Dead on one’s feet, Rowan was barely able to pay attention to his back. From the previously flat walls suddenly appeared alcoves filled with clay statues. They were no ordinary statues but instead were clay golems, as they started to move and walked out, then began attacking his henchmen with iron weapons in hand.

“Goddammit! I shouldn’t have agreed to this.” Erick grabbed out his bow and began shooting arrows at the golems while nimbly evading their attacks like a ranger should. With each shot, the arrow hit the golem right on the head, yet that didn’t stop the golems from moving in the slightest.

“Sir!”

“Are you alright?”

The two shield-bearers stood in front of Rowan, protecting him from the golems coming from within the hallway.

“Haa-haa… Give me a moment.”

Currently, they were no different than sitting ducks, being surrounded from all sides in a narrow space—

“No! No!! I can’t die here!” Two clay golems encircled one hooded man with a magic staff — an elementalist. “{Ear— Uuaargh!” Before he could even finish, he was interrupted mid-chant by an iron mace swung on his chest by the golem, and his body tumbled down after hitting a wall behind him.

“Argh! Son of a bitch!” A big dude with a mace got stabbed in his stomach by the golem, but he quickly counterattacked by bashing his mace at the golem, blasting a huge chunk of it into the air. “The fuck… So hard!”

The group was retreating together, forming a circle in the narrow hallway like a blood clot in a vessel.

Feeling a bit better, Rowan weighed the situation and finally instructed, “Let’s risk it! Go through the hallway and destroy the Core! Then all these things will stop!” That was obviously a lie since he didn’t know better, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

However, his remaining henchmen agreed without a single word of complaint for fear that they would end up like the elementalist just now. They couldn't just back down now that the arrow was loose.

“Now!” Rowan hustled the two shield-bearers forward before following them with his ax and shield ready in both hands. “Charge! Charge with me!”

“Let’s go! After Sir Rowan!”

“Ahh! Charge!”

Rowan led the charge, rushing to the end of the hallway at his fastest speed possible. Of course, the four golems standing in his way wouldn’t let him or his men pass that easily and were hell-bent on stopping them, and the rest of the golems behind were also sticking close to them like chicks following their mother.

The two clay golems with shields in front stood to block him, stacked by two other golems holding the line behind them. Nevertheless, he didn’t mind and hoisted his shield in front with both hands and used his Vocation, shouting it aloud before crashing against the golem formation head-on. His movement was instantly slowed down, barely moving at all.

Rowan, who had complete confidence in his immense strength, was immediately rinsed with cold water. “This… This isn’t any run-of-the-mill clay golems!”

The two shield-bearers at the side hurried to help Rowan push the two golems before them. The rest of the men behind were helping by holding off the chasing golems from approaching.

“Darn it!” Rowan mustered up every last bit of his strength, backed off a step, and bumped his shield into the golems, causing them to be pushed back like a castle door holding at its last nail, denting their shields even.

Eventually, after bumping his shield time and time again, with the strongest last shield bumping, the golem formation collapsed, and the two in the lead were crushed to pieces under Rowan’s tyrannical strength while the two behind were beheaded by Rowan’s ax.

Little known by Rowan, he had stepped onto a pressure stone when he was mustering his all. There was a clatter of something around before the sound of gears turning. Moments later, a drizzle poured down on them. But they were obviously underground — and inside a dungeon to boot — so where did this dripping water come from?

“Watch out! I sense danger from our sides!” shrieked Erick, who had caught up with Rowan after incapacitating a few chasing golems.

Both sides of the wall instantly opened and revealed two clay golems that looked slightly different from the others as they had fatter bodies with large protrusions on the back. One of their hands was shaped like a long pipe with a small rod held by the other hand.

Rowan had yet to react much before the golems pulled the rod, and flames breathed out from the pipe-like hands. Luckily, Rowan had passed the two golems by the time that happened, but he didn’t cheer as his henchmen closely following behind were the ones being affected.

“Nghaaaa!”

“Hot! HOT! Gaaargh!!

“Help—! I’m MELTING!!”

Three people in the line of the flamethrower were burned to a crisp, leaving Rowan, Erick, and the shield-bearers alive. At the same time, the fire danced wildly in the midst of the pouring water as if being fed by them, cutting their escape path, and even spreading and chasing them.

“Oh no! We’re screwed!” Erick screamed.

“Not yet! Rush to the end of the hallway, quick!”

They weren’t far from their goal. So long as he made another dozen or so steps, he should be able to reach the Dungeon Core, destroy it, and escape this hell!

Still, there were two doors at the side of the hallway, but he ignored them and kept rushing ahead. The doors, to his horror, burst open and revealed tens of goblins and kobolds from the two sides, all full of bloodthirst.

“Shield-bearers! You guys block them! Ranger and I will go ahead and break the Core!”

““Understood!””

The two shield-bearers nodded their heads, stopped in their tracks, and faced the almost two dozen goblins and kobolds head-on.

Up ahead, across the hallway was a glimmering, pretty crystal ball. With the clear goal sighted ahead, Rowan rallied his all and quickened his step even more. Yet by the end of the hallway, they were met with another two out-of-this-world golems with pipes protruding in their palms.

“Fuck! More of those shitty golems!”

“What do we— Aaarrghhh!” Erick screamed as blood trickled down his right chest. Whatever hit him, it was something extremely fast and dangerous that not even the agile him could dodge.

