Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 510
Chapter 510: Grave (2)
Hans A. The day when I opened my eyes and came to this world, he was my first night companion. He was also the first person I killed. Thanks to him, I was able to become even stronger and more accustomed to life in the labyrinth. In the process, I was also able to meet Erwen as well.
Is it because his name was Hans? He’s even persistent in death.
This portrait of him was the first thing I threw aside looking through his bag, after looting him.
Was it like a cursed doll that would continue to haunt me no matter how many times I threw it away?
“Hm? So it’s an object that was left behind in the labyrinth…”
What the? When did Amelia get here? When I came to my senses, I realized that all my teammates were also listening in on our conversation, while doing their jobs. I guess since they were all adventurers, they had good hearing.
“…Then maybe this is where everything left behind in the labyrinth gathers.” Versyl quickly came up with a hypothesis, like a real wizard. Truthfully, after hearing my story about the portrait, it was a hypothesis that anyone could have come up with.
“Oh! That’s amazing! Then will I be able to find my lost shoes now? They’re my favorite pair!”
“If you’re lucky.”
“Wait a minute, Ms. Gowland,” Amelia interjected. “Then according to your hypothesis, what’s the explanation behind those? It doesn’t seem right to think that all those closets and tables were objects left in the labyrinth.”
Versyl couldn’t come up with an answer as she quietly muttered, “Th-that’s…true. Why are those there?”
The hypothesis that this place was the trash dump of the labyrinth would remain unsolved. That was until, surprisingly, our navigator could come up with a clear explanation.
“If I may…I think they might be pieces of furniture on large ships.”
“Large ships?”
“I heard that before subspace magic, ancient adventurers struggled to explore the sixth floor.
Since they couldn’t summon ships out of thin air like we can now.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“They cut down trees on the island they started on, and hand-built a ship themselves on the sixth floor so they could explore it. That’s the first thing that all navigators learn.”
“…How is that possible? It’s not like they only used it to visit the nearby island. And I can’t imagine they would build a new one every time just to throw it away after.”
“You’re right. This issue was solved with magic. Back then, subspace magic wasn’t as advanced as now, but that doesn’t mean other types of magic didn’t exist.”
Auyen didn’t know the details, but he said that a type of magic automatically made the ship return to the starting island with the ocean’s waves, regardless of where it was.
“So they took advantage of that fact to utilize as much time as they could, even when the labyrinth closed.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “However, I also heard many cases of theft and disputes because of it. Ah, and also, they said that sometimes the ships would find their way back to the starting island in a wreck, rather than its usual—”
“I see. Thanks for the valuable information.” I felt sorry for cutting off Auyen, who was excitedly showing off his knowledge to us. I didn’t mind hearing his stories, but he had to focus on navigating. “But let’s focus on the ship for now.”
“Ah…of course!”
“Erwen, stop getting distracted with us as well. Ainar, your mop isn’t moving?”
I quickly ordered everyone to stop getting distracted and returned to their roles. A closet or chair floating out there on the sea might be an interesting phenomenon, but the reason behind it wasn’t in any way important to us. Only one thing mattered—this place was now full of valuable objects, and maybe even treasures, that were left behind.
“Versyl, continue to grab whatever comes floating by the boat. There might be treasures as well.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
Right now all we had was this useless family portrait of Hans A, but who knew what else we might come across? It might be a numbered item or a high-class piece of equipment. There would surely be countless treasures here that had been long forgotten, just like how we had to throw away countless pieces of our gear at Ice Rock.
Thinking of it that way, this place is more of a grave than a dump since it’s full of all sorts of expensive items.
I was finally starting to understand it. At first, I wondered why so many adventurers were risking their lives, standing around waiting for the portal to open, even when Berzak was summoned.
But this opportunity was worth risking your life for.
New monsters, new essences, new experiences, and countless treasures floating around on the sea… How much would we make once we returned to the city and sold everything we found?
Suddenly, Erwen yelled at the top of her lungs from the observation deck. “Mister! An island! There’s an island!”
…It wasn’t another rank one monster again, right?
***
In the end, what Erwen saw was indeed an island. Well, calling it an island was not quite the word for it. At the very least, it wasn’t a monster.
“…It looks like a temple.”
There was a building of sorts in the shape of two cylinders, floating on the water. We took the ship and navigated around it at first to scout the area, but in the end, we could only find one entrance that led inside. In other words, going inside was our only option.
“What should we do?”
