Not good—this was really not good!
This was the absolute worst possible situation, one that could decide life or death!
The supporter—the beastkin girl who was barely half a man's height, Liliruca Arde—felt alarm bells screaming in her head.
She had followed a gang of lowlife adventurers down here. Even knowing how dangerous it was, she'd still come, driven by resentment and the desire for revenge—willing to take a high-risk gamble for high returns. She hadn't even slept through the night, pushing all the way to the 12th Floor in one go with their party.
After the usual bullying and humiliation, she'd been waiting for her chance—planning to steal something valuable from them.
Instead, they ran into three juvenile dragons.
It was the cruelest joke imaginable.
Those juvenile dragons were powerful individuals—praised as the true "upper-floor boss."
A trashy, mismatched party made up of lowlives couldn't even defeat one juvenile dragon.
Three?
That was checkmate. A dead end. Maybe this was the punishment she deserved for harboring crooked intentions…
Naturally, the lowlife adventurers threw their supporter—Liliruca—as bait right in front of the juvenile dragons, then fled in blind panic. Their herd mentality dragged them all in the same direction, clumped together.
Of course… even a cornered rabbit bites.
Facing imminent death, she struggled anyway.
Liliruca quickly tossed several smoke bombs from her usual pack, scrambling the dragons' senses. Then she grouped her magic-stone lights together and shone them toward the direction the lowlife adventurers were fleeing.
Next, she used an expensive potion to erase her scent—
and began feeling her way out in the opposite direction.
"Ughhh…? ROOOAAARRR—!!"
The three juvenile dragons reeled in confusion. When they couldn't find their prey after the brief disorientation, they roared in fury.
Which made sense.
Those smoke bombs cost 30,000 valis each, single-use items—and she had thrown several in one go.
After a short burst of chaos, two of the dragons locked onto the light source pointing at the fleeing lowlives. Their eyes went crimson as they chased after them.
But the third dragon accidentally smashed part of the wall with its tail, and falling debris struck Liliruca.
She bit down hard and didn't make a sound—
but blood still spilled anyway.
The dragon caught the scent instantly. Its vertical pupils narrowed, and it pinpointed her general location.
Run.
She could only run.
Run—find even the thinnest sliver of survival in this dungeon.
And so the chase began.
To survive, she started dumping gear from the massive pack that was five times her body size, throwing out the heaviest items first.
She lost count of how much equipment she discarded as she fled—leaving a trail of scattered supplies behind her.
She kept only what mattered:
healing potions, a few bolts, and her special tool for stealing cloth goods—an arrow with a rope tied to its tail, like a whip-arrow.
Using her small body, those tools, and her familiarity with dungeon layouts, she weaved through intersecting routes—caverns, tunnels dug by armadillo monsters, and cramped passages—buying seconds wherever she could.
But the juvenile dragon's brute force was absurd.
It smashed through dungeon walls as it pursued her relentlessly.
Even when she landed a precise hand-crossbow shot—driving a bolt into one of the dragon's eyes—the situation barely improved.
If anything, it only enraged the creature further.
Her lifeline was stretched tight—yet the dungeon, rumored to possess a will of its own, activated its rejection mechanism.
When Liliruca touched down after one desperate leap—
a natural trap spawned beneath her feet.
She dropped into a pit.
And the juvenile dragon was already standing at the edge.
Saliva streamed from its gaping maw and dripped onto the ground with a sizzling hiss, corroding the earth.
No way out.
A monster like that was something she—a Level 1 supporter—could never oppose.
This time, she couldn't even summon the will to resist.
There was nothing in her life worth clinging to anyway. She had done plenty of shameful things.
Maybe she should just die here.
They said you saw your life flash before your eyes when you were about to die—
but for someone like her, even the montage was nothing but filth.
When she was little, her parents were addicted to divine wine. They ignored her completely.
From the age of three, she survived by begging—while her parents, despite being adventurers, only ever came to demand money from her so they could buy more divine wine.
Later, her parents died during a dungeon expedition because they were so desperate for money. After that, the familia's patron god Soma did show her some care, and she barely managed to survive.
When she was six, the newly appointed familia captain—an ex-adventurer named Zanis Lustra—persuaded her to drink divine wine.
Just a single drop—
yet the violent taste exploded across her tongue in an instant and shot straight into her skull.
Even though her mouth and throat burned with pain, the sensation made her heart and brain tremble again and again.
In that moment, she became addicted.
After that, she became just like her parents—desperately earning money just to drink divine wine.
Begging, odd jobs… and later, once she grew a little, she entered the dungeon, becoming a supporter.
But someone who crawled out of the gutter would naturally meet gutter rats as employers.
Her clients were almost always lowlife adventurers.
Supporters were non-combat members during dungeon exploration.
Most adventurers looked down on them.
And in front of lowlives, supporters couldn't hold their heads up at all.
Because lowlives were lowlives for a reason: they lacked every quality needed to become truly strong or noble.
All they could do was bully people weaker than themselves, clawing a sense of existence and superiority out of their misery.
To them, the weak were convenient punching bags—won't fight back, easy to use.
She was despised and abused outside—
and back in her own familia, she was exploited by that trash captain.
Adventurers… adventurers…
Looking back, her entire life had been dragged along by adventurers, pushed into a direction she loathed—even loathing herself for becoming this kind of person.
That was why she hated adventurers.
That was why she wanted revenge on them.
And that was why…
she'd ended up here.
A life like this—what reason was there to keep living?
"Ugh…"
Liliruca lay at the bottom of the pit. She'd thought she could face death calmly—
but tears spilled from her eyes anyway.
They poured out, unstoppable.
Even when she'd been beaten black and blue, covered in wounds, slumped against an icy wall and dozed into nightmares—
she had never cried like this.
Maybe this was the most she'd ever cried in her life—
and maybe her last tears too…?
BOOM—!!!
A violent shockwave rolled in from nearby. Dust carried by the airflow scattered across Liliruca's face.
The juvenile dragon crouched at the pit's edge, ready to enjoy breakfast—yet it instantly tensed with caution.
BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—!
The impacts drew closer.
With the sharp eyes she'd honed as a thief, Liliruca made out what was happening through the white fog.
An adventurer was fighting and maneuvering against two juvenile dragons. The thunderous sounds came from the dragons' attacks—each strike or missed collision blasting into the ground and walls.
From what she could tell—
that adventurer actually had the power to contend with multiple juvenile dragons.
Liliruca hated adventurers more than anything!
But…
She was so close to having enough money to escape the Soma Familia.
So close to breaking free of divine wine—
to embrace a normal life at last!
So…
she hated dying here even more than she hated adventurers.
Fighting against her long-ingrained habits, she didn't care who it was—adventurer or anyone else.
Her tears surged like a breached dam, and through choking sobs, she unleashed the strongest will to live she'd ever had in her entire life:
"Adventurer big brother—please save me! Please save Liliruca Arde—!!!"
-------
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