Bad premonition brushed against the back of Rowan’s head and caused his hair to stand on end, then he raised his shield and attempted to jump to the side, but something sharp and forceful hit him right at his shoulder after piercing through his shield.

“Ngh! Fukin’ hurt!” he groaned; he’d never experienced such pain… or had he? At the very first moment of impact, he almost didn’t feel anything, but it burst out the next second he noticed he had been shot.

When he inspected the wound, there wasn’t anything lodged inside, and instead, he found a small ricocheting metal ball not far away. The momentum of the thing must have reduced as soon as it pierced his shield. Otherwise, it would’ve been stuck inside his shoulder despite his burly muscles.

“Tch… Their hands… Their hands work like steam guns.”

Holding his bleeding chest, Erick painfully opened his mouth between bated breaths, “No! I know this! Ack! That ‘bum’… has similar things at his disposal. But this is incomparable to his…”

“What’re ya implyin’ by that?” Rowan eyed him dubiously since he’d thought of something similar at first, though he denied it.

“I don’t know— Shoot!”

The golems didn’t give any respite time to them and mercilessly rained them with more of those metal balls. Even if there were only two of these golems, it was enough to cover this whole narrow space with deadly bullets.

Rowan raised his shield and ax to block the incoming rain of bullets but was quickly met by intense wounds all over his body. He didn’t have the time to check his accomplice’s condition, but he wouldn’t fare better in this narrow space.

Over time, Rowan could feel his eyes growing wet, his vision blurring. Despair wrenched his heart to the point of suffocation.

“No, no, no! I don’t wanna die!” Rowan, as cold-hearted as he could be, grabbed Erick and tossed him to the golems before backpedaling and turning away.

“Rowan! You fucktard! Curse you!”

Rowan ran and ran, ignoring the curse dished out by the ranger, Erick. He now had his tail between his legs, running for his sorry life at the fastest speed possible, faster than his fastest record. But he still wished that his mother gave birth to him with six legs so he could run faster.

Seeing the two shield-bearers still alive and fighting monsters before him, Rowan swiftly grabbed their shoulders.

“S-Sir?”

“Outta my way!”

He ignored their cry and shoved them to use as momentum to vault himself forward. Since things had escalated to this, Rowan had no thoughts about liberating the dungeon and taking down the Dungeon Core no more. The only thing on his mind was to run for his life and get the fuck out of this damnable dungeon!

Even if he had to sacrifice the others, as long as he brought back the gold bars with him and presented them to the Order’s leader, in consideration of his strength and contribution all this time, he would get another chance.

The flames spread about before his eyes, not showing any sign of extinguishing any time soon. Rowan hoisted his shield forward and braced himself for a big leap, jumping through the raging fire. Burn pains hurt him to the point of him wanting to cry, and even when the fire burned his treasured beard to ashes, he sucked it up and pressed on.

Forging ahead, he passed the sea of rats and his comrades alike. Weirdly enough, there weren’t any signs of the golems’ existence that were previously chasing, but that just worked in Rowan’s favor.

Where had it all gone wrong? Rowan asked himself. All that happened, from the start to end in this undertaking of conquering the dungeon, had been like someone leading them by the nose. “Right… it’s as if there’s an impostor among us.”

But, even if there was, he should have been dead… Right? Or so he thought, rushing to the start of the hallway; he knew that he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t help but second-guess himself.

The room was finally within sight despite the lack of light, although to his confusion, there was but a single person standing at the entrance — the thin hooded man, Timmy.

“Hey! Scram!” was what Rowan yelled, but he raced at him without any sign of stopping like an unstoppable train.

The thin man kept his silence, from behind him a giant mud monster was abruptly appearing out of thin air. He pointed his hand at Rowan, and the mud monster rushed at him like it was waiting for him to give it a sign.

Right at that moment, Rowan finally connected all the dots in his mind and understood the whole thing: He was the impostor all along. But since when and how? He was the one that rushed inside the dungeon first… and… wasn’t he the first one that dropped the torch and overplayed about the gas being poisonous as well? Moreover—

Rowan’s chain of thought froze as his body merged with the mud monster, losing his consciousness in the process…

Vincent’s Perspective

“Insects trap… followed by the rats, then the rolling boulder traps. You sure have thought this through, huh. Now, they are all but wiped out,” commented Lorelei.

“But of course! I had done my fair research in constructing all these things. That being said, it’s still thanks to your idea of hiding the golems inside the walls that really shines in this.” I wasn’t lying since I didn’t know it was possible to do that until she told me.

“My, oh my. Thank you for the praise.” She hummed, and without warning, seated right beside me as though the place was reserved for her. Her sweet scent wafted through my nose.

Um, why does she sit on the same bench as me? There are like a few here… Oh well, she can have her own fun.

Nonetheless, in this dungeon defense against Rowan and his henchmen, I didn’t use any kind of conventional traps like flying arrows, swinging blades, or dropping guillotine, among other common dungeon theme traps. The whole strategy had been rather simple but deadly and interconnected to each other. It was a layer upon layers of schemes. Insidious.

“Hey, look. That one you have a grudge against just died.” She pointed her finger to the ranger.

Against all odds, he actually died from a stray goblin— Indeed, when a goblin stabbed its dagger upon the head of the one last remaining person in the hallway, the ranger. Expression of disbelief and shock was displayed on his face as his body fell to the ground, lifeless. Hence, the invasion drew its curtain to a close.