The dwarf coughed up blood and collapsed.
"Mr. Brooks!"
The flustered elf immediately tried to rush over to him, but I blocked her path.
"W-Why are you stopping me?!"
"Now is not the time to tend to him."
It's a heavy wound, sure, but not a fatal one.
Leaving him like that for a little while won't kill him.
If we waste time fussing over him right now, though, everyone here will die.
"What do you mean...?!"
"A warrior d-does not abandon a comrade!"
"Shut up and focus!!"
I couldn't help roaring at my party members as they babbled nonsense without knowing a damn thing.
Our lives are on the line right now, and they're talking back to me?
"You do only what I tell you to do! Do that, and we all live! Otherwise, we all die! Got it?!"
"G-Got it!"
"...Yes! Yes, sir!"
Thankfully, they knew how to read the room.
"B-But... why did the dwarf collapse? Suddenly there was blood! He started bleeding!"
"It's a Cave Goblin!"
"W-What is that?!"
A Cave Goblin.
A monster with poor overall stats, but possessing permanent stealth and silent footsteps exclusively in cave terrain.
Because it was so weak, it was trash mob fodder that posed zero threat if you just wore proper gear—yet for beginners alone, its notoriety rivaled that of a killing machine.
"No way! I-If I cannot see it, I cannot hit it!"
"That's why you just swing your weapon around for now!"
"Oh! Got it!"
The moment my order fell, the orc swung his axe wildly—WHOOSH— WHOOSH—without holding back.
His stance looks a bit sloppy, but it doesn't really matter.
"Cave Goblins are small! Swing lower!"
"Got it!"
The elf carried out my orders dutifully as well.
She drew her sword and diligently slashed low to the ground.
I did the same.
Holding my shield low so it couldn't strike the tops of my feet, I gripped my short spear as far back on the shaft as I could and swept the area around us.
...
We combed every inch of our surroundings like that, but no Cave Goblin got caught on our blades.
"There is nothing here!"
"It backed off to keep its distance."
"Then can we stop now?"
"No. Just swing slowly instead. Stay right around the dwarf."
"Got it!"
Positioning the elf and the orc in front and behind, I gathered all four backpacks and crouched down in front of the dwarf.
His back was soaked in blood.
Hardly any time had passed, yet his face had already gone deathly pale.
Normally, someone like this would die on the way to a hospital, but thankfully, things worked differently in this fantasy world.
"Did you bring a potion?"
"I, I have... o...ne..."
The dwarf could barely even get a single word out.
Still, it was plenty for me to understand.
I dumped out the contents of the dwarf's backpack and easily found a glass bottle filled with red liquid.
Using it was simple.
POP—
You pop the cork and pour it onto the wound.
There was one caveat, however.
'Just half for now.'
I had to watch out for "Overhealing," one of the mechanics that made [Dungeon Log] such a brutally difficult game.
If you poured in more potion than necessary, abnormal tissue would grow inside the body like a tumor, causing permanent disabilities or, in severe cases, death.
Using too little was far better; using too much was fatal in the opposite way.
I pulled open the wound on his lower back and poured in only half the potion.
Using 10% at a time was the standard textbook method, but doing that right now would slow the healing down too much, and he'd die first.
Since it was a low-grade potion, its effect kicked in a bit slowly.
GLUG— GLUG—
After about thirty seconds, blood and flesh began rapidly regenerating inside the punctured flesh.
Not all the way, though.
Only about halfway.
What remained was a wound that looked like he'd been stabbed only halfway deep with a short blade.
In other words, he still wasn't in normal shape.
"Hoo, hoooo..."
Even so, this was enough to get him past death's door.
The dwarf's breathing, which had sounded like it might stop any second, grew much smoother.
Parceling out the remaining potion in 10% increments, I closely watched the wound fill in until it looked no worse than a nasty cut, at which point I stopped the treatment and finished up with gauze and bandages.
"That'll do for now."
Healing it cleanly would be ideal, of course, but from this point on, controlling the dosage was too difficult.
To heal him completely without risk, I'd need a measuring item or an ability used by alchemists.
"...Thank you."
