"Shiromaru, slash!"
At my command, Shiromaru growled and swung his foreleg down.
"Gyaaa!"
The goblins that had clustered together were torn apart by Shiromaru's single strike and killed instantly.
"Good work, Shiromaru! You've gotten much better."
The strike Shiromaru unleashed was one he had developed back during the crocodile shark incident. For convenience, I named this technique "Slash Claw" and had him practice it under the simple name "Slash."
Thanks to his training, where he used to just unleash it with brute force alone, he had now learned to control his power — he could send it flying at distant targets or channel it directly through his claws.
Honestly, the old version of the technique was hard to use. The reason was that it could be substituted with other magic on top of being far too crude.
However, by limiting the ways it could be used, it became incredibly versatile.
The approach involved dividing it into three combat methods: close-range, by channeling it directly into one's hands, fingers, or feet to attack; mid-range, by infusing it into a weapon or blade; and long-range, by refining the old technique to launch it at a distance.
The result was that even Shiromaru could learn it easily, and his combat ability improved dramatically.
Of course, against the goblins we were dealing with now, that didn't really matter…
"Shiromaru, you can ignore the ones that run."
I extracted magic cores from the goblins and burned the corpses.
With dungeon monsters, there were no bounties for defeating them unless they were designated targets or sub-species. Moreover, if you brought parts from dungeon monsters to another town, it would be detected through Appraisal or similar means. In that case, a considerable penalty would be imposed.
You didn't technically have to deal with corpses inside dungeons, but since rotting remains could become a nuisance, it was an unspoken understanding that you should bury or burn them when you had the time. You could take materials back if they were useful, but goblins didn't yield much beyond magic cores.
"The stairs should be just a little further ahead. Let's go, Shiromaru."
Just like that, my first dungeon went smoothly, and in about two hours, I had made it to the tenth floor.
Normally, a beginner would be lucky to reach the third floor in two hours, but in my case, guided by Shiromaru's nose and my own exploration, we took the shortest path and cut down any goblins or slimes that occasionally appeared — resulting in progress at a speed that would be unthinkable under normal circumstances.
As a side note, I had made up my mind to avoid having Slarin fight others of its kind as much as possible.
The reason wasn't anything noble like feeling sorry for them — it was because watching it was just plain disgusting.
Slime-versus-slime battles, given their lack of physical attack methods, mostly consist of swallowing the opponent whole and dissolving them. I had pitted Slarin against another slime out of curiosity, and Slarin squirmed and writhed, trying to find an opening to swallow its opponent. The other slime did the exact same thing, squirming and writhing in response, and just watching them made me nauseous.
So after that, I put a stop to slime-style duels — or whatever you'd call them — between Slarin and its own kind.
On a related note, Slarin learned the fire magic that the slime it defeated had possessed. The most likely explanation is that it absorbed the other slime's elemental attribute, but since I had fed it other magic-wielding monsters before without this happening, I suspect it only applies when the opponent is also a slime.
Anyway, moving on.
Floor eleven. From here onward, no map existed — all that was known was that insect-type monsters appeared in this area.
This stretch was said to be the first real wall for beginners.
"Already here, huh… is that a caterpillar?"
My Appraisal identified it as a Green Caterpillar. It apparently had poison, so —
"Shiromaru, wait!"
I held Shiromaru back, picked up a palm-sized stone from the ground, cast an enhancement spell on it, and —
"Hah!"
I hurled it like a baseball.
The ball — no, the stone — struck its mark beautifully… and the caterpillar burst apart.
"Gross! And weak!"
The problem was that I had enhanced my arm strength too much — the caterpillar's body fluids and whatnot splattered all over the place as it died.
"…Next time I'll try to take them out with magic…"
Was the eleventh floor nothing but caterpillars?! That was the kind of scream I wanted to let loose, because absolutely nothing but caterpillars kept showing up.
I was getting a little tired, so I decided to find a dead end and take a break.
My method for taking a break was simple: first, find a dead end, then seal off the passage with earth magic. Once I had something like a private room, I'd check for any hidden monsters... That was it.
