Chapter 24: Fifth-Class Explorer ⑫

Fireman.

A humanoid dungeon monster made entirely of flames.
They appear fairly often in the labyrinth of the 13th floor. However, they drop no relics.

To extinguish them, you either douse the flames or destroy the flint inside their body.
They’re kind of like the Water Sprite series in the Water Dungeon.
Element-based monsters like these exist in wind and earth as well.

“Ahh, this… this is it.”

I muttered without thinking. Using Deep Silent, I focused.

I lined up the glowing dot with an approaching Fireman and cast Vanish.
Then I matched the next Fireman and fired Vanish.
Next, in succession—Firemen disappeared one after another.

This—this is exactly like an arcade shooting game.

When you point the light gun at the screen, a glowing dot appears,
and when you pull the trigger, enemies drop.
That’s exactly how it feels. With that mood, I wiped out the Firemen.

I used to play a lot back then.

I’d imagine the zombie businessmen coming at me were all my boss.
Or the zombies dressed like doctors—also my boss.
Or just any zombies—always my boss.

It was great stress relief.

“Master, strong. Feels refreshing, desu.”

“Going quite well, I’d say.”

Shardina’s eyes sparkled, while Alexander-san leisurely puffed on his kiseru pipe.
Most of the monsters were being defeated by me.

Thanks to the relic evolving into Deep Stillness,
the runtime was extended to 10 minutes, making it incredibly convenient.

The only drawback was that I couldn’t use Vanish with precise aim unless I activated Deep Silent.
The target pointer—the glowing dot—was just too useful.

Something occurred to me, so I asked Alexander-san.

“You don’t just set up transfer arrays, do you?”

“You can think of us as handling all the dungeon’s backstage work.
Checking and processing events like this is part of the job too.”

“Events…? This is the first I’ve heard of that. Are they common?”

“Large or small, they happen often. To be frank, it’s hard to tell what counts as an event.
Even experts can’t always agree on whether monsters from the lower layers showing up in higher floors count as events. This one’s just so big that it was obviously confirmed as one.”

“I see.”

Now that he mentioned it… you could say that everything that happens inside a dungeon is an event.

We soon arrived at the event site.
A pack of Chimeras. And deeper in—an abnormally large Chimera. Exactly like before.
Did they respawn?

I activated Wheel of Fortune.

Beyond the cave, I could see several green lights.
Two yellow. One blue. The blue was furthest back.
If they were still there, then nobody had claimed them.

This floor apparently gets skipped a lot, since the transfer circle to the next floor was found early on.
Well, yeah, who’d want to bother with a maze like this? Though as an explorer, that’s questionable…

On top of that, the deeper you go in the Fire Dungeon, the harsher the environment becomes.
Explorers are fewer here. Wind wasn’t all that crowded either, come to think of it.

Compared to that, the Earth Dungeon—the most popular one—was so packed it had entry limits.
A whole lodging village sprang up at its entrance. The gap between dungeons is really stark.

As for the city dungeons…
They’re set to reopen a week after the Great of Rounds ends.
The junkyard, though, is a special exception—it’s still open. That’s good, at least.

Alexander-san gazed at the Chimera pack and grunted.

“I’d say leaving them alone wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Well… that’s true. Yeah.”

“Really, desu?”

Since this floor itself was often skipped, leaving them wasn’t exactly a problem.
Still—work is work.

“How do you deal with events?”

“For that, we use this.”

He showed me a stone.

It was oddly shaped, semi-transparent, looking like something you could find anywhere.

“What is… that, desu?”

“Events and even buildings generated in dungeons are shaped by thoughts.
Thoughts are a formless concept of the soul. This here is a Phenomenon Stone. It’s a legacy item that can seal those formless conceptual phenomena.”

Alexander-san tossed the stone.

The Chimeras noticed, and as the stone shone brightly, it shattered into fragments.

Then, as it vanished, the Chimeras suddenly seemed as if something had been lifted from them.
Together with the variant, they retreated deeper into the cave.

“So that erased the event here?”

“That’s right.”

Well, that worked, though now they had gone into the cave behind.
That was where I needed to go too… oh well.

If we run into them, we’ll just fight.

Sure enough, the moment we passed through the cave, a Chimera attacked.

Shardina deflected its sharp claws with her cutlass, and I seized the opening.
Targeting.

“Vanish.”

Shot. The Chimera’s head disappeared.

Alexander-san sliced off the snake tail.

“Straight to it, eh?”

“That last hit was heavy, desu.”

“Thanks, Shardina.”

“Master, protecting you is my job. But… if you must, you may pat my head, desu.”

I patted Shardina’s slightly lowered head.
She looked delighted.

Then, to the first prize: a green-glowing treasure chest.

“A potion, it seems.”

