The Unremarkable Man Who Fell Into The Dungeon's Pit Survives By Acquiring A Plain But Useful Skill, and Through Persistent Effort While Enduring The Absurdity, He Gradually Rises to Success - Episode 5

The little goblin approached Shogo, grabbed his head with his right hand, and made him stand up as if pulling him out.

“Stop it! Please stop!”

Shogo desperately tries to shake off the hand gripping his head, but it doesn’t budge an inch.

The left hand of the little goblin slowly touches the knife embedded in Shogo’s right thigh.

“Ahhhhh!”

The goblin’s face drew closer, its warm breath brushing against Shogo’s ear.

And then, the knife was drawn haphazardly—

“Gyaaaaaaah!”

A popping sound echoed deep in his ear, and Shogo’s vision flickered and blinked.

“Gugegyatt”

The little goblin, as if to show off to Shogo, licked the knife with its tongue.

“You have acquired a skill. Please return immediately and undergo the required examination before it affects those around you.”

The voice reporting Shogo’s condition and the measures taken echoes from the WD watch device.

“Heart rate and blood pressure are both rising. Wavelength detected. There is a risk of skill activation. All nearby personnel, please evacuate to a distance of at least ten meters from the current location.”

In the pain he had never experienced before, while his consciousness scattered, Shogo’s ears barely picked it up.

Information for survival. Skills. Things that someone like me, who hasn’t grown, shouldn’t be able to obtain.

However, this is the 533rd floor, which is hard to believe in the first place. Monsters I’ve never seen before. To survive—

“——Fight.”

Fight, fight with skill. The voice, like a whisper, pushing him forward, reached Shogo’s ears so clearly that it couldn’t possibly be an auditory hallucination.

A voice that isn’t his own, he doesn’t know whose it is, and he doesn’t have the luxury to think about it either.

“Fight”

“Fight”

“Fight”

The whispers grew louder with each overlap, gradually diminishing the fear that filled Shogo’s mind.

Shogo’s hand had somehow slipped away from the goblin’s hand, and his palm was now directed towards the goblin’s chest.

I remember the content of the worker training. I attended it more seriously and earnestly than anyone else. With this, I thought I could save my mother from her illness.

“Fight.”

Another whisper. That’s right. If I don’t fight, I’ll die here.

“Wavelength detection. There are signs of skill activation. Nearby workers, please evacuate.”

Skill.

The method of activation may vary from person to person, but what is common is a strong desire. One might even call it a wish.

Concentrate. I was told that if the skill awakens, it will activate just by that.

Enhancements to the body and weapons, abilities that resemble magic seen in games and anime.

I don’t know what kind of skills I can acquire. But if they are beneficial in combat…

Shogo fervently wished for his survival skills to activate.

“I-I’ll defeat this guy and go back…! If it’s not a malfunction…! Skills! Give me skills! Aaaaaaaah!”

With determination, a torrent of heated power overflowed from Shogo’s heart, coursing through his veins and racing throughout his body.

Releasing the sensation of a lump bursting out from his palm as it was—Shogo lost consciousness.

“Gugya?”

And then, the little goblin with a large fist-sized hole in its chest tilted its head, and with a puzzled expression, it fell backward with a thud.

Shogo fell down, cushioned by the goblin, and didn’t take much damage, but he didn’t get up, his eyes rolled back in his head.

The silence that had arrived. Ten seconds later, when it seemed that only the faint sound of the wind would continue.

From the edge of the control panel of the WD watch device worn on Shogo’s arm, light was emitted, projecting a screen onto the cave wall.

◾️Please leave a comment for the hunter.

Number of viewers: 3, 533rd basement floor

Kemomecho: “Huh? I can comment? Confused. 3 concurrent viewers… Wait, I’m not dead, right?”

Passerby Tanaka: “Since the video stream is still ongoing, they can’t be dead. If it were cardiac arrest, WD would have stopped the stream. Still, this situation… it could be staged.”

