"Let's move on ahead, since things are dangerous around here and all?"
"No objections!"
My suggestion was met with immediate agreement from everyone, and we set off.
The reason for this swift action was that the moment Jin had expressed his puzzlement over Grandpa's semi-naked state, the same kind of insect had burrowed into Jin's back. However, unlike with Grandpa, it hadn't landed directly on his back. Instead, it first landed on his head, and from there, perhaps of its own will, crawled onto his back. This gave us a window of time: first, for Jin to react to the insect on his head, then for us to spot Jin's reaction and realize what the insect was, and finally, to watch it enter Jin's back.
The insect that drew everyone else's gaze, besides Jin, was named 'cockroach'. The 'black demon' that had plunged countless humans into a vortex of terror and panic. At its sudden appearance, we panicked, scrambling to put distance between ourselves and Jin, and even drew our weapons to prevent it from getting close.
Seeing us react so excessively, Jin finally realized the true identity of the insect on his back. In the next instant, he had joined Grandpa in the ranks of the semi-naked tribe. Incidentally, the black demon that had slithered onto Jin's back was apparently caught off guard by his swift action, unable to offer any real resistance before being smashed against the ground and then trampled.
The move was partly due to our aversion to the insects, but more significantly, it was because we had entered an area with a different atmosphere than before. After all, a different atmosphere meant the possibility of obtaining materials we hadn't been able to find up until now. Therefore, everyone's walking speed was, whether consciously or not, faster... or rather, it had definitely quickened. It seemed everyone shared the desire to be the first to spot materials, and what started as a slightly brisk pace soon turned into a fast walk, then a jog, and finally a full sprint.
"Whoa!"
"Watch out!"
About a hundred meters into the run, Lina tangled her feet and almost fell. Menace stopped to help her. I and Grandpa noticed this and stopped immediately... but Jin and Garat, not paying attention to what was behind them, continued running straight ahead.
"Hmm... Perhaps we got a little too carried away."
"Agreed. It seems like there are no insects around here, so shall we take a short break?"
"That sounds good. Even if the terrain is relatively easy to run on, it's not wise to sprint through an unfamiliar place."
"Exactly! I don't have the stamina of all of you, so you need to think about that a little! ...No, um... of course, that was a joke?"
Once we had calmed down, we suggested a break, and the other three agreed. We left the two who had run off ahead to their own devices and set up for our rest. During this conversation, Lina had tried to blame us for her stumble, but when all three of us stared at her in silence, she quickly tried to play it off.
Since there were no signs of Monsters, we set out chairs and a table right there on the path and prepared some tea.
"Why didn't you guys follow?!"
"We were worried something might have happened!"
Jin and Garat, who had gone on ahead without us, returned.
"Even so, Jin and Garat ignored us and ran off on their own, you know."
"If anything had happened, you guys would've been the ones in trouble. We had Tenma and Merlin with us, so we were actually stronger than the usual Dawn Sword, if anything."
"Honestly, I think it's questionable for the leader and the scout to abandon members of their own party like that?"
"Well, by normal standards, that'd be grounds for disqualification. I've seen plenty of parties break up over stuff like this."
The two came back while trying to argue back, but we teamed up and launched a counterattack. The result:
"S-Sorry! We've reflected on it, so please give us another chance!"
They sincerely apologized with genuine remorse. Well, all we actually did to them was sit in chairs and drink tea with snacks — after the initial counterattack, we'd completely ignored them.
"So what happened up ahead?"
"Hm? Oh, the path splits after a few hundred meters."
"When we noticed no one was behind us at the fork, we came back. So we don't know what lies beyond that."
(Meaning, if there hadn't been a fork, they would've gone even further ahead.)
I thought as much, but since the conversation wasn't moving forward, I kept it to myself. Everyone besides Jin and Garat seemed to be thinking the same thing, but nobody said it out loud. However—
"No, I really am sorry, so please stop making that face!"
"We seriously feel terrible! We know we messed up, so just forgive us already!"
We hadn't said anything out loud, but apparently our faces said plenty, because the two started apologizing all over again.
"In any case, once we've rested a bit more, we'll have to head to that fork."
