Chapter 151: False Reports Are Unforgivable

“What… what incredible power…! That blue-haired lady of yours, you’re amazing! And Lyon’s spell was stronger than ever too!”

“Indeed, Lyon-sama, as expected,”

“N-no, wait… was that really me…?”

“Why are you the one with your eyes wide open?! Explosive magic is your specialty!”

……Most likely, it was thanks to Shifa-san’s Empress Authority.

That aura must have amplified the power of the spell beyond its usual strength, which would explain why even Lyon himself looked so stunned.

Anyway, with that, the Cyclopes were completely wiped out.

The remaining Atlas had clearly suffered massive damage as well. Smoke rose from its charred, scorched body as it groaned, “Ooooh…” in a deep, pained rumble.

“Let’s go!”

“I’ll go too!”

Seizing the opportunity, Sena and Lala-san leapt toward Atlas.

Their swords slashed through Atlas’s legs.

“Oaaah!?”

Atlas’s knees buckled, and with a thunderous thud, it collapsed backward, slamming onto the ground.

“…Mine was shallower,” Lala-san muttered in surprise, as Sena began climbing up Atlas’s massive body.

Atlas swung its arms to swat her off, but Sena deftly dodged each strike with ease.

“Ei!”

Sena thrust straight toward Atlas’s eyeball.

Atlas reflexively closed its eyelids at the last second, but the piercing strike cut through, impaling the eye.

“Uwaaaaaaahhh!!”

Despite writhing in agony, Atlas desperately tried to knock Sena off, its enormous hand striking her directly.

“Sena!?”

“Got it!”

Two of Atlas’s fingers were sliced clean off.

Sena slipped through the gap created, narrowly avoiding the follow-up attack.

“That… just cut off two fingers in an instant! And that quick decision-making! Absolutely amazing!”

Lala-san’s eyes widened as she scrambled up Atlas’s back, driving a sword strike into the nape of its neck.

“———!?”

Atlas let out a shriek that was almost not a shriek at all, then collapsed forward onto the ground, utterly spent.

“Wow! Incredible! You took it down in a single blow!”

“It’s just that this is the weak spot of a giant. You drew its attention for me, so I could strike,” Lala explained modestly.

“Wow…”

“More importantly… are you really C-rank? With that skill, you could easily be B-rank, maybe even A-rank!”

Lala-san praised Sena wholeheartedly.

“But I can’t pass the exams!”

“The exams?”

“Never mind the practical, it’s the written test I fail at. Totally hopeless,” Sena said, sheepishly.

“…I see,” Lala-san nodded, now understanding from Sena’s behavior that she was a bit of an airhead.

“In any case, thanks to you, we were saved. You helped Roin too… I don’t even know how to repay you.”

“Don’t worry about it. We help each other when needed,” Sena replied.

“No, we can’t just leave it at that. We’ll repay this debt one day, for sure.”

……How diligent.

After that, they left to search for the spear Roin had lost, and we parted ways there.

I just hope they find it… it seemed like a rare, powerful weapon. Roin was nearly in tears over it.

“So, what should we do?”

“I want to return to the surface. We still need to report to the guild.”

It seemed our dungeon expedition was going to be paused for now.

We’d gone quite deep, but they wanted to reconsider whether to push even further or focus on fulfilling requests, and figure out the next steps.

“And… sightseeing too?”

“Yay!”

So, we decided to return to the surface—not to Arcel, but to the garden hidden near the royal capital.

“Sightseeing, sightseeing!”

……Sena, obsessed with sightseeing, seemed to have completely forgotten what had happened the other day.

Yeah, just as I thought.

“…Excuse me? C-could you say that again…?”

The guild receptionist repeated her question.

She was the same woman who had registered me as an adventurer.

“We reached the ninth floor of the ‘Infinite Dungeon.’”

“W-wait, wait, wait! But your party is mostly B-rank and C-rank adventurers, right?!”

After returning to the surface, we had come to report to the guild.

We weren’t on any particular mission, but reporting our dungeon progress contributed to our evaluation as adventurers.

Incidentally, Sena was missing… she couldn’t resist and had gone off to play alone.

“You know false reports aren’t allowed, right?”

The receptionist gave us a wary look.

Of course, to have our claim acknowledged, we had to provide proof.

So we showed her the materials we had collected along the way.

“T-this…! The horn of a Cyclops from the ninth floor?! And these… iron crab pincers from the seventh floor…!”

We had skipped the eighth floor, so we didn’t have anything from there to show.

“!? A fragment of the shell from the sixth floor boss, Tarascroade!? You actually defeated the boss?!”

“Yes, we did.”

“How on earth… Tarascroade is practically immune to attacks from A-rank adventurers, and there are almost no records of it being defeated…”

When collecting materials in dungeons, adventurers usually have to be selective.

Carrying heavy materials while retreating is exhausting.

Some adventurers specialize in material collection, but in high-difficulty dungeons like the Infinite Dungeon, few handle the deepest layers.

Luckily, we had the home garden.

Not just materials, but even monsters could be transported to the secondary garden.

Still, carrying too much could raise suspicion, so we planned to sell only a portion to the guild and leave most of it to Lilka-san.

“All the materials have been verified as genuine! I… I apologize for my earlier skepticism!”

The receptionist, sweating and looking apologetic, finished verifying the materials.

Shifa-san then asked, “Can we take the A-rank promotion exam…?”