Volume 4 Chapter 13.1

Leaving the tunnel, they were met with a Rot Realm.

「……This is pretty bad……」

The stench of sludge and spores, decay all around, and undead-looking plant monsters. Tatsuya spat out his clear opinion with a grimace.

「So we’re still in the dungeon？」

「I dunno, but I see the sun out.」

Hiroshi responded to Haruna’s feeble voice as he looked up at the sky. In the game there was no sun in any dungeon. Not just in caverns or buildings, but also for wide plain dungeons.

There was no guarantee of this being the same, but just like with the tunnel entrance, it wasn’t a low chance that this area might be another isolated dimension.

「Sensei, the feng shui……」

「I know. This is yet another weird situation.」

Hiroshi nodded at Mio. Haruna, who had been expressionless, made a puzzled expression.

「What’s with the feng shui？」

「This kinda situation usually means the feng shui is very polluted. But this feng shui’s clean as a whistle.」

Haruna pondered what Hiroshi said. Focusing on her surroundings, she tried to analyze the situation…

「……Nope. I can’t figure it out……」

「Well, that’s to be expected. I do have one thing to say though.」

「What’s that？」

「This prolly ain’t no dungeon.」

Mio nodded at Hiroshi’s statement while the other three appeared to be incredulous. This kind of scenery usually implied there was a last boss.

Looking at their confusion, Hiroshi called out to the pot hanging from Tatsuya’s neck.

「So y’all can teleport, right？」

「No problem～、no problem～」

「Not isolated～」

「Enter and exit as you please～」

The octogals demonstrated this by multiplying and decreasing in number. Haruna and the others had previously doubted this, but now they were convinced.

「Then that means this is……」

「It’s gonna be a cursed land, I say. Basically like a graveyard with loads of undead sproutin’ up. Lots of miasma, and the land is altered before actually becoming isolated.」

Hiroshi answered Haruna’s question clearly.

In actuality, when a bunch of miasma piled up in one place, it was rare to become an isolated dimension dungeon. Usually the area become a cursed land.

Cursed land attributes usually depended on the area’s situation beforehand. Most areas became undead spawners or warped the animals in that region, potentially creating new species, or even in rare cases becoming almost synonymous with a dungeon without the isolation. In this case, the main difference was that you could get in/escape via teleportation skills and that there was no clear boss.

Also, it was common for dungeons to exist in the middle of cursed land, since both were related via miasma. These dungeons grew quickly and many of them were high difficulty.

Then again, for cursed land, unlike the dungeons, it wasn’t difficult to cleanse the area. It would go back to normal once cleansed, and priestesses like Aearis could do it solo or gather a large crowd of priests/priestesses to use their skills and force the land back to normal before things got out of hand.

Currently there was no way to cleanse the area without someone as good as Haruna with singing, but it was possible to return this area to normal. However, the situation was abnormal, and they could not just clean it and have it turn back this time.

「Okay, so assuming we can change it to normal, don’t you think it’s unusual for Elza’s Temple to be in this state？」

「Yup, which is why there’s gotta be a mastermind pourin’ the miasma into here.」

Everyone grew tense at Hiroshi/Haruna’s conversation. There was no way they were solving this for free.

「And based on what’s happening, there’s no way the mastermind is just sitting back.」

「They probably won’t let us go without a fight.」

「Yeah, we probably took one too many detours this time around.」

Makoto and Mio regretted their actions as they grimaced at the situation worsening. Sure, they ended up strengthening their equipment, but they had no intention initially of producing new equipment to deal with bosses, but this could have been saved for Crest Cave.

「We can mope about it later. Haruna, how about you sing the usual？」

「Oh, right. Let’s try out the first song and go from there then？」

Haruna obeyed Tatsuya and sang the lotus sutra gospel at the top of her lungs to try and cleanse something. The overwhelming power from this normal-sounding song immediately cleansed the birds/wolves that were beginning to watch, returning them to normal via euthanasia. The poison mushrooms spewing out spores twisted, dried up, and crumbled. The big trees moving around were all uprooted and dried up, the malice and miasma driven from their bodies before melting away.

All monsters within the sound distance were immediately cleansed.

「The heck is this……」

「Did Haru’s song always have this much power？」

「Her cleansing power has increased since she first sang the sutra gospel, but certainly not this much……」

Once the first song was over, the swampland all around had half returned to normal. Tatsuya and the others were all bewildered by how easy it was. Hiroshi seemed to feel differently.

「……You don’t seem surprised Sensei. Any reason why？」

「I ain’t 100% sure. Haruna-san’s craftin’ skills are quite high now though.」

「Why’s that matter? Wait, are you saying……」

「I do remember hearin’ that curse songs rely on the spirit」

Everyone immediately knew what he was getting at. Not just Haruna, but also Hiroshi had cooked nearly every say, refined iron in the forge, swung the hammer, sewed with yarn, practiced the proper potion procedures, essentially living like a craftsman. She was not only boosting her skills but also her mentality and endurance, in addition to training against mehemoths. Clearly her willpower was much stronger than in Darl.

「So it wasn’t just her becoming better at singing？」

「That too, but curse songs don’t really have proficiency, do they？」

Hiroshi glanced at Haruna quizzically. After finishing her second song she explained.

「Curse songs don’t have an acquisition process, so there is no proficiency involved. And when your proficiency goes up for chanting, you’re able to use much more resources. You just pull the activation trigger when singing a curse song and the effects come right away.」

「Whatcha mean by trigger？」

「All you do is focus on which effect you want before singing, so no bystanders would understand. I think the same goes for special stages.」

Everyone listened to Haruna’s explanation with awe. Singing and dancing were especially minor skills, though not as rare as shut-in craftsmen. Plenty of people had the skills, but those with high enough proficiency in curse songs or special dances were suddenly in the minority, while those who used such skills in battle were practically non-existent. They were difficult to use, mainly because they didn’t differentiate between enemy and ally.

「I been at this for 5 years and I still got a lot to learn……」

「Not all the skills are there at the same time either, and there are plenty of unfinished dungeons, so there probably isn’t anyone who knows everything other than the developers.」

Hiroshi mumbled about not knowing everything and Makoto likewise commented on how deep FaiChro was.

「But I do wonder whether the heart sutra gospel is categorized as a curse song or not」

「And I doubt that Haru pulls the trigger each time she sings a song」

Listening to Tatsuya and Mio’s conversation as she sang, Haruna had a rather awkward look on her face. Seeing this, Hiroshi and the others realized that Haruna never thought about much when she was singing.

「I think we have the main picture now.」

「Yup. I think Haruna-san’s purification from her songs are automatically set in as the result of an extra skill and the power relies on the attribute points and the contents of the song.」

「Probably.」

Listening to Haruna’s song, Hiroshi and Tatsuya discussed the results of the inspection. In a sense you could say that talking amongst themselves during Haruna’s singing was a sign of disrespect, but this was also to prevent any accidents when listening to her sing. Even if this was a slightly weird song when you listened to it, it was easy to get sucked into it with her skill.

During battle it was never really an issue since they were focusing on fighting, but in this situation where there were no visible enemies but they were still in a dangerous area, it was extremely dangerous to listen in. Therefore, they were having a conversation in order to distract themselves.

「Aight. Then let’s check a lil somethin’.」

「I’ll do it so that Sensei can be next to Haruna just in case.」