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Chapter 152: My First Treasure Box
Birds chirped sharply as they flew by overhead. I think I’ve seen this type in the jungle zones.
This meant that I can assume that the plants and animals here may be similar. Or at least, the trees I saw around us were of the tropical type. Maybe I could even find mandragoras here. I’d found bananatatoes already.
We should be on alert for the new types of monsters on this level. Or maybe, since we’re so deep into the dungeon, we could expect stronger, evolved forms of the monsters we’ve already seen.
“Let’s limit our exploring to this area for today.”
We hadn’t strayed too far from the fairy square yet. We needed to be cautious in any approach to a new area, and I figured I could collect our spoils there.
With my Intuition Pharmacy and Witch’s Cauldron, we could find and prepare food relatively easily. With Mei-chan here, getting large boars were a piece of cake.
I had a feeling none of our other classmates had this much ability in pure food gathering. True, they can survive with just the fairy walnuts and water from the fountain, but thinking long term, it’s healthier to add actual meat and vegetables to the menu. In other words, the difference is that it would bolster your vitality and stamina. The apparent effect may be small, but this was one of the few advantages only I had.
I’m pretty sure we’re better in that respect to the Souma Party. They basically only knew about that one type of edible snake, and maybe shrimp worms.
But there was also Tendou-kun who had the ability to figure out, at one glance, every single one of the ingredients used in my healing ointments. He should find it easy to tell what’s edible and what’s not. There was also Cannibalizer Yokomichi. He just ate anything. Those two wouldn’t be strapped for food any time soon.
“I’ll hunt down all the meat! And then, we can cook up more delicious food!”
Mei-chan gets pumped up whenever food is the topic. She was fidgeting around, using her full awareness to seek out any prey that came nearby.
“Hunting is fine and all, but I kind of want to check out some of these houses actually,”
This place was very town-like in the fact that there were aisles and aisles of houses lined up. I’d taken a peek inside some, and basically, they were either like the empty rooms we’ve seen in the dungeon so far, or had some dregs of what used to be furniture. In short, nothing of value.
Incidentally, the fairy square we landed in was actually inside a big temple-like building. I conjectured that other buildings similar to that one could house more fairy squares. Also, there were the many multistory buildings we’d yet to explore for spoils. By spoils, I mean treasure boxes.
Really, for some odd reason, I hadn’t come across one of these elusive boxes in all my time here. Like, everyone else I’ve talked to had encountered them at least once.
“Oh, right, we might find more meat to be hunted inside too.”
My greed was for treasure, while Mei-chan’s for meat. Well, I don’t mind finding more of either.
I’ve also been informed that Takanashi Kotori had a Sage skill to activate mapping mechanisms in the dungeon. I’d learned a little of the ancient tongue thanks to Yamajun, so maybe I could find some kind of item or facility I can use for that.
“Alright, let’s try checking out that warehouse, or factory (?), like place over there.”
I pointed at the biggest building around.
It had a simple box shape, with half the exterior overgrown in foliage, and thick pipes jutting out of it. The walls looked like brick while the pipes, well they should be metal since they’d gone rusted and worn down.
First we circled around the dilapidated warehouse. The front had this large gate, or maybe shutters, big enough to let in large trucks. It looked to be shut tight, with rust and overgrowth all over it. It may’ve not been locked but I didn’t want to waste the effort opening it.
There were other doors to the building. Most were shut by nature like the large gate, but one of them, we found open. This will be our point of infiltration.
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“You’re up, Rem.”
“GUGAGA!”
Rem made an energetic reply and, I guess she considered that a spear was bad for indoors fighting, took the lead with her sword in hand.
I know Mei-chan is super strong, but life is still life. We can never be too careful in the dungeon, so as Rem was practically immune to instant death traps, I’d of course send her in ahead. I could infinitely revive her as long as I had the parts.
“Guess they still have power inside.”
Technically, it wasn’t electricity but powered by mana, I suppose.
This ancient looking warehouse also had the white light panels everpresent within the dungeon. Although, most of them were dimmer, some broken, and some even flickered like they’d run out.
This building only had the rare window, so I appreciated the little light we had. I didn’t want to rely on the dim light provided by my Red Knife.
“Hmm. The place really isn’t in good shape.”
“Kotarou-kun, there’s a tree root over there, so be careful walking.”
We were walking in a dim hallway. The rooms inside weren’t too different from the once in the smaller houses. Crumbling furniture, or completely eaten up by nature.
The only things we’d gained so far would be some edible mushrooms, and a bundle of herbs. Maybe the dark and damp environment was just right for this sort of vegetation?
“GUGA.”
In the middle of our exploration, which seemed more like vegetable picking at this point, Rem stopped.
“There’s a big room up ahead. And… I can hear something inside.”
Mei-chan reported in Rem’s place. I myself couldn’t hear anything at all yet, but as a Berserker, her ears were a lot sharper.