That's what we decided, and as we continued with idle chatter—
"Come to think of it, you gave Primera the knight-type Golem, right? Did she say anything about it?"
Lina brought up the knight-type Golem as if suddenly remembering.
"She was quite surprised. She'd noticed I was making a Golem to give to Primera, but I don't think she expected to receive three of them."
Primera had named the three knight-type Golems "Percival," "Galahad," and "Bors." Apparently, she had heard tales of knights bearing those names when she was a child.
The three had almost no difference in performance, but their roles were divided by giving each a different weapon: "greatsword and shield," "twin swords," and "spear."
"I also heard you made a Golem that looked like some kind of monster?"
The monster Lina was referring to was a Golem built using minotaur bones. Originally, it was being constructed with materials from one corpse and hydra muscle at its core, but that alone made autonomous movement difficult, so an additional set of minotaur materials was used before it was finally completed. Because of the minotaur, the Golem ended up larger than the knight-type Golems, resulting in a sluggish build that couldn't perform fine movements. However, it possessed enough power to compensate for that shortcoming, so a massive hammer was equipped as its weapon. As a result,
"If it connects cleanly, it might even be able to shatter an Earth Dragon's skull."
—that was the level of destructive force it could achieve. In practice, its sluggishness meant the target would likely dodge or take the blow during the wind-up, but if it coordinated with the knight-type Golems, it could land hits with a high probability.
"Tenma… what exactly are you aiming for? You're not secretly plotting to use your Golems to found a nation or something, are you?"
"If you offer me favorable terms, I wouldn't necessarily refuse."
"I'm not going to do something that troublesome. The King and the others asked me the same thing, and I told them then too that I had no intention of doing it."
When the King and Lyle caught wind that I'd built something interesting, they came to see the minotaur-type Golem, and the very first thing they said was, "Are you founding a country or something?" I told them it was too much of a hassle and I wasn't going to do it, but apparently I had enough military force to easily establish and maintain a small kingdom if I wanted to. Caesar, Zane, and even Duke Sanga had told me as much, so I'd been more careful lately about doing anything that might be misconstrued. Well, I do tend to forget, though.
"Speaking of Golems, I heard from the three members of the Stray Cat Princess that you once made three naked Golems."
Menace shifted the topic by bringing up a story she'd heard before about one of my blunders. For a moment I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I quickly remembered—it was from my debut battle as an adventurer.
"What! Tenma, you had a hobby like that?!"
"I have to say, that's a bit much…"
Jin was the first to react, and Garat followed him in a teasing tone. Grandpa, Lina, and Menace, who had brought up the subject, all seemed to know what had happened and were grinning ear to ear.
"That was just a little mishap… The technique was something I'd been using casually, and the models for it were either myself or Shiromaru, so it simply didn't occur to me how it would look on other people."
Since I'd done it where no one was around, I hadn't cared about my own nudity, and in Shiromaru's case, he was basically naked all the time anyway, so it never dawned on me what that would translate to with actual people.
"Come on, you totally did it on purpose, didn't you, you perverse bastard!"
Jin kept teasing me as if venting all his accumulated frustration, but… Garat, who had been standing next to him, was looking at me worriedly and had somehow slipped behind Menace and the others. Grandpa was quietly sipping his tea. Menace was avoiding eye contact with Jin, saying nothing, and Lina was busy pretending she needed to get a refill of Grandpa's tea. However—
"Garat! Menace!"
"Oh! Yeah!"
"Right on!"
"Wh-what! What are you going to do!"
When I called their names, the two immediately flanked Jin and forced him down to his knees.
"Lina!"
"Y-yes! ...Heave-ho!"
"Ouch! That was sudden!"
Lina hesitated for a moment after I called her name, but soon plucked a hair from Jin's head.
"Garat, Menace, hold him like that for a while. I'll do this... and... there!"
I took the hair from Lina, asked Garat and Menace to restrain Jin for a bit, and created a golem using human hair for the first time in a while. The result was—
"This is sexual harassment, Jin-san."
"It is undeniably sexual harassment, Jin."
"This guy is awful... in every way... pfft! Just awful!"
"Stop! Please stop! I was wrong to get carried away, so destroy them right now!"
