Live Dungeon!
chapter-18

When the three returned to the guild, Camille, the former guild leader, went towards a middle-aged man who was waiting near the black gate. Tsutomu, who attempted to exit the city for a break, was stopped by Garm.

“There are guild members that’ll see us. Wait a bit.”

As such, Garm made his way to the reception. The three who had become entangled with each other yesterday all ended up there, as Tsutomu expected.

“Hey, Lucky Boy… well, I guess you’re a criminal now!”

“You’re the talk of the town. Must be nice to be so popular!”

“Scum!”

Around that time, there was a sizable amount of people who laughed and pointed their fingers at the party. Tsutomu raised his hand and shook his head at the people who laughed at him as soon as Garm disappeared.

One of the people grabbed Tsutomu’s chest and smiled sarcastically. Tsutomu took the person’s hands off and laughed. The man was taken aback.

“Wh-!?”

“I think you can’t win against a white mage.”

“… that’s probably ’cause you’re boosted by Garm!”

“I think that’s a bit better than insects who go after people.”

Tsutomu, who glared daggers at the man, smiled twistedly. This was a person who took advantage of people dying in parties. This was a person who would trick a newcomer who didn’t know much to scam them and profit. Tsutomu looked down on him from the bottom of his heart.

Tsutomu had never been rebellious. The three investigators, who were attacked by him for the first time and were glared at maliciously, retreated with defensive instinct.

Then, when they saw Garm from the reception, they parted from Tsutomu and merged with the crowd. Tsutomu, who stared at the back of the guild expressionlessly, looked at Garm, who had just come back, warmly.

“You seem to have been caught up in something.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. How was the city?”

“There seem to be people who were influenced by the article. It would be better not to act alone for a while.”

“Yes. It was pretty good back there. Ah, I want to get my luggage.”

“Ah.”

Garm looked uncomfortable with all the gazes. Garm whispered something to one of the insect seekers, causing him to lower his gaze.

Garm slammed his feet as soon as he caught up with Tsutomu. Paparazzi around him who were aware of who Garm was drawn back to avoid trouble.

“The only insects around here are their mouths. What a shame.”

“You can’t go anywhere without the sound of insects.”

After Tsutomu said that, Garm laughed as he scattered the air around him. While scrambling in and out of the lines of sight of passers-by, the two took their luggage from the inn and checked out at the reception.

“You may use the guild staff’s dormitory until the article is corrected.”

“Oh, really? I’m fine with that, but is it allowed?”

“Well, it’s fine for me to live here in the meantime. Camille-san allowed me. You can use the dorm freely.”

“That helps.”

While carrying luggage that couldn’t fit in the magic bag, the two headed to the guild staff dormitory, which was built in the immediate vicinity of the guild. The dormitory was much larger than the one used by Tsutomu, and built out of glossy black stone, its appearance made one hesitant to enter.

Tsutomu followed Garm, who was surprised and left the luggage in one room of the dormitory. After moving the luggage, they now had a dorm that was large enough for the family of three to grow and live.

The room that Garm told him to use was larger than the room in the inn, with toilet and bath too. If you became a guild employee, you would be allowed to move in free of charge.

As Tsutomu acknowledged that the guild had a very high standing, he killed time and cleaned the room by using a magic tool. He opened the window, gathered dust with the broom, and scraped it off outside.

[Times like this make me grateful I can use skills. It’s great that God invited me to such a place where I could use magic.]

Tsutomu could use skills that were on his status card by consuming mental power, but couldn’t use magic, which used magic stones as a medium. To use magic, you needed not only the talent to do so, but the knowledge too. And so, most magic-users were nobles, who had the luxury of both.

The magical tool that Tsutomu was now using was created as a substitute for magic. By developing a machine with colored magic stones as a core and colorless magic stones as fuel, it could create phenomena similar to magic.

On the other hand, a skill is something that anyone can use by creating and updating a status card in the dungeon managed by God. Talent, knowledge, and magic stones are not required to exercise skills. All that is needed is MND.

However, skills are less flexible than magic. For example, as long as you had a magical stone of wind, you could make anything from a gentle breeze to a tornado, from a warm wind to a cold one. But skills couldn’t do that.

The Air Blade that Tsutomu had mastered was a skill that shoots a wind blade in a straight line, but the blade was still a blade, no matter how weak. If you tried to use it to remove dust, your room would be full of scratches. In addition, it only shot in a straight line, and you couldn’t change its trajectory. The only thing that could be done was to use mental power to strengthen and weaken the intensity of the blade and to specify the direction it would fly.

Garm told Tsutomu that magic and skills were similar, but in truth different, and should not be put together. In some cases, the people who said that in front of the nobles were executed, so Tsutomu kept in mind to stay away from the nobles.

The wooden magic tool was wiped with a clean, dry cloth. It was placed on the shelf, wiped the floor and walls with water, dried itself out, and so Tsutomu sat down in a clean room.

[It’s still noon, huh…]

After cleaning, Tsutomu, somewhat unsatisfied, lay down in the room. The light coming in through the window was still shining.

[I wanna see a live broadcast.]

