Chapter 101 - How to Use Lanuvel

[8th Round] How to Use Lanuvel

The sewer wasn’t made sloppily

If we opened the manhole cover and went down the installed stairs, there was really the draining function for rain and fountain water.

But,

“It’s messy.”

It didn’t seem like the Fairy King, who acted like a clean freak, would secretly hide his wife’s underwear in such a dirty place. Not just the Fairy King, anyone with a weak stomach would go back in disgust after coming here out of curiosity.

But I was a 20-years veteran hero who had experienced all kinds of hardships.

This much didn’t bother me at all.

“Mr Hero. This place is too artificial.”

“I know. There’s not even a slime here.”

Slimes lived everywhere, just like bacteria.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the ecosystem wouldn’t be able to be established in the fantasy world, in which the killers and hunters were clumsy at cleaning up the mess after they were done, without slimes. Because slimes ate anything and everything.

For example, bandits would usually kill people and just throw the corpse carelessly off the side of a mountain road, the corpse wouldn’t decompose and spread infectious diseases. Wild animals or monsters also sometimes ate the corpses, but for special cases such as when the corpses were in pitfall traps or were poisonous, it would be up to slimes. The corpses would disappear completely around the time it started to decompose.

It was the same for the city sewage facility.

If it was the earth, the pollution would’ve been purified through various methods such as filtering, electrolysis, precipitation, chlorination, flocculation and so on.

Of course, maintaining the facility would require a constant flow of funds. That was why it would be regularly inspected to see if the money spent was used for purification properly, residents’ petitions to change the system, and complaints about the land value falling were also received…

But slimes took care of those all here in the fantasy world. They only needed to make a sewer and without doing anything else slimes would grow naturally and propagate, then they would handle the sewage and the other things by themselves.

And slimes that leveled up like this would be good EXP for beginner adventurers too.

In other words, slimes lived anywhere. So this sewer, where no slimes were to be found, was abnormal.

“Uuh…… Lanuvel was going to say this. There’s really nothing Mr Hero doesn’t know.”

“Of course. I…”

…was going to say that I have 20 years of experience, but stopped myself.

On Earth, people tend to get treated better at their workplace when they had a long experience, but my heart only felt heavier the longer my experience was.

“What were you going to say, Mr Hero?”

“Nothing. Just follow me.”

“Yes! Mr Hero!”

This place was made messy on purpose. If it wasn’t on purpose, then there was no reason to keep the beneficial monsters for the world like worms, slimes, etc from living here.

Lanuvel and I kept moving along the sewer. There were no footprints on the sewage that was piled up on the ground, hinting that it had been a long time since anybody last came here.

The stench gradually got worse as if it was warning us to not proceed further. \n Even my useless skills leveled up. Chefs were continuously trying hard to level up the grade of their Sense of Smell skill, but for me this wasn’t something to be happy about at all.

The stench got even worse.

So I just blocked my Sense of Smell.

Peace–

“Awoooo…”

Lanuvel was blocking her nose with her hands when her face turned pale. We would be okay if we got used to it but until then we needed to struggle in this stench.

“Hmm. Is it an underground maze being shielded by the stench?”

I stopped in front of a forked road.

The Elfheim Kingdom’s Royal Palace garden’s underground sewer had a really similar structure to a dungeon, only that there were no monsters coming out.

Usually people would get stuck here. But there would be no problem with a professional grave robber around.

“Mr Hero, this way.”

“Then it must be that way.”

I went to the other fork, not the one Lanuvel pointed at.

“Eh?! Why?!”

“It’s a secret.”

This was also the wisdom coming from long experience. Lanuvel had the habit of swaying her butt gently when she was telling me the wrong direction on purpose to satisfy her curiosity.

Why did she lie?

She knew that if we kept going straight there would be a trap waiting for us, but she was curious what kind of trap that was. In the 1st round we got buried alive under a collapsing dungeon because of that dangerous curiosity.

“You’re not coming?”

“Uuh… no, I’m going with you.”

I kept taking the lead as Lanuvel’s guide after that. If she swayed her butt, I went in the opposite direction. If she stayed still, I followed what she said. Thanks to that, we found our way out of the underground sewer maze at once without falling into any trap or dead-ends.

Professional grave robber Lanuvel.

Trying to get me off guard while acting cute, her personality was trash. But she was really good at finding the way.

By the time we reached the end of the maze, the dirty sewer also ended. Since nobody would think this place was a normal sewer if they’d come all the way here. It became the real dungeon after the sewer disguise was removed. However it wasn’t possible yet to specify the type.

Labyrinth, ruins, nest, tomb, den, shrine……

We would naturally find out if we went deeper.

