LEGEND

Chapter 475

By the time Rei and Elena emerged from the guard station, the sun had completely set and the surroundings were now illuminated by moonlight.

「Guru~」

Rei petted Set on the head as he cam over to greet them, seeming to say ‘thanks for the hard work’ with his cry.

Elena gave a stretch to loosen up her body, which had gone stiff from sitting for so long.

Her twin hills were pushed out, causing the cheeks of a guard who saw it to go red. However, Elena didn’t seem to notice it herself.

「Well, that took longer than expected……shall we head back to the inn and have something to eat?」

「I mean, if you’re hungry, I have bread. But, we are talking about the inn’s food in the end.」

「Gururu~!」

I’m hungry too! Set seemed to say with a cry. Nodding at Set, both Rei and Elena turned to the guard.

The guard, who had recollected himself somewhat, gave a small bow towards the two of them.

「Thank you for your help in this incident. Thank you very much. ……Ordinarily, the captain would have wanted to see you off in person.」

「Don’t worry about it. After all, the district guard captains were all called to a meeting. I’ve also received my reward.」

Rei’s words made the guard bow his head uncomfortably/

Rei hadn’t helped out as an adventurer receiving a request, but rather as a volunteer. Because of that, there was technically no reward tied to it and the two silver coins they had received had been given from the guard captain’s own pocket.

However, Rei was satisfied as the bakery owner had decided that the remaining bread in the bakery wouldn’t be sold due to today’s incident and had given it all to Rei as a reward, which was worth a lot more than 2 silver coins.

When the bakery owner had told Rei that he could have all the bread, Rei initially refused due to how much it was all worth.

However, the bakery owner had insisted that none of the bread could be sold anyway due to the incident and that he would give it all to Rei as a reward for their help and because they loved the taste of his bread.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been too much bread to eat, but fortunately, Rei could store it all into the Misty Ring, where it wouldn’t go bad as long as it remained inside.

In addition, the captain of the guards had mentioned that the equipment and belongings of the three robbers would be sold off to compensate the bakery, especially the walls and door that had been broken by Set’s entrance. That was probably one of the reasons why the bakery owner was fine with giving them all the bread.

Rei had been slightly concerned with Latio’s strong request for him to come again, but decided that it was probably she really liked Set.

「Today ended up being very hectic for some reason. We’ve finally cleared the desert floors though, so we will start exploring cooler places from now on.」

「……Even if it’s coolers, I honestly hope it won’t give us a hard time with strong smells.」

At Elena’s words, Rei gave a bitter smile as he recalled what the 16th floor was.

There had been a rotten smell the moment they stepped out of the small room with the magic circle. The stench of decay was proof that zombies and other undead were present on the 16th floor.

Whether it was Rei, Elena, or Set, the three of them had a much keener sense of smell than others. Normally, this would be an advantage for them when searching for something, but in the presence of undead, it had the opposite effect.

「It’s also hard to get magic stones from undead.」

As was with the dungeon where the Altar of Inheritance had been located, the fastest way to reliably kill an undead was to destroy the magic stone that functioned as its core.

However, if the magic stone was destroyed, Rei wouldn’t be able to use that for the Magic Beast Art, which bothered him greatly.

(In addition……)

Rei looked over at Set, who was walking next to him, and hesitated over whether he wanted to give Set magic stones that had been wrapped in rotten flesh and organs.

If if was the Death Scythe, he could just cut the magic stones without hesitation, unlike Set, who had to swallow them.

Elena probably thought of the same thing as she frowned with displeasure.

「Heey~, you look beautiful sis. How about having a drink with me? On a hot day like this, we should share a drink.」

A black out drunk man called out to Elena, but Rei and Elena both just ignored him and walked straight by.

Luckily for the man, he was completely drunk and completely missed the fact that he had been ignored.

If he had been half drunk, realised that he had been ignored, and tried to mess with Elena, whether it was Elena, Rei, or Set, the man would have regretted it the next day without doubt.

「Ugh, hic-. It really is hot.」

The man sat down on the ground as he saw Rei’s group walk away and fell asleep as he leaned against the wall of a nearby building. Eventually, he was taken away but the guards and guild staff that patrolled the city.

After returning to the inn and having their meal, Rei and Elena immediately began discussing plans for the next day.

Although it was a situation where a man and a woman were alone in a man’s room at night, as typical of Rei and Elena, they didn’t end up in a romantic conversation.

「Undead, huh?」

Elena frowned unpleasantly.

Elena was originally an ordinary human with ordinary senses and the smell of undead hadn’t been intolerable to her.

However, as a result of inheriting the magic stone of an Ancient Dragon, her sense of smell had become very sharp.

What would happen if she smelled the rotten smell of zombies now? She had already experienced it from the dungeon where the Altar of Inheritance had been located.

Above all, she had already smelled the strong rotten stench after stepping out of the small room on the 16th floor for a little bit before leaving the dungeon today.

Rei looked at Elena as he reached for a clean cloth in the room.

「I think we can deal with the smell to some extent if we cover our faces with this. But, the biggest problem is if we run into any other adventurers.」

「……I see.」

At Rei’s words, Elena imagined what would happen if they ran into anyone whose face was covered by cloth in the dungeon.

