Chapter 90 - A Shift in Awareness
“Oh my, even on the 18th floor, the Second Unit is having quite a hard time.”
Watching from the monitor, I thought that as I observed the Second Unit completely falling apart during their first attempt at clearing the 18th floor, struggling against a bizarre red bear.
Seen from the outside, through a screen.
It was an oddly unnatural creature, limited to just two crude patterns of behavior: wildly swinging heavy punches with no finesse, and charging straight ahead like a bull in stubborn simplicity.
The First Unit, encountering it for the first time, had already seen through those repetitive movements and handled it smoothly, dodging as if brushing it off.
But for the Second Unit, things had gone south the moment their vice-captain was suddenly blown away. The surrounding members panicked, and that sealed their fate.
If they had simply noticed the nature of its movements and responded calmly, I figured it wouldn’t have been that difficult of an opponent, even for the Second Unit.
“Well, saying all this just makes me no different from those old guys watching boxing or sumo, complaining through the TV like ‘you should’ve moved like this—what the hell are you doing?’”
In reality, fighting a monster right in front of you, there was no way you could instantly pull off those kinds of reactions.
If anything, the First Unit was the abnormal one for being able to.
“If they trained using the hot spring that fully restores stamina, the knights might still manage somehow... but we might be reaching the limit.”
“What’s reaching the limit?”
Peta-chan asked as she stirred a pot of curry.
“The limit of hot springs that princesses and noble ladies can safely enter.”
Most likely, once you went below the 20th floor, it would no longer be a matter of “having strong enough guards might make it manageable.”
It would become a situation far too dangerous. One where letting royalty set foot inside would be unthinkable.
Even now, the fact that Her Majesty herself was entering was already borderline insane.
“Even if we transport the hot spring to the No-Hunger Dungeon, it won’t change anything.
The deeper floors there have monsters just as strong.
So for the 19th and 20th floors, we’ll create a hot spring with effects that Her Majesty and the nobles will absolutely want. Something we’ve been saving until now.”
“Oh? What kind of hot spring is that?”
“It will produce, to the greatest extent possible, two effects: healing all diseases, and rejuvenation. No matter the era or place, those are the things every person in power desires until the very end.”
“...Hmm.”
Peta-chan’s reaction was lukewarm. As a Dungeon Core, she hardly understood illness or aging in the first place.
She asked, but to her, they were still concepts with no real meaning.
“That’s a pretty weak reaction... what kind of hot spring would you want, Peta-chan?”
“One that makes you grow bigger!”
It seemed that for a dungeon, there weren’t many desires beyond growing larger.
“Well, growing taller is nice, but maybe something like a hot spring that makes your chest bigger too. Like a big-breasts spring.”
“Huh?”
“Master, you always stare really intensely at women with large chests, don’t you? If my chest got bigger, you’d probably pay just as much attention to me, right?”
What was she suddenly going on about?
“When you stare at women with big chests or curvy bodies, I sometimes get irrationally irritated.
I’ve been thinking about why, and I figured maybe it’s because, as a Dungeon Core, I feel a sense of defeat when you focus on someone bigger than me.
So I’m going to become big too.”
“What are you even talking about? Sure, I like big breasts, but I also like smaller ones just fine. You’re fine the way you are.”
Perhaps she didn’t like the word “smaller,” because Peta-chan bared her teeth and let out a brief, threatening growl.
Back in the beginning, even when she saw naked female knights in the bath, she used to look at them with the same detached gaze as a boy observing insects.
Since when had she started developing these twisted feelings, whether rivalry or jealousy?
Well, part of it was probably because she had been absorbing my sensibilities, gradually changing her own awareness.
But it was likely also influenced by the adventurers who had been frequenting the No-Hunger Dungeon lately.
Up until now, everyone had simply explored seriously, since monsters could appear at any moment inside the dungeon.
Even the impoverished people who settled in the shallower floors did so for food and gemstone gathering, and when it came to those activities, it was common sense to do them outside the dungeon, where there were no monsters.
But recently, safe residential areas had been established within the dungeon itself. Couples began entering together, bathing in the hot spring brought to the sixth floor to clean themselves up, and then, inside the residential facilities... well, you know.
On top of that, independent merchants had started getting involved in the lodging business, and now even questionable establishments for adventurers staying multiple days in the dungeon had begun to appear...
“More importantly, that curry you’re simmering smells amazing. What kind is it?”
“This? It’s chicken butter curry. I was thinking of making some fried eggplant as a side dish.”
For now, at least, the whole “big-breasts hot spring” idea...
It seemed to be nothing more than something she could forget about entirely the moment the conversation shifted—even slightly—to curry.
For now.
“By the way, Peta-chan, when are you planning to serve curry in the dungeon? It’s about to reach a point where only top-tier adventurers or knights can even make it to those floors.”
“Hmm... maybe I’ll put it on the 18th floor.”
“Hm? Why the 18th floor?”
“The hot spring on the 18th floor of the Hot Spring Dungeon fully restores stamina, right?
If we assume you can bring that water over here too, then with that effect, people could just keep collecting materials without getting tired forever, couldn’t they?
And while we’re at it, I’d also like to put out those gemstones we got from Kenma’s Dungeon Master. At a depth like that, it shouldn’t be a problem to increase both the ingredients and the gems at the same time.”
I see. Floors where stamina could be easily restored would naturally become extremely profitable farming spots.
“That’s a solid idea, Peta-chan. I’ve got no objections.”
In that case, instead of towels that regenerate over time, maybe I should’ve made my excavation drops more like soap, something you could keep mining continuously using stamina. Did I mess that up?
いや、発掘作業より効率的な強化トレーニングをしてくれたほうがいいかもしれないから……いいか。
Well, it might be better for them to focus on efficient training rather than just excavation anyway. So maybe it’s fine.
“Then as for the Hot Spring Dungeon, it’ll probably be a training period for the female knights again for a while, so I won’t make any changes until the No-Hunger Dungeon catches up to the same 18th floor.”
“Right. If you bring the hot spring over here, we can get the same effects anyway. It’s better if both progress at the same pace.”
“Exactly. For now, things probably won’t change much, aside from the number of residential facilities continuing to increase. I’ll just take it easy for a while.”
“For the 17th floor, let’s go with beer that doesn’t lose its carbonation until it’s opened. That should be fine, right?”
“Yeah. We’ve confirmed that as long as it’s sealed, dungeon mana can keep the carbonation intact even if it’s shaken around. And as long as there’s ice to chill it, beer’s good enough.”
As for me, I had already decided that the next hot spring I’d create would focus on disease healing and rejuvenation.
From here on out, it would be a period of observation.
Even on the surface, at most, there would just be improvements to the mobile housing and an increase in the kinds of businesses operating within those facilities.
Yeah, there wasn’t really anything for me to do right now.
That said, it wasn’t a situation where so little was changing that I could just shut down my consciousness and skip time... so I figured I might as well play some games to pass the time.
I pulled out a few of the games I used to sink countless hours into back when I was alive and decided to play for a while.
“Man... it sucks that I can’t pull out any new games I’ve never played before...”
That sequel to this game that was announced while I was hospitalized had probably already been released on Earth by now. I really wanted to play it.
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