The Item's Information, Previously...
He had heard the item's particulars by word of mouth, but he had never laid eyes on the thing itself.
Taking the divine-beast item in hand, Yujun checked its information at once.
◈ Option: When consumed, increases a divine beast's brilliance and nobility.
That was the whole of the option text.
But it would hardly be Mythic for nothing. It couldn't be something that merely changed one's appearance — though he wouldn't have minded if that were all it did. Items bound to divine beasts were not easy to come by, not even for Yujun.
Harp only grows stronger when I do, the way he's built... so this works out better, if anything.
He had no idea how brilliance and nobility would actually take effect. Simply knowing the effect wasn't a harmful one was satisfying enough.
Yujun held the Tarvan Fruit out to Harp.
"Want to eat it?"
He couldn't force it down his throat, so he asked.
"Yes! It smells delicious!"
"Good. Here."
"Ooh!"
The fruit wasn't particularly large. Harp chewed it a few times and swallowed it almost at once.
The change showed immediately. The white fur stayed as it was, and his body didn't swell any larger, but his eyes changed. Those big, feeling-brimmed eyes brightened with a jewel-like radiance — a truly luminous quality, just as the item's option had promised.
At first he had wondered what the point of it could possibly be. Feeding it to him made the answer plain. Harp had become far cuter. And something more than that. It wasn't mere cuteness; divine energy seemed to drift through those eyes, as if he had become a higher form of life.
"Wow! I feel wonderful!"
"Wonderful how?"
"In my chest? My heart? Happy feelings just keep blooming and blooming! All fluffy! Sprouting right up!"
"R-right?"
He couldn't quite picture what that felt like, but if Harp was happy, that was enough.
Next he was told where the dungeon lay — the hidden dungeon whose location every member of the Elite Association knew, and which none of them had managed to push past the entrance. The anticipation sitting in one corner of Yujun's chest swelled.
"We'll leave at once."
"......Without even raising that toast?"
"A toast? Does one bishop dying mean the whole order collapses?"
"Awfully particular, aren't you."
Manuela and Yenil had been resting, so they were in fine shape, and Yujun had loosened up well enough against the Demon God Worshippers. They set out for the dungeon at once.
The hidden dungeon lay beside a cabin in the forest where the Elite Association often gathered for its discussions. Two members came out of the cabin to meet them.
"We heard. You're going to clear the dungeon."
"Yes."
"Please be careful. They'll be on you the moment you step inside. Do you know exactly what kind of monsters appear?"
"I heard the gist of it. The monsters are exceptional at stealth."
"That's right. For mere monsters, they come and go like ghosts. You never know when or from where they'll strike, so stay on your guard."
"Yes. Thank you for the warning."
"Godspeed."
What struck him, after dealing with the Elite Association's players, was how even-tempered and kind most of them were. They were watching a dungeon they had been holding get taken out of their hands, and still not a crease of resentment showed on their faces. They hadn't been chosen for the Elite Association for nothing.
Once inside, Yujun's party received a violent welcome from their monster friends.
Boom!
Paranet body-checked one and sent it flying far off.
"Ugh. Did you get a look at that thing's face?"
At Yujun's words, Manuela shook her head.
"It flew off too fast......"
"Hideous. Like a cockroach plastered straight onto its face."
"Ugh......"
Just as he had said, the monster that ambushed them the instant they entered was enough to turn the stomach. A hard, dark-brown carapace. Dozens of thin, gluey tentacles sprouting from its face writhed without rest. Take a cockroach, stand it on two legs, and make it as revolting as possible, and you would get exactly that.
"Hrrk......"
"Wh-what is that."
Manuela and Yenil, too, could not hide their horror at the monster's faintly revealed shape. Even Paranet, undead as he was, looked displeased by the sticky fluid that had gotten on his body.
So the warning to be careful from the very entrance wasn't for nothing.
He had been told the monsters looked dreadful, but seeing them put them beyond anything words could manage.
"Careful. There are ten of those things."
"R-right nearby?"
"Yeah."
"I can't sense them."
"I told you. Stealth is their specialty."
Yujun raised a barrier over the entire party. He wanted, desperately, to deal with them by magic rather than close in and cut them down with a sword. Even Yujun, whom Equanimity kept unfazed by most things, had no desire to approach something that looked like that. Looks alone he might have borne. The smell was vicious too, and a sticky fluid clung to their bodies......
"Paranet, you tank."
"......"
"You look dissatisfied."
"Not at all!"
Yujun prepared his magic. The monsters — the cockroaches — caught the rise of his mana with uncanny speed and rushed in all at once. They had judged the party to be built around mages, and even these things seemed to carry the basic common sense that you do not give a mage time.
But Yujun was no ordinary mage. The instant he thought it, Chain Lightning was loosed. He had chosen lightning because it seemed especially effective.
Bzzzt. Bzzzzzt!
All ten cockroaches took a direct hit at once. Lightning strung them together like a chain and poured damage into them without pause.
"Graaaah!"
"Kyak! Kyak!"
