The Rabbit Dungeon’s Underbelly
“This… is even more safe of a dungeon than I’d thought it’d be. Maybe there’s something hidden about it. Let’s stay a second night to make sure. I don’t think the reward will change… but does that sound alright to you?”
“I don’t mind. What about you, Strawberry?”
“Yes! Tokoi-san, let’s get along with the rabbits!”
Big bro Tokoi was so transparent about how cute he found the rabbits he was practically fidgeting. Convenient.
Well, there really is an underbelly to this dungeon. I mean, this dungeon was [For the Dungeon Battle].
That night, we divided our tents based on sexes, so Tokoi was in a separate tent.
Then, temporarily taking off [Super Transformation] and moving to the behind-the-scenes part of the dungeon, I used [Teleport] to go to the original dungeon and saw an orange-colored rabbit jump at me.
“Uoooh! Kehmaaaa!! Nyuu are amazing, Kehma! I’m getting so much DP~!”
“Oh, that’s great.”
The DP I’d used to make the dungeon was most of Orange’s DP. However, that wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. Including the Dummy Core’s 5000 DP cost, it was around 20,000 DP in all.
Although it looks like Orange’s map doesn’t show him how much DP he gets per day, Tokoi was a very strong person. He’d get a good amount just from a single day.
Moreover, he’s getting Ichika and Meat’s value as well.
“Hold on, No. 629. Kehma is my master, you don’t get to embrace him before I do!”
“It’s fiiine~. Rokuko, you can just embrace him too.”
By the way, that environment room with all the rabbits bounding about… well, it’s a giant [Prison] with two entrances.
A [Safety Zone] that’s a [Prison]. This [Prison] takes advantage of the late night hours by closing its entrance, causing the adventurers’ DP to skyrocket from three times the amount for being jailed to six times after being doubled for being confined.
The only person in the room who’s worth DP now is big bro Tokoi, but for Orange—who’d been hunting insects for DP thus far—it was probably a significant amount. (Even though his daily revenue from the earth vein seems to be much higher than the 10 DP/day my dungeon started with.)
More importantly, I’m surprised grasshoppers even give DP.
Maybe it’d be worth giving insect ranching a shot… but it might’ve just been a special characteristic for Orange, and it might get dangerous if I did it haphazardly, so let’s not.
“But that guy’s great.”
“Great petter!”
“Kehma too!”
Meanwhile, the three sibling horned rabbits that were operating the white rabbits spoke. No sooner than they said that, they went back to controlling the rabbits and closed their eyes to lay down. Monster operation was a possession-type operation, so it would cause them to leave their original bodies.
This let them move the monsters like their own bodies, but it had the drawback of making them unable to move their true bodies unless they were given privilege to do so from the menu. In other words, neither Meat nor Ichika could do it.
“Nkyuuu. Is it time for the next stage?”
Orange asked me as he began to groom himself.
The next stage was preparing for the Dungeon Battle.
“Yeah, there’ll be no point unless we get more customers coming. We need at least two or three more.”
“The soldier rabbits aren’t getting a chance to do anything.”
“They’re going to be pretty busy when the time comes though, yeah? Just have them practice in the meanwhile.”
“Nkyuu, I just can’t get used to attacking allies.”
The plan is to let our customers take care of the defense for this Dungeon Battle.
We’d be using the method I rejected—having adventurers become our fighting strength—back when I expanded the dungeon for our Dungeon Battle against Haku-san. Coincidentally, Tokoi was candidate number one back then, too.
There were various reasons I’d rejected the method back then, but since our plan for this one was to straight up [Annoy] them, we were going with this unreliable plan.
The training for that was simple.
We’d prepare monsters meant to attack the rabbits. The gimmick was that the Safety Zone would be released when that happens.
As a result, this’ll imprint the behavior [Defend the rabbits].
We were going to make it so that it wasn’t strange for the rabbits to get attacked, that it was actually a normal thing for this dungeon. In that case, it would also be a normal thing to defend and protect them.
The Dungeon Battle’s outcome would rest on this plan, of having them eliminate the invaders to [Defend the rabbits].
… We won’t be giving them any rewards, so maybe we could have the rabbits leave the adventurers that really try some minor gifts?
We’d be faking it all of course, but it’d become reality on the day of the Dungeon Battle.
I’d love for all of the adventurers who are there on that day to give it there all in actively defending the dungeon.
Moreover, as soon as the day the Dungeon Battle is officially set… it would just happened to be a day that Wataru would come to the rabbit dungeon. Naturally, of course.
It just happened to take three cream soda’s to get Haku-san to cooperate…
Yeah, so now that we have a hero’s strength… the dungeon’s pretty beefy. Who could break through that? Sure, if it was a group of rats or something maybe a few would break through, but I don’t think they’d rely on numbers like that for their offense.
And although we still had to prepare our method to attack them—we were missing information on our opponent.
“Come to think of it, do you still not know what kind of person they are at all?”
“There haven’t been any reports yet.”
Several days had passed since I asked Haku-san to get in touch with them, but there haven’t been any reports yet.
I guess it takes a good bit of time to deliver the letter to a hostile group like the Demon King Faction. They’d probably be wary of traps and spend a lot of time making sure it was safe before opening it.
“Oh. By the way, it was humanized when it came to this dungeon. But it’s probably a demon-type.”
“Eh, are you sure?”
“Probably? It was humanized but it had these big goat horns on its head! I think it was partially cancelled. It would’ve been in the Beast King Faction if it was a beast.”
Orange rubbed his nose with his paw in pride. His prideful expression was pretty despite being a rabbit.
So humanization can be partially cancelled… According to Orange’s reasoning, since it wasn’t a beast-type core, it was most likely a demon-type one.
Hearing that much, I find myself agreeing. A demon was a perfect for a group named the Demon King Faction.
“Please tell me important stuff like that sooner.”
“I just remembered now though… It’s thanks to you that I had it in myself to remember!”
“Uh huh.”
That aside, I wonder if holy water would be effective against a demon-type… I get the feeling Beddhism holy water wouldn’t work.
“Oh, right.”
Just as I started thinking about that, Rokuko spoke up.
“No. 629, what are you doing for the assembly? I’m going to go.”
“Meeting? Wait, Rokuko, what are you talking about?”
She was talking to Orange, but I spoke up anyway.
“Huh? I didn’t tell you? The Dungeon Core Assembly is coming up.”
“… Oh yeah, it’s been about that long, huh. And no, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t I? Last year.”
“That’s basically not saying it at all.”
“Then I’m telling you now.”
I heard about how the Dungeon Core Assembly was held annually back in the three-way dungeon battle we had alongside Haku-san… It’s been a year since then already?
“I’m going to go too, nkyuu. I really don’t want to go, but I need to go to find out more…”
“I see. So, Rokuko, when is it going to happen, exactly?”
“Sometime soon?”
“No, I mean what day.”
“Today?”
Saying that, Rokuko’s body started glowing. Orange’s too.
A G A I N?
“Don’t cheat on me, Kehma. I told Ichika to keep an eye on you.”
“Oh, Kehma. Please look after Strawberry and the others for me~”
“I said to tell me about this kind of stuff in advance!”
Rokuko and Orange’s bodies were wrapped in light and disappeared.