Chapter 29 - (Chapter 83): Method of Mourning
Year 7442, Month 8, Day 14
On a hot day as summer nears it"s end once again today the five of us are challenging the dungeon. Since we"ve explored the dungeon countless times we"re already used to fighting the monsters that come out on the 1st floor. However, we still can"t let our guards down. If we make a single mistake we could get seriously injured and even death is possible beyond that. I can"t even remember the number of times the three front-line attackers have gotten injured. They usually end up being injured by opponents that appear in the afternoon when their ability to concentrate starts to break and we end up having to retreat. Today was the same. Unable to avoid the charge of a gnoll with a crude spear Zulu ended up taking an injury to his thigh.
I immediately a.s.sisted them and after wiping out the enemies I healed Zulu"s wound. Zulu apologized but it doesn"t particularly bother me. It"s true Zulu was in the wrong by letting his guard down but it was also Bel and my mistake thinking Zulu would be fine so we weren"t able to a.s.sist him right away and since we"re advancing cautiously it"s about the time start to become unable to focus. It"s a bit early but since I"m sure there"s still pain remaining in Zulu"s leg we should head back for today.
It was when I was thinking that while I cut open the pitiful gnolls chest to take out the magic stone. I heard something that was clearly a humans voice from somewhere saying "save me". It"s been two and a half months since we started exploring the dungeon and this is our first time coming across another living adventurer inside. We exchange glances and look further in the cave where the voice came from. Of course we can"t see anything but we couldn"t help but to do so. I guess this is a trait of living things.
"What should we do?"
Ralpha asked. Right now I"m strictly training her with magic. I"m sure she wants to freely use magic as well, she doesn"t make any complaints and focuses on the training every day, but it will still probably take about 1 month before her void magic reaches level 1. It"s really unfortunate that her MP didn"t increase during her last level up. As a matter of fact a large portion of the combat we"re doing lately has the objective of leveling up Ralpha.
"Let"s move forward while keeping an eye on things."
After I respond and Bel said as well.
"But, I heard, save me. I think it would be a good idea to hurry."
Her manner of speech has gotten a lot softer. But, she still tries to speak politely to me and since it"s unnecessary to tell her to go out of her way to fix that I"ve just ignored it. She just learned void magic the other day. She"s training the same as Ralpha right now but in another week or so I"m sure her level will go up. Having more than 30 times the amount of MP than Ralpha is that much more valid in earning experience towards magic and it"s to point where Ralpha is a bit pitiful. Zenom said to that Bel.
"There"s no need to hurry. Everything that happens in the dungeon is your own responsibility. I won"t say we shouldn"t save them or not to save them. But, the area ahead of here we haven"t pa.s.sed by yet. There might be a trap. If we go to save them and get caught in a trap then it"s pointless."
Zenom is a pillar of the party with how he"s always calm and composed. There"s a personal opinion in his words and everyone pays attention to those warnings. Obviously I do as well.
I washed my hands with water magic and after wiping them with a towel I o
pened the map and checked our current location once again. Going off the terrain from around where we teleported, the location we are is probably, here. If the map is correct then 100 meters ahead of us the cave should bend to the left and after continuing a bit from there it should connect to a large room. That large room should be connect to two other caves from the cave we"re advancing through. Right, I bought a map, but this map was a fake. There seems to be a considerable number of mistaken places and while the traps are written down but there aren"t enough to match up to them at all. We"re treasuring it because it"s quite a bit better than not having one at all but there"s no way we can put all of our faith into it.
Zulu is watching as I confirm the map. I"m sure he wants to say something as well but he"s careful of his position and actions so unless I give him permission he doesn"t speak pointlessly. He"s a good subordinate.
"Then, Zenom, take up the front with me. Zulu hold up the center and I"ll leave the rear to Bel and Ralpha."
After giving simple instructions I ignored the gnoll"s corpse and picked up my bayonet. Lined up with Zenom I cautiously start walking. Zenom hits the ground with a roughly 3 m pole as we move forward. Just before we were about to make it to the curve to the left the sound from Zenom hitting the ground changed. A trap huh? We walk around the edge avoiding the trap and after pa.s.sing the trap we started walking towards the large room that should be ahead of here.
