「Gurururururu~!」

Set’s cry echoed through the dungeon passage as he swung his claw equipped with the Bracelet of Herculean Strength.

His eagle claw struck the body of an Orc which weighed well over 100kg, knocking it aside easily.

The Orc, whose ribs were crushed as it was knocked back, slammed heavily into a wall and stopped moving for a few seconds.

「Mm!」

In those few seconds where the Orc stopped moving due to pain and shock, Byune, wielding two daggers, swept right up to it and slashed its throat with her right dagger while stabbing her left dagger into the Orc’s brain from under its jaw.

What impressed Rei, as he watched, was that Byune pulled her dagger out of the Orc’s head while jiggling it around. If she had simply pulled the dagger out and had bad luck, or good luck for the Orc, the Orc might have counter attacked in its hazy consciousness. In order to prevent that from happening, she moved the blade around in the Orc’s to take away its consciouness……and life. This cautiousness was something that Rei admired.

Sometimes, Byune would party up with Vihera, but she normally would enter the dungeon solo. For that reason, she naturally acquired her cautiousness after experiencing the danger of being caught off guard and being counter attacked by an enemy she hadn’t properly killed. That was why she acted the way she did.

However, contrary to Rei’s admiration, Elena was looking at Byune with concern.

Elena knew how to fight from a young age. But even then, it wasn’t until her mid teens that she had taken part in a real battle. Until that point, she had only fought in mock combat with the knights she led.

「You can feel sympathy for her all you want, but it would be insulting to show that in your attitude. Keep that in mind.」

Elena reflexively glared back after Vihera called out to her.

However, Vihera didn’t flinch at Elena’s reproachful eyes and just looked back steadily.

After staring at each other for several seconds, Elena slowly deviated her eyes.

She understood that. As Vihera had said, showing that attitude to Byune would be nothing but an insult. But still, Byune was working solo in a dungeon at the age of 10. Elena naturally felt concern due to her kind nature.

While seeing Elena and Vihera interact, Rei quickly cut off the Orc’s right ear, its proof of subjugation, and took out its magic stone before storing the Orc’s body into the Misty Ring.

Having eaten Orc meat before, Rei had found it to be quite tasty and planned to use it as food for Set.

As he was about to store the magic stone into the Misty Ring.

「Mm.」

Rei felt a sudden tug on his Dragon Robe as he turned to see what it was.

There, for some reason, Byune was holding two magic stones from the Seal Worms she had killed earlier as she looked at Rei’s Orc magic stone.

「……Mm?」

「Ahh……I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you want to say. Vihera, do you know what she wants?」

Troubled by Byune, who was looking at him with a blank expression, Rei turned to Vihera. Vihera gave a shrug as she replied.

「It’s not that hard. You said that you were collecting two magic stones of every monster, right? You also don’t have the magic stones from Seal Worms. She probably wants to trade them for the magic stone of the Orc you just killed. Between two Seal Worm magic stones and an Orc magic stone, the Orc magic stone can sell for a bit more due to the difference in rank.」

「I see. But what if I hadn’t collected the magic stone of an Orc before?」

「Who knows? That said, she probably thought you wouldn’t refuse?」

「Mm!」

Byune nodded at Vihera’s words.

Rei thought about what to do for a moment, but he decided that it would be his loss if he didn’t exchange them seeing as both Set and the Death Scythe had already previously absorbed the magic stones of Orcs. He gently placed the magic stone he had on the palm of Byune’s small hand.

「Mm.」

Giving a small nod, Byune looked over at the Orc’s right ear, its proof of subjugation, before looking back at Rei.

Although she didn’t express it in words, it was clear that she was showing she wanted it.

「……Mm.」

Byune turned her eyes upwards as she looked straight at Rei.

After thinking for a few more seconds, Rei decided that he should probably get along with Byune, who was also a thief, and gave her the right ear with a small sigh.

Rei felt like he had lost out a bit, but it was an obvious advantage that he didn’t need to look out for traps if he was working with Byune. In that sense, an Orc’s proof of subjugation could be considered a cheap price to be able to form a party with her, even if only temporary. If Byune had wanted the Orc meat, Rei would probably have thought twice about it.

「Well then, if that’s all settled, let’s hurry along. If we keep up our current pace, we’ll be able to reach the fifth floor by the end of today……no, we might even make it further.」

Elena spoke up with a smile as she watched the exchange between Rei and Byune. Everyone else nodded before proceeding down the passageway.

Unlike the third floor, there weren’t as many crossroads. However, there were still occasional branching paths as the passage continued on. Like that, they all followed Byune through the basic dungeon floor.

The monsters that showed up from time to time were stronger, but only still ordinary Orcs. Aside from Byune, Rei and the others had no trouble fighting any of them.

Due to her small build, Byune wasn’t able to deal any serious injuries to the Orcs through the skin covering their thick fat and tough muscles. However, she would still throw her favoured needles to blind them while following up attacks from the others, contributing from her role.

After walking for several hours……they finally found the stairs to the fifth floor.

「……What can I say, this was pretty straightforward. It took Rei and I a long time to find the stairs yesterday.」

「You struggled even after buying a map?」

Elena had originally tried to use her map on this floor but had decided to leave it all to Byune after being told that she had basically memorised the path.

Naturally, it wasn’t possible to get lost if they had a map, so Rei responded to Vihera with a bitter smile.

