Danmachi: The Focalors Familia — Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Dungeon

After finally escaping Eina’s endless stream of anxious warnings, Noah and Robin arrived at the very center of Orario. Towering above them was the magnificent white giant—Babel.

This was the gateway to the Dungeon.

A sea of people moved through the massive plaza at the base of the tower. Adventurers gathered in tight circles, assembling their parties or running final checks on their armor and weapons. The atmosphere hung heavy with a tense, disciplined focus. At the main entrance, several Guild staff members stood post, managing the flow of traffic. The verification process was strictly efficient; a simple flash of their official Adventurer ID cards granted them passage.

Following the surging crowd, the two stepped into the cavernous interior of Babel.

Before them lay a spiral staircase wide enough to swallow thousands of people at once, plunging straight down into the deep underground. This was the Path of Origin, the Dungeon’s Level 0—an absolute safe zone where the stone remained quiet and monsters never spawned. As they descended, the air shifted, growing cool and heavy with moisture, while the bright surface light gradually surrendered to the gloom.

The moment their boots left the final step and touched the soil of the first floor, a completely alien world unfolded around them.

This was Dungeon Level 1, a sprawling network of shallow caves. The rocky ground beneath their feet was jagged and uneven. Patches of glowing moss clung to the rough walls, serving as the only source of illumination and casting long, distorted shadows across the dim space.

Without warning, a searing heat flared across Noah’s back.

He recognized the sensation instantly. 【The Abyss That Gazes Back】 had just triggered.

“Robin, stay sharp,” Noah murmured, his right hand already resting on his hilt. He drew his longsword with a slow, silent grace.

Robin understood the shift in his tone. She raised her staff, the embedded magic stone at its tip shimmering to life, primed to channel a spell at a fraction of a second’s notice.

They pressed deeper into the tunnels. The surrounding parties of Adventurers began to branch off into different corridors, and soon, the echoing footsteps of others faded completely. They were alone in the dim light.

A sudden crash shattered the quiet. The rock wall to their left burst open, raining debris across the path as a short, dark-green Goblin shrieked and lunged forward, wildly brandishing a rusted blade.

Facing the most basic of Dungeon fodder, Noah felt absolutely nothing.

He simply stepped into the creature’s guard. His longsword carved a crisp, blinding silver arc through the gloom, biting cleanly through the Goblin’s neck. Black blood sprayed across the stone. The monster managed a single, choked gargle before collapsing. With a hollow pop, its physical form dissolved into a cloud of dark ash, leaving behind a magic stone the size of a fingernail.

Robin stepped forward, scooped up the tiny crystal, and examined its dull luster for a moment before dropping it into her pack. Since they had not hired a dedicated supporter, she had calmly taken over the task of managing their loot.

They advanced steadily, dispatching several more Goblins with the same ruthless efficiency. The rhythm of the Dungeon seemed entirely predictable.

Then, the expected anomaly finally reared its head.

The ground ahead of them shuddered violently. The stone cracked open, and a creature that had no right to exist on the upper floors dragged itself out from the subterranean dirt. It was a gelatinous sphere roughly the size of a human head, its entire body radiating a furious, fiery red.

“A Fire Slime…”

Noah’s eyes narrowed. He instantly pulled the creature’s identity from his distant memories.

His stance shifted, and he moved with blinding speed. His longsword left a metallic afterimage in the dim air, slicing horizontally straight through the Slime’s core and drawing out a thick spray of glowing, viscous liquid.

But a second later, both Noah and Robin froze.

That strike, which possessed enough kinetic force to cleave a Goblin in half, had merely left a deep, glowing gash across the Fire Slime’s surface. Worse, the wound was already writhing. The gelatinous mass knit itself back together, completely erasing the damage in under two seconds.

Before Noah could reset his stance, the Fire Slime violently compressed its body. It launched itself off the stone like a cannonball, hurtling toward him on a wave of scorching heat.

