Floor B2
At first glance, this floor seemed to be the same as the one before, until Nellie’s fur stood on end. “Lady Shino…” she said, “this area… I sense the presence of strong monsters here.”
And true to her suspicion, the place was crawling with monsters that we hadn’t seen before. Fortunately, though, no high-level monsters that would give us trouble. “Still, even if it’s all small fry, it’s annoying to have to slog through all of them…” I muttered.
Nellie was suddenly suspiciously silent.
“Nellie? What’s wrong?” I asked. “You’re staring at your hands.”
“I just saw a blade mantis and felt nostalgic,” she said. “Back then, Lady Shino weakened them so I could deliver the killing blow… now, I can defeat it one-on-one.”
“Ah, right,” I said, “Operation ‘Power Level’.”
“Operation what level now?” Dan asked, interested.
“As I was level 1 then and Lady Shino wanted me to change classes as soon as possible, she killed 17 Horned Wolfs, 44 Blade Mantises, and 1 Death Mantis with me.”
“… That’s quite the situation you got yourselves in…” Dean says nervously.
“Yeah, it was a real surprise,” I said, “I didn’t expect my [Monster Bait] would be so effective, pulling in a rare species like that among the usual ones.”
We proceeded to clear nine rooms worth of monsters and eventually came out to a massive hall. “Hey, do you think this is the end of this floor?” I asked.
“Looks like it!” Dan said.
A magic circle suddenly appeared in the center of the hall, constantly blinking and summoning monsters around it.
“… Aa-aand, of course, it couldn’t be that easy…” Dan continued with a sigh.
Soon, the hall became a hellish scene, almost overflowing with monsters. “Hordes of blade mantises with the man-eater worms… four Death Mantises to take down…” Dan muttered. “It’s like a terrible joke.”
“Rare monsters…” Dean muttered. “I can’t fight four of them at once! And there seem to be multiple magic circles, even!”
“I and Dean will be our shields!” I yelled. “Nellie, use [Fire Ball] and ignore the MP cost, just fire away! Dan, shoot anything that breaks through!”
“Understood!” Dean cried. “[Aegis], [Provoke]… if you monsters do not fear this holy blade, Evil Breaker, then come forth!”
“As you wish!” Nellie cried. “[Fire Ball]! [Fire Ball]! [Fire Ball]! [Fire Ball]! [Fire Ball]…!”
“Leave it to me!” Dan said. “[Double Shot], [Snipe] [Bullseye]… let’s go!”
As before, I made a wall of monsters with [Shadow Bind/Break] and parried and dodged the rest. The Death Mantises were at the back, so there’s no risk of them breaking through just yet.
Fortunately, the horde of 40 or so demon beasts got thinned out in record time. Unfortunately, the Death Mantises were finally coming towards us. One of them brought its scythes down on Dean.
Whoosh! Clang!
“Gah!” Dean cries as he just barely blocks it with his shield.
I aimed at it and used [Shadow Bind/Break]. The Death Mantis froze for a few seconds, Dean cast [Assault], Dan shot it with his crossbow, and Nellie’s [Light Bullet] finished it off.
“Alright!” Dean yelled. “One down!”
“Keep your guard up!” Dan yelled. “The Death Mantises are coming in through the gap!”
The three other Death Mantises are all grouped up, slicing into each other as they try to tear down the walls of corpses. Normally this would be an unfortunate turn of events, but for me, it’s an opportunity.
They wouldn’t be so tough if I could deal with them all-at-once.
“Dean, hold for 3 minutes—no, 1 minute!” I said before I readied [Steel-rending Double Slash], jumped into the Death Mantises range with the help of [Sword Parry].
“Ms. Shino!?” Dean yells. “This is insane!”
“Time to go all out~!” I hum. “[Steel-rending Double Slash]! [Steel-rending Double Slash]! [Steel-rending Double Slash]! [Steel-rending Double Slash]! [Steel-rending Double Slash]! [Steel-rending Double Slash]…!”
[Steel-rending] skills’ key feature is its ability to bypass armor. However, it consumes a lot of MP and it’s not possible to spam it like this… unless you had my cheat ability and an infinite amount of mana coursing through me from Earth.
“You’re finished!” I cried. “[Steel-rending Double Slash]!”
With the seventh cast, the last of the Death Mantises fall, the room echoing as its body crashes to the ground.
Walter’s POV
“I should definitely help her out, right?” I muttered to nobody in particular.
Ms. Shino gave me enough money to buy equipment, plus that ninja dog summon.
I look at Laurina and Mavin, fast asleep. “Yeah, I shouldn’t wake them up from their nap,” I say as I sneak up to their bedside table. “I should just leave two gold coins behind.”
With the rest, I can buy some quality leather armour. I could afford a cheap magic weapon if there was a sale, too. By myself, I could kill one or two goblins even with my old rusty dagger. But to be of help to Ms. Shino…
… Right, let’s go to the armor store, then dive into the dungeon. And wouldn’t it be so cool if I came to their rescue?
{And so, without considering that he’d more likely be a load than a helping hand and geared in leather armour and a magic dagger, Walter stepped onto the magic circle, an hour after the party had entered.}
End Walter’s POV
With the Death Mantises and the monster horde dead, we wrecked the floor where the summoning magic circles had been installed to ensure they wouldn’t start up again. We also recovered two Death Mantis magic gems.
