novelraw Chapter 152 : You Can’t Just Leave Like This
Chapter 152 : You Can’t Just Leave Like This
Chapter 152: You Can’t Just Leave Like This
“Robin…?”
Delinger called out to Robin while pressing himself to the ground, but no answer returned.
“W-Why on earth….”
He let out a hollow question as he looked at Hank and Poch, who were snickering.
Poch stopped laughing and replied.
“Why? Those punk bastards were trying to squeeze us dry.”
As if paying 10 Silver as the price for the escort request wasn’t enough, they had even disposed of their equipment.
That money had gone straight into Robin’s pocket.
“Everyone agreed to the deal.”
“That’s because we were the weaker side. We had no choice.”
Poch’s words had some logic to them.
It had been an unavoidable choice in order to survive.
“Still, this isn’t right….”
There were plenty who swindled others after making a verbal contract.
Robin had not broken the contract, and he had worked diligently to ensure their safety.
If there had been no one to protect, he would not even have entered the Dungeon while avoiding Monsters.
He could have simply run away as he was.
“This isn’t right?”
“Delinger, my friend, you ought to watch what you say.”
The two of them approached slowly.
They had been quite flustered when Robin disappeared, but they soon regained their composure.
Those two had tried to push Delinger into a trap.
There was no need to reconfirm their murderous intent.
‘Their eyes have gone bad.’
They were not the Poch and Hank Delinger knew.
As if they had taken some kind of drug, the strength had drained from their eyes.
And yet their pupils were stretched wide, an eerily grotesque sight.
‘I have to run…!’
Forgetting even his injured leg, Delinger ran.
The fear that he might die outweighed the pain.
That fear miraculously became the driving force that allowed him to escape from the two of them.
He was hazy on where this was or how he had managed to get here.
He had simply run. And when he looked back, no one was following him.
“Huff… huff….”
Wiping away the sweat pouring down like rain, he collapsed onto the floor.
“Why aren’t they chasing me….”
A natural question bubbled up.
Neither of them showed any sign of injury.
Chasing a cripple would not have been difficult.
“Get a hold of yourself.”
He calmed his breathing and looked around.
Things he had not noticed while fleeing in haste now came into view.
It was not an empty room.
Far more mechanical devices were scattered about than in the place he had gone with Robin.
“These are….”
Various levers bore drawings on them, most depicting weapons.
Crossbows, Cannons, fists, armor….
And even a central table engraved with a complex floor plan.
It reminded him of a highly developed strategy planning room.
It was a sight Delinger had never seen before, leaving him momentarily speechless.
Only for a moment.
Even without any separate explanation, he grasped how to use the mechanisms.
‘If this is where I am… then those bastards must be over here.’
Lights flickered on at several points of what seemed to be a floor plan representing the entire Dungeon.
It indicated locations where people were present.
After slowly tracing the connected paths from his current position, he found an exit.
He was saved.
There was a way to escape while avoiding the traitors.
“…Damn it.”
Delinger hesitated.
There was a way for him to survive, but if he ran away here, what about the others who remained?
Unaware that Robin was dead, they would wait endlessly.
“Delinger! Are you there!”
‘Just as I thought.’
As if refusing to give him time to deliberate, Hank’s voice drew closer.
He held his breath like a dead mouse, but Hank shouted as though he knew everything.
“Stop hiding and come out! I have no intention of killing you!”
It had not even been an hour since they had tried to push him into a trap.
There should have been a limit to shamelessness.
“Just grant me one favor! Then I’ll let you live!”
Hank did not come any closer.
It seemed he was trying to appeal that he truly had no intention of threatening Delinger.
“If you look carefully, there should be a drawing shaped like a box.”
Though Delinger did not trust Hank, he searched for what he mentioned.
He had already taken it in once, so it was not difficult.
“There’s a place where treasure is hidden. The passage will only open if it’s operated from that side. You open it for me.”
“…How do you know all that?”
“So you finally answer.”
Hank sounded delighted, but it did not work in the slightest.
When Delinger maintained his silence, Hank cleared his throat and continued.
“I just happened to find out. Didn’t you also figure out how to use the devices there?”
‘So the treasure is the goal.’
He had seen many teams fall into discord over money, but he had never imagined he would be the one involved.
“Was trying to kill me also because of the treasure?”
“Hey now, trying to kill you? We were just having a bit of fun.”
“What happened to Robin.”
“I’ve never been caught in a trap myself, so how would I know?”
“…….”
‘Has he lost his mind.’
The inconsistent wordplay only made him less trustworthy.
“Thinking of old times, I believe you’ll grant my request.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Delinger, don’t you know better than anyone?”
Though Hank did not say it outright, the meaning was clear.
At the veiled warning of retaliation, Delinger stiffened.
“I’ll go back and wait. I trust you’ll make the right choice.”
The sound of footsteps gradually faded away.
His mind felt as though it might burst from the complexity.
‘What should I do….’
If he did not comply with Hank’s demand, he would be caught before he could even escape.
If he obediently followed his words, he might truly survive.
‘There has to be some way….’
As Delinger replayed what had just happened, something felt off.
Asking him to open the Dungeon’s treasure vault was one thing.
But even though he had come right up to the entrance, Hank had not revealed himself.
It looked like a gesture to show he did not intend to threaten him—but was that really all?
‘Why didn’t he come in?’
After confirming that no one was outside, Delinger cautiously wandered around the area.
There was nothing that could even be called a door—just a corridor that bent at an angle.
After entering and exiting the corridor several times, he realized the source of the discomfort.
‘The air is different.’
Though not to the extent of Robin, Delinger’s senses were sharper than those of an ordinary person.
He had hunted Monsters dozens, hundreds of times.
