Dungeon Odyssey [EN]: Chapter 66

Dungeon Journal – 66

# 66

Dungeon Journal

Chapter 67

“They’ve forgotten the history of humiliation and are competitively buying up things from the surface, committing atrocities.”

“Like what, for example?”

As Kim Jin-woo showed interest, Balzac, without much thought, excitedly began to rattle off examples.

The things he mentioned were mostly junk. It was almost absurd that they were weakening the dungeon’s power by paying exorbitant prices for such items.

However, Kim Jin-woo’s eyes lit up instead.

Unlike the others, Kim Jin-woo was a being from the surface. He could buy surface items as much as he wanted.

He started seeing money in his head.

“Hmm…”

Balzac, who had been talking for a while, quickly shut his mouth when he noticed that Kim Jin-woo was lost in thought and not paying attention to him.

“Good, very good.”

Balzac, not knowing what was good, nodded along to his mumbling.

***

“Are you ready?”

At the black merchant’s words, Kim Jin-woo nodded and turned around.

After leaving a few words of caution to Dominique and a few others who came to see him off, he followed the black merchant out of the dungeon.

“Ahem. I remind you again, you must not open your mouth during the journey.”

“From now on?”

“The 9th floor is fine. However, you must be extremely careful from the moment you enter the 10th floor.”

“Still a long way to go.”

The black merchant shook his head at him, who was leisurely stretching his back.

“It’s not far.”

With those words, the black merchant took out an old piece of parchment from his pocket and tore it in half. Then, a portal appeared before their eyes.

“Let’s go.”

Following the black merchant, the procession filed through the portal. Kim Jin-woo, who had been staring at the other side of the portal for a moment, soon followed them through.

“Welcome to the 10th floor, ruled by the Barons and Viscounts of the Underworld.”

Having entered just a step ahead, the black merchant spread his short arms and gave a somewhat formal greeting.

“From here on, the Baron is merely a mercenary escorting the trade, and you should not expect any special favors from me. I, too, will treat the Baron as a mere mercenary, so I hope you understand.”

Kim Jin-woo, already prepared for this, nodded briefly. At this moment, he was lost in thought, looking at the door to the collapsed space behind him rather than the black merchant’s words.

He belatedly realized why the black merchant could travel around this vast underworld, claiming it was small.

If they could use portals to travel between floors like this, they could drastically reduce the time and effort spent on trading.

Moreover, he felt strange looking at the portal that disappeared immediately without any waiting time.

Unlike his own portal, which had a restriction of being open for 24 hours once opened, the black merchant’s portal was truly an all-weather, all-purpose door.

“Just so you know, this portal scroll is not for sale, even for a billion gold. So, you can stare all you want, but it’s not happening.”

The black merchant, as if to show off, shook the torn pieces of the scroll from his hand and turned around.

“Find the way! We’re heading to Baron Horace’s dungeon first!”

Whether he had enough trading experience or not, the mercenaries and workers were perfectly in sync. At the black merchant’s incongruous command, a few of the mercenaries who seemed agile stepped forward to gauge the path and scout the surroundings.

“Unlike the 9th floor, there are no creatures on the 10th floor that run wild barbarically without reason.”

When did he threaten not to expect any special favors? The black merchant was quite kind, explaining the situation on the 10th floor in detail.

“Instead, there are groups of bandits who do not recognize the authority of the nobles, so it is just as dangerous. Our Black Merchant’s trade is quite a good prey for them.”

His face became complicated under the deeply pulled hood as the black merchant seemed to be giving him a tour of the 10th floor, as if he had planned it from the start.

He had felt it before, but the Black Merchant was pushing him too much. The attitude of accepting his unreasonable demands every time they traded, and even if there was a secret agreement with Anatolius, it was too much.

It was the same now. The black merchant was slowly turning around, as if giving him directions, engraving the map of the 10th floor in his head.

“I heard that those who commit atrocities against the merchants of the Black Merchant receive fitting punishment. Even if it’s the owner of the dungeon. What’s the reason for leaving the mere bandits alone?”

Since the previous requests had become meaningless anyway, Kim Jin-woo asked in a low whisper. As expected, the black merchant answered quite kindly.

“Unlike dungeons that stay in one place, bandits don’t have a fixed residence.”

“So, you just get robbed?”

The black merchant did not answer this time. It was because one of the mercenaries at the front raised his hand.

The mercenary, raising his clenched right fist for everyone to see, then took out three fingers and wiggled them back and forth.

The formation became somehow bustling at the sight of that gesture.

“You asked earlier if the Black Merchant just gets robbed by the bandits?”

The black merchant’s eyes were smiling as he said that.

“Absolutely not.”

His appearance looked so different from the black merchant he had seen before that Kim Jin-woo frowned.

“We chose to annihilate them as soon as we see them rather than making them pay a fair price later…”

The creatures that came as escort mercenaries all threw off their hoods and rushed forward.

“…”

“Rather, we chose to annihilate them as soon as we see them.”

