Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

"Hoh? A party made up of people other than adventurers are shouting my name huh. Do you know which floor they are on?" Simon asked with a little interest in his tone.

"About that… my lord, they are currently on floor twenty-five and have accidentally entered the hidden chambers"…

Floor twenty-five, it was a land filled with ant hills. Giant Beetle Ants as big as an elephant roamed this place. They are around levels 150-180 and live in colonies. Floor twenty-five contained eleven colonies of around 2000-3000 ants in each colony.

Usually, these monsters resided inside their hill and only came out occasionally.. however that is only if no adventurers disturbed them by entering their hill.

The veteran adventurer's party who have dived inside this dungeon and gone through this floor have many a time cautioned the other adventurers and the adventurer association to be careful around this floor since the number of the monster here was simply too much for even a guild to handle on their own, much less a small adventurers party.

The instructions that they passed down were to kill any beetle ant that they meet as soon as possible and get away from that place before its cry for help attracts the other towards it.

They especially cautioned about the queen residing within every hill… if any unfortunate adventurer party was to meet it, their only hope in surviving was to pray that it was in its egg laying phase. During that time it was weak and unable to move around much.

However, even then the elite adventurers have cautioned the others not to kill a queen since it only makes the entire beetle ant colony crazy. They will not stop until they kill the adventurers that killed their queen.

Sensing the frightfulness of the floor, the adventurer's association have put up many notices on its quest board trying to inform and spread awareness among the adventurers. They even went to great lengths as to appoint a strong guild to chart out the map of the various ant hills.

Since the stairs that led to the next floor was located in the middle of the floor, one had to pass through the ant hills to reach there. Thus a map became essentially crucial in the off possibility that they fell into one of the ant hills.

If they had the map with them, it became easier to manoeuvre out of the meandering tunnels. The map became one of the crucial life support items that an adventurer group must have if they were thinking about tackling the twenty fifth floor.

This was a common knowledge amongst the adventurers; however, there seemed to be a new rumour or news per se spreading amongst them about a mysterious chamber that was found around the middle of the floor where the stairs to the next floor was located.

It was rumoured that these mysterious chambers were full of valuable treasures and laced with traps and dangers. According to some adventurers group that have encountered the mysterious chamber and was lucky enough to survive the encounter, a strong monster guarded this place.

The chamber was a little tricky to find and up until now only a few groups of strong adventurers have managed to discover them. But the thing common among them was that all of them found the chamber accidentally while searching for the stairs that led to the next floor.

"No matter how I look at it, this place seems to be that mysterious chamber those adventurers from the association were talking about".

A woman spoke unfolding a map in front of the group. She was donned in a light leather garb and a brown robe on top. There were five people beside her with similar apparel and looking at the map intensely.

While the six of them wore a frown of consternation on their face, two people walked out from inside the tunnel. When the group saw the two people come out, they immediately turned towards them and asked "Captain did you find the stairs?".

The two people that walked out, were women. One of them was holding a staff and donning a garb just like the six people in front of her. The woman beside her who was referred to as captain, was a familiar face that Simon would instantly recognise.

She had a temptational figure, a cold stern face and the demeanour of a warrior. She had the poise of an unsheathed sword and an intense aura radiated out of her. Her short black fell on her shoulders revealing her pearly white neck, she donned a simple leather armour much like the people around her; nevertheless, the clothes weren't able to hide her alluring curves.

The woman was a head-turner through and through. If Simon was here, he would immediately recognise the woman as the Guard Captain Alvara he had met back when he was masquerading as an adventurer.

Alvara who was asked that question by her subordinates shook her head. They were searching for the stairs that led to the floor downstairs; however, while they making their way to the middle of the floor, they were suddenly spotted by the Giant Beetle Ants, after that it was just like a never ending battle with ants pouring out of the ant hill in hot pursuit of them.

Fortunately for them, they were able to escape out of that chase but during that, they found themselves accidentally deviating from the path on the map and inside this meandering tunnel full of traps and dangers.

From what they heard from the talks of the adventurer in the tower town, they could somewhat tell that the place they were in was that mysterious chamber that was the hot topic in the town. Unfortunately for them, the chamber was something that was discovered in the recent days and nobody had a map of it.

"The outside is oozing with the Giant Beetle Ants, it isn't a good idea to go out. We can only proceed forward through the tunnel and hope that it would lead us towards the stairs" Alvara stated pointing at the map.

"Ungh… it's all because of you, muscle head. If not for you attacking their queen, they wouldn't have become insane like that" the woman with the staff pursed her lips and viciously cursed at the burly man amongst the group.

"Hey I'm not an adventurer, how will I know that monster was their queen?" The burly man defended himself.

"Are you kidding me… didn't you see the size of that thing? In what world did it look like an ordinary beetle ant to you?".

The woman flared even more. She was the sole magician of this group and also someone who possessed quite a high authority in their group.

In front of such a furious assault, the burly man could only scratch his head, she was not wrong, it was indeed his fault to attack the queen first. But who would have known that the abnormally big ant he thought was just an ordinary beetle ant would turn out to be their queen.

Although the queen radiated a strong aura she was surprisingly weak for some reason. However, before she died to their group she issued out an ear piercing scream that made all the beetle ants in that colony go crazy and hunt them until the ends of the floor.

"You two stop bickering, if you have the time to fight among each other then use it to find a solution" Alvara harshly intervened.

"Hehh, I have a plan. Why don't we leave this muscle head as their dinner while we use this chance to get out of here" Everybody could only laugh dryly at those words from the woman mage.

The burly man felt his feet go cold and his back drench with sweat when he heard that.

Alvara sighed, shook her head and turned to face the interior of the tunnel. If they wanted to proceed forward, their only choice was to go through this meandering tunnel which for some reason was avoided by the ants.

'Sigh… Princess, I don't know what you see in him for you to go to such lengths but since it is your order, I will see to its completion no matter what' Alvara mused in her heart. She clapped her hands stopping the conflict between the two and declared with a cold voice that told others that she wouldn't take any more of this fooling around attitude.

"Alright you all, we had enough rest, Let's proceed forward and see what lies ahead" she declared.

The group nodded their head and cautiously advanced forward. There was an experienced person with a [Hunter] class with them, thus it was not too troublesome for them to disarm and avoid the many traps that lay in wait for them.

The group of eight continued forward like this for a while, from how synergically they worked together with each other and from their strength, it could be seen that it was not their first time working together.

Each of them knew what their role was and they worked together in a good overall team balance. It could be said that the traps on this tunnel were nothing for this group of people. However, they still proceeded with caution indicating that they were quite experienced too.

Of course, while they proceeded forward they did not forget to call out the name of the person they came all the way here to search for.

"Captain, isn't it time that you tell us who this person is?" the woman with the staff asked.

The question that she asked was on everyone's mind, they too wanted to know who this person they came all the way here from the capital to search for was.

"You will find out once you see him. For now just keep on proceeding" Alvara spoke sternly.