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“Say… Rir. That thing, as far as I know… ain’t that a dungeon?”
“A… a dungeon? It’s also possible that this was caused by something falling from the sky.”
“I guess… For now, I’ll go check it out.”
“P-Please wait a moment. I’ll…”

She asked me to wait, but if I did that, we’d end up arguing about who’d go and take a look, so, even though I felt bad about it, I ignored her and got close to the hole.

“…Master!”

Ultimately, Rir ended up joining me. As I gazed down into the hole, she followed my lead and did the same. It looked like the bottom was made of marble and I could see boulders protrude unnaturally from the walls.

“It is a dungeon, ain’t it…?”
“To think that there’d be one in such a place… W-What should we do, Master?”

True, what will we do? To be honest, I wanna go in. This feels strangely excitin’.
Still… we’re currently in the middle of an emergency, ain’t we…?

“What would you like to do, Rir?”
“I… I will follow your lead, Master.”
“I see. Still, we only got two options here… either go in or ignore it.”

We currently have some leeway to survive in this situation, though only a little. We gotta stay alive, don’t we. From what I see, goin’ down there should be fine… I guess.

“…Should we climb down? If it seems too dangerous, we can always withdraw, so just takin’ a look won’t hurt. Besides, I can already bring down B-Rank monsters. I might even manage A-Ranks…”
“Woof~! In that case, let’s descend, Master. You can get super rich just by clearing a single dungeon!”

Super rich…?
Sure enough, if we manage to leave the dungeon and then get outta this forest, it should earn us tons of money. It’s settled. No choice but to go in there.

“Alright… Rir, let’s enter it!”
“Understood, Master.”

We had almost no knowledge about dungeons. As a consequence, the preparations we were able to make were likely insufficient. Still, we got ready to the best of our abilities.
We readied our tools and steeled our hearts.

“Down we go…”

Rir and I stepped on the stairs leading down into the dungeon. We descended until we reached the floor that looked as if it was made of marble. As soon as we stepped onto it, a message appeared in our minds.

Gettin’ this message… makes it feel more real, don’t it?

Curiously, the interior of the dungeon looked like a palace. The floor was mainly made of marble and there was an extravagant picture of an eagle on the ceiling. It somewhat resembled the monster that had blown us away. Furthermore, there were windows made of stained glass through which light shone in… despite us being underground.

Then, there were five doors that looked like large entryways, and a gate directly opposite from where we had entered. Things that that looked like colored gemstones were embedded into each of the five doors, but nothing on the gate…
No, there were five dull-black objects on it. Furthermore, it looked like there was something else embedded in the center of the gate, but it was also too dark to see properly.

I just noticed, but there was also something below the eagle picture on the ceiling, or in other words, in the center of the palace-like room. It was tiles, I didn’t know whether they were made of marble, but they formed something like a giant pattern.

I think I got it… You go into those five rooms, and by defeatin’ whatever’s in there or clearing’ some mission, you fill up the things on the gate and… once you clear all those rooms, that gate will open up, lettin’ you fight the boss… that’s what it feels like. From the atmosphere and such.

There might also be some hidden routes, so we gotta pay attention as we walk around, don’t we?

…Looks like I can’t use Detection in here.

“Rir, there’s probably something in each of those five rooms. Which one should we start with?”
“…”
“Hey, Rir?”

She had stiffened as she looked up at something.
From her face, looks like she’s starin’ at something pretty. Maybe that’s the first time she’s seein’ stained glass?

For now, I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Woof~!? Oh, Master. I’m sorry, it looks kind of pretty, this… erm… colored glass.”
“Yep, it sure does. So, as I said, there’s probably somethin’ in each of those five rooms… Which one should we enter? For the record, I’m fine with any of ’em, y’know.”
“Is that so…I know of a good method in that case!” Rir said, walked to the center of the palace, where she took out something.

It was a stick.

“What’ll you do with that?”
“This stick will decide for us where to go first. I’ll put it up in the center of the room, and we’ll go in the direction it falls.”

That’s kind of a primitive method. Well… I guess it’s the best we got.

“Let it fall, then.”
“Alright.”

Rir let go off the stick. It pointed in the direction of the door with a purplish colored gemstone in it.

“Good, that one it is, Master.”
“Right, let’s go.”

Rir and I went through said door.

In front of us lay a bleak room, devoid of any decorations. Even though there was no light source to be seen, it was somehow bright. Finally, in the center of the room, there was a magic beast.

TL notes:
After the “joy” and “wrath” dungeons we’ve seen with Alim and Mika, there is now a third type called “grief”. It remains to be seen whether Shuu’s assumption in how it works is correct, but it seems likely from what we’ve seen so far.

1. The original is more like “The dungeon of the bottom of the valley of Ýdalir, “Grief”, which I shortened a bit. This name might imply that there are other dungeons in the mountains belonging to the valley (or the system is simply trying to be as precise as possible).