Before the black merchant’s words were even finished, screams and cries erupted from the front.

[A battle has begun.]

[The bandits of the 10th floor, who targeted the black merchant’s procession, and the Black Merchant’s mercenaries have begun to fight.]

“It could be a diversion, so the remaining ones should maintain the formation and pay special attention to the surrounding area.”

At the cold command, the escort mercenaries nodded silently.

***

“I’ve shown the Baron an unsightly sight from the very first day of the trade. I’m sorry if I’ve only made your eyes dizzy.”

At the black merchant’s brazen words, Kim Jin-woo waved his hand with a complicated expression.

The Black Merchant’s mercenaries were strong. In less than half an hour, they had slaughtered all the bandits ambushing them in the front, and there were as many as five hero-level mercenaries who revealed their power in the process.

It was an excessively strong force to be possessed by a mere merchant on a trade, so Kim Jin-woo inwardly adjusted the power of the Black Merchant upward in his mind.

“It seems that our trade route has been exposed. The fact that they were ambushing so close to the moving point means that information has been leaked.”

The black merchant, who had been talking about security before coming, was not hesitant in his remarks even with Kim Jin-woo present.

“I’ll report this to the higher-ups when I get back and have the waypoints re-established. I can’t even walk around in fear.”

The black merchant’s face, as if he were the heroine of a tragic story, was filled with fear, and the mercenaries were splitting the bandits’ bodies to extract Down Jem [a type of magical energy source], which was terribly incongruous.

“It seems like this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

“Well, since we carry items that even the nobles are interested in, we’re bound to be targeted.”

“No, not that. I’m talking about the mercenaries.”

The black merchant tilted his head innocently, as if he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“No one opened their mouths. There were no common shouts, and they didn’t give each other instructions. But despite that, they’re very efficient.”

The image of the mercenaries silently slaughtering the bandits was still in his eyes, so when he spoke like that, the black merchant shook his head.

“Oh, no. They’re just guys I picked out, but they’re all freeloaders who can’t even earn their keep. We were lucky this time to meet some weaklings, but who knows what will happen next time.”

Even as he said that, he was sending subtle glances, as if subtly showing off the power of the Black Merchant.

There was nothing more to be gained from talking, so Kim Jin-woo began to observe the mercenaries instead of talking to the black merchant.

The fact that he was quite familiar with the mercenaries who had put their hoods back on after the battle meant that they were the ones the black merchant had been bringing with him all along, visiting his dungeon countless times.

*I need to be a little more careful.*

Kim Jin-woo had been meeting the black merchant’s procession on the outskirts of the dungeon, being careful in his own way, but after seeing the power of the mercenaries, he realized that he needed to be even more careful in the future.

Even if he had the power to somehow stop them now, he belatedly realized how reckless he had been in the past.

If it were the Nagas [a race of serpent-like beings] before the war with the Kyorong King, they could have been massacred by them alone.

“Baron Horace is one of the more moderate ones on the 10th floor.”

Seeing that Kim Jin-woo’s eyes had changed and he had become silent, the black merchant spoke first this time.

“Thanks to his abundant wealth and his personality, many people in our Black Merchant want to trade with Baron Horace, but I was in charge of the trade this time. It’s all thanks to the Baron [referring to Kim Jin-woo].”

Perhaps he had chosen Horace, a man named Baron Horace, after carefully selecting the trade route at Kim Jin-woo’s request.

“We were lucky, but it’s the virtue of our merchants to turn that luck into results. I will definitely make Baron Horace my regular customer through this deal.”

The black merchant excitedly rattled on, even revealing his ambitions that no one had asked about.

He didn’t understand why he had told him to save his words in the first place, but anyway, he was able to get a lot of information from the black merchant’s story.

Baron Horace was a noble with moderate power even on the 10th floor.

Thanks to the dungeon located in a place with abundant Down Jem deposits, he was an old noble who had raised a strong army with ample finances, and his relationship with the owners of the surrounding dungeons was not bad, so he would continue to maintain his position as it is.

“Ah, from here on, it’s Baron Horace’s territory. The territory is a little further away, but you should be careful with your words and actions from here on.”

He was speechless that the person who had been talking so excitedly until now was saying that, but Kim Jin-woo didn’t raise any objections.

[The Parasite’s senses have detected something.]

It was because he saw the numerous messages appearing before his eyes.

Pretending to adjust his posture, he looked around. Darkness was unnaturally gathered in various places in the passage, which was twice as wide as the 9th floor.

It was such a small sense of incongruity that even he would have overlooked it if it weren’t for the Parasite’s warning. But soon, as he began to pay attention, he began to see many things.

There were at least ten or more eyes watching the trade. Those who were following and monitoring so secretly that even the hero-level escort mercenaries could not notice them were certainly Horace’s subordinates.

“There’s someone here to greet us. Drop your weapons and bow your heads.”

At the black merchant’s words, the escort mercenaries all bowed their heads. There were people approaching them from beyond the passage.