"More importantly, I didn't expect you to actually have a potion."
I'd asked just in case, but honestly, I'd figured the odds were low.
They were a beginner party that didn't know the first thing about the labyrinth, after all.
"Since it was my first time, I bought one just in case. In truth, it was far pricier than I expected, so I hesitated, but it was worth every coin."
"Do you happen to have any more?"
"None."
Right, when I checked his bag earlier, there really was only the one bottle.
"By the way, why did you do it like that earlier?"
"Do what?"
"You poured the potion out a little at a time, did you not? Had you used it all at once, it seems the wound would have healed much faster."
"...I'll explain later."
I wasn't brushing him off because I couldn't be bothered to explain.
Something far more urgent had just caught my eye.
CLACK—
All of a sudden, I spotted a pebble rolling across the floor.
In a cave without a single breath of wind, a stone wouldn't just move on its own.
Which meant the hidden Cave Goblin was right over there.
The instant I realized that, I snatched up my shield and spear and charged.
"Where are you going?!"
My shield gave him his answer.
Held low, my shield vibrated with a heavy THUD!, and at the same time, a blurry silhouette rippled in the air.
Even with permanent stealth, taking a hit temporarily destabilizes the concealment.
Without hesitation, I thrust my spear forward.
The tip of the short spear glinted, and with a deep SHUNK—!, the shaft sank home.
"Kyaaak!"
With a dying shriek, the stealth faded away.
Soon, the creature that had been hiding itself all this time came into plain view.
"Ooh! A goblin!"
"It's a Cave Goblin."
"Wait, it's a little..."
"Small, is it not?"
Looking at the dead creature now that its stealth had come undone, that was the verdict my party members reached.
Barely even a meter tall.
A body so scrawny it looked downright pitiful rather than merely small.
Who would look at this thing and think "monster"?
Sure, one look at its face told you it was a monster, but that was only from the perspective of Kim Yu-seong from Earth.
In a world where Beastfolk and even orcs were treated as "people," a mug like this wasn't anything special.
"..."
Was it because the culprit that had driven him to the brink of death looked far smaller and weaker than he'd imagined?
The dwarf said nothing for a moment.
A short silence passed, and once he seemed to have sorted out his thoughts, he quietly spoke up.
"So the labyrinth... is this kind of place."
Yeah, the labyrinth is this kind of place.
An arena where you can lose your life to absolute trash like that.
A living hell where a single slip-up turns you into a corpse and monster food.
"Good thing you figured that out now, at least."
Now that he'd learned that lesson, there had better not be a second mistake.
***
Once the Cave Goblin situation was wrapped up, I gave the party a task.
"Break off stalactites about this size, and prop them across the passage... like this."
Building a so-called "stalactite wall."
Unlike other terrain that was either indestructible or instantly restored itself when broken, the stalactites and stalagmites on the first floor left behind permanent debris.
By breaking off the stalactites littering the cave and barricading the passage, we could block Cave Goblins from sneaking in—and even if one forced its way through, we'd know right away.
"Just space them tightly enough that a Cave Goblin can't squeeze through."
Before long, a structure that looked less like a wall and more like a cage of stalactite bars was completed across both ends of the passage.
It was a crude barricade that would crumble if you bumped into it the wrong way, but it did its job without fail.
Alright, now that we're set up for a quick breather, it's time to get down to business.
To play [Dungeon Log], there were five main things you had to farm.
Experience, items, records, Runes, and gold.
The rest could wait for now; the first thing we needed to secure was "gold."
In [Dungeon Log], gold—money, in other words—was vital.
True to form for an absurdly difficult game, [Dungeon Log] placed a heavy emphasis on "realistic" mechanics.
Unlike ordinary games where your character could run around fighting all day long, characters in [Dungeon Log] had to eat and sleep, and poor condition directly caused a real drop in their stats.
In short, "living expenses" were mandatory.
Which made gold a resource you could never afford to give up.
The problem lay in how you earned gold.
In a normal game, killing a monster made items and money drop on the ground.
In [Dungeon Log], however, things didn't work like that.
Items dropped like that every once in a while, sure, but to get money, you had to harvest "byproducts" separately from a monster's corpse and sell them off.
