Eve and Celeste returned and reported to me.
“Low level, it’s empty.”
“Nobody in this house, either.”
I furrowed my brow.
We’d looked around the town after cleaning up all the outsiders, but we hadn’t found a single resident. We even searched inside the buildings. Not one person to be found.
“It’d be worse if there were,” Eve said quietly. I had to agree.
The sheer number of outsiders wandering around had made the town into a sort of biohazard. It would be more worrying if someone had managed to survive in hiding throughout all this.
“But it’s strange,” Celeste mused. “If it was like this, I would think they would have asked you for help differently.”
“I had that same thought.”
Tetramine looked like a town in ruin after our fight with the outsiders.
Dale had asked me to move my base of operations here. Neptune had explained it away as him wanting my taxes. I’d found that convincing at the time.
“Typically, they’d be honest and ask me to save their town from the monsters, yeah?” I agreed.
“And they didn’t need you in particular, low level.” Eve was right, too. Her evident unhappiness was probably because my being called here meant fewer carrots for her.
“Yeah. A simple request to exterminate a flood of monsters could be handled by any old adventurer. Throw a hundred in this town, and they would’ve finished within a day.”
“What is going on here?”
☆
It didn’t take long for me to get my answer. With the monsters gone, the caravan from Cyclo entered the town and settled in. Meanwhile, Dale and the other townsfolk approached me.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
After hearing that we were the ones who’d saved them, they all came running and thanked us over and over.
“Forget that; I need an explanation,” I said to Dale. “Why did you make that specific request given the circumstances? I wouldn’t have refused if you’d told me monsters had taken over.”
“That’s not it!” He panicked and tried to explain─though he was so flustered that it almost sounded like excuses to me. “The dungeon wasn’t paying out; we had no choice. But we’d managed to maintain appearances, if nothing else, when I left for Cyclo.”
“And things changed after you left.”
“Yes... My subordinate, the vice president, ran off with all the town’s remaining funds. All while I was gone...”
“...”
“The town had nothing. We were on a tightrope...”
“And then it all came falling down,” I said.
Dale nodded silently. The townspeople behind him did the same.
It didn’t seem like he was lying.
One or two people might lie, but you can’t get hundreds of people to stick to the same fabricated story. As more people get involved, the chance of a lie being exposed rises exponentially. If just one person spills the beans, that’s it.
But he was being honest now.
The most convincing thing of all, of course, was the exhaustion evident in those who’d fled from town and taken refuge from the monsters.
☆
Though they were naturally just here for profits, the presence of people from Cyclo helped get the town running for the time being. That allowed me to put it aside for now and go to the dungeon with Eve and Celeste.
On B1 of Plumbum, Celeste and I were stunned by what we saw.
“Oh,” I gasped. “This is...”
“It’s underwater! Why?!”
The dungeon looked as if it was submerged underwater. Plants swayed as if they were in water, and we moved sluggishly.
“Huh? But I can breathe.”
“We can...”
“That’s how it works,” Eve cut in.
“Eve? Have you been here before?”
She nodded slightly. “With the party before my last party.”
“You’ve been in lots of parties, huh?”
“Yes. But differences in dungeon priorities always led to us breaking up.”
“So it’s like it’s underwater, but we can breathe just fine.”
“Looks like it. Hup!” Celeste took out her magical Bicorn horns and swung them. As usual, they allowed her to use fireball magic as much as she wanted. “It still works. Fire isn’t weakened by being underwater here, then?”
“I see. Then this should work, too.” I loaded a limitless lightning round and fired it at a wall. It struck and scattered electricity, but we didn’t get shocked by being underwater like you’d expect.
Seemingly underwater, but not quite. What a strange dungeon Plumbum was.
“Now, as for monsters... There we go.” I quickly spotted a monster. A fish-like monster swam in the air...water? Whatever.
It was as big as a dolphin you’d see in an aquarium, but it had a fierce-looking face and demonic fangs.
“Killer fish,” Eve said. “This bunny hates them.”
“They’re called killer fish?” I switched to my growth round and shot the killer fish as it menacingly approached. The bullet landed and penetrated straight through.
BZZZT.
With a grating noise, the killer fish split in two.
“Wha?!”
“It split?!”
“That’s how it works,” Eve repeated. “Try burning one with magic.”
“Okay! Go, Bicorn horns!” Celeste cast fireball on one. It hit its mark and set the monster on fire. “More again!”
The burned killer fish had once again split in two. In two attacks, one killer fish had become three.
“If you don’t kill it, more appear every time you attack.” Eve approached a killer fish and chopped it.
BZZZZZZZZT!
With the loudest noise I’d heard all day, that one killer fish became more than twenty.
“Like this,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Why would you use a multi-hit attack now?!”
Her chops looked like singular hits, but they were the kind of attack that struck a ridiculous number of times. She’d done that and caused the killer fish to multiply all at once.
“That’s how they work. That’s why I hate them.”
“N-Now isn’t the time for that! This is far too many─” Celeste panicked.
I loaded bullets, took a deep breath, and fired rapidly. Upping the firepower a bit, I used piercing rounds to shoot every single one of the twenty-plus killer fish.
“Oh... And it’s fine now,” she laughed. “Incredible work, Ryota.”
“Uppity, for a low level.”
They complimented me, but my mind was elsewhere.
“I see...” I muttered.
“See what?”
“Take a look.” I pointed at white stuff floating in mid-air. Based on its scent, it seemed to be milk.
“Yes. The drop on this floor is milk,” Eve said. “You can collect the stuff that floats at your own pace.”
“This dungeon’s feature is surprisingly convenient,” Celeste said.
She was right. The milk wasn’t in a container, but it was like liquid floating in midair; it didn’t mix with anything or splash onto the ground.
That was kind of convenient, except for one problem.
“Fatal, too, though,” I added.
“Huh? How so?” she asked me.
“You didn’t notice? How many did I just kill?”
“Umm... About twenty?”
“Nope.”
“Huh?”
“One,” I said, pointing at the milk again. “One.”
“...Huh? Wait, what?” She was confused.
Another killer fish happened to swim by, so I used weak attacks to make it multiply. Since I was doing it myself this time, I counted how many I made.
When there were exactly a hundred, I killed them all again.
Celeste cheered and called it incredible again, but she was quickly stunned─for once the hundred killer fish had died, only a single drop’s worth of milk was there.
The more you multiplied them, the more futile it felt.
This had to be why Plumbum was abandoned.