Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 2 (27 page)

She made up her mind; she would get her freedom with her own two hands.

“Hmmm!”

Lilly came to a halt as she stepped into some tall grass.

An eighth-level goblin was walking around in front of the only exit from this room, directly in front of her.

There were no signs of other adventurers. The goblin blocked her path. Even if she tried to sneak around it, she couldn’t go forward.

Doubling back and taking another route would take far too long.

While Bell surely had his hands full with the onslaught of monsters heading his direction and wouldn’t be able to pursue her at top speed, there were other dangers in the Dungeon. Time was of the essence, so Lilly decided to break through.

“Lilly’s not built for this kind of roughhousing, yeah?” said Lilly under her breath as she rolled up the right sleeve of her cream-colored robe.

She pulled out a small handheld bow gun.

The magic sword would be wasted on a goblin!

Stepping forward with her right leg, she leveled the bow gun at the monster.

Prums in general were known for having amazing eyesight. Lilly’s round chestnut eyes zeroed in on the goblin, lining it up dead center. The monster finally noticed her as well.

“Bah—ffftt!”

A golden arrow shot out of the bow gun with frightening speed.

The arrow carved through the air and bore straight into the goblin’s right eye.

“GiGYAAAAAAA!!!!!!”

“Excuse me!”

The goblin screamed out in pain, clutching its eye as Lilly used the opportunity to scurry by the monster and to the exit.

Lilly could fight, too, as long as she had a strategy. However, she had to rely completely on weapons and items. Slaying a single monster did not justify the amount of money required to take it down, not by a long shot.

Lilly only fought against monsters in self-defense.

“Lilly’s jealous of Mr. Bell. He could do everything by himself!”

Starting with her magic, Cinder Ella, Lilly’s strengths were not suited for combat. Lilly was very weak physically.

She gained her magic shortly after swearing revenge against adventurers, and hoped that it would transform her into something stronger than her weak self. She was extremely depressed when she learned the truth about it.

However, she soon learned how to use it in a different way to exact revenge. She pushed her magic to its limits and figured out what it could really do.

As proof of its power, her magic allowed her to consistently steal many items, using the same strategy on many adventurers.

Lilly had become powerful enough to laugh at the weakling she once was.

And…seventh level!

She made her way up the staircase jutting out of the wall, to the next floor up.

Lilly kept her speed up as she raced past the light green dungeon walls.

After this floor, the rest is a piece of cake.

In terms of the monsters, the seventh level was the last mountain she needed to climb. It was too early to lose focus.

After this floor, she could handle everything on her own. Her lips started to curve into a smile as she bolted into the next room.

“Ain’t this a surprise. I’ve hit the jackpot.”

“Eh?”

It happened when she came out of a small corridor and into a room.

A leg appeared from the side and caught Lilly’s short body just under her knee.

Her balance gone, Lilly fell face-first onto the dungeon floor.

Wha…what was that…?

Dazed and confused, she put her hand into the dirt to push herself up. That’s when a long shadow fell over her.

She was yanked up before she could turn around; half a second later a boot was slammed into her nose.

“Gyhaaa?!”

“I’d better be gettin’ an apology, ya piece-of-shit prum!”

A powerful fist nailed her left cheek. A river of blood flowed from her nose.

Just as her eyes were beginning to focus, she took another kick to the chest. Her oversized backpack dislodged from her shoulders, rolling backward like a snowball.

The next hit wasn’t far behind—the heel of a boot bore into the small of her back.

“—hhhh?!”

Her body bounced off the floor like a ball, bouncing once, twice.

Lilly was swept up in a whirlpool of pain as her body finally came to a halt.

“Ah…! Gahaahaa…!!”

“Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! That’s a good look for ya! Plastered in blood and dirt!”

With the world spinning around her, Lilly finally caught a glimpse of the voice’s owner.

It was a human adventurer. The same one who’d been talking to Bell yesterday. Her former employer.

The man’s jaw was pointing at the ceiling as he looked down on her with a sneer.

“Thought it was about time for ya to throw away that kid. I wet up a net for ya. Been dyin’ to say hello!”