The two females greatly disapproved, and Garat, in a sense, thoroughly enjoyed the sight of the three "Jin-type Golems (ver. Completely Naked)." And there were three of them.
"Hmm... truly a wretched sight, isn't it..."
Grandpa murmured, seeing the naked golems of Jin, then pulled his hood down to hide his hair.
"Stop it... seriously, stop it..."
Jin begged with a tearful expression and voice, so I had the naked golems sit in the corner in a cross-legged position to cover their privates for the time being.
"Now then, Jin. Here are the leftover hairs from the ones used for those golems. You understand what this means, right?"
"What are you planning to do?"
"I'll use this to make the same thing as those... and have them running through Seigen's streets. Near the golems, with someone screaming, 'Jin! Please, just put on some clothes!'"
That way, even if people who saw them up close realized they weren't human, those watching from a distance would think it looked like Jin was running around naked.
"I-If you do that, even Tenma's reputation will drop!"
Jin shouted that he'd go around telling everyone what I was doing, but—
"Which do you think will happen faster — my reputation taking a hit, or yours, along with your social standing and likeability? Besides, if I play dumb, I can keep the damage to a minimum. But even if those are fake, you'd still have witnesses... so how do you think that'll play out?"
As I said that and had the naked golems start running,
"I was completely in the wrong... please, forgive me..."
Jin finally surrendered completely.
"I won... though it was a pointless fight."
As I said that and had the naked golems stop and turn back into lumps of stone,
"If it was such a pointless fight, you should have just ended it sooner..."
"Jin never learns his lesson, does he? Well, I do think Tenma went a bit overboard too."
"Still, Jin was the one who caused this in the first place, so I can't really say he didn't have it coming... but it was overkill."
"It was entertaining to watch, at least. But if I put myself in Jin's shoes... that's terrifying."
Those were the evaluations from the other four. Pretty harsh, but I do feel I went too far, so I suppose there's no helping it. After that, through the combined plea of the other four — led by the old man — I was made to swear that I would not misuse that technique
as much
as humanly
possible.
"Even so, putting the purpose this time aside, I think that golem uses some pretty advanced technology. Why don't you use it normally?"
"Yeah, you're right. It does seem like it could have some uses, but why don't you use it?"
Lina and Menace seemed curious about why I didn't use that hair-based golem, but the answer was simple.
"Purely because it's inferior to my regular golems in every way. If I had to say something positive, I suppose you could call it superior when the golem's core is missing, or when you're using it purely for mischief."
The main drawback compared to my regular golems was, first and foremost, the time it took to create one. If you considered the process from core creation onward, you could argue it was faster than a regular golem, but the hair method couldn't be prepared in advance. With a regular golem, as long as you'd already made the core, all you had to do was pour magic power in and toss it out. Moreover, with the regular type, as long as you had the magic power to activate it and materials like rock or earth, you could produce a hundred or even a thousand simultaneously. The hair-based ones, on the other hand, had to be constructed individually on the spot.
Second was the vast difference in performance. The hair-based golems still formed their bodies from rock or earth, so they could fight ordinary humans without issue, and depending on how you used them, they could serve as perfectly capable combatants. However, even though they were golems with bodies harder than a normal human's, they were only about the same size as the human they were modeled on. Compared to a golem built with a carefully designed core, they were fragile. With strength on par with the "Dawn Sword," even Lina alone—assuming she fought with magic—could probably defeat multiple hair-based golems without breaking a sweat.
"And the third reason is that making clothes for them is a real pain. I can't exactly send them into battle completely naked, and if I'm going to spend that kind of effort, I might as well just do the work myself—it'd be more efficient. That said, if I could get my hands on enemy hair, I could probably use them as a nuisance at the very least."
For the above reasons, hair-based golems had become a forgotten technology in my repertoire.
"If you gave them armor and weapons, they'd probably be plenty strong enough, but anything you could do with them, you could do with my regular ones too. Might as well just use the kind I gave as engagement presents. Technically advanced, sure, but practically no use for them... Truly a technology that was born for mischief alone. Seriously, don't go misusing it, okay?"
Garat nodded in understanding at my reasons, then pressed the point once more that I really shouldn't use them.
