Monster Company Tycoon Chapter 11

Chapter 11

 

The dungeon’s first opening, and its first successful defense.

For the monsters, who had always been beaten up by challengers, this must have been an incredibly precious victory.

“We wonnn!”

“Woooaaah!”

They all embraced one another and jumped up and down, celebrating their success as one.

In that situation… I couldn’t exactly pour cold water over their excitement by pointing out that their opponents had only been two little children.

As soon as I confirmed on the monitor that the children had collapsed, I headed to the first floor.

“What are we supposed to do with unconscious challengers?”

I hurriedly checked the children’s condition, and thankfully, neither seemed to have suffered any serious injuries.

“Obviously, we take anything worth money!”

Brownie said this in a proud voice, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d heard her correctly.

“What…? Isn’t that basically robbery?”

“It’s their own fault for bringing good stuff into a dungeon!”

What if they sued us or something? Ah, wait. This wasn’t the world I used to live in, so maybe that sort of thing didn’t happen here…

“Besides, there’s an unspoken rule that if you get knocked out, you get completely looted. All adventurers know that. They turn out our pockets when they defeat monsters, too, so why shouldn’t we do the same? Some of those bastards even strip us down to our underwear! They’re absolutely vicious!”

The monsters, who’d been celebrating their victory moments earlier, approached me with tears in their eyes. I hurriedly took off my glasses, hooked them into my pocket, and welcomed them.

“Manager, thank you. Thanks to you, I’ve finally experienced what it’s like to win.”

The goblin, who’d done its best to act like a cruel monster against the children, wiped away the tears streaming down its face with its arm.

So winning, no matter who the opponent was, really made it that happy… Just how many times had it been defeated before this…?

For a moment, a wave of sympathy washed over me, and my heart ached with pity.

But then…

“Come on! Hurry up and loot them! Search every last corner! We can fill the reward room, too!”

Brownie’s shout instantly cooled my sympathy.

“The reward room, ah…!”

The reward room was supposed to be a decoy built to protect the holy relic.

At present, it was completely useless, with nothing but dust rolling around inside. It didn’t even have any rewards.

So this was another way to fill it up temporarily… by looting unconscious adventurers.

“Or we could give the loot to the ones who worked hard as their spoils of war.”

“Oh, I see…?”

The only monster wearing anything that could be called equipment was one of the skeletons.

If I identified them using codes based on their interview order, it would be Skeleton 1.

When I’d asked whether they had any names I could call them by, they’d all been horrified.

Apparently, monsters could receive names from the God of Demons once they became high-ranking monsters.

So every monster here was simply Low-Ranking Goblin 1, 2, 3… or Skeleton 1, 2, 3…

In any case, providing the monsters with decent equipment would cost money, too. With labor costs already becoming a fixed expense, buying equipment for every single employee was a luxury we couldn’t afford.

Brownie had even tried to talk me out of it. They were weak monsters anyway, she argued, so what difference would giving them equipment make?

What a heartless, merciless little fairy.

“Let’s see what we can take…”

Trying to soothe my nagging conscience, I first collected the weapons the children had been carrying.

Two crude wooden swords, worn smooth from repeated handling.

No matter how I looked at them, they weren’t suitable items to place in a reward room, so I gave them to the skeletons as spoils of war.

Even after receiving such terrible weapons, the skeletons were so delighted that they danced around joyfully.

I couldn’t bring myself to touch the leather plates the children had tied around their bodies in place of armor, so I was just about to sneak a hand into one of their pockets when…

Zap.

I felt a sharp static shock at my fingertip, along with the sensation of something blocking my hand.

“Ow…”

“The holy relic is warning you. If you keep provoking it, the curse will be lifted, and the challengers might wake up.”

Brownie spoke with unmistakable disappointment in her voice.

“What? You were just talking as if we could strip them of absolutely everything!”

“If we had a monster with a looting certification, we could’ve cleaned them out completely. They know how to loot an adventurer’s belongings stealthily and quickly while causing as little disturbance as possible. They even know all the best places to hide expensive items. What a shame. I thought we might at least get a potion out of this.”

Looting was a term used in games to describe the act of taking items from a defeated target.

“They even have a certification for that…?”

I’d thought it was the most basic thing in the world, but apparently, you needed a qualification for it.

