Appraiser"s Job Chapter 14: Vegetable Salad
According to Mr. Larsh, this dungeon seemed to have a low level of difficulty compared to other dungeons. As for the monsters inhabiting this type of dungeon, they were slimes, slimes, and even more slimes.
Moreover, even when I appraised them, common as well as uncommon subspecies of slimes were almost indistinguishable from each other. Capture became quite simple with the variety of monsters being so unbalanced.
The presence of a mage was certainly sufficient enough to clear this dungeon.
Even so, slimes were a suitable threat if you looked at someone like me for starters. The sword I went through great pains to prepare for this endeavor was unlikely to be helpful.
So far all the monsters that appeared were defeated in one hit from Ms. Ruka"s magic. Since Mr. Lloyd"s turn never came, he could be said to be the perfect bystander. Mr. Larsh was the same. However, their role of guarding me did not disappear. They weren"t so careless as to be distracted.
I devoted myself to my role of appraising any slimes that appeared. Slimes are basically monsters that don"t provide any raw materials to be harvested. The results of my appraisals consistently showed that the corpses were those of a common slime; meaning the use of my magic was pointless.
My job was easy, but my weariness grew with the simple work. It"s good to be peaceful.
In that peace I realized I had grown a bit hungry.
Mr. Larsh smiled at the sound the bugs gurgling in my stomach made. "Lunch should be any time now."
"I"m sorry. I seem to have ruined the tension."
"It"s alright. I was just thinking it was about time for us to take a break."
When I asked the remaining two people beside me, they too seemed to have grown hungry. It seemed to be the perfect time to take a break in the middle of the pa.s.sageway, since no monsters were lurking in the vicinity.
I set the lantern down, and the four of us seated ourselves in a ring around it.
Ms. Ruka set down her backpack and withdrew four small paper packages. She opened them and inside was a slice of rye bread and a homemade vegetable salad. I was glad to see a boiled egg had also been included. They gave me a strong image of dungeon rations made to last a long time, but it seemed they took great care in bringing along food for me.
"Sorry for the simple meal."
"Let"s eat."
The four of us gave thanks for the food, and I began to much on my first mouthful of the vegetable salad.
This….a drop of mustard and mayonnaise mixed in...it seems they used a special sauce. It perfectly stimulated the flavor of the egg yolk, a superb combination. The crisp lettuce and cuc.u.mber as I chewed is absolutely delicious. The young tomato moistened my palate enough so that when I ate the bread I didn"t become thirsty.
What is the most important thing in a dungeon? It has to be the preparation of the food!
Mr. Larsh explained while eating a sandwich that when you run through a large dungeon, the back holding all your rations can become quite bulky. Since they didn"t expect to be traveling for a long time, the amount of food they brought along this time was small.
"Mr. Larsh, are we going to the bottom?" Mr. Lloyd asked Mr. Larsh while dusting the flour from his bread off his hands.
Mr. Larsh nodded, taking a bite from his sandwich. "Our goal is to get a complete understanding of the dungeon"s structure. I plan to go as deep as we can."
"Since this dungeon doesn"t seem to have anything other than slimes, our strategy will be to rely on Ms. Ruka"s magic."
"I hope the dungeon isn"t that deep," Ms. Ruka sighed, letting the tension ease out of her shoulders. "Since my magic is limited, we should avoid combat whenever possible."
Naturally she wouldn"t be able to use her magical power is exhausted. This is also true for my appraisal magic.
In my case it"s not a huge issue if I exhaust my magical power, but the same cannot be said for Ms. Ruka. Her magic has become our party"s lifeline. We want to avoid a situation in which we cannot use her magic at a crucial moment.
"Mhmm. Since slimes aren"t aggressive monsters, let"s try to not spend any more time on them than we have from this point forward," Mr. Larsh, having finished his sandwich, slowly stood to his feet.
"Our magic is fine, but our time is limited. Let"s make our break this long and move on," he said raising the lantern, wanting us to reach the deepest parts before sunset.
I didn"t know if we could conquer the dungeon in one day, but we set off in antic.i.p.ation of just that.
Having finished our meal, we immediately stood and resumed our previous pace.
Footnotes:
T/N: I"m starting to get the feeling Mr. Io really likes his food. I can relate.
Credits: