Chapter 44 - Post-Construction of the 12th Floor: A Female Knight's Perspective
The twelfth floor itself turned out to be... surprisingly uneventful. Perhaps it might have been a real challenge for us in the past, but after half a year of intense training under the First Unit, it barely registered. We didn’t feel even the slightest resistance.
At the very end of the floor, we discovered a bath—thick with bubbles and filled with the most exquisite aroma. Naturally, we decided to soak and relax.
Since the hot spring seemed to have strong cleansing properties, we took the opportunity to wash a few changes of clothes as well. Lathering them up in the bubble bath, rinsing in the cold springwater, and drying them afterward—it left the garments smelling absolutely divine.
Even more surprising, the walls and surrounding rocks of the bath turned out to be made entirely of soap. And not just any soap—this was flawless, pure white, beautifully scented, and foamed up with remarkable ease. It was clearly of exceptional quality.
It shaved off easily with a knife, so we decided to take as much as we could carry.
Our packs were heavy with soap by the time we were done, but it wasn’t a problem anymore—we’d grown that strong.
Upon returning to the royal palace after completing the exploration of the 12th floor, we found a rather unexpected sight: a banquet underway, hosted by Her Majesty herself, with various foreign princesses and nobles already in attendance—having rushed ahead of schedule, it seemed.
Sigh... So they were already here? Couldn’t they wait until the foreign armies’ reception was properly prepared? No, of course not—they were far too impatient.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
Then, as we entered, everyone—including Her Majesty—suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.
“What is that scent?! Is this... is this the effect of the twelfth floor?!”
They all looked at us, wide-eyed in astonishment.
We, on the other hand, had been smelling like this the entire journey home. Our senses had gone completely numb to it—but clearly not so for others. Every single person we passed on the way had turned to stare, which had been incredibly embarrassing.
“There was a great deal of soap on the twelfth floor,” I explained. “If you wash yourselves with it, I imagine you’ll carry the same scent.”
Before anyone could shout “Take us to the twelfth floor, now!” Captain Bantu quickly pulled out a bar of the soap and handed it over, hoping to redirect their enthusiasm.
Oh, that woman who reached for it and sniffed it... she was Princess Glaida of the Kingdom of Kenma, wasn’t she?
Her Majesty ordered a bowl of hot water to be brought forth. Princess Glaida washed her hands with the soap, and upon experiencing its cleansing power and fragrance for herself, every single noble’s expression shifted. They all wanted it—desperately.
“This,” declared Her Majesty, “is the latest treasure harvested from the Hot Spring Dungeon! Who among you wishes to be the first to possess what will surely become the next great trend?”
With a gleam in her eye, Her Majesty turned the room into an auction house, stoking the competitive spirit of the foreign princesses and nobles.
The fact that we had been using the soap freely in the dungeon? Completely ignored. Only those who bought it were deemed the “first” to own it.
Then, with a subtle hand gesture, Her Majesty ordered that all the soap not in Captain Bantu’s backpack be hidden away.
So we were playing the “limited stock” game, were we, Your Majesty?
In the end, Princess Glaida of Kenma bought out the entire stock—for a staggering amount of money.
Even as the surrounding nobles kept raising their bids, she ignored them all and doubled down with increasingly outrageous offers. The bidding war reached absurd heights, and I honestly wondered if it was okay.
Judging by the stiffened expressions of her attendants—no, it was most certainly not okay.
Captain Bantu’s backpack alone had fetched a fortune. And considering all our backpacks were still stuffed with the same soap... was it really okay to sell it at those prices?
The next day, we were summoned by Her Majesty.
The orders were simple: mobilize the entire corps of female knights and escort the overeager foreign princesses and nobles to the sixth-floor bath.
That part was fine. But why bring every knight—even the greenest trainees? That was overkill, and frankly, such an oversized escort would only get in the way.
“Don’t worry,” said Her Majesty with a smirk. “They’re footing the bill for all of this, so why not bring everyone we’ve got? Let Kenma feel the full weight of our hospitality—they’ll be flattered to be protected so thoroughly.
“Once they’re safely soaking in the sixth-floor bath, just assign a group of ten moderately skilled knights to watch over them, and bring the rest back.”
Her eyes gleamed.
“The real objective starts after that.”
“You lot are going to escort the entire group of apprentice knights all the way to the depths of the dungeon,” Her Majesty had declared. “Once you get there, toss every last one of them into the enhancement hot spring on the tenth floor.
“After that, leave them waiting in the clearing on the ninth floor. Then, you veterans—those capable of going deeper—bring back as much soap as you can from the twelfth floor to distribute to the apprentices, so they can carry it back themselves.
“If you’re going to tell me it’s impossible to go back and forth between the ninth and twelfth floors enough times to fill their packs with soap alone, then fine—let them haul back as much produce from the ninth floor as they can instead.
“This plan’s nothing but good: the apprentices will boost their stamina faster, and we’ll get tons of soap and crops brought home for free. Best part? Doesn’t matter how many people we mobilize—it won’t cost the kingdom a single coin.”
“I see... If we skip the hot spring on the eleventh floor and just drop straight down to the twelfth, we won’t have to pass through much of the athletic zone. At our current level, three round trips a day should be doable.”
Even if they were still apprentices, they were knights-in-training and trained daily. Hauling heavy packs of soap back from the ninth floor should be manageable.
As for the combat side of things—so long as there were a few apprentices who were candidates for the First Unit, we had little to worry about.
...Well, for the newer recruits, this was probably going to be hellish. I could already imagine them in tears, vomiting from exhaustion. But if we could throw them into the tenth-floor hot spring beforehand, it would make for absolutely ideal strength training.
