《29 The Labyrinth of Spirit Hollow》
The next morning I woke up to find Eleanor and Maria in my bed for some reason.
Originally, my bed was a double so that I could sleep with Eleanor. But I also made the single first.
I couldn’t bear the thought of letting Maria be the only one sleeping alone last night, so I thought I’d have them each sleep separately in a single bed. …… How did this happen?
I’m not even going to think about it……
Next time, I’ll get a custom-made large bed, or make one myself! I decide to do that, and I wake them both up.
I’m planning to skip my morning workout today and go to the dungeon right after breakfast.
Maria’s natural strength was okay, but I just started strengthening her yesterday, and thus, she was inevitably weaker than Eleanor and I. So I’ll let her assist Eleanor in the shallower levels of the dungeon, and then I’ll supervise her further.
With that idea in mind, we enter the dungeon.
Once inside, I looked around and saw that the inside was like a limestone cave. Furthermore, it was kind of gloomy and uncomfortable to be honest. There were still things I didn’t like, and the ground was wet in places.
Hmmm, this is going to get my shoes wet and dirty. It’s not my favourite dungeon so I’ll have to endure ……. the consequences of that can be solved with〈Life Magic〉later. But then again, I only have experience with one dungeon, don’t I?
I pushed down my frustration as I made my way through the dungeon, but as I expected, the shallow levels were filled with only weak monsters.
After clearing the Labyrinth of Time’s Lament, I hardly encountered any strong monsters, so I only gained one level too.
When the two of them get more powerful, I want to go to a place where there are strong enemies.
After a while, we came across ten alligators. They looked exactly like crocodiles, maybe two meters in size.
The alligators were moving in a random order, each of the ten of them without regard for their formation. One of them tried to bite Eleanor.
Eleanor dodged it to the side with room to spare, and also dodged another one that came to bite her. I walked behind the alligator that had first attacked her with 〈bite〉 and sliced off its tail with my mithril dagger.
Eleanor hadn’t stopped moving yet. While avoiding〈bite〉, she got behind the other alligator and sliced off its tail.
In conjunction with that, Maria had already shot an arrow.
The arrows that were released shot through the eyeball of the alligator, whose tail Eleanor had cut off, in rapid succession.
The alligator that was hit by the arrow in the eye went wild, causing the alligators to bump into each other.
Then Eleanor and Maria attacked the confused alligators with more attacks to finish them off.
Watching the two of them work together so effortlessly, I wondered if they were a good match. I think so.
After defeating all the monsters, I put the materials into the【Item Box】. Their skins are often used for the outer lining of mass-produced magic pouches, and they are not that expensive.
We went further down the levels, but there were no particularly strong monsters.
This is a captured dungeon, and it looks like it has a total of 40 floors.
It seems that Aspidochelon appears from the 25th to the 39th floor. The 30th floor is a boss room, though, so no Aspidochelon.
I quickly made my way down to the lower levels in an attempt to catch as many as I could, and finally made it to the 25th floor.
By the time we got here, we noticed that there were not many parties going down, but on the contrary, there were a lot of parties going up.
I look at Eleanor and Maria and tell them what I’m going to do from here.
「Okay, we’re finally on the 25th floor. Eleanor and I will be the main fighters from here on out. Maria, you can follow up and see how we fight. Maria is slowly strengthening, and I think she’ll have to fight more when she does.」
Okay. I understand.」
「Well, Eleanor, let’s keep moving.」
◇ ◇ ◇
After defeating the Aspidocerons on the way and collecting their carapaces, I had now reached the door in front of the boss room on the 30th floor.
We camped once before we arrived here. On average, we advance a little more than 15 floors a day.
There were fewer target monsters than I expected, and I had only gathered eight carapaces so far.
The Aspidochelon looked exactly like a turtle, as the guild receptionist had said. It was a size that you would never see on Earth, and it was about three meters long.
Aspidochelon
Level: 28
ＨＰ：４６６０／４６６０ ＭＰ：１３１５／１３１５
Strength:310 Resistance:932 Agility:56 Dexterity:65 Magic:233 Spirit:263
Skills
Bite Lv3・Robust lv4・Gravity Magic Lv3
Its features just looked hard, and for me, they were too weak to be a match.
On the other hand, with Eleanor, she could beat them, but it took her a long time to do so.
