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I'm at the dungeon from early this morning. Jeanne and the others are with me.
That said, I didn't come here to conquer it — I'm here to gauge the two of them.
Before bringing them here, I had a blacksmith outfit them with weapons and armor.
For Jeanne, I picked out a light two-handed sword to go with her set of leather armor, and for Aura, a spear about two meters long along with a shortbow — also in leather. But Aura had something she wouldn't compromise on, it seemed: she chose armor that could be worn over her maid uniform and still be instantly recognizable as maid attire from a glance.
After that, we entered the dungeon — though I immediately teleported us to the secret base.
The two of them had clearly expected to be fighting Monsters, so they looked a bit deflated. I summoned a Golem as their sparring partner and let them have a quick go at it. What I learned from the result was:
"They're weak... No, rather than weak, it seems like they don't know how to fight."
That was the conclusion I came to. When I asked, it turned out they'd only learned the bare minimum — what was expected as basic noble refinement, or just enough to protect themselves. As for magic, they'd only picked it up in passing because they happened to have a talent for it.
I was actually more impressed that they'd managed to survive in the dungeon at all.
In any case, I decided to have them train their magic the same way I'd taught Amy, while also running them through sparring matches against the Golem.
Ideally, I should have started from the basics, but their foundations didn't seem to have any glaring issues, so I figured I'd train them in a more combat-practical way instead. I set the Golem so it couldn't attack, and had Shiromaru and the others observe.
In the meantime, I had plenty of things I wanted to get done.
First was weapon maintenance. I wanted to repair the chipped Adamantine sword from when I fought the Solomon-infused Golem here before.
Next was making pork bone soup. With this many Orc bones lying around, it was time for my first attempt.
Finally, armor crafting — picking up where I left off yesterday. I wanted to finish at least one arm guard.
My plan was to start with the sword repair, move on to the armor, and work on the soup in between since it was mostly just simmering.
However, I was being too naive... no, way too naive!
Because—
"What the hell, that stench! It reeks!"
The smell wafting from the pot was enough to overwhelm even me, a die-hard pork bone soup fan.
Of course, if even I was reacting like that, Jeanne and the others had already fled to the far end of the room. As for Shiromaru, he was writhing with his nose clamped shut.
"What went wrong?"
First, I plunged the pot into ice to stop the source of the smell, then used wind magic to cycle the air.
As a side note, this space wasn't completely sealed. I'd made small air holes here and there, connecting them to passages throughout the dungeon. However, leaving them as-is risked Monsters like Slimes slipping through or adventurers discovering them, so I'd fitted mesh screens in the middle of the holes and placed some openings in the ceiling to make them harder to spot. Still, someone might pick up on the smell this time.
Well, even if that happened, it would take a pretty skilled mage with plenty of time to actually find anything...
I examined the leftover bones and the inside of the pot, but nothing seemed rotten or out of place.
However, looking more closely, the contents were abnormally thick and sludgy. As a test, I dumped the soup from the pot, refilled it with fresh water, and simmered the same bones again.
This time, the smell came much closer to what I knew as pork bone soup.
Now the cause was becoming clear. Essentially, if you simmered Orc bones as-is, you got a broth several times more concentrated than the pork bone soup I was used to. I also realized that I'd apparently forgotten to clean the grime off the bones before boiling them, which had contributed to the problem.
So this time, I decided to pay attention to that while making the soup... In the meantime, everyone had gathered by the wall and apparently decided to resume their training there...
Pulling myself together, I went back to repairing the sword. The chip was only about five millimeters, so I heated the blade using the forge fire, magic, and alchemy, hammered the chipped area out repeatedly to extend it, then quenched it in a water sphere I'd conjured with magic.
When I pulled it out of the water sphere, the chip was virtually invisible. However, the edge had obviously lost its sharpness, so I moved on to the sharpening process.
That said, I wasn't particularly demanding when it came to the sharpness of an Adamantine sword, so I called it quits at a reasonable point.
That finished the repair.
Before moving on to the next task, I peeked into the pot, and this time it was looking good. I glanced toward the wall, and Shiromaru—who'd been holding his nose just moments ago—was looking my way... his tail was ever so slightly wagging... It seemed it was safe now. So I removed the stench and continued simmering.
While heating the half-finished gauntlet, I checked on Jeanne and the others. They seemed to have grown accustomed to the Golems operating at reduced intensity, so I adjusted the settings to mix in light attacks and feints.
