“What did you say?! Have the invaders arrived?” But then I quickly denied that statement. Logically speaking, they shouldn’t reach this place so soon. In addition, they wouldn’t be rushing here, would they? It wasn’t like we were going away anywhere.

With her eyes closed, Lorelei replied, “No. It’s a boar… Not just any kind of boar.”

“What do you mean by that?” Swiftly, I opened the Dungeon Menu and went through the Dungeon Map function to see what was approaching. Not too far away from the dungeon’s entrance, a bright red dot was traversing straight to the dungeon’s location.

“What a golden opportunity to test the golems.” I licked my lips in anticipation of the CP that it would bring. “Right on time. Can you lure it to the dungeon?”

“Hmm…” She paused, flattening her mouth slightly. “I dunno. Probably, but I can try.”

Just to be safe, I ordered the monsters near the entrance to enter deeper. Recently, I discovered that it was possible to remotely command these monsters through the Dungeon Menu in the Minions catalog. Surely convenient.

At short notice, the red dot which had its course strayed a little from the dungeon switched into a beeline. With its momentum not slowing down, the red dot plunged straight into the ravine. Was it right in the mind, or…?

“Good job, Lorelei.” I gave a thumbs up.

“Don’t cheer too fast. This thing is… enraged and merely acting on instinct; that’s why luring it was so easy.”

“What?”

Using the camera setting in the Dungeon Map function, one could see a giant boar the size of a small car with a body full of thorns. Aside from being muscular, it had a pair of sharp tusks, bones protruding from its spine that looked like spikes, and bloodshot eyes, looking as if it were mad.

With closer inspection, traces of blood spots could be seen on its mouth as he exhaled a gust of wind. My hair stood on end just seeing the boar from afar; I couldn’t imagine myself facing the thing at close range.

Species: Carnivorous thorn boar (hybrid)

Condition: In a frenzy

Sex: Female

Age: 13 years old

Height: 285 cm

Stats:

STR: D (55) AGI: E+ (34) VIT: C- (57) MAG: F (7) SPR: F- (4)

Accumulation Points: 36 [D-]

Carnivorous thorn boar… I think I’ve heard it somewhere… And a hybrid, what’s that? What's more, what’s with this “in a frenzy” condition? There hadn’t been any “condition” shown so far, this was the first.

In a frenzy

Something has caused the creature to be in a state of madness and agony. It will perform way beyond its normal strength and agility while also possessing immense tenacity to not go down so easily.

“How weird.” I eyed the boar, touching my face.

“Indeed. The condition that this boar’s in is abnormal,” Lorelei stated. “I sensed that the golem, individually, may not be its opponent.”

“No concern, though. We only need to take it down with numbers.” I ordered the golems to stand on guard in front of the boar while protecting the Core.

In spite of having suffered numerous cut wounds all over after falling down the ravine, the boar appeared fine and seemed eager to face the five golems. Granted, I wasn’t there, but the boar was giving me a hair-raising chill from its frigid bloodlust.

Hm. This… There was suddenly one additional function inside the Dungeon Catalogs: “Intruders.” Considering that this boar was this dungeon’s first intruder, it was logical that it would appear just now. Still, I should inspect the Dungeon Menu more in-depth later. Let’s see…

As shown by the menu, the boar was netting us about 81 CP per day, quite a considerable sum if I were to say. Just how much would it give us when it died?

“HOINK!!” A deafening battle cry shook the cave; I had to cover my ears and lower the voice setting of the menu just to not get deafened. Damn this realistic function! Then as if to announce its dominance, the boar tensed its muscles before charging toward the golem formation like an incoming train, not knowing what I’d set in store.

When the boar was about to reach the golem, one of its legs stumbled into the hole that had been dug for clay previously, delaying and even disturbing its course and momentum. Chance!

Seizing the opportunity, the five golems marched and held the boar back. With two of the golems in front to block the boar, the rest attacked with their hands — an ugly fistfight.

“Heh. It seems that your golems aren’t that effective despite their immense strength,” remarked Lorelei while watching how the punches rained down upon the boar barely did any damage.

“Yeah. I forgot to give them weapons.” I had some idea how to circumvent this problem just that I didn’t yet have the time. “Welp, no crying over spilt milk.”

The boar didn’t remain still; it trashed and flailed around, going for a golem nearest to it. The golem confronted it head-on with open arms, making it a contest of strength. Despite the fact that the enemy was many times its size, it faced it without fear. Truly a soldier worth having.

However, not even two seconds had passed, the golem was plunged onto the wall. Even so, the other golems didn’t remain still; they ganged up on the boar and destroyed the many thorns on the boar’s body, causing it to bellow in pain as blood spurted out from those thorns.

Sad to say that the golems’ arms were made of hardened clay and the boar’s body was tough as heck… They were starting to crack the longer the battle dragged on. Although I was certain that given enough time, they would recover.

“This can’t go on.” It wasn’t a D- creature for nothing, even if the whole reason for its fierceness was its condition.

“Shall I have the rest of the dungeon inhabitants rush for the boar? Overwhelming it with numbers should do the trick, just like you said,” Lorelei advised.

“No, not yet. Let’s not waste any of our precious CP. Let’s just do this…” I told Lorelei of an idea before having her transfer “something” to one of the golems.

I manually controlled that golem through the menu screen and had it jump on top of the boar. While holding its protruding spines, I had the golem target the left eye of the boar with the thing I had just given — a sharp fragment of a sword. Blood spurted about as the blade pierced its eye and painted the ground red.

“HOOOINK?!” With half of its vision taken away, it trashed around even wilder. Even the golem holding the spine above was almost thrown off if not for the rest of the golems and the numerous holes on the ground restricting the boar in tandem.

Not stopping with just this, I had the golem over the boar to pull a thorn on the boar’s body before piercing another of its eyes. This time, it seemed to have pierced the brain as the thorn was long and sharp.

With no vision left to see where it was going, the boar crashed into the wall and pushed the blade and thorn to pierce even deeper. Accompanied with cries of agony, the boar tumbled down and stopped moving, its limbs seeming to have lost all its former strength.

“It died, right?” My heart throbbed hard in the face of such a threat, which made me realize that this was only one of the lowest rungs of creatures out there.

Lorelei shook her head. “Almost, but not yet.”

“Just curious, if we were to subdue it, would you be able to make it submit through brainwashing?”

“I'm afraid not; this thing was affected by some unknown causes that made it out of control. A shame, just like how I failed to do the same to you.” She squinted her eyes at me, raising a part of her lips.

Did she still hold grudges against me? Though from her tone, I knew that she was joking. The mind of a girl was impossible to know… even if she was a Dungeon Core.

At any rate, this boar wasn’t a monster, nor did it appear like a normal creature. I checked its status to find out what a hybrid was from its status.

Hybrid

A fusion between monsters and normal creatures. When a monster procreates with an animal, there is a high chance that it will result in a hybrid.

Ooh, so this hybrid beast is essentially a half-monster. Then, would they possess monster core as well? Curiosity got the better of me, and I exited the Artificial Realm and took out the broken sword’s hilt that still had some blade remaining.

Even on the verge of death, I noticed some subtle muscle spasms, truly an extraordinary beast this was. I ordered the golems to hold down the boar so it wouldn’t exert any last desperate action.

“What are you doing?” Lorelei suddenly commented.

“Whoa!” I nearly got a heart attack; this girl, she really liked to startle people. “Don’t scare me. Wait, you can communicate through the other side, huh.” Lorelei was nowhere to be seen, but her voice was so clear like conversing up close.

“Of course. Since you can, why can’t I?”

“Fair enough.” I tapped my chin. “You see, I wanna check whether this thing has a monster core.” Since it was technically neither a monster nor an animal, it was intriguing, to say the least.

“Then you need not trouble yourself; I have an answer for that. Yes, they do. However, a hybrid with a sparse amount of monster blood wouldn’t possess one. Want me to take its monster core?”

“Please do.”

“M’kay. Just don’t forget to reward me.”

“Fine.” She wouldn’t do what I said if not promised.

With that said and done, I was still bewildered and confused by one fact: Why did hybrids even exist? Were there monsters running rampant outside dungeons? Or were they being controlled to do so? There were just too many things I didn’t know.

I consulted Lorelei on these matters and was told three possible answers:

They were controlled by some unknown dungeon. Through the menu, I knew that there was no restriction to doing this. They were “lost monsters” — those that had lost their mother dungeon, their birthplace, maybe through the destruction of the Core, or any other wild reasons. They were descendants of these so-called lost monsters, monsters born outside dungeons; there might even be goblin or kobold settlements outside.

No matter what, this battle gave me a wake-up call that this dungeon was well under-protected. Barely any traps if the holes dug before could be counted as one. And the risk was too high with the Core located too close to the entrance; we needed more rooms.

Overall, the holes had given me some wild ideas to implement to face the incoming invaders. For one, dungeon traps could be set up through the menu, but no hurdle blocked me from doing it myself. And with [Programming] on hand, there were just so many I could do.

“Hm?” I turned my gaze toward the boar. Blood had stopped trickling down from its wounds, but despite that, the traces left behind on its mouth were rather apparent. The boar had not even once opened its mouth despite being carnivorous, so I had two golems to open it up.

“Vincent! Don’t open that.”

“Why? Ugh. Wh-What is this?!” I was able to barely remain calm while holding my mouth. Inside was a mesh of barely noticeable human flesh and viscera. Barely since it had a somewhat intact form of a human’s upper part. The boar must’ve been intentionally keeping the corpse inside its mouth as if to savor it slowly.

“You okay? You shouldn’t have done that…” Lorelei appeared beside me and grabbed my hoodie sleeve.

At that time, I finally realized something about this boar; the assassination in the forest that had caused all my grievances. Guh… So the carnivorous thorn boar they mentioned is this one…

“May you rest in peace.” This heinous act of theirs redoubled my will to seek vengeance. I might be weirdly unbothered by all this as if life was something fleeting, but since it was already on my agenda… Mark my words, I will remember this!