“Let’s look through all the floors,” I suggested. “I want to have a good grasp of this place.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Mm.”
Celeste and Eve seemed willing to follow.
We went through Plumbum, one floor at a time. The entire dungeon was the same as B1─underwater, but breathable. It slowed me down and made it harder to fight, but it didn’t affect mages like Celeste as much.
Incidentally, my bullets were about half as slow as usual. Furthermore, if I tried to go for a burst of full speed right away, the resistance was greater. It took a major toll on my stamina.
It was best to move through this dungeon at a slow, consistent pace, like walking through a swimming pool.
All of the monsters were fish-like. Fanged dolphins, horned goldfish, whales with wings─despite being underwater─and so on, all of them resembled things you’d find swimming in the ocean.
They all split if not killed in one blow, just like the B1 monster. Even if I tried my best to kill them in one hit, my reduced speed led to me failing quite often. A tricky dungeon, to be sure.
Celeste accurately pointed out the problem along the way. “The real problem here is how the monsters split.”
“Agreed.”
“It would be fine if we could change that, but is that possible?”
“We could try selectively breeding like before. That changes the monsters themselves.”
“I’ll call two people from the mansion,” Eve offered.
“That won’t be necessary,” I replied. She tilted her head in confusion. “Needing two spirit-blessed for selective breeding is only a rule in Cyclo. Tetramine probably hasn’t adopted that yet, or even had it brought up for a vote.”
“So one low level is enough...”
“What, am I alone in this?” I rebutted with a wry laugh.
“You can do it, low level. This bunny believes in you.”
“I can manage, sure, but I’ll need your help when the time comes. I’ll owe you all the carrots you want.”
“My motivation is breaking its limit.”
I don’t know whether I should call her cheap or not. Either way, glad to have her help.
The three of us continued to chat, kill monsters, and descend through the dungeon.
☆
The lowest floor of Plumbum was still “underwater,” but it came with dungeon snow.
“So this is the end,” Celeste said.
“That matches what I heard,” I agreed.
“The monsters are doggy-paddling fish.” Eve’s commentary was spot-on.
“It’s weird to see, isn’t it?”
This floor’s monsters were fish with arms and legs. Their hands had fur, and their legs bore fishnet stockings, and they were dog-paddling. The sight was, in a word, uncanny.
“But...they are fish. So it fits, I guess?” I shrugged.
“Yep. I think so, too.”
“Well, I’d better kill one to get them bookmarked.” I readied a gun. Not that I expected to ever use it, but I wanted to kill one so I could use Repetition on them in the future.
I loaded a homing round. After much testing, I had learned that of my bullets─which naturally slowed down due to the watery nature of this dungeon─the homing round dealt the most damage. I’d be able to use other ones with practice, yes, but this was just a preliminary bookmarking run.
I raised my gun and put a finger on the trigger...
“Huh?”
“I-It’s gone!”
Me and Celeste were surprised. The monster had disappeared as soon as I’d set my sights on it.
“Look closer, low level.”
“...They’re all gone?”
Eve had made me realize that all of the monsters had disappeared. They’d doggy-paddled here and there with the population density of a normal dungeon, but now, they were nowhere to be seen.
“The dungeon master has appeared,” Celeste added.
“Gotcha. We don’t want it making a mess of the place, so let’s find and kill it,” I said.
“Right!”
“If we must.”
It didn’t seem to be on this floor, so we went up one level.
“Huh?” I was startled by the situation before me. The floor above had fish-like monsters swimming around just like before. “There are monsters. So it’s not the dungeon master?”
“I guess not...” Celeste replied. “When dungeon masters appear, monsters are supposed to leave every floor.”
The laws of this world were surprisingly inflexible. There were almost no exceptions to things that my S-rank drop skill couldn’t interfere with. If a dungeon master emerged, the monsters would disappear from every other floor. That was certain.
“Let’s go back down.”
“Okay,” Celeste agreed. Eve remained silent.
The three of us went back to the last floor.
No monsters. Dungeon snow continued to rain down, making it feel even lonelier.
“What’s going on here?”
“I’ll go ask the townspeople,” Eve said, turning and going back upstairs.
After a while of waiting, she returned.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“Nobody knows. They say it hasn’t happened before.”
“What an odd phenomenon,” Celeste said. “It happened when you pointed your gun at them, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“It’s like they didn’t want to be defeated by you.”
“...They didn’t want to be defeated by me? Just here?”
“Yes... Oh!” Celeste’s eyes went wide. She’d realized it, too.
There was another possible reason that the other floors were fine while this one wasn’t─the spirit.
To reach the staircase leading to a spirit’s chamber, one had to defeat monsters on the bottom floor of a dungeon. With my S-rank drops, I could open the path far more easily than others.
But still, the laws of this world were inflexible. Even with S-rank drop rates, I couldn’t do that without first killing a monster. If there were no monsters, then I could not go to meet the spirit.
And tell me, who controlled how many monsters there were?
“Does the spirit Plumbum not want to meet me?” I wondered aloud.
“That would make sense,” Celeste agreed. “Spirits can control the monsters and drops in their dungeons, just like Aurum did. It’d be easy to get rid of the monsters on this floor.”
“Getting rid of just drops wouldn’t stop this low level from tripping into her chamber,” Eve commented.
“So you just get rid of the monsters altogether, huh?” I mused.
We discussed the situation, as if comparing answers. The more we discussed it, the more certain we became that we were correct.
“But what do we do?” Celeste asked. “I’m glad that it recognizes your abilities to the point of wariness, but we can’t do anything without monsters.”
“Nah. There’s no problem,” I disagreed.
“Huh?”
“Eve.”
“You’re bossy, low level.” She turned and went back up the stairs.
“What are you doing, Ryota?”
“Remember the potatoes.”
“The potatoes... Oh! If she brings this floor’s drop...”
“Yep. We just need to bring a drop from this floor back and let it turn into a monster. Outsiders will turn back into their base monster if they’re on their home floor.”
“I see. But will it work that well? You need more than one kill to make the staircase, don’t you? If we wanted to do that, wouldn’t we need a lot of them?”
“...No, I think we’re fine.”
I felt something akin to certainty. This dungeon’s spirit was avoiding me. It took drastic measures to do so, going as far as getting rid of every monster.
And that had to mean one thing.
Before long, Eve came back with a bottle of white liquid. “Sorry for the wait.”
“Is that the drop from this floor?”
“Yes. Goat’s milk. They only had two left.”
“Two?” Celeste repeated. “Oh, I guess Tetramine is struggling because of depopulation, so production must be low... Will this be enough, Ryota?”
“Yeah. I’ll use it well─though I think one will be enough.” I accepted the goat’s milk, put it on the ground, and backed off with the two of them. Soon after, a dog-paddling fish with arms and legs appeared.
I aimed, fired a homing round, and killed it. When I did, a path opened.
I’d done this many times by now. Instead of dropping goat’s milk, it had dropped a staircase leading down.
“I think it got rid of the monsters so fast because it knew the path would open that easily,” I declared.
“Wow! That’s amazing, Ryota.”
“Now, let’s do this.”
The opened staircase, the spirit trying to escape me... Normally, I’d have ignored or put this off. But with how much they had put me through, I had to meet this spirit.