Chapter 79 - Confirmed for Rework
“If we didn’t reinforce the parts on the 16th floor, it would’ve broken almost immediately... The weight of the hot spring water alone is a serious burden. On top of that, the ground keeps sinking under the weight, so we’ll have to widen the wheelbase...
And if we do that, it becomes heavier, so we’ll either need more people to move it or start mass-producing strength-enhancing potions in the steam bath on the 14th floor...”
As I gathered my thoughts, I mentally organized everything I needed to report to Lady Auf.
The bottom line was that while it wasn’t impossible to live in the mobile dwelling, in its current form it would inevitably become unsustainable and collapse under its own weight in the near future. So, it was clearly too early to move into mass production.
That said, as Prototype No. 1, I felt it had done fairly well.
Leaving my subordinates at the site, I returned to Duke Nausa’s estate to deliver a report based on the week I had spent there.
“Oh! Vihita, welcome back! Hey, want to try this?”
The moment I stepped inside, I was greeted by a mysterious clear liquid being shoved in my face.
What is this? Judging from the smell... it seemed to be alcohol?
Taking a sip, I found it burned my throat—just like the whiskey produced in the dungeon.
However, unlike the dungeon-made drink, this one was just strong and didn’t have much going for it in terms of flavor.
“Is this... something new from the No-Hunger Dungeon?”
“Nope! I made it myself, inspired by that whiskey.
I tried boiling it down to concentrate the flavor, but you know how with alcohol, the more you heat it, the weaker it gets until it completely disappears, right?
That got me thinking—maybe the alcohol was escaping as vapor. So I built a special distillation device and extracted it from regular alcohol available in Sepans.
And voilà! I ended up with this super-strong liquor! This is a discovery! A brand-new breakthrough!
That’s right! Anything made in the No-Hunger Dungeon can be replicated by our own hands!”
“Wait... isn’t alcohol something that just evaporates and disappears when heated?”
“Yes, that’s been the common belief—that heat causes alcohol to break down and vanish, and unlike sugar or salt, it can’t be reduced to concentrate it.
But in reality, it was just turning into vapor and slowly escaping the whole time!
...The problem is, the result is just a throat-scorching liquid that isn’t particularly tasty.
Hmm... what should I add to recreate that flavor? I could throw in some fruit juice, and sure, it’d taste better, but that’s not quite it.”
She said this while gazing wistfully at a bottle of dungeon whiskey.
Dungeon-made goods were crafted with magical energy and exceeded the bounds of human knowledge. I highly doubted they could ever be truly replicated.
Yet, Lady Auf seemed firmly convinced that anything the No-Hunger Dungeon produced could be reproduced by human hands.
“That’s surprising. I thought you were focusing on researching the mobile dwelling inside the dungeon?”
“Well, that project’s gotten too technical. It’s out of my hands now and has moved on to the royal engineers at the research institute.
Of course, I’m still compiling reports from you and the others about your experiences and submitting suggestions for improvements.
But when it comes to the actual manufacturing side of things, I don’t think there’s much left for me to do.
Same with the lighthouse I made using mirrors.
They didn’t use my version as-is either.
The researchers refined it into a much more practical structure and rebuilt it from the ground up before they adopted it.
My role is to gather ideas, put them into rough prototypes, and present the findings.”
As she spoke, she looked over at a strange contraption—some kind of pot with a mess of pipes haphazardly welded to it.
What in the world is that?
“This is a modified version of the water distiller. I tweaked it to concentrate alcohol.
Steam gets heated here, passes through this section, and then condenses into liquid again when cooled... right here.
See? Clunky, isn’t it?
My job is to show that it’s possible to create something like dungeon liquor using our own methods.
Whether that’s worth researching for mass production or just a dead end—that’s up to Her Majesty and the engineers to decide.
But if we can mass-produce this strong liquor... it could become a brand-new industry for the Kingdom of Sepans!”
Lady Auf seemed absolutely delighted with her new discovery.
Her whims often sent us scrambling, but the royal research institute was probably in an even greater state of chaos than we were.
♨♨♨♨♨
The royal research institute wasn’t the only place caught up in chaos.
The discovery that hot spring waters from the Hot Spring Dungeon produced the same effects when brought into the same floors of the No-Hunger Dungeon meant one thing:
Hot spring waters had become an item of serious value.
Ordinary folks who regularly visited the second floor baths began making it a habit to take home a small barrel of spring water on their way out.
After all, they could sell it to merchants once they returned to the surface.
From young girls to mature ladies, women across the Kingdom of Sepans were all carrying home hot spring water and making easy pocket money from it.
When male adventurers soaked themselves in second-floor hot spring water—brought in and delivered to the corresponding level in the No-Hunger Dungeon—it began healing skin and hair damage that even the first-floor waters couldn’t fully restore.
Rough, rugged adventurers began to radiate a surprising freshness.
“Fresh-looking men are so attractive!”
“Grooming matters for guys too, you know.”
“Clear skin is a must—even for men!”