The ones that somehow avoided instant death endured the lightning through sheer indomitable will and hammered at the barrier with sharp claws. Yellow fluid gushed from their tentacles in floods and sheeted over the barrier's membrane.
Hiss.
Yujun's barrier shuddered precariously. He was faintly startled.
"Their attack power's no joke."
"I'll help too!"
Manuela raised a shield over the barrier. It didn't last three seconds before it shattered to pieces.
"Ah."
"......What are you doing. If this is play, I shall handle it myself."
This time Yenil stepped forward.
Crack!
Yenil's shield lasted only a second. The monsters struck by the lightning were recovering, and their assault was growing fiercer for it.
"Yenil. I'm disappointed."
"......"
"So Yujun's barrier was incredibly sturdy."
"I think their base specs are just insane."
Attack, defense, and regeneration besides. With all three in place, the cockroaches' momentum was genuinely threatening.
It's not that Chain Lightning isn't working... Their regeneration is absurd.
There was a reason the Elite Association's members had never gotten past the entrance. At the level Yujun had seen from them, they could not handle the monsters that lived here — not unless they fought prepared to be wounded.
If the Guardians of Balance brought only their elite troops, they might be able to contend with these.
The Elite Association didn't stand a chance. If the dungeon's entrance was like this, there was no need to speak of what lay beyond.
Yujun tried fire magic, and he tried every freezing spell he had, but the things were as tenacious of life as real cockroaches. They would shudder under a powerful spell and lock stiff for a moment, then recover almost at once and start hammering the barrier again. It wasn't only toughness. Their magic resistance seemed high as well.
This stretch is narrow. Large-scale magic would be awkward here anyway.
Yujun let out a heavy sigh, took up his sword, and stepped outside the barrier. The cockroaches lunged at him like beasts with prey before them. Hoping not a drop of their bodily fluid would splash him, he unfurled a screen of blades.
Thud-thud-thud!
The cockroaches' bodies were pulverized all at once, as if they had been fed through a blender. In an instant Yujun had slain eight of them. The remaining two dithered, thrown into confusion. He closed in at the speed of a flash and cut their necks.
They still twitched. He spread the blade-screen again, stepped in, and sliced them to pieces.
True to creatures that did not die easily, they gave a great deal of experience. Of course, he had already been on the verge of leveling, so it wasn't as though ten of them amounted to a single level.
"Should've used the sword from the start."
"Yeah......"
It wasn't that his magic lacked power. In a dungeon this cramped, magic could simply be inefficient. A spell had to account for its surroundings, so constraints were inevitable. A sword was different. Give it a few steps of room to move, and it could bring its full power to bear anywhere.
The fluid... didn't splash. Good.
What worried him most was the smell. The sword couldn't help touching their bodily fluids, and a foul stench climbed the blade.
"This is when you use magic."
Yujun generated a great volume of water and wiped the sword clean. The smell didn't vanish completely, but it became somewhat bearable.
"It's depressing to think we've only taken a single step."
His companions agreed vehemently. Even Tapagol muttered "Tapagol" under his breath and nodded.
There was plenty here to make the skin crawl, but abandoning the clear was out of the question. The System had always paid rewards to match the price, and it would keep doing so.
Past the entrance, the filthy cockroaches kept coming. They were not all the same, of course. The shape was similar, but the ones that appeared now seemed enhanced — larger bodies, more tentacles.
"If this keeps up, they'll be bigger than the dungeon by the end."
The monsters coming out now were twice the size of the first cockroaches he had seen. The fortunate part was that he was gradually growing used to how they looked. After swinging his sword without rest for about thirty minutes, it would be an exaggeration to say he had grown fond of them — but the revulsion that had stayed with him the whole time had faded to some degree.
"The dungeon's pretty long."
"It is. If the basic monsters are like this, what's the boss going to look like?"
"We'd better pray it isn't."
He had cleared a dungeon once before and met a boss there that was filth given form. That had been a truly hellish experience. The smell in this place was a cut above even that, so the worry was already running ahead of him.
"Y-Yujun, I'm sorry I can't be of any help."
"It's fine. Clean is enough."
Every time he finished off a pack, he scrubbed himself with Water Ball and Clean, but unless they got out of this place, it meant nothing.
"Let's finish this fast and get out."
He had never wanted to clear a dungeon quickly as badly as he did today. Yujun hurried. He activated Barbarism as well and hunted the monsters with everything he had. When he shot straight through, the monsters split in half. They might have possessed a monstrous regeneration, but cleaved from head to toe, even they could not grow that back.
Arriving at a certain room in an instant, Yujun finally stopped.
"This should be the boss room, right?"
"I think so."
"The smell isn't even worse, surprisingly."
"Yujun, don't let your guard down."
"I know. It could hit us the moment we go in. You all, hold your noses."
Manuela had meant a different kind of carelessness, but she succeeded in sharpening his vigilance all the same.
"Dad! Is it... is it finally over?"
Harp, keen of nose, asked. He looked about ready to faint, so Yujun smiled and nodded.
"Yeah. It's over now."
The power of Barbarism settled through his whole body. Yujun kicked the iron door hard, just as it stood.
BOOOOM!