Chapter 115 - A Troubled Heart
~Quite Some Time Before Auf Fell Ill~
"Master! We've saved up enough points to make the nineteenth floor! Let's build it! Let's build it together!"
"Already? That was fast. The Claps Knights did gather curry before they left, but I wonder if the fact that some of the residential areas are now powered automatically by steam has made a big difference, too."
I had no idea how the mechanism worked, but some of the mobile residences reserved for the knights of the Kingdom of Sepans had been designed so that their wheels turned veeeery slowly whenever they used fire to heat the hot springs or cook food.
On top of that, after moving about twenty meters, they automatically started rolling in the opposite direction, so the buildings never went careening off in some completely random direction.
“The researchers at the heart of the kingdom must be ridiculously smart to come up with such an incomprehensible mechanism in the blink of an eye. The pace of development is almost scary.
Anyway, Peta-chan, I'm fine with building the nineteenth floor, but have you decided what you're going to put there?"
"Why not use the jewels Kenma's Master gave us?"
Peta-chan clearly hadn't given it much thought.
"W-Well... I guess that works. The nineteenth floor is valuable just by virtue of existing, after all."
The Healing Spring that the Hot Spring Dungeon was about to create was one of the most powerful effects imaginable.
For the No-Hunger Dungeon, which could reproduce the same effect simply by transporting the hot spring water there, having a floor with that same effect was more than valuable enough in itself.
"Then let's build it together! Together! Hey, Master, we have to do it together when the time comes, okay?"
Peta-chan said this while striking a coquettish pose and gazing at me out of the corner of her eye.
What's with that slightly suggestive way of putting it?
Well... Peta-chan had also been watching the activities in the shady establishments that had recently sprung up in the No-Hunger Dungeon, so maybe her choice of words wasn't entirely coincidental.
I was a little uneasy about creating that Healing Spring before our defenses were fully in place.
Still, a knight from the Kingdom of Claps who had visited us before had said that bringing down the Kingdom of Sepans as it stood now seemed pretty much impossible. Maybe I didn't need to worry quite so much?
I'd also heard that they were stepping up the fortification of their fortresses, checkpoints, and the like at an even faster pace before the steam locomotive's big debut.
More importantly, Peta-chan seemed almost suspiciously excited about building the nineteenth floor together.
What was that about? Did doing something like this have some special significance for dungeon cores? Like a way of showing how close we were or something?
"Hmm, all right, let's do it, then. I made the nineteenth floor pretty complicated, so it'll take at least ten days for anyone to break through. It's not like we're going to be thrown into a panic anytime soon."
"Hehe~! Then let's press this expansion button together, too!"
"Yeah, yeah. Ready? One, two..."
Click.
— Time until completion: 332 hours 3 ……… Time until completion: 1,120 hours 42 minutes —
Huh?
It got longer?! The completion time just shot way up! What happened?!
...Was this because the same core was trying to establish new floors in two different dungeons simultaneously, putting too much strain on the core and making the process take longer?
Was it like trying to download two ridiculously large files at once over the internet, only to find that both downloads took forever?
"Hey, Peta-chan. It looks like making them at the same time is adding a ton of extra time. Wouldn't it be better to build them separately?"
At that, Peta-chan shot me an incredibly suspicious, half-lidded glare.
Apparently, that wasn't an option.
"...Oh, well. It's not like we're in a hurry. We can think of it as giving the Kingdom of Sepans more time to get everything ready."
Quite a bit of time passed after that.
That said, we spent most of that time unconscious, only waking up occasionally to check on things, so the extended construction period didn't make much difference to us.
If anyone was affected, it was Bugu-kun, Silk-san, and the others. While Peta-chan remained unconscious for such a long time, they couldn't get their hands on any new food or come by to check out the latest fashions.
I could already picture Bugu-kun yelling, "Just how long are you two planning to stay unconscious?!"
I casually pulled up images of the hot springs on the various floors and saw a large number of Sepans knights gathered at the Stamina-Recovery Spring on the eighteenth floor.
However, despite gathering at the hot spring on the eighteenth floor, none of them seemed to be exercising.
Instead, they appeared to be caring for a young girl.
"Huh? Isn't that Auf-chan? Why is she all the way at the eighteenth-floor hot spring?"
From the information available through the Information-Gathering Spring on the 5th floor, I was able to piece together most of the situation.
She had contracted a terminal illness that medicine in this world couldn't cure, and they were desperately trying to find a way to treat her through hot spring therapy.
...Tuberculosis, huh? The Healing Spring could cure it in an instant, but could hot springs of this kind really do anything about tuberculosis?
After looking into it, I found that the Training-Enhancement Spring strengthened both immune cells and pathogens at the same time.
In other words, if it was an illness that would eventually resolve on its own, there wouldn't be a problem. Even if both sides were strengthened, the immune cells would ultimately win.
But if the disease was caused by pathogens that would kill the host if left untreated, the immune system would lose even sooner, making the treatment counterproductive.
