I Get A Shock

The girl started talking after about a minute.

"What is your name? Who are you? What are you doing this deep in the dungeon? And how do you have power that exceeds that of some of the Otherworlders?"

I stopped dead at the last question.

Otherworlders? Does she mean...Earth people? My sister and classmates?

"Otherworlders?" I asked her.

"The strongest fighting force in all of Igvardia," she said. "We recently incorporated them into our emergency army. Their power is strong enough now to stop the advancing forces of the Demon King."

"Huh," I said, trying not to sound a little apprehensive. "Who is their leader?"

"I remember them saying something like she wouldn't reveal her actual name. Seems she calls herself 'Blue Grove'."

Thank god, I thought. My sister is the leader - so she's probably gonna be safe.

"By the way, who are you?" I asked her.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't introduce myself properly, did I?" she said. "My name is Alicia Miraine. I am the first and only Princess of the Riverine Kingdom."

"Huh? The Riverine Kingdom? What are you doing here in the Forest Kingdom?"

"A treaty. We want to ally with the Forest Kingdom until the Demon King threat is wiped out, and if possible, after that too."

"Oh...sounds like a pain."

"A little." She smiled, and my heart fluttered. Control yourself! I told myself. I used my skill "Heart of Stone" to negate all my emotions. "But I got to have a crack at this dungeon. This is supposed to be the third hardest dungeon, after all. But it's a pity...if Prince Ken were still alive, he might've been able to at least clear this dungeon. They say he disappeared when he was around nineteen years old."

"Huh...wait, third?"

"Yeah. The second is the Arctic Dungeon, and the first is the Lost Dungeon of Legend."

"Oh.."

"By the way, who are you?"

"Uh..."

I couldn't tell my real name - it was in Japanese(Ginjiro Kobayashi). Nor could I tell her the name my father said to use 'in his home, Seloria' which I thought was some village far away, not a different world. My name was Silver Restove, heir to the Royal Family of Restove (my father was the aforementioned Prince Ken). I want to keep my freedom intact - the time for revealing my identity will come later.

"My name is Silver Forest," I told her.

"Huh," she said. "You are pretty good. But..." She scrutinized me. "You aren't looking like you haven't been up to the surface from the time you started living here.

"That's because I have been to the surface since, and I as about to go today to. In fact, I am going up to the surface after I look over you and your friends - "

"Oh, I said friends, but they aren't my friends. They're my protectors - two Otherworlders."

Thank the Gods I had the sense to transform a moment before I went to shoot the Goblin Force. They might have recognized me.

I reached the gate and stopped there, not wanting to show my base to others.

"What are we waiting here for? I can't wait to see your base!"

Her eyes sparkled with such enthusiasm that I couldn't help but take her inside.

The moment I said the day's password, the gate swung open and revealed my base. Alicia's jaw hit the floor. "This is crazy....you built all of this alone?"

"Yeah."

"You are unparalleled, you know? With this much skill, you could rise to be a noble easily!"

No need, I am a prince already...

Thankfully, at that moment, Matet (in his bunny form) bounded up to me and said out loud, "I brought them."

I looked at him. "Thanks."

"You'd better be thankful. They were surrounded by a Goblin Corp."

"Seriously?! Do you think they're gonna - "

"Yeah, I gleaned that from one of those thousand goblins' mind, they were sent to raid the place and then report to the Goblin King."

"King?! Then-"

"Yeah, a force of ten thousand."

I turned as my class mates approached. They were Orimura and Tanaka.

Shoot. The two worst people to see this.

Tanaka always took whatever he liked from others, by force if necessary. On the other hand, Orimura could never keep his mouth shut. He was sure to blab, and Tanaka had this odd gleam in his eyes.

They both were covered in cuts and bruises. I saw this and asked them to lie down. They did, and I used a heal skill. Their wounds disappeared in a few seconds.

I asked them if they wanted me to escort them up to the surface, and Tanaka started to say "No need," but I finished my question with a statement that there were about ten thousand goblins close by.

Tanaka looked furious, but he accepted. We went out together and almost immediately, I could hear the sounds of hushed breathing.

"Halt," I said.

"What's the matter, wimp?" Tanaka asked.

"I'm not a wimp, muscle-brain," I retorted.

He turned red. "How do you-"

"Shut up, Tanaka," I said.

"How do you-"

"Matet can read minds."

"What the-"

"I know enough about you that you went to a school in your world, then came here because the Gods - "

"Okay, okay, you win, so shut up about that!"

What you don't know is that Matet didn't tell me anything like that.

"All right. Princess, if you will stand back a bit..."

She nodded and stood back. I immediately cast a powerful skill known as Lightning Channel, which lets me control Lightning for as long as I can bear the power. My highest time had been 17 seconds. Lightning struck me and exploded to all sides as tendrils. I didn't master it yet, so I couldn't control the exact amounts of lightning and direction, so I was careful not to let any of them in the direction of the princess.

7000 goblins fell smoking as a result, and my skill Item Collector absorbed all the drops into my inventory.

Now for the next three thousand. I activated my Supersonic skill and summoned my katanas. I shouted at them to close their ears and ran ahead. I broke the sound barrier and sliced through 200, maybe three hundred goblins in the first three seconds. I kept running like that and killed all the goblins in a minute.

"And that's done," I said, barely out of breath.

All three of them were having their mouths open.

"Awesome," Orimura said.

Suddenly, a messenger bird - I recognized it as a super fast emergency message bird - landed on Tanaka's shoulder. He read the message it brought him, and his face turned grave - fearful and grieving, even.

"We need to go to the surface as soon as possible and return to our kingdom, Princess."

"Why?"

"A Demonoid Assassin killed two of our guards. And..." he gulped. "They killed our leader."