“What else? We’re adventurers. We should go and explore it.”
Since the water level around it was shallow, we had to transfer to a smaller ship and paddle ourselves toward the building.
“…What a strange place.”
As we got off our smaller ship and headed inside the entrance, we looked around, but we couldn’t see much due to the lack of light.
I can only see about five yards ahead.
All we could see was a wide staircase that led all the way down. The height and width of the staircase was massive as if it were built for something that wasn’t human. Of course, that worked out perfectly for me.
[You have cast Giantization.]
A staircase that I could comfortably walk down even in Giantization? This was a tear-jerking moment.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
I took the lead down the stairs with the mindset of tanking whatever attacked us, no matter what. But how long did we continue walking down those stairs?
“It goes so far down?”
It had already been at least two hundred steps by now. What the hell was this place? Spatially speaking, how did this make any sense? But I decided not to think too deeply about it. After all, it’s ridiculous to judge this world by regular physics.
Stomp!
Eventually, we reached the end of the staircase.
“Ugh…it smells so dusty.”
The space had a stuffy smell to it. Due to the lack of visibility, it was hard to make out the entire area. Still, as we headed further inside, our surroundings began to brighten.
In fact, with a flash, the entire space brightened as if someone had turned the lights on.
The whole team flinched as they went on high alert, waiting for an enemy to appear. However, after surveying our surroundings, we all turned to stare at each other with blank looks.
“This place…”
The ceiling was extremely high, approximately as far from us as we had walked down the stairs.
Not only that, massive bookshelves around us reached up to the ceilings.
“What is this place? It’s like a library…”
The first thing that came to mind was a library, but it was very different from any regular one purely for its sheer size. Even the books were so big that you had to hold them open with both arms spread wide. Not only that, each bookshelf was full of thousands of books.
“Oh! It’s not as heavy as I thought it would be?”
But for some reason, the weight of each book was light enough that anyone with the strength of an adventurer could easily lift it.
“Ms. Fenelin, could you help me open this book?”
“Of course!” Ainar quickly grabbed a book off the bookshelf, placed it on the floor, and opened it. “It’s empty…”
What? Are they just props, then?
“Versyl, you’ll be in charge of investigating the books here. Ainar, you’ll stay here and help her.
And make sure to protect her if something happens.”
I left Ainar and Versyl with the bookshelves, as the rest of us went to investigate the surroundings a bit more. All around the outer walls were curved bookshelves that reached up to the ceiling, creating a cylindrical space.
“…What the hell is that for?”
In the center of the room, there was a table-like stone plate. There was also a large stone door between the bookshelves, opposite the staircase we came down. Even after our thorough investigation, we couldn’t find anything else.
This seems like a place where we have to trigger something…
Since there didn’t seem to be any monsters or traps, we all split up to investigate. Eventually, we finally found something.
“Mr. Yandel, I found a book over here with something written on it! But it’s in the ancient language, so I think you should come and read it for us.”
Learning the ancient language had helped me quite a bit already. I quickly ran over to Versyl to look at the book that was spread out on the floor. The book was open to one page with a picture and a written passage on the other.
“That painting over there looks like the rank nine monster Wall-Mole Rat…but I can’t read what it says.”
As Versyl speculated, that picture was a Wall-Mole Rat. It was written right there next to the picture—its name, its habitat, its essence. Even the origin of its name, characteristics of its essences, unique habits of the monster, and more were included.
“…This is a guidebook of sorts. Is this all you found?”
“Yes. No matter how many other pages I flip through, it’s all left blank.”
I hummed. “I see…”
“You sound like you know something?”
“There’s just a lot to process.”
First of all, that book alone held incredible value. If Raven was here, she would run around in excitement, calling it a great discovery, like the history fan she was. I, however, wasn’t interested in that. Adventurers weren’t like wizards. Instead, we focused on something more important than knowledge.
How can we use this?
We focused on what we could do with this discovery. No, more than that, we tried to figure out the reason the object existed in the first place.
Instead of research, we did things the adventurer way: trying every means possible until we got our results.
“Everyone, gather up.” I immediately called a team meeting.
“Did you realize something?”
“No, but I think there’s something worth trying.”
“Worth trying?” Amelia tilted her head, but it would be faster to do it than to explain. Especially since I wasn’t even sure it would work.
Thud.
I grabbed the book that Versyl found and placed it on the stone plate in the center of the library.
Roughly three seconds later, Amelia broke the silence. “I guess there are times when even you are wrong—”
Shwaaaaaa!
