arc01 · 017-ep17

Episode 17: Gathering Is Such a Chore

Having made the acquaintance of a weapon as insanely cool as 【Iron Demon】, my motivation is through the roof.

Originally today was supposed to be sort of a rest day—I figured I'd take it easy in the dungeon—but I've got money to earn, and once I'm done gathering Aizawa's materials, I'm thinking of hitting floor 7 one more time.

First things first: hurry up, collect the materials from around floors 1–4, and get them handed over to Aizawa.

So without further ado—let's go, back to Floor 1 for the first time in a while.

◇

Never thought I'd be exploring Floor 1 again, but honestly, it's barely what you'd call exploring. The road is a good four lanes wide, sure, but through Floor 3 it's simply one straight road. The distance just keeps stretching, though. Each floor down, the walk to the stairs to the next one seems to run two, three times longer. Per the net—thanks to 【Map】 skill holders, it's been confirmed—Floor 1 is 2 km, Floor 2 is 4 km, Floor 3 is 6 km—growing by 2 km per floor. Meaning that having pushed through to floor 6 by now, I've been covering at least a good 42 km or so on every round trip. When you think about it that way, adventurers really are insane.

Now then. What exactly can you gather in a single-road cave like this? A moss called glow moss, and a mushroom called the madake.

Glow moss is also the raw material of the 【light orb】 Aizawa handed me at school today.

This 【light orb】 is a strange stone that glows faintly—and only inside the dim of a dungeon. Dungeons get pretty dark, so it's genuinely handy.

For the record, ordinary flashlights do work, but artificial lights like those apparently draw monsters in—even on Floor 1 they'll swarm right over without mercy. Trivial for the current me, but if a fresh Floor 1 newbie tried it… well, they'd die, probably.

This 【light orb】, on the other hand, apparently never gets attacked—maybe monsters mistake it for a dungeon light source, or something.

Then again, I'd trained up 【Night Vision】 since way back with fighting in the dark in mind, so doing without was never a problem.

Though when it comes to searching out materials, being without one might just be a non-starter.

Glow moss is easy to spot, being literally glowing; the madake is genuinely impossible to find. It seems to grow in the especially dark spots—without the 【light orb】 I never would have noticed it.

Once found, the harvesting itself is easy.

I shave the wall-growing materials off with my folding knife and pack them into glass jars. Boring work, but hey—good experience.

Floors 2 and 3 grow different materials, but the work's the same, so I harvested one after another as I followed the road. Yeah—exploring with all this constant stop-and-go really eats time. So this is what other adventurers are doing, which is why their levels climb so slow. Makes total sense now.

"That took me nearly an hour already. On Floor 4, I'll just take magic stones from the various monsters, plus whatever materials catch my eye."

Floor 4 is faintly brighter than the floors up above, but this glow doesn't seem to be glow-moss light. Maybe it's the power of some material too. Not on the list, though, so I'll ignore it for now.

The list also includes one that looks like a real pain: the water dripping from the stalactites growing from the ceiling. Easy enough to find, but collecting it takes forever. Pass.

Huh, come to think of it, floor 7 had that pond-looking spot. Why not the water there? Would that count as a different material of its own?

"Eh, whatever. I was getting bored—time to hunt some monsters."

Leaving only the turtles alone, I worked over bats, spiders, and wolves one after another. Beautifully, nothing but magic stones dropped. Yep. Knew it.

"All right, feeling a bit more refreshed—grab the rest of the materials and head back, I guess."

Basically, the low floors yield a handful of plants and a handful of ores. Mining ore is a pain, so I jar the plants, one after another after another.

The promised time was coming up, so I headed back at a good stopping point.

◇

Made it back to the guild before 7 p.m., so I messaged Aizawa and figured I'd grab a light meal at the café while I waited.

The attached café is a perfectly ordinary café. No dungeon-sourced ingredients or anything—it really is no different from any café on the street.

Ordered a hot dog, a sandwich, a café au lait, and cheesecake. Pretty tasty-looking.

I'm handing the gathered materials to Aizawa instead of selling them, but… you can't help wondering what they're actually worth.

So I checked the market rates on my phone. And lo and behold—the gathered materials actually fetch more than magic stones and monster materials. Seriously?, I thought, but apparently that's just how it is down in the low floors. The deeper you go, the more magic stones and monster materials skyrocket, so prices probably scale with difficulty.

I was gazing at my phone between bites of hot dog when Aizawa came trotting up.

"S-sorry to keep you waiting! I'm sorry—I was in the middle of some work…"

"It's fine, I was eating. You ever eaten here, Aizawa? It's pretty good, y'know?"

"Ah, yes. Sometimes. The hot dogs are great, aren't they?"

"Right? I'm sold."

"Hehe."

Aizawa's gotten a lot more natural about talking with me.

Still, what's with wearing her uniform even at the guild? Did she come straight here without going home?

Whoops—more importantly, time to hand over the materials.

"Here—the materials from the list. This is everything I managed to grab in about two hours just now."

I set the jars of materials and the magic stones down on the table.

"Whaaat!?! This much!!"

"Well, I gave it a decent effort. Gathering's not my usual gig."

"Th-this isn't just 'decent effort' quantities…! N-no, I mean, this helps so much! With this much I can make plenty, and I can run experiments too, so my 【Alchemy】 level should go up and I should be able to make even more things…!"

"Huh? Ah, right—【Alchemy】 has levels too, huh."

"Yes, it does. Though I'm still level 2, so I'm a novice's novice for now."

"My 【Martial Arts】 is level 2 too, so we match."

"Oh, really?! Then let's both do our best and level up!"

"Heh. I won't lose."

"I-I'm not trying to compete with youuu!"

Aizawa seemed brimming with motivation, and I was done eating.

Guess it's about time for me to head back into the dungeon and get to work earning.

While Aizawa was stuffing the materials into her bag, I told her, "Well, I'm off to the dungeon again. See you at school tomorrow."—and she stood there gaping, mouth hanging open.

She's got some great reactions.

All right—time to go make some money!