"So that's the fork up ahead... Jin, get it together already! They've finally shown up!"
When we reached the fork that Jin and Garat had been heading toward, the long-awaited new Monster appeared right from that very path. It was a lizard about a meter long, resembling a Komodo dragon. It seemed to have noticed us too, flicking its tongue in and out as it sized us up.
"Go, Jin! Strike first and win—blow off some steam!"
I'd apparently pushed him a bit too hard earlier, because Jin was trailing behind me radiating what could only be described as a dark aura, like he might stab me in the back at any moment. This was the perfect outlet for that frustration, so, entirely uninvited, I decided to sacrifice the lizard that had appeared before us as an offering to Jin.
"Guaaaaah—!"
Jin charged at the Monster, channeling all his accumulated stress into raw power.
"Old man, that Monster doesn't drop any particularly good materials, right?"
"The hide should fetch a decent price, but the meat is smelly and tough—hardly a valuable creature."
"Well, normally if the hide is worth gold, the meat comes second, but..."
"I suppose from Tenma and Merlin's perspective, delicious meat matters more than a moderately priced hide."
"Indeed. As someone who has benefited from their generosity many times over, I should be grateful for their priorities."
While we were chatting and watching Jin, a pack of what appeared to be his fellow lizards came pouring out of the same passage the first one had appeared from. Incidentally, the first lizard that showed up had already lost its head to Jin in a single strike.
"One... two... three..."
"They just keep on coming... Well, every last one of them is ganging up on Jin, though."
"Jin can handle it."
"It might be unconscious, but he's aiming perfectly for just the neck or head every time..."
"Could it be that all that moping around earlier was just an act?"
"If so, he's a real handful... Not cute at all, though." And so on. Despite the fact that Jin was putting up a remarkably impressive performance, for some reason his reputation kept steadily declining.
"YEAHHH!"
After felling over a dozen more lizards, the entire pack was wiped out, and Jin let out a victorious roar. But the looks Garat and the others gave him were ice-cold.
"Wh-what?"
"Oh, it's nothing. More importantly, you should hurry up and pack those lizards into your bag. Other Monsters might come drawn by the smell of blood."
Jin was startled by their cold stares, but since it would be a pain if his mood soured again, I decided to redirect his attention from Garat and the others toward the lizards instead.
"I'll store them in my Magic Bag for now, but these are all yours, Jin. Just remember the count."
When I said that, Jin suggested that maybe half
should be divided among everyone,
but since I was the one from Orasion who had pushed the subjugation onto them, and Jin was the one who had actually defeated them all, Grandpa and I declined our share, and Garat and the others also waived their rights as the Dawn Sword, so it was decided that Jin would cash everything in under his own name once we returned to the surface.
"Still, it was quite the shock when a whole pack of lizards showed up out of nowhere."
"Indeed. Perhaps that vertical shaft we found earlier was a feeding ground for those lizards."
The lizards Jin had defeated seemed capable of staying active for extended periods even on minimal food. On top of that, insects grew quickly, bred easily, and were highly nutritious — so from the lizards' perspective, those bugs must have looked like quite the feast.
"So those cockroac... things actually served some purpose after all. I'd rather not think too hard about it, though... But more importantly, there's no guarantee that only lizards will show up from here on, and I'd say they're definitely stronger than the skeletons and rotting-flesh Golems we saw above. We need to tighten up and stay sharp as we push forward."
We psyched ourselves back up and decided to push forward with the raid, discussing briefly before heading toward the path the swarm of lizards had come from. As a result,
"That vertical shaft must have been just one of several."
We found several holes similar to the one we had descended through. At the same time, we ran into multiple swarms of what appeared to be reptilian Monsters that fed on the insects living there.
Most of them were the same species of Monster as the lizards Jin had defeated, but we also found creatures resembling geckos, frogs, and snakes. They were all small, under a meter in size, and ranked by threat level they went: lizards, snakes, geckos, frogs.
The snakes had a shape similar to anacondas, but the largest one we saw was only about a meter long and didn't appear to be venomous. The geckos were slightly smaller still, averaging around eighty centimeters, and they would try to hide and wait us out unless we attacked or startled them. However, they were so good at hiding that we would accidentally step on or touch them without realizing, so we had to stay alert for surprise encounters. As for the frogs,
"They've got rather charming faces, don't they?"
