Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Four: Dealing with the Dragon 3
When Karen came to, she was lying outside the boss room on the tenth floor. She was wrapped not only in her own mantle but in a knight’s mantle as well. The scent that drifted to her nose told her whose it was before she even had to think about it—it was Julius’s—and Karen smiled to herself and buried herself deeper into the folds.
“If you’re awake, get to work, Karen.”
“…Okaaay.”
Called out by Licht, who was apparently somewhere nearby, Karen had no choice but to stir herself and start moving.
“Karen, you’re welcome to keep resting. Licht, please don’t force Karen to work after she lost consciousness.”
“Julius, she’s here as a party member, and she made a promise to do her part. I make it a principle to treat party members as equals regardless of rank.”
“Master Licht is right on this one, Mr. Julius. Please don’t worry on my account.”
“Karen…”
Karen sat up and shivered. The dungeon was as bitterly cold as ever. But thanks to the mantle Julius had draped over her and the campfire nearby, her teeth weren’t chattering.
It wasn’t only cold—simply existing in this place carried a faint, constant ache. If she stayed on this floor much longer, her body would begin to take damage again before long. But Karen pretended she was fine and got herself moving.
“What happened to Little Lumi?”
The riding dragon that had been tethered near the pillar on the tenth-floor side of the gate to the ninth floor was nowhere to be seen. Karen looked around, and Licht answered:
“She’s on the ninth floor now. The black dragon’s presence scared her half to death.”
“Since the two of you look unharmed… You already defeated it, right?”
The black dragon. An S-rank monster capable of speech. The fact that it could talk had left a small ache in her chest—but Karen pushed the feeling down and said it plainly, and Julius nodded.
“Yes. Its body is in the tenth-floor boss room. If there are any materials you need, we could collect them now while we have the chance.”
Karen’s eyes went wide.
“Why are you asking me about materials from a monster the two of you defeated?!”
“If you are a party member, distribution is only natural, Karen. Isn’t that right, Licht?”
“Well, when you put it that way, yeah.”
“But… really? Is that all right?”
Julius nodded with a bright smile, and even Licht shrugged and nodded along. Karen set up the alchemical cauldron over the fire and swiftly disposed of any lingering sympathy for the black dragon.
“I’d like as many parts as possible, please. A good variety.”
“For alchemical experiments, I assume. You may have my share as well, for your research.”
“That’s too much, Mr. Julius! Please keep your share for yourself!”
“Not at all. I had always intended to offer whatever I obtained at the hunting festival to you. So the materials from the wendigo—the tenth-floor boss I defeated alone—are entirely yours.”
“Oh my goodness…!”
Karen’s heart raced at the thought of all the things she might attempt with an enormous quantity of extraordinarily high-grade materials. Faced with this dreamlike situation, she had no room left to feel sorry for any monsters. The black dragon had tried to eat her at first, after all. It had even identified her as the weak point of the party and deliberately targeted her.
If Karen hadn’t had the presence of mind to negotiate with it, she might have had her heart stopped by that very first roar. Julius would probably have protected her from that—she had a feeling he would have—but she knew it instinctively: that roar hadn’t been directed at Karen. That was why she had only fainted. If it had been aimed solely at her, she had no idea what might have happened.
— When she returned to the surface, she would have to honor the deal she had made with the black dragon.
“I’m taking the black dragon’s spine, by the way!”
“What do you use a spine for?”
“I’m going to have it made into a sword. Dragon fangs are the famous choice for dragon swords, but a dwarf once told me that from the especially long vertebrae of the dorsal spine—only a handful of which can be taken from a single dragon—you can forge a truly exceptional blade.”
“Oh, interesting. I’d like one too, if I may—I want to make a sword for Mr. Julius.”
“If it’s for Julius, sure.”
“You needn’t bother on my account—”
“Yes, we do.”
“Yes, we do!”
Karen bumped her fist against Licht’s. When it came to Julius, they always seemed to be of the same mind. Julius sighed.
“I don’t wish you to be at odds with each other—but being too friendly doesn’t sit entirely well with me either.”
“The fact that you say something like that so honestly shows how much you’ve let your guard down around Master Licht. Honestly, I’m a little jealous.”
“I’m the one who feels awkward being stuck between the two of you!”
Licht shouted that and retreated to the ninth floor. Likely to go to the restroom.
“So we’ll wait for the knights to join us and then carry the black dragon and the wendigo back together?”
Once the monster in a boss room was defeated, the dungeon remained calm for a while. In particular, the boss room stayed safe until the boss revived, so the corpse could be left there for some time.
In the royal capital’s dungeon, when an adventurer defeated a boss on, say, the tenth floor, nearby adventurers would gather and help carry the body back together. But the deeper floors—the twentieth, the thirtieth—saw almost no adventurers, and the bosses tended to be massive, so even after a boss was defeated, it often couldn’t be retrieved immediately. The raid party would return to the surface first, celebrate, and then form a new party or clan to go back and retrieve the body.
The wendigo had been quite a large specimen, and the black dragon had been even larger. Even with Licht and Julius each carrying one, there would be limits. Julius nodded at Karen’s question.
“Yes. And before we head back, there’s something I want to do.”
“Something you want to do?”
“The truth is, I came here once as a child.”
Julius mentioned it with almost startling ease. It had never been a secret for him to begin with. Karen listened quietly.
“And so—”
“Hey, Lumi! I’m coming back this way, so if you want to stay with me, then you come over too!”
“Gyuruuuu…!”
Lumi, though still tethered to the tenth floor, had fled with only its body to the ninth floor and was biting onto Licht’s cloak; half of Licht’s body stuck out from the tenth-floor gate while only Lumi’s neck protruded from the other side. Watching the desperate tug-of-war between man and beast, Julius fell silent.
“I wonder what would happen to Master Licht’s body if the dungeon gate closed right at this moment.”
“Don’t think terrifying thoughts out loud!”
“Gyuru!”
Karen vented her frustration at having Julius’s story interrupted by unleashing a chain of frightening scenarios, all the while continuing to make her curry. Now that she looked closely, both Julius and Licht had equipment in terrible condition—their clothes were torn in places, as though bitten or slashed through. Licht in particular had quite a sizable hole blown clean through his midsection, and the unblemished skin visible beneath it was clearly the result of a healing potion.
Since both of them had already used their healing potions, Karen combined what little food she had on hand with solid roux and produced yet another new panacea for them.
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