After working for about another hour, I was able to finish the gauntlet. All that remained was to fit it together with the undershirt portion and make minor adjustments through repeated trial and error.
I assembled the undershirt with the gauntlet and tried it on my left hand—there wasn't much of a sense of awkwardness... or rather, the more accurate thing to say would be that since I'd never equipped anything like a gauntlet before, there was simply no basis for comparison.
If I had to pick out one thing, the area around the wrist felt a little off, so I made the tiniest adjustment there and decided I'd sort out the rest after actually trying it out in practice.
By now the soup should be coming along nicely—I glanced over at the pot, and sure enough, Number One and Number Two... or rather, Shiromaru and Solomon were both peering inside it together.
Jeanne and the others seemed to find the smell of pork bone broth a bit off-putting and were still keeping their distance. The Golems appeared to be taking a break in sync with Jeanne's group, all four of them lined up neatly in a row.
"Wau?"
"Kyui?"
The two of them tilted their heads while looking at me... I'd call it cute, but the drool dripping from both their mouths kind of ruined the effect.
However, since I still needed the bones in this pot, I decided to give them the extra bones from earlier. I'd already washed them with water to remove the grime and bitterness, so they didn't have that overwhelming smell anymore.
The two of them started gnawing on them happily, so I left them to it for a while and went to check on the soup's flavor.
"It's got a little bit of a gamey smell..."
So, drawing on memories from my previous life, I picked out vegetables to help cut the stench.
From inside the bag, the items I chose as potential deodorizers were ginger, green onion, and daikon radish leaves... there were probably other options, but I couldn't think of any, so I stuck with just those three. I'd also seen eggshells used before as a way to remove bitterness, but I wasn't confident enough in its effectiveness to bother, so I left that out.
I tossed in the deodorizing vegetables along with the seared chunks of meat, put the lid on, and turned the heat down slightly.
I set the pot aside for the time being and went to check on Jeanne and the others.
Jeanne and the others didn't seem to be injured, so I decided to see just how far they'd progressed in their training. Still, I was pretty hungry by now, so I opted to have a late lunch first.
Jeanne and the others—
—apparently remembering THAT soup,
—had steeled themselves, expecting it to come out again. But today's lunch was nothing but stall food I'd stored in the Magic Bag.
The menu consisted of a massive amount of skewered pork, chicken, and beef, soup made with dried meat, and several varieties of bread. Add some shredded cabbage and torn lettuce, and the meal was complete.
I immediately sliced a bread roll open lengthwise and stuffed cabbage and pork skewers in between. All that was left was to pull out the skewers, and I had a simple pork sandwich. By the way, all the skewers were salted, but I'd also set out a jar of my own special sauce, so you could enjoy a teriyaki-style sandwich too.
Following my lead, Jeanne and Aura were making their own original sandwiches as well. Off to the side, Shiromaru and Solomon were eyeing the skewers.
Jeanne and Aura had been bewildered by the stall food at first, but after taking a bite they seemed to have taken a liking to it, trying out all sorts of combinations. For Shiromaru and the others, I took some food that I'd set aside, pulled it off the skewers, and plated it for them.
Watching Jeanne and the others eat, it occurred to me that women in this world basically eat a lot. I understood why the men ate big portions, but the women were no slouches either.
It was probably because death was more tangible here than in my previous life, and female adventurers were a given, so naturally the amount they ate increased... That said, one thing that remained true in both lives was that commenting on a woman's weight was dangerous territory.
I'd prepared a considerable amount, but sure enough, between three people and three beasts, nothing was left.
After lunch, we decided to take a break. I pulled out beds to serve as sofas for relaxing (of course, there were only two).
Incidentally, starting with this meal, I'd been secretly mixing in my own blood. Honestly, it was gross, but I told myself it was necessary to break Jeanne's curse and endured it... However, after the meal, it hit me that I could have just put blood into a bottle and made her drink it, calling it medicine, rather than mixing it into the food. That realization left me feeling a bit deflated.
By the time the meal was over, the soup seemed to have finished cooking nicely, so I strained out the bones and put the remains in a bag for Shiromaru and the others as a treat.
Then I took out the chunk of meat that had been simmering together in the soup and submerged it in a jar filled with seasoning liquid. If I let it soak for several hours, it should turn into something like char siu.
There were those lurking who had their eyes on the jar containing the future char siu, but I ignored them and stowed it away in the bag... Solomon's behavior had been getting more and more like Shiromaru's lately, and that was still on my mind...