"They look cute, depending on how you see it."
"They might even become popular as pets?"
Or something like that. They were just under fifty centimeters in size, and unlike the 'Mud Poison Frog' we had subdued before, their tongue attacks were weak—even a direct hit only stung a little. Their appearance was essentially a tree frog scaled up.
"Keeping them as pets would be difficult, but they'd certainly be considered cute compared to other Monsters. They probably prey on insects, but at the same time, they're also prey for lizards and snakes."
Smaller individuals were probably eaten by even the larger geckos, but perhaps their surprising agility was what kept them from being wiped out entirely. Or, much like salamanders, they might have been escaping by climbing along walls and ceilings that lizards and snakes couldn't easily ascend.
"So maybe we should ignore the geckos and frogs as much as possible. Fortunately, they just hide as long as we don't bother them."
If we kept hunting every Monster we encountered, it would upset the ecosystem, and the insects might end up spilling into the upper dungeon levels. Lizards and snakes that came after us were one thing, but the geckos and frogs that didn't attack should be left alone as the insect exterminators they were. Besides, they didn't seem to hold much value as materials.
That said, the raid had started off smoothly, but fatigue was gradually setting in. The reason was the faint presence of Monsters. The frogs and geckos were hard to detect without using 'Detection,' and the lizards and snakes could approach without making a sound, leading to several heart-stopping moments. Most troublesome of all, though, was the insects. Their habitat wasn't limited to the vertical shafts, so if you let your guard down, you could get hit head-on by one dropping from the ceiling.
However, unlike the upper levels, there was no stench from the rotting-flesh Golems, so we could rest on the spot whenever we got tired. Because of that, we decided it was time to attempt our first camp.
Up until now, the smell had made resting impossible no matter what, but this time, as long as we watched out for the hidden geckos, frogs, and even the insects, we could rest inside a space walled off with earth, just like we had done in the dungeon where the Hydra had been.
"Alright, here's the procedure I came up with. First, we create an isolated space with magic. Then we fill that space with insect-killing smoke. After that, we cool the inside down until ice forms. Once that's done, we rest inside. That's it."
"That sounds good, but when you burn the smoke, it'd be better to make air holes in the top and bottom of the wall. If you blow wind through the bottom hole with magic, the insects might escape through the top, and it could help drive away the bugs in the surrounding area too."
If we kept it sealed while burning the smoke, it might not spread evenly throughout the space, or it might die out halfway through. On top of that, we'd have to deal with the insects that couldn't escape. So Grandpa's advice was to let as many as possible leave on their own. Menace and Lina jumped to agree with that suggestion, especially the part about not having to deal with the bugs, so we decided to build the wall first and then make the holes.
"Alright, let's light it up."
"Garat, give it your all! And if anything goes wrong, Tenma'll handle it!"
Grandpa and I still had the tasks of blowing in wind, cooling the interior, and raising the temperature left to do, so producing the smoke was taken on by Jin and Garat. Apparently Garat was better suited for that kind of work, so Jin just stood behind him cheering. Meanwhile, since Menace and Lina weren't needed for the smoke operation, they stayed with us, and the two of them stared at us with weirdly heightened excitement in front of the fire.
"I aired the place out, but the smell of smoke is still lingering."
"Well, compared to the stench of rot, it's rather pleasant."
After finishing the planned work and sealing up the holes in the wall, we brought out the carriage as usual and began preparing to camp. Normally when camping outdoors, the women and men would split up to rest separately, but since this time we were inside a dungeon, we divided the carriage interior with partitions to share. At that point, Jin teased me with something like, "You just got engaged and you're going to sleep in the same place as other women?!" and with the majority voting in favor, Jin's sleeping spot was decided to be outside.
And so, the first camp of the new dungeon's conquest took place.
Incidentally, several days later we returned to the surface... When we got back, we were stunned to find that rumors of our deaths were spreading.
The cause was the camping itself — since we had been returning to the surface almost daily up until that point, suddenly not showing up for several days led people to believe we had died.