Well, that defeats the whole purpose...
The Stamina-Recovery Spring had the same problem, since it restored the pathogens' stamina as well.
In other words, inside Auf-chan's body, the tuberculosis bacteria and her immune cells were going at each other in an absolute frenzy, both growing stronger at an accelerated rate, with their stamina effectively becoming infinite.
To put it bluntly, all this was doing was accelerating the progression of her illness and bringing her closer to death.
"This is bad. It's fortunate that we're building the Healing Spring, but how long until it's finished? There's still nearly 400 hours to go. Are we going to make it in time?"
Auf-chan was clearly going to be essential to future dungeon explorations. We absolutely couldn't afford to lose her.
Besides, watching Auf-chan's condition deteriorate so rapidly made my heart ache.
Having experienced wasting away and dying from an illness myself, I couldn't look at someone growing weaker and dying from a disease as though it had nothing to do with me.
I grabbed Peta-chan by the arm and woke her up.
"Mmm? What's wrong, Master? There's still nearly 400 hours left, isn't there?"
"Peta-chan, please! I need you to temporarily halt construction of the No-Hunger Dungeon! Hurry up the completion of the Hot Spring Dungeon!"
"Wh-What are you talking about? Why?!"
I explained the situation to the bewildered Peta-chan.
That there was someone who was on the verge of dying from an illness right now.
I explained, without appealing to emotion, that she was the one who had developed the steam engine and created the mobile residential areas, and that she was someone we absolutely could not afford to lose if we wanted to expand the dungeon further in the future.
There was no point appealing to Peta-chan's emotions by telling her how pitiful Auf-chan's situation was or how much I wanted to save her. None of that would get through to her.
Fortunately, Peta-chan understood the significance of Auf-chan's achievements so far. She should have recognized that Auf-chan was indispensable to her as well.
"I promise we'll build the twentieth floor simultaneously next time, so please, just let me speed things up this once! I'm begging you!"
After I kept pleading with her in complete earnestness, bowing my head the whole time, the result was...
Peta-chan, wearing an expression of extreme displeasure…
…slammed her finger down on the button to halt construction of the No-Hunger Dungeon.
"Thank you, Peta-chan!"
The remaining construction time, which had been nearly 400 hours, rapidly dropped to around 20 hours.
Would that be enough time? No, that alone wouldn't cut it. I'd made the new floor quite large and complicated.
I had to find some way to get them to locate the hot spring quickly, or we'd be in trouble.
I had no choice but to control the monsters on the nineteenth floor and have them guide the knights along the shortest route.
I'd station monsters at each dead-end branch, and program one of them to lead the knights straight to the hot spring by the shortest route...
Damn it... Controlling monster behavior was so difficult.
Even in the Hot Spring Dungeon, the only practical application of monster control so far was the command that kept the boss on the 16th floor from wandering away from the hot spring room.
Programming precise movements was a pain, kind of like creating motion animations for 3D characters. It wasn't something I could do with a single click... Would 20 hours be enough?
While I busied myself preparing to save Auf-chan, Peta-chan sat silently the entire time, looking thoroughly dejected.
Looking back, perhaps I was partly at fault for ignoring Peta-chan and focusing exclusively on preparing to rescue Auf-chan.
When there were fewer than five minutes left until construction was complete, Auf-chan's condition suddenly took a turn for the worse. Vihita-san began pounding on the wall and shouting at the top of her lungs.
"I'll keep exploring, whether it takes the twentieth floor or the thirtieth! Impose whatever training you want on me, whatever it takes!
So please, save my young lady! Save Lady Auf!!! I'm begging you!!!"
A few minutes after she began screaming and sobbing, casting a heavy gloom over the entire scene, the new floor was finally completed.
"Uh... Talk about cutting it close. W-Well, I hope they'll feel indebted to us for this and keep working hard on their explorations from now on."
I'd somehow managed to hastily program one of the white monkeys that spawned on the nineteenth floor to guide the knights to the hot spring, but would it actually work properly?
Making monsters move according to specific instructions cost a fair number of points, so I'd never seen much value in doing it under normal circumstances. Besides, I'd hardly ever experimented with it.
And, just as I'd feared, it failed.
The moment the monkey finished guiding them to the designated hot spring, my commands disappeared, and the guide immediately attacked Captain Touji.
Well, that was fine.
If that had been the extent of the problem, it would've been a minor mistake, the kind where I could just say, "Oops, my bad! Silly me!"
The real problem was that all the monsters I'd forcibly restrained along the way to keep them from attacking the knights suddenly charged toward the hot spring room the instant my control over them ended.
"Whoa, wait, wait, WAIT?! Why are even the monsters near the entrance all coming this way?!"
Oh, crap. An absurd number of monsters were now rushing toward them all at once.
My attempt to keep the monsters from attacking until the knights reached the hot spring had ended up creating an even worse situation.
