An Old Veteran Charges into the Labyrinth: The Legendary S-Rank Ogre 作：naow
This is Chapter 1 of the English translated version of my web novel. Please note that I am a Japanese author, and I cannot read or write English at all. I am using an AI translation tool to publish this.
My goal is to find someone in the English-speaking community who falls in love with this setting and wants to take over this story to write the continuation from Chapter 4! If you want to adopt this story and write what happens next, please feel free to do so! You are welcome to take this idea and run with it.
A city on the frontier.
Surrounded by steep mountains and deep forests in the territory of the Margrave, located in the absolute middle of nowhere—right in the center of the great forest.
Connected by a robust overland route that seems almost unnecessarily sturdy, this place is the furthest edge, yet in a way, the center of this territory.
Small but bursting with vitality, fully equipped with every necessary facility, it is both a graveyard and a utopia for adventurers.
The Dungeon Blockade City, Adashino.
Whether it truly deserves the name "city" is debatable, as it is incredibly small. Who named it remains uncertain. Some say a swordsman from the East muttered the name before a mountain of adventurers' corpses. Others claim it was a sage from a foreign land. Rumors abound.
But whichever is true, it no longer matters.
To an adventurer, this place is a deadly hunting ground and, at the same time, a cave where they dream of ambition. Everything else is mere decoration. With only one's life placed on the gambling table, one pushes through the jaws of death, relying solely on their own strength. Or, holding hands with comrades, using bonds as a weapon to carve out a path.
Such reckless passion boils within this tiny, tiny city.
This is a sight commonly seen in the so-called "Dungeon Cities" scattered across the world.
The Adventurers' Guild, rumored to span the entire globe with almost no place left untouched, is at its most lively here. Our curtain rises from this stronghold of dungeon exploration.
***
The man looked to be of advanced age.
Stroking his completely bald head, he looked up at the sturdy building, seemingly lost in thought.
He had stepped away from the entrance so as not to block traffic, but there was no mistake—he had business with this establishment. A well-groomed white beard, growing in place of his missing hair, hid his mouth, making it difficult to read his thoughts from a distance.
"Um... excuse me, old gentleman? This is the Adventurers' Guild, and it's full of rough people inside... It might be dangerous if you linger around here too long."
Lana, a guild receptionist who happened to be out for a late lunch break, couldn't bring herself to leave the old man alone and called out to his back.
She assumed he was a villager bringing a request from some farming commune, or perhaps a migrant seeking work who had mistaken this place for the Lord's manor. With that guess in mind, she spoke gently. But when the old man turned around, meeting his calm gaze, she caught her breath for a fraction of a second.
The old man looked perfectly affable and was certainly smiling.
And yet, the moment she looked into his eyes, a shiver ran down her spine.
"Oh, my apologies, young lady. No, you see, I heard that exploration of this dungeon has only just begun. I was simply admiring what a magnificent building you have here," the old man replied.
His tone was gentle, carrying a slight accent. Lana recognized it—it was the dialect of the northern regions, where many dwarves resided.
The contrast between the spine-chilling dread she had felt a moment ago and his cheerful, pleasant demeanor made her mind wander to trivial thoughts.
"Y-Yes, this is the Adashino Branch of the Adventurers' Guild. It's the base of operations for adventurers who gather here to conquer and liberate the Adashino Dungeon. Do you have business here today, grandfather?"
Still, she was a professional guild receptionist. Regaining her composure quickly, she explained what the building was with a polite smile.
Adventurers were those who took on requests ranging from cleaning the streets to hunting dangerous beasts and monsters, or challenging dungeons. Of course, their temperaments varied, but to the public, they were seen as nothing more than a "mob of lawless thugs."
She didn't think this elderly man was an adventurer, but surely he had some reason for being here—either to post a request or because he was simply lost. In any case, standing around out here made him an easy target for low-to-mid-rank fools who lacked composure and mistook thuggery for strength.
"Ho ho ho. Well, I am an adventurer myself, you see. I thought I'd challenge the dungeon and perhaps knock out a few suitable requests while I am at it."
Lana had been planning to guide him to safety, so the old man's words caught her completely off guard.
His bald head caught the light, and his back... no, his posture was remarkably straight, even imposing. The loose-fitting clothing he wore was unfamiliar, though she recalled it being a style from the north. It wasn't brand new, but it was clean, without stains or loose threads. A neat appearance. Indeed, looking closely, he was clearly no ordinary villager.
But even so... he was unmistakably an old man.
"An... adventurer? Forgive me, but... you mean a former adventurer, right?"
Lana stared blankly. Though she knew it was rude, she couldn't stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth.
"Ho ho ho, I may look like this, but I am still active. Look, here is my guild card. What do you think?"
Not offended by Lana's reaction in the slightest, the old man pulled a palm-sized metal card from his chest pocket. It was then that Lana remembered his clothing was a "Kimono," a garment common in the Six Northern Kingdoms.
It was a trivial detail, certainly nothing to focus on right now. Her mind had clung to it only because she could not mentally accept the reality of the card's color.
A small plate made of an alloy based on iron, blended with a small amount of mythril and an even scarcer amount of orichalcum.
Mythril, which carried immense danger just to mine, and orichalcum, a legendary metal of microscopic yield. A card utilizing both was the ultimate proof.
Those who held it were S-Rank. Mighty individuals whose numbers could be counted on one's fingers across the entire continent.
"A... A... You are... that..."
Lana, who had handled and even scolded countless rowdy adventurers dreaming of dungeon conquest in this city, found her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and absolute terror.
Seeing the receptionist's state, the old man let out a small sigh.
Good grief, even here?
He stroked his bald head and looked up at the sky. It was fine while he was diving in the dungeons, but once he came back to the surface, this kind of interaction was never-ending.
"The Ogre...! Mugai Yatsushiro...!"
Facing Lana, whose expression was now pale with shock and fear,