Lost in thought, I was about to lie down on the bed when I noticed Jeanne and Aura were still standing there.
"What are you doing?"
At my casual question, Jeanne and Aura quickly stepped away... That reaction stung a little, but when I looked more carefully, both of them were drenched in sweat, so that was apparently what was bothering them.
I reflected that telling a pair of women to go ahead and use the beds while they were soaked with sweat had been insufficiently considerate. Using earth magic, I constructed a roofless hut-like structure a short distance away and placed a water-filled barrel inside to make a simple changing room. I handed them towels and told them to use it however they liked, then created an identical one a bit further away as my own private changing room.
After the break, I watched Jeanne and Aura's training as planned. After observing for a while, my impression was that while both Jeanne and Aura had decent instincts, they were overwhelmingly short on experience. It seemed like they'd improve faster if I taught them how to fight while actually hunting Monsters.
So I decided to teach them several fighting techniques today and have them gain experience in the shallow floors of the dungeon starting tomorrow.
For Jeanne, I had her practice diagonal slashes, thrusts, and overhead chops from a raised stance, teaching her how to use each and their effects.
For Aura, I had her first learn the reach of her spear, then repeat thrusts, sweeps, and parries over and over.
With breaks sprinkled in between, I had them continue their drills for about two hours, and finally I had them practice coordinated attack formations as a pair.
I had them do this practice for about an hour, and then called it a day.
Sure enough, both of them were completely worn out. They managed to make it out of the dungeon under their own power, but after that they looked like they couldn't take another step, so I pulled something like a handcart out of my bag, loaded them both onto it, and had Shiromaru pull it.
This handcart was something I'd made back in Gunjou City—small but sturdy. I'd built it from leftover materials when I made my carriage, so it hadn't had much use until now and had just been taking up space in my bag.
The two of them were embarrassed about it, but I told them there was nothing to be ashamed of since they couldn't walk, and though it was a bit forceful, I hauled them back to our room.
That day I made sure to have an early dinner, a bath, and get to bed in time so I wouldn't carry any fatigue into the next morning.
When I woke up, the sun had only just risen, but since I'd gone to bed early the night before, I felt completely refreshed.
Jeanne and Aura were still asleep, so I decided to whip up a simple breakfast.
Halfway through making breakfast, Aura woke up and apologized for not being able to cook. I told her not to worry about it since I genuinely enjoyed doing it.
Jeanne, on the other hand, refused to get up. Just before breakfast was ready, Aura had to forcibly drag her out of her futon... Jeanne, still groggy from sleep, had her clothes in complete disarray—rather than a feast for the eyes, it was more the kind of sight that left you not knowing where to look.
After breakfast, I quickly cleared away the dishes and then we headed for the dungeon.
Today I wasn't going to use the Warp, so we started our assault from the first floor using the stairs. I'd already told Jeanne and Aura beforehand that the two of them would be handling the Monsters on their own, and I intended to stay out of it unless something went seriously wrong.
As expected, there was no need to worry about them against Goblins. Jeanne and Aura proceeded to slaughter them with ease... Though, if they'd been struggling against mere Goblins after practicing against a Golem, that would have been a sight too painful to watch.
Their fighting style had been stable so far. I attributed that partly to the fact that I'd been giving advice here and there and having them correct their mistakes, and partly to the fact that both of them were quicker learners than I'd expected.
I'd planned to keep things shallow today and stick to Goblins only, but the two of them worked through them faster than I'd anticipated. In about six hours, we'd collected roughly fifty Magic Stones.
Well, that was more than respectable for two beginners. Most importantly, neither of them had sustained any injuries, which was a job well done.
After leaving the dungeon, we headed to the Guild, and I went to the reception desk to have Guild Cards issued for both of them.
Up until now, since the two of them had been my subordinates, there had been no need for registration. But I felt it was necessary, so I tried to get their cards issued—only to realize, in my carelessness, that Jeanne wasn't yet old enough for a full registration.
As a result, only Aura received a full registration, while Jeanne was given a provisional one. However, Jeanne was apparently going to turn fifteen in a few months, so we decided she'd register again at that time.
Starting the next day, we repeated the routine of hunting Goblins in the dungeon from the morning and then training against me at the secret base. After a week of this, they had become reasonably capable fighters.
