Chapter 14
“Hey, what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do? Let’s just go.”
Salik’s companions, whom I had singled out, turned their backs on him and left.
“Damn it, damn it!”
Salik spat curses as he curled up on the ground.
The onlookers whispered among themselves over Salik’s pitiful state, then soon lost interest and drifted away one by one.
Now only Salik and I were left.
“Quit being an adventurer and look for some other work.”
This wasn’t a provocation, but sincere advice.
The adventurer Salik was finished. Because of the suggestion I’d placed on him, even taking on the easiest missions would be difficult for him now.
“Or go search for herbs or something.”
“Urgh...!”
I walked right past him, but Salik couldn’t say a word and remained collapsed on the ground.
I think I’ve accomplished what I came here for today. Should I head back?
Now that there was no one left to pick a fight with me for no reason, I also felt like taking a look at the dungeon.
The entrance to the Bordeaux Dungeon was in the ground.
A large staircase had been built into the dark, bare soil where the grass had been stripped away.
It was so dim that I couldn’t see what was at the bottom, but it didn’t exactly make me want to go in.
I don’t think I’m cut out to be an adventurer.
How much nerve would you need to walk into a place like some haunted spot of your own accord?
Especially knowing for certain that you’d be attacked once you went in.
“Mister.”
Someone tapped me.
When I turned around, a grubby boy carrying a huge bag was looking up at me.
“If you’re thinking of going inside, hire me. I’ll be your porter.”
A porter...
I had my personal storage, so I didn’t need one.
“Do you have a torch?”
“I do.”
“Then light the way. Payment afterward. If those are the terms, you can come with me.”
“Okay.”
The matter was settled in no time.
I went down underground together with the boy.
“By the way, why did you approach me when I was alone?”
“Because you somehow smelled like money, mister.”
I let out a small laugh.
Smelled like money—those were words you’d hardly hear in my original world, so hearing a kid say them felt absurd.
Still, he had a fairly sharp nose. I didn’t have money, but I also wasn’t troubled by not having any.
“But mister, can you fight? You don’t even have a weapon.”
“You’ll see.”
A sound came from up ahead.
It was a familiar sound. Goblins. But unlike the ones outside, the moment they noticed us, they charged in immediately.
I kicked the charging goblins down one after another and cast a spell.
“Fire Arrow!”
When flames flared up from my hand, the boy’s eyes went round.
“Mister! You were a mage?”
I fired Fire Arrows at each of the goblins and blew them apart.
“Kieeek!”
“Yeah. I’m a mage.”
“Amazing!”
“Though this is the only spell I can use.”
“I’ve never seen someone as young as you use attack magic before.”
As if respect that hadn’t existed before had suddenly welled up inside him, his attitude changed completely.
“Isn’t this just a basic spell that anyone can learn?”
I pretended not to know and probed him a little.
“Are you kidding? If there are a hundred Bronze-rank adventurers, ten of them can use magic! And out of those, only one knows how to use attack magic.”
“Really?”
This was just a spell I’d happened to receive along with the goddess’s blessing.
“This is only the second time I’ve seen it in person. So cool.”
“Can we keep going now?”
“...”
The boy seemed to belatedly feel embarrassed and shut his mouth.
“My name is Dekal. You?”
“I’m Bindel.”
Hadn’t they said the monsters that came out of dungeons were highly aggressive? It was exactly as they’d said.
Just the fact that the goblins, which had seemed so easy before, noticed us first and charged at us increased the tension tenfold.
Their equipment was also a little different. They were holding filthy blades and such from inside the dungeon, so it seemed dangerous to get hit.
Right, I might get tetanus...
When was the last time I got a vaccine shot? I heard the effect of the shot lasts ten years. Phew... I’m seriously worried.
“Fire Arrow!”
(You have leveled up.)
“Mister, over there!”
After Bindel learned that I was a mage, he sometimes went a few steps ahead, spotted monsters first, and told me about them.
It seemed like he was trying to feel like a warrior in his own way.
Still, it was quite reassuring compared to being alone.
The first underground floor of Bordeaux was an underground structure made up of countless goblins and even more countless empty rooms layered one after another.
Though I wasn’t sure if you could call it a structure when more than half the walls were missing soil instead of building materials.
