After the battle, Leon came back to find Eunice in tears. Other members gathered around, one after another, and the vicinity was subsequently filled with an awkward ambiance.
“AAAHHH!!”
[This little…!]
Eunice proceeded to deliberately exaggerate her crying, causing Tsutomu to grind his teeth in annoyance. The members of Absolute Helix’s team whispered among themselves, while the Golden Tune team seemed to have understood what was actually going on. Leon promptly stepped forward and grabbed Tsutomu’s shoulders, startling Tsutomu with his unusually serious expression.
“…Tsutomu, man, you’ve been hitting on one of my girls again?”
Then he cracked a grin, enjoying his success in tricking Tsutomu into thinking that this would escalate into a fight. Leon, being a Lycanthrope, had heard the whole mid-battle conversation thanks to his sense of hearing. And from one look at Eunice’s face — which seemed as if she had just had a ghost exorcized off of her — he knew that those tears of hers were not genuine.
Tsutomu, now that he knew Leon was just teasing, let out a sigh of relief before replying,
“No… and you know I never did that.”
“T-that’s right, Leon! I’d never consider even dating him anyway!”
“Yes, and I’d never consider even dating her, either.”
“Hey! First you ripped off my dumpling <<Haste>>, and now you’re ripping off my line word for word!? Are you not ashamed of yourself!?”
“You’re not making a lot of sense right now.”
While the two of them kept on arguing, both sides watched on and chuckled, and the situation eventually resolved itself without incident. The two teams then decided to proceed with the exploration together.
Going together like this had its downsides, such as <<Raise>> not working across parties, but the experience point distribution was not affected much. Although both teams may receive less experience overall, they would also be able to take on more monsters at once due to their strength in greater numbers.
During this cooperation, Diniel was in charge of scouting, with Absolute Helix and Golden Tune working together to hunt large groups of monsters she detected. The naturally cheerful ones, such as Amy and Hannah, talked casually with everyone else, and Leon asked Xeno about the latter’s golden <<Ember Aura>>.
“Three whole seconds off. Your time management needs work.”
“Shut up. Don’t talk to me. It ruins my concentration.”
“The girl behind you already has the basics down better than you do. Milway, was it? You won’t need to do much to be better than Eunice — just learn dumpling <<Haste>>. Good luck!”
“WHAT!? Why I oughtta… I’mma kick yer ass!!”
“E-Eunice!? You shouldn’t do that! The God Eye is looking at you!!”
The two Vulpeer Healers proceeded to argue with each other while still keeping up with their support and healing duties, with Milway holding Eunice back as the latter was about to get physical.
And with such occasional hiccups, Absolute Helix and Golden Tune’s joint exploration continued into the evening.
After finishing off a large wave of monsters and collecting about half of the Magic Stones, Leon turned to ask Tsutomu as they looked on at their other comrades,
“So, Tsutomu, when are you gonna fight the Winter General? Looks like Silver Beast’s put their attempts on hold for now, and Ealdred Crow’s bound to win sooner or later, yeah?”
“Right. And Sir Melchor might be getting there, too.”
“Ah… him. Of course. His attempts are looking good too, yeah — always makes the rest of us look weak, man.”
Leon shook his head, seemingly particularly conscious about this point, perhaps because he had known Melchor since before the emergence of Gold’s Dungeon. Tsutomu, having been informed of Melchor’s activities by newspaper articles, could not dismiss the possibility of Melchor winning despite going at it solo.
Additionally, just like the Rotten Swordsman on layer forty, the Winter General’s strength seemed to vary depending on the number of challengers. Articles by Solit Company and Dungeon Maniacs had pointed this out, so that was likely to be true — in which case, Melchor would have a good chance if he could secure enough Magic Stones to fuel his Magic Fist style.
“We haven’t even agreed on our first attempt’s team yet. Not that I want to let Ealdred Crow be comfortably in the lead, mind you.”
“Oh-ho… I see.”
“What about your Clan?”
“We’ll be leveling up a bit more. The cap’s gone up to level 90 now — it’s a long grind.”
“You’re going all the way…? That will be time-consuming.”
Unlike playing games, Dungeon exploration here was work — one could explore this Dungeon all day without worrying about time. But that also meant there were no pay-to-win items such as experience point multipliers. It also took longer to kill monsters, so leveling up to 90 was sure to take quite long.
“What else are we gonna do? That thing’s strong as hell — not as bad as the Devourer Dragon, but that just means it’s the second strongest thing I’ve ever seen. Reminds me of how long we were stuck with the Fire Dragon… well, I guess you wouldn’t understand that.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose.”
“Tsutomu, man, I kinda wanna see you die…”
“Out of context, that sounds VERY wrong,” Tsutomu said, tired out by Leon’s cheerful teasing.
Looking ahead, it seemed that the rest of the Magic Stones had already been collected and sorted. Amy’s appraisal skill enabled the piles to be divided equally in terms of value, greatly pleasing both sides.
“Honestly though, I think quite a lot of people would wanna see Absolute Helix be wiped out for once, you know.”
“Uh, what?”
“Everyone’s looking forward to seeing you lose a fight for once, man. They’re betting whether or not you’d die to the Winter General.”
“Huh… By the way, Leon, if you were to make a bet, which one would you put your money on?”