Kemomecho: “This realism… it’s hard to think it’s staged. But the 533rd floor. No matter how mysterious the dungeon is, with signals reaching here and physical laws being distorted, it’s just too much of a gimmick… it’s hard to decide.”

Passerby Tanaka: “Isn’t it possible that this is the work of the anti-dungeon faction?”

Night’s Main Cannon: “If it were the Anti-Dungeon faction, they would carry out a more large-scale terrorist attack involving more people and broadcast the situation in real-time. So far, nothing like that has happened.”

Passerby Tanaka: “Indeed. This is different from their usual methods.”

Kemomecho: “Is anyone recording this?”

Passerby Tanaka: “We are recording it properly. No matter how you look at it, a special phenomenon is occurring.”

Kemomecho: “I tried sending a distress report just now, but it didn’t work.”

Night’s Main Gun: “Report submitted.”

Kemomecho: “→Night’s Main Cannon”

Don’t lie. The online reporting system only has the floor specification field up to 108, you know? I tried it, but it won’t even accept the report unless you fill that in. Or did you call the Dungeon Management Bureau directly?

Night’s Main Gun: “I lied. I messed around. I’m sorry.”

Passerby Tanaka: Night’s Main Cannon → “I burst out laughing at the funny part.”

Kemomecho: “That’s enough. By the way, what is this?”

Passerby Tanaka: “I don’t know. I just happened to find it while browsing the new releases. Isn’t it the same for you? It’s a name we often see together.”

Kemomecho: “Yeah, but still. The stream title is ‘Emergency Rescue Signal,’ there’s no streamer name, no drone camera, and it’s live-streamed with a WD watch device, right? It’s confirmed to be a test stream for things like provisional license courses, and when I peeked in, the perspective was all shaky and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I don’t know how you managed to keep watching.”

Passerby Tanaka: “Are you familiar with the term ‘boomerang’?”

Night master Cannon: “Hunting Tools of the Aboriginal People of Australia”

Passerby Tanaka: → Night’s Main Gun

“A person who seems to get along well and is quite interesting.”

Passerby Tanaka: “Well, sorry for the long message. First, I want to align what everyone has seen. In my opinion, a worker with an unremarkable appearance, who isn’t even a hunter, suddenly started an unprepared and careless stream, ran through a dim cave, almost got killed by what looked like a goblin, and somehow survived with some kind of unclear skill. Also, I suspect that the device recognized the worker as a hunter, which is why comments became possible.”

Kemomecho: “Well, it’s a reasonable guess, and I think the same. Is it an ogre rather than a goblin?”

Night’s main cannon: “That’s a Gray Goblin, isn’t it?”

Kemomecho: “What’s that? I’ve never heard of it before.”

Night’s Main Gun: “It is said to be an unpublished new species of monster that has been confirmed to appear on the 108th floor, the current lowest level of the United States.”

Kemomecho: “That’s a lie, right? An undisclosed new species is a state secret level thing. It’s not something a hobbyist who just browses new releases should know about, right?”

Passerby Tanaka: “A person with too much free time… that’s also a boomerang.”

Kemomecho: “You’re so noisy. Hey, what are we going to do about it? Spread it? Or rather, are we already doing it?”

Tanaka the Bystander: “No, not yet. If this is real, then he, looking like a worker, will need someone to give him advice. If an unspecified number of people watch, the chat box will just become a place for scribbles.”

Kemomecho: “I also think this is real now. I’m a bit concerned that there’s no magic substance addiction, though. And it might be better not to report it to the Dungeon Management Bureau. If they decide it’s a prank, they might stop the distribution.”

Night’s Main Cannon: “It seems that unless we search on level 533 underground, there won’t be any new prospects since it got overshadowed by other new streams. Apparently, unless we spread the word, it looks like only we will witness his fate. [Yellow Super Chat]”

Passerby Tanaka: “We’ll continue recording until the storage capacity is full. Since we’ll also keep logs, please think carefully about your statements and so on. As for the night main gun… well.”

Kemomecho: “Hey, the screen moved. I think it’s waking up.”