“The holy relic’s power is too weak. For now, it looks like you’re limited to looting once if you want to do it yourself.”

“Just once?!”

If I’d known that earlier, I would’ve searched their pockets first instead of taking those pathetic swords! I might’ve gotten a coin or something… Wait, what? How could I think something so despicable, like a petty thief?!

I’d become a nasty adult who was seriously considering robbing little children!

I let out a silent sigh.

“Manager, we’ll carry the challengers we’ve finished looting to the respawn room.”

The low-ranking goblins carefully picked up the children.

The respawn room was a separate space next to the lobby where unconscious challengers woke up.

According to the rules, monsters weren’t allowed to set foot inside the lobby while challengers were in the dungeon. But that didn’t mean they could just leave incapacitated challengers lying around indefinitely, either.

So, without passing through the lobby itself, they used a secret passage connected to the respawn room to transport unconscious challengers there. Once the challengers woke up, they could leave directly through the lobby.

Perhaps because the monsters had experience working in instant dungeons, they knew the dungeon’s layout better than I did. They’d naturally volunteered to carry the children there without needing any instructions from me.

“What if the children realize we’ve taken their wooden swords and come back to attack us…?”

“They can’t return to the dungeon until the holy relic’s curse wears off.”

“Oh…”

So there was a penalty that prevented reentry for a certain period of time?

“They shouldn’t be trying to challenge the dungeon again while they’re injured. It’s basically a system designed to protect adventurers. On the other hand, it also means that there’s no point in looting the same people twice, so they should go outside, fill their pockets again, and come back later.”

The dungeon really was run according to a well-organized system…

The goblins carried the children to the respawn room, and the children slept on the cold floor until they came to their senses. Fortunately, they woke up before the cold could leave their mouths crooked and then left the dungeon.

Their drooping shoulders were truly pitiful to look at.

They seemed to have come to the dungeon with some grand ambition, but this newly opened dungeon had crushed their dreams before they’d even gotten started.

After all the visitors had left, the monsters fetched some old cleaning tools without being told to and began tidying up after the battle.

Judging by how familiar they were with the work, it seemed like something they’d done many times before.

“Scrub that spot properly! It’ll stink if the blood dries! Cleanliness comes first! Cleanliness comes second! Do you want to live in a filthy dungeon?!”

“Yes! Understood!”

Incidentally, all the old cleaning tools had apparently been picked up by Brownie from a garbage dump and brought here. Their condition was terrible, so they weren’t particularly effective.

“Fill in any dents! It’ll be a disaster if something causes problems during your next battle!”

“Absolutely! You’re completely right!”

As I watched Brownie hound the monsters while they cleaned, I fell into thought.

This battle has been a great opportunity to examine the dungeon’s systems from beginning to end.

Although our opponents had been so weak that I hadn’t been able to gather much data about combat itself, there was a world of difference between merely hearing about how a dungeon operated and seeing it with my own eyes.

When a challenger entered the dungeon, they fought the monsters. Once their fear reached its peak and they lost, the holy relic’s curse activated immediately, causing them to lose consciousness.

During that interval, we collected spoils from the fallen challenger, but only to the extent that we wouldn’t lift the curse, and then transported them to the respawn room in the lobby.

Since the awakened challengers couldn’t challenge the dungeon again until the holy relic’s curse wore off, they had no choice but to leave and return another time.

Once we have more employees, we’ll need to divide them into departments and manage everything in greater detail. There’s no guarantee every battle will be as leisurely as today’s.

Aside from a combat team responsible for fighting, it’d be good to have a facilities team that specializes in shaping the dungeon environment, such as setting up traps.

Come to think of it, the slime already belonged in the facilities team.

We’d also need a support team to handle things after battles ended.

A recovery team to collect spoils and transport challengers, a cleaning team to clean and repair the dungeon after battles left it in a mess, and so on…

If we divided the work into departments and operated them like an actual company, it’d be easier to manage everything and run the dungeon more efficiently.

“We don’t have enough employees to divide them into departments yet, so one person will have to handle several people’s jobs… Everyone’s going to have to work a little harder.”

Just like I used to, back when I had to handle everything by myself: HR, accounting, general administration, cleaning, preparing lunch, washing the dishes, doing the CEO’s son’s homework for him…

It seemed to be getting further and further removed from actual company work, but anyway, I really had been responsible for all of it.