He detected an ominous aura trailing after Hank.
It was Demonic Energy.
Even if it was knowledge picked up by hearsay, he could not mistake it.
Though faint, the alien malice was not something commonly found in everyday life.
‘It cuts off from here. As if it were cleanly sliced.’
From the spot where Hank had been standing, the Demonic Energy did not enter beyond that point.
A hypothesis flashed through Delinger’s mind.
‘It’s not that he didn’t come in—he couldn’t come in.’
If that were true, the situation changed.
“Worrying alone won’t make anything better.”
There was no solid basis to gamble on a mere hypothesis.
In the end, Delinger made his decision.
He would do as Hank said.
A slight sense of guilt pricked at him, but what dominated Delinger was fear.
Who could remain calm when their own life was under threat?
‘I’ll open that treasure vault or whatever it is and bolt immediately.’
After memorizing the floor plan several times and just before leaving the Dungeon.
“…Hoo.”
No, this wouldn’t do.
It was too frustrating to leave like this.
Delinger stepped before the complicated control panel. Then he raised his hand over a lever.
“If I’m leaving, I’m leaving—but I can’t just go quietly.”
As he manipulated the directional controls, a red light lit up in the room where Hank was.
There was no guarantee this was correct.
What if he messed something up by touching the wrong thing?
He forced himself to ignore the anxiety creeping up.
“This is the control room. It’s not like I’ll die.”
With a clunk, he pulled the lever down.
The drawing of a box blinked.
He pulled another lever some distance away from it.
Without even checking whether it worked properly, Delinger ran toward the escape route.
At the moment Robin fell into the trap in Delinger’s stead.
In his haste, he poured Fighting Spirit into his sword and drove it into the wall.
His first attempt failed, and he felt an instinctive sense that he might die at this rate.
Only after one sword tore through even its scabbard did he avoid falling.
“Hgh!”
He had stopped before regaining his balance, so his posture was extremely unstable.
By sheer luck, he avoided being impaled on the spikes.
Tap.
A fragment of stone brushed past his ear and fell below.
When he lifted his head, jagged spikes protruded densely above him.
The reason he looked upward to check the ground was because his posture was akin to hanging upside down.
With Fighting Spirit gathered into his heels, he had stamped against the wall, and the sword he gripped in reverse with both hands like a salute had lodged into the wall.
With each passing second, blood rushed toward his head.
‘This is insane.’
Even for Robin, moving in such an unstable position was no easy feat.
One slight mistake and he would fall at any moment.
The spikes below looked sharp enough at a glance that even falling from this height would be more than enough to threaten his life.
If he had been wearing plate armor, it might have been fine, but Robin had nothing that could be called armor.
In that moment of crisis, he recalled what Serena had said.
“Serena, help me! I fell into a trap and can’t move!”
Had the Spirit heard him properly?
While overworking his core and letting a second that felt like a minute slip away helplessly.
His body floated upward.
‘Wind Spirit!’
Though invisible, the moment help reached him, his mind eased.
Just as the upside-down world righted itself and he thought he would rise all the way up.
“…That startled me.”
The buoyant sensation supporting his body vanished.
It vividly felt as if Serena were saying, That should be enough, right?
Fortunately, he had embedded one more sword just in case, so there was no major issue.
“…Thank you.”
A word of thanks forced through clenched teeth.
If Serena had been in front of him, she surely would have nodded calmly.
The words Why not just pull me out while you’re at it? rose to his throat, but he swallowed them.
Clinging on with sheer grit and willpower, he climbed up the wall until he finally reached the top.
“What happened.”
“He’s scared stiff. The door should open soon.”
He heard Hank and Poch conversing.
While Robin climbed upward, Hank had gone to see Delinger.
“Really can’t enter that room?”
“Can’t. It looks like it was designed specifically to completely block Demonic Energy at its source.”
“That’s a shame. If we hadn’t been stabbed by that tree-root Monster….”
“So what? Once we loot the treasure and get out, our lives will bloom anyway.”
Having quietly listened to their conversation, Robin roughly inferred what had happened.
While fleeing from the tree-root Monster, Hank and Poch had been injured.
As a result, Demonic Energy had been injected into their bodies, and unlike usual, they had been blinded by greed.
The two of them knew of the existence of a room where treasure was hidden within the Dungeon.
And they had let Delinger live.
Because those who harbored Demonic Energy could not approach the room that could open the door.
‘They intend to take the reward for themselves and leave.’
They were waiting for Delinger to open the treasure vault under the guise of a request laced with threats.
Robin had no intention of merely watching this unfold.
He tapped the ceiling that had opened by lever operation with the tip of his sword.
‘It’s solid. Can I cut through it?’
Just before he swung his sword while supporting himself with his left arm.
Rumble—
Vibrations spread, and Poch cried out in an excited voice.
“Finally……! The treasure room!”
“We did it!”
‘Enjoy it while you can. You’re about to die.’
However, Robin’s prediction missed the mark.
Poch, who had entered a Dungeon for the first time in his life and discovered treasure.
And Hank, who had ruthlessly turned his back on Delinger.
“What is that….”
KWA-A-A-A-BOOM!
With a tremendous roar, the trap that had swallowed Robin was destroyed.
As he was swept up in the explosion and fell once more.
Crack.
He barely managed to drive his fist into the wall.
“Cough! Cough!”
Rubble and dust poured endlessly down over his head.
After the aftershock passed, he looked up with difficulty, and the sight above was clearly a scene of utter chaos.
Through the thick cloud of dust, what entered Robin’s eyes were blood and chunks of flesh scattered in all directions.
“Hank. Poch.”
He called out to the two, but there was no response whatsoever.
Only what had once been Hank and Poch lay strewn all around.