Someday Will I Be The Greatest Alchemist?

Chapter 223: Cathedral Labyrinth 2

5 days have passed since we entered the dungeon. When we moved through five floors and went up the stairs, the scene before our eyes surprised us.

「……uhh, a forest?」

「It ain’t unusual in a dungeon. There are even dungeons that are completely different per floor.」

「No, Lyle. It can’t be helped that Takumi doesn’t know. There are only four dungeons in this continent. Though there’s supposedly a lot more at the continent in the south.」

I was surprised that a cathedralesque dungeon suddenly changed into a forest landscape, but I knew that common sense doesn’t apply to a dungeon that had Otherworldified.

According to Lyle-san and Heath-san, there are some dungeons in the continent in the south too.[1]

10 days via a sea route from Samandourー though it would be much shorter with our shipー, there is a small continent where plenty of Devils and Beastkin live in. I want to go there once things settle down.

As soon as the surrounding scenery changed, there was also a change in the monsters we encountered.

Swoosh!

A leopard-like monster ambushed us from within the forest, but it didn’t succeed as we were a party with high search capabilities. Immediately after, Sophia killed it with a counterattack.

「Did the monsters get a bit stronger?」

「Yes, though minimal.」

Heath-san asked Sophia, but the answer that came back surprised him. Sure enough, for Sophia, the amount that the monsters grew in strength could be said to be minimal.

Though the sixth floor was a vast forest dungeon, it didn’t have a maze-like labyrinth so it was favorable for us for ascending the stairs.

「Still, even though there’s a clear difference in strength, they still actively attack, don’t they?」

「Yeah, well, dungeons are like that.」

As I slayed a four-armed monkey monster, Spider Ape, that swooped down, I asked Heath-san about what I thought.

I noticed it when we entered the dungeon, but the obviously lower ranking monsters attack us on sight. It’s as if it were the will of the dungeon.

Sophia used a shield to knock down the Spider Ape that jumped at her from the top of a tree. Akane and Lulu-chan finished the monster off.

Kaede’s sticky threads caught the Spider Apes, then Marnie and Laeva killed them and moved on.

A gigantic Twin-Headed Viper raised its sickle-shaped neck from within the forest, but in the next instant, one of the heads was decapitated by Kaede’s threads while I impaled the other’s neck into the ground using my spear.

「Heath-san, please finish it!」

「O-ou.」

Heath-san lopped off the remaining head of the Twin-Headed Viper using his battleaxe.

「They’re really pulling their punches.」

「It’s pathetic for us as their adventurer seniors, but this is the current gap in our strengths.」

Lyle-san smiled bitterly, but Heath-san came to grips with their current condition, displaying a strong will to aim even further. To show that they would one day become A Rank adventurers.

In actuality, the strength of Lion’s Fang already reached the level of A Rank adventurers. As a result of power leveling in the Forest of Death with the girls, they’ve attained the strength to be some of the top adventurers within Valkyra Kingdom. All that’s left is to make more achievements.

From time to time, we stopped and made camp.

Barrier MDs were set in a slightly open area.

Until now, we went at a pace of one or more floors per day, but the size of the floor grew per floor and it was getting harder to keep that pace.

From the sixth floor to the ninth floor were forest stages to grassland stages, but when we climbed to the tenth floor, the dungeon’s appearance changed entirely.

A large metal door came into sight when we ascended the stairs.

「Could this be a boss room?」

「Well, doesn’t this feel more like a midboss?」

Heath-san said that dungeons with over ten floors would often have powerful monsters stationed midway.

「It’s not like we have a choice but to go forward, so shall we go?」

「Watch out for an ambush.」

I reached for the door. Bogah-san held his large shield and stood beside me.

Gogogogoooo!!

With a heavy creak, the door opened.

Beyond the opened door was a large domed space.

「It’s coming!」

At Sophia’s exclamation, we went on guard.

A 10 meter magic circle in the middle of the dome shaped room appeared and began shining.

In the middle of the magic circle, an enormous 3 meter tall orc materialized.

「An Orc King?!」

GUOOOOOOW!!

Wearing a sinister black metal armor, the Orc King carrying a gigantic battle axe roared. Then, in the still shining magic circle, more Orcs flooded out.

「There are Orcs to Orc Knights, Mages, and even an Orc General.」

「Sophia, Maria, Laeva, Akane! Match me!」

At Heath-san’s strained voice, I ordered the girls to do a magic attack preemptively.

We launched the starting shot of our fight with the Orc army.

***

Footnotes:

1. It could also mean that it was the first time he learned that there’s another continent, but that contradicts chapter 170, so I’m interpreting it as him learning about dungeons elsewhere.