Chương 141: Chapter 140: Clearing a Dungeon in 45 Seconds With a Spreadsheet Mindset

The shrill shrieking of five hundred green-skinned Goblins echoed through the damp limestone cavern. Bloodshot eyes burned in the dark, jagged fangs dripping with hunger at the sight of a single human boy standing alone in a crisp black overcoat. The whole horde surged forward from every direction like a colossal ant swarm, waving wooden clubs and rusty daggers, howling. Lucian didn't move. His left hand hit the start button on his stopwatch: 00: 00: 01. He didn't draw a sword.

He didn't unleash some cavern-cracking magical fireball — a collapse would run at least twenty million won in excavator rental and structural reinforcement costs. Layered Focus: locking all 500 targets. Syntactic Weak-Point Recognition: scanning movement patterns. Silent Displacement: chain sequence engaged. WHOOSH! His form blurred from where he had been standing, weaving through the horde in a gray streak too fast for the Goblins to follow. He didn't cut them down.

Each time he passed a Goblin, his right index finger simply flicked out, tapping a precise strike against the mana pressure point at the back of its neck. Tap. Tap. Thock. Thock. Thud. Thud. The soft impacts pattered out like rain on a tin roof. Row after row of charging Goblins suddenly seized up, eyes rolling back, every muscle going slack, collapsing onto the damp stone floor like sandbags with their ties cut.

They slumped into unconscious, dreamless sleep in total silence — not one managed a cry for help, not one drop of blood touched the stone. Lucian slipped past the five-hundredth Goblin in the far corner of the cave and landed lightly. He tapped the stopwatch in his left hand with his thumb. BEEP. The digital display read: 00: 00: 42. Clearing time: exactly forty-two seconds. Mana consumed: well within a controlled reserve. [UNIFIED SYSTEM V2. 0: TRIAL CLEAR OBSERVATION] [DUNGEON HAZARDS NEUTRALIZED IN 42 SECONDS] No fatality confirmation. Goblin population secured for licensed inspection. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. A dormant core-shedding chamber is releasing an existing batch of raw mana stones. Batch value requires valuation, chain-of-custody records, and compliant sale. Preliminary conclusion: low suppression cost may make a limited pilot viable.

[SYSTEM SPEED NOTE:] The result reflects the Host's established skills, not an Earth-dungeon modification. At the rear of the cave, behind the unconscious Goblins, a neglected core-shedding chamber clicked open. Five hundred quail-egg-sized raw mana stones rolled into its collection trough, awaiting sorting and purification. Under the observers' chain-of-custody procedure, Lucian sorted the batch into three blue plastic bins and sealed each one.

Then he took a leisurely walk around the cave, checking that the sleeping Goblins were safely grouped for the licensed inspection team rather than blocking the passage. Rattle... clank... Hurried footsteps and the clink of inspection gear echoed from the dungeon entrance. Banker Park Sang-Cheol returned with two contracted safety guards for the scheduled trial-clear observation and welfare check. The powerful flashlight beam swept across the cave. Park Sang-Cheol froze on the spot. No roaring.

No blood, no gore, no torn bodies. The entire cave was spotless, not a speck of dust out of place. The five hundred once-savage Goblins were now stacked in neat squares against the wall, snoring like a litter of piglets after a big meal. In the middle of the cave, the ten-year-old was calmly brushing dust off his overcoat, three plastic bins full of glowing blue mana stones sitting beside him. Clatter. The phone slipped out of Park Sang-Cheol's fingers and landed straight in a puddle on the stone floor.

His jaw dropped to his chest, eyes bulging like they might burst out of his skull.

"F-forty... forty seconds... he neutralized five hundred monsters alone... and lined them up like export packaging?!" At the same moment, at the Seoul National Hunter Association's radar operations center. The energy signature of the Rank D Gate at the Gyeonggi warehouse flipped from danger-red to safe-green in under a minute. The duty officer stared at the acoustic reading and reported, alarmed, to his superior.

"Report, Director! The Gyeonggi Rank D Gate just went quiet in under a minute. The bank has a supervised trial clear in progress; send an inspector before anyone guesses what happened." Down in the cave, Lucian checked the gate's public inspection file and the bank's geological notes. The neglected chamber had been shedding a modest mineral batch on a regular cycle. With lawful handling, its yield could be sorted and purified instead of being wasted under rushed combat cleanup.

Lucian did the math: if the pilot's labor, insurance, suppression, and compliance costs stayed low, the concession might finally stop bleeding money. He carried the three bins of mana stones out through the blue vortex, back onto the floor of the abandoned warehouse. Click. The door of the black SUV opened. Evelyn sat in the driver's seat, pulling off her sunglasses and holding up a tablet with public exchange reference prices and a draft compliance checklist.

"Boss, the preliminary batch can go to a licensed buyer after inspection. No futures tricks, no shortcuts - just a clean record and a good process." Lucian climbed into the car and shut the door.

"Take us to the commodities exchange. Time to learn what compliant buyers will actually pay for verified material."