Noah crouched down beside the nearest goblin body.

He opened his storage ring and swept the body inside with practiced efficiency. Leaving monsters in a dungeon passage behind you was the kind of thing that caused problems on the way back. But it also have use, they could sell it to guil management. They also possess f rank mana cores.

Damien did the same on the other side without being asked.

They cleared the three bodies in under a minute and moved on.

---

More goblins came as the passage continued.

Not in large numbers. Small groups of two or three, appearing from side alcoves or simply wandering the corridor ahead of them. Each encounter lasted less than a minute.

Damien handled most of them before Noah even had to adjust his grip. The ones that peeled off toward Noah went down without much trouble.

They were weak. Genuinely, simply weak. No coordination or stratgy. They lunged and they swung and they died.

Noah stored the bodies each time without commenting on it.

After the fourth group, he stopped feeling anything particular about it. It became mechanical. Clear the passage, store the remains, move forward.

The dungeon was doing its job. He was doing his.

---

They had been walking for some time when the quality of the dark ahead changed.

’This is very easy and smooth.’ He thought with frowned. But continued.

Noah noticed it first as a feeling, a slight difference in how the air moved. Then as something his eyes caught at the edge of the torchlight. A faint shimmer along the walls further down the passage.

As they walked closer, it became clear.

Crystals.

They were embedded directly into the stone walls, irregular clusters of them at different heights, some no larger than a fist and others the size of a forearm.

They gave off a pale steady light, cool and even, the kind that didn’t flicker. The walls on both sides caught the glow and returned it softly, filling the space without shadows.

The passage opened slightly here, the ceiling rising a meter or two higher than it had been.

Damien stopped and shut off the torch without a word, then slipped it into his storage. The crystal light was more than enough.

"It’s better. We could fight more easily this way."

"Yeah. We are lucky, I guess."

Noah looked at the walls as they walked through. The glow came from deep inside the stone. These had been here as long as the dungeon itself, probably.

’They’re beautiful, honestly,’ he thought briefly.

Then he kept walking.

---

The crystal-lit passage split into two after a few minutes.

Damien stood at the junction and looked down both options. Left and right. Both equally lit by the crystals running along the walls, both the same width, both disappearing around separate bends ahead.

He was quiet for a moment. Thinking.

Noah waited beside him without rushing him.

Then Damien went right.

Noah followed.

The right passage ran longer than anything they had walked so far, straight and steady, the crystal light consistent along the walls.

Their footsteps were the only sound. The dungeon felt different here, more settled somehow, like they had moved past the outer edges and into something more interior.

Noah belived in Damien. He knew that this protagonist with his unknown decisions would take him toward the danger and also secret treasure.

Then the passage ended.

At the end there was a door.

It was set directly into the stone wall at the end of the corridor, filling the space almost completely from floor to ceiling. Heavy iron, dark with age, held together by wide flat rivets along its frame.

No visible lock. No handle on this side, only a thick horizontal bar seated in two iron brackets.

Both of them stood in front of it for a moment.

Damien looked it over with a calm expression.

"There’ll be monsters on the other side," he said. "Probably a significant number if this door is here. Rooms like this tend to be gathering spaces deeper in." He paused.

"But there’ll also be loot. Dungeons this old usually have something worth taking."

Noah’s ears caught that last part clearly.

Loot.

The word landed with immediate effect. His expression shifted from neutral to interested without him trying to control it.

"Then what are we waiting for?" he said. "Let’s go."

Damien glanced at him sideways, a small smirk on his face.

He stepped forward and gripped the bar with both hands.

The door was heavy. It didn’t move immediately. Damien’s boots pressed into the stone floor and he pushed steadily, the bar grinding in its brackets, the hinges giving a long low groan that resonated through the passage behind them.

Then it swung open.

---

The space beyond was large.

Genuinely large. The ceiling rose high above them into shadow that even the crystals mounted along the upper walls couldn’t fully reach.

The floor was wide and flat, old stone worn smooth in the center from what might have been centuries of something moving across it.

Across the room, at the far end, was another door. Same iron construction. Same scale. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

But getting there was not going to be simple.

Between the entrance and that far door, the room was occupied.

Goblins. Scattered across the space in loose groupings, some crouched near the walls, some standing in the open center, a few moving slowly between clusters. Noah did a rough count and stopped at thirty before he lost track. There were more.

And among them, standing out by size alone, were two others.

Hobgoblins.

The distinction was immediate. Where the regular goblins were hunched and small, these stood nearly upright.

One of them was easily six and a half feet tall, broad through the chest and shoulders, holding a heavy club across one arm with the ease of something that weighed nothing to it.

The other was slightly shorter but thicker built, with crude armor strapped across its torso.

They were E+ rank. A clear step above everything else in the room.

The tall one saw them first.

It turned its head toward the open door, and its small eyes found Noah and Damien standing in the entrance. Something shifted in its expression.

It raised its club and let out a single short sound. No, it made a roar.

ROARRRR

It was loud enough to fill the room completely.

Every head turned.

Then the room erupted.

The goblins screamed all at once, the sound bouncing off the high walls and the stone ceiling, and they moved. All of them.

Rushing forward in a disorganized mass, no formation, just numbers and noise and forward momentum.

KKKRRRCHHKKKKK!!!

More than thirty. Possibly close to forty when Noah counted the ones emerging from the far corners.

Noah stepped back half a pace and made a decision.

He pushed his sword into his storage ring.

His hand went to his back and found the bow he had brought, a simple recurve he had purchased before leaving the city.

He swung the quiver over his shoulder and nocked an arrow in one motion as the horde closed the distance across the room.

Beside him, golden light bloomed.

Damien’s sword lit up along the blade, a warm steady glow that pulsed once before holding. His posture dropped slightly, weight forward, and then he moved. He was fast.

Directly into the oncoming mass without hesitation, the blade already cutting through the lead goblins before they had time to adjust.

Noah pulled the bowstring back.

He let his mana flow. Not a surge. A controlled extension, the way he had been practicing for weeks, following the circulation path until it reached his hands and from there into the arrow. Blue light wrapped the shaft from tip to tail, steady and clean.

He aligned the shot.

Not at the cluster Damien had already entered. To the right side of the room where a group of eight or nine goblins were rushing along the wall toward Damien’s exposed side.

Noah released it.

The arrow left the bow and a clean line of blue cut across the room just past Damien’s shoulder, low and straight, moving faster.