As soon as it became clear that bringing back hot spring water was profitable, and more importantly, that it didn’t harm their own beauty routines, the women of Sepans began chanting a new gospel:
“It’s a new era—men need grooming too!”
This, despite the fact that not long ago, they had fiercely demanded the complete ban of men from the Hot Spring Dungeon and had insisted that the rugged look of male adventurers was what made them appealing.
The level of hypocrisy was practically a work of art.
Merchants, sensing the birth of a lucrative new industry, quietly threw their full support behind this sudden narrative shift.
Yes, the tide had turned—now, even men had to care about grooming!
This rapid reversal spread like wildfire, not just among merchants but also among nobles eager to cash in on the hot spring transport boom.
The spring water from the second floor, once brought into the No-Hunger Dungeon, was stored in barrels just big enough for one person to bathe in. Hundreds of male adventurers took turns soaking in those barrels.
Naturally, the water quickly turned into a filthy sludge.
But because transporting water between dungeons was such an exhausting task, there was no choice but to reuse it thoroughly.
This led to the development of a specific protocol: Wash your body thoroughly with water before entering, then take a quick dip in the barrel and get out immediately.
At this point, it was no longer a “hot spring” experience—just a skin treatment routine.
As for the youth-restoring water of the fourth floor, which only worked once per person, it became a race to claim it first.
Five women adventurers jumped at the opportunity. Over the course of a week, they managed to transport a single barrel of it to the fourth floor of the No-Hunger Dungeon.
They then sold access to male adventurers for the right to bathe in it.
By the time the water had become unusable, those five women had earned the equivalent of several years’ worth of adventuring profits.
Naturally, once word got out, every female adventurer scrambled to get a piece of the pie.
They hauled out the youth-restoring water from the fourth floor and sold the effect—said to make one look three years younger—to male adventurers in the No-Hunger Dungeon.
Amid this wild, money-making frenzy, the First and Second Units of the Order of Female Knights remained entirely unfazed.
If regular adventurers were going to voluntarily handle the heavy labor of hauling hot spring water from the shallow floors just to make a quick buck, they had no complaints.
After all, the real knights had far more important things to do—like extracting the waters from the ninth floor.
The waters on the ninth floor—the distortion-healing spring—had once restored the battered and broken body of Captain Touji.
Now, Her Majesty Yuzha had issued a direct order:
Every member of the First Male Knight Unit currently exploring the Iron Dungeon was to soak in the ninth-floor spring.
She even deemed it worth pulling the entire First Unit back from their mission via messenger, just to make that happen.
It wasn’t just the First Unit—restoring the battered bodies of retired knights was also seen as a top priority.
The Kingdom of Sepans was on the verge of entering a period of unending busyness. No matter how many healthy hands they had, it still wouldn’t be enough.
So if there were people who could be healed and put back to work, then every single one of them would be healed.
This wasn’t driven by kindness. There was something far more pressing and desperate behind the decision.
And it wasn’t just the adventurers and knights who found themselves caught in the whirlwind.
Sepans’ most brilliant researchers and engineers had also gathered, throwing themselves into round-the-clock research on mobile housing units, not even stopping to sleep.
They were on the verge of creating a marvel—something like a work of art—by pouring in every bit of current technology, calculating and recalculating endlessly.
Compared to the original prototype, this new model boasted vastly superior durability, ease of movement, and storage capacity.
Given the known strength and weight of materials available in this world, it was hard to imagine a more perfect design.
Lady Auf, the noblewoman who first proposed the idea, visited the lab and offered high praise without reservation:
“Truly remarkable, everyone. Absolutely splendid.”
After countless test runs, they had finally reached the point where full-scale production could begin.
The researchers, having at last completed their design work, were in the middle of a grand celebration.
On that same day, the First Unit of male knights—recalled from the Iron Dungeon—had returned to the royal capital.
With the iron materials they had brought back, it would now be possible to construct dwellings on multiple dungeon floors.
Lady Auf quickly slipped away from the festivities and headed straight to inspect the spoils they had brought back.
“Huh? New materials are starting to appear in the Iron Dungeon?”
That was what one of the palace knights told her. When Auf laid eyes on the towering piles of drop items, she immediately noticed it—metallic materials formed into perfect, seamless squares. She had never seen anything quite like them before.
She reached out and lightly touched one. Just that single contact was enough for her to know.
Ah... this is something entirely different from the iron we’ve seen so far.
It had a precision to its shape, an unembellished refinement. And in that, Auf sensed it—the unmistakable aura of the Hot Spring Dungeon.
In other words...
“...A material of the future.”
Hellish calculations upon calculations. Sleepless research upon research. Relentless experimentation upon experimentation.
And just as the final blueprint—the culmination of it all—was completed, this new material appeared out of nowhere.
Even Auf found herself hesitating. To bring this new material to the attention of the researchers in the midst of their hard-earned celebration felt... almost cruel.
If the Hot Spring Dungeon Master had been watching the whole scene unfold, he’d probably have said one thing:
“Yep. Time to do it all over again.”
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