“Well, that’s fine.”

The next green glow contained a Power Potion.
A rare one that temporarily boosts physical ability.

“Well, that’s fine.”

Next was a yellow glow.

Ah, so that can happen too.

“Oh, this is unusual. A pile of junk.”

“All broken, shattered weapons and armor, desu.”

It was a dead end, with decayed weapons and rusted armor piled up.
A small junkyard. The yellow glow was buried there. I dug and found it.

What I pulled out was a small, narrow wooden box.
Old, with carvings etched on the surface.

Inside was a pendant with a red gemstone.

“That’s a fine item.”

“You can tell?”

“Well, I can only say that my gut tells me it’s not bad.”

“I am uninterested, desu.”

Shardina’s response was curt.

“Well, that’s fine.”

I tucked it into my pouch.

Now, for the main dish.

We took down a couple more Chimeras. Alexander-san explained:
The sellable parts were the claws and the snake fangs from the tail.
Buyback price: 1,500 to 3,000 oro.

Not especially high for the effort. Still, since we had them, we’d take them along.

The blue glow was in a recessed dead-end junkyard.
Next to a rusted knife and a broken piece of armor, a white plate was stuck into the ground.

That white plate was the source of the blue glow.

“This is rare, you know. It’s only the second time I’ve seen one myself.”

Alexander looked both surprised and nostalgic as he gazed at the plate in my hand.

“What is this?”

At a glance, it looked like a differently colored Relic Plate.

“It’s a Relic Plate, sir. More precisely, what’s known as a Duplicate Relic Plate—a legendary one at that.”
“Duplicate?”
“It allows you to duplicate a relic and store it in the plate. But it’s not for just anything—it only works for common types of relics that exist in large numbers, like elemental ones.”
“Wow, that’s still pretty convenient. So then, this one’s empty?”
“Yeah, since it’s blank.”

“Um, Master, I have a favor to ask, desu.”
“What is it?”
“I want Master’s relic, desu.”
“Ah—you mean you want me to duplicate one of my relics and give it to you?”
“Yes, desu!”
“So that means Shardina doesn’t have a relic of her own?”
“Yes, desu!”
“I see. Alexander, how do you use this thing?”
“You just hold the plate in your hand and imagine the relic you want to place into it, as though you were using it.”

I tried it.
No good with Wheel of Fortune. No good with Vanish. No good with Deep Silent.

Silent Auto-Move (Half) didn’t work either. And of course Generous was impossible.

Oh—Crisis Detection worked. The plate turned black.

“That means it’s been stored.”
“How do you hand it over?”
“Just give the plate to the other person and have them declare, ‘I possess this.’ Then it’s theirs.”
“Alright, here.”

“…Master. Are you really sure about this, desu?”

Even though she asked for it herself, Shardina hesitated.

“It’s better to use things like this right away.”
“Then, I’ll use it, desu.”

She accepted the plate and declared, “I possess this.”
The plate crumbled and disappeared.

“How is it?”
“W-whoa! Master, Master! Deep inside my chest, two relics have appeared, desu!”
“Two?”

I only duplicated one.

“Y-yes! Crisis Judgement and Impact, desu!”
“Not Crisis Detection?”
“Yes, desu. It became Judgement.”
“And Impact too?”

That was Alweld’s relic.
How did that happen?

“Well now, this is quite the unusual phenomenon. As expected of Lord Wof—what a delightful, astonishing event. A splitting phenomenon like this might not happen even once in a lifetime, you know.”
“…Splitting…”
“The original relic seems to have split apart, sir. That’s how two relics formed from a single duplication.”
“So Crisis Detection became Crisis Judgment, and Vanish became Impact?”
“Master! Master! I’m so happy, desu. Really, truly happy, desu!”

Shardina was bouncing with excitement.
Her face was still Munieka’s, so the whole thing looked very weird.
But well, if it made her happy, that’s what mattered. That smile—priceless.

“Lord Wof. If you ask me.” 

Alexander said,

“What is it?”

“It’s exactly because you do things like this that the world’s ending up the way it is.”

“…………”

I couldn’t deny it.

We left the Fire Dungeon and parted ways with Alexander.
He’d really done so much for us.

After returning, Shardina went to the witch’s house while I headed back to the lab.

With a reluctant Haiyaan dragged along, I started training.

I successfully dispelled the Evil Eye ten times in a row without erasing the eyeball.
Haiyaan gave me a look that was anything but rabbit-like.
Detective, maybe?

Either way, it felt refreshing.
At last, I’d made it to Alweld’s stage.

Later, Munieka scolded me about Shardina’s relics.
We both had to sit in formal seiza for nearly an hour as she lectured us.
And honestly, the lecture felt mixed with jealousy and sulking—maybe it was just my imagination.