Anti-Dungeon Organization

Adventurers' Guild, second floor.

After Jack left, Leon watched his departing figure through the window, lost in thought.

"What is it, boss?" Te Er asked. "What are you thinking about?"

Leon withdrew his gaze and smiled. "Te Er, you got fooled again this time."

"Huh?" Te Er scratched his head and asked in confusion, "What do you mean?"

"It's simple. Mr. Jack is a swindler whose tricks aren't particularly clever," Leon said with mild boredom.

Black Fist Beidang nodded in agreement.

"I could tell that old man was suspicious ages ago. He kept trembling and trembling; people would've thought he was having a heart attack." Malu shrugged and smiled with the air of a bratty girl. "Only a big dummy like Te Er would get fooled by him."

"You!" Te Er glared at her, while she giggled and hid beside Leon.

"All right, Malu, stop teasing Te Er." Leon put an end to the dispute, then looked at Te Er again. "Didn't you notice anything strange?"

"I did have a bit of a feeling, but..." Te Er sat down on the sofa indignantly. "Jack's knowledge of dungeons didn't seem fake. Didn't he answer all your questions? He even caught the parts you deliberately said wrong."

Leon chuckled, running a hand through his sun-bright golden hair. "Yes, there's no doubting his knowledge of dungeons. But the more genuine he seemed, the more I suspected one thing."

"What is it?" everyone asked in chorus.

"Someone may be advising Jack from behind the scenes." Leon smiled smugly, and his golden hair seemed to sense his mood, shining even more brilliantly.

"I'm going blind! Where's the hat? Hurry up and put a hat on the boss!" Malu cried, covering her eyes. "Didn't we agree he had to wear a hat indoors?!"

"Wearing a hat while meeting guests would be far too lacking in authority," Leon said helplessly.

Black Fist Beidang nodded in agreement.

"In any case, I'm very interested in the person behind him. If we can invite them to join the Strategy Team, our progress will surely speed up considerably." Ambition gleamed in Leon's eyes. "At the very least, we won't fall behind the Strategy Teams currently tackling other mutated dungeons!"

"Malu!"

"I'm here, I'm here." Malu covered her eyes and did not dare look this way at all.

"Go follow Jack. If someone really is advising him from behind the scenes, remember to be polite to them."

"Fine, fine, fine. I seriously can't stay in this room any longer."

Malu was about to leave after saying that. With some night catfolk blood mixed into her lineage, she simply could not endure bright light.

However, something unexpected happened.

"Ah—murder!—" A scream came from downstairs in the Guild.

Bede City, inside the Resurrection Room operated by the Holy Light Church.

Dozens of priests specializing in resurrection magic were on duty around the clock. Whenever an adventurer's corpse was transported to the Resurrection Room, they immediately began the resurrection process.

If someone had only just died, they could be revived in less than ten minutes. If they had been dead longer, it became troublesome. Once more than a day had passed, no resurrection spell would have any effect.

Not every Resurrection Room was contracted to the Holy Light Church. In fact, churches large and small competed to operate them. Outside Bede City, other Resurrection Rooms might be run by the Forest Church, the Night Light Church, the Necromancy Church, or others.

After all, Resurrection Rooms were big business. Adventurers had to pay a resurrection fee every time they were revived—not too much, not too little, just enough that everyone could grit their teeth and accept it.

In a study within the Resurrection Room, a young-looking junior priest asked the elderly man beside him, "Teacher, as long as someone has been dead for less than a day, can resurrection magic save them? Wouldn't the legendary God of Death get angry?"

"Why would he get angry?" the old man asked kindly.

"Because..." The junior priest hesitated. "Resurrection magic counts as profaning death, doesn't it?"

"Haha, the God of Death isn't that petty. Besides, not every death can be reversed with resurrection magic."

The old man lovingly stroked the junior priest's head and explained:

"Only deaths in dungeons can be reversed so easily with resurrection magic, because dungeons lock a person's soul inside their body. Since the soul has not left the body, repairing the body and awakening the soul naturally brings the person back to life."

"But once someone dies outside, barring special circumstances, their soul is immediately pulled into the Netherworld. At that point, the body is merely an empty shell. To revive that shell, one must arrange a complex and expensive soul-summoning ritual to pull the soul back from the Netherworld."

The old man said, "That is the true profanation of death. Those who cast such resurrection magic will be marked by the God of Death."

The junior priest asked fearfully, "Marked... What happens then?"

The old man said solemnly:

"They'll be written down in the God of Death's little notebook."

"?"

The junior priest blinked in bewilderment, then finally pretended to understand. "Oh, oh! So they'll be written down in his little notebook. How terrifying."

The old man's mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

The atmosphere in the study fell quiet before the junior priest spoke again:

"So, the old gentleman who was brought in just now can't be saved, right?"

"He can be saved, but he can't be saved."

"?"

The old man sighed and slowly said:

"He cannot afford the price of being saved."

In the morgue, Jack's corpse lay there alone.

The morgue was the least-used facility in a Resurrection Room, because the corpses sent here basically all came from dungeons. Most could be revived; cases like Jack's were rare.

"His heart was shredded by a sharp blade. He died on the spot. My condolences," the priest said mournfully to Leon with lowered eyes.

"I'm not his family," Leon said expressionlessly.

"Oh, then it's fine." The priest changed expressions in an instant, stretched lazily, and asked, "Do you know where his family is? If they can't be contacted, we can only give him a ground burial. This old man was an adventurer, right?"

"Yes." Even Malu was stunned by the priest's lightning-fast change of face.

A ground burial was the final destination of adventurers with no family or friends. If no relatives handled their affairs after death and they had not purchased a grave beforehand, their corpse would be sent into a dungeon.

Beyond adventures on the surface, exploring dungeons was an indispensable part of every adventurer's life. The vast majority would approve of this arrangement.

"The killer really was cruel," the priest continued. "The Anti-Dungeon Organization has been getting more and more excessive lately. They actually dared to murder someone in the street. That old man was unlucky too."

The person who killed Jack came from the Anti-Dungeon Organization.

It was a mysterious organization fiercely opposed to dungeons. It preached that ancient evil gods were hidden within them, believed people had to destroy those demon-infested dungeons, and demanded that everything obtained from them be destroyed.

Everyone treated the organization like a bunch of clowns, but unexpectedly, its actions had grown increasingly extreme over the past two years. It began with organized protests and marches, yet today it had actually dared to kill someone in the street.

There were even rumors that the organization possessed a method to permanently destroy dungeons.

Perhaps Jack's selling ingredients yesterday had drawn their attention, or perhaps it was because he led people in dungeon raids. In any case, he had indeed become a victim.

"Boss," Malu suddenly said, "should I wait here for a day or two and see whether anyone comes to claim his body? If someone does, they might be the person behind him."

Leon fell silent for a moment, then nodded.