"But first, what exactly did these people do?"
Before Amour could even ask, I demanded to know how this situation had come about.
"They attacked us, and I repelled them!"
So that was the story. I turned to Jeanne and Aura, who were hiding in the back.
"So, these guys were trying to capture Jeanne and the others for ransom... Slarin, is that correct?"
I asked Slarin just to be sure, and Slarin bounced its body up and down to confirm.
"In that case, to prove Amour's innocence, we should take them to the Guild... Or, because it's a hassle, should I just tie them up and leave them here?"
"That would really... affect the reputation of the Ootori family, so please don't."
I wasn't just going to leave them lying around; I intended to create something like a proper cell and put them inside, but Primera objected because of the bad press.
"Fine. I'll put them in the Dimension Bag and take them to the Guild. If this isn't their first offense, there should be some similar incident reports at the Guild."
Besides, even if this was their first time, they had clearly gotten into a conflict with Amour's group. And despite appearances, Amour was the daughter of a Viscount. Since they had laid hands on a noble (or at least, since a conflict had occurred), their interrogation would be severe.
"If these people's crimes cannot be proven, we might have to consider staying long-term in Seigen..."
Primera murmured in a voice that sounded both resigned and exasperated, while, for some reason, she was kneading Slarin. Well, if this much trouble kept happening on their honeymoon, maybe it was unavoidable. I felt a bit sorry for Slarin, who was being kneaded in a way that wasn't quite abusive but still might be a form of venting, but I wanted her to keep at it a little longer.
While Slarin was in Primera's clutches, I was about to tie up the still-unconscious criminals and toss them into the bag when—
"Heyyy, Tenmaaa!"
Jin and the others arrived.
"I heard at the reception desk that you and Primera were doing something weird! It sounded interesting, so I came to check it out!"
"If it's something interesting, we'll help too!"
I was a bit annoyed that Jin and Garat were trying to act cool and refreshed despite arriving out of sheer nosy curiosity, but I thought they might know something about these people, so I decided to ask them. And then,
"Amur, well done! These are outsiders who drifted into Seigen a while back. I don't know what they were like in their original place, but their attitudes, their mouths, and their personalities are rotten—causing problem after problem the moment they showed up, with the guild master on the verge of blowing his top. Once the evidence of their misdeeds is all lined up, we won't just revoke their licenses—we'll deal with them as criminals! ...That's what he said."
"I figured they weren't first-time offenders, but what other charges are they facing?"
Thinking "just as I suspected," I asked Jin—who was putting on his best impression of the guild master—about the other charges, but before he could answer, it was Garat and Menace who spoke up instead.
"Well, for starters, there's extortion. On top of that, blackmail and theft... It's been confirmed that they'd pick fights with newcomers over trivial things to seize what they'd found."
"Plus, since a few newcomers have gone missing since those guys showed up, they're also under suspicion of murder."
They sounded like a pretty nasty bunch, but as far as the murder charge went, there was no real evidence—just the fact that several people had gone missing—so it was still only a possibility. On the other hand, for the extortion, blackmail, and theft, even though there was no definitive evidence since everything happened inside the dungeon, there were witnesses and victim testimonies, so the guild had concluded they were "pretty much guilty." However, with just that, it was difficult to not only prosecute them as criminals but even revoke their licenses—at best, they could impose a suspension of a few weeks. Since they could potentially flee to another city during that suspension period, the guild was in a holding pattern, waiting for decisive evidence to surface, and Jin and the others were grinning, saying that thanks to Amur, they'd finally be able to deliver the finishing blow.
"Well then, let's head to the guild right away!"
In an inexplicably cheerful mood, Jin and Garat roughly stuffed the adventurers into the Dimension Bag, then started heading toward the lower floor where the warp zone was, practically pushing me along by the back.
Menace watched the two of them with exasperation before starting to walk, while Primera followed behind, chatting with Lina and the others.
"Listen up, everyone! Those idiots went and made a real mess of things!"
"The one who took them down was Amur!"
The moment they entered the guild, Jin and Garat started shouting at the top of their lungs that the problem adventurers had been taken care of by Amur. When the other adventurers heard this, voices of joy and voices of disappointment rose up from the crowd.
By this point, I could tell that not only me but even Amur, Jeanne, and Aura had noticed something was off, and they were all looking at Jin and Garat with cold eyes. However, the two of them didn't seem to realize their reputation was taking a nosedive.
