Mushoku Tensei: Life and Strife.

Laurel moved to the left corner of the door before pushing the empty room open. The left side was clear; the same goes for the front. Without hesitation, Laurel bolted to the clear corner and turned around, preparing to fire a wind bullet at any monsters hidden from view.

There was nothing either. Laurel took in the full view of the room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. That’s exactly the problem. Laurel walked around a few times to check, but there are no monsters waiting, nor signs of any hidden traps.

There was only the treasure chest sitting in the middle as if begging for someone to open it. For an A-rank dungeon, this place reeks of suspicion. But then again, it was probably because everything outside this room was dangerous enough.

Cough. Cough.

Laurel covered his mouth, coughing. Staring at his palm covered in blood, Laurel thought to himself. The last fight was a close call. To think that the combination of a wraith, a slime, and an ogre could be so dangerous. If they hadn’t been at odds with one another, Laurel would’ve died.

Not that Laurel is as good as dead. At his current state, even if there were no fatal life-threatening wounds, he’d probably be out of commission for an entire week. An entire week… Angel could patch him up, but deals with her are paid in triple digits Asuran Gold.

Laurel stared at the bait dangling in front of him.

A treasure chest filled to the brim. While it’s unclear as to how much value it possessed, at the least, the upper layer of the treasure chest was spilling out shimmering gold. Gold, of all things. It was probably no—Laurel was definitely sure it was the trap.

But Laurel needed the money, and he was a gambler at heart. Laurel checked the treasure chest, but there were no obvious hints. A mimic, perhaps? Laurel thought. While mimics were tanky and annoying to kill, they’re not strong. It might be doable.

Laurel checked his current state. He was battered and bruised all over the place, with at most two to three spells left in his arsenal. While he wasn’t in a good state, he was more than enough to stab the thing using his rapier from a distance.

Tap, tap, tap.

Laurel knocked the thing. Sure enough, it was a mimic. The mimic pounced with hesitation, but Laurel was faster, stabbing it through the throat, dealing a fatal strike from the first move and killing the thing… Strange, normally it would’ve taken a few more strikes to kill the thing.

Clack. The sound of a trap setting off was heard. Laurel turned around in horror. A wall had appeared, blocking off the door. How did the trap set off? Don’t tell them there was a weight trap underneath the mimic? Shit. Did the bastard lose it out of starvation?

The ceiling was lowering itself like a hydraulic press, so I have to decide quickly. Leave the mimic and gold behind? Or risk it and dig my way out? My answer was obviously the latter. Who in their right mind would leave THAT amount of gold behind?

I thought about blasting the floor with force or building something to hold the ceiling and stall for time. In the end, I chose to manipulate the earth and create two pillars of earth that carved a hole out of the floor in front of the new wall. It’ll take a little more time to dig my way out, but it was enough time to stall the ceiling.

I then tied a rope on the mimic. If I make it in time, I’d pull its corpse with me, and if I fail, the thing becomes the buffer zone for the ceiling. And with that, I started digging with my hands. His fingers clawed through the earth.

Vrrr-Crack, crack, crack.

The sounds made Laurel flinch a little, but he continued. The soft walls were built to slow down the ceiling in the first place. Things were still within expectations. Laurel kept digging. But his danger senses flared, and without hesitation, he swung his arm.

Coincidentally, he smacked away the mimic. It was alive?! He thought in shock. He’d never expected a mimic to play dead. He tried pulling out the rapier, but it wasn’t fast enough to handle the mimic.

“Come on…”

Laurel started digging faster. Losing the fight, the mimic stopped ramming him.

Instead, the damn thing played smart, playing a tug of war with him instead. Laurel cut off the rope and immediately dug faster with the mimic on his tail. They tussled a few times, but eventually Laurel managed to dig a hole enough for him to go under.

Now Laurel just needs to use his last bit of mana to manipulate the earth to squeeze his way through the wall and escape. But right then and there, at its final moments, the mimic threw out its triumph card. The mimic tossed a bomb into Laurel’s hole.

KABOOM!

The hole shook. Laurel luckily managed to shield himself with a barrier, but because of the explosion, air had become scarce. And he ran out of mana. Laurel dug desperately with his fingers.

Blood and scratches were growing in numbers, and one of his fingernails had even broken, but Laurel ignored it all to dig. He coughed. Blood and dust filled his lungs. He wanted to curse, but he kept his mouth shut and kept on digging. Faster. Desperately. Pathetically.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

HELP. HELP. HELP. I’M SCARED. SOMEONE HELP ME. I…

…

“I don’t wanna die.”

Laurel woke up to the pair of boobs suffocating him. Laurel sighed as he pushed the dogkin girl—probably Tersena—off of him. The sheer volume of her boobs made Laurel inadvertently twitch. He had to use telekinesis just to move her.

Seriously, how did she turn so voluptuous out of nowhere? Isn’t she still a kid? He thought to himself as he lay on the bed thinking about the past.

“…”

Laurel had survived. At the last minute, Timmy managed to gather enough mana, barely digging out a finger-sized hole to the other side, just enough for Laurel to breathe. Thinking back, Laurel had made so many foolish mistakes.

He should’ve made sure the mimic was dead. He should have found something of equal weight to hold the trap, and he should have prepared himself more. All his suffering came from him panicking here and there.

If he had been more patient, he wouldn’t have suffered so much. If he were smarter, he wouldn’t have been tricked so many times. And if he had been stronger, Timmy wouldn’t have…

“Hah…”

What's done is done. Laurel took a deep breath as he floated out of the bed and washed his face. He looked at his reflection.

Long white hair due to mana exhaustion. A gaunt old body, with barely enough muscles, as if it had been forced to grow faster. A slightly pale face due to the lack of sunlight and health issues, dark circles under a pair of eyes that looked like hope had been thrown into the bin. That expressionless face... It was too eerie for Laurel.

Was it the wrong choice to kill people because it was safer and paid higher than risking the Dungeons, after all? Laurel thought but then shook his head. The gig outweighed the risk, at least in comparison to the Dungeons. And he didn't have to do either anymore. With all the magic tools and artifacts in his arsenal, it wasn't impossible to make his own and sell it for cash. There's no need to risk his life for dough anymore.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Laurel tapped on his cheeks, trying to make a smile, but to no avail. With a cheery tone, he raised his only hand to the sky and told himself.

"Today's going to be a fucking great day!"

And then, wearing his eyepatch and his fake arm, Laurel grabbed his cane with telekinesis and walked out of the room. He did not manage to smile, but his expression was slightly more positive.

"Let's go, let's go!"

He cheerfully tapped the floor with his cane.