They would definitely look suspicious and might even be mistaken as some kind of bandit.

Even now, there were people who were sneaking around and creating abnormal species, so it was natural for adventurers to be very cautions about suspicious looking people.

No, rather, if there was someone who didn’t have any suspicions, that would make them pretty bad adventurers.

Elena was wondering what to do when she suddenly looked at Rei with a hopeful gaze, as if thinking of something.

「If we are exploring with Set, wouldn’t that make us less suspicious?」

「That is certainly a possibility, but……I honestly don’t know.」

Certainly, with Set around, most eyes would gather on him. However, that wasn’t absolutely guaranteed.

「In addition, if we cover our faces with cloth, it will become harder to breath, which I don’t recommend when fighting.」

While replying to Elena, Rei thought of something else.

「You didn’t bring Yellow along because it was just a kid and couldn’t stand the heat, right? What do you plan to do tomorrow? It’s a cooler floor after all.」

Before leaving the dungeon, they had already checked out the 16th floor and the temperature Rei felt after reaching out from under his Dragon Robe was cooler than in the city.

It was the perfect place to stay during the summer months.

That is, assuming you could withstand the rotten stench from zombies.

Elena thought about it for several seconds before nodding and speaking.

「I’ll take Yellow with us. It wasn’t an option in the desert because of the negative impact it might have had on Yellow’s growth, but this time there’s no such impact. I am sure that Yellow won’t like it, but it will an experience.」

Elena herself didn’t want to take a small familiar like Yellow to a floor filled with undead, but that wouldn’t have a good effect.

From now on, Yellow would spend countless time in battlefields with Elena. Of course, their enemies would include monsters, not just other people, and there was a high possibility that there would also be undead.

With that in mind, she decided that it would be best for Yellow to get used to it sooner.

「If you say so, that’s fine. Fortunately, the 16th floor’s passageways are fairly wide, so Yellow won’t get in the way of fights.」

The 16th floor appeared to match that of an ordinary dungeon.

It had passages made of cobblestone……very similar to the floors with undead in the dungeon where the Altar of Inheritance had been.

(……The Altar of Inheritance, huh? Grimm can’t be here as well, right?)

He suddenly thought about it, but shook his head right after, thinking it unlikely that they would run into Grimm twice in two dungeons.

Besides, in Rei’s case, he had a magic item that allowed him to contact Grimm and vice versa, so the chance of such a coincidence happening wasn’t high.

(However, getting a magic item like that is one of the big reasons we’re exploring the dungeon. After that is magic tones……should a put in a request to the guild to help with stripping materials?)

Elena must have started to wonder what Rei was thinking about. She reached out her hand as she looked at him.

「Rei, what’s wrong?」

「Hm? Oh, no. There’s quite a few monster corpses stored in the Misty Ring. I was wondering if we should ask the guild to help dismantle them. I’m thinking of submitting a request for that tomorrow and sort it out the day after.」

「……We’ve certainly been exploring the dungeon without taking a break recently. The last time we took a break was before we entered the desert floors. Thinking about it, we could take a day off from exploring the dungeon.」

With her hand on Rei’s shoulder, Elena nodded after thinking for a few seconds.

「Sorry about that.」

「What, even I want to take a break sometimes. That said, the number of monster corpses we have right now should be quite high? Especially the Kobolds.」

「There’s one Earth Crab, one Spiral Rabbit, two Desert Lizardmen, and quite a few Bloodydiles and Kobolds. I think the big one is the Earth Crab. It’s edible and the magic stone should be quite good as a powerful monster.」

The image of the Earth Crab being roasted by flames popped into Rei’s mind.

It had four huge claws and even its legs were much larger than those of an ordinary crab.

At the very least, they were probably a hundred times larger than the crabs Rei had caught in the mountain rivers back in Japan.

As Elena recalled the Earth Crab as well, she nodded at Rei with a faint smile.

「That’s right. Set was looking forward to it and I think Yellow would be happy to come along as well.」

「Crab, huh?」

「Rei? Are there any problems?」

Elena called out to Rei, who suddenly stopped talking.

「No, there’s a dish called crab cream croquette. It’s quite delicious, but unfortunately, I don’t really remember how it’s made. If I did, I could just tell a chef to make it for me.」

「Crab cream croquettes? That sounds interesting, do you have any idea how it’s cooked?」

「I think it was creamy and made with fried flour? Or something like that……」

Elena was a bit puzzled at Rei’s description.

She couldn’t imagine how to fry flour while still keeping it creamy.

The original process was to melt butter, fry flour, and then add milk to make the cream, but Rei had no idea as he had never seen it made before.

In addition, oil was a very precious commodity in Elgin, so deep frying was rarely done unless it was a high class restaurant.

Considering all that, crab cream croquettes were still a dish too ahead of its time for Elgin.

「The outside is crispy, and once you bite into it, a rich cream spreads into your mouth, softly followed by the flavour and aroma of crab. It’s delicious on its own, but tastes even better when eaten with bread.」

Thus, Rei described the deliciousness of crab cream croquettes to Elena, but since he didn’t remember the recipe, unlike udon, he had no way to cook it and ended up only needlessly stimulating his and Elena’s appetites.