The slab suddenly began to give off a blue light. That meant something was happening, and since this was Dungeon and Stone, chances were that it would be dangerous.
“Bjorn! Over there! That stone door is opening…!”
I ran in the direction Missha pointed from where she stood at the front. “Everyone, ready for battle!” I shouted urgently.
The team got into their fighting stance, full of energy ready to fight against whatever showed up.
Time seemed to stand still as we waited there in the heavy tension.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds…
After four seconds, the monster finally appeared. It slowly walked out of the slightly opened stone door.
“Squeak.”
It was a Wall-Mole Rat.
“Squeak!”
And just one of them.
The first monster we met on this new floor was a whopping rank 1 monster.
Because of that, everyone including myself was extremely wary of whatever would be coming out of that stone door.
“A Wall-Mole Rat…?”
What we got instead was just a singular rank 9 monster.
“Don’t lower your guard. Something else might come out.”
Even though I was the leader, I was at a loss for what to do for a moment there. However, it didn’t take long before I controlled my emotions and thoughts to figure out what was happening.
…So, that’s what’s going on.
Wall-Mole Rat was written in the book. When we placed that book on the stone plate, a Wall-Mole Rat appeared through the stone door. How could that be seen as a coincidence?
“Erwen.”
As soon as I said her name, Erwen shot her arrow at it. Was she a psychic or something? How did she know what I was going to ask of her the moment I said her name? I had no idea, but that didn’t matter right now.
The Wall-Mole Rat, which had been running straight for us, died without being able to make a squeak.
Shwaaaaa!
A cluster of lights dispersed in the air as a singular rank nine mana stone was left behind. Since Beginner’s Luck effect didn’t activate, it didn’t drop an essence. Though it was so low rank, we would have just ignored it anyway.
Rummmmble!
As soon as the monster died, the stone door started to close again.
“Oh! Mr. Yandel! Over there!”
Suddenly, a staircase leading to a higher section of the massive bookshelf appeared. In the language of Dungeon and Stone, this was an obvious instruction to the player.
So it’s telling us to keep going up and summon more monsters.
However, before going up the stairs, I checked the book I had placed on the stone plate.
“The picture and text are all gone…”
That meant that a book can’t be used again. I threw the now empty book on the floor as I climbed up the stairs. A sudden thought struck me.
Is it possible to reach for a higher book without the stairs? If you had the thought, you might as well give it a try.
I quickly took advantage of my height to grab onto the bottom of the third row, which the stairs didn’t reach and then used my arm strength to climb up. However, when I tried to take out a book, it didn’t budge in the slightest.
So even if we can climb up to a higher level, we can’t take out a book.
But what would happen if I climbed all the way up? The curiosity ate at me, but I decided to check it later when we either reached a dead-end or had some extra time left. We had enough on our plate as it was.
“Everyone, grab a book and find the page with a drawing.”
When I gave out my orders, everyone quickly went to grab a book and flip through the pages.
With all of us working hard to find a picture, it only took a few minutes before we found it. This time, it was a book with two monsters listed down. One was the rank 8 Nightplar.
“Oh! I know this one! Isn’t it that monster with the same essence as that vampire we met in the Bloody Citadel?”
The other monster was the Gullfrog, which we had met quite a few times on our way here.
“…So, what’s written down about it?”
“I guess it already has an official name. Then we voted for no reason.”
Since it was a monster that we were the first to discover, everyone seemed curious to see what was written down about it.
Then let’s see the name of it…
As soon as I read what was written at the top, I stiffened.
“…Huh? Bjorn? What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?” Ainar was concerned by my sudden shift in demeanor and quickly went to approach me.
Versyl, who was nearby, also asked, “…Mr. Yandel? Is there a problem?”
I was slow to respond. “Gullfrog.”
“What?”
“In this book, the name written down is Gullfrog.”
“…What? What do you mean by that? I’m sure you were the one who came up with that name though, captain…”
Exactly. It didn’t make sense.
“I-isn’t that a crazy coincidence…? I can’t believe you picked the same name…” Auyen murmured to himself while I quietly stared down at the book. I understood where he was coming from. It made more sense to think it was a wild coincidence.
However…
Name. Habitat. Essence.
I quickly skipped past the rest of the explanations and went straight to the origin of the name.
Bjorn, son of Yandel, the first adventurer to enter the Basement Floor 1’s Archives, named the monster after being the first to discover it.
What the hell was this?