Chapter 504: Traveling Between Dungeons

The first floor of Babylon looked exactly as it had the last time Tauro and Aeris had visited.

Skeletons and ghosts occasionally appeared along the route.

As before, Taichi, serving as deputy captain of the escort, defeated the monsters before Tauro and the others had any need to act.

While watching him fight, Tauro suddenly noticed something.

“Taichi-san, could that sword you’re using have been made by…?”

Even without activating [True Eye], Tauro somehow recognized the weapon.

“You noticed? After seeing how well your dagger turned out, I took a long leave and went to Saisi to ask the famous blacksmith Angus to make me a sword. I was lucky enough to commission it just before his reputation really exploded and he became too busy. Thanks to the recommendation you gave me back then, I got an excellent sword at a reasonable price.”

Taichi spoke proudly as he sheathed the sword after finishing off the nearby monsters.

“By the time I tried to order one after seeing Taichi’s sword, Angus already had so many customers that getting a commission accepted was almost impossible,” Tsuyoku added with a wry smile.

“When I visited Angus’s workshop recently, he had a lot of apprentices working there,” Tauro said, remembering his recent stop in Saisi.

“Exactly. These days, getting a weapon forged by Master Angus himself is almost impossible. Even if you place an order through him, you’re usually getting something made by Angus Blacksmith Workshop. His apprentices forge those. They’re still good weapons, but they aren’t quite the same as something made by the master personally. I tried to order another dagger after he became famous, and this workshop-made one was all I could get. Still, it turned out very well.”

Taichi drew the dagger at his waist and showed it to them.

Tauro activated [True Eye] and examined the weapon.

The appraisal indeed identified it as “Made by Angus Blacksmith Workshop.”

When Tauro examined its value more closely, however, it was worth considerably more than he had expected.

“This is a very good piece. It may have been forged by one of his apprentices, but it’s definitely a high-quality weapon.”

“Right? One of my combat abilities lets me judge weapons to some extent, so I can usually tell when something is well made. I like this one.”

Taichi smiled with obvious satisfaction.

Before long they reached the familiar junction where the stairs descended to the next floor and a side passage led toward the Rest Room.

“Here we are. So what exactly do you want to do in this room?”

Tsuyoku asked as he walked beside Tauro.

Once everyone entered the Rest Room, Tauro turned to him.

“Captain Tsuyoku, could you and your men wait here for a moment? I want to conduct a small experiment and confirm something.”

Without using Ragune’s [Dimensional Corridor], Tauro activated [Spatial Transfer] and vanished from the room.

Tsuyoku, Taichi, and the other knights froze in shock.

The sight apparently reminded them of the previous expedition, when Tauro and Aeris had disappeared for several hours.

They all turned toward Aeris and the others for an explanation.

“He should be back soon. Probably. Please wait a moment.”

Aeris gave them a wry smile.

Tauro returned a short time later.

His sudden reappearance startled Tsuyoku, Taichi, and the escort all over again, but Tauro paid no attention to their reaction.

“It worked!”

He turned excitedly toward his companions.

“What worked?”

Tsuyoku could no longer suppress his curiosity.

“Please keep this confidential. I have an ability that lets me travel easily between the special Rest Rooms inside dungeons. I wanted to test whether I could also travel between Rest Rooms in different dungeons that I’ve visited before. It worked.”

“What?! You can move between different dungeons? Wait… that’s one of your abilities? And you’ve already been inside other dungeons in the kingdom?”

Tsuyoku was overwhelmed with questions, as usual whenever Tauro did something unexpected.

“For now, just remember that I can use this ability to move between them. Before long, I plan to have other people come and go from Babylon under my authority.”

Aeris and the others immediately understood what Tauro meant.

He intended to bring the dragonfolk from the Dungeon of Beginnings in their village to Babylon.

But if Tauro’s own [Spatial Transfer] was the only method, then the dragonfolk would still depend on him every time they wanted to travel between the two dungeons.

“Tauro, does that mean we’re going to devote ourselves to conquering Babylon from now on?”

Aeris asked the obvious question.

If that was his plan, she would have preferred that he at least discuss it with the party first. Everyone would probably follow his judgment anyway, but a little advance notice would have been appreciated.

“No. I’m going to prepare a method that doesn’t require me. The people over there should be able to travel on their own.”

“A method that lets them travel on their own?”

Aeris and the others stared at him in surprise.

Until now, their only exceptional travel methods had been Tauro’s [Spatial Transfer] and Ragune’s [Dimensional Corridor]. Abilities that convenient were extraordinarily rare.

“This.”

Tauro took a familiar magic stone out of [Magic Storage].

“That’s the magic stone from the two-headed holy beast that served as a floor guardian in the Dungeon of Beginnings, isn’t it?”

Aeris immediately connected it to the research Tauro had been staying up all night to conduct.

“It’s that unusual stone with both Light (Holy) and Dark attributes… Oh? You’ve already processed it.”

She noticed that the special magic stone in Tauro’s hand had been altered.

“Yes. When I analyzed my [Spatial Transfer] using [Magic Manipulation] (Extreme), I found that Light (Holy) and Dark magical power were combined in a very precise balance. That made me wonder whether I could use my own magic-circle design to process this special stone so that it reproduced the same output.”

“Then… you made a magic stone that can activate [Spatial Transfer]?!”

Aeris was the first to understand what he had accomplished.

“Exactly. The problem is the amount of magical power it consumes. It requires so much that only someone with magical reserves on the level of the dragonfolk can activate it.”

Tauro revealed both the invention’s extraordinary potential and its equally extraordinary limitation.