Chapter 475: Chapter 475 - S-Ranked Dungeon(Part 1)
"Come on, come on, come on...! Wha-...no! Damn it, I was so close!" Groaned Celes, throwing her head back in disappointment.
"Heh, you’re still ten years too early to beat me, you need more training," I smirked tauntingly.
"Hey, no fair! I wanted to say that after I finally beat you, I was saving it!" She pouted indignantly.
"Oops, sorry."
I mean, how was I supposed to know that?
A few days have passed, the two of us were currently chilling in our cave, playing a fighting video game.
I’ve introduced her to a whole bunch of games, and she’s never beaten me so far. She took a liking to fighting games, and she’s improving at an impressive rate.
It won’t be long before she’ll be able to give me a real challenge, she was mostly button-mashing at first, but she’s starting to consistently pull off combos now.
I’d also given her a haircut after we got back from that Dungeon. It ended up a bit shorter than I’d intended, around shoulder-length, but it looks good on her. She seemed pretty happy with it too.
"Wanna go again?" I asked her, as she let out a huff.
"Hm...nah, I feel too riled up, I think I need a bit of a break first. Could I have a drink?"
"Sure, that’s fine, but FYI, we’re down to our last barrel. We should probably think of a way to get more before our supply runs out," I suggested prudently, as I filled a mug and handed it to her.
"Yeah, it’d suck if we run out of booze before we can restock. Maybe we could make some ourselves?" She replied, as she took a deep gulp from her mug.
"I mean, it’s not impossible, but that’d be really tough. Not only would it take a lot of time, but it’s a pretty intricate process, if we screw up any of the steps, it’ll all go to waste. Not to mention, neither of us have any idea how to make alcohol in the first place. Well, I could probably look it up in my Info Bank, but I’d wager it’ll still be more trouble than it’s worth," I replied after taking a moment to mull it over.
"I guess so, if it was easy to make booze, everyone would do it. It’s too bad alcohol doesn’t grow like weed does," She sighed wistfully.
"That would be pretty convenient. So, got any ideas? We’re probably strong enough to attack a city or something and steal some booze. But we should save that as a last resort. If we keep using that method, it’ll only get harder and harder each time."
"Yeah, it’ll be easy enough the first time, but they’ll be more prepared each subsequent time. Bandits would be a better target...but we haven’t come across any since that last time," She mused in response.
"Maybe we should’ve spared one of the bandits to interrogate. We could have gotten the location of their hideout if we did that. But, I suppose there’s no point in dwelling on it since it’s too late to change what happened," I nodded, as I opened up my World Map and zoomed in, scrolling about the live feed at random.
"Yeah, we’ll have to keep that in mind for next time. Hm...I can’t think of any other options we could turn to to get more booze. We could try searching your World Map to find the bandits’ hideout, but that would probably take ages, huh?"
"Yup, unless we get really lucky. Otherwise, it would take a mind-numbing amount of time to search through an entire nation," I replied with a wry smile.
"True, and those bandits, the Marauders, have been around for over ten years, no one’s even come close to finding their hideout. So, it must be in a pretty well-hidden spot, like underground ruins or a large cave or something," She suggested uncertainly.
"That’s definitely a possibility. But it’s not like they can hole up forever, right? Since the group we killed never returned, the rest of them probably decided to lay low for a while. But it should only be a matter of time before they venture out to loot more stuff. If we can come across them, let’s capture and interrogate them. Or, alternatively, we could spy on and follow them using World Map, that should lead us straight to their hideout," I reasoned after giving it some thought.
"Hey, that’s a great idea, I think that could work! Yeah, and once we locate their hideout, we could flood the place with your venom! You said you can turn it into steam by heating it, right?" She grinned.
"Huh, that’s a surprisingly brutal suggestion. Not sure it’s entirely viable though, I doubt I can produce enough poison mist to fill a large space. Considering how long these bandits have been around, they’ve probably got a pretty large hideout. They’d certainly need one to store everything they steal."
"Yeah, true. Well, maybe we’re getting a bit too far ahead of ourselves, who knows how long it’ll be before we encounter-...," She began with a sigh.
"Woah! Hey, check it out!" I exclaimed as I came across something on my World Map while scrolling around the display, startling Celes, before adding sheepishly, "Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you."
"It’s cool, no worries. What prompted that reaction, though? Did you find bandits?"
"No, not that. Here, take a look," I replied, before she scooted over and peered at the screen.
"Hm? Oh, a Dungeon...that height, is it an S-Ranked one?" She responded, her eyes widening slightly.
"Well, it seems to be about as tall as the Dungeon I came from when I reincarnated in this world, so probably," I nodded, before adding, "Should we take it on? That A-Ranked Dungeon we raided a few days ago wasn’t much of a challenge, but this one should give us a good workout...at least, I hope."
"No objections here, count me in!"
"Pretty sure it wasn’t here before, so it must have risen up recently. That should hopefully mean other Adventurers haven’t gotten to it yet."
"Well, if it’s been less than three days since it appeared, we won’t be able to enter," She reminded me.
Oh, right. Humans can only enter Dungeons three days after they appear, and Monsters can’t leave until seven to twenty-eight days, depending on the height and rank of the Dungeon.
"Let’s go check it out. If we can’t enter yet, we can just camp out near it until we can."
"Yeah, sounds good."