Thanks to that, I was plagued by pointless worries. Surely it wouldn’t suddenly collapse and bury me alive, right?
“Fire Arrow!”
The goblins really poured out without a moment’s rest.
Thanks to that, my skill in handling magic was gradually improving.
As I gained confidence, I became able to hit moving targets fairly well, and I also figured out a few characteristics.
First was whether or not there was an incantation.
With Fire Arrow, you only had to chant once, either when summoning the arrow or when firing it.
It was possible to cast without chanting, but in that case, the power dropped to less than half.
The number of arrows I could summon at once was up to two.
However, if I did that, the first arrow could be drawn out with an incantation, but the second arrow would be summoned without one.
Also, the MP consumption doubled.
Whenever my MP dropped, I gulped down water from the bottle and continued forward.
(You have leveled up.)
(You have leveled up.)
“Mister, it feels like you’re casting magic faster and faster.”
“I was feeling that too.”
I checked my status once.
Level: 12
Status
HP 290/290 MP 354/463
Veleira’s Blessing (True) 「Fire Immunity, increased fire magic power, all skill proficiency values ++」
Goddess’s Agent 「Communicates in all languages and reads all scripts. Qualification to cross worlds.」
Stats
Strength 46 Magic 59 Stamina 50 Agility 51
Skills
Fire Arrow (★☆) - The most basic but practical fire magic. Lingering embers may remain and deal additional damage.
Looking at my status, I could tell that Fire Arrow’s proficiency had increased even further.
Now the casting time was around 1.5 seconds. Compared to the frustrating beginning, it was a big improvement.
Thanks to the water bottle, I had no fear of running out of MP, so I advanced leisurely and knocked down every goblin that came into sight.
Huh. Isn’t this actually pretty comfortable and nice?
I realized it belatedly, but the goblins could no longer even get near me.
There was no longer any need to beat the goblins down with rough movements.
A simple but powerful attack spell and a water bottle that endlessly refilled my MP. This combination seemed far better than I had imagined.
Since the path was narrow, simply stepping over the fallen goblin corpses caused countless souls to gather into the soul stone.
“Fire Arrow!”
“Kieeek!”
This satisfying feeling of souls being swept right in.
It was utterly thrilling.
“Shall we go to the second floor?”
“Yeah. I’m glad I followed you, mister. I think you’ve already caught as many as a decent party would.”
“If I’ve caught this many, would the soul stone be worth quite a bit?”
“Is this your first time being an adventurer, mister?”
“Well, something like that.”
“For about as many as you just caught, you can get 1 gold at the guild rate.”
I see. So a hundred goblins are worth 1 gold.
What will come out next?
On the second floor, even more goblins appeared, with the occasional skeleton mixed in.
When I first saw one, a set of human bones was just standing there blankly, and I nearly got terrified.
But its movements weren’t particularly quick, so it wasn’t hard to bring down.
“Fire Arrow!”
Since its body was bigger than a goblin’s, it even seemed easier to hit.
It didn’t go down in one shot, but sometimes it did.
“Hm?”
That was when I felt something was strange.
I hit the same spot with the same spell, so why was there a difference?
Was it an individual difference between skeletons?
I soon realized that this was the function of the 〈Convergence Bracelet〉.
“Fire Arrow!”
If I deliberately spent more time concentrating even after the arrow was complete...
More MP was sucked in, and the arrow swelled in size.
Skill overcharging. That seemed to be the function of the Convergence Bracelet.
“Bindel, step back.”
I had Bindel move back in case he got hurt, then fired the overcharged Fire Arrow.
Boom!
The moment the skeleton was hit by the overcharged Fire Arrow, it shattered into pieces.
“Wow...”
Bindel exclaimed in open admiration.
I felt the same way inside. The Convergence Bracelet was more impressive than I’d thought.
At the very least, it seemed to raise a skill’s power by three times—no, five times.
It wasn’t without drawbacks, but the advantages were far too great compared to the disadvantages.
The times when a skeleton occasionally died in one shot had been caused by the difference of me carefully aiming and investing a little more MP.
If I could control the power and kill skeletons in one shot, there was nothing to fear.
“Mister, are you going to fill the soul stone today?”
“Should I?”
