Chapter 313

Eina brought him to a quieter section of the Guild and spread a map of the Upper Floors across the table.

Instead of burying him beneath a lecture, she asked Bell to describe exactly where he had gone, what monsters he had fought, how he had been injured, and what happened when the Kobold chased him through the passages.

She listened without interrupting until he finished, marking several points on the map as he spoke.

“You actually made one good decision without anyone teaching you,” Eina said, tapping the route back toward the surface.

“You returned while you still had enough strength to protect yourself if something appeared on the way out.”

Bell’s expression immediately brightened.

Eina then pointed at the cut across his cheek.

“Unfortunately, you also planted both feet when attacking, turned your attention away because you assumed the first Goblin was finished, fought far too close for someone with almost no experience, and let a Kobold chase you through multiple passages without checking whether you were running toward the surface or deeper into the Dungeon.”

Bell’s brief confidence collapsed.

“I… didn’t think about that last part.”

“I know, and that’s exactly why we’re doing this.”

Eina’s expression softened when she saw how seriously he took the criticism.

She turned the map around and traced his path with one finger.

“The Dungeon usually doesn’t kill new adventurers because a Goblin is unbelievably strong, Bell. Rookies die because they panic, lose track of where they are, get surrounded, underestimate an injury, or keep fighting after they’re too tired to react properly. Right now your priority isn’t proving that you’re brave. It’s learning how to survive long enough to become experienced.”

Bell stared down at the map, and the words settled more deeply than a simple warning to be careful.

Eina placed a small notebook beside it.

“Record what you fight, where you encounter it, what injuries you take, and anything unusual you notice. For now, stay between the First and Third Floors. You can become stronger as quickly as you want after you learn how to come back alive.”

Bell accepted the notebook with both hands and nodded firmly. “I will.”

Eina studied him for another moment before finally appearing satisfied.

“Good. Now let’s exchange those Magic Stones before your goddess starts wondering why her first child disappeared on his first morning.”

Bell’s eyes widened when he realized how much time had passed.

…

Hestia was waiting outside the abandoned church when he returned.

She was very clearly attempting to look as though she had simply happened to be standing there.

The illusion lasted until she spotted Bell.

Relief crossed her face immediately, and Bell felt a stab of guilt even before her eyes found the scratch on his cheek.

Her expression changed.

Bell touched the injury instinctively.

“It’s really small.”

Hestia marched straight toward him, caught his arm, and began dragging him toward the church.

“I can see that it’s small. I’m still checking the rest of you!”

“Eina already lectured me!”

“That’s wonderful for Eina i guess! But I’m your goddess, so I get my own turn!”

Bell decided resistance would only make this worse.

A few minutes later he was sitting in the basement while Hestia inspected his cheek, shoulder, arms, and armor with the seriousness of a battlefield medic.

Her irritation gradually faded once she confirmed that every injury was superficial, but the tension did not fully leave her until she finished cleaning the cut herself.

Bell remained quiet through the entire process.

He could complain about being embarrassed.

He could not bring himself to complain that someone had been waiting for him to come home.

Once Hestia finished, Bell emptied his first Dungeon earnings onto the table.

The amount was so unimpressive that both of them stared at the coins in silence before slowly turning toward the food cupboard.

Hestia folded her arms.

“We may need you to become stronger fairly quickly.”

Bell laughed despite himself, and Hestia’s attempt to remain serious lasted only a few seconds before she joined him.

Later that evening, she updated his Falna for the first time.

The numbers had moved only a little, but Bell stared at the status sheet as though someone had handed him proof that heroes truly existed.

“So fighting today actually became part of my strength…”

Hestia smiled behind him. “Exactly. Just don’t interpret that as permission to get stabbed repeatedly because you think injuries are efficient training.”

Bell carefully avoided looking at her.

She immediately narrowed her eyes.

“Bell.”

“I wasn’t thinking that!”

He absolutely had been!

…

Over the following days, Bell developed a simple routine around the Dungeon.

He descended in the morning, stayed within the floors Eina had approved, returned before exhaustion turned dangerous, exchanged his Magic Stones, reported anything unusual, and went home for another status update from Hestia.

His bruises multiplied almost as quickly as his earnings.

Fortunately, so did his experience.

During his first trip, Bell usually reacted only after a monster attacked.

Several days later, he was beginning to recognize the movements that came beforehand.

A Goblin’s shoulder tightened before an overhead swing, allowing him to step inside the attack rather than retreat blindly.

A Kobold lowered its body before pouncing, which gave him enough warning to move aside and cut across its exposed flank.

When three Goblins emerged together on the Second Floor, Bell’s first instinct was to rush the nearest one.

He stopped himself.

Instead, he backed into a narrower section of passage where the monsters could no longer surround him and forced them to approach one at a time.

The fight still left him with a swollen wrist and another tear in his cheap armor, but he walked away from it under his own power.

Eina called that progress.

Hestia called it another reason Bell needed better equipment.

Bell called it expensive.

On his fifth morning, he entered the Third Floor carrying a new knife he had purchased with his own Dungeon earnings.

It was still cheap by Orario standards, but the blade was sharper, the grip actually fit his hand, and Bell found himself admiring it far more often than necessary simply because he had paid for it himself.

A Dungeon Lizard apparently took personal offense at his happiness.

The creature exploded from a crack in the wall with its jaws snapping toward his arm.

Bell twisted aside before the teeth closed and slashed across its neck, but the cut was shallow enough that the monster immediately answered by whipping its tail into his stomach.

The impact slammed Bell against the wall and knocked the breath from his lungs.

The Lizard charged before he had properly recovered, and Bell shoved himself sideways just as its head struck the stone where his chest had been.

Rather than trying to create distance, he jumped onto the creature’s back, hooked one arm around the ridge above its neck, and drove his knife into the wound he had already opened.

The monster thrashed wildly.

Bell held on.

It slammed him against the wall once, making his vision flash white, then tried again while Bell clenched his teeth and pushed the knife deeper.

“Come on!”

The Dungeon Lizard’s legs finally buckled beneath it.

Bell hit the ground beside the dissolving corpse and remained there for several seconds, coughing while one arm wrapped around his aching ribs.

When he eventually spotted the Magic Stone among the remains, however, his expression immediately brightened.

“That one had better be worth more.”

…

Eina was less impressed with the achievement after seeing the bruise across his ribs.

“You fought a Dungeon Lizard alone?”

Bell sat opposite her while she examined the injury. “I won!”

“You also got slammed into a wall twice.”

Bell lowered his head.

Eina sighed, although there was more concern than anger behind it.

“I’m not telling you to stop fighting. You’re an adventurer, Bell, and you’re going to get hurt sometimes. What I need you to understand is the difference between surviving because you handled a situation correctly and surviving because the monster happened to miss something important.”

Bell nodded more seriously this time.

He understood that difference much better than he would have a week earlier.

Eina opened the notebook she had given him and found Bell’s written account of the Dungeon Lizard encounter.

His handwriting deteriorated noticeably halfway through, apparently because he had recorded the details while his ribs still hurt, but he had remembered everything she asked him to include.

That earned him a faint smile.

“You’re learning quickly. If you continue like this, I’ll let you begin exploring the Fourth Floor soon. But don’t mistake being comfortable on the first three floors for being ready to rush downward. The passages become more troublesome, monster groups become harder to manage, and sooner or later you’re going to encounter something you can’t solve by charging at it.”

Bell’s eyes had already lit up at the words Fourth Floor.

Eina immediately pointed his own notebook at him.

“I said soon, Bell.”

His enthusiasm wilted so visibly that she had to suppress a laugh.

…

Bell waited another two days before receiving permission.

Those two days felt considerably longer to him than they actually were.

The Fourth Floor initially seemed almost disappointing after all of Eina’s warnings.

The walls and passages were familiar enough, and the first group of Goblins Bell encountered went down more smoothly than most of his fights from the previous week.

Then the Dungeon reminded him why experienced adventurers never relaxed.

Bell had just finished extracting a Magic Stone when he heard movement behind him and turned to find two Kobolds approaching from the passage.

Before he could choose how to engage them, the wall to his left cracked open and another Goblin crawled out.

Bell stepped backward.

The stone behind him began splitting too.

His stomach dropped as three additional monsters emerged around him.

“Oh, that’s bad.”

He abandoned the Magic Stone on the ground and ran before the group could close in.

One Kobold remained close enough that Bell could hear its breathing behind him, but he resisted the urge to keep fleeing blindly.

When the passage narrowed, he planted one foot against the wall and reversed direction so suddenly that the pursuing creature overshot him.

Bell’s knife entered beneath its ribs.

He tore the blade free and kept moving before the others could catch up.

Another Goblin appeared around the next corner, forcing Bell to lower his shoulder and crash into it at full speed.

They both hit the ground, but Bell recovered first, rolled onto one knee, and slashed across its throat before the pursuing monsters reached them.