Noah twisted his torso, dodging the blazing impact by a hair’s breadth. Using the momentum of his evasion, he delivered a brutal backhand strike with the flat of his blade, swatting the creature out of the air and sending it crashing into the far wall.

“Noah, your sword!” Robin’s voice cut through the hiss of the monster.

Noah glanced down. The steel blade of his longsword, right where it had made contact with the Slime, was glowing a terrifying cherry-red. The metal looked as though it had just been pulled from a blacksmith’s forge, radiating a blistering heat that threatened to warp the edge.

He looked back at the Fire Slime, which had already bounced back to its original shape, and frowned.

Physical strikes were heavily mitigated by its gelatinous structure, and its internal temperature was high enough to rapidly degrade standard weaponry. For a rookie Adventurer armed with basic Guild-issue gear, a monster that destroyed weapons on contact was a death sentence.

While he calculated his next move, the Fire Slime abruptly stopped moving. Its surface rippled, and it opened a hollow cavity that served as a mouth, aggressively spitting a fist-sized sphere of concentrated fire directly at Noah’s chest.

“Reverberation!”

Robin’s reaction was instantaneous. She leveled her staff at the creature, her voice ringing out with cold authority. An invisible, ear-piercing wave of acoustic force tore through the cavern, slamming directly into the fireball mid-flight.

The projectile destabilized and detonated prematurely, washing the tunnel in a brilliant, harmless shower of sparks.

A dry sigh escaped Noah’s lips.

It even possessed ranged magic? This wasn’t just an unfriendly encounter; this was a complete rookie killer. What fresh Level 1 Adventurer, stepping into the Dungeon for the very first time, could possibly survive a regenerating, weapon-melting monster that hurled fireballs?

Still, no matter how bizarre the creature was, it had been spawned by the Dungeon. That meant it was bound by the Dungeon’s absolute law: its core was a magic stone. If the stone shattered, the monster would die.

Noah abandoned his hesitation. He kicked off the ground with explosive force, his body shooting forward like a loosed arrow.

This time, he didn’t aim for a single, decisive execution. Instead, his longsword blurred into a relentless flurry of strikes, raining down on the Fire Slime in a continuous storm of silver light. The kinetic impacts hit faster than the creature could mend. Under the overwhelming barrage, the gelatinous body finally gave way, violently bursting into several scattered pieces.

A magic stone pulsing with a deep red glow clattered against the rock.

The severed chunks of slime resting on the ground finally stopped twitching, unable to heal.

‘As long as the burst damage is high enough, it can’t regenerate,’ Noah concluded, lowering his weapon. He had deliberately avoided striking the core. Destroying the magic stone meant forfeiting the loot, a desperate measure he would only use if his life depended on it.

He walked over and collected the spoils. The magic stone was significantly larger than the ones dropped by the Goblins, and beside it lay a clump of thick, fiery-red condensate that still radiated a gentle warmth.

“Is this the anomaly your skill dragged up?” Robin asked, walking to his side. A rare trace of solemnity touched her elegant features. “It is vastly more dangerous than a Goblin.”

She had memorized the Guild data Eina had provided. A creature like a Fire Slime simply did not exist in the shallow floors., any monster capable of casting elemental magic should have been at least a Hellhound from the middle levels. While this Slime lacked a Hellhound’s raw destructive power, its mechanical complexity was more than enough to slaughter an unprepared novice.

Just then, a chorus of distant, panicked screams echoed down the tunnels. The heavy, muffled thuds of fireball explosions drifted through the dark passages from far away.

Noah and Robin exchanged a quiet look. A wry, knowing tension passed between them.

It was glaringly obvious now. The lethal surprise triggered by 【The Abyss That Gazes Back】 wasn’t isolated to their immediate vicinity. The entire first floor of the Dungeon was currently being forced to endure a brutal, unscripted trial that never should have existed.