In his spare time, he always watched live streams of the dungeon, or just went around the stalls near the giant monitor. However, as soon as the turmoil happened, Tsutomu couldn’t do so.

[Oh, Camille is new, so I have to rethink my tactics. Like Amy, I’m at a blank since I can’t apply Haste consistently.]

Lying down on the wooden floor, he brought out documents from the magic bag.

――▽▽――

In the evening, Tsutomu and Garm joined Camille at the guild and headed to a popular bar called Taru no Boushitei. When they arrived at the restaurant, famous for meat dishes that were baked in large wine barrels and a magical oven tool, they sat down and the three began a dungeon exploration meeting.

“…are you aiming to break the record of highest floor reached?”

Camille asks the endeavor to do it with the clerk who ran without busy after receiving the order. In a noisy shop, Tsutomu shouted a little.

Camille asked this to Tsutomu as the waiter who received their order went off in a rush. Tsutomu raised his voice a little in the noisy shop.

“If you don’t, your reputation won’t disappear. I was thinking about getting Solit to write an article about it, but it seems impossible.”

“No, no, maybe if we go up to the 59th level, we’ll be shown consistently on the monitor. Then maybe we’ll lose the nicknames?”

“Eh? Is that so?”

Eyes wide, Tsutomu turned to Garm, and Garm nodded.

“In the first place, it seems that your battle with the shell crab was projected on the 9th screen, and that seemed to be effective, due to there only being three people. Those who have some knowledge of dungeon capture already have made efforts Will not be called a lucky person. “

“Hmm. But it seems that Amy said, the Shell Club was able to defeat because of good luck.”

“… There is no example of a shell club dying as soon as it is discovered. You just have to make it seem like you don’t know.”

“Garm? Didn’t I join the party to dispel your reputation as ‘lucky’?”

“…”

Tsutomu smiled at Garm, who looked like he had forgotten something, and he picked up a small piece of jerky from a pile. Camille lowered her gaze while adjusting her long hair with her hair tie.

“…The shell crab thing might be a little lacking. A three-person party beating the shell crab from a mid-level clan is not unheard of, and it could easily be done by three people in a top-level clan. right?”

“Surely, but…”

“Don’t ask, Garm. Times change.”

Camille patted Garm’s big shoulder as he was biting into the jerky. He was not very convinced, but Camille comforted him anyway.

“But if you can break through the 56th floor, which is said to be a wall between the mid-level and the major clans, you will be able to get to a single-digit rank. I think that will resolve it.”

“…really? I heard that that would just be running away from facing the fire dragon, so I thought it would be no good.”

By a huge monitor called the first stand by residents of the labyrinth city, Tsutomu often heard such information since he spent most of his free time there. So he thought that his reputation would remain the same unless he beat the fire dragon, which was the boss of the canyon.

“Aren’t those a clan’s standards, though? This is a party, and if it’s a three-person party that does it, it’s definitely going to be a topic … floor 56 will be the goal of this party. I’ve already reached the 58th floor, and Tsutomu wasn’t as experienced with Garm and Amy.”

“That’s reasonable.”

Tsutomu said that after the store clerk announced something, and a soup dish in a large bowl was placed on a round table. Meat, carrots, and potatoes were contained in a white soup-like stew. Tsutomu handed it over to the rest.

Another store clerk, who put bread in the basket in the center, had just left. Even though he seemed to be quite busy, Tsutomu began to put a hard bread in his stew.

“But don’t you want to defeat the fire dragon? I think we have Camille’s firepower for that.”

Trying to sink bread into the stew with a wooden spoon, Camille opened her mouth after staring at Tsutomu.

“…huh. Are you going to defeat the fire dragon, that the Red Demon Group defeated only after they used your top tier black wand, with an improvised party?”

“I was originally going to go with Amy, but I think that the chances of being able to beat it increased with you. However, there are three issues.”

Tsutomu, eating a bit of crumbled meat and moderately soft bread, sighed. Camille adjusted her red glasses and glared at Tsutomu.

“And those are?”

“The first is simply the lack of cooperation between us three. Well, this will solve in time. You don’t seem to think anything about my tactics. Secondly, there is no black magician or archer in this party, so you can only rely on magical tools. The third is your Dragon form, which isn’t affected by my support skills and recovery skills, so it’s hard to incorporate it into my tactics. I have to think about what to do.”

“…nothing about me?”

“Not really, Garm. Isn’t your concern just about getting fireproof equipment and getting used to it?”

As Tsutomu swallowed thick stew, Garm wrapped his head around the confusing situation. Camille, who saw Garm like this, looked at Tsutomu again. A fortunate man who gained tremendous wealth by looting the highest tier treasure chest. After that, he beat the shell crab with the three-man party of him, Garm, and Amy. And now, he was trying to beat the fire dragon, still unsatisfied.

Her initial train of thought was that he was at least not born in the labyrinth city. Orphans and Camille have been reported to do so, but was someone that could use magic the son of an aristocrat in another country? Or someone who beat a dungeon outside? Some of those guesses came to mind. However, Camille was not interested in Tsutomu’s origin.

“You seem interesting.”

Camille licked her lips and stared, with reptilian red eyes, and Tsutomu could feel something was up.