"Everyone!"
The moment the mist sprayed out, everyone reacted to my voice and tried to run, but the mist swallowed us faster than any of them could react—everyone except me collapsed to the ground.
"Damn it!"
I didn't know what the mist actually was, but it didn't seem to be a lethal poison. Everyone was still conscious, just in a daze.
I was relieved that nobody had died, but staying here was dangerous, so I decided to put everyone into the Dimension Bag and leave this place.
After retreating quite a distance, I noticed the mist had thinned out. I used a side passage to create a room for everyone's treatment, exchanged the air with magic, and then completely sealed the opening to keep the mist from getting in. After that, I pulled out every bed I had in the Magic Bag and laid everyone down. Grandpa and Lina seemed to have relatively mild symptoms, but their bodies wouldn't move and they were still groggy.
Jin, Garat, and Menace, however, seemed to be in serious condition—they were unconscious, their complexions were bad, and their breathing was rough.
I immediately cast the antidote spell "Antidote." Their complexions seemed to improve slightly, but there was no change in their consciousness or breathing. Still, it seemed to have some effect, so I decided to cast it on myself, Grandpa, and Lina as well and see how things went.
"My symptoms seem pretty mild—just a headache, dizziness, and nausea, I'd say... Still, this sweet smell is really getting to me."
The wind magic had cut out for a moment when the mist sprayed, so I'd been hit full-on by it. On top of that, after protecting Grandpa and the others, I'd run straight through the mist without using wind magic, so the sweet smell was clinging to my clothes. Grandpa and Jin and the others had also been enveloped by the mist, but since I'd put them in the Dimension Bag right away, they didn't seem to have the smell on them as much as I did.
"Ugh... Tenma, give me water..."
"M-me too, please..."
After washing their faces and arms and changing clothes, I checked on Jin and the others. They still hadn't regained consciousness, but they seemed to be feeling considerably better. While I was mulling over the symptoms that had struck me and the mist, Grandpa and Lina's consciousness fully returned, and they complained of thirst. They'd recovered enough to sit up on their own, so I was relieved.
"Here's water. How are you two feeling?"
"Terrible... It's like being rocked by waves on a ship."
"It feels like a hangover..."
The way they endured their headaches while drinking water was exactly as Lina had said—it looked like they were suffering from a hangover.
"Could it be... that you're actually drunk?"
Just as Lina had described, it was so similar to a hangover that I ended up muttering that without thinking.
"No, I don't think it's alcohol intoxication—more like some kind of drug poisoning. I'm not sure if you'd call it a medicinal component in that mist, but I think it's affecting our bodies somehow. And the common factor between me, Grandpa, Lina, Jin, Garat, and Menace is whether or not we're skilled with magic. So those of us who are accustomed to Magic Power—like me—probably experienced milder symptoms, right?"
"You mean 'magic intoxication'? I've heard it can happen from taking too many magic recovery potions, but can it occur naturally?"
"That wouldn't happen under normal circumstances. Even if the area was prone to magic power buildup, it should have dissipated before it could accumulate. Even if that mist was a mass of magic power, and the other side of that wall was a sealed space where it could pool—the mist that escaped was drifting outside too. In other words, something"
"something"
"laced"
"with magic power could have caused the magic intoxication."
Grandpa beat me to the punch.
"Exactly. So I think Jin and the others will recover if they just rest up. But before that, I want to go investigate that area."
I didn't know what the cause was, but if we left it alone and that mist ended up spreading throughout the dungeon, everything we'd conquered so far might go to waste. Grandpa and Lina seemed to think we should turn back, but if the mist was the root cause, there was a good countermeasure. That was,
"Just like when we defeated the octopus, I'll surround myself with a wind barrier and keep the air inside constantly filled with magically generated air—that should prevent what happened earlier. Besides, I seem to have some resistance to that mist, and at worst, if we don't seal that hole, it could affect not just this dungeon but the ones above as well."
