Live Dungeon!

Now that Daryl had successfully taken care of his body odor, Absolute Helix proceeded with their exploration of the Volcano layers. After registering their party at the Guild’s reception desk, they stepped onto a Magic Circle and teleported to the sixty-first layer.

Upon arrival, the five were welcomed by an environment filled with coal-like black rock surfaces, dazzling red lava, and black soot drifting all over the air.

“Gah… So hot,” Daryl whined and fanned himself with his hand while curiously looking at a nearby lava stream.

The temperature here was so high that one was bound to sweat profusely after a short walk. Diniel also seemed to have had enough of the burning air already.

“Diniel.”

“Mm-hm.”

On Tsutomu’s signal, Diniel let loose some arrows in all directions, searching the area for enemies. Unlike before, this was the first time she was in this layer, so she had to perform a more detailed scan of the place, which also meant using more arrows than usual. In the meantime, Tsutomu filled up some Potion vials and passed them to everyone.

“In the north, there are… Rock Beetles, I think. The west is mostly lava, with monsters swimming in it. The south has white rock surfaces, unlike everywhere else. The east looks just like where we are now.”

“All right. Let’s start by trying north first, then go clockwise from there.”

“Aye-yup,”

Diniel put her bow back on her back and went to line up in formation with Hannah. Essentially, the party had Daryl and Amira leading the formation, Tsutomu in the middle, and Diniel and Hannah in the rear.

“Hmm. He smells fine today.”

“Yeah, for real.”

“……”

Daryl, hearing Tsutomu and Amira — the two people who worked with him most closely — saying that to him, felt quite grumpy as he walked on his way with his tower shield on his back. Behind the three of them, Diniel and Hannah — whose heights were quite different from each other’s — observed the surrounding area vigilantly.

Eventually, Rock Beetles, scarab-like creatures with black rock for body surfaces, started coming into sight. These monsters were camouflaging themselves as rocks, and would attack unsuspecting Explorers from blind spots. Similar monster types had also been discovered in other Dungeons, though they were different appearance-wise.

“Daryl, pull aggro.”

“<<Combat Cry>>!”

The Rock Beetles, spurred by the red aura, broke out of their mimicry and approached Daryl. Amira, upon receiving the usual buffing spells, snarled at the monsters and raised her greatsword.

“RAHHH!!”

Swinging at one of the Rock Beetles from the side, it was easily knocked away, falling into the lava stream and sinking down as if melting away. Diniel accurately pierced their exposed mouths with her arrows, killing a few of them.

In the end, the ten or so Rock Beetles were wiped out by the two Attackers. Tsutomu collected the Small Colorless Magic Stones that had fallen to the ground.

“Amira, try not to knock them into the lava — we’ll lose their Magic Stones.”

“Sorry, man!” Amira apologized… while laughing in good humor.

“I didn’t even get to fight at all! I gotta go next, Teach!” Hannah complained, prompting Tsutomu to chuckle.

“Sure, Hannah. You’ll be up for the next wave.”

This was essentially the first time they had been down to the Volcano layers. Hannah and Diniel were bound to feel the change of scenery due to how long they had been exploring the Canyons, while Daryl and Amira seemed to be quite curious as well.

And even though Tsutomu had seen it before from the game, this was in reality. The silver lining was that he could withdraw to safety at any time while exploring most layers, with the exception of Boss layers where one could not escape from and was at risk of temporary death. As such, Tsutomu was actually having fun exploring this non-game Dungeon.

The team proceeded to encounter more monsters, including fish-like creatures that swam in lava and Golems made of black rocks, and defeated them while learning through trial-and-error. With this being layer sixty-one, Amira was starting to feel underleveled. Thankfully, her <<Dragon Form>> could make up for her inadequate raw strength.

Now that she had gotten quite used to snapping back to her senses after disengaging <<Dragon Form>>, she was able to quickly resume attacking. Recently, she had been practicing to disengage <<Dragon Form>> during flight, which seemed to be quite a difficult challenge. She was not even that used to controlling <<Fly>> yet, so it would naturally be harder for her to suddenly lose and regain consciousness in that state. Regardless, she still kept up her training every single day.

“All right! Bring it on!”

Hannah, switching with Daryl as the primary Tank for this round, had improved her skill rotation patterns quite a bit, and in turn mostly eliminated her mental energy exhaustion problem. Tsutomu’s strategy alterations — particularly lowering Amira’s <<Dragon Form>> uses and increasing <<Medic>> casts for Hannah — had helped the latter manage her stamina more easily.