And truly, we always needed more capable soldiers. I had no objections to pushing for faster growth.
“Oh, and as for the knights who’ll escort the princesses and noble daughters all the way to the end—make sure they carry stretchers. There’s no way those pampered softlings will walk to the sixth floor under their own power.
I’ve had plenty of sturdy stretchers made from the Thread Dungeon’s cloth—take as many as you need.”
“Whew... bringing those ladies deep into the dungeon? That sounds like a job and a half.”
“Don’t be like that,” said Captain Bantu with a shrug. “Princess Glaida might be a spoiled brat raised in luxury, but she’s at least still capable of holding a proper conversation. That level of selfishness is almost charming, in a way.”
“Kenma might be a nation of great wealth now, but over twenty years ago—before that high-level dungeon producing those rare gems appeared—it was just a minor country with only mediocre dungeons to its name.
The king of that land had always been a hard-working, earnest man, so he had a solid upbringing from his parents.
Though, now that he’s found fortune, the way he spoils his son and daughter to no end is quite something.”
“The real trouble begins when those spoiled second-generation kids grow up and become parents themselves... That’s when the third generation turns into a problem.”
“Sometimes you’ll run into these monkey-like creatures wearing crowns—no brains to speak of, just parading around like royalty...”
...Her Majesty and the Captain both stared off into the distance, clearly reminiscing about some disaster in another country.
They must have seen even more outrageous things abroad. Not that I had any desire to see them myself.
“By the way,” Her Majesty suddenly asked, “if one washes their body with that soap, can they end up smelling like you two? My husband did say the soap alone had a pleasant scent.”
Her Majesty had probably already used the soap herself, but honestly, both the Captain and I were so overwhelmed by our own scents that we couldn’t tell anymore.
“We can’t say for certain yet. We still don’t know whether it’s the soap or the hot spring that’s causing it.
Considering the dungeon miasma, though, I think the scent lasts for days if you actually soak in that hot spring.”
“What did that young Lady Auf of yours have to say about it?”
Queen Yuzha occasionally sought Lady Auf’s opinion through me. She must have valued her perspective that much.
“I’d washed a few sets of underclothes in the bubble bath on the 12th floor. When I reported it to the young lady upon returning to the estate, she immediately confiscated all of them. Then she said—”
‘Take off all the underwear you’re wearing right now! Then wash them with that soap, now! I need to compare the ones washed with the bubble bath water from the 12th floor to the ones cleaned with the soap alone!’
“She said that and promptly stripped me bare. Then she made me wash my underwear—both in regular hot water with soap, and in the warmed water from the 1st floor with soap.
“She’s now regularly sniffing the laundry as it dries to evaluate the scent differences...”
Her Majesty looked utterly bewildered.
I understood, of course, why the underwear washed on the 12th floor was crucial as a sample. I also understood the urgency of using the same person’s underwear for testing as quickly as possible. I really did. But still...
Lady Auf's methods were technically sound as far as verification was concerned. But since she carried them out without hesitation, no matter how bizarre they seemed from the outside, I couldn’t blame Her Majesty for looking utterly bewildered.
Yes... For the sake of her research, Lady Auf had no qualms about sniffing my underwear.
She always did it with a completely serious face, driven solely by her pure thirst for knowledge. But the problem was—getting your underwear sniffed by someone with a dead-serious expression made it look even more perverse. It was embarrassing. Please, stop.
For the love of all that's holy, I begged her: if she absolutely had to do that, could she at least confine such behavior to her own chambers, away from the eyes of her family or the servants?
“Oh, uhh... well, right. So this is... a theoretical verification process, yes... quite.”
Her Majesty, too, had faltered for a moment. But in the end, it seemed she had no choice but to accept that, scientifically speaking, nothing she did was technically incorrect.
“Very well then, I’m counting on you to recover the soap from the 12th floor... Oh, and do be sure to transport the princess and those nobles down to the 6th floor with proper care.”
“As you command.”
And so now, having already brought the princess and the nobles up to the 6th floor, we’d moved on.
After escorting the large group of trainee knights to the baths on the 10th floor and making sure they all had a proper soak, we stationed them out on the wide grasslands of the 9th floor.
From here on, our task was simple: endless soap mining on the 12th floor.
We carved chunks out of the soap wall, stuffed them into backpacks, and hauled them back up to the 9th floor to hand off to the trainees. Then we did it again. And again. And again.
Every time we handed over a pack crammed with soap, the knights stared in disbelief at the sheer weight. And honestly, I didn’t blame them. Half a year ago, we wouldn’t have been able to lift those packs either.
But it was fine. Soon, they’d be able to carry them on their own too.
They’d have no choice but to.
When we looked at them with warm smiles full of hope and expectation—hope that they’d grow to carry the burden of our Second Unit’s future—their faces steadily turned pale.
The trainees who had originally aimed for the elite First Unit, trained as a combat group, seemed to appreciate this sort of training without much complaint.
But those who had hoped to be assigned to the glamorous Second Unit—the one responsible for guarding royalty and nobles—wore expressions that clearly said, This isn’t what I signed up for...
Well, yes. With a dungeon as useful as this one now existing within our borders, the fate of our Second Unit had likely changed forever.
Once we handed off the soap, we dashed back to the 12th floor to dig up more, and carried it back again to the 9th.
Their work bore the image of rugged miners digging for soap—completely at odds with the elegant, radiant lady knights they had become thanks to the hot springs.
Some even did the work stark naked, so they could jump straight into the bubble bath or cold bath the moment they felt tired. It was a sight that screamed, in many ways, that something had gone terribly off the rails.
Perhaps, at this point, we had already crossed into the domain of the First Unit.
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