Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

Simon turned around and swiftly left the scene. It took him a total of thirteen days to traverse the vast northern outlaw forest. During this period of time, he encountered many bandits and monsters that came after him. Though, all of them were swiftly disposed of by him.

After another day or two, Simon was in front of a vast field that spanned dozens of miles. To his front, in the distance, he could see a black gloomy forest that was like a dark line on the horizon and behind him on top of a mountain fortified by tall ramparts, the city of Mountmend.

He was back, after that trip that took him more than five months, he was finally back.

Simon flapped his wings, increased his speed even further and darted towards the distant forest. The moment he approached near the forest, he was alerted of a stream of foreign presence that was constantly coming and going out of the forest.

Needless to say, these foreign presences belonged to the same race. What's more, Simon could see that the majority of them were coming from the direction his dungeon was located in… i.e... the eastern region of the forest.

A little concerned, a little excited, Simon descend onto the ground, masked his appearance with the trinket, robe and hat before following the stream of humans that were diving inside the forest.

To his amazement, the line of adventurers he saw, only got bigger as he approached closer to his dungeon. And when he finally reached the location, Simon was stunned to find a small booming town around his dungeon.

Wherever he laid his eyes, he could see a steady flow of adventurers, buildings being made, line-up of wagons and so on and so forth.

Looking at the scene that lay in front of him, Simon was completely gobsmacked. The last time he had seen this place, it was not that big and could hardly be called a town. Now though, it was so large with building sprouting up everywhere, that it could hardly be recognised.

Adventurers, merchants, simple workers or ordinary people, the town had all sorts of people coming from different walks of life walking around the town. At the centre of the town lay a huge tower that had grown even more since the last time Simon had seen it.

As he walked around on the road randomly, he was approached by a few people in adventurer's garb. The leader of the group of adventurers that approached him seemed to be a person named Bolan.

He did not have any particular feature that would make one remember him nor was his presence strong enough to give a lasting impression. The word average seemed to be the perfect word to describe him.

Bolan approached him because they were looking for a person or rather an adventurer who could join them in their endeavour to the eighth floor of the dungeon.

After the adventurer's association set up a small building here, they established a set of rules and regulations that one must follow to enter the dungeon. And one of them was the necessary headcount of adventurers, or their rank to be equivalent to the standards they have set for each floor.

Since Bolan's party members were all [D] rank adventurers, they needed a total of six members to tackle the floor. However, they only had five members on their team and were looking around for someone who could fill up that last spot.

As they were a low rank party, they did not have much incentive or money to offer a strong adventurer thus seeing Simon's shady yet ordinary clothes, they thought he might be a rookie adventurer who appeared in the tower town for the first time and thus approached him.

Listening to their story, Simon fell into contemplation. Looking at them, it does not seem like they recognise him nor did they act in a way that made him suspicious. Them not recognising his face, could only mean that his face hadn't spread to this part of the land yet.

What he couldn't understand was why though? The news that the demon who was the master of the dungeon located in the ghastly winding forest should have spread every part of the kingdom by now so why weren't these adventurers able to recognise his face?

Were they two low levelled to know that or was there some other reason. No matter what it was, Simon decided that he needed to know what was going on and acquire more information about the past few months he was absent from here.

"Alright, I accept your offer," Simon said.

"Oh" Bolan who thought that he would be rejected once again, was surprised to hear the other party agree. Though the next second his eyes got clouded with doubt.

"Heh, it's good that you have agreed but are you even an adventurer?" He asked.

Simon smiled before casually taking out the provisional adventurer's card from his space ring. The card was something that he had gotten from the old man of the adventurer's association branch in the city of Mountmend.

Simon had his own motive behind handing them his adventurer's card, he wanted to try and see if this could induce ant reaction from them. Although he did get a reaction from Bolan and his team, but not the one that he was expecting of.

Bolan looked at the other party's adventurer's card and immediately made a disappointed face.

"What the hell?! Ye are a provisional adventurer? No wonder ye just readily agreed without hearing the compensation and reward. Forget what I said before, we don't have time to carry a total newbie with us".

With that said, Bolan turned around and was about to move away when one of his teammates hurriedly stopped him and started reasoning with him. Although they were whispering in a voice so that the provisional adventurer couldn't hear them, how could it escape Simon's acute senses?

"Bolan wait, I know it is extremely risky to bring a greenhorn with us but if you think about it carefully we got no one else with us and if we do not bring another person with us we might not be able to complete the commission".

"Besides bringing a greenhorn has its own advantages. We could simply give him less share of the reward in return for carrying him all the way to the eighth floor."

Hearing what his teammate has to say, Bolan made a thoughtful face and nodded his head in understanding. It was true that bringing a total greenhorn with them would be a considerable risk, but they were a team that was able to clear up till the 7th floor amidst with some difficulty themselves.

It shouldn't be too hard to bring a greenhorn with them to the 8th floor, besides just like his teammate told him, taking a greenhorn in their team had its own benefits. Thus, Bolan turned around and addressed the black robed man behind him.

"Alright, ye can come with us newbie, but ye won't be getting a cut of the loot that we gonna farm from the dungeon. Instead, ye will get a few percentage of the money we gonna get after completing the commission. Ye fine with that?".

Simon nodded his head, he did not care about the reward or the loot these people were talking about. With that out of the way, the six of them started walking towards the huge tower.

As he walked around the town, he noticed that there were many high levelled adventurers wearing different insignia that denoted their guild, walking around.

Seeing the newbie's gaze roam all across the place, Bolan smirked and explained "There is no need to be so surprised; this dungeon is pretty famous now. I'm sure you have also come here after hearing all the rumours. Haha, the Laplace's dungeon is the talk of the town now".

Bolan felt as if he was a senior who was showing the ways to his junior.

"Laplace's Dungeon?!" Although he didn't wish for it to come out loud, Simon couldn't control his volume when he heard the other party.

"What? Don't tell me ye haven't heard the name of the demon that wreaked havoc in the capital? Which boonie of a region did ye pop up from?" Bolan asked, surprised that the provisional adventurer did not even know that.

Simon gave him a random excuse and shifted the conversation. Though he would be lying if he said that he wasn't curious as to how his name became Laplace when he did not even reveal it? In the first place, it was the dungeon that he named Laplace and not the other way round. It seemed that people had mistakenly associated the name of his dungeon with himself.

"Was there always this many adventurers here?" As they approached a building which was eye-catching compared to all the other ones around it, Simon asked.

"Hmm? This village of your you mentioned, the news does not circulate there easily I believe. Well, never mind that, the town was not like this from the start. It all started three months ago when the top guild of the city of Mountmend was handed a disappointing result with them having to retreat after reaching the twentieth floor and losing a few of their members in the process."

"When the adventurer's association received a letter from them, a peculiar rumour started to spread around this part of the land. Later, the various other guilds from the surrounding regions tried their luck and further proved the fact that there really were strong entities inside guarding the dungeon. Not only that, as new floors were explored, more treasures and monsters to challenge surfaced" Bolan explained.

The six of them entered the building which was the adventurer association's newly established branch and each handed their adventurer's card.

The receptionist at the front desk checked their cards and inserted into a peculiar instrument before handing them back.