After convincing Grandpa, I left him in charge of looking after Jin and the others and headed outside alone.
"Is it because of the mist, or is my vision slightly worse?"
It was only a little worse than before—more like "maybe my vision is a bit blurrier?"—but if it was like this this far from where the mist had erupted, that spot must have been quite dense.
And unfortunately, my guess turned out to be correct. The slope was blanketed in mist so thick that I couldn't see more than a few meters ahead.
"Should I push through while parting it with wind magic, or blow it all away first before advancing... Either way, it looks like I'm going to scatter that mist everywhere..."
The mist seemed to be pooling on the slope, so using wind magic would send it scattering in all directions. But in its current state, I couldn't investigate the cause at all. Worse yet, just entering like this might cause the mist to overflow from the slope.
"Should I go inside and set up a wall as a lid? But then I might not be able to escape in time if something happens..."
As I murmured to myself, I crept forward to the edge—just shy of the point where the accumulated mist on the slope would start to billow up—
"The ground is white... Is this the true nature of the mist?"
I noticed the ground had turned a faint white, so I traced my fingertip along it. A chalky powder clung to my skin.
"It doesn't seem to be lime, but if this is what's causing the haze, maybe I can do something about it?"
The idea crossed my mind that if the haze was some kind of lime-like substance, I might be able to wash it away with water. So I used the wind magic barrier I'd been maintaining to seal off the entrance of the slope, stuck just my arm through, and conjured water magic to produce a mist. Well, more like a
Mist
Spra
ying
kind of thing, so it immediately fell to the ground... but the falling droplets were mixing with the haze and turning white, which meant the spray was having an effect on it.
It worked, but the haze was still quite thick, so I increased the power of the spray to reach further in. This created a flow in the accumulated haze along the slope, improving efficiency, and gradually the haze began to thin out.
"At this rate, it looks like it'll be fine."
After continuing the spray for a while, the haze had become virtually invisible, replaced by numerous white puddles of water across the ground. I probably could have moved around without magic at this point, but just to be safe, I decided to keep the wind magic barrier active while heading toward the wall.
"Getting this far, there's still some haze left... I could do another pass, but maybe I should check what's inside first."
There was still haze near the wall, so I considered spraying again, but thinking about the possibility that there might be something on the other side that shouldn't get too wet, I decided to check the situation as it was first.
"'Search' isn't detecting any monster reactions, so it doesn't seem to be the boss's room... but it's quite spacious."
I gave it a quick scan with "Search" before entering. It wasn't as large as the room where the hydra that Jin and the others had defeated had been, but it was the biggest room I'd found in the new dungeon — large enough to rank among the top rooms even when combined with the upper dungeon.
"Well, I might as well go in and—whoa!"
The moment I slipped through the hole I'd opened while emitting light from my magic, I was startled by the face of a monster right next to the opening.
"That's going to give someone a heart attack..."
Well, I did realize it was dead right away, but if I'd been a split-second slower to notice, I probably would have blasted it with magic.
"Still, what a massive snake. And there are two of them."
They were nearly mummified, and parts of their bodies had been crushed by rock, so I couldn't tell their exact size, but even so, both of them looked to be around thirty meters long.
"The materials probably won't be much to look forward to."
The two didn't seem to be mates—if anything, they appeared to have been hostile toward each other, as their bodies bore clear wounds from fighting. On top of that, they were covered in mold and moss, and above all, they were filthy, so I really didn't want to touch them.
"The rocks at the entrance—could they be the result of these two fighting?"
It seemed like these giant snakes had battled inside the room, and the resulting rampage had sealed off the entrance. Both had killed each other in the process.
"If that's the case, though, it doesn't explain the mist..."
The mist grew thicker the deeper into the room I went, so I decided to give up on the materials altogether and use my spray bottle to clear it. Unlike on the slope, I was spraying near the center where the mist had pooled, and perhaps that was why—it was thinning out in a surprisingly satisfying way.
"Maybe I should move around while I do this... What's that?"
