The Cardboard Explorer

Rico suddenly touched his chest and then clenched his fist, "This feeling…" thought Rico. He was thinking of something and suddenly he looked at the female mage and said.

"I need to go to Dianne"s group. I think they are in trouble. You will take command starting from now," said Rico as he immediately left the group towards the south of the base where Dianne"s group was located.

"Eh!! Wait, Rico!! You cannot just leave like that!!" shouted the female mage but Rico did not even look back and continued running towards Dianne"s group.

"What should we do now?" asked an archer beside the female mage looking worried. That archer was afraid that without Rico, they will be in big trouble.

"What else? We need to hold the fort for a while until he comes back…" said the female mage dejected. "I never thought that he will be this irresponsible," the female mage pouted.

"Well, he is still young and you should know that young people tend to be reckless," said that archer as he can feel that the female mage was not in a good mood.

"That still did not mean he can do this. He knew he held high position in our whole group. He knew his responsibility. He is abandoning his job here. That brat! I knew you are from the powerful family but you still cannot do this!" said the female mage while clenching her teeth.

The archer looked at the female mage and he decided to not say anything. He was afraid that if he misspoke, he might end up putting oil in the fire and caused infighting between them.

They were in foreign land and they needed to work together to succeed. If not, they will all die. He knew the consequences clearly and thus, he decided to stay quiet though the female mage was mumbling something in anger.

At the south part of the base, Dianne was leading her group without much problem. With the mages in the group as the lead, they managed to kill a lot of the boarman.

The boarman had high physical strength but their vitality and defense in physical and magic were not as high their strength.

With that in mind, Dianne decided to use the mages as the lead while the physical attacker in the group will act as support to protect them from the boarman or dealt the finishing blow if possible.

"We are lucky that we did not meet any variant," said Dianne to an explorer beside her. She was casting her skill skillfully and killed another boarman.

A few minutes ago, a scout appeared and informed her about the appearance of the variant boarman, the big arm boarman.

Dianne was ready to see how strong the big arm boarman will be but to her disappointment, none of the boarman her group was currently fighting was the big arm boarman.

She did say they were lucky but, she actually wanted to test if her skill will work against the big arm boarman. What she said was just her way to make her group member feel at ease.

"You are right. I don"t think we will encounter anything hard," said that explorer while his eyes were eyeing any free boarman he can fight.

"They must think that we are the easiest to handle and send these small fries," said Dianne. She continued, "The scout said that they sent most of the boarman to Ben"s group. They must think that Ben is the strongest among all of us."

"They are not really wrong though. Ben is strong," said that explorer. "You can hear the explosions happening at east side of the base."

"Ben cannot explode things. Get your facts straight," said Dianne. "That explosion might be from the boarman. Seriously, why all of you thinks Ben is the strongest here?" said Dianne annoyed when she kept hearing Ben"s name.

She was not fond of Ben because of his personality. She was really annoyed with Ben but tried to not show it much because she trusted Cade"s words about what the system said about Ben.

However, she asked Cade about the exact words the system said about Ben. Dianne thought that Cade tried to give more hope to everyone there by saying Ben was their hope in surviving the world dungeon and thus she wanted to know what the system really said.

When she heard that the system said that Ben was not the main person for their success in the world dungeon and his role was merely to give more chance to their survival, she sighed.

She thought that the system did try to help but even the system did not know who will be the one that will be the key person in closing the world dungeon.

However, Dianne decided to look at the situation that had been happening from wider view and she realized something that others had yet to realized.

That key person had been by their side for a while already but no one realized it because of Ben. They all thought that Ben will play that huge role.

"Do you mean you are the strongest here?" said that explorer with a smile. He said it in a joking manner. He knew Dianne was not really fond of Ben.

He knew it just now when Dianne showed displeased towards Ben. He can feel the tension in the air and tried to make a joke out of it to lighter the mood.

"There is no one among us is the strongest. We are all somehow or another at the same level. Plus, and minus every individual strengths and weaknesses, we are all the same," said Dianne.

"Ah~ is that what you are trying to say?" said that explorer. He thought that Dianne wanted to brag about her own strength but he was wrong.

"No. That was not it. Although I said that we are all the same, there is actually one person among us that is far above everyone else here," said Dianne with serious face.

"So, is it you after all?" said that explorer playfully. Dianne stared at that explorer beside her. That explorer looked at her and he awkwardly smiled.

"I don"t mean in terms of strength. Look at it at the bigger picture. If you remembered it back, before that guy joined our group, we had a really hard time fighting the boarman," said Dianne.
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"… Who?" the explorer had no idea who Dianne was talking about.

"After he joined our group, thanks to him, he gave us hope in surviving this world dungeon, he helped in awakening Ben"s bloodline and he also helped everyone in our group becoming stronger."

"… … …" That explorer fell silent as he knew immediately who Dianne was talking about. "Cade… Now that I think about it, he is the one that change everything in our group."

"Why did I not see that? You are right that he is somehow above everyone else in our group. He is the only one that got the message from the system. He is the only one capable of extracting the essence… and he is the only one that is fighting the boarman… with a cardboard…"

"You can see yourself how amazing he is. He is a D rank explorer but if you properly see him, he is not D rank at all. His stats are above what a D rank can do. It might be because of the essence but still, the essence has a limit too," said Dianne with a smile.

"Besides that, to be able to do something that others cannot do, that is more than enough to confirm his real ability. Heh, I am still amazed when I see him fighting with his cardboard equipment. He looked really flashy in a bad way," Dianne smirked.

"Ah, I cannot deny that. He looks really ridiculous with that cardboard. What is he? A kid?... but I never heard about cardboard equipment drop…" said that explorer.

"It might be something extremely rare or it is actually part of his skill," said Dianne with a smile. She was in a good mood when talking about Cade more than about Ben.

"A skill huh? It is possible. There are many kinds of skill in the universe and that cardboard might be his skill. Maybe his first skill when he awakened? People rarely learned ridiculous skill like that," said that explorer.

"Well~ now that you know that Cade is actually much more important than Ben, we need to do our best to make sure he is fine. I know when I said this, it sounds like I want to exploit what he can do but he is indeed the most important person in this world dungeon and we need to make sure he is safe," said Dianne.

"Luckily, he decided to stay at the camp or else, he might be in danger here," said that explorer.

"Cade is at the camp?!" suddenly, a voice came from behind Dianne and that explorer. Both of them were surprised by that and they almost attacked the owner of that voice but stop immediately when they saw who it was.

"Rico?! What are you doing here?" asked Dianne as she was shocked to see Rico there.