The method itself was straightforward, but I considered it quite effective. After all, if I reinforced the earthen wall with a fortification spell, not many monsters would be able to break through easily. More than anything, the ability to sit down and relax without being overly cautious was a huge advantage.
Besides, I had various spells at my disposal, and inside my Magic Bag I had everything from food and water to even a carriage. If I put my mind to it, I could live inside the dungeon for as long as my food supplies lasted.
However, just because I could survive down there didn't mean I should let myself get complacent. Doing so would eventually take a toll on both my mind and body.
That was why I had been searching for a comfortable inn on the surface where I could properly rest.
"Let's eat for now."
I instructed Shiromaru and Slarin to take turns standing watch, then sat down to have a meal and take a light rest. Of course, I prepared food for Shiromaru and Slarin as well... Otherwise, Shiromaru would start putting on a concert with his stomach growling.
After eating, I lay down and slept for about thirty minutes. Keeping a spare bed in my bag had been the right call for moments like these. Whether you lie down or not when resting makes a definite difference in how quickly your fatigue fades away.
This was something my grandfather and the others used to tell me in my previous life: lie down whenever you can.
Even sleeping for a short while left me feeling considerably refreshed, both mentally and physically. Up to this point, the journey had been simple enough, but I hadn't realized how much tension I'd been carrying, wasting extra energy without even noticing.
"Time to go, Shiromaru."
I called out to Shiromaru, who had been sleeping under the bed, then began packing up the bed and other belongings.
Shiromaru seemed to have recovered his stamina as well, yawning and stretching lazily.
In his place, Slarin climbed into the Dimension Bag to get some rest.
When I was about to break through the wall to resume our adventure, I noticed a faint breeze coming from behind.
"Where is that coming from?"
If the wind had been blowing from the wall in front of me, I wouldn't have thought much of it. But since it was coming from the direction where the wall had originally been, I cautiously felt along the wall to investigate.
"Here."
There was a fist-sized hole in the corner of the wall.
Once I had identified the source of the breeze, I used earth magic to widen the opening. Beyond it lay a deep pit.
"A hidden room... or something like it. Not sure how far it goes, but as long as it's not a monsters' nest."
I murmured that to myself, put Shiromaru in the bag, and used Flight to slowly descend into the hole.
Just to be safe, I sealed the opening back up the way it was.
Floating through the air on the way down took about fifteen minutes. The hole was roughly four meters in diameter, but occasionally the walls jutted inward, narrowing the passage, so I had to carve through them with magic as I descended — and I still hadn't gone down even a hundred meters.
Another ten minutes of descent. Finally, I could see the end.
When I reached the bottom, there was a side passage large enough for a person to walk through, and wind was flowing in from beyond it.
I advanced cautiously while using Exploration. Within five minutes, I emerged into a vast open space.
The space was filled with magic power far denser than normal, so I quickly hid behind a nearby rock and surveyed my surroundings — but there were no monsters within sight.
Just to be safe, I used Exploration again, and there was a rather large magic power response deeper inside. Strangely, even when I used Appraisal, all that appeared in my mind was a garbled string of incomprehensible characters.
This had never happened before, so I slowly made my way toward the source of the response while concealing myself, when—
"A dragon?"
What was there was a rock shaped like a dragon.
It was about four meters in size, curled up in a resting pose.
My curiosity got the better of me — I forgot all about the magic power response and approached carelessly.
When I got within about five meters, the dragon-shaped rock's eyes glowed red and it rose to its feet.
"Wh— so it's a Golem?!"
Panic flared inside me as I hurriedly put distance between us, but the Golem had apparently identified me as an enemy — it had already assumed a combat stance.
I pulled the Adamantine sword from my bag and took up a fighting position against the Golem.
I could have fled, of course, but I'd become curious about the core powering such a Golem, and I figured I might as well take it while I was here.
The Golem swung its tail and lashed out with its limbs, but fortunately it didn't seem to be able to use breath attacks — when the distance opened up, it could only resort to hurling rocks.