“Me? DIE, of course!”
“Bloody hell, man…”
Tsutomu smirked and narrowed his eyes, while Leon grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.
“Hehehe… You can’t win forever, Healer! You’d better be on top of your game!”
“Oh, I’m totally going to do my best. There’s no telling how this will go.”
After everything was done, Leon jogged back to his team. Tsutomu, after seeing Leon off, also went back to his comrades. The two teams then went their separate ways, back to the Black Gate they had come from.
―▽▽―
The following day, Tsutomu went with a slightly different lineup of party members to level up and do teamwork exercises on layer seventy-nine like usual. At one point, Diniel detected an Ealdred Crow team with her scouting skills. Tsutomu decided to head toward them, but failed to catch up with them.
Diniel, after shooting off another arrow, said with mild annoyance,
“You know, I think they’re avoiding us.”
“Huh? Really?”
“I’m tracking them with my arrows. Despite all this walking, we’re not getting any closer to them. Maybe they don’t want to see you, Tsutomu.”
“Huh… I don’t remember doing anything wrong, though…?”
“C’mon, Teach, just fess up! Rook’s a nice guy — I’m sure he’ll forgive you if you’re honest!”
“Oh, so you’ve already decided that I’ve done something, huh?”
Tsutomu chuckled dryly as Hannah looked up at him as if she was scolding a child. He had not even interacted with anyone from Ealdred Crow as of late, so it was hard to believe that they would just suddenly start disliking him.
[The experience point distribution is the same as the game, so us working together won’t make leveling any slower. Then why would they…?]
Even if an outsider were to kill a monster that Ealdred Crow was fighting, the same amount of experience points would be distributed equally to all contributors. Perhaps they did not want to give experience points to Absolute Helix specifically, but Tsutomu did not consider Ealdred Crow to be so efficiency-focused to do that.
Then again, seeing that Ealdred Crow was seemingly avoiding Absolute Helix, there was no good reason to chase after them. Although Tsutomu was concerned about Stephanie’s recent shenanigans, he decided to put that on the back burner and proceeded to flick Hannah’s forehead to make her shut up.
“Ouch! Teach… now stay there and lemme take a shot at you! An eye for an eye!” Hannah lashed back, tears welling up in her eyes as she rubbed her forehead.
“Garm’s watching, you know?” Tsutomu pointed out calmly, prompting her to turn right around.
“Ah–! Sir Garm, I’m so sorry! I am exploring seriously, I swear!”
“Uh, It’s fine… And also, stop calling me ‘sir’ already.”
“No, no, no! Sir Garm is Sir Garm!”
“One kid never stopping calling me ‘sir’ is more than enough. Tsutomu, can you persuade her somehow?”
Garm knit his brows. Perched on his shoulder was a small terracotta statuette — which was in fact the Gnome, the earth-elemental Spirit whose <<Contract>> with Garm had been formed by Leleia.
With the exception of Tsutomu and those with unique skills, a <<Contract>> with a Spirit gave a status boost of half a letter rating. As such, the <<Contract>> was not all that important to Garm, but he was doing this to try out various things.
“I don’t think I can — I mean, that has never worked with Daryl, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, Sir Garm is Sir Garm! And you, Sir Tsutomu, is Teach!”
Hannah smiled and pointed at the two in question. Garm’s ears folded back, suggesting that he was feeling awkward, and Tsutomu seemed to have a mixed reaction.
After that, Leleia walked up to Tsutomu and spoke to him,
“Tsutomu, do you have a moment?”
“Ah, yes. What is it?”
“Can you try forming a <<Contract>> with the Gnome? It’s upset that it’s being left out, so…”
Hearing Leleia, the Gnome — the statuette on Garm’s shoulder — repeatedly nodded. Due to its haniwa-like appearance, the sight of the clay figure moving around came off as somewhat unnerving.
“Uh…”
The Gnome emoted its shock upon seeing the reluctance in Tsutomu’s reaction. The other Spirits were useful to him — the Undine boosted his mental energy, the Sylph helped with his evasion-based Tank functions, and the Salamander could be assigned as a Sub-Attacker. But the Gnome boosted VIT, which was not useful to him, so he did not feel the need to contract with it.
“Please. It told me it would try its best.”
“Well, sure, why not? Shouldn’t hurt to just form the <<Contract>> once in a while. I’d still like to get help from the Undine most of the time, though.”
“Yes, of course. Now then… “<<Contract — Gnome>>.”
Leleia immediately cast the skill, getting it done before Tsutomu could change his mind. The statuette on Garm’s shoulder crumbled away, and a mass of earth started rising up in front of Tsutomu.
“……”
“……”
Perhaps due to the earlier conversation, the Gnome emerged in the form of a little girl no taller than Hannah. Its whole body was still made of earth, but its ‘skin’ looked just like that of a human’s, and it even wore clothes adorned with clay accessories. And in its hands, it was holding the haniwa-like terracotta statuette that had been on Garm’s shoulder earlier.
“So it IS trying its best…” Tsutomu grumbled and flicked the Gnome’s forehead as it was about to hug his waist. “But is this really what it should be the best at?”
“…There are still many things we don’t understand about the Spirits,” Leleia said and closed her eyes, blatantly dodging the question.
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