Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

When the primary teams reached the mysterious ruins after learning everything from the adventurers left on the surface, it was already very late. Many teams that had dived inside were wiped out, they managed to rescue only a handful few teams from inside those spaces.

Out of the many guilds that had lost their entire team down there, Baskerville guild was one of them.

"We are not sure, Baskerville guild had a fallout with the phantom light team and went on their own way. I do not know if they had survived or not, but I can say with certainty that they didn't dive inside those seven doors" Marcus Sarge answered.

There were a few cuts and bandages on his body. The young faces attending this meeting were none other than the people who had survived the incident themselves.

From their mouths, the various guild leaders learned how the teams were lured into a trap where there was no turning back from and how monsters poured out of those magic circles like an unending horde.

The more they heard, the more unbelievable the story started to get. The adventurers who had survived the incident didn't keep anything hidden and revealed everything that they saw and experienced.

Descriptions of monsters that they have never heard of before, unknown traps with mysterious effects and a sense of desperation. The guild leaders were shocked by everything that they heard.

That place was truly a hellish trap created to kill people. Had they arrived any late, none of the people would have survived.

After hearing the side of the story from the people that were invovled, the various guild leader couldn't hold themselves back from arguing with each other. Except for the top five guilds, almost all of the big guilds had lost their entire teams.

Their arguments started becoming more and more spiteful and one thing led to another before the entire meeting turned into one big vocal fight.

The chinks in the link were starting to show, these various guilds already had much too much prejudice against each other and the situation today only made it obvious. They couldn't trust each other.

The meeting no longer had any resemblance to its name, Brutus could only sigh. Forget about the other guilds, his own guild had suffered such a heavy loss. If not because the quality of gears and the training the members of his guilds had to go through was extremely tough, many people would have died from his guild too.

The injuries on his son Marcus were evidence of how gruesome the battle there was.

Out of the seven doors, they could only rescue people from four of them, the remaining three doors no longer had any adventurers alive. All they found was a mountain of corpses and blood littered floor.

Given what they saw and no clues as to what had transpired behind those other three doors, the guild leaders were naturally uncertain as to how to take all of this. Their suspicions went towards the other teams and guilds.

The grey haired man was silently observing the situation from his seat. He did butt in nor did he step in to settle the situation. All he did was listen to the accounts of the story of the people who were there and closed his eyes to muse something in his head.

"Hmm… Those mysterious ruins were obviously a trap, a meticulously laid out one at that. Those monsters aren't much of a threat to the secondary teams of any of the guilds much less their primary teams".

"The reason why the monsters were able to corner them to such an extent was because the ones facing them were the tertiary teams of the guilds. If that was the case, then were the mysterious ruins set up to counter the tertiary teams in mind? If so then what was the demon's goal behind doing all of this?".

Just as that question popped in his mind, the answer arrived to him.

"Of course the geniuses. The tertiary teams... although it was the weakest unit of any guild, it also held the most number of newbies and budding geniuses of a guild. Dealing a blow there would be tantamount to breaking the legs of a guild. What could he be after?".

The arguments inside the tent was starting to get heated when a few subordinates entered the tent and brought a couple of things for inspection back from the ruins. 𝙛𝔯𝒆e𝔀e𝗯𝓷𝗼𝘃e𝚕.𝒄𝗼𝗺

"Are these all?" the grey haired man asked the subordinate who nodded his head saying these were all they could find inside that place.

"Good, leave it behind, you can go" he waved his hand and those people immediately left. After that he used his aura to pressure the people inside the tent into silence.

"Is there a point in arguing amongst each other? Instead of that wouldn't it be better for us to understand what are we dealing with first?" the eyes behind that mask, glared at everyone.

Nobody dared to match that gaze, they all became silent and suppressed their discontent inside. Seeing that the tent was silent now, the grey haired man turned his attention to the things that were brought out the ruins.

The first thing that he observed was the monster carcasses.

"They somewhat look like the Direwolves and the Anemodactyl but their size and colour are way different. Not to mention, I have never heard of any direwolves being able to breathe fire" the grey haried man analysed.

"Huh? Even Sir doesn't know what kind of monsters they are?" the curious guild leaders were amazed.

This person who was from the mainland and from that organisation was the most knowledgeable one among them. If even he doesn't know what these monsters were, then wouldn't it mean that…

"New species?!!" Karina spoke out the words in everybody's heart.

There was no other explanation. The fact that they were unable to recognise the species of the monster meant that it was a new species. However, what surprised these people inside the tent the most was that these new species were found in a low ranking dungeon.

Normally, for a low ranking dungeon, it was already known to many adventurers as to what kinds of monsters to expect when diving inside such dungeons. Since it was easy to conquer and numerous adventurers tackle the low ranking dungeons, Adventurer Association made many records pertaining to the monsters that are usually seen in those dungeons.

These records were available to all adventurers and were a part of an individual's curriculum and training that the adventurer association provided to a newbie adventurer before issuing their licence.

Guild leaders like them have been diving inside many middle and low ranking dungeons and have a vast variety of experience. Yet they have never seen a monster like that. New species although it was just two words, the meaning it signified was much higher than that.

An appearance of a new species meant that the monster was a complete unknown. Since there are no records about it, they didn't know its behavioural or its attack pattern. They didn't know its potential, power or class and whether it could become a threat or not.

What made a new species so frightening was the unknown factor. Compared to fighting a monster who was a complete unknown it was much safer to fight a monster that they know all about.

Fighting a new species involves risk of injury and even casualty. As could be seen by how terribly the tertiary teams of the various guilds had lost. It was because they were fighting with the factor of unknown involved that they had lost.

The same could be said for the traps, the charcoal remains of a tree, the fallen petals of a four leaf clover and a silvery grey liquid. Each and every object that was brought out of those mysterious ruins was filled with mystery.

"We cannot certain yet that they are new species. Although I have dived inside quite a few middle ranked dungeons, I am a human after all. What I know is also limited, perhaps these species are recorded in some text and we are just unaware of it".

"Nonetheless, as it stands we are all unaware of what these monsters are and what they are called. One cannot use [Analysis] on a corpse after all. Therefore we must be careful when proceeding forward".

The grey haired man reminded everyone. While musing internally 'if you die to these pathetic monsters, it would be a huge waste of my time'.

Since no one was able to hear the grey haired man's inner thoughts, they all nodded their heads at his words. After that, he asked a few more questions to Marcus, Hallie, Gallio and the others who survived.

Most of these questions were related to these unknown monsters and traps. The meeting proceeded without anyone butting in and after a while, it was adjourned. f𝐫ee𝘄ℯ𝚋no𝐯𝐞l.c𝘰m

"Expedition leader, tell everyone to take breaks in turns. We will rest here for half a day before proceeding forward" with those words from the grey haired man, everybody stood up from their seats and left.

Marcus followed his father out. They were just about to enter their tent when someone appeared behind them.

"A moment please… young master of the Savannah beast guild". Marcus turned towards the speaker of the voice only to find that it was none other than the guild master of the Baskerville guild, Manuel Baskerville.

"Guild master of the Baskerville guild, why are you here?" Brutus stepped forward and asked. He was cautious as to what the other party's intention was to follow them like this back to their tent.