"Menace, what exactly is going on here?"
"Simply put, those problem adventurers were placing bets on 'when, where, and by whom' they'd get caught. The most popular pick was 'in the dungeon on the day Tenma came to Seigen.' The second most popular was 'in the dungeon the day after Tenma came.'"
As it turned out, bets related to me dominated the upper rankings, with Grandpa showing up around sixth place, and Amur only appearing past the tenth spot. Incidentally, the bookmakers were apparently Agri and her group. When I confronted Agri about this—she was having tea with Grandpa at their usual spot—she said the profits would go toward new recruit training at the Tamer's Guild. Since I was (technically) a member who never actually did anything, I decided to let it slide.
Amur, who had been made into a betting target without permission—and a deeply unpopular one at that—was about to protest to Agri, but before she could get a word in, Agri offered her an assortment of sweets, and her attitude did a complete one-eighty. Agri must have anticipated the protest, since she'd prepared in advance. For what it's worth, the tea snacks she'd been serving Grandpa were apparently prepared for the same reason—to preempt any complaints. As for me, she said that since I was a member of the Tamer's Guild, no such accommodation was necessary.
"On that note, did any of you win your bets?"
"No, it's not that we won or lost—I didn't place any bets at all. Jin and Garat apparently did win, though. In my case, Lina said something like, 'Depending on Primera's mood, she might get angry if she finds out you're betting~'... so the official story is that I sat it out because of that. The real reason, though, was that I didn't have enough confidence in my prediction."
I gave Menace a look that said, "Come on, you're not the type to hold back just because Lina says something." Noticing my gaze, Menace quickly corrected herself. Lina probably didn't think Primera would actually get angry over something like that either, so the real reason she hadn't placed any bets was probably the same as Menace's.
"So, how much do you think those two made?"
"Who knows? All I can say for certain is that they didn't bet on just one thing, so even if the payouts were big, it might not have added up to that much."
Judging by how thrilled they looked, it would be wrong to say they were at a loss. If this had been a payout tied to me, those two would've descended on me without a shred of hesitation, but since it wasn't, that privilege belonged to Amour alone.
Amour probably understood this too, because she popped one of the sweets Agri had given her into her mouth and immediately headed over toward the pair. Knowing Amour, there was a real chance she'd end up treating them to the point where their winnings evaporated entirely... but that was none of my business, so I decided to sit back and enjoy watching what happened to their wallets from the sidelines.
"It appears the discussion about the bets has concluded."
Noticing that the conversation had reached a natural break, the old man had us—everyone except Amour—take our seats.
"You've heard about the lake inside the dungeon, yes? It turns out there's a high probability that Namitaro is there."
Well, the largest body of water in Seigen was the lake inside the dungeon, so it wouldn't be strange for a fish-type Monster like Namitaro to have headed there.
But just as I was wondering what the problem was with that—
"Here's the thing. Not a single person has seen Namitaro enter the dungeon from the entrance."
If that were all there was to it, you could assume someone had... say, used Jeanne's Dimension Bag to get inside. But at the very least, Jeanne and the others hadn't done that (they, like me and the old man, hadn't met Namitaro either), and apparently none of Namitaro's acquaintances—Jin or anyone at the Tamer's Guild—were involved either.
"Maybe he asked someone we don't know to help, but that doesn't sound like Namitaro. He's the type to just walk right in the front door."
He was the kind of creature who'd try to force his way through even if someone tried to stop him, just for the fun of it. It was hard to believe he'd go so far as to secretly enter the dungeon by asking some stranger for help.
"There are a few things I'd like to ask him, so let's go talk to Namitaro directly."
When I said that, the old man and the others nodded, stood up, and called for Amour to head toward the dungeon... but just then—
"Tenma, if you're heading to the lake, there happens to be a request that's right up your alley."
Agri said something like that. I told her that since this was technically our honeymoon, I'd rather not take on any requests, but Agri pulled me over to the reception desk, saying things like "It's something only Tenma can do" and "Think of it as helping a fellow professional." The result was...
"I ended up taking on a request."
Agri's suggestion landed me with a commission. I figured I might as well do it while I was already going to hear what Namitaro had to say, so I agreed, but under normal circumstances it would have been the kind of job that took months to complete.
I relayed the details of the request to the others, and they all agreed it was something only I could handle and probably wouldn't take much time.