“Either it’s students fighting monsters, or monsters fighting themselves. Let’s go have a look, preferably without whatever they are from noticing.”
We shouldn’t be asking for danger like this, but we need to at least check if there’s one of our classmates there.
We went into sneak mode, and slowly made our way to the large hall.
We stepped over the door that’d been taken off, clearly, and, I see, so this really was a factory. There were two, no three, large cylindrical silo-like things stationed inside. Angled pipes surrounded these ‘machines’, and in the ground around them, there were many broken somethings strewn about. These somethings could be the goods produced by this factory, or tools to make said good, or anything really, I had no real idea.
I was careful not to kick one accidentally and walked as silently as possible.
“OuOuUaUaa!”
“GuVeRa, Obaaahh!!”
Once inside, I could finally hear what Mei-chan was likely referring to. This sounded like, gomas, and the other one, zombies, or something like that.
“What now?”
“There’s stairs over there, let’s get a view from there.”
After we climbed the rusty stairs, there was a long pathway placed to get a perfect view of the factory as a whole. From the direction of the sounds, I surmised that the gomas were deeper inside, close to the third of the large silos. The 2nd story hallway gave us a good view of their conflict.
So I went ahead into spectator mode on their little battle.
“… They look like an elite gove unit.”
What I saw were 7 goves in combat, all with swords and war-axes. There wasn’t one goma around them, so I figured I could call them an elite unit as they were composed of fully armed goves.
Their weapons looked good quality, and all of them were also equipped with a sturdy looking bow. Their equipment itself spoke volumes of their strength.
The goves had formed a circle, and were fending off their enemies falling in from all directions. Their teamwork was also nothing to scoff at.
“Are those really zombies?”
They were a humanoid monsters like zombies, but looked macho enough to rival the builds of the elite gove warriors. Their attacks were fast and aggressive, possessing strength and agility unlike any zombie I’d ever seen.
They didn’t have skin, but red, bulging muscles all over their bodies. They had none of that decayed bone stuff going on either. Rather, I could see white exoskeleton-like parts sticking out from some areas on their bodies. Actually they didn’t look like zombies at all.
Hmm, whatever, let’s go with High Zombie.
“Ah, they’re a lot weaker than that gorilla boss, so I can beat them easy.”
She’s talking about the goliath. That, was still supposed to be a boss, so of course it was strong. But Mei-chan took it down like it wasn’t even smallfry.
Setting aside Mei-chan’s overpoweredness which can’t be a good scale to compare to at all, I personally think that high zombies would be a pretty high level opponent.
I don’t know if they were inside the factory all along or came chasing the goves, but there were dozens of them. With their numbers, they really just needed to attack mindlessly, and it looked like the gove unit was getting cornered. Against these crazed red zombies, the elite warriors were being worn down. Their numbers would surely be whittled down and then they’d be anihilated. The goves were in a state where losing even one would turn the tides against them.
“Can you take on that many high zombies?”
“No problem. They aren’t as tough bodied as they look, and their movements are simple. They’d go down if I crush the head. Actually, even one living armor is more troublesome.”
“And what about the goves?”
“I beat lots of those in the goma castle. They only think they’re strong by having weapons, but they aren’t really. Piece of cake.”
Piece of cake it is then.
This basically means that I can send Mei-chan into the fray and she’d come out with not a scratch. They’re all monsters just the same, so personally, I just want them to die ASAP.
But I’d feel like a dick if I asked Mei-chan to go into all that trouble, so, I guess I could speed things up a bit.
Alright, I need to get this timing right… Got it, this should be good enough.
“Entwine its escape, with weaving hair ――Blackhair Bind.”
Full canto. That’s been a while. I aimed, of course, for the losing side, the goves.
Blackhair Bind was a lot better in some ways to arrows or attack spells in that the caster wasn’t the point of origin. It was perfect for covert hits.
“GuBu! MuGaah!?”
With a sudden black tentacle suddenly wrapping around it’s arms and legs, one of the goves let out a desperate scream.
Goves had enough strength to tear those off easily, but currently, they were exhausted from prolonged battle with the numerous high zombies.
And now, I’d gotten it to stop moving for that one moment. And it couldn’t even rely on its fellow gove to bail it out since I’d done the same to the 6 others.
“BuGa! Guh! GeVaaaAAAAAHHH!!”
One of them shrieked as a high zombie fiercely tackled it down.
“ZeBa!? ZieGuBa ――nBaaaAAAAHH!!”
Ah, another one tried to save it and got jumped from behind.
With two of their numbers down and out, the gove’s circle formation had broken ―― Now, they would simply, and slowly, get devoured.
“You can do it~ Take as many of the zombies as you can before you die~”
As if encouraged by my little cheer, the gove that had high zombies biting down on them already, used its last remaining weapon, a knife, to finish off as many as possible.
And so, after fighting the good fight, the gove unit was indeed decimated by the high zombie onslaught. On the winning side, the zobs had also lost many of their own. There weren’t even 10 remaining.
