Chapter 99 - The State of the Dungeons
"Heeey, Masteeer? Are you really sure beer was a good choice?"
Ever since she woke up after the new floor was created, Peta-chan had been in a foul mood.
It had been quite some time since Commander Shield discovered the new alcoholic beverage and returned to the surface to report her findings, yet hordes of adventurers still hadn't come flooding into the dungeon.
"It seems the knights of the Kingdom of Sepans are too busy transporting the healing hot spring water for the injured members of the First Male Unit to worry about alcohol...
Besides, there just aren't that many knights or adventurers skilled enough to make it all the way down to the seventeenth floor..."
After all, knights skilled enough to descend that far were generally assigned to the Weapon, Iron, and Thread Dungeons.
From the perspective of national interests, sending them to those dungeons was the more sensible choice.
Most of the foreign knights who came to our dungeon were bodyguards dragged along at the whims of princesses or the daughters of high-ranking nobles.
However, most of them were only here for the Youthful Skin Spring on the eleventh floor of the Hot Spring Dungeon, so they never ventured any deeper than that.
Since the food in our dungeon was delicious and the atmosphere was pleasant, it had earned a certain degree of popularity among independent adventurers.
Even so, most of them either stayed on the twelfth floor in search of alcohol or, if they were the sort hoping to strike it rich, headed for the fifteenth floor to hunt for tourmaline gemstones.
With the exception of Commander Shield, almost everyone venturing below the sixteenth floor was a knight of the Kingdom of Sepans.
"Since you can already get sake and whiskey by the twelfth floor, I guess it's just not worth risking your life on the seventeenth floor, even for a pretty powerful adventurer, when all you get out of it is alcohol...
And since the unmelting ice is also an item exclusive to the dungeon, only people connected to the Kingdom of Sepans have any real incentive to come here for it."
"What are we going to do?! If this floor stays unpopular, the No-Hunger Dungeon is going to stop growing at the seventeenth floor!"
"I think people like Vihita and the Second Unit will come once the First Unit finishes transporting the healing hot spring water...
But it's not healthy for us to be relying so heavily on the knights of the Kingdom of Sepans. We need plenty of knights and adventurers from other countries to rush to the deepest floor, too.
Still, I'm not particularly worried about it for now."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm certain that the hot spring I'm planning to create on the next floor of the Hot Spring Dungeon will draw people from all over the world.
To get the same effects in the No-Hunger Dungeon, people will have to carry the water as deep as possible. That means there will definitely be demand for the deepest floor of the No-Hunger Dungeon, too."
"Wasn't the hot spring you're planning to create on the next floor supposed to cure illnesses, Master? Is there really that much demand for something like that?"
"Of course there is! An enormous amount! If a hot spring like that had existed on Earth, I wouldn't have died of an illness!"
"...Don't you think you're getting your hopes up too much just because you died of an illness, Master?"
"No!"
Honestly... This was exactly why dealing with a Dungeon Core that didn't understand the value of good health was such a pain.
It had no idea just how terrifyingly effective the illness-curing hot spring I'd put everything into creating for the nineteenth floor would be.
From what I'd looked into, it could cure everything from colds, canker sores, hemorrhoids, and athlete's foot to sexually transmitted diseases, leukemia, cancer, and dementia!
Its capabilities far surpassed those of modern medicine.
If anything, I was so worried that the Kingdom of Sepans might get invaded by other countries because of how frighteningly powerful it was that I actually wanted to wait until we'd finished strengthening the knights and fortifications before creating it.
"Anyway, I'm not creating the nineteenth floor until the defensive walls, built with plenty of iron from the Iron Dungeon, are complete."
"Will people notice the effects as soon as they get into the water? It's not like anyone who'll be using it is sick anyway. It'll probably just be healthy people like Captain Touji or that Vihita girl, right?"
"...Now that you mention it, that's a good point. Maybe I should clearly spell out what the hot spring can do.
I wasn't sure about explicitly revealing that the dungeon could write, but I suppose it's a little late to worry about that now..."
I thought this as I glanced at the letter from Auf-chan.
She'd written that since the entrance to the dungeon had the words "Hot Spring Dungeon" on it, she'd assumed that written language was something the dungeon could understand.
Right, I wrote something like that, didn’t I? I'd completely forgotten.
"Okay, then. I'll just copy and paste the effects and benefits onto the walls of the hot spring I've already prepared for the nineteenth floor..."
