As the slaughter continued, Dio’s movements grew smoother and his reactions sharper.
At first, he had cautiously watched every goblin, studied the path of its attack, and waited for the best moment to strike.
It was the careful tension of a beginner, with every movement performed consciously and deliberately.
By the time he killed his twentieth or so goblin, however, something began to change.
His body seemed to react before his mind could catch up.
Before he had decided how to dodge, his feet were already carrying him out of danger.
Before he chose where to strike, his wrist had adjusted the angle of his blade on its own.
It was a strange sensation, almost as though something dormant inside him was slowly awakening.
By the time his kill count approached fifty, Dio had stopped thinking altogether.
He no longer needed to consciously judge how a goblin would attack.
The instant one raised its club, he already knew where the blow would land.
The moment it bared its teeth and shrieked, he could tell which direction it intended to lunge.
Every attack became painfully obvious.
It was as though the goblins had been slowed down several times over, leaving every movement exposed to his senses.
Before long, he even began to feel bored.
‘So this is what happens once you’ve killed enough of them.’
Dio had always imagined fighting monsters would be tense and thrilling, with every battle setting his heart racing and flooding his body with adrenaline.
In reality, when his opponents were nothing but low-level goblins, combat soon became a repetitive chore.
Charge forward.
Evade the attack.
Drive the sword into a vital point.
Pull it free.
Step back.
Pick up the magic stone.
Find the next goblin.
The process never changed.
The first and second floors of the Dungeon were filled with twisting, interconnected passages.
Some corridors were broad enough for more than a dozen people to walk side by side, while others were so narrow that a single person could barely squeeze through sideways.
Dio followed the wider main passages, occasionally turning into quieter side tunnels where he invariably found lone goblins or small groups of them.
The goblins on the first floor were noticeably weaker than those on the second.
They were smaller, slower to react, and rarely appeared in groups larger than two or three.
On the second floor, the goblins were slightly larger, and their skin had darkened from pale green to a deeper shade.
Their crude wooden clubs had been replaced by heavier stone weapons, and they were considerably more aggressive.
Rather than hesitating when they saw an adventurer, they immediately charged with savage cries.
Some even attempted to sneak up from behind.
For Dio, however, those differences caused no real difficulty.
He continued clearing the floors one passage at a time, moving from the first floor to the second, then returning from the second to the first before repeating the same route again.
Whenever he found a goblin, he killed it.
Once it was dead, he moved on.
When he reached another area and encountered more goblins, he killed those as well.
The Dungeon’s first two floors became an endless hunting ground, and Dio was the tireless hunter roaming through it.
He had no idea how long he continued.
Only when intense exhaustion and hunger finally broke through the mechanical rhythm of the slaughter did he snap back to his senses.
Dio raised his wrist and checked the digital watch he had brought from his own world.
4:23 p.m.
He stared at it for a moment before sucking in a sharp breath.
He had entered the Dungeon shortly after eight that morning.
That meant he had spent almost eight straight hours killing goblins in these dark, damp tunnels.
“What the hell?
It’s already that late?”
Dio shook out his aching arm.
Only now did he become fully aware of the soreness spreading through his shoulders and back from hours of gripping and swinging a sword.
His stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he had completely missed lunch.
The hunger he had ignored until now surged over him all at once.
“No, I need to get back.
If I stay any longer, Demeter’s going to think I ran away.”
Dio quickly checked the pouch of magic stones at his waist.
It had been completely empty that morning, but now it was stuffed until it bulged like an overinflated balloon.
The pouch felt surprisingly heavy in his hand.
By his rough estimate, it contained at least three or four hundred magic-stone fragments.
Which meant he had killed three or four hundred goblins today.
Even Dio was taken aback by the number.
“No wonder my arm barely feels like it belongs to me anymore…”
He gave a tired smile, rolled his stiff shoulder, and began following the passages back toward the surface.
…
When Dio returned to the Demeter Familia home, Demeter was standing outside the courtyard entrance with her hands planted on her hips, pacing anxiously back and forth.
The moment she saw him approaching, relief visibly crossed her face.
It disappeared almost immediately as she put on a stern expression and hurried over.
“You’re finally back!
If you’d taken any longer, I was going to send someone into the Dungeon to look for you!”
Her voice was full of reproach and worry, though Dio could tell the scolding was simply how she chose to express her concern.
“That really wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Dio waved dismissively, a foolishly satisfied grin spreading across his face.
“I got a little carried away killing goblins, so I came back later than planned.”
“Killing goblins?”
Demeter blinked, then frowned.
“You spent the entire day killing goblins?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
Dio sounded as though it should have been obvious.
Demeter fell silent and looked him over.
His leather armor was covered in green blood and dust.
The webbing between the thumb and forefinger of his sword hand was red and irritated, while the magic-stone pouch hanging from his waist bulged like a small hill.
Her confusion gradually turned into shock.
“You…”
She pointed at the pouch.
“Did you collect all of those today?”
Dio followed her gaze, nodded, and removed the pouch from his belt before handing it to her.
“Yeah.
They all came from goblins I killed today.
I didn’t count them properly, but there were quite a lot.”
Demeter accepted the pouch and tested its weight before opening it.
Hundreds of green magic-stone fragments, each roughly the size of a thumb, were packed tightly inside.
They glittered faintly beneath the evening sunlight.
She did not count them one by one, but there were clearly more than three hundred.
In other words, Dio had killed over three hundred goblins in a single day!