When I got back to the mansion, it was already nighttime.
Emily came running up to the door and greeted me, “Welcome home!”
“Thanks. Sorry I’m so late.”
The sun had set a while ago now. Dinner time had passed, and if this world had them, we’d be enjoying prime-time TV shows right about now.
“When do you want to eat?”
“After I rest a little,” I replied, and sighed out all the air that had built up in my lungs. Just being in the mansion maintained by Emily, which remained bright and warm even at night, made me feel as though my fatigue was draining away.
“Yoda.”
Emily hugged me without any warning, startling me.
“Hmm? Wha?!” Despite my surprise, I naturally sat down where I was standing, allowing her to hug my head.
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“It’s no big deal, really…”
“The new dungeon is hard, isn’t it?”
“Hmm, I guess it is. I mean, the first-floor monsters look like Neptune and are even stronger than he is.”
“That does sound hard,” Emily replied and gently stroked the back of my head. It was calming─so calming that all my tiredness left me. “Yoda, don’t push yourself too much.”
“…Did I look off, or something?”
“You’re too kind.”
Her answer was indirect, but I had a feeling.
Neptune was in trouble, and I wanted to help him. To do that, I needed to conquer Tennessine. That wasn’t going to be easy work. But I still had to do it; that was what was on my mind on the way home.
“It reminds me of how you looked when we first met,” she said.
“Sorry to worry you.”
“I know you’ll be okay, but I don’t want you to push yourself too much.”
“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
We stayed like that for a while until she finally let me go. After that, she’d gone back to her usual gentle smile.
☆
The next day, after I’d gone and chatted with Plumbum for a while, I used the warp room to go to Tennessine.
I sensed several enemies─fake Neptunes wandering the floor.
I could kill them with Repetition, but due to the stars on the real one, I couldn’t kill them indiscriminately.
First, I planned to climb up to the fourth floor. I carefully felt for the presence of, and evaded, monsters as I progressed through the tower. One fake Neptune got in my way, but I used a fully powered restraining round to escape from it.
I started to worry; even a fully buffed restraining round had only stopped him for three seconds. Neptune’s limit was truly terrifying.
Eventually, I reached a staircase and climbed up to floor two along my path to floor four.
A monster immediately appeared: a cute girl with green hair. This monster looked like one of Neptune’s girls, Ran Hydrogen.
The fake Ran disappeared.
“She’s fast!” I quickly tucked and rolled to the side. The fake Ran’s pickaxe smashed into the floor. “So that’s what you use when you fight alone, huh?”
Her power and speed were more than I’d expected.
Next, she swung it sideways to try and decapitate me. A simple move, but when backed by such speed and power, it was truly threatening. Her stats were probably along the lines of dungeon masters.
“But!” I stepped forth in time with her charge, closed the distance between us, and slipped past her pickaxe blade. Then, I raised my arm and guarded against its handle. “Emily could’ve crushed me with just the handle.”
Remembering a friend who used a similar weapon, I stepped even further, thrust out my gun, and fired growth rounds.
They’d grown to the point that they could kill things in one shot, but the fake Ran’s defenses were no joke.
Like a pile driver, I fired multiple shots at the same spot until they finally pierced through, but she still did not die. She pushed me away with a kick and swung her pickaxe horizontally.
I swayed to barely evade the sharp tip and stayed on her, following up with more gunshots.
After ten in total, she finally fell.
Poof!
Out dropped an item.
“Black watermelon? Well, that’s rare.”
The fake Ran had dropped a perfectly round watermelon with a smooth surface and black sheen. Though it was a watermelon, it was an extremely expensive item. Just one could easily go for 10,000 yen back home. It was my first time seeing one in this world, but it’d probably be worth about as much.
“Given the matsutake mushrooms from the last floor, this dungeon must specialize in luxury ingredients.”
I picked up the watermelon and went back down. There, I used the warp gate to go back to the mansion, left the watermelon, and returned to floor two. The warp room allowed the user to teleport to any floor they’d been to before, but when going back, you had to use the floor you’d teleported to.
That meant that when I got to a new floor, I couldn’t go straight back.
The fake Ran was strong. Just in case things went south, I wanted to keep moving the warp gate upward each time I progressed so that I could make a quick escape if necessary.
Incidentally, I’d brought the black watermelon back to give to Erza and Ina later.
I eventually went back through the warp gate. I couldn’t go around killing more Rans and wasting stars, so I evaded them until I found the staircase to the next floor.
Floor three was home to pretty women with long, pink hair, clad in bondage outfits and wielding whips.
She was like a queen─Lil Hydrogen. Like Ran, she was a spirit-blessed who was recognized by the spirit of the dungeon Hydrogen and another one of Neptune’s girls.
“Kh!”
I was too slow. Lil’s hand seemed to flicker for a moment. Instantly after, something was coiling around my neck.
I quickly put my arm in the way to stop it.
It was the whip. The fake Lil’s weapon undulated like a living thing and went for my neck. Since I’d put my arm in the way, I’d managed to avoid getting strangled.
The fake Lil pulled her arm back, dragging me.
“You’re strong, too?!” I screamed as I fired a growth round at the whip.
Her weapon itself wasn’t too tough; one shot was all I needed to tear it apart. I did a half-turn in the air and landed on my feet, but just then, another whip came flying. When it did, I fell onto all fours to dodge, and then I jumped away as far as I could.
Her whip had somehow recovered in no time.
I changed bullets, loading a homing round this time, and fired it at the whip. The whip was torn, yet it regenerated again immediately.
“So that’s how your weapon is, huh?”
It came flying at me. This time, I fired at both her and her weapon. The fake Lil deflected my shot, and the whip was severed once more. Her weapon wasn’t strong. And what’s more…
“You can’t move while it’s regenerating, can you?”
Three times was enough for me to notice a trend. When the whip regenerated, Lil didn’t move much at all. She stood almost stock-still. Her power and technique were no laughing matter, but her weapon couldn’t keep up.
I aimed for the whip, tearing it again before it could finish regenerating. When I kept it torn and unusable, the fake Lil didn’t move at all. I held her in place while I fired growth rounds at Lil herself. She was tough, like the fake Ran, but it was easy to beat her in this state. She went down in no time and dropped an item.
“Caviar, huh?”
Tennessine really was a dungeon full of expensive foods.