Particularly since both of them had a natural talent when it came to Magic Power, they had already approached a level on par with intermediate practitioners.
So, in addition to their training so far, I decided to have them learn some simple offensive magic, healing magic, and support magic.
Magic training is straightforward. First, one of them — either Jeanne or Aura — takes on the role of the wall.
While the wall holds the Goblins' attention, the other one casts magic from behind the wall. That's all there is to it.
I've been teaching them mainly ball-type and bullet-type offensive spells. They haven't mastered them completely yet, but they can already produce enough power to handle Goblins.
Their range of attacks is expanding thanks to magic, so once they get a bit more used to casting offensive spells against Goblins, I'm thinking of having them face different types of Monsters.
Four days after we started offensive magic practice, I decided to switch today's training to dungeon exploration. The plan is to reach the tenth floor by the end of today.
Before that, I'd equip them with new weapons and armor to boost their combat power. I'd have them use the sword and spear that I made myself. The material was something called Demon Iron — regular iron from the space where Jeanne and the others used to live, mixed with a considerable amount of Magic Power. Since Demon Iron is sturdier than ordinary iron, you can reduce the amount used in weapons and armor, allowing for lighter gear without sacrificing strength.
Besides the weapons, I also gave them gauntlets made of Demon Iron. Everything else would be what they'd been using before. Since both of them are the type who fight in light gear, their armor would mainly be leather, but I decided to make a few modifications.
Specifically, I'd attach pieces of centipede carapace — backed with anaconda leather — to the surface of their leather equipment.
The centipede carapace is surprisingly lightweight and thin for how hard it is, so even with anaconda leather glued to the back, it doesn't add much thickness or weight. However, sticking it on every piece of equipment would definitely get in the way of movement, so I only attached centipede carapace to the chest and back sections, sewing anaconda leather onto the inside of the remaining parts.
The anaconda — the Dark Rubber Anaconda, as its name implies — has leather that's quite similar to rubber, so using it as a lining should help absorb some of the impact.
With their equipment upgraded like this, Goblins probably won't be much of a challenge anymore. Well then, let's dive right in.
Floors 1 through 5… No way they'd stumble at this level. Jeanne and the others headed straight for the stairs along the shortest path, cutting down every Goblin in their way without even needing magic.
Floor 6… This might be the first floor they were tackling as a duo, or perhaps that was why they slowed down a little compared to before. But the Monsters were mostly Goblins with only the occasional Slime appearing, so once they got used to it, their pace picked back up.
Floor 7… This was where Jeanne got hurt for the first time. The moment she let her guard down after taking out a Goblin, a Slime hiding behind a rock body-slammed her, sending her tumbling. She scraped her leg in the process.
Aura finished off the Slime without any trouble, but they were at a loss about how to tend to the wound. Fortunately, I'd taught them how to do first aid before, so they dredged up that memory, cleaned and disinfected the wound, and managed without using any potions or magic.
Floor 8… Today, Goblins and Slimes seemed to be hanging out together in the same areas quite often. It was unusual, but at the end of the day, they were just Goblins and Slimes, so whether they were together or not didn't change the difficulty much. That said, Jeanne and Aura seemed a bit tense, and they'd been going overkill since a while ago.
Floor 9… Goblins and Slimes were paired up here as well, but by now Jeanne and Aura had gotten used to it, turning them into easy prey. It had been about five hours since they started — they were getting close to their goal of the tenth floor. At this rate, reaching floor 10 was practically a certainty.
Floor 10… Today's goal was achieved, but the two of them still seemed to have energy to spare. I asked them just to be sure, and they were both raring to go!
In that case, let's change the plan — we'll keep going as far as we can!
Floor 11… My assumptions were too optimistic… These two could handle caterpillars just fine, but then they showed up — the black ones. The black devils, the most despised creatures in the entire insect world!
I'd only seen these things once before, on floor 30, but I don't know if Jeanne and Aura had some kind of special affinity or what — by now they'd encountered over ten of them (approximately, since they didn't look directly).
These devils were roughly 60 centimeters long. An utterly disgusting sight.
I wondered where they'd been hiding, so I used Search to investigate and found countless responses in a nearby dead end. Peering in cautiously, there was nothing there.
I used Search again and realized that the passage had been partially buried at some point, creating what looked like a hidden room. The black devils were crawling out through tiny gaps, and along the corner of the passage, there were several gaps just wide enough for a cockroach to fit through.