The fight had already left his lungs burning, and Bell knew he could not keep exchanging attacks indefinitely.

He ran toward a fork in the passage, checked the markings Eina had taught him to recognize, and immediately chose the route that would bring him closer to the surface.

Two injured adventurers appeared ahead.

Bell almost shouted in relief before realizing that one was supporting the other and neither was in any condition to fight.

If he kept running toward them, he would drag the monsters directly into their path.

Bell’s fear tightened painfully around his chest.

He turned around.

One of the injured adventurers shouted after him, “Kid, what are you doing?!”

Bell sprinted back toward the pursuing monsters and took the other branch before they could reach the wounded pair.

Only after making the choice did he fully understand that he had deliberately moved farther from the exit.

His heartbeat surged.

‘Think. Don’t panic. Eina said think.’

Four monsters were still after him.

Bell spotted a narrow crack between two walls that he remembered passing earlier and forced himself through sideways.

The opening was barely wide enough for him, which meant the first Kobold following him had just as little room to attack.

Bell waited until its head and shoulders entered the gap, then drove his knife upward beneath its jaw.

The corpse collapsed backward into the monsters behind it and jammed the opening.

Bell crawled out from the opposite side, raced through a connecting passage, and circled around until he emerged behind the trapped group.

His hands were trembling and his breathing had become ragged, but something important had changed during those few moments.

For the first time since becoming an adventurer, Bell had been surrounded by several monsters and created his own solution before they overwhelmed him.

He rushed forward.

The first Goblin turned too late and took Bell’s knife through the back.

Bell ripped it free, ducked beneath the remaining Kobold’s claws, and drove his shoulder into the creature’s legs hard enough to topple it.

He followed it to the ground and stabbed through the chest.

The final Goblin slashed across Bell’s upper arm before he could turn.

Pain burned through him, but rather than retreating wildly, Bell spun with the hit and kicked the monster away.

It immediately came back.

Bell raised his knife and caught the next blow poorly enough that the impact nearly tore the weapon from his grip.

Instead of surrendering the distance, he stepped forward, trapped the Goblin’s arm against his own body, and hammered the pommel into its temple.

Once.

Then again.

The creature sagged against him, and Bell finished it with a thrust beneath the chin.

When the last corpse dissolved, he stood alone in the passage with blood running down his arm and exhaustion making his legs tremble.

The fear was still there, but it had changed shape; instead of controlling everything he did, it had become something he could work around.

Bell leaned against the wall and laughed breathlessly.

A week ago, one Goblin had nearly sent him running all the way back to the surface.

Now he had survived being surrounded.

The thought lasted until he looked at the wound on his arm.

‘Eina is going to kill me.’

That almost made him laugh again.

…

By the end of the week, Eina finally allowed Bell onto the Fifth Floor.

He descended with far less confidence than he had displayed while asking permission.

The passages were broader, the air felt slightly different, and distant sounds carried strangely through the Dungeon.

Bell kept one hand near his knife while repeating Eina’s warnings to himself, determined not to throw away a week of progress because he was excited about reaching somewhere new.

His first few encounters went well enough to relax him slightly.

Then a roar rolled through the floor.

Bell stopped in the middle of the passage as the sound vibrated through the stone beneath his boots.

It was deeper and more powerful than anything he had heard since becoming an adventurer, and the instinctive fear crawling across his skin told him before his mind did that whatever had made that noise did not belong anywhere near him.

Another impact shook the corridor, followed by distant shouting and the unmistakable sound of something very large smashing through the Dungeon.

Bell tightened his grip around his knife and began retreating toward the route he had used to enter the floor, but the heavy impacts were approaching far faster than he could withdraw.

Dust shook loose from the ceiling as the pounding grew closer, each step now distinct enough that Bell could feel it through the soles of his boots.

A massive shape finally burst around the far corner.

Bell’s breath caught.

The creature towered over every monster he had fought during the previous week, its bull-like head crowned by enormous horns while thick muscles covered a body already stained with blood from another battle.

The Minotaur skidded slightly as it entered the passage, turned its head, and immediately fixed its red eyes on the white-haired rookie standing alone ahead of it.

Bell knew what a Minotaur was.

Eina had shown him the illustrations.

She had also made it painfully clear that a Level One rookie had no business fighting one.

The monster lowered its head and scraped one hoof against the Dungeon floor.

Bell’s fingers tightened around the knife even though every instinct in his body was screaming that the little blade meant nothing here.

Then the Minotaur charged.