5 giant snake ghosts attacked Allen.
[Name] None
[Age] 1025
[Species] Snail
[Strength] 5980
[Mana] 0
[Spiritual Power] 4550
[Attack] 5640
[Endurance] 6660
[Agility] 5720
[Intelligence] 5540
[Luck] 0
[Attack Element] Earth
[Endurance Element] Earth
(They're easy prey.)
They were roughly as powerful as A Rank monsters.
'Merle! Use Homing Bullets!!'
Since everyone was far away on their golems, Allen communicated with the Bird F summon's Special Skill [Transmission].
"Understood. Let's go Tam-Tam! Homing Bullets!!"
'Understood. Opening fire.'
In the last month Tam-Tam's Nature had grown into a B Rank [Grand Buster].
Tam-Tam's adamantite shoulder guards lifted up, shooting out 100 small missiles.
They split in the air into groups of 20, which hit the different ghosts.
'Kshaaa?!'
'Kshaaa?!'
'Kshaaa?!'
The ghosts tried to move out of the way, but were unsuccessful and were blown up.
Soon after a bit more than a dozen Spirit Stones clinked on the ground.
(That's just like any other dungeon. I need some materials.)
"Ah, those are Spirit Stones. I'll go-"
Cecile tried to pick up the Spirit Stones.
"We can get those anywhere so don't worry about picking them up. We should hurry ahead."
"O-oh, okay. Somehow it sounds like you already know what to do here..?"
The dungeon had a time limit, but somehow Allen seemed to be hurrying more than usual. Cecile felt like he was acting as if he already knew what to do.
"Well, any gamer knows the appeal of rogue-likes. They're a whole different beast."
"I don't really get it, but I guess that's cool."
As Kenichi, Allen mainly played RPGs. But he was often curious about claims of games you could replay 1000 times or that every playthrough was unique, so he had eventually played over 10000 runs of games in the rogue-like genre.
He only learned those games also had time limited modes (called RTA) when he was an adult.
"Merus, those ghosts only produced Spirit Stones. Are you sure what you told me before was correct?"
'Hm? Ah, yeah. This was originally a prison built by the God of Earth Gaia to imprison those who caused mayhem in the divine realm. Now it's just the location of a trial though.'
The Earth Labyrinth had once been an enormous prison built in Gaia's Temple.
Places where divine people lived had the dragonkin hunting ghosts, but Gaia took care of the places where the Gods lived.
"And they were trapped here and not killed?"
Allen felt like Gaia would have plenty of power to defeat ghosts.
'Well, they'll eventually pop up again somewhere anyway.'
Ghosts would eventually pop up again, so it was actually more effective to keep them trapped and stop them from reappearing somewhere else.
"I see. But the way they only leave Spirit Stones behind is more like the dungeons on the surface?"
'That's because they're inside the Labyrinth. This place is maintained by divine power just like other dungeons.'
Merus' explanation made some sense but was still somewhat obtuse.
That aside, Allen had found something else that caught his attention in the dungeon.
(Oh? What's that? They can't destroy it? Hmm…it's pretty far. I should teleport there.)
His summons had found a chest, but it was shut tightly and they could not get it open.
'Everyone, we found a room with treasure. We're teleporting there!'
Allen spoke to everyone with the Special Skill [Transmission] and then teleported them.
(We teleported away, but we're still on the right path.)
The 5 pairs of Bird A and Bird F summons were moving ahead quickly, dodging all ghosts.
Thanks to Allen's overwhelming Intelligence, he had already memorized the map of that floor.
He had teleported far away, but he still knew exactly where he was.
"That's a treasure chest, and it looks pretty big."
"Yeah."
There was a large treasure chest around 5 meters tall in the center of the room.
The summons kept body slamming it in an attempt to open it, but they were unsuccessful.
Seeing that, Allen walked up to it with his sword and swung it down to split the treasure chest open.
Soon a yellow light golden escaped from inside as the contents were revealed.
"Oh! That's a big score. They're chunks of gold! And 3 of them!!"
Galara's eyes sparkled seeing those chunks, which were bigger than a person.
He quickly made his golem reach out to pick them up.
"Sadly that's a dud. We'll have to keep moving."
"Wait what? …Alright, whatever you say."
Galara quickly gave up feeling Allen's intense stare.
