by Hiro Ainana
“At this rate, I might hit level thirty before the end of the day.”
Because area 9-1 had a lot of strong enemies, the girls had been leveling up pretty effectively.
This part of the area had a lot of plant monsters, which was why I mistook it for a forest at first.
“Sorryyy?”
“No worries!”
Tama was being followed by two monsters this time: a thornfoot, an annoying ivy monster that could sap magic power, and a capture slime, an insect-eating plant monster that crawled along with sticky tentacles. She must have accidentally pulled both when trying to grab only one.
“Nana, deal with the capture slime for a while, please!”
“You should try being cute like a snail, I declare!”
Nana’s “Taunt” skill had leveled up so that she could now use it on specific targets.
“Let’s bring down the thornfoot first! Make sure you don’t get caught in its ivy, or it’ll suck up your magic!”
“Understood!”
“Yes, sir.”
Liza and Tama kept the thornfoot in check while Pochi served as a secondary tank.
My Enchant: Physical Protection spell hadn’t worn off, but magic was being stolen from the beastfolk girls’ weapons.
“Emergencyyy?”
“Geh, a third one! It’s a fire maple!”
Waving its burning branches around, the fire maple came along on wriggling roots.
“I’ll use Mazemaker to buy some time. Thornfoot first, then the capture slime, then the fire maple last!”
Arisa used Space Magic to create a maze of invisible Deracinator walls around the fire maple.
Some of its branches jutted out from the maze, flinging flaming leaves like shuriken.
There was a bit too much going on for the group to fend them all off, so I used my Magic Hand to catch the leaves and put them in Storage.
“Thanks, master!”
I waved at Arisa, then took out one of the still-burning leaves and looked at it.
Oh, I know.
I decided to use the flaming leaf to continue what I’d been working on this whole time.
“The thornfoot’s down to forty percent of its health!”
“Mm. Got it.”
“Let’s bring it down!”
Quickly defeating the thornfoot, the rest of the group went to help Nana, who’d been fighting the capture slime alone.
“Arisa, the fire maple’s almost out.”
“Uh-oh! Thank you, master.”
Arisa hurriedly recast her Space Magic spell.
This seemed to use up the last of her magic, so she pulled a vial out of the pouch at her waist to throw back a Mana Recovery Potion.
Before long, my group had overcome the emergency and defeated all three enemies.
“Smells gooood?”
“What’re you making, sir?”
Once the battle was over, Pochi came running up to me, her tail wagging. Tama rushed over, too, her eyes narrowing as she sniffed the air.
“Hmm? Well, the walking corn’s kernels reminded me of something, so I decided to make pancakes.”
I’d used the Everyday Magic spell Dry to suck all the moisture out of the corn, ground it down with a mortar using my own original spell Multitool, then used the resulting flour to make pancakes.
This was a recipe a classmate who was allergic to wheat flour had taught me in my school days.
“Geez, I wish you’d stop cooking near us while we’re in the middle of a fight. I thought my stomach was gonna start growling.”
“Mm, it did.”
“Good work.”
Ignoring Arisa’s complaints, I transferred the freshly made pancakes to a board.
Then I cut them into smaller pieces and put some maple syrup on top before giving them to everyone as a little snack.
I’d harvested the maple syrup from a monster similar to the fire maple the group just fought.
“Yummyyy.”
“It melts in my mouth, sir!”
Tama and Pochi rejoiced at the sweetness.
“More maple syrup, please.”
“Mm, more.”
“Don’t blame me if you put on weight, you two.”
Lulu shook her head as Arisa and Mia demanded more syrup, then looked to me uncertainly.
I nodded permission. Maple syrup wasn’t too high in calories anyway, if I remembered right.
“Master, did you make these with the yellow grains from that monster?” Lulu asked.
“That’s right. I broke them down into powder, then mixed them with eggs, sugar, and so on.”
To be honest, these pancakes were made entirely with ingredients from inside the labyrinth. Tama had collected the eggs the day before, and the sugar was called “ugi sugar,” created from the bamboo of a deer-shaped plant creature.
Watching contentedly as the girls enjoyed their pancakes, I took a bite for myself.
Since I didn’t have any baking powder or baking soda, they weren’t quite as fluffy as I would have liked, but the taste was perfectly good.
Hmm?
Nana was staring intently at the baby chick design I’d imprinted on her pancake.
“Master, this design is wonderful, I report. We must protect it, I recommend.”
I’d burned the design onto the pancake in a fit of playfulness, but she seemed to like it, maybe a little too much.
“I can make it again for you anytime, so please eat that one before it gets cold.”
“Yes, master.”
I’d made the mark using the Multitool spell and a leaf from the fire maple. It really wasn’t much work at all.
For the other kids, I also made paw print marks, rabbit marks, and so on.
Tama and Pochi still looked hungry, so I cut the rest of mine in half to give to them.
When I beckoned, they trotted over and opened their mouths wide like baby birds. I popped the big pancake slices into their mouths.
“Tastyyy?”
“Delicious, sir.”
Mia and Arisa opened their mouths, too, but because my plate was empty, I gave them candy instead.
