CHAPTER 67: THE FIRST KNIGHT IV: THE BOY WHO CARRIES THE WORLD

Arthur had fallen asleep on the tree, and when he woke up, he saw that the dungeon still hadn’t been cleared.

He looked around from his vantage point and noticed something terrifying — the gate was gone.

He paled. Where’s the gate?

He climbed down to check and found nothing. How is this possible? Where’s the gate? If there’s no gate, can the second wave of explorers enter?

He had so many questions but no answers. Then he heard a loud roar in the distance. What should I do?

Running footsteps echoed closer. Moments later, the explorers appeared, sprinting toward where the gate should have been. Arthur immediately hid himself; he didn’t want to be caught.

"Captain! The gate isn’t here! There’s no gate!"

"Captain! The haelions are getting closer! We can’t fight them all!"

The explorers were in a panic. They tried to fight back, but the haelions’ hides were too thick, normal swords couldn’t pierce them. They had to use heartstone guns, but they’d only brought a few.

The plan had been to exit the dungeon, grab their guns and other heavy artillery, then return to finish the job.

The captain was panicking too. The first group of explorers had always been the scouts, not the fighters. They consisted of only five or six people and didn’t carry many weapons — their job was to scout, not clear the dungeon.

"Are you sure this is where the gate was?" the captain asked. He saw five heads nodding frantically.

"The gate must’ve malfunctioned. Our people outside are probably trying their best to reopen it. In the meantime, we need to survive — and kill a few haelions while we’re at it." The captain took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down as he tried to boost their morale.

"Come on, guys. It’s not like we’ve never been in a situation like this before! These are just haelions! We’ve killed plenty of them already!" he shouted, trying to sound confident.

The rest of them started to show confidence too.

"You’re right, Captain! Let’s go, guys!"

"First," the captain ordered, "we need to set up traps. Then we’ll shoot them with the guns. Kill as many as we can with what we have."

"Yes, Sir!" The men got to work immediately.

Once they were done, they hid themselves in the nearby bushes. One of them — dark-skinned, very young, with eyes almost as blue as Arthur’s — hid very close to where Arthur was crouching.

His eyes widened in shock when he saw Arthur. He didn’t recognize the boy, but he said nothing; his focus was on the haelions that were now charging toward the traps.

The traps worked like a charm — at first. But what they didn’t expect was that the haelions’ hides were extremely thick. The traps didn’t kill them — they only made them furious.

The cow-like haelions charged wildly at anything that moved. The captain fired his gun and managed to take down a few, but the rest of the herd came storming in like a wave of madness.

One of them charged toward where Arthur and the dark-skinned young man were hiding. Arthur reacted instantly, shoving the young man aside just in time.

The haelion slammed into him, pinning him between its snout and a tree. Its glowing eyes locked onto him with murderous intent.

Arthur panicked — but to his credit, he didn’t freeze. His hands scrambled to grab anything that could be used as a weapon.

The haelion’s tail moved like a snake, its mouth dripping with venom, closing in on him. Arthur didn’t want to imagine what would happen if that poison touched him.

He finally managed to grab a thick tree branch and, without hesitation, plunged it into the haelion’s eye. Then the other.

The creature roared in agony, stumbled back a few steps, and collapsed with a heavy thud. Dead.

The dark-skinned young man stared in disbelief, then shouted, "Stab their eyes! It’s their weakness! Stab their eyes!"

The next few minutes were the longest of Arthur’s life. He ran, dodged, rolled, and dove like crazy, doing whatever he could to stay alive while stabbing at the haelions.

He had a few advantages the adults didn’t, he was smaller and faster, able to slip out of the haelions’ path before they could crush him.

The young man tossed him a knife, and Arthur used it to stab another haelion in the eyes.

Soon, the adults noticed that the boy’s strikes were fast and precise. They quickly changed tactics, they would distract the haelions while Arthur went for the kill.

Arthur and the dark-skinned young man, whose name, as Arthur would later learn, was Dumar, darted between the monsters, zigzagging and stabbing their eyes with relentless speed.

------------------------------

About thirty minutes later, five adults and two young men sprawled on the ground, panting hard. Most of them were covered in blood, though most of it wasn’t their own, but that of the haelions.

Arthur lay on his back, staring up at the dungeon sky. He was completely out of breath. He had done plenty of exercise back home, but nothing came close to what he had just endured. And he couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. Survival instinct, he thought, was the best motivation of all.

He turned onto his side and looked at Dumar, who was also gasping for air and covered in blood. Their eyes met, and no one knew who started it, but the next thing they knew, both of them were laughing.

Laughing like their lives depended on it.

All seven of them started to laugh, loud, hysterical, almost mad.

And that was the scene the second group saw when they entered the dungeon.

Yes — five adults and two boys had managed to clear the dungeon. They were lucky it didn’t have a Dungeon King, only a high number of cow-like haelions.

When the last haelion fell, the dungeon began to shift, and the gate reappeared. The people outside rushed in, eager to help their comrades, only to find seven blood-soaked survivors laughing like lunatics on the ground.

And that was the beginning of Arthur’s journey to becoming one of the first Sentinels, and later, the youngest CEO in Concordia.

Arthur was among the first to stand against dungeon threats, long before they were even called Sentinels. There wasn’t a name for people like him back then, but his strength and instinct inspired Linus Monfort to train the first generation of Sentinels years later.

It had started as a simple ambition: to earn money for his family. But that ambition led him to where he was today, CEO of Montrose Corporation, a company that sold Aegis, a shield powered by heartstones that could withstand almost anything.

Right after that first dungeon experience, Arthur received a generous share of heartstones. The other six survivors, especially Dumar, were adamant that he deserved the same portion as the rest of them.

Nothing could describe how Arthur felt in that moment. He was in tears.

He returned home the very next day, earning tears, laughter, and scolding from his parents. Julian cried in relief; he had been afraid that Arthur had abandoned him.

Later, Arthur told his parents what he had done, though he downplayed it, and informed them that he would continue doing it. He had already received an offer from Dumar to work with him as a scout.

His parents had no choice but to let him go, only because they saw that Arthur had already made his decision. He wasn’t asking for permission, he was telling them.