「We were thinking of the case where we wouldn’t have a thief and would need to look out for traps and unknown monsters.」

「A thief, eh. ……If you really needed a thief, couldn’t you hire a thief from the Church of Holy Light in the plaza in front of the dungeon?」

In response to Vihera’s question, Elena shrugged her shoulders as she looked over at Rei.

「I don’t think Rei likes the Church of Holy Light……or rather, religions in general. It it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t mind paying 30% of what we collected.」

「……Do you hate religions?」

「Well, to be honest, I don’t have a good impression of it. And, when it comes to paying out 30% of what we find, I still think we’d run into a lot of trouble with the kinds of magic items we’re looking for, monster materials and magic stones aside.」

As they conversed, they went down the stairs to the fifth floor.

『Ah.』

Seeing other people there, they unintentionally let out a sound.

At the stairs on the fifth floor, there was a 4 member adventurer party. That by itself was fine, but there was also someone from the Church of Holy Light with them.

「Oh, hey……you’re the one with the Griffon, the Crimson from the rumors. You have a lot of notable people with you.」

The leader of the party, a warrior, seemed to want to do something about the awkward atmosphere as he called out to Rei.

Indeed, the people in Rei’s party were no less well known that Rei, the Crimson. Vihera, the Mad Beast, was someone who used her beauty as a weapon. Byune was the descendant of one of the four families which had laid the foundation of the Labyrinth City of Exil. Elena’s identity had been hidden by the guild’s upper management at her request, but her beauty still ranked up there with Vihera.

As expected, with such well known people, they were certainly noticable.

「I guess we do stand out……? Well, we’re only partying up for today. So, what are you doing here?」

「Ah. Nothing much. We’re planning to hunt for magic stones on this floor. Right now, it seems that there aren’t enough magic stones, so we received a request from the Levisor family.」

The Levisor family. Hearing that name, Byune’s eyebrows moved. Quite a few people noticed that, due to her usual expressionless face. However, they mostly ignored it as it seemed to make sense, seeing that the Levisor family was one of the four founding families, like the Fraut family.

At the same time, Vihera looked at the warrior from the Church of Holy Light in understanding.

It was an open secret that the Levisor family, one of the three that currently ruled Exil, was close the Church of Holy Light. It wasn’t clear what the reason was, but it was known that they were competing with the Marschel family to buy up magic stones.

(In other words, it’s not enough for them to buy up magic stones from the guilds or stores, so they’re asking adventurers to collect magic stones directly……what are they thinking?)

Vihera listened in to the conversation between the man and Rei as she thought to herself.

Before long, after their short greetings, the other party decided to head into the dungeon first. They waved their hands lightly before leaving the room where the stairs and magic circle were. ……As the warrior from the Church of Holy Light walked past Rei.

「I understand from what you said previously that you don’t like religion. However, we are blessed by the Goddes of Holy Light. You cannot deny that from us.」

「Ah, I’m sorry. I just don’t like religion. I don’t have any intentions of degrading any religion in particular.」

「……Is that so. Personally, I would like a promising young man as you to receive the blessing of the Goddes of Holy Light. Please come to the church at least once. Then, you will surely understand the teachings of the Holy Light.」

The man from the Church of Holy Light smiled as he said that to Rei. Rei frowned slightly as he hid his face under the hood of his Dragon Robe.

「I’m sorry, but all religions are the same to me. I have no intention of joining the Church of Holy Light.」

「Hmm. That’s all right. I had just wanted someone with high combat strength and a title like you to join.」

High combat strength. At those words, several people perked up.

Vihera was one of them, but she didn’t display any reaction. Instead, she turned to look at a man in the adventurer party that was distracted by her. It was as if Vihera was trying to show she hadn’t noticed anything.

There might not have been a signal, but after the man from the Church of Holy Light gave a sigh, he bowed towards Rei’s party before returning to his own.

The rest of his party members left the small room with the stairs while forcibly dragging away the man who had been distracted by Vihera’s body.

「Seriously, the Church of Holy Light is a new religion and might not be that strong, but don’t go around arguing with them, okay?」

Vihera, who had been listening in to the conversation between Rei and the man from the Church of Holy light, said that. However, it was clear from her tone that she didn’t really mean it.

However, it was true that there was something for them to think about.

「Mm.」

It was the same for Byune, who was pulling on Rei’s Dragon Robe while hitting his shoulder repeatedly. It seemed that she was telling Rei it wasn’t that good to interact with the Church of Holy Light like that.

「……What would you like to do? If we proceed through the dungeon as is, we might run into those people again. If that happens, that probably won’t feel so great.」

「Don’t worry about that. The fifth floor is a rather complicated maze, so I don’t think we’ll come across them so easily……but there’s no guarantee. I’ll leave the decision to Rei……what would you like to do?」

Rei nodded with a smile as he took off the hood of his Dragon Robe in response to Vihera, who asked him with a provocative smile.

「Of course we’ll go. Our……Elena and my purpose, was to find magic items and new magic stones deeper in the dungeon.」

「Right. Shall we go them? Let’s be careful not to run into those guys again. ……Byune, we’ll be relying on you.」

「Mm.」

Having almost perfectly memorised the passages on this dungeon floor, Byune nodded with her usual blank expression at Vihera’s words……and with that, they made it to the stairs of the sixth floor without running into anyone else.

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