re two parties. They only listen to me.”

Ruby probably just said it casually, but I clearly drew the line with a small smile. Ruby seemed to take my words without much thought, nodding once before entering first.

As we all entered, the door closed behind us with a creaking sound.

Ahead was a long, narrow corridor.

“You can sprinkle blood to get out too, so don’t worry. Ah, something’s coming out.”

Ruby put on gloves, then unfastened the spiked whip from her waist. As something that looked like a melted goblin crawled out from a corner, she lashed out with her whip, throwing it backwards, and Karl stabbed it with a knife to finish it off.

Seeing this, I gestured to Luna and Kane, then held the Codex like a regular spellbook and slowly chanted a spell while observing the situation.

“Just keep going straight ahead. The monsters that come out here look a bit different. Don’t be too surprised.”

Well, of course they would.

‘The commonly given name is the Experimental Dungeon.’

It’s a parasitic dungeon created in the labyrinth by an alchemist researching homunculi to easily find materials.

They researched using monsters that infinitely respawn in the Labyrinth to create homunculi, and used the failed creations as guards for this laboratory.

I pretended to concentrate like a mage using a regular spellbook as an amplification tool instead of the Codex, while looking at Ruby and Kane.

Kane, who had been looking at Ruby with a strange gaze as if he had sensed something, turned his head and met my eyes.

To this, I smiled with a supposedly stupid expression, as if I had no ulterior motives.

* * *

‘Strange.’

Kane frowned slightly as he looked at Adelian’s face full of schemes, then turned his head.

Adelian had always been odd in some way, but today was worse.

As if…

Glance.

As if possessed by something.

Kane looked at Ruby, who was whipping, with slightly sunken eyes.

A woman who seemed interested in him, or perhaps not.

Her companions who gave off a strange feeling.

And…

‘Suspicious.’

Even more suspicious was this dungeon.

Another hidden dungeon inside the Labyrinth dungeon?

That could be possible. But that Ruby woman enters and exits this dungeon daily?

As soon as they entered this hidden Labyrinth, Kane smelled a strange lingering scent along with the stuffy air of the Labyrinth.

A fragile scent that seemed like it would disappear at any moment.

‘Ruby’s scent remains in this Labyrinth as if she’s been in and out frequently enough to leave her trace.’

Not just once in a while, but frequently enough for her lingering scent to remain in the air.

Ruby herself probably didn’t notice due to her own strong scent, and the scent was so faint that even Adelian and Luna didn’t seem to notice.

‘I should keep this in mind…’

Just as Kane was thinking this, the narrow corridor ended and a wide space opened up. Kane involuntarily paused for a moment.

‘A Black mage’s laboratory?’

The structure was quite similar to a place where he had been before.

On one side were cages with iron bars to confine test subjects, on another were various experimental tools, and at the farthest end was a side path leading to an even deeper inside.

And as Kane’s eyes reflexively turned towards the iron bars, the door of the largest cage vibrated with a creaking sound and slowly rose.

“Something’s coming out, we’ll need to work together.”

“Grooooowl…”

As Ruby whispered and looked in that direction, something like a rag golem, seemingly made by partially melting people and mashing them together haphazardly, crawled out moving its broken legs.

‘For now, even if it’s unpleasant, I should take care of that first.’

Karl and Hals moved to the outer side in a semicircle as if to catch its back, and Ruby also moved inward while keeping it in check with her whip.

Joby and Adelian also followed behind Ruby as if to cover her, which gave Kane a strangely disturbing feeling that he had to suppress.

‘As soon as possible.’

This unpleasant feeling should disappear once that thing is dealt with.

“Bind and restrain.”

The binding spell that Adelian cast, pretending to be a regular mage, caught the feet of the creature whose movement was already unstable.

At this, Kane approached the rag homunculus quickly with his sword drawn and swung his blade. Luna also moved close to Kane, perhaps to disrupt its vision, when suddenly-

“Now!”

As Ruby shouted a signal, Joby covered Adelian’s mouth to prevent him from chanting magic, and Ruby, instead of her whip, shot out thin silver threads from the tips of her gloves, instantly severing one of Adelian’s legs below the knee. Blood spurted out as Adelian’s body was thrown to the ground like trash.

“Try to hang on until we come back! If you’re still alive, I’ll make you my puppet too.”

Using Adelian and Kane as bait, Ruby laughed loudly as she ran towards the inner side path, avoiding the rag homunculus.

“Young Master!”

“Graaaah…!”

As Luna screamed and tried to run, the rag homunculus, freed from the binding spell, roared and swung its abnormally elongated arm, pouncing on Kane.

Even as the homunculus was about to cover him, Kane shouted with disbelieving eyes.

“Adelian!”