The voice calling for help is still continuing. After turning the corner it"s gotten louder. I say,
"We"re on our way! Give it your best!"
and just said that but after all raising our pace would be foolish so we carefully continued walking forward. I guess they heard my voice, the owner voice said,
"It"s a slime! Be careful!"
And gave us the warning. A slime huh... I"ve seen one on the edge of Bakuddo once in the past. I"m sure the only attacks that will work on it will be my magic.
"Only magic works against slimes. I"ve seen one once in the past. There"s no other choice than to burn it with fire...He probably can"t be saved.."
After I said that I took the pole from Zenom and stood at the front. According to the story I heard from the hunter in Bakuddo, Zachary Dokush, it seems that slimes wrap up their victims and melt them. Being melted alive is a seriously frightening way of dying. It"s probably for their sake that I kill them and put them out of their misery. I thought that.
I didn"t turn around but I felt the presence of everyone following after me. These softies. Ah, do they intend to take the magic stone? Even I"ve never taken the magic stone from a human or non-human before..Do you guys seriously intend to cut open the chest of a person? Putting aside Zenom who"s been an adventurer for countless years, I wonder if Ralpha, Bel, and Zulu intend to do that? I"ll put it aside for now.
We approached close enough to look into the large room and nervously looked in. The large room is about 30 m in every direction and just like other places inside of the dungeon the walls and ceiling are giving off light. It was the scenery of h.e.l.l inside the room. I heard Bel and Ralpha say "hi" as they held their breath behind me.
There"s a green viscous liquid scattered all around the room and it"s swallowed the adventurer party. There"s already four people that have stopped moving. They"ve fallen all over the place and their bodies are covered in the slime. In the corner of the room there"s one person remaining that has been swallowed up to his chest and still has his sword held in his free right arm trying to escape.
After he saw us and,
"Sa...Save me! I can"t do anything about these things! No matter what we tried they wouldn"t die!"
And yelled that. In any case, there"s no other choice than to do something. After I put my bayonet around my shoulder I held up both of my hands and aimed them in the room. I can"t do anything but burn everything that can be burnt with {Flamethrower}. I burnt all the slime in the way to where the man was and got close to him. The man is still training to escape from the slime but it"s clear that it"s not going anywhere. It"s only a matter of time before this man gets swallowed by the slime and after suffocating to death he"ll slowly be melted, digested, and absorbed I"m sure. There"s no choice than to do what I can.
I adjusted my {Flamethrower} into a thin gas-burner shape and got it close to the slime being careful not to burn the man"s body. When the spell was about to reach the slime it suddenly changed its movements. The slime that was slowly moving to completely cover the man suddenly rolled up into a ball after detecting the flame. Well I had predicted it so it wasn"t anything to be surprised over but the problem was that the place the slime rolled up to was the farthest place in its body away from the flame. In other words, it rolled up contracting to around where the man"s chest was. Since I"m sure the volume itself didn"t change. It ended up creating an orb of viscous liquid right around the man"s chest.
Eh~ Things that happen will happen. Try not to die. I think that was spreading out the flame from my {Flamethrower}. From the fear of suffocating and the heat from the flame near his lower body the man started rolling around with his upper body covered in the slime. But, I succeeded in killing the slime. Leaving the convulsing man just as he is I started using {Flamethrower} and it didn"t take much time at all to finish killing all of the slime I could see.
In any case, I was able to get rid of the dangerous monster for now. Next is healing this man. I crouched down to the man and started using a healing spell to heal him. Simultaneously I identified him. The man is 24 years old. Level is 8. As an adventurer he"s somewhere between a newcomer and a mid-cla.s.s I guess. Zenom and the others started gathering what appears to be the man"s allies together. At the same time I saw Bel and Ralpha pick up the magic stone from inside of the slime(since it"s originally a viscous liquid, it just looks like a dirty puddle of water) with a disgusted face.
