Chapter 450 - 450 - Surrounded? No, Counter-Surrounded!

"Highly venomous. The toxicity is on par with a Poison Vermis, and it takes a specially made Antidote to cure."

"If it isn't cured within half a day of being hit, the death rate is one hundred percent."

"Clearing requirement: a Lv.3 Adventurer party, with the Abnormal Resistance Development Ability."

After Leon finished his explanation, everyone sucked in a breath at once.

"Ambush monsters? Specialized in sneak attacks? And deadly poison on top of that?"

Laurier's eyes went wide and she cried out:

"God, isn't that, isn't that even nastier than a Poison Vermis? What kind of hellhole is Sand Land?"

Rose narrowed her eyes, thinking.

"The signature trap of Sand Land, hidden mines... I see."

"The monsters don't show themselves. They hide in the dark like traps. Nobody can say for sure whether the next step they take will be the moment a monster strikes."

Having gotten a handle on how Sand Land worked, everyone relaxed a little, but their guard didn't drop an inch.

Sneak attacks weren't the fear. The fear was that long, silent stillness from before, when nothing moved at all.

The Dungeon is alive.

Any Adventurer with a bit of experience understands one thing:

Running into enemies constantly in the Dungeon isn't frightening. That's the normal state. What truly unsettles you is going a long stretch without a single monster in sight. The moment that happens, a seasoned, dependable captain will usually order a retreat without hesitation. Only clueless rookies, or hotheads who push ahead on the strength of a little talent, dare to keep going deeper.

As for how those people end up, that goes without saying. It's never good.

The Dungeon's casualty rate speaks for itself. Every year Orario draws in countless newcomers from all over the world, carrying their dreams, their ambitions, their ideals. A small handful of them might stand out for a while on sheer talent and become the new stars of the Adventurer circle. Most of the rest fade back into the crowd.

Of course, even when someone flashes brightly for a moment, most of the veterans won't rush over to make friends. They watch and wait. Only when those newcomers hit the "rookie wall," settle, and still come out ahead do the Adventurers in the circle give them real recognition. As for the ones who hit the wall and vanish, they were either broken by reality and never recovered, choosing to just coast, or they're already gone for good.

People like that aren't worth knowing.

After all, is there a single senior Adventurer who hasn't come through trial after trial, through life-and-death crises? Every last one of them is sharp. Even the brutes who don't like to think have been ground down into having a vicious eye for things.

Leon didn't have deep credentials in the Adventurer trade. Orario was full of old hands who'd been at it for fifteen or twenty years. But he'd been in the business four years now, and rookies who met him still had to respectfully call him "senior."

His mindset was the same: careful, steady, never reckless.

In this line of work, the deeper your experience, the smaller your nerve tends to get. Because you know too much, and you've seen too much.

Like a veteran driver, the more you drive, the slower and steadier you go.

The mindset of a veteran Adventurer is the same.

...

"Everyone be careful. The ambush monsters really test an Adventurer's danger sense and reaction speed. And most importantly, whether you can take the right countermeasure the moment it happens."

"Remember, when something goes wrong, never panic. Even if you can't handle it yourself, trust your partners."

"We're a team. Understood?"

"Yes!"

With morale restored, Jeanne and Rose nodded, and the two of them started walking again, leading the party deeper into the Sand Land.

...

Jeanne spun her spear in a flourish, ducked low to avoid the scorpion tail hook stabbing in from her side, and kicked the ambusher flying. At the same moment she flicked the spear tip back up and blew open the head of the Sandstorm Wraith in front of her, then turned her wrist, pulled the spear back with the momentum, took two running steps, and launched into a high leap, catching the Sandstorm Venom Scorpion she'd kicked away in midair. The spear came down from above and pinned it into the sand.

Green poisonous blood sprayed out, and Jeanne twisted aside as though she'd known it was coming.

She pulled the spear free and stood, catching her breath, then called out toward the other side:

"Rose, Persephone, need any help?"

"No need, we're done over here too!"

On the other side, Rose and Persephone had been in a fierce fight of their own. At their feet lay the remains of a dozen or so monsters sprawled every which way, the green poisonous blood soaking into the yellow sand and quickly buried by the blowing grit.

Blades rang against each other in a long, unbroken chain of strikes. Persephone moved nimbly, dodging the monsters' attacks with quick footwork, a pair of black over-the-knee high-heeled boots on her feet, her combat steps calling to mind a passionate free tango: elegant, beautiful, with a hint of lingering tenderness and full of tension.

Her legs snapped apart straight, she bent at the waist and lowered her head to slip under a spray of venom, tossed her hair, swept one long leg across to break the sand monster's balance, then braced one hand on the ground, the perfect line of her waist showing, flipped upside down, and drove her sharp heel straight into its face.

Blood flew everywhere.

The sand monster's scream was cut off as a silver flash went past.

Persephone didn't stop moving. Her steps kept a waltz rhythm. She braced a hand on the ground for a spin, kicking away the Sandstorm Wraiths closing in from either side, and at the same time hurled the short blade at her waist. Then she dropped back down out of the air, touched one knee to the ground, and jerked her head up.

She dropped into a proper sprinter's start, kicked off hard from the yellow sand, and charged the Sandstorm Wraith on the right. With a light leap she reached a height of a meter, planted both heels on the monster's shoulders, gripped her longsword in both hands, and drove it down from above.

"Hah!"

The blade ran it through from the crown of the head.

She stood there on its shoulders, and as the monster toppled backward she rode the motion down to the sand, landing light on her feet.

At almost the same moment, the short blade she'd thrown landed just as precisely in the skull of the Sandstorm Wraith on the left.

Leon flicked his staff around like a quickscoping sniper and put two quick shots through a venom scorpion that had just poked its head up. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Persephone's flowing dance of a fight, and a look of appreciation rose in his eyes.

"As expected of a marquis's daughter from the great noble houses of Mélstra, a nation of art."

"Elegant and lethal. A woman after my own heart."

...