Meanwhile, Dan started investigating another suspicious area, sticking close to the right side of the hall. “This is… yep, no doubt about it: it’s a secret entrance,” he said. “Right, time to open it,” he said as he pushed an almost invisible depression on the wall.
A section of it moved, revealing the entrance to a room. We all came over to help investigate.
It was small, about 10 tatami mats wide with a desk, a chair, and four cabinets.
“Hey… are these human bones…?” I said as I noticed various bones scattered around the chair. Upon further inspection, there were remains of luxurious clothes over them, if discolored and worn.
No matter how used to death and violence I had gotten since coming to this world, it was a bit much for me… maybe I wasn’t as used to it as I thought I was?
“From the clothing, it might have been a noble,” Dean said. “I believe I saw something similar to the crest on these clothes back at the mansion.”
“You do?” I said. “Your memory’s amazing, Dean.” (I’m not very confident in my memory, so I meant that honestly.)
Dean put his hand to the back of his head and said, “No, no, it’s just a noble’s duty.”
Or was Dean a nobleman himself? It would certainly make sense as he was a Holy Knight.
We investigated more thoroughly, found 9 scrolls, 5 moderate heal potions in a cabinet, a diary in a desk drawer, and 1 ring still on a finger bone.
Dan examined the scroll and scowled. “Ahh, some of these skill scrolls… I was hoping for something lower quality.”
“Why?” I asked. “Can’t you get some value out of them.”
“Nope,” Dan replied. “I can’t use them myself and the level restriction is ‘50 or above’ which is so rare there’s basically no demand on the market.”
“Ah, so what does it do?”
“It lets you imbue the scroll with a skill and pass them onto others,” Dan explained. “Bypasses class restrictions, too.”
“But isn’t that an incredible effect?!” I say.
Dan sighed. “Most people who reach level 50 are government officials at the highest levels or they live in secret, secluded areas. Even if I could speak to them, I doubt I can convince them to let me have one of their skills.”
Meanwhile, I’ve got skills aplenty. I wondered if I should give Nellie one of them.
“So that’s how it is…” I mutter. “How much do they go for?”
“About 50 silver coins if it’s blank,” Dan replied. “If there is a skill already written on it, the price will vary depending on what, exactly.”
It seems like they’d fetch pretty high prices if we sold them.
“Lady Shino, please have a look at this,” Nellie said as she brought me the diary. “If you read the first few pages, it seems that the body was the nobleman who used to live on your land. However, the rest is in an ancient language I can’t read.”
I took a look at the diary and found the language resembled English somewhat… I can understand some of the words, but aside from those, I was lost.
Fortunately, Dan could read and write in ancient languages, so translated it easily. I was loving him more and more.
The contents were as follows:
The nobleman, Baron Dowan, was also a magician and happened to stumble on a “Dragon Vein” by chance.
A dragon vein is a point where large streams of mana intersect and pool together. Based on a certain magical theory, anything built on top of it becomes supercharged with magic; so, by creating the dungeon here, Baron Dowan took advantage of the effectively infinite mana by building an automatic monster summoning system.
“Ha, not the most original idea in the world,” Dan said. “Normal dungeons are usually built on top of dragon veins, too.”
The key difference, however, was that Baron Dowan found a way to connect this dungeon deep in the mountains to Port Sazan where he lived, by dedicating a small part of the mana to the magic circle. The monsters that escaped to Port Sazan were trapped within a certain range around the property, but he’d secretly start increasing the radius.
Eventually, an army of monsters would flood the city with the citizens and the government none the wiser, and Baron Dowan would seize power shortly after.
“But before that happened, the Baron died in his hidden room,” Dan continued. “Seems he had a heart attack while he was on his chair, leaving only the magic circles behind.”
“How horrifying,” Dean said, frowning. “It was fortunate that the only magic circle connected to the city was on Floor 1.”
I’m with him on that. It would have been a nightmare if it was Floor B2 instead.
“So is there a way to turn off the magic circles?” I asked.
“According to the pages, to do that you’d need the magic tool that controls them, which seems to be hidden on Floor B3,” Dan said.
“B3?” I asked. “There were no passages or stairs back at the hall, right?”
“In cases such as this, it’s always good to check the cabinets,” Dan said as he casually examined one of them.
Doon! Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-gh…
It slid away and revealed another staircase leading deeper underground.
“Let’s delve a little deeper…” Dan said.
As a former gamer, I had a bad feeling about this.
Walter’s POV
“Wow… did Ms. Shino do all this…?” I said as I stared at the piles of dead goblins spread out before me.
One of them wasn’t dead and tried to slash at me, but it was no problem. My leather armour didn’t let its rusty dagger sink at all, and my new magic dagger cut deep into its flesh.
“Alright! I’m feeling confident! Let’s keep going!” I said as I went down the stairs just beyond.
“The conventional wisdom is that the deeper you go, the stronger the enemies get…” I whispered to myself.
I’m sorry for betraying your trust, Ms. Shino. But I can’t worry about those things while I’m here.
When I reached the bottom, the dungeon was now clearly man-made, with smooth walls, passages of the same sizes. I walked around for a bit but found nothing at all. They twisted and turned so much it almost felt like a maze…
I wondered if I was going to be lost and wandering this place forever. Just as I did, however, I found a staircase leading down.
I didn’t see any monsters on this floor, either. Did Ms. Shino defeat all of them? If things keep going like this, I’d have been of no help at all and I’m just wasting time up here.
“I have to hurry,” I said as I took the stairs two at a time.
Walter POV End
ruff Translations 
What an idiot.
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