Chapter 122 - Desire
After finishing our rest on the eighth floor, we descended further and spent a week on the ninth floor of the No-Hunger Dungeon.
Lady Auf had been running miniature trains, each about the size of a small wooden crate, along several makeshift railway tracks she had laid out.
She repeatedly coupled the little wooden-box trains together, ran them along the tracks, and then left them sitting idle.
Apparently, she was trying to determine the limits at which the energy generated by the trains' vibrations traveling through the tracks would cause the dungeon to absorb the railway—or leave it alone.
The problem was, it was incredibly boring.
She would run the model trains back and forth along the tracks several times, stop them, run them back and forth again, and stop them. Then she'd change their weight and stop them again, or alter the number of coupled cars and stop them once more. The cycle went on and on.
After each test, we had to wait two whole days to observe the results, making the whole affair unbearably tedious.
The experiments were originally supposed to be conducted on the ninth floor of the Hot Spring Dungeon, where the actual railway was to be built. However, with so much tedious waiting involved...
...even Lady Auf had eventually agreed to conduct them in the No-Hunger Dungeon instead.
At least here, we could kill any monsters that attacked us while we waited and collect their drops.
The ninth floor didn't drop any alcohol, though...
I wasn't even asking for beer or whiskey. I just wanted to reach the eleventh floor, where at least we could get some sake.
"All right! If my calculations are correct and the weight of cargo from the surface can also be converted into energy, then today, the railway carrying only stones from inside the dungeon and the railway carrying no weights at all should both start disappearing at the same time. The only one left should be the railway along which we've run the train carrying stones from the surface. Nobody touch anything!"
...Even with experiments this tedious, Lady Auf seemed positively delighted every single day.
Honestly, I could only conclude that we were fundamentally different kinds of people.
"...Lady Auf, you're still here in the No-Hunger Dungeon?"
"Oh, Captain Touji."
While we'd been busy conducting our railway disappearance experiments, Captain Touji had apparently finished transporting the sick man to the nineteenth floor and returned.
The barrel that had contained the Medicinal Spring water—the one she'd carried on her back while descending—was now packed full of beer cans, whiskey bottles, and a generous supply of curry.
Please spare me some of that...
"Captain Touji, where's Professor Morok? Has he recovered properly?"
"Oh! Could that be Lady Auf? It has been quite some time!"
Standing there was the professor, looking every bit the part of a seasoned old sage with a sharp, distinguished face.
It seemed the Medicinal Spring had cured his illness completely.
The Medicinal Spring really was amazing.
After all, even Her Majesty Yuzha, who had been constantly irritable lately because of her crushing workload, seemed to have recovered from the mental strain caused by stress the moment she entered those waters. She had since begun meticulously examining and adjusting the state of the kingdom, which had been thrown out of balance by her hasty reforms.
She had even seriously asked whether she could continue governing from somewhere near the Medicinal Spring and the Stamina-Recovery Spring, much like Lady Auf had done back then.
Naturally, I had no desire to see Her Majesty working in a place where enormous bears that charged headlong into people and monkeys that hurled rocks with all their might were commonplace.
Lady Auf's situation had been an exceptionally unusual case, after all.
"My goodness, Lady Auf, your skin has completely recovered! And now you're even coming into the dungeon fully equipped with armor and weapons. You've become so much healthier that you're almost unrecognizable.
As Captain Touji told me, an astonishingly effective dungeon has appeared while I was sleeping away, oblivious to the world.
Now then, what exactly are you doing here?"
"Yes, I'm conducting experiments with railways inside the dungeon. Here, Professor, please take a look at these blueprints."
"Is this using the pressure generated when water turns into steam and expands...?"
"Exactly. The piston produced through this compressor here is then converted into rotary motion..."
Before long, Lady Auf and Professor Morok had launched into a highly technical discussion that was completely incomprehensible to the rest of us.
When scholars get like this, they can go on forever.
A few hours would be getting off lightly. If you're unlucky, they can keep talking for days.
"Um, Professor Morok. We're planning to take our next break on the floor above this one, so we'd like to get going now."
"Uoooooooh!! At a time this important, what in the world have I been doing, sleeping away like a fool all this time?!"
"Never mind, never mind! Captain Touji, you go on ahead without me. I have matters to discuss with Lady Auf, so I'll be staying here for a while!"
Please don't just decide to stay behind on your own.
We haven't made any preparations for the possibility of having to protect another elderly man, so this puts us in a difficult position.
It's a problem, but knowing Lady Auf, she'll probably order us to let the professor accompany us for a while anyway. Sigh.
"No, no, Professor Morok. I think it would be best if you returned to the surface as soon as possible."
Huh?
"They're conducting experiments on a new type of catapult on the surface using this mechanism, Professor."
"What?! A weapon?! A weapon, you say?! Could it be that you're using the power of steam to launch rocks?! Hmmm, and what is its current range?!"
"We've built two types: a wide-area dispersal model that feeds in large quantities of smooth stones, which can be collected in abundance from riverbanks, and launches them using centrifugal force; and an artillery model that fires shaped projectiles aimed at specific targets.
The wide-area model has about the same range as the conventional catapult you designed, Professor Morok, while the artillery model has roughly twice that range."
"Hmmmm! And how wide is its spread? What's its rate of fire? How powerful is it? The blueprints! Lady Auf, do you have the blueprints?!"
"I certainly haven't brought weapon blueprints all the way out here. However, if you speak with General Gensen, I'm sure you'll be able to get involved in the development process right away, Professor Morok."
"Captain Touji! What are you waiting for?! Let's get back at once!"
...Now that I think about it, this was exactly the sort of person he was. He was an extraordinary sage, to be sure, but I remembered how he'd passionately lectured a young Lady Auf about the romance of weaponry, leaving the duke smiling wryly.
Captain Touji, too, looked utterly exasperated, making no effort to hide her expression of What the hell is wrong with this old man?
"Now that we've figured out how to process rainbow ore, I'd love for you to come up with some incredible weapons, especially for Captain Touji."
"What?! You've found a way to process that ore? Excellent! I'll make sure we produce plenty of dungeon-exploration weapons capable of holding their own even on the twenty-fifth floor!"
"Wonderful! Then let's hurry back to the surface, Professor!"
The look on Captain Touji's face that said What the hell is this old geezer talking about? vanished in an instant.
Her expression sharpened, and she switched straight into escorting Professor Morok back with the utmost courtesy.
Talk about being too mercenary, Captain Touji.
After spending so much time with her, I've come to realize that Captain Touji isn't so much stoic as she is simply far too honest about her appetite for combat.
Lady Auf was probably thinking that by leaving the weapon development—which she wasn't all that enthusiastic about in the first place—to Professor Morok, she could focus on the research she actually wanted to pursue, wasn't she?
What is wrong with all of you?
Every last one of you is just charging ahead at full speed to satisfy your own desires. Honestly!
"Good work sticking with your assignment on the ninth floor all this time, you lot. Here's something for you. Enjoy it with Lady Auf, as long as it doesn't interfere with your duties. See you around."
With that, Captain Touji, in an excellent mood, casually pulled out some of the alcohol and curry powder packed in the barrel on her back, handed them to us, and went on her way.
"Y-Yes, ma'am! Thank you very much for your exceptional consideration!"
All of us in the unit guarding Lady Auf saluted Captain Touji in unison as she walked away.
...I'm sure that when we gave that response, our faces were practically dripping with greed.
What's wrong with that? We're only human. There's nothing wrong with indulging our desires a little.
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