The moment I pasted the text describing the hot spring's effects and benefits onto the wall, the entire surface was covered in writing.
No, not just the walls. Even the floor and ceiling were completely plastered with text, turning the place into something like a cursed chamber.
"Huh? What? What the hell is this?!"
Had something glitched? Wait, could a dungeon even have glitches?
I wondered as I examined the densely packed writing, and the reason quickly became clear.
The problem was that the translations of disease names that didn't exist in the language of the Kingdom of Sepans had become absurdly elaborate.
For example, here's how "leukemia" had been rendered in the language of the Kingdom of Sepans.
Leukemia (*A disease in which white blood cells, which are immune cells found in the blood, multiply abnormally) (*White blood cells are one type of immune cell contained in the blood and primarily serve as the body's defense against pathogens from outside the body) (*Pathogens are... Immunity is... Cells are...)
In other words, since the people of the Kingdom of Sepans presumably had no concepts corresponding to things like cells or pathogens, the system had attempted to explain the meaning of each disease name by adding one annotation after another, endlessly.
With nearly a hundred different disease names, each accompanied by these ridiculously long chains of annotations explaining other annotations, the result was a room covered in text that looked like it was cursed.
"...Fixing this is going to be a pain. Actually, I don't even know how I'd go about fixing it."
...All right, I'll just leave it as it is.
I'm sure Auf-chan will be absolutely delighted to learn about all these new and unfamiliar medical concepts.
As for the unit that has to copy all of this down and submit a report, well, good luck with that.
Though construction of the nineteenth floor won't be happening for a while anyway... Ideally, I'd like to wait until the No-Hunger Dungeon has grown by another floor or so.
♨♨♨♨♨
Some time later.
The First Unit, led by Captain Hitou, returned in pretty rough shape.
From what I gathered, their injuries had been completely healed by the Deformity-Healing Spring on the ninth floor, which had made them overconfident. On top of that, they were growing increasingly anxious as the female knights led by Captain Touji began catching up to them in terms of strength.
Apparently, those factors had led them to venture too deep into the deepest level they had reached, the twenty-sixth floor, where they suffered a crushing defeat.
Well, those were pretty standard reasons.
"Hitou, the Stamina-Restoring Spring in the Hot Spring Dungeon is incredible. Once your injuries have healed, don't rush things. Use this bath to build your strength to the absolute limit."
Captain Touji spoke to Captain Hitou and the others, who had their arms and legs submerged in the Deformity-Healing Spring.
Their arms and legs, twisted into shapes that looked absolutely impossible to restore, gradually returned to normal.
Amazing. The Deformity-Healing Spring really was something else. Even though I'd made it myself, I was still astonished by how effective it was.
"...So you lot are going to the Iron Dungeon in our place while we recover completely, Touji?"
"That's right. I've put a lot of work into training, so I'd been itching to put it to the test. This works out perfectly for me."
"I'll lend you some Rainbow Ore to fight on the twenty-fifth floor... But if you feel you're in danger on the twenty-fifth floor, don't you dare go down to the twenty-sixth."
Rainbow Ore?
"What exactly is Rainbow Ore, Peta-chan?"
"Let's see... If I remember right, the Iron Dungeon Core once created a metal called Rainbow Ore. It was absurdly hard and durable.
It's true that the stuff is unbelievably hard and tough.
But I heard humans absolutely hated it because it was incredibly heavy and so hard that it couldn't be worked at all."
Now that I thought about it, the monsters from the twenty-fifth floor onward had incredibly tough skin, making ordinary weapons from the surface completely ineffective.
In other words, people had to fight with weapons made from that ore in the deeper levels of the Iron Dungeon.
They probably had no choice but to use crude stone tools made by attaching handles to chunks of ore they'd picked up, or connecting them to ropes or chains to make makeshift weights, without processing the material at all.
I remembered that in the RPGs I'd played in my previous life, dungeons where your usual weapons dealt no damage and you had to use special ones were almost always miserable, infuriating dungeons...
No wonder the Weapon Dungeon, which produced proper weapons like the Red Sword that could be used even in the deepest levels, had grown into the largest dungeon in the world.
"If we brought a Red Sword into the Kingdom of Claps, who knows what they'd say to us... I guess we have no choice."
After that conversation, Captain Touji and the others headed off to the Iron Dungeon.
In their place, Captain Hitou's unit took up residence in the No-Hunger Dungeon.