“The door’s blocked by a cipher.”

A huge door was blocking our way.

It was the turn of the archeologist, philosopher, magician and so on, who had studied the ancient language passed down since a long time ago in Fantasia, to step in.

I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but it was Lanuvel’s main job.

“This lithograph is written in the ancient language. Whoaa! It’s fascinating. I can’t believe I’m seeing the South Continent’s oracle bone script in the Central Continent. Thought it’s not strange at all if we take the fact that the South Continent is the Fairies’ hometown into consideration. Hmm. Were the fairies of the Elfheim Kingdom immigrants from the South Continent? If it’s true then this is an amazing discovery…”

“Lanuvel.”

“Yes, Mr Hero!”

“Shut up and just read.”

“Uuh… I’m sorry. Then I’ll translate the content on the lithograph and try to solve the cipher on the door.”

“Nevermind the cipher.”

“Pardon me?”

“Just quickly find what the fairies are hiding behind there and stuff like the precautions to take while we rob the grave.”

“Then please wait a moment~”

Lanuvel started to scan through the lithograph quickly.

This ability of hers wasn’t a skill.

Although she must’ve had an assistant skill like intellect that raised her ability to memorize, the ancient language wasn’t something that one could just learn just because they had good memory. We’d have to be familiar with the culture, slang, grammar, history etc used in society in those days.

Something that was even more annoying?

The language wasn’t systemized.

You needed to know how to understand the phrases and sentence structures that changed a bit or totally in every area and time period, like dialects.

That was why it was beyond my power. This was the territory that couldn’t be taken care of even with Interpretation A.

“It says that we shouldn’t open the door out of curiosity since an ancient devil is locked in here. But it seems like it tells us to either solve this lithograph’s cipher or smear the blood of the noble Fairy King’s, not a mixed breed, on the door handle if we still want to get in.”

“Ancient devil…”

It was a lie.

If such a powerful devil was really locked in there, it would’ve been caught by my Demon King’s devil detection ability. Therefore, there was no devil here in this basement.

We should see it as some ancient thing that was as evil as a devil.

“I think the riddle would take some time. What about going up for a moment and using the Fairy King’s blood?”

“He’s dead.”

“There’s Princess Sylvia.”

“She’s… ahh, she has pure royal blood, come to think of it.”

I forgot since she behaved like a violent beast.

“Mr Hero. What would you do?”

“Of course…”

Ppyong!

I summoned the Holy Sword Nucleon.

The fact that there was no warning that we shouldn’t destroy the door showed that they were confident it wouldn’t be destroyed by any means. Of course there also wouldn’t be things like traps that get triggered the moment the door gets destroyed.

Then there was nothing to hesitate over.

“That’s the Holy Sword that cut off Alex’s Holy Magic Sword SwordMaster in a single stroke…” Lanuvel muttered to herself.

“Look carefully.” I grinned and cut the door with Nucleon.

It wasn’t cut frictionlessly like soft tofu —perhaps because it was thick, but it was better that way. Because it had the sensation of cutting cheese.

Sseuk-

And I kicked it after I was done cutting.

Koong!

A passageway that people could go through appeared.

“The Holy Sword is like a cheat! Lanuvel thought Lanuvel finally could play an active role. Uuh…”

I ignored Lanuvel’s scolding.

I almost cut down Lanuvel on a whim when she pouted like a carp acting all cute, but I held myself back with superhuman endurance.

Endurance F → Endurance E

I knew this because I’ve gone through it, that skill was useless.

It seemed like it assisted Fantasy natives to the point they could even endure terrible tortures, but it didn’t help me at all.

Anyways,

“It seems like we’re almost there.” My 20 years of experience whispered to me that it was coming to an end.

The stench, maze and cipher were followed by a puzzle, searching for a key, hitting a target, and avoiding a trap. But everything was equal in front of the Holy Sword Nucleon.

“Mr Hero, it doesn’t feel like an adventure…”

Lanuvel, who got kicked in the butt by me after getting caught purposefully stepping on a trap, let out a groan.

“Do we have to fall in a trap and roll around busily for it to be an adventure? Lanuvel. If you want to roll that bad should I make it so you can do it here?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

After silencing Lanuvel, I kept walking through the wide underground plaza. It had been damp and dark all the way here. But this place was quite bright and dry. It was because thousands of fire spirits were flying around like fireflies. Not only fire spirits; earth, wind, water, and heart spirits also. Five kinds of spirits were playing around.

Before I got into this place.

Now all the spirits were watching me.

The underground square’s walls were full of drawings of spirits and fairies getting along together, many statues of fairies and spirits standing next to each other were also seen. Though some of them were horribly destroyed.