As I kept clearing the mist and it thinned enough for the far end of the room to start becoming visible, I spotted something like a pedestal against the wall on the opposite side from the entrance. Curious, I approached it and—
"Could this be... the dungeon core?"
Sitting atop the pedestal-like structure was an enormous dungeon core. The one Jin and the others had found was slightly over a meter in diameter, and even that was said to be the largest ever discovered. But the one before me was bigger still—conservatively, well over 1.5 meters across.
"This is incredible... Wh—!"
Still dazed by the colossal dungeon core, I absently raised my gaze and—
What
...
I locked eyes with it. When I'd seen the snake corpses earlier, I'd been startled but able to reflexively ready myself for combat. This time, I couldn't. If anything, my first thought was, "I'm dead..."
"Is this...
a dragon
...?"
The entity facing me was a 'Dragon'—about as large as the
zombie of an ancient dragon
I had once slain. Though,
But
that's
only
if it
were
still
alive.
"
To have
this much
presence
in bone form...
When it was alive, it might have had strength on par with a Dragon Zombie."
If the bones alone carried this kind of presence, then when it was alive it might have possessed the strength of an Ancient Dragon class... Just as I was thinking that,
"Mist has appeared again... Where is it coming from?"
I noticed the mist around me was growing thicker.
I scanned my surroundings looking for the source of the mist, but couldn't find anything.
"Maybe I should head back and inform everyone about the Dungeon Core."
Thinking that, I turned toward the entrance to head back when—
"Didn't mist just erupt?"
From a rock near the entrance, I could see something mist-like spurting out. I hurried over to the spot, only to find that what I'd thought was a rock was actually the carcass of a snake, and what I'd assumed was the source of the mist-like substance turned out to be moss.
"Is this moss the cause? I don't see anything particularly unusual about it, though..."
It was moss I had never seen before, but by all appearances it looked like nothing more than a slightly rare variety—not the kind that would be belching out mist.
"'Appraisal' doesn't even give it a name, so it must be a new species, then... Hm?"
After staring at the moss for a while, I thought I saw it move for just an instant. Wondering if I'd imagined it, I kept my eyes fixed on the spot where it seemed to have shifted, and little by little, that area began to swell upward. Then—
"So you're the real source of the mist!"
The raised area formed into a bump, and from it, the mist spurted out. The mist quickly became invisible as it dissolved into the air, but when I lowered the barrier and sniffed, I caught a sweet smell—so this was almost certainly the true source of the mist.
"In other words, this mist is like some kind of pollen from the moss?"
When I peeled back the moss around the bump, I found a small pouch-like structure just beneath the surface. It was probably something like a bud, connected by a tube-like stem. Air was being forced through this tube, scattering the pollen inside the bud outward in the form of mist.
"Maybe it evolved this way because there were no insects to carry the pollen."
Still, it was strange that the moss could only be found in this particular room, given that it produced enough pollen to create that much mist.
"At least now I know what's causing the mist, which is good. But I should probably head back for now."
It had to have been about an hour since I started going solo, and if I didn't get back soon, I'd be causing Grandpa and the others unnecessary worry.
Thinking that, I hurried back to the evacuation area, but—
"Tenma! You're far too late!"
I thought I'd only been gone for an hour, but apparently more than two hours had actually passed, and the moment I got back, Grandpa laid into me. Discovering the dragon bones, the Dungeon Core, and the source of the mist must have thrown off my sense of time considerably.
"Hmm. So if you take that Dungeon Core with you, the dungeon conquest will be considered complete."
"It kinda feels like Tenma swooped in and snagged all the best parts for himself."
"Well, I never expected there wouldn't be a boss either. More importantly, how were Jin and the others doing?"
They looked better than when we'd left this place, so I asked if anything concerning had happened in my absence, but apparently nothing had. On top of that, all three of them had regained consciousness once along the way, so they should be fine. They were just sleeping normally now, though they said they still felt some lingering fatigue.