"Even so, it doesn't look like the Adamantine sword is doing much damage…"
If things kept going like this, I probably wouldn't lose. However, letting it rampage in a place like this could trigger a cave-in before long.
So I reinforced the Adamantine sword and charged into the Golem's reach.
Naturally, the Golem swung its limbs at me trying to crush me, but aside from its hardness and power it wasn't much of a threat — I dodged its attacks by using earth magic to turn the ground beneath it to sand and throw it off balance, or by conjuring walls to absorb its force.
Of course, I was launching my own attacks while dodging the Golem's.
I concentrated my strikes around the base of its right front leg, and little by little I was chipping it away.
At first I'd been using magic, but this Golem seemed to have magic resistance — physical attacks were more effective than spells, so I was dealing damage with my reinforced sword and earth magic–powered physical strikes.
In truth, there were magic attacks that could damage even this Golem… but they were far too powerful, and in an enclosed space like this they'd hurt me just as badly. There was no way I could risk using them.
Anyway, thanks to my sustained assault, cracks had started to form in the Golem's front leg.
I created some distance, then hurled a rock at it with earth magic. It struck the right front leg just right, and I succeeded in shattering it completely.
But I couldn't afford to let my guard down — Golems of this type often possessed a degree of regeneration, and sure enough, the Golem's right front leg was slowly pulling in surrounding stone to rebuild itself.
"Like I'll let you!"
I fired off fire magic to pin the Golem down, then closed in to strike again.
This time I shattered the left front leg faster than before. After that, just to be safe, I crushed the hind legs as well — though those were trickier since the tail kept lashing out, in a sense more troublesome than the front legs had been.
The result was a Dragon Golem with no limbs.
Having no limbs didn't mean it was harmless — it still had its mouth and tail, so I had to stay alert. But on the other hand, those were its only attack methods now, so I methodically hammered its head while preventing it from regenerating.
After five solid minutes of pounding, the Golem's head crumbled away to nothing — and yet it still wouldn't stop moving.
"Even for a Golem… this is pretty grotesque."
Thinking that, I smashed the neck to pieces. Then I shattered the tail, leaving only what looked at a glance like an ordinary boulder — the torso.
As I was breaking apart the torso, I heard a harsh metallic clang, and believe it or not, my reinforced Adamantine sword chipped.
"Whoa!"
I let out a weird sound. When the sword chipped, the shock was so intense that my hand went numb.
"Ow ow ow… What the hell was that?"
Looking at the spot I'd been striking, I could see something white.
Carefully striking around the white object, what came out was some kind of white, roundish thing.
"Could this be… an egg?"
The moment I pulled it out, the Golem stopped moving and then crumbled apart with a rumbling crash.
"So this was its core."
With the core removed, the Golem lost all function and became nothing more than an ordinary stone.
I stuffed the egg into my bag first, but as I was about to head outside, I noticed that the collapsed remains of the Golem contained flecks of metal.
I used Appraisal, and it came back as Mithril, so I went around picking it all up.
The pieces of Mithril ranged from about the size of a thumbnail down to half the size of a pinky nail.
"No wonder it was so tough… If this stuff was mixed in, of course it was a pain to deal with…"
As I said that, I cast an earth spell on the shattered fragments of the Golem, turning them into sand. What didn't turn into sand was the Mithril.
All told, I'd gathered around ten kilograms of it. At market price, even in its raw, unprocessed state, it would be worth around five million G.
That was roughly on par with gold. However, depending on the item, Mithril could fetch nearly five times its raw price once processed. That was because Mithril was incredibly hard and difficult to work with, driving the price up beyond its raw value.
I searched the surrounding area for any more Mithril, but it seemed like the metal had been transformed along with the rock that became the Golem. All I found around the area was about twenty kilograms of silver—no more Mithril turned up.
Still, that would probably net somewhere between one hundred and two hundred thousand G.
I was just about to call it quits when I noticed something at the far edge of the area—a place where space itself seemed to warp and distort.
"Is this the thing they said connects to the outside?"