The Volcano’s environment did prompt Tsutomu to consider additional stamina management issues, but at least the team’s progress was not likely to hit a wall until they had to fight the Bolseyer. The plan was to discuss the issues with Hannah sometime before they reached layer sixty-five.

Diniel and Daryl seemed to have no problem performing well. Additionally, Daryl’s body odor was far better, with him only lightly stinking of sweat now, as opposed to the brow-knitting level of miasma from before.

“…And so it turned out that the stink came from my ears,” Daryl wrapped up his explanation to Amira.

“Right, because they’re folded. Must’ve built up too much gunk under there, yeah?”

“Yes. They took two huge black piles out of them…”

“Why’d you fold them down in the first place, anyway?”

“They’ve always been like that…”

Getting a curt question from Amira, Daryl scowled at her, looking quite grumpy. Amira, annoyed by the look he was giving her, proceeded to poke her fingers under his folded ears.

“Do you even know how much I suffered that one time I carried you? You know, after we beat the Fire Dragon?”

“S-stop it!”

“I swear, a normal dog soaked in ditch water would smell better than you back then!”

Amira, sporting a sadistic grin, was about to pull on Daryl’s ears, with the latter’s face turning bright red as he tried to pry her hands off. The one who stopped Amira was, to everyone’s surprise, Diniel.

“Get away from him.”

“Miss Diniel…”

Daryl turned to Diniel, grateful for his savior, or so he thought…

“It’s my turn now.”

“Huh…?”

Diniel’s hands seemed itching to grab Daryl’s ears as she inched close to him. Daryl, feeling a sense of impending danger, broke into a cold sweat and promptly ran away.

“Looks like they’re having fun.”

“Totally.”

“I wanna touch them, too.”

“Gimme him a break…”

As for Tsutomu and Hannah, they only took a glance at the three running around, not joining in. Instead, they were swinging pickaxes, shaving away at a red pyroxene ore vein. Tsutomu was new to mining, so he was not digging as well as he would have liked, while Hannah was doing perfectly fine.

“Teach, no need to raise it so high. Put in too much power, and the ore will be damaged as well.”

“Got it, Teach.”

“…Teach?”

“Sorry,” Tsutomu promptly apologized to the confused Hannah.

Hannah chuckled and proceeded to resume digging.

“Yes, like that — that’s the way you do it, I think.”

“I see. Thanks for the tip.”

Tsutomu put an uncut red crystal into his Magic Bag and proceeded to mine some more with Hannah, collecting various ores. Eventually, Daryl was caught by Diniel, who proceeded to fiddle with his ears as she pleased.

“…So hot.”

“Why don’t we take a short break, then? Just over here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Tsutomu took out a towel cooled with Ice Magic Stones and a lidded cup of cool drink from his Magic Bag. Hannah gladly accepted them, slinging the towel around her neck and starting to drink the cool drink with a straw.

“I want that, too,” Amira said as she came up to the two.

“Get us ten Red Glintstones, and you’ll have it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Taking the pickaxe from Tsutomu and tying her long red hair up with an elastic band, Amira quickly got to work — and for once, she actually looked elegant doing it. Diniel, having been stuck rubbing Daryl’s ears, also came over and started mining as well.

“Manual labor really does NOT suit me,” Diniel said. Despite her bow also being fairly heavy, she seemed to be having difficulties holding her pickaxe as she swung it down at the black rock surface.

“It’s much less demanding than fighting monsters, though…”

“Apples and oranges, boy.”

She, Daryl, and Hannah proceeded to spend some time mining. Tsutomu thought to himself how surreal it was that they also had to perform manual labor while in the Dungeon, wherein he usually would think of adventure and loot.

“Good work.”

“Hell yeah! Water! Gimme water!”

“Here.”

Tsutomu passed a cold towel and cup of drink to the sweat-soaked Amira. Daryl and Diniel moved on to another vein and collected the crystals, delivering them to Tsutomu in exchange for cold drinks.

[I never expected to have to do this… but reality can be disappointing sometimes, I guess.]

There was no gathering mechanic back in the game, with all materials being obtained from treasure chests dropped from monsters. That fact caused Tsutomu to feel an uncanny sense of reality as he and his team proceeded to battle more monsters and do more mining.