"Once Jin and the others recover, let's all go to that room together, grab the Dungeon Core and the dragon bones, head back to the surface, and throw a party!"
Lina was excited about clearing a new dungeon after the last one, but Tenma had something on his mind.
"Say, Tenma, you don't seem too keen on recovering the core?"
"Well, I'm a little worried about something. You all remember what I told you about the 'Dungeon Dimension Bag Theory,' right? If that theory turns out to be correct, I'm wondering what happens after we pull the core out."
"Huh?"
"A Dimension Bag stores things inside an expanded space, right? Grandpa, you know what happens to the contents when that space collapses, don't you?"
"That would be... well, everything inside goes spilling out..."
"So you're saying this whole dungeon could go spilling out right under Seigen's town?"
If that were to happen, Seigen's town would be blown sky-high.
"Even if my theory is wrong, the moment we remove the core, the dungeon should lose all its functions, right? That would leave behind a massive space with weakened structural integrity, wouldn't it?"
Even if his theory was wrong, there was a real possibility that Seigen's town would sink down by a hundred-plus floors.
"Both scenarios are nightmares."
"They're just hypotheses, but they're pretty convincing. And if either one actually happened, the damage would be enormous... On top of that, we'd almost certainly be caught in it."
If the dungeon was in a Dimension Bag state, the town would blow up and we'd go with it. If the structure weakened, we'd be crushed along with the sinking town... Just as Grandpa said, either way it was nothing short of a nightmare.
"So far, there haven't been any reports of this happening in other dungeons, so maybe I'm overthinking it. But a super-massive dungeon like Seigen's being cleared is unprecedented. I think we should pull back for now and report to the King. Then we can wait to see what he decides. That said, if they decide to go ahead and remove the core, I'm planning to refuse."
"Me too!"
"Same here! ...Well, that's what I'd like to say, but I think Jin should be the one to speak up in that case. If push comes to shove, I'll quit the Dawn Sword!"
Standing up to the King head-on would be too difficult for someone in Lina's position—unlike Tenma or Grandpa—so Jin being the one to take the arrow was probably unavoidable. And if Jin couldn't bring himself to refuse, slipping away was probably their only recourse.
And so, the three of them reached an agreement. The rest was up to Jin and the others.
"Speaking of which, so that mist was moss pollen after all... Tenma said he was pushing the pollen out with air, but maybe it wasn't just plain air—maybe it had an effect like 'hypnotic gas.' And maybe it wasn't pollen at all, but spores. It immobilizes the target with gas, then coats them in scattered spores. The target gradually falls into a poisoned state and dies without ever waking from sleep. Using the corpses as a nursery bed, the moss spreads... Could that be the explanation? Being lighter than air is exactly why it drifted up to the higher floors. And I've heard that some gases in that category even have a sweet smell."
Now that she mentioned it, that did seem to be the case. After all, moss had actually been growing on the snake's corpse.
"Maybe the reason the moss only grew in that room is that it needs some special condition to spread, or it couldn't cross the slope, or its germination rate is extremely low."
"If there is some special condition… maybe it's the Dungeon Core? Who knows, maybe that moss was actually the boss."
Lina said this half-jokingly, but it might actually be true. If I hadn't been there, Grandpa and the others would very likely have been wiped out.
"Even if we could find some way to enter the room, removing the Dungeon Core would destroy the dungeon… That would make it virtually impossible to clear, wouldn't it?"
Removing the core didn't necessarily guarantee the dungeon would collapse, but if it did, then this really would be an un-clearable dungeon.
"Then why don't we present that angle to the King? For the Kingdom, it's better to be able to harvest resources from the dungeon long-term rather than have it destroyed. And above all, even if it's just a 'possibility,' they can't afford to gamble Seigen on it."
Even if the Dungeon Core was a valuable resource, it didn't have any particularly important use. For the Kingdom, the profits generated by Seigen would be far more important.
Some nobles might object to this, but since Seigen was under the direct control of the royal family, they wouldn't be able to meddle with the King's decision… probably.