I'd seen it countless times in online games: even high-level characters could die surprisingly easily when swarmed by a bunch of low-level mobs. This was bad.
B-But it'll be fine. If anyone can handle this, it's Captain Touji. Captain Touji will surely find a way!
And Auf-chan's condition... Good, it looks like she's recovered.
Even though things outside had turned into a battlefield, she was already completely naked and diligently examining the floor and walls. Even fresh out of a serious illness, she was still the same old girl.
...Hmm. Well, well.
Perhaps because she'd soaked in the hot springs on every floor while recovering from her illness, her beauty had been polished to perfection. Auf-chan's skin and hair were now flawless, and she didn't have a single unwanted hair. She was the picture of a perfect beauty.
As a result, seeing her crawling around on all fours in her current state, with absolutely nothing left to the imagination, was quite the temptation to look at.
"I love you, oh will of the Hot Spring Dungeon! I truly love you!"
What's more, she even confessed her love to me with her arms spread wide, still completely exposed.
Whoa, whoa. I'm flattered, but confessing your love to the consciousness inside a dungeon? Auf-chan, you've wandered into some pretty dangerous territory there.
Still, well... Hmm. This is quite a sight. Better save it.
As I stared unabashedly at Auf-chan with a lovestruck grin, I felt an intensely cold killing intent coming from behind me.
When I turned around, Peta-chan was glaring at Auf-chan with a look of pure, unbridled fury.
"What is her problem? What is it with this girl...? And you, Master! You've been ignoring me this whole time and paying attention to nothing but her...! What the hell is this?! What the hell?!"
Ah... Crap. I'd pressured Peta-chan into doing something she didn't want to do and hurt her feelings, then failed to comfort her properly because I'd been too focused on rescuing Auf-chan.
Peta-chan was throwing a tantrum with an intensity I'd never seen from her before.
"P-Peta-chan... Um, s-sorry. Thanks to you, we were able to save her... Peta-chan?"
Peta-chan suddenly collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Had she shut off her consciousness? No, that wasn't it. She'd sent her consciousness over to where Auf-chan was and manifested herself there.
On the other side of the screen, Peta-chan glared at Auf-chan and spoke in a dark, ominous voice that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
"Don't get too full of yourself. Master belongs to me."
............?
Huh?
Peta-chan, it's not just that she's upset about being ignored all this time... Is she jealous of Auf-chan?
There had been faint signs of this for a while.
I'd noticed that she'd started to feel something along the lines of, Ugh, it really annoys me when he stares at naked women with big boobs.
But those feelings had been shallow and fleeting, like a child's minor tantrum that would be forgotten a few minutes later.
So why had her jealousy suddenly swelled into something this intense and emotionally heavy?
Peta-chan soon returned to the Master Room.
And when she came back, she was crying.
It wasn't anger or sadness. She was crying as though her heart were in turmoil, unable to get her emotions under control.
"Why? Why does my heart feel so restless? Why can't I calm down...? Why? Hey? What are human emotions, anyway? Why do I feel so awful when Master keeps looking at her and no one else?
I... I was just... Sob... in the process of creating the same floor together with Master's soul... I only mixed more of Master's soul into mine and strengthened our soul fusion even further..."
............Huh?
Wait, wait, WAIT! That's what she'd been doing while we were creating the same floor together?!
I thought it was something cute and innocent, like wanting to wear matching outfits because it made us happy to have something in common!
That's some seriously heavy stuff, isn't it?! She was trying to do something like that without even discussing it with me first?!
Please stop casually pulling such hardcore yandere moves as though they're perfectly normal!
Hmm, now that she mentioned it, I did feel that my desire as a dungeon core to expand the dungeon inside my heart had grown stronger than before...
What would've happened if we'd finished creating the nineteenth floor together?
"Masteeeer! Master belongs to me! I don't want to let anyone have you! Absolutely no one!!"
Peta-chan sobbed as she said this.
Besides, we couldn't even leave this Master Room in the first place, so there was no need to worry. It's not as though I could physically hand myself over to anyone else...
I did think about pointing out that rather blunt little fact, but I kept it to myself.
For the time being, I silently pulled Peta-chan into a tight hug to reassure her.
When a girl is this emotionally overwhelmed, trying to reassure her with words usually just makes things worse.
Though I had no idea whether this sort of thing would even work on a dungeon core.
............A few minutes passed as I continued holding Peta-chan tightly in my arms.
Peta-chan remained perfectly still and silent the whole time. Maybe she'd finally calmed down.
When I loosened my arms, Peta-chan silently wrapped her own arms around me in return.
Hmm, still not enough, huh? How cute.
There, there. All right, then. I'll keep holding you like this until you've had enough.
♨♨♨♨♨
♨♨♨♨♨
....................Several hours passed.
HEY! Could you please be satisfied already?! A dungeon core's sense of time is way too long! WAY too long!
Damn Peta-chan is crying jealous, that's so cutee!! And hugging for hours lol
ReplyDeleteThanks for the chapter!