“A…net?”

“The Dungeon is huge. Waitin’ for ya by myself woulda been as borin’ as lookin’ for a needle in a haystack. Got myself some partners, increased my chances.”

The Dungeon itself was extremely large; the floors below level five were wider than Central Park. Despite its size, there were only three or four ways to get this far down.

The man had stationed his partners at each of the pathways and waited for her arrival.

Of the four, Lilly had chosen the route that the man was watching.

“Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that white-haired kid running around with a runt…Don’t tell me, the kid had something that made yer eyes go all a-twitter? Are ya dense?”

“…!”

“But I don’t care ’bout that. Before I tear you limb from limb as a thank-you for stealing my sword, think I’ll make you play along…!”

He declared with a sadistic twinge in his eyes that he would take everything from her.

Lilly did her best to cup her still-bleeding nose as the man ripped off her robe, causing everything inside to fall to the ground. She was now wearing only her underclothes, unable to do anything to resist him.

“Magic stones, a gold watch…Hey, hey! You had a magic sword?! Haaa-ha-ha-ha-ha! So ya stole this, too, eh?”

The man was overjoyed by his discovery.

His mood improved greater still when he saw a knife with a glossy shine.

Spinning the crimson knife in one hand, a dark smile grew on his lips.

“Hee-hee-hee-hee…All right, I’ll let you off the hook, ya piece-of-shit prum. After gettin’ a present like this from ya, I’ll show ya a bit of mercy. Nice guy, ain’t I?…Hyaa!”

“Ahgg…!”

Two swift kicks to the stomach and Lilly was reeling in pain.

This is bad, this is bad, this is bad
. Lilly’s heart raced inside her small chest, her brain in all-out panic mode.

She knew at that moment that if she didn’t get away now, she would meet a miserable fate at the hands of this man’s brutality.

Just as she took in a deep breath, another man’s voice came from somewhere distant.

“You certainly went all out, Master Gedo.”

A new person was coming toward them.

“…?!”

Looking in the direction of the new voice, Lilly saw someone she recognized.

He was one of the adventurers who’d tried to get money out of her the other day. Just one of the many members of
Soma Familia
who had tried to do the same thing many times before.

Then it came to her. The man’s partners were members of
Soma Familia
. Most likely, after talking with Bell, he had seen them arguing with her and decided to ask them for assistance.

“Get this, Kanu. The runt had a magic sword! Just as ya thought, looks like she’s been stealin’ all over the place. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“…Is that so?”

An adult male animal person, the one called Kanu, narrowed his cloudy, dark eyes at the happy man, the adventurer called Gedo. But Gedo was in such a good mood that he didn’t notice.

“Master Gedo, I have a suggestion…”

“What’s that? Hand it over? Hey, now, I caught the prum, I should have first dibs on—”

“That’s not quite it. Not just the magic sword, but everything you took from her. I suggest you leave it all on the ground.”

“Huh?” Gedo looked at his partner with a confused smile. Before he could ask any questions, however, Kanu pulled something out from behind him and threw it. It landed just in front of Lilly.

“KEEEEI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Lilly screamed. “K-killer ant…?!”

It was only the top half, making it easier to carry. The bloody mess was still oozing purple liquid from many gashes all over its body; it had likely been slain only a few minutes ago. No, not slain. Its mouth was still moving; an arm twitched in agony.

“You might have thought at first that all of us were hunting
together. There’s a chance that Master Gedo, who has conquered many floors, is stronger than we are. So the three of us put our heads together and came up with this plan here.”

Plop, plop.
Two more barely alive killer-ant bodies landed close to them.

Two more adventurers had arrived in the room from separate entrances, both of them working with Kanu. The three masses of dying ant let out cries that united to create eerie echoes throughout the room, like a curse from another world.

Both Gedo’s and Lilly’s faces turned pale.

Killer ants released a special pheromone when they were close to death. It was a call for help, and other killer ants would answer.

The three balls of still-breathing ant flesh had been releasing the pheromone for some time. The room had become a ticking time bomb.

“Are you serious?!!” Gedo said.