"So then, we just wait for Jin and the others to recover, collect the dragon bones, and call the expedition finished for now?"
Lina seemed to be looking forward to the dragon bones, but—
"I don't think we'll be able to get much of it. Most of it had fused with the rock, and the exposed parts were badly deteriorated. Besides, it's also possible that it's part of the Dungeon Core itself, so I'd advise against messing with it carelessly."
I suspected that the Dungeon Core was actually the dragon's magic core that had transformed. However, the idea that the bones were part of the Dungeon Core was frankly hard to believe. The likelihood was considerably lower than the theory that this dungeon was in the same state as a Dimension Bag. Then, why had I said something like that? Because—
"If we put it that way, there'll be fewer idiots trying to get their hands on the dragon bones."
That was the preventive measure I wanted to put in place. If someone managed to bring back even a piece of the bone, nobles would start arguing that the Kingdom should send people to retrieve the dragon bones, and if there were enough of them, even the King wouldn't be able to ignore it.
"Explain that to the King and inflate the additional reward considerably, and he should accept it."
If that still wasn't enough, I'd add my own share of the reward on top, and in the worst case, I was prepared to pay out of pocket. Well, I didn't think it would come to that—the King would probably pay up regardless—but that was the level of resolve with which I was making this proposal to Lina. If Lina agreed, then even if Jin and the others ended up on the opposing side, we could force a three-to-three draw. And if we could reach a draw, we could then propose leaving the final decision to the client.
"Hmm… If I can get more rewards without taking any risks, I'm all for it. But if this causes a rift with Jin and the others, you're taking responsibility for that, Tenma?"
Lina probably didn't think that would happen either, but she was asking for compensation in the off chance it did. I accepted Lina's condition, and in doing so, gained an ally for the worst-case scenario. Incidentally, I was certain that Grandpa would side with me, so I didn't bother asking for his approval. In exchange—
"Tenma, you'll explain to me why you're so fixated on those dragon bones."
That was the condition she laid out. Well, the reason I was so particular about it wasn't really a big deal. It wasn't like I was planning to come back later and secretly salvage the bones or anything like that.
"I just thought that dragon might be Solomon's parent. I don't want to do something like desecrate what could be Solomon's parent's grave."
Solomon's egg had been found on a much higher floor, but I couldn't believe that the bones of what appeared to be an upper-tier or higher dragon had nothing to do with a middle-tier or higher Solomon. Rather, it only made sense to assume they were connected, given that they were found in the same dungeon.
"If I could take even a part of it, I'd want to bring it back for Solomon's sake, but if that ended up ruining Seigen's operation, it would be unbearable to watch."
So at the very least, I wanted to leave it undisturbed.
"If that's the case, couldn't you have just explained that to Lina as well?"
"Well, saying 'it might be' is a little embarrassing, and besides, the reason I gave Lina was the truth too."
With that, I put an end to the conversation — but a few hours later, Jin and Garat woke up after recovering and started grumbling. Menace, like Lina, was satisfied with the understanding that this was a safe strategy that would increase their rewards, but apparently the chance to get your hands on upper-tier dragon bones was a once-in-a-lifetime probability — if even that.
Jin and Garat seemed to understand that they would lose even if it came to a vote, so they didn't push the matter further, though they were still a bit sour about it. However, once Grandpa revealed my true feelings—
"I see... Tenma, you really do have a kind heart, just like anyone else."
"If that's the case, then I suppose there's nothing to be done. This time, let's call it even for Tenma's sake."
—and they began looking at me with a warmth they hadn't shown before. Their entire attitude had flipped from the sullen mood they'd had just moments ago, but... they had probably been grumbling just to get it out of their system, and were struggling with how to shift the atmosphere. So they'd pretended to concede by humoring me, and then decided to tease me for good measure. If the King ended up skimping on the bonus rewards, I would give my share to Lina and Menace, but I made absolutely sure not to give a single thing to these two.