Apparently, adventurers call this a warp zone. It was probably the reincarnators who gave it that name.
I was a little nervous, but I steeled myself and stepped into the warp zone, and immediately found myself in a different space.
There was a door a little ahead, so I opened it—and it led to a spot near the entrance I'd come through that morning.
"Oh, what's this? Tenma's back just in time too!"
When I looked toward the voice, Jin and the others were there.
"Yeah, I figured I'd dive in casually and ended up pulling in a decent haul."
The words "decent haul" caught Jin and the others' attention,
"How much are we talking?"
They asked out of sheer curiosity. Their tone was the kind that said they'd consider themselves lucky if I told them, but I pulled out a portion of today's haul and set it on a nearby table.
"Wait, you—… you call *this* a 'decent haul'? How far down did you go?!"
Jin and the others raised their voices at the sight of roughly a hundred magic cores and about twenty kilograms of silver laid out on the table (shaped through alchemy into one-kilogram ingots, for the record).
The commotion drew looks from people around us, and they started to peek over, but I shot them a glare and kept them at a distance.
"The location's a secret, but I think it was around the twelfth floor… or thereabouts. I've used Concealment on the spots I harvested from, though."
Hearing that, a few adventurers bolted toward the dungeon entrance—I swear I wasn't lying.
Jin and the others were eyeing me with open suspicion, but seeing that my expression didn't change, they seemed to give up and—
"Try not to stir up too much chaos…"
Jin placed a hand on my shoulder and muttered that. I gave a vague nod—
"Adventurers are responsible for their own choices, though."
—and when I said that, Jin let out a wry smile.
"So, are you planning to sell that silver to the Guild?"
Menace, who was sitting next to Jin, said something to that effect, so I replied that was indeed my plan, and—
"If the quality is this good, you'd probably get a better price selling it to a high-end shop somewhere rather than the Guild."
—that was the advice I received.
"Do you happen to know any good places?"
However, I still wasn't familiar with Seigen, so when I asked where I could find a shop that would buy it, Menace thought for a moment before answering—
"A shop on the north side of town would probably buy most things, but… I couldn't say which specific one is best."
So for the time being, I decided to stow the silver ingots in my bag.
"Since we're at it, why don't we grab a meal together?"
I was invited along, so—
"Sure, I'd like that."
—and so we proceeded to deepen our connection. Mind you, it wasn't purely a desire for camaraderie that motivated me; there was also a certain calculation that being on good terms with Jin and the others might serve as some degree of deterrence. Though they probably had a rough idea of that already.
"So, where are we headed?"
"There's a great place nearby. They've got a wide variety and the drinks are good too."
The place in question turned out to be close to the Guild, so—
"In that case, I'll swing by the Guild and sell the magic cores first."
—and I decided to make a slight detour.
Incidentally, the magic cores came to a total of 3,000 G. That was because goblins made up the bulk of them, and along with the worm cores, they were the lowest-grade items obtainable in the dungeon, fetching only 30 G apiece.
"Still, even if a beginner tried to collect that many, it would take a group of several people diving in for nearly half a day just to gather them all. To an outside observer, the results of just about four hours of work would be absolutely unbelievable."
After that, we headed to the shop recommended by Jin and the others, placed our orders right away, and the meal began.
While we were there, I learned all sorts of things from chatting with them. Apparently, Jin's party name was the "Dawn Sword."
They'd originally been a three-person party, but ever since Lina joined four years ago, their stability had only increased. Apparently, their name had even become known in the Royal Capital recently.
"Jin, have you heard any rumors about Kukuri Village while you were in the Royal Capital?"
I asked, but—
"No, I haven't heard anything... Actually, the last time I went to the Royal Capital was about three years ago, and the Kukuri Village tragedy was right around that time... But what happened with Kukuri Village?"
Jin and the others knew of Kukuri Village, but since I wasn't about to go into detail, I gave them a brief version of what I'd told the duke before.
"I see... I hope you can find out about your acquaintance..."