If I had known these were going to be so popular, I would’ve made a bit more corn flour.
Incidentally, this candy was a by-product of making the nectar of the mayhem dendrobiums into orchid mead.
I’d gotten these recipes from Trazayuya’s materials, too.
Clearly he had been a gourmet-loving elf.
“Once we’ve rested for a bit, we should move on.”
“Yeah, the only monsters left around here are trash,” Arisa agreed.
The reason we were able to have such a carefree time cooking and eating in the labyrinth was because there weren’t many enemies around.
We’d hunted just about all of them over the past few days, so the fire maple from earlier was the last one left in the large cavern that might randomly attack us.
I know it sounds like the kind of thing that could get us into trouble with environmental conservation groups, but the monsters in a labyrinth are apparently made by the labyrinth master using a Labyrinth Core, so there was no danger of any species going extinct.
Still, I made sure not to lay a hand on creatures like the heat haze dendrobium, which seemed to be crazy dendrobium saplings.
Once we’d wiped out all the monsters in the huge cavern, we went through each of the small rooms attached to the cavern in turn.
“That last spore attack was rather dangerous.”
“I never imagined that capsaicin bird symbiote would use its ‘Fire Magic’ to set the spores on fire.”
Standing in front of the large corpse of a dungeon fungus, Arisa and Liza wiped their brows.
The capsaicin bird was a fairly weak bird-type monster made up of red leaves, which lived on the heads of dungeon fungi. Once in a while, they would have the “Fire Magic” skill.
“That’s a pretty large dungeon fungus. Mia, would you like that for dinner again tonight?”
�
�Mm, please.”
Mia gazed hungrily at the dead dungeon fungus, her eyes sparkling.
“Fungus, tasty.”
Dungeon fungus steak had been Mia’s main dish for the past few days.
There were plenty of vegetables in this plant-based area, so Mia was in a better mood than usual.
“Treasure box over there…”
Tama pointed at a hollow in the corner of the fungus room.
This room was full of giant mushrooms that grew like trees. When I tried cutting one, I found that the inside past the first few inches was hard as rock. They were a kind of monster, but they showed no signs of moving.
“Ooh, finally!”
Over the past few days, we had found only three treasure boxes.
Aside from the areamaster one on the first day, the other two boxes were both duds, containing five bronze swords that looked like ancient ornaments and one big bronze mirror.
Everyone’s hopes were high as we approached this one, but…
“Bronze swords again? And they’re all the same kind!”
“They’re well-balanced, so they might be useful to newbie explorers for training.”
As I attempted to console the grumbling Arisa, I put the five swords away in Storage.
“It’s starting to get dark.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should head back to the vacation house.”
When nobody seemed to have any complaints, we left the danger area behind.
The group looked like they still wanted to fight more, but aside from Mia (who required a high amount of experience), the others had all reached level 30 and acquired new skills, so I figured our first labyrinth expedition was already plenty successful.
Most importantly, Liza gained the special attack skill “Helix Spear Attack,” Tama and Pochi gained “Spellblade,” and Lulu gained Practical Magic and Everyday Magic.
The only Practical Magic spell she could use so far was the beginner spell Mana Light, but she was already on her way to mastering Everyday Magic.
Lulu said she was hoping to learn to use the Practical Magic spells Cube and Floating Board soon, too.
She wanted to use the former as a hygienic cutting board and the latter for transporting ingredients. How very like Lulu.
Mia and Nana hadn’t gained any particularly notable skills, but Mia’s Spirit Magic abilities had improved: She could now make spirits of all four major elements.
As for Arisa…
“I’m definitely picking up ‘Fire Magic’! The elves said that ‘Fire Magic: Body Strengthening’ burns body fat to create energy, so it’d be perfect for dieting.”
…she had recently acquired the “Fire Magic” skill.
The night before, she’d been moaning about how she was heartbroken because it cost way too many skill points to raise Space Magic’s skill level from 8 to 9. Right now, she was having a little affair with Fire Magic.
I’d better not mention that it only cost me one point to raise my skill levels.
At present, Arisa was just about able to use advanced Space Magic, so she decided to pick up Fire Magic, since it was effective in battle and safe to use in front of people.
Incidentally, from my analysis, Fire Magic seemed to use normal magic power as fuel. The thing about body fat was probably a joke by the elves.
She seemed so excited that I didn’t have the heart to tell her, but I should probably warn her about it before she went on a binge-eating spree.
As far as my worries about her low stamina, she said the cause was that she was greatly limited by her magic-based stats.
In Arisa’s case, she could decide which points went to which stats when she leveled up, so I had her raise her physical stats like strength and stamina to the point where it wouldn’t be a problem.
“We’re heeere?”
“Ooopen sesameee, sir.”
When Tama and Pochi spoke these words in front of the dirt wall, a passageway appeared with a low rumble.
A penguin statue arrived on a pedestal to greet us.
“We’re back,” Mia greeted.
“Pen!” the penguin responded.
I had made this penguin statue during the course of our stay in the dungeon; it contained the core parts of the figurehead golem that had controlled the flying ship.
