Volume 4 Chapter 4.3 (1/2)

Volume 4 Chapter 4.3

「I really am grateful for your hard work.」

Igreos bowed to Hiroshi once after he said that. Finding it a little baffling that a god would do something like that, Hiroshi just returned to his work and then got to finishing the outer wall maintenance as pledged before looking inside…

「Whoa……」

「Mm, it appears to be still thrashing around.」

In the center of all the junk that used to be the treasury, there was an evil god fragment attempting to crush the barrier that Igreos had erected.

「Before repairin’ this or anything, don’t we gotta do somethin’ bout that？」

「Aye」

「Even I feel like I’d lose my sanity if I weren’t next to Igreos-sama right now, so I bet regular priests/faculty wouldn’t be able to take it.」

Looking at the wriggling evil god fragment, Hiroshi, Igreos, and Nazaria continued their conversation while grimacing. Honestly, you would have to possess a sharp mental game like Hiroshi or Igreos’ direction protection like Nazaria in order to keep your sanity. Of the members from the Japanese team, Mio could probably handle it somehow, but the other three, probably not, unless they had a preventive measure.

「Well, since we obviously gotta erect a barrier to prevent anything leakin’ outside, Igreos-sama, do ya gotta holy elemental offensive strengthening field or somethin’ you can make?」

「Aye, as I am a god. That is the most basic of basics.」

「Then followin’ past procedures, how ‘bout we play Haruna-san’s sutra gospel on repeat.」

By this point, Haruna’s song was essentially being treated like a talisman or like the salt in pickles. Nazaria inwardly expressed her deepest sympathy.

「Now I’ll just fill in the crevices that stick out ‘n then coat the surface with a sheet, I guess.」

「Aye. Please do.」

Since Igreos gave his stamp of approval, Hiroshi moved the work along speedily. Igreos’s barrier (which outclassed Aearis’s holy offensive strengthening barrier) forced the evil god fragment to pour all of its remaining energy into maintaining its life force, now unable to interfere with the outside at all.

Rewinding a bit to the time Hiroshi was relaxing with some tea on break.

「We should be at the first poison gas region soon.」

「About how far do we have?」

「According to the map, that tunnel over there makes a turn, and it’s right at the end there. The spacious room ahead is completely filled with it.」

The dungeon crawl with Haruna’s group was going pretty smoothly. Already at the entrance there were just monsters that even amateurs could deal with, and even going a little further in only yielded capybara-sized mice. Big rats were certainly a handful to beginning adventurers/warriors or amateur excavators, but to adventurers who were accustomed to taking on quests, all they amounted to were sitting ducks.

Approaching the poison gas region, there were monsters like giant centipedes coming out, which were a nuisance, but even these were no enemies of Haruna’s group. The moment they showed up, Makoto sliced them in half, Haruna cut them up, Mio sewed them onto the wall, and Tatsuya froze them in ice.

Also, the reason Tatsuya didn’t use Oxide Circle was because despite the monsters in this dungeon being of the biological variety, depriving them of oxygen did not work.

「Dungeons are weird places though.」

「Pretty sure when they’re isolated they’re beyond weird, yeah, but specifically what do you mean？」

「Cuz the monsters we defeat disappear if we leave them too long, but the ingredients we retrieve from them, like meat, don’t disappear right？」

「Oh, that’s what you meant……」

Tatsuya commented on Haruna’s rather late observation. Normally you’d think after watching the tower sprout back up after being pulverized, this would be nothing new to see, but apparently Haruna just liked to pay attention to small, pointless details from time to time.

「Also, the monsters disappear, but why not human corpses？」

「Ah～、I see what you’re getting at」