They didn't seem to find anything suspicious. That's when Marquis Haust came up—it sounded like he'd been under quite a bit of pressure over the Kukuri Village incident.
After all, it was essentially the men Marquis Haust had arranged who destroyed the village. To make matters worse, many of the villagers had connections to adventurers, so those adventurers withdrew from Marquis Haust territory. And they did so by reaching out to their own acquaintances.
As a result, at one point the number of adventurers in Marquis Haust territory had dropped to less than half. Apparently it had mostly returned to normal by now, but the number of veterans had taken a serious hit.
As we were having this conversation,
"Come to think of it, Tenma-san, I hear you're good at making sweets."
Lina said with a flushed face—it seemed to be the alcohol talking.
I was wondering how she knew, but then—
"Primera-chan was bragging about it. She said, 'I've eaten sweets more delicious than anything in the Royal Capital!'"
The information source was the natural-born knight—
the duke's daughter.
Primera herself.
"I don't know if they're better than anything in the Royal Capital, but I have given Primera some now and then..."
When I said that,
"Make some for me too! It's so unfair that Primera-chan gets to have them all!"
And she leaned forward eagerly as she spoke.
I was wondering why, when Menace, who had been sitting next to me, said,
"This one has a total weakness for sweets... but if you're making them, make some for me too!"
It seemed the power of sweets worked just as well here too... Jin and Garat were looking at me with pitying expressions, and even when I silently begged them for help with my eyes, they just smiled and looked away.
"Well, I don't mind, but at least cover the cost of ingredients, okay?"
At those words, Lina enthusiastically produced a single gold coin. "Of course!"
"That's way too much! Two silver coins would be plenty!"
When I said that, she tilted her head and produced two silver coins from her bag, handing them over.
"I want sweets that Primera-chan hasn't had before, if possible!"
she added as a request, so after thinking it over for a moment,
"All right, I'll make about two kinds. Let's see... come by the guild around noon the day after tomorrow."
When I said that, Lina was quite fired up. "Got it! Noon the day after tomorrow, right!"
The meal continued in that mood, and we broke up around the time it got dark outside... The reason being that Lina, who had gotten weirdly overexcited, had chugged down booze after booze and passed out drunk.
I took some leftovers back for Shiromaru and the others and fed them in the room before calling it a night.
"Hey, wake up, Tenma."
Even though I should have been sleeping alone in the room, I was woken by a voice I recognized.
When I sat up groggily,
"Oh, finally awake, are you? Sorry to bother you."
there, right in front of me, stood the God of Creation and the God of Magic.
"Hey—wasn't the next visit supposed to be over a decade from now?"
To that question, the God of Magic—
—dismissed it with a single sentence: "We pushed the God of Creation too hard."
Still dazed, I then heard the God of Skills chime in:
"So anyway, the time we've got this visit is way shorter than last time, so let's get through this quick!"
He said it in a breezy, casual tone.
"First up, my business! Tenma, you got your hands on Mithril, right? This is about how to forge it. Mithril on its own is tough to work, so flow magic power through it together with silver, mixing them little by little to soften it up for processing! Once you've shaped it, heat it to high temperatures and hammer it—the silver will gradually separate out, and in the end you'll be left with high-purity Mithril. Got it? Oh, and this method works on Orichalcum and stuff too."
"Understood."
"Next is the God of Beasts! The egg Tenma found—if you keep feeding it a substantial amount of magic power, it'll hatch. And the monster that's born will become Tenma's Familiar. That's it!"
As I was nodding along with a "hmm, hmm":
"My turn next. Tenma's slime… Slarin, was it? That's not just a subspecies—it appears to be an entirely new one. Most likely, it has the ability to absorb the traits of its own kind. I'll add that to Slarin's Status next time… Truly fascinating."
Listening to the God of Magic chuckle away—hoh hoh hoh—I couldn't help but think, these guys really do sound like characters out of some drama.
"Oh, crap, looks like we're out of time! Later, Tenma!"
"Bye-bye, Tenma!"
With those words, their figures wavered and faded, and I woke up… but since it was still the middle of the night, I went back to sleep.