“Ahh, this is really good.”
It had the kind of taste and texture that had me craving a beer!
Just as my knowledge says, this is exactly like sea squirt—definitely a delicacy. Shiro and Kuro seem to love the crunchy bite too.
And the mana recovery’s impressive. Strange, considering it came from a monster built for brute force. You can never tell with magical beasts. Well, it’s a blessing since I burned through so much mana.
That advanced magic sure was dangerous, though. First of all, it drains way too much mana, like half of what I had just for casting and controlling it. I had to use dragon power too, so it made me famished. And it’s way too powerful. It was total overkill even against the hell chimera. Forget about its weak point, I split it in two and insta-killed it. Honestly, pouring extra mana into a mid-tier spell would’ve been more efficient.
And then there’s the risk of misfire. That’s actually the scariest part. If that spell had gone out of control, none of us would’ve gotten out unscathed. I’ve gotta be extremely careful the next time I use it.
“Well, now that we’re full, shall we get going?”
“Myah!”
“Arf.”
We had some mellum juice for dessert, and we were completely replenished.
Then, once again, we stepped into the deep layer. From here on, we couldn’t let our guards down. More than the magical beasts, we had to avoid being spotted by mercenaries. I didn’t know how far Ares had spread word about us, but it was possible that every mercenary out there was on our tail.
Even so, our progress through the deep layer was smoother than expected. Thanks to Shiro’s eyes and Kuro’s nose, we hadn’t encountered a single mercenary in three days. We were finding materials and food and targeting only edible monsters. Shiro and Kuro had grown more than I’d imagined. Their sharp senses kept finding enemies and ingredients.
But our fuel efficiency’s gotten way worse! The three of us were constantly getting hungry. At this point, we were eating so much for a snack that it was like eating four meals a day. Each meal was twice the usual size too.
This level of hunger was abnormal considering we were at the same level of activity and mana use as before. I figured our dragon bodies were in some kind of heightened state. Whether it would settle down or stay like this, I didn’t know.
If it were permanent, then sure, the power boost would be great, but we’d need to stockpile way more food. Luckily, we’d taken down the hell chimera on the first day, so we had plenty of meat for the time being. In fact, eating meals with strong magical effects every day was steadily increasing the mana inside our bodies.
For now, I’m thinking we should just keep eating and grow stronger.