Is this really a Game?!-Chapter 36 Searching For The Hidden Room

The inside of the building was vastly different compared to the outside, the dilapidated small buildings and houses outside were a sharp contrast to the luxurious inside of the main building. Big chandeliers hung from the 3.5m tall ceiling, the entrance hall was sparkly clean, the floor was made out of a material similar to marble while the walls even had a crude paint on them. Tables and chair could be seen inside and there was even a rug on the floor.

"Guys, did we make a mistake and enter the wrong building or something?" Shadow said while looking around himself, the richness of the hall was definitely out of all their expectations.

Ding!

[ The players have entered the mansion of the goblin chieftain, please give it your best to defeat the boss and find out the reason behind his greed for mana crystals.]

[Warning, the players have entered a special area inside the dungeon, retreat is impossible.]

Bam!

The door behind them was suddenly slammed shut, spurring a strong wind to blow towards everyone.

"The door closed, hmph, like that can stop us if we wanted to leave." Tank sneers as he goes towards the door and lifts his mace high up in the air.

"Tank, wait!" Reigns shout comes a bit late as Tank had already swung his mace down, giving it his all to break the door in pieces.

Clang!

The mace hits a purple light that covers the door and bounces back with even greater force.

"Shit!" Tank takes to steps back to stabilize himself. Turning around he gives everyone a look of apology as he rubs his right shoulder with his left hand. "Seems like we really can't leave this place huh?"

"No shit Sherlock!" Shadow jumps from behind him and slaps the back of his head in anger.

"Ouch, why'd you do that for?!" Tank rubs the back of his head while giving a sorry look to Shadow.

"Because you don't think, what if there was an explosion instead of the rebound effect, all of us could have gotten injured before even getting to the damn boss!" Shadow gives a growl while yelling at him.

"Alright Shadow that's enough, Tank please don't do something like that again alright?" Reign calms Shadow down and tells Tank who nods obediently.

"Alright then, let's search for that basement then, if it really does exist." Reign holds his sword while telling everyone.

Slowly moving deeper inside everyone carefully observes their surroundings, the ambushes from before put them on high alert. Beast was already crouching on the ground, listening for any breathing or movement nearby.

Getting up he shakes his head as he fails to hear anything. The group relaxes a bit but still keep their vigilance up in case of any problems.

The hall was quite big and looked somewhat similar to medival ones. There were three doors that they could see, one on the right, one on the left and one straight ahead. After several minutes of looking around and searching every nook and cranny Wolf speaks up

"This place seems to be empty, I highly suspect there would be anything hidden here so let's just pick a door and continue the search."

"That's probably the best thing to do right now." Reign looks at Wolf and nods his head in agreement.

"So which door should we choose?" Beast asks them.

"Well we'll probably end up searching everything, just in case we don't miss something so let's just go for the left one, it's the one that's closest to us anyway." Reign says and moves towards it.

"Wait, let me open it, if there's a trap or something on the other end I can block it with this bad boy here." Tank quickly moves ahead of Reign and points to his shield with a proud grin on his face.

"Alright, lead the way then." Reign says while helplessly sighing at him.

Tank nods and moves to the door, planting his huge shield in front of him he gives the door a small push as there was no handle on it.

Creeeaak.

The door creaks loudly as it opens, Tank had already crouched behind his shield and prepared himself for an attack but nothing happens.

"Huh, seems like there's no traps there." Shadow nonchalantly says and peaks from the sides of the door.

The room looked like a lounge of some kind. Big wooden benches could be seen inside, circling multiple tables.

Entering the room everyone goes into full alert and carefully looks around it. There was nothing they could see to be honest, the room was quite empty except for the benches and tables.

Creeeaak

Another door opens up as Tank again pushes it, the same thing happens again, there were no traps or enemies waiting for them at the room on the right side either. Wooden poles were the only thing inside this one, looking at the cuts and cracks on them it seems like this room was used for training. Everyone searches it like the previous two but again they find nothing at all.

"Alright, so it has to be in the last room, let's go guys, hurry up." Shadow says with some excitement in his voice, happily hopping towards the last door.

"Shadow wait!" Tank runs up to him and grabs his shoulder. Seeing the serious look on Tanks face Shadow gives an apologetic look and moves to the side. "Sorry big guy, I guess I just got a tad bit too excited."

Tank nods and moves to the last door, putting his shield up he pushes the door and crouches behind the shield.

"Well no surprise there, it's empty aga-" Shadow starts talking but gets interrupted by a loud bang coming from Tanks shield. Moving three steps backwards Tank manages to regain balance and everyone looks at the object that moved him, it was a ball, a big stone ball that was launched from inside the room.

"You were saying?" Wolf gives Shadow a cold look and asks in annoyance. 𝑓𝒓𝚎e𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯𝘰𝐯𝒆𝑙.c𝚘m

"Sorry, sorry." Shadow starts bowing towards everyone with his hands clasped together in front of him.

"Tank, how are you?" Beast goes to Tank and asks him with concern.

"Don't worry I'm alright, it was just the impact that was stronger than I expected." Tank gives a big smile to him and reassures Beast.

"Alright everyone, let's move in slowly and carefully alright, get your shields out, we may need them." Reign says while taking out a red shield from the inventory. Everyone nods and does the same.

Moving inside the room everyone could hear loud clicking noises, before they knew it 5 arrows were shot towards them.

Thud Thud Clang

Everyone manages to successfully block the arrow thrown at them while Wolf simply hit the one headed towards him with his huge sword.

"Alright, this feels more like the dungeon now, let's keep together while we look around this room." Reign turns his head around and orders.

The room was even emptier than the third one, there was nothing inside of it, just a simple wooden staircase and something that looked like a canon, inspecting it everyone understood that this was what launched the stone at Tank.

The staircase was at the end of the room, the stone wall of the building being on one side of it while a wooden wall was put on the other side, maybe for stability or maybe for the goblins aesthetic purposes. Everyone moves while inspecting the room for any hidden area or clues. After a good 20 minutes they were dejected to find nothing, there were no more traps after the ones at the beginning and there was nothing leading them to the hidden room.

"Damn it, that's impossible, it has to be here somewhere!" Shadow shouts in anger and kick the wall.

"Calm down you moron, maybe we were wrong and they simply put the crystals upstairs, the goblins are usually a species that's not quite smart you know, well at least not before they evolve." Wolf glances at Greenie as he say the last part of the sentence.

"You're right, maybe it's up or maybe there never was something like a hidden room to begin with, it's just me and my brain trying to hype me up for nothing. " Shadow bends his head down and says in a sad voice, looking like a kid that didn't get a present.

"Let's move up then, we lost a lot of time here." Reign starts walking up the stairs while telling them. Everyone follows him and sees that there was no door at the end of the staircase, just an open entrance.

They slowly move up before they hear a shout from behind them.

"Wait, that wooden plank there seems a bit off." Shadow yells while pointing at the wooden wall, everyone looks down and gets surprised by it, one plank really did look out of place when being viewed from a height.

Shadow goes down and stands in front of it, putting his hand on the plank he pushes a bit and smiles as he can feel almost no resistance. "This should be it right?" He smiles and looks at everyone else, they nod in agreement and he pushes the plank inside, it falls down and following it multiple more do the same, leaving an opening that was enough for one person to pass through.