Bindel’s grin stretched from ear to ear. He seemed happy because of the share that would come back to him.
After catching quite a few, I learned that a skeleton’s soul was worth three goblins.
Bindel lights the way to locate the monsters first, and I fire magic to kill them.
We repeated this process diligently.
Using the 〈Focusing Bracelet〉, I took down skeletons in a single blow.
Occasionally, an armed skeleton would appear, and when that happened, I overcharged all the way to the limit and blew it away in spectacular fashion.
By the time I had filled all five small soul stones, I had grown incomparably stronger.
Level: 16
Status
HP 440/440 MP 653/653
Beleira’s Blessing (True) 「Fire Immunity, Increased Fire Magic Power, All Skill Proficiency Values ++」
Agent of the Goddess 「Communicate in all languages and read all scripts. Qualification to traverse worlds.」
Stats
Strength 71 Magic Power 112 Stamina 61 Agility 55
Skills
Fire Arrow (★★) - The most basic yet practical fire magic. Inflicts ignition even after impact, dealing damage.
Perhaps thanks to Beleira’s blessing, which I had received when I was transferred to this other world, my growth speed felt abnormal even to me.
Now, my casting time was only one second.
The arrows flew drastically faster, and their power had improved to the point that I could take down a goblin without chanting.
The monsters that appeared in the Bordeaux Dungeon were no longer any match for me.
I conquered it all the way down to the lowest floor without much difficulty.
“Mister, I think this is the last room.”
“Is that the boss?”
At the very bottom of the Bordeaux Dungeon, there was a skeletal mage.
“Fire Arrow!”
I immediately slammed two overcharged Fire Arrows into the spot where the skeletal mage stood.
With an explosion, a cloud of dust burst up, then gradually cleared as time passed.
The skeletal mage had been destroyed without a trace.
“Wow. It fell. Can I go check?”
“Go ahead.”
Bindel went over right away to check the items.
“Mister! A spellbook dropped.”
“Where?”
An old book had fallen near the skeletal mage’s head.
The title of the book was 〈Introduction to Necromancy〉.
“Spellbooks are extremely valuable. Expensive ones can go for a hundred gold.”
“We made a profit, then.”
I placed the spellbook into my personal storage.
“Shall we head back now?”
Now that we had conquered the lowest floor, there was nothing left to see.
Perhaps because we had defeated the skeletal mage, there wasn’t even a glimpse of the monsters that had been everywhere on the way back.
Around the middle of the first floor, we ran into some adventurers who had noticed the change, and one of them asked me,
“Did you go all the way to the end?”
“Yes.”
“Ahhh!”
Gasps escaped from all around.
“How strong was the monster at the end?”
“It wasn’t that difficult. It was a skeletal mage holding a staff.”
“Oooh!”
With everyone listening intently to my story, I actually felt pressured.
“It seemed like it would be dangerous if I let it do anything, so I attacked in a hurry, and that worked.”
“I see!”
“See? I told you it’d be a skeletal mage.”
“What a shame. I made it to the end of the second floor yesterday.”
Leaving the adventurers to talk among themselves, I came out of the dungeon.
Outside, the sun had already set, and darkness was falling.
The fatigue I had forgotten came rushing in all at once.
The thought of walking another hour back to the village was dreadful.
How nice would it have been if I could call a taxi?
“Bindel, you’re going back to the village too, right?”
“Of course. Don’t forget that I stuck right by your side and helped you all day today, Mister.”
“Yeah, once we get back and cash this in, I’ll give you your share.”
Since the soul stones had to be turned in to the guild, I couldn’t just hand them over whole.
I returned to Mareun together with Bindel.
“Oh, the adventurer’s back.”
Two guards grinned at me.
“Did you get a decent haul?”
“Somewhat.”
“Hahaha. Judging by your face, you must be exhausted. Hurry on in.”
I was back in Mareun Village. Let’s cash this in quickly and rest. Where is Isti?
For some reason, a strange number of people had gathered in front of the guild.
Was there some kind of spectacle inside?
“What’s going on?”
I grabbed just anyone and asked. The men answered without even looking back.
“That elf is inside.”
“Looks like she hasn’t gone back yet.”
“Seems like she’s waiting for someone. Who is it?”
“······.”
I immediately grasped the situation.