When I identified it"s corpse it was supposedly a Green Slime. Since it was a deep green color liquid as if algae had floated up I thought it was different from the Brown Slime I saw in the past but as expected it was different.
In any case, it seems that the man has recovered so he should be able to at least talk.
"That was dangerous. But, I"ve already burnt all of the slimes to death so it should be already fine."
After I said that and the man said,
"A..Ah..Thanks. My name is Turner. Turner Doruleon. Who are you?"
Since he said that I named myself as well. And then the man said with admiration.
"However, that was some amazing skill with magic. If you can use magic this well than that..."
After saying that far and Turner looked at the corpses of his allies lined up beside him and bit his lip in regret.
Even though I"m sure the pain from the burns still remains the man firmly stood up and stuck a knife into the chests of his allies. When I was dumbfounded with my eyes wide open and he quickly cut open their chests and took the magic stones out. I"m sure she saw that scene because Bel tightly held my hand as hers were trembling. Her face is pale. My facial expression is probably pretty bad as well. At the same time I felt angry. What in the world is this guy doing cutting up the corpses of his allies!
Since I couldn"t stand watching anymore I was about to call out to him but after he took out the magic stone of the first one with his hands covered in blood Turner started crying.
"~~~!!! Alice...Alice.."
Eh...What? What is? This?
"Is this your first time seeing someone take the magic stone out of a person? There"s quite a few of them, people like that."
Ralpha quietly approached us and told us that. I see, I guess it"s something like an article of the deceased... It"s true I know of it as knowledge. When I was in Bakuddo I saw a total of five funerals. Among those one of those was the time when six people were killed by the Horned Bear. All of the funerals were performed by burning the corpse near the river and after taking the magic stone out from the remaining bones that was buried. The bones and ashes were washed away in the river. It"s true that the magic stone was used in place for the remains. The bereaved family digs a deep hole at night when no one is looking and buried the magic stone there.
The location can be anywhere. It"s fine in a place the person who died liked, it"s fine at the edge of the fields, or in a garden. In any case, it"s fine if even just one person knows in a location that no one will dig up. After hearing that I accepted it thinking that the religious customs are different so the concept of making graves would be different as well. I feel like the concept of returning to nature would be a primeval thing but the teaching of the temple that G.o.d exists in everything in this world also feels natural as well. For the most part it"s not as if you can"t call it a cremation so I didn"t have any doubts about it back then.
However, there"s times when people die inside of the dungeon like this. Obviously there"s no time to leisurely be doing a cremation. Rather since it was stuck in my head that you cremate people when they die I thought it would be difficult trying to carry the corpses back to where he teleported.
While he"s mourning Zenom and Zulu were gathering the belongings of the corpses covered in viscous liquid and gathering all of the swords and spears scattered around. It seems that this room was a nest of slimes and there was a considerable number of swords, spears, and shields laying around. The handles and wood parts of them has rotted and is useless but there was a decent number of just the portions that can be sold as well. The ones that are still new are probably what Turner"s allies used.
After crying while holding the magic stone of his ally for a while Turner moved on to the next ally and took the magic stone from their chest. During that time we inspected the articles of the deceased and split things up into stuff that could be sold and trash. The equipment of his allies was stuff that could still be used plenty well but even though we saved them, I thought about whether it was really okay to sell off the stuff of people that were his allies for money while sorting things. The equipment of his allies was two sword, two spears, and one shield. After that there were three swords that probably weren"t his allies which the handle was rotten and fell off one spear like that as well. There were four spears that had just become the tips. The things that could be sold was just that. There were also the parts of a shield that were metal but I"m sure that"s just trash. Also there was money totaling 1,200,000 Z other than what came from his allies corpses.
After we had organized that far I guess he had finished taking the magic stones from all of his allies, Turner called out to us.
"I"m sorry about that. Please let me off on the grat.i.tude with just money. This is all of my money."
After saying that Turner took out his wallet and flipped it over. Among the silver and copper coins there was just one gold Shu mixed in. Well if he"s going to give it to us then I"ll take it. I placed all of his allies equipment on a shield and after tying it to a spear with rope, I handed it to him along with the wallets from the corpses while saying.