"They'll just be needless baggage, right?"
"Yeah. We can't use magic bags so that immediately rules them out. Well, I guess they could be used in the dungeon's store, so they're not exactly useless. But we don't need them right now."
Chests contained various items. The best were Mana Recovery items, especially if they worked on the entire party, since golems consumed ridiculous amounts of Mana.
It was forbidden to bring such items into the dungeon, and even if the items came out of the dungeon, they could not be brought back in. That was another part of the dungeon's difficulty.
Golems were always consuming Mana, so there was a time limit before such items had to be found.
There were chunks of gold inside the dungeon that could be used in the dungeon's store.
Sometimes they had valuable items for sale, or even key items.
But the gold chunks weighed 100 kilograms, so they were cumbersome to carry around.
(Hmm, if bird summons can't open the chests, I might need to add a summon that has the power to break them open. That would mean 15 summons for 5 pairs. Though no, I don't have any summons with that power that can fly.)
"Alright, the next one is over there."
(I can still teleport 4 times. I really should keep some for emergencies.)
Allen had his pairs of summons check the countless corridors of the dungeon, and once they reached a dead end they would retrace their steps and go somewhere else.
Their Awakened Skill [Homing Instinct] had a cooldown of 1 day.
Sophie's Divine Technique [Spirit God's Blessing] could reset the cooldowns, but he wanted to do that after he had used up all five teleports.
Even after he used their Awakened Skill they could still explore anyway.
While he thought of all that, he also tried to search for the remaining chests.
By the time 50 minutes had passed, he had found 4 chests.
"Alright, the shovel came out. And we also got 1 recovery item. Let's head to the next floor."
(There really is a shovel in the first floors then, Merle's efforts didn't go to waste. But it's a copper one…that's not really good, at least Habarak is here, so we just need to find the forging area.)
Allen had been thinking of how to beat the Earth Labyrinth ever since he watched Merle's attempts through the Wraith A summon.
"What? I thought there's still 6 chests though?"
"There's simply too many rooms. We don't have enough time so let's head to the next floor."
(If we take 1 hour per floor, we'll only ever get to floor 24.)
He had already discovered the stairs leading down, and headed through the shortest route there. He would have checked other chests if he did not know where the stairs were though.
Cecile continued making questions about Allen's decisions, and Merle and Sophie could also pick up on his reasoning.
As they went down floors, the enemy ghosts were still like A Rank monsters.
6 hours after they started, they reached the 7th floor, where they found another landmark.
There was a sculpture again, and in the center of the room was a piece of cloth with items for sale like in the God of Trading Marne's market.
"We found the store. There may be mimics here, so be careful. I'll touch all of them just in case."
"Oh, thanks."
Allen also knew about the existence of mimics thanks to Merle's outings, so he carefully touched all the items. There were 9 in total.
[Items at the shop]
-Strength Recovery Item (Large) x2
-Mana Recovery Item (Large) x1
-Mana Recovery Item (Small) x1
-Magic Bag (Medium) x1
-Key (Copper) x1
-Earth's Blessing x1
-Magic Board Expansion Terminal x1
(Nice, we have a key and a Magic Board Expansion Terminal, that's the perfect combination.)
"What is Earth's Blessing?"
Cecile picked up the item that looked like a large fruit shaped like a heart.
"That's from the Earth lineup. It's a blessing so it can enhance heals by 3, but we need to visit the nursery for that."
Spiritual Power Recovery Items were more valuable and rare, as well as those who recovered 1% Health for 1 hour. Earth's Blessing could be used to amplify those effects.
There were also other variants like Earth's Fury and Earth's Sorrow, which could be found in other locations or chests.
"So it's a special item that can only be used under certain conditions."
Sophie was also starting to catch up with Allen's thoughts.
"That's it. Alright, I think all these items should fit in the magic bag."
Allen stashed everything inside the magic bag without much care.
"Huh? We don't have any money though."
Merle's voice sounded distressed inside of Tam-Tam.
They had found gold chunks many times already, but Allen had ignored all of them.
'...'
The sculpture in the room moved to block the only exit of the story, so they would not leave.
"Hey, that's why we told you we should've picked up the gold chunks. What are we going to do now?"
"I have a good idea."
Allen grinned menacingly as he replied.
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