The penguin golem was the doorman and maintainer of this little area.
It wouldn’t open the wall for anyone but our group, so it was the perfect security.
On the small chance that anyone did manage to break in, the golem would alert me with a similar mechanism to the Practical Magic spell Signal.
Beyond the penguin was a single log cabin that we were using as our base here.
Made from tree-type monster parts, it initially consisted only of a living-slash-bedroom, but I’d been slowly expanding and improving it over the past few days.
Now it contained a living-slash-dining room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a workshop, making it feel more like a vacation house than a base.
“Let’s wash up and go inside.”
We stopped at the little washing area just outside the cabin, cleaning the dirt off our hands and feet, then trading our shoes for indoor slippers.
“I haven’t used much magic power, so I probably don’t need to restock…”
Muttering to myself, I supplied more magic to the backup magic power storage tool on the penguin’s pedestal.
I had designed the system so that it could supply itself with magic from the labyrinth’s mana source, but I didn’t want to risk any meddling from the labyrinth master, so I usually just left it as a stand-alone device.
It could also be switched out with the figurehead golem.
“There, all done.”
With that, I looked around the cavern containing the cabin.
Next to the cabin was a field cultivated by living dolls, where we were growing tomatoes, herbs, and so on.
These living dolls were the same ones we’d used as a dummy crew on the flying ship.
The reason I chose to make this cavern the site of our base was that it had a water source, ventilation holes, and no nearby monster passages that could create a spawnhole.
There were three passages leading in and out of the cavern, but I’d blocked both ends of each passage with an earth-wall door like the one we’d just entered through.
I’d also put adamantite alloy wire mesh from one of the sunken ships across the air vents, and the walls, ceiling, and floor were all protected with purification Barrier Magic circles like the ones I set up around the city-rock island in the Seadragon Islands.
This barrier was to keep out any physical- and small bug-type monsters.
That was mostly because the first time we slept here, small bug monsters called “bite worms” came up from the ground to attack us, attracted by our body heat.
Luckily, I was able to ward them off easily with the Everyday Magic spell Bug Wiper, but I’d decided to come up with certain precautions to prevent it from happening again.
It might be overkill, but it was all for the sake of my friends’ safety and my own sound sleep, so I decided to pull out all the stops.
“Master, the bath is all heated up.”
“All right, I’m coming.”
Since Arisa called me, I closed the lid to the magic storage device and headed over to the bath.
The kids who couldn’t cook were in charge of heating up the bathwater.
Pochi had a hard time controlling the magic tool for water heating at first, but now she was able to get it to a steady level.
“Hurry up and strip—everyone’s waiting…”
As soon as I entered the changing room, Arisa wiggled her fingers at me to urge me to hurry.
If I took too long, she’d start trying to do it herself, so I used my “Quick Change” skill to switch to only a towel wrapped around my waist.
“Grrr, you can’t cheat at bathing!”
Arisa grumbled about not getting to see me change, but I ignored her eas
ily.
Everyone was waiting outside the large wooden bath, all clad in bathing robes. I’d made the bath by cutting up the trunk of a gigantic tree with a Holy Sword, then carving it out with the help of Arisa’s Space Magic.
They could’ve just started without me, but Liza and Nana insisted that “master must be the one to enter the bath first,” so they’d gotten into the habit of waiting for me to go in.
“Your bath awaits, master.”
“I shall rinse you first, I report.”
Liza and Nana, who had clearly taken a liking to the ritual, poured hot water over me from either side before I stepped into the hot bath.
Then I slowly lowered myself into the bathwater, allowing the perfect temperature to relax my very soul.
Aaaah, baths are the best.
Activating Spirit Vision, I raised my hand partway out of the water and examined my palm.
Spirits danced along the water that flowed through my fingers, slipping in and out.
Supposedly, spirits didn’t have personalities or feelings, but the spirits in this bath seemed to be enjoying themselves.
“Lots of spirits,” Mia commented.
“Are there?” Arisa asked, tilting her head.
There were, indeed, many spirits in the watering hole in this cavern. I wasn’t sure if they were there to feed the monsters or if it was just a natural opening in the underground mana vein.
Either way, it might be thanks to the spirits that just submerging oneself in this water made it feel like one was getting a full-body massage.
“Okay, now that we’re all warmed up, time to wash our hair.”
“Aaaye.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tama, Pochi, and Mia stood up in the bath cheerfully.
At first, I’d been washing the other kids’ hair, too, but Lulu turned so red, she looked ready to pass out, and Arisa got overexcited and nearly had a nosebleed. I had them do it themselves.
“Mm. First.”
Because Mia had won the round of rock-paper-scissors, she put on a little headband to keep the shampoo out of her eyes and sat down on the little chair in the wooden bath.
I didn’t want her to get a cold, so I promptly started lathering her hair with the shampooing soap and hot water. This was a recipe I’d learned from Tutoreiya, an alchemist elf in Bolenan Forest.
It wasn’t quite as good as the shampoo in my old world, but it formed a better lather and was gentler on the scalp than most normal soap.