"I understand. I"ll gratefully accept your thanks. Also, this is the articles from your deceased allies. Take it back with you."
"Is it fine?"
Turner said surprised. If you hadn"t taken out all of your money from the start then it wouldn"t have gone like this.
"Yes, of course."
After I said that and Turner accepted it with an expression of thanks.
"Thank you. I"m grateful. I wasn"t just saved but even the belongings of my dead allies.."
"Please don"t worry about it. We"ve already received your grat.i.tude after all. More importantly, are you fine on your own?"
After I said that and Turner said,
"I"m probably fine. We walked quite a bit to get here but it was one-way with no split paths to the teleport crystal so there shouldn"t be any monsters."
and replied.
"I see, then be careful on your way."
After Turner thanked us once more he lifted the heavy equipment and started walking down a different cave than the one we came from. A short while after he disappeared and Zenom said.
"I was watching to see what you were going to do but for you to give him all of the deceased"s belongings including their wallets.."
His tone was cynical but his expression was laughing.
"Since I properly received the expression of his grat.i.tude after all.."
After I said that and Ralpha,
"Coming from the miser Al who doesn"t even overlook a single magic stone from goblins.."
poked fun at me like that. This girl..who"s a miser.
"You go and search if there"s still any magic stones laying around somewhere. We forgot to search for magic stones from the victims that last time with the caterpillar."
I said that and drove her away. Search with Identify? Don"t be stupid, if I use Identify vision then every time I move my sight the brightness of every rock on the ground lights up. I can"t just raise the brightness on magic stones. It"s not that convenient. Since every thing that appears in my sight is a target for identifying. I wouldn"t want you to misunderstand so I"ll review once here but the only things that appear in the sight of my identify vision are things that are a valid target for identifying. I identify them by clicking on and selecting them consciously. Probably everything other than vapors are targets for identify. Even if there was a lot of small rocks trying to pick just the magic stone out of there takes just as much work as normally. Other than that, I guess, if we suppose there"s a person wearing a full suit of plate armor. I probably can"t identify that person. Since it"s too difficult to focus on my sight between the slits in their helmet. I could probably do it if they"re right in front of me not moving for a while. And if they have visible hair then it shouldn"t be a problem.
"But, I think Al-san is right. Taking the belongings of his deceased allies is..I"m sure that person would have felt disgusted as well."
Bel said that. That"s right, allies need to be like this.
"I think that it was good I was able to serve master."
Zulu said that as well. I see, I see. I"m glad I have a good slave as well.
I gave Ralpha the honorable job of gathering the magic stones from gnolls on our way back. Ah, since I burnt close to 30 slimes to death my level went up and I became level 11.
.............
After we sold all of the items and magic stones we obtained and it came out to a total of 2,000,000 Z. Obviously the money we received from Turner as an expression of his grat.i.tude is counted differently. I don"t know since when but I"ve made a rule in myself to give a bonus of 10,000 Z for every 500,000 Z earned. Since we made more than 2,000,000 Z I gave Zenom, Ralpha, and Bel 4 silver coins each as a bonus and we split up until dinner. After I returned to "Boil Manor" there was a message for me.
It"s from Madam Ronslail. It seems that she"s obtained a slave that matches my conditions. I guess I"ll try going to take a look.
After quickly taking a shower and changing I started walking towards "Slave Store, Ronslail". It"ll be nice if she"s prepared a good slave. It"s only obvious that if the number of people in the party increase it"s directly related to an increase in combat potential but I think it"s more important that it becomes easier on our nerves while exploring the dungeon. I wonder if there"s anyone out there that is useful in finding traps? If there was then even if the guide cost was a bit expensive I"d hire them.
After arriving at "Slave Store, Ronslail" I called out to the madam.
"Welcome to our store, Greed-sama. Did you receive my message?"
I"m here right now because I heard your message, madam.
"Yeah, since you went out of your way to get into contact with me that you obtained a good slave. I thought I should definitely take a look."
After I said that and the madam smiled but her expression clouded up a bit as she said.
