Monster Company Tycoon Chapter 10

Chapter 10

 

At last, daybreak arrived.

The ten newly hired employees had spent the entire night practicing combat, and they were now fully prepared to welcome their challengers.

Their enthusiasm was remarkable, considering I couldn’t even afford to pay them overtime.

It suddenly occurred to me that we needed a training facility inside the dungeon.

Of course, there were still plenty of other facilities we needed to set up first…

For now, I resolved that if we could handle this first challenger successfully, I’d immediately start preparing spaces for the new employees.

“I’m so nervous.”

I hadn’t been able to sleep much throughout the night, either.

If things went wrong, our dungeon could be conquered by its very first challenger and be finished before it even got started.

Brownie and I hid near the entrance together, waiting for the challenger to appear.

Please let it be someone incredibly weak. Please let it be a beginner adventurer who’s only just started out!

How much time had passed? Just as I was beginning to grow tired of waiting, I heard the sound of people chatting in the distance.

“This time, I’m definitely going to get my parents’ permission!”

“Are you sure we’ll be okay? We haven’t even finished our basic swordsmanship training yet.”

Two different voices!

The moment I realized there were two challengers instead of one, I felt dizzy with worry. But there was still hope.

They just both need to be weak!

As the two people approached, their figures gradually became clearer.

And when I finally saw them up close…

“What? They’re children!”

I was self-conscious about my own small stature, so I tried not to judge people by their appearance. But no matter how I looked at them, they were definitely kids.

At most, they looked like middle schoolers.

“Humans can become adventurers once they’ve lived for thirteen years.”

Brownie said this as though it were nothing unusual.

“Thirteen? That’s way too young! Kids that young actually… go around beating up monsters and stuff?”

In my world, thirteen-year-olds were supposed to be going to cram school and playing games at PC bangs…

“There are adventurers who’ve made their mark in high-ranking dungeons at sixteen. Give kids like those three years, and they’ll be shaking down passing monsters for pocket money.”

“Even so…”

“Isn’t this actually a good thing? No matter how weak our new hires are, do you really think they’d lose to kids like those? Just look at the way they’re holding their swords. It’s completely sloppy.”

Brownie chattered excitedly.

But my conscience wouldn’t let me leave things alone.

What if the children got seriously injured in the dungeon? What if they even lost their lives…?

No matter how desperate my own situation was, I didn’t want to do anything cruel to children.

“Brownie, I don’t think we should do this.”

“What? Are you seriously worried that the monsters in a dungeon might take an adventurer’s life?”

“Of course I am. I’m human, too. How could I just stand by and let something happen to children who are the same species as me?”

“You have a huge misunderstanding about dungeons!”

Brownie scolded me in an incredulous voice.

“Th-then that’s not how it works?”

“Of course not! If adventurers die, that’s a loss for the dungeon! We need them to challenge the dungeon again and again if we want to make money.”

Now that she put it that way, she had a point. If the number of adventurers dwindled, the dungeon wouldn’t be able to make as much money.

The Demon King gained power from the fear extracted from adventurers, while the dungeon operated on the money adventurers deposited into the prayer box.

“Then… what are the conditions for a challenger to fail to conquer a dungeon?”

“When the challenger experiences such overwhelming fear that they think they might die. At that point, the holy relic can place a curse on them that makes them lose consciousness and become incapable of acting. That’s the signal for us to kick them out because there’s no more fear left for us to extract from them.”

No matter what happened, we had to stop challengers from reaching the deepest part of the dungeon.

The reason was that we had to protect the holy relic.

On the first day of my contract, Brownie had explained the “holy relic” stored deep inside the dungeon.

“The holy relic is the very core that keeps a dungeon running! It’s an incredibly, incredibly important object that extracts fear from adventurers and bestows the God of Demons’ blessing upon the dungeon.”

To have a dungeon completely “conquered” meant that an adventurer had taken the holy relic, leaving the dungeon unable to function as a dungeon anymore.

Usually, to prevent this, dungeons built a reward room right in front of the holy relic’s actual location as a decoy. That way, adventurers could obtain a suitable reward, feel satisfied, and return home without going any further.

But we hadn’t even managed to build a reward room yet… so we had to stop this first challenger somehow.

“Of course, getting hurt during combat can’t be helped. But a dungeon never lets things go as far as injuries that leave someone permanently incapacitated or even death. We need them to recover and come back for another challenge!”