I summoned about ten Golems and had them stand guard in front of the wall, then used earth magic to transform the wall into sand.
The instant the wall disappeared, I activated the barrier, forming a lid over the passage in front of us.
This was where I made a huge mistake — the barrier was transparent.
I knew there was a swarm of devils on the other side of the wall, but because I'd left the barrier see-through, I ended up looking straight at the horde of devils… What if this shows up in my dreams…
Jeanne and Aura were on the verge of fainting. Even for me, this was… No, no person with their wits intact would want to see this.
These were 60-centimeter cockroaches, hundreds of them, charging straight at us in a swarm. Fortunately, none of them were strong enough to break through the barrier, but seeing them slam into it and get crushed, or cling to it and crawl around while flashing their bellies — it was a scene I never wanted to lay eyes on again.
I ordered the Golems to exterminate the devils, but that just produced an endless chain of gore.
So as a last resort, I opened a hole near the top of the barrier — too small even for a cockroach — and cast the ice-elemental spell "Blizzard" through it.
I'd heard in my previous life that cockroaches were weak against cold, so I gave it a try, and the effect was incredible!
In no time, the cockroaches' movements began to slow — or rather, they were freezing solid. The cold weakness thing didn't seem to be the half of it…
Still, this was probably the most effective method against cockroaches.
It was only speculation, but if you tried burning them with fire, they'd keep writhing around until they died, and you'd be stuck smelling them being charred.
A water-based attack wouldn't work well either — they were called oil bugs for a reason.
Earth-based crushing would let you see the squashed cockroaches, and trying to bury them alive was impractical given how many there were and how fast they could scurry away.
Wind-cutting wouldn't do much either — cockroaches were tough enough that even with their bodies being sliced apart, they'd keep moving for a while. And anyway, I had no desire to look at their dismembered remains.
Thinking about it that way, freezing them really does seem like the right answer...
Once every last G was completely frozen, I had the Golems move in and crush them all, just to make sure there wouldn't be any survivors if they happened to thaw out.
The sight of the Gs being crushed was gruesome, but at least their bodily fluids weren't spraying everywhere, which was something.
I dispatched Golems to the inner chamber as well to confirm nothing was still alive, then had them survey the space.
What they found was surprising — turns out the nest of Gs was also a Mithril deposit.
Most likely, even creatures like the Gs with very little Magic Power, when hundreds of them gathered and clustered in one spot, created a high enough density of magic that the silver already present reacted and transformed into Mithril.
It was a complicated feeling, but since I wanted the Mithril, I had the Golems scrape the G remains out of the nest and set them aside in a corner of the corridor, then cast Earth Magic across the nest walls to break them down to sand and collect the remaining Mithril.
The collected Mithril yielded 34 one-kilogram ingots, bringing the market value to a staggering 17 million Gold. As a bonus, I also found 40 one-kilogram ingots' worth of silver. Those would probably fetch somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 Gold, but since silver is needed for Mithril processing, I wouldn't be selling any of it as long as I had Mithril to work with... Honestly, my sense of monetary value has been going numb lately...
In any case, with this much on hand, I could sell it off in smaller lots or use it to gear up. I'd figure out the specifics later, so I tried scanning for more Mithril with my search ability, but nothing else came up.
I'd probably already mined it all, or what remained was too small — sand-grain-sized at best — for even my search to pick up.
So I decided to turn this place into a graveyard for the Gs. I dug a pit and ordered the Golems to dump the remains into it.
Once everything had been hauled in, I covered the pit with sand and solidified it with Earth Magic.
Then we all headed outside and used magic to destroy the ceiling at the entrance, sealing the chamber off.
I went to convert the spent Golems back into earth and retrieve their cores, but I hesitated to actually pick them up. Still, I couldn't just leave them behind, so I washed them with water first and put them in my bag.
I definitely wasn't in the mood to keep pushing through the dungeon after that, so I called it a day and headed for the nearest Warp Zone to return to the surface.
Jeanne and Aura, too, were clearly shaken by the last batch of Gs — they didn't say a single word until we made it back outside, slumped over in silence.
Apparently you can extract Magic Stones from the Gs as well, but I hadn't collected a single one. I doubted any hero would have the stomach to dissect those things as I left the dungeon behind.
I'm sorry I haven't been able to reply to your comments. I do read every single one of them, though.
I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude.
Thank you all so very much.
Please continue to enjoy the adventures of this reincarnated otherworlder.