"I think they"re a good combat slave but..they aren"t a war prisoner slave.."
Well, it"s preferable that they"re a slave originating from a war prisoner just because I"d like for them to have some skill, so as long as I can test their ability there"s no problem.
"I see, no, it"s fine. Let me take a look at them."
After I said that and I guess the madam was relieved, she went into the back again.
After waiting for a short while like usual and the madam appeared again to call me back. After excitedly following behind her and going through the door and there were four people lined up. Starting from the edge I checked their facial expression and physique in order. Their physiques aren"t bad for each of their races.
"The slave I suggest this time is the woman on the far right end."
I use Identify on the slave the madam suggested.
【Malso.Angela/12/8/7442 Malso.Angela/20/8/7421】
【Female/14/9/7422 ・ Dog-People Race ・ Ronslail Family Owned Slave】
【Status：Normal】
【Age： 20 Years Old】
【Level： 6】
【HP： 90(90) MP： 4(4)】
【Strength： 13】
【Speed： 17】
【Dexterity： 10】
【Endurance： 14】
【Special Skill： Small Magic】
【Special Skill: Super Sense of Smell】
【Experience： 36128(43000)】
Hmn. She"s not half bad but why is she suggesting her? The fact that her facial features are average doesn"t really matter. But, I wonder what it really is? If she wasn"t a war prisoner then what in the world is her sales point?
"She was released from a group of adventurers that took quite a bit of damage the other day. Since she"s entered the dungeon countless times, I"m sure she"d be no problem."
Ah, that sort of reason.
"I see. However, I"ll have you let me test out her skill."
After I said that the madam had a male apprentice bring along two wooden swords. During that time I tried identifying the remaining slaves just in case but there was no slave that interested me. After receiving the wooden swords I handed one to Angela and we went towards the backyard while I said to her.
"I can use healing magic. Even if one of us is injured I can fix it so feel free to attack me without worrying about it. If you want to be purchased by me then it would best if you don"t go easy on me."
I noticed a number of small cuts on Angela"s skin from a close distance. I wonder if there was no one that could use healing magic where she used to be.
After I actually tried testing her out and her skill could be said to be decent. In terms of my party then in close combat it would go me, Zenom, Ralpha, Zulu, Bel from strongest to weakest but she at least has enough skill to be slightly below Bel. I try not to injure Angela as much as possible while making that apparent to her, stopping short of attacking, and my ability with the sword isn"t so bad that I"d take her sword so both of us are unharmed. Well, this should be fine.
"How long have you entered the dungeon in Baldukk?"
I tried asking her that.
"Since just about a year ago. However, there was a period of about 3 months where I didn"t enter the dungeon at all during that time."
"I see. How many people have you served until now?"
"A total of three people. My first master sold me right away and returned to their hometown. After that, I served a different master for a short while but that person also sold me and returned to their hometown. The one after that was my last master. It was a party of 10 people, but just the other, there was a fight where only six of us including me survived. After that, my master sold me to this store. They said they were returning to their home town."
I see now.
"Did your first master buy you?"
"No. I was born as a serf. When my first master became an adventurer they brought along three slaves including me as we left our home town."
A born serf huh? Although, if she can use the sword this well even though she was born a serf then she must have talent.
I faced Madam Ronslail and said.
"What"s the price on this woman?"
"Since she has experience in the dungeon her price is 6,500,000 Z."
Hmn, it"s cheap compared to Zulu but she"s a woman after all. The normal price for a female combat slave is 6,000,000 Z to 7,000,000 Z and it"s 6,500,000 Z to 7,500,000 Z for a male. If their origins are a soldier or squire then it gets more expensive. Something like a knight has a price that would make your eyes pop out they"re so expensive. This Dog-people race slave named Angela was born a serf but since she has the achievement of surviving several months in the dungeon she"s a bit more expensive.
"You are her skill with the sword right? Is it that price even with that?"
I thought this would be the case so I intentionally treated Angela like a child while parrying her.
"..How about 6,300,000 Z?"
Hmm, well I guess that"s good.
"I understand. I"ll buy her for 6,300,000 Z."