As each group finished treatment, they began carrying the Stamina-Restoring spring water to the deepest floor and starting their strength training.
Unlike Captain Touji and her team, whose naked strength training featured muscular women, this was a bunch of seriously jacked gorillas of men working out in the nude.
It was an absolutely dreadful sight. I didn't even want to put it on the monitors.
On top of that, whenever monsters attacked in the middle of their workouts, they casually slaughtered them while still naked, then stuffed the beer they'd obtained into their backpacks.
The naked men continued their training with their backpacks bulging to the brim strapped to their backs.
It was a nightmarish sight. Please save me, Captain Touji!
Once they'd accumulated more beer and alcohol than their backpacks could hold, they'd grab the excess and sprint all the way back to the surface at full speed. At least they put their clothes on for that part. They should just keep them on all the time.
After handing their cargo over to the transport unit stationed on one of the upper floors, they'd take a short break at one of the dungeon's shops, where large numbers of prostitutes who'd cleaned themselves up in the bath on the eleventh floor were stationed. Then they'd run all the way back down to the bottom floor.
What a beautiful sight. Saved.
"Hey, Master, that's reproduction, right? Why are they going out of their way to do that inside such a dangerous dungeon?"
"...Yeeeah. Good question. Why would they do that, I wonder?"
"Even back when the No-Hunger Dungeon was home to the poor, wasn't it common sense to go outside to do that sort of thing somewhere safe? Otherwise, monsters might bite you on the butt.
I just don't understand why they'd go all the way into the depths of a dungeon to do it."
"...Anyway, look! They're transporting more and more beer to the surface, and it's proving to be a huge hit. See? That lady from earlier is enjoying her cold beer, too."
The woman, who'd worked up a good sweat with one of the First Unit's muscle-bound men, let out a blissful sigh as she drank her beer, chilled to the bone with the non-melting ice she'd received as payment.
And yes, she was naked.
"Mm-hmm! I was worried about how things would turn out for a while there, but it really has been well received. What a relief!"
Peta-chan had been in high spirits over the past few days.
The First Unit had been spending nearly all its time on the deepest floor and hauling beer up to the surface in huge quantities. As a result, word of how delicious the beer was seemed to be spreading throughout the kingdom.
Even adventurers skilled enough to reach the seventeenth floor had begun showing up there from time to time.
As for the Hot Spring Dungeon, I'd thought the eighteenth floor might become deserted now that Captain Touji was gone.
But then Commander Shield and her crew took up residence by the bath on the eighteenth floor and continued their training.
Naked, of course.
They were stationed in the Kingdom of Sepans under the pretext of gaining the strength necessary to escort Queen Teta into the depths of the Hot Spring Dungeon in the first place, so they couldn't afford to get distracted by a new alcoholic beverage, no matter how tempting it was.
After seeing far too many naked muscle-bound men training, my retinas had practically rotted. Commander Shield and her crew's naked bodies were like a soothing balm for my eyes. This was... much appreciated.
"Hah... hah... Commander Shield... how much longer... do we have to keep this up?"
"Until our strength and stamina stop improving... We need to become as strong as Captain Touji, for the sake of Marponwear as well.
And for the sake of the alcohol... that the No-Hunger Dungeon will produce in its deeper levels in the future..."
She muttered the latter part under her breath so her subordinates wouldn't hear.
As far as alcohol went, though, my knowledge of liquor was pretty limited, so there wouldn't be any particularly good drinks appearing in the future... Sorry about that.
"Besides, Captain Hitou and his men from the Kingdom of Sepans are on the seventeenth floor of the No-Hunger Dungeon right now... They need to leave that floor before we can go.
Those naked... gentlemen... keep looking over with those leering grins... Argh! Honestly!"
Commander Shield shook her head, her face bright red, as if trying to erase the sight burned into her retinas.
The other members wore awkward smiles, as though they'd just remembered something unpleasant themselves.
So that's why Commander Shield and her crew weren't stationed on the seventeenth floor.
Meanwhile, Vihita and the others were tirelessly soaking all sorts of mysterious components in the equipment-repairing and equipment-enhancing springs on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors, then hauling them away, only to repeat the process over and over with dead-eyed expressions.
I had no idea what they were being made to build, but it looked like hard work. Hang in there, girls.
Since there was nothing remotely lewd about that scene, I just gave it a casual glance and moved on.
Comments
Post a Comment