Quite an interesting situation. It’s probably intentional, but selection of our group is way too balanced to be a coincidence. Even if it isn’t, this will definitely be useful when we enter the dungeon.

“Okay, is everyone ready?” Arakawa asked.

All of us gave some sort of green light as she nodded. We then searched for a dungeon within the forest area. Who knows how long it would take for us to find one.

“By the way, have you gotten our rations? We’ll be there for a month,” I said, hitting my shield to gather their attention.

We stared at each other as we attempted to see if anyone had the rations but to no avail. Forgetting rations was detrimental, good thing we managed to remember before it was too late.

“I’ll go get them!” Rick shouted, his voice being quieter since he ran towards the base.

“That takes care of that, but what about our armor? Will we be needing armor?” I asked a question of mine.

“Hmm. I don’t think so?”

Although Arakawa responded, her answer was vague and non helpful. I stared at Leon who had a similar expression to mine. We both nodded, being on the same page.

“Well, I’ll be leaving to grab some light armor. Protection comes a long way,” I said.

“Same goes for me,” said Leon.

Even though the others didn’t respond, they decided to follow us. Normally I wouldn’t forget such important things, but the lack of preparation was mostly due to a misunderstanding on my part, but that’s besides the point.

On our way we found Rick. The rations were inside a bag made for this sort of thing. I grabbed the bag and placed it on my back, carrying it as I held onto the piece of cloth holding it in place.

Explaining the situation, he followed us as we quickly grabbed our armor. Once we made it back to the original place. We continued our discussion.

“I think we’re ready this time…” said Arakawa with an awkward smile.

“Uh…How are we going to find a dungeon? Sorry, I’m clueless about this type of thing,” Rona said, avoiding eye contact.

“Yeah! This is my first time finding a dungeon. I usually enter them when they’re already found!” Rick agreed, nodding his head enthusiastically.

“I hate to admit it, but I’m the same. No. I’m worse as I haven’t even gone in a dungeon,” Cynthia spoke, lacking confidence in her words.

“I’m on the same boat. Sorry, I won't be any help with finding a dungeon,” Leon added.

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From the five people here, not including myself, four haven’t found any dungeons in the past. Fortunately only one of them hasn’t been in a dungeon, meaning the other three have experienced in dungeons.

You see there’s actually a process when finding a dungeon. Dungeons aren’t visible to the naked eye, you won’t be able to find one if you search around without knowledge of how to find them.

It’s not particularly hard to find a dungeon though if you have no knowledge on the subject, you’ll obviously struggle.

“How about you?” Arakawa asked me, interrupting my thoughts.

…

“Sorry, but I also can’t help.”

I lied.

Of course I knew, if I didn’t have any knowledge on the topic, I wouldn’t be explaining all of this.

So why did I lie?

Well, it’s a very simple reason, it’s because she interrupted my monologue.

Yes, I’m that petty.

She can go find a dungeon all by herself, good luck with that, you’ll be needing it.

In all seriousness, I—

“Everyone don’t panic! I’ll be able to find a dungeon. As much as I would love to teach you all how to find one, it would be far too long.”

She interrupted my thoughts twice. Eh, who cares. Anyways, with her shutting her mouth as she needed to find a dungeon, I was able to resume my lesson.

Okay, back to the point. To find a dungeon you’ll need to use mana. More specifically an advanced technique where the user concentrates a larger than normal portion of their mana into one specific body part.

The mana increases the strength of that one body part. The downside is it leaves the rest of the body more vulnerable.

This isn’t to be confused with normal enchantment to the body. It’s a more common technique where pretty much everyone learns how to use it.

When you are born into this world, you already have mana flowing inside of your body, it’s an integral part of ourselves.

In fact, there hasn’t been a case of someone being born without mana. They all died at birth or quickly after birth. It’s speculated there’s an unknown force killing everything without mana.

There have been mutilated corpses found around the globe. While the damages vary per corpse, they all share one similar characteristic, the lack of mana.

The strange thing about it is, all the researchers agree that the corpses are of teens, and some adults, they even found a child within all the corpses.

None of the corpses could be identified, which was impossible to begin with since of how bad the corpse looked, many didn’t even look human anymore.

It doesn’t make sense, how could someone with no mana live so long without dying? It’s a known fact that all babies without mana die within a few seconds, so how?

A sudden influx of corpses are being found at this moment. For some unknown reason, they have been finding way more than usual.

The corpses usually are found in remote locations. Mostly where people rarely venture to as the location are known to be dangerous. Adventures were the ones who found the bodies at first, then as the amount increased the governments around the world got involved.

The research done on these corpses is classified information. Not a single person I know has access to such information.

It seems like they either found something groundbreaking or they haven’t found much at all.

Ah, I’m getting off topic.