In other words, injuries were only permitted if the adventurer could make a full recovery with treatment.

Even so, I still wasn’t comfortable with it…

“Ooh! They’re coming, they’re coming!”

Brownie bounced up and down on top of my head, pointing outside.

While we’d been talking, the children had already reached the dungeon entrance.

“I had no idea there was a dungeon near our village.”

“I discovered it by accident while gathering herbs. Maybe I’m the first person to find it!”

“Wow… But doesn’t it look kind of… creepy? Can we really do this?”

“How long are we going to keep practicing vertical slashes until our arms cramp up? If we clear a dungeon and return home with our heads held high, our master will have no choice but to acknowledge us. Then he’ll let us set out on an adventure!”

“Wait! Aren’t we going to pray before challenging the dungeon?”

“I already did that yesterday. If I carried the money around in my pocket, they’d catch me skimming the money I was supposed to use for errands, so I just put it straight into the prayer box.”

The children seemed to have prepared quite thoroughly for their dungeon challenge. They carried well-worn wooden swords and wore what they called armor: leather plates attached to the front and back of their bodies and tied together with cords.

They were exactly the beginner adventurers I’d been hoping for, yet I still couldn’t shake my uneasiness.

“Where are you going?”

“To tell the monsters to go easy on them.”

“Why bother? We should show them the harsh realities of life!”

“As you said, we need to go easy on them so they won’t get discouraged and give up after this one challenge.”

“Oh! So you’ve thought everything through!”

I hurried toward the first floor, where the monsters were waiting.

I sat in my private office, monitoring the dungeon’s situation through the status screen.

It was a kind of administrator-only privilege that allowed me to observe every corner of the dungeon in detail, powered by the holy relic.

A short while later, I saw the little challengers enter the first floor, their legs trembling.

“I can see the children’s attack and defense stats.”

Strangely enough, the challengers’ combat stats were displayed on the monitor.

Both were level 2, with attack power of 50 and defense of 10. Their combat abilities were nowhere near those of our monsters.

They have absolutely no chance of winning.

Brownie, who was watching alongside me, spoke up.

“At our current level, we can only see the information of challengers below level 10. If you want to see information about anyone stronger than that, we’ll need to upgrade the holy relic.”

“It’d be a real disaster if a high-level adventurer showed up…”

After adventurers passed through the entrance, the dungeon provided a lobby where they could make some final preparations for battle.

The lobby was a safe point, so to speak, where monsters weren’t supposed to enter. It was practically an unwritten rule.

“Monsters will appear when they open that door.”

“I’m scared…”

At last, the dungeon’s first challengers opened the door, and, just as we’d practiced, a low-ranking goblin leaped out with a roar to intimidate them.

“Waaaaah! It’s a goblin!”

“Kiheheh! You tender-skinned humans have come here without even knowing fear!”

Despite those chilling words… that goblin was actually a vegetarian.

“Um, does the dungeon provide lunch, by any chance?”

“Uh… no. Our dungeon is still lacking quite a bit in terms of employee benefits…”

“Ah, I see. I’m a vegetarian, so I thought I’d ask just in case. O-of course! I can work hard even without meals being provided!”

To draw out the challengers’ fear, the monsters needed to behave as cruelly as possible.

One of the children who’d come along fell flat on their bottom, but the other immediately raised their wooden sword and stepped in front of their friend.

“I’ll take you on!”

Their hands were trembling, but they were pretty brave.

“Hyah!”

The little adventurer’s attack looked clumsy, but it was surprisingly well executed.

“Theon!”

So that brave child’s name is Theon.

The goblin didn’t have any equipment yet, so it had to take the attacks barehanded. Fortunately, the children’s attack power was so low that they barely inflicted any damage.

The goblin merely wore an expression that suggested the hits stung a little. Even so, the monsters were faithfully carrying out my request to play along without going too far.

“You’re pretty good for a little brat! But can you block this attack, too!? Rattle, rattle.”

“Gasp! It looks like it’s about to use an incredible technique! Theon, dodge!”

“I won’t run away!”

“Take this! My ultimate technique: THE REALLY HARD SWING!”

The more cornered the children became, the more a red aura began to rise from their bodies. That was probably what the dungeon’s absorbed “fear” looked like when visualized.

After being tossed around by the monsters like that, the children’s fear eventually reached its limit, and they fainted.