GG, no re. I’m so moved. I’ll remember your last struggle for all my days~
“Well then, Mei-chan, Rem, handle the rest?”
“Yup!”
“GAGA!”
While the remaining zombies were feasting on their spoils, that is, the bodies of the muscle bound goves, that I guess, did have a lot of meat to them, the merciless Berserker, and the killing machine Mud Doll attacked.
Anyway, I scavenged the cores. This’d be the second time like this since Gomas Vs Pawn Ants. All their cores were small, but at least they all had them.
Since Mei-chan carried the cores of all the monsters she herself defeated with her, she had a lot stored up. But all the ones I had were ‘reappropriated’ by those homo bros Ooyama and Sugino.
I didn’t want to rely on her savings, so I made sure to collect as much as I could. I do NOT want to be a leech.
Next was collecting their gear. Although for that too, Mei-chan’s weapons were super rare class right now from Sage-tier upgrades. At least, Rem’s stuff got an improvement I guess.
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I helped myself to a spear, knive, and a small axe that looked like a tomahawk, for my mud doll.
Now that Rem was tall and had her steel wire musculature, she could easily put on a macho gove’s outerwear too. We didn’t really need the dirty clothes, but the belt with pouches and weapon holsters looked useful.
I equipped her with belts for her waist and shoulders along with the scavenged weapons.
I think the higher quality bow was one of the better loot. Rem was pretty good with her bow as of now. She was, of course, nowhere at the level of someone with an Archer Job, but she got the job done, and well. Now if I made her arrows with Spiderfrog’s Anesthesia coated on, I bet she’ll score some good kills.
I had Rem carry one bow, and I carried another as a spare for her.
There weren’t any more monsters in the factory. A few large bugs scattering around, and a snake that slipped by. That damn snake, it ran inside a crack in the wall as soon as it saw us. Mei-chan got real sad at the missed opportunity to catch it.
“Guess there wasn’t much here after all. Let’s head back after this room.”
We were on the third and top floor of the factory. At the very back of the hall, there was a room sealed with double doors. If there isn’t anything inside, this whole exploration will have been for nothing basically.
Fine then, I already know my luck never holds up in this sort of thing.
So without too much anticipation, Open Sesame. Well, not me, Mei-chan did it. Forcefully.
“Ah!… A treasure box! Kotarou-kun, look, a treasure box!”
“Eh! What, where!?”
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Once Mei-chan opened the sturdy door with a bang, she happily reported some great news.
I was like, holy guacamole, and ran in without thinking and, cough cough, the place is arid!
“Where, is it?”
Hacking on the stagnant smoke inside, I looked around and couldn’t see anything treasure box-like at all. By treasure box-like, I of course mean a large wooden chest with a key hole.
Inside the room, I could only see metal shelves that looked like lockers, and container boxes of various sizes.
“That one, that’s a treasure box.”
“Ah, oh.”
Mei-chan pointed out one of the several containers. It had a length of 1 meter, a 50 cm breadth, and a 30 cm height. The box was somewhat black, kind of like metal, but not really, well it did feel like metal though. As if it had rested there for a long time, the so-called treasure box had weedage all around it, half way up its height in fact.
Kind of, well, disappointing… But who cares, as long as I get stuff inside, we’re good.
“Hmm. It’s locked huh.”
So I dragged it away from the other containers, and started poking and prodding on it, but the lid didn’t open at all. Actually, where was the ‘lid’ anyway?
“Erm, I think they said you had to inject mana inside.”
“I see. Wait, what does that even mean, injecting ma―― Woahh!?”
Suddenly, the treasure box made a whirling sound and let off light. Blue lines of light ran along its length, and the next instant, a click, as if the lock was undone, and then the box’s top slid off.
“O-ohh…”
I was bewildered at what just happened. It seemed more scifi than magic, and the box also had the same blue glow inside.
As for what was inside…
“This, is a staff?”
It certainly seemed like a magic staff. It was like a twisting tree branch with sharp claws on the tip like an eagles foot.
“No, I’ve seen something like this before ――Ah!”
The boss in the goma fortress had this. The Explosion Stick. Other than it missing the red fire stone, this staff looked almost identical.
“Wait, what if,”
Settling down my bubbling excitement, I brought out from my bag a green ball that’d been a paperweight for a long while now. It was the wind manastone that had once been on Nishiyama-san’s own staff.
“C’mon, this has to… work!”
The claws on this new staff moved and latched onto the fist sized wind stone.
And, heart still pounding, I took a swing,
“――Aer Sagitta.”
With a whistle, a single line of wind with a faint emerald glow, shot off from the staff.
This was, without doubt, an attack spell. All this time after I’d become a shaman. For the first time ever, I used not curse, but real magic.
“Y-yes, YESS!!”
“Awesome, Kotarou-kun. Congrats.”
And so, from my first treasure box, I obtained my first magic staff.