There were three ants in that state calling for help. Just how many of their friends would answer?

The expressions on Kanu’s and his allies’ faces were surprisingly calm and unchanging, even during Gedo’s screaming.

Only Lilly correctly understood the adventurer’s irrational obsession with money, having been under the influence of Soma herself.

“You don’t want to become their prey while you’re fighting with us, now do you, Master?”

“Hyee?!”

Five killer ants poked their heads into the room entrance behind Gedo.

This room had four entrances. Kanu and his cronies were standing in front of three of them; the last one now had killer ants in the way. Gedo gritted his teeth, shaking in a mixture of fear and anger. His pale face hardened as he threw everything he’d taken from Lilly to the ground.

“Damn! Damn you all!!!”

Kanu grinned as he stepped aside to allow the man to pass. Gedo took one last look around the room before running past him.

Not a moment later, a barbaric roar erupted from the corridor, followed by the sound of a sword clang. After that, silence.

A shell-shocked Lilly had no way to see what happened; there was a wall of giant ants between her and the exit.

“Gii…!!”

“?!”

A killer ant stepped in front of Lilly as the room was flooded with the monsters.

Her injured body wouldn’t move like she wanted it to, and she couldn’t get out of the way of the monster’s incoming claws.

Blood suddenly sprayed into the air.

The injured killer ant fell to the floor.

“Are you okay, Erde?”

“Mister…Kanu…”

Kanu looked down on the girl, his mouth nothing more than an upward rip in his face and a purple blood–splattered sword resting on his shoulder.

“I came for you, to save you. We are in the same
Familia,
after all.”

Lilly bit her lip and clenched her fists as the man in front of her spoke like some kind of hero.

His partners were holding the killer ants back, for now.

“That’s right, we all came for you, Erde. In this desperate situation, we didn’t abandon you, see?”

“…Yes.”

“…You know what I’m saying, yeah?”

He wrapped his arm behind Lilly’s shoulder as he spoke. His tone sounded as though he were acting in a play rather than facing death.

His eyes might have been looking at Lilly’s quivering body, but in reality he didn’t see her.

All he could see was money—to be more specific, the Soma that the money would get him.

Kanu’s expression was calm and collected, but on the inside he was overwhelmed with anxiety.

“Hey, speed it up! We can’t hold them!” said one crony.

“I know!” Kanu looked to Lilly. “You, yesterday you said you had no money. Drop the act. If you try to pull something like that again…”

“Okay! Okay-okay-okay…!”

Seeing the direness of her situation, Lilly nodded with a defeated look on her face.

She had no time to be angry, so Lilly grabbed a small key that was hidden as part of a necklace and held it out to him.

“The hell is this?”

“A key to a gnome rental storage unit in Orario’s eastern ward…”

“Talking about a safepoint? To think you kept large amounts of vals in a box that small…”

“Gnome jewels are in there…”

“Ah…now I gotcha…”

The jewels and minerals that gnomes collected were highly valuable. Their worth rarely changed so there was always a buyer. Lilly had exchanged most of her ill-gotten gains from coins into gnome jewels at the Gnome Trader because carrying large amounts of money would look suspicious if she were caught.

Another dark grin graced Kanu’s lips as he nodded and grabbed the collar of Lilly’s shirt. With a big wad of fabric in his hand, he pulled Lilly to her feet and then up off the floor, placing her level with his eyes.

“Mr. Kanu…what are you…?”

“We’re in quite the pinch, you know. Look around. We’re being surrounded.”

At least twenty killer ants had made an almost complete ring around them. There was only one exit that was still open for escape.

Lilly futilely kicked her legs as she hung in the animal man’s grasp, but it was like trying to swim in the air.

Kanu, five o’clock shadow and all, made one last big smile.

“Buy us some time.”

“?!”

“We’ll make our escape while you draw them away, Erde. That exit over there isn’t blocked yet, so we can take a few of them while you act as a decoy.”

Terror filled Lilly’s eyes as she looked back at him.

Chancing a look to the side, she saw Kanu’s partners had the same savage smile on their faces.