It had started raining harder outside again, but since we traveled to the dungeon by carriage, nobody got much wet aside from the driver Jin and Garat (who had tagged along out of curiosity), and we made it to the lake without any stress.
"So, how are we going to find Namitaro?"
"Knowing Namitaro, it's hard to imagine they'd come out obediently just because we called, right?"
Primera was right—there was a chance Namitaro would clown around and not show up even if we called, so we decided to try two different plans this time.
"First, let's prepare some imo yokan, wrap string around it, and… throw it!"
The plan was to lure Namitaro out with their favorite treat. If that didn't work, we'd have no choice but to resort to a rather violent alternative, but…
"Don't waste it!"
Imo yokan
Before it could hit the water, Namitaro burst from the surface and snatched it. With too much momentum, Namitaro flew all the way over to where we stood.
"You really flew all the way here, huh…"
At Grandpa's exasperated remark, we all silently nodded.
"Aw, come on, no need to praise me that much. Nami-chan's getting all bashful~"
Despite the joking around, Namitaro had already deftly stuffed the imo yokan into their mouth. Seeing that, I sort of regretted not going with the violent approach from the start—just blasting the lake with lightning magic.
"So, what brings you here, Nami-chan? It's still a bit early to head back to the Royal Capital, isn't it?"
"Oh, I almost forgot! You see, word got around that Namitaro appeared at the lake without passing through the dungeon entrance. I came to find out how that actually happened. Also, Tenma took on a simple request, so I figured I'd knock that out while I was at it."
Grandpa, who was the quickest to get back to his senses, answered Namitaro's question, and Namitaro said, "Oh, is that all?" with a slightly deflated look.
"Indeed, I'm"
he
re
..."
D
u
n
g
e
on entrance doesn't go through!"
Then how are we supposed to... I was about to think that when I noticed something off about the way Namitarou was speaking.
"The dungeon entrance here doesn't go through, but I came from a different dungeon!"
Namitarou's shocking revelation left us all momentarily paralyzed. Ignoring our stunned reactions, Namitarou continued his explanation.
"Yesterday, I was really itching to swim, so I dashed to the nearest river from Seigen. While I was swimming in that river, I found a little deep spot. I went looking to see if there was anything there, and I found a side passage barely wide enough for me to squeeze through. So I went inside, and it turned out to be a dungeon. I figured I might as well clear it while I was at it, and after swimming through, I ended up here. Oh, and it connects to the deepest part of this lake! Also, I brought you guys a souvenir!"
With that, Namitarou pulled out of his own bag an
oct
opus
roughly two meters in size. The octopus was weakened but still alive, and it was desperately trying to escape back to the lake.
"Man, this thing's stubborn, huh... Take that!"
With a shout, Namitarou delivered a chop right between the octopus's eyes, completely finishing it off. For the record, the octopus took Namitarou's chop to the face, and the area between its body and tentacles went completely flat.
"This one... it's the same species as the one that was in this lake before, right? A baby?"
"I don't know if it's a baby, but there were quite a few octopuses about this size around here. I didn't really intend to catch one, but this guy clung to me trying to eat me, so I beat it up a bit."
After that incident, there had been no sightings of octopuses in this lake, but it seemed they simply hadn't been found rather than not being there. Or perhaps this lake was like a vacation spot for the octopuses, doubling as the territory of that giant octopus, with their true home being in a different dungeon.
"In a sense... no, isn't this a huge discovery?"
Just discovering a new dungeon in the deepest floor would have been a significant find on its own, but another undiscovered dungeon had fused with it—one that might not exist anywhere else yet.
"That other dungeon was pretty huge too. Couldn't finish exploring it in a day. Besides, it wasn't really all that fun... Swimming through the deep sea would've been more entertaining."
That dungeon was apparently entirely submerged in water, dark, and visibility was so poor he kept almost crashing into walls. The creatures in it were also pretty much the same as the ones in this lake, aside from the octopus, so there weren't any particularly new discoveries. Though, it was possible that the creatures along the path he took just happened to be the same, and since he hadn't checked for ores or minerals, there was a chance some treasure lay hidden. Well, Naminata said searching was too much of a hassle, so he had no intention of going back outside of a casual visit.
"At any rate, I need to report the dungeon connected to the lake to the Guild and the King. Not that it would really speed up the clearing process."
Right now, the only one who could operate underwater and file a report was Naminata. The old man and I could use magic to investigate underwater as well, but if a Monster stronger than the octopus we defeated earlier showed up, that place could easily become our grave. Honestly, it sounded way too troublesome, so I didn't want to go. Even a royal commission from the King wouldn't change that.