And the role required for that exact process was a "Dismantler"—
"We really... don't have a Dismantler?"
Nobody in this party had that role.
Since they were all beginners, that might have seemed natural... except it wasn't.
Dismantling was a skill you could learn right in the city.
Even a beginner party had to include a Dismantler no matter what.
Otherwise, you ended up with the tragedy of working yourself half to death for zero income.
"Unbelievable. Which idiot put this party together?"
"..."
"..."
The elf and the dwarf quietly turned their gazes toward me.
"You were the one who called me!"
The orc pointed at me as well.
Ah, so "Yuta" was a complete moron who threw a party together and marched straight into the labyrinth without knowing the first thing about it.
I couldn't help feeling a surge of resentment toward this body's original owner.
'Once we leave, we can't even come back in for a whole week.'
Once you entered the labyrinth, you couldn't leave for a week, and once you left, you couldn't re-enter for another week.
Meaning if we operated like this and finished our expedition empty-handed, we'd have to starve for seven straight days.
And I knew all too clearly just how fatally sleeping on the streets and starving wrecked a character's condition.
I couldn't let that happen under any circumstances.
"Can't be helped, then."
"Oh, do you have an ace up your sleeve?"
We had to walk out of here with something worth money, no matter what.
And to do that, securing byproducts through "dismantling" was essential.
Which meant we had no choice but to carry out the "dismantling" one way or another.
"I'll do it."
"...Can you manage it?"
"Have to try."
At the very least, I had the exact byproducts for every single monster memorized.
For a Cave Goblin, it was the hide and the tongue, if I remembered right.
Sitting in front of the Cave Goblin's corpse, I held out my hand with a solemn face.
"Dagger."
SHING— Drawn from its sheath, the blade of a dagger was placed right across my palm.
"..."
"...Aren't you going to take it?"
"Handle first."
"Ah."
Lacking basic manners, the elf flipped the dagger around and set the handle onto my palm.
And a short while later—
"You cannot even use this for meat! Not even a monster would eat it!"
"I am afraid this will haunt my nightmares."
"Should I just give it a try instead?"
Before us lay one utterly butchered wreck of a corpse.
***
Not having brought a Dismantler didn't mean we were out of options.
We just didn't have one in our party; there were plenty of Dismantlers already inside the labyrinth.
"So you mean to find another team."
The dwarf caught on quickly.
"Even better if it's a Dismantler who already lost their team."
The elf had a sharp head on her shoulders, taking the thought one step further.
"Praying for the deaths of others... You say some dreadful things so casually."
"Well, it's true, isn't it? Besides, I'm not praying for anyone to die—I just mean it'd work out well for us to recruit someone who's already in that situation."
For a moment, sparks flew between the elf's and the dwarf's eyes, but thankfully, it didn't escalate.
"...It seems I was being overly sensitive. I apologize."
Realizing his mistake before it was too late, the dwarf bowed his head first—
"I understand. After what happened to you earlier, it's only natural."
And the elf coolly accepted his apology.
'They've got decent personalities.'
They had the drawbacks of knowing nothing and lacking proper party roles, sure, but neither of those was a major issue.
Raising companion characters was part of [Dungeon Log]'s core content, after all.
I could teach them the knowledge they lacked, and raising their skills and stats wasn't all that hard.
Personalities, on the other hand, were tough to control the way I wanted.
When I played the game, my party had blown up plenty of times because of personality clashes.
Keeping this team together and raising them for the long haul might not be bad at all.
'Granted, that's assuming we all make it out alive.'
That was when it happened.
Just as we were about to set out again, voices echoed from down the passage.
"What the hell? Which bastard blocked off the passage like this?"
"They're just stalactites. Smash through 'em."
"Tch, what a pain."
CRASH-CRACK— The barricaded entrance shattered, and another party came into view.
"New humans!"
"Oh, we found one right away."
"Luck is on our side."
My teammates greeted their arrival warmly.
Well, my take on it was a bit different.
In the labyrinth, people were always more dangerous than monsters.
My hand moved on instinct.
It was already gripping the shaft of my spear.