Days of Dungeon: From Simple Quest to Strange Adventure

The faint yet thunderous echoes of Arezu's clash with the Crystal Blade could be heard from afar, and the intensity of the fight could be felt as the ground—hundreds of meters away where Lynn's group was—trembled.

Arezu might do something stupid, but he would never lose. At least that's what Lynn kept telling herself as she ran toward the town square to find where the hidden Dungeon Core was.

Yet despite her worries for Arezu, which made Lynn wonder if it would have been better to stay by his side instead of leaving him to fight on his own, the situation her group was facing wasn't much different from fighting against a gold-rank adventurer.

Nearly a thousand raging undead Visage—both from the townsfolk and the Annual Caravan—had flooded the town square, swarming their group and preventing them from searching for the Dungeon Core, much less pushing forward toward the center where the clocktower stood.

It's like they're all moving to protect the Core, Lynn thought, which made her strongly believe that the Dungeon Core was indeed hidden in the town square.

But that thought alone wasn't enough to change their situation.

Even as a hero and commander with strength equal to a gold-rank adventurer, Brandon, in his battered state, couldn't clear a path through the swarm of Visage to move forward.

No matter how many he cut down with his longsword, the enemies just kept coming, replacing one shattered Visage with another. All he could do was keep the undead at bay so their group wouldn't be overwhelmed.

The situation at the front, where Brandon fought, was just as bad as the rear, where Sylvie and Ellric held their ground.

Although Ellric still couldn't use his divine gift and could barely stand on his own, he was still capable of defending Sylvie from the undead that broke through her magical onslaught.

Wielding her half-broken enchanted staff, Sylvie cast her mystic spell Lightning, conjuring a ball of lightning mid-air above her and Ellric. It shot forth bolt after bolt of lightning, shattering the Visages into mirrored shards.

At the center of their formation, Liz and Hannah continued protecting Lynn from the Visages that slipped past Brandon and Sylvie.

"Hurry up and find where that Dungeon Core is!" Liz shouted in panic as she cut down another Visage that slipped past Brandon.

"What do you think I'm doing?!" Lynn retorted while crouching down with both hands on the ground, repeatedly casting her scouting skill Search to locate the hidden Dungeon Core. But with all the undead Visage flooding the town square and swarming their group, she could barely detect anything beyond their corrupted mana.

Using her eccentric eyes to perceive curse corruption wasn't helping either, since the curse of Envy engulfed the town square like a typhoon, causing her to see nothing but corruption whenever she fully activated them.

"We're all gonna die if you don't find it now!"

Lynn's intuition told her the same thing Liz shouted—not just because they were about to be overwhelmed by the Visages, but also because of the ominous feeling she had about the approaching sunrise, only minutes away.

"Don't pressure her, Liz!"

Ignoring Liz and Hannah's squabble, Lynn thought of anything else she could do.

If her Search skill was being overwhelmed by corrupted mana, then all she had to do was overwhelm that mana with her own.

If one scouting skill wasn't enough, she would combine it with a mystic spell. And if that still wasn't enough, she would add another.

Lynn gathered what was left of her mana and once again cast her scouting skill, her hands pressed firmly against the ground.

'Search'

If the Dungeon Core was buried underground, then she would shake the very ground itself.

"Obelisk"

If it was hidden inside a building, then she would freeze the air until the chilling mist reached it.

"Glacier"

A sneer flashed across her lips—not to mock their opponents, but to mock herself for being so stupid as not to suspect the most obvious and suspicious location in the entire town.

Her breath turned to mist, and sweat to ice beads as she kept her head down, feeling unbearably exhausted. Then she shouted the Dungeon Core's location as loud as she can.

"It's at the top of the clocktower!"

Brandon didn't waste a second. He activated his divine gift, Burnout, imbuing divine power into his weapon before hurling his longsword at the top of the clocktower, aiming to destroy the hidden Dungeon Core and the large clock at once.

—BOOM!—

Lynn didn't need to lift her head to know Brandon's attack had failed.

—DONG~!—

The loud chime of the clocktower bell that followed the explosion meant Brandon's longsword had only managed to destroy the magical barrier protecting the Dungeon Core and the clocktower.

Brandon conjured a new spear from the storage enchantment in his armor to launch another attack—but before he could brandish it, what happened next froze him in place, filling not only him but every survivor from the Annual Caravan with dread.

The supposed soothing chime of the bell echoed in their ears as nothing but agonizing screams. The ground beneath their feet turned to mirrors reflecting a dark abyss—an abyss filled with thousands of trapped souls, their bloodied hands pounding against the mirrored surface as if trying to escape—or drag the living in.

Everyone felt the darkness engulfing them. They couldn't run or fight back; their bodies felt paralyzed as the bloodstained hands from the abyss reached for them. All they could do was cry and scream—or at least utter their last words.

At that moment, Lynn realized what her ominous feeling had been all along.

The spoiled food in the town meant the place had probably turned into a dungeon more than a week ago.

The fact that they hadn't heard any news of it meant that anyone who entered the town was trapped and never survived.

And the grim truth—that none of the townsfolk survived, not even the Crystal Blade adventurer, with all of them turned into undead Visage—meant the dungeon had a terrifying trait:

A trait that would surely devour every survivor inside if they didn't escape before the clock ran out.

"So this is where I meet my end…" Lynn murmured, accepting the inevitable end. She looked up at the twilight sky so that her last memory wouldn't be one of despair and agony.

"To you who shall inherit my curse, I pass on to you the memories of our world I seen through mine own eyes—"

With a final prayer—not for the goddess—Lynn prepared herself for death.

"—especially the days I spent with—"

But at that moment, even before her prayer ended, Lynn felt a strange mana engulf the entire town in mere seconds;

A familiar mana flow she had been closely observing since she began her new journal about the days she spent with him;

A new Dungeon overlapping the current one.

Then, from afar, an arrow of light rose into the twilight sky—BOOM!—and destroyed the top of the clocktower along with the hidden Dungeon Core—just as the first light of dawn shone.