"Well then, now that the mystery of Naminata is solved, I guess I'll get started on my own commission."
With the discussion about Naminata and the lake-connected dungeon wrapped up, I headed to the floor above to prepare for the commission I'd taken on. The preparation itself wasn't difficult, but it took a little time, so I asked the old man and the others to handle processing the octopus while I was gone.
About thirty minutes after moving to the upper floor, I finished my preparations and stood at the lake's shore...
"Golems, advance!"
I issued the command to over a hundred Golems. The Golems moved in two columns along the wall and stopped when the water depth reached the waist of the lead Golem.
A medium-sized Golem—about two meters tall on average—
"That makes exactly the tenth group... Didn't even make it thirty meters, but oh well."
The Golem I'd stopped was made to sit down on the spot, and then a small Golem was sent to retrieve its core. This created an improvised stone road. Once the core retrieval for the road Golems was complete, I had a Golem that had been waiting on shore walk along the rocks and assume a cross-legged sitting position at the front end. When that Golem was retrieved, I advanced the next Golem and had it drop the rock-clumped Golem into the lake. That Golem was then shifted sideways and seated in the same way, its core retrieved. Then the next Golem was sent in to drop it into the lake... By repeating this process, I managed to build a stone road over fifty meters long using a hundred Golems. The reason it didn't go as far as I'd hoped was that in some places, when the rocks were dropped, the footing was poor and they rolled in unexpected directions or sank.
After using the first hundred Golems to build the road, I went back to the upper floor to create more Golems and send them down to the lake.
From building a Golem to incorporating it into the road took less than an hour, so from the second round on, I left the on-site supervision to Slarin and focused solely on creating Golems. Making too many would just get in the way of the work, so after making a certain number, I waited for the retrieved cores to arrive and repeated the cycle of making only as many as were delivered.
By dividing the workload, we managed to cut the time roughly in half from the second round on, and in about three hours, the road was completed all the way to the other shore.
"For the last step, I'll use earth magic to fill in the gaps."
Even though it was called a road, there were tetrapod-like holes scattered throughout, so I decided to fill them with stone created by carving away the dungeon walls with magic. I used magic to break the wall first and then had the Golems handle the hole-filling work, so this was finished in about thirty minutes.
I'd ended up making Primera and the others wait for nearly four hours, but they'd spent the time toying with the carriage as a base camp—fishing, eating, sleeping, and even going out to explore the surrounding area without a care in the world.
"Getting pretty hungry though... What time is it around now?"
"It's probably well past dinnertime by now, I think."
There should still be time before midnight, but it was apparently quite late. Since I'd been concentrating so hard, my sense of time had gotten all messed up.
When I tried to eat a late dinner by myself, everyone else showed up for some reason and started preparing food together. The others had supposedly already eaten, but they claimed that enough time had passed that they were a little hungry again.
In the end, we ate together since food always tastes better with company... Even though it was obviously a second dinner (or late-night snack), three of them (plus two beasts) ate more than I did, one tried to eat but gave up, and our post-meal rest stretched on. By the time we returned to the surface, it was the middle of the night. Namitarou said he wanted to stay in the lake a while longer and vanished into the water, so we left him there and headed home.
We reported the quest's completion and the underwater dungeon at the guild that same day, quickly collected our reward, and had no intention of taking on any more dungeon-related requests. However, we were asked to at least share the location of the entrance at the bottom of the river, so we ended up returning to the lake before half a day had passed.
After sharing the location and going back to the guild to report again, we learned that the entrance fell within Seigen's jurisdiction, and the guild master and staff were overjoyed... Only to immediately realize they had no adventurers capable of conquering an underwater area, and their spirits sank.
Having finished our greetings and shopping, there was almost nothing left to do, so we planned to depart for the Royal Capital two days after our report... But starting the day after the report, heavy rain began to fall and didn't let up even on our planned departure date, pushing our departure back by about two days.
Incidentally, the only one happy about the rain was Namitarou, who apparently spent his time swimming upstream against the raging river in the downpour for fun.
Also, during our extended stay, the water level in the lake inside the dungeon rose again. While the road I'd built didn't sink completely, water did flow down to the lower floors. According to Namitarou, the water in the dungeon, which was connected to the river, had been pushed out by pressure when the river's water level rose.