Also, they tried to slow us down with〈Gravity Magic〉, so it might be hard for parties where that works and parties without attack power.
The boss on the 30th floor looked like a crab, about five meters long, with a similar looking guy attached to his back. Two for one, huh?
I did an 〈Appraisal〉 and its name was Twin Club.
From the looks of the status, it was specialized in defense, just like Aspidokeron, and the only magic it could use was〈Water Magic〉.
Since its overall strength is higher than Aspidokeron’s, I’ll fight it alone.
It was the first time in a long time that I used 〈Lightning Magic〉 to fight, and I was able to defeat it in no time.
I could hear Maria and Eleanor, who were watching, yell out, 「「Eeeeehhh?!」」
You’re no match for〈Lightning Magic〉, Twin Club-san…….
However, it smells like grilled crab, perhaps because it was cooked with〈Lightning Magic〉.
I almost drooled, but unlike Eleanor, I’m a man with self control! I quickly started to 〈Dismantle〉 it.
And when I tried some of the dissected meat – it tasted better than the crabs on Earth. I’ve never eaten fine crab meat on Earth, but ……
That’s when I started snacking – I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but there was a glutton beside me, drooling profusely and eyes sparkling.
If she’s this honest about her appetite, her drooling looks so cute……. there is no way that that’s the case. Wipe that drool off your face! I inwardly tsked as I put the meat in Eleanor’s mouth.
Then, with her usual delirious expression on her face, she yelled in my ear,「I want more!」
Naturally, my ears ring when someone shouts in my ear. Holding back the ringing in my ears, I gave more meat to Eleanor and fed it to Maria.
The two of them just gobbled up the meat with gusto. When I saw them, I thought.
We’ ve been through this dungeon so far …… and the one who did the most damage to me was Eleanor?! And.
A little while later, the ringing in my ears subsided, and I managed to regain my composure. I thought for a moment that I would be tempted to come here regularly, but I quickly denied it.
This dungeon is uncomfortable, the enemies are weak, and there’s little profit in terms of money or experience, so I doubt I’ll be coming back here in the future.
That’s how I successfully defeated the boss, so we continued on our way.
Then, when we proceeded to the 32nd floor, we heard several shouts from the front, and then more ……
「Hey! Let’s hurry back!」
「Hurry up!」
「Wait! I sprained my leg!」
The people who were shouting were getting closer and closer. I looked closer and saw that it was the same party we had shared the carriage with.
Behind them, a large number of Aspidocerons were closing in on them.
At a rough count, there seemed to be sixty of them.
I absentmindedly thought, “What kind of bonus is this?” popped into my brain for a moment, but then I thought of all the contingencies.
What I mean by “just in case” is that this might be their own plan to lure them in and then take them down.
So I have to ask the guys who are being chased if I can take these down or not.
I decided to check with the adventurer coming from the front.
「Hey! You guys over there! Are you planning to deliberately lure the large number of Aspidocerons that are closing in and defeat them? If not, can I take them down myself?」
「What? You’re kidding, right? You think you can beat that many? No, if you can take them down for real, it’s no problem at all! I mean, I wouldn’t intentionally lure that many in!」
「Well, then I’ll accept it gratefully.」
I used multiple deployments of 〈Lightning Magic〉, which I controlled to avoid hitting the adventurers in front of me, to kill more and more Aspidocerons.
It takes about three minutes to kill them all. The party of five adventurers from earlier were rolling around on the ground, exhausted, with surprised expressions on their faces.
「That’s awesome!」
「I’m saved!」
「Thank you for your help! Thank you so much!」
But I was more curious as to why there were so many Aspidochelons, so I asked them the question.
「When we got to the thirty-sixth floor, that group was there, and we couldn’t match their numbers, so we tried to run away, but they found us. And then they chased us. All the parties that went that far probably turned back, right? Didn’t you guys notice that there were a lot of parties going back to the surface?」
「 Ah, it was definitely a lot. Was that why?」
After a short conversation, they seemed to be tired and returned to thesurface.
They said that it was rare for someone to be able to defeat it so quickly, because only a high skill level of 〈Lightning Magic〉 could penetrate the shell.
He also said that other than〈Lightning Magic〉, it would require a good quality weapon with a very sharp edge.
Anyway, after defeating a large number of Aspidochelons, we decided to make camp here for the night.