Chapter 53
Gaendal returned a little over an hour later.
“Should I say bold or reckless, you seem to be quite careless… No, what delicious smell is this?”
As soon as we arrived, we couldn’t help but laugh when we saw Gaendal distracted by the scent of stew prepared by Ekatrina. He was a savior to those of us who had already been drooling for over 30 minutes while smelling this fragrant stew and waiting for him to come back, but he was never the subject of laughter.
“Hey, let’s start eating.”
Thanks to the fact that it was not a long-term request, the food ingredients provided by Engrim did not worry about freshness and focused on the taste as much as possible, and Ekatrina’s decision to boldly boil the stew by trimming the ingredients was extremely correct. Aside from the warmth radiating from my stomach, the stew was delicious.
“How can food like this come out while camping?”
It’s not an empty word, it’s better than the stew sold at any inn. Even Mrs. Alicia’s stew, which I miss, can’t keep up with this. As if I was the only one who felt that way, everyone praised Stew in unison. Ekaterina, who smiled cheerfully, patted her muscular chest and said,
“Ingredients are ingredients, but I’m confident about stew! It’s a taste you’ve never tasted because it contains ingredients passed down from generation to generation in the family!”
“Ah! That’s when you put that unknown liquid in! It’s really useful. It’s useful.”
Lellie, who promotes together, responded that there was something to guess if she had already tasted her food. unknown liquid? Do the people of Lovell even have an esoteric recipe for chicken stock?
“Ekatrina. In return for your advice earlier, I’d like to hear from you later on what the material is.”
“It feels good to hear that it suits your taste. The more food you share, the happier you are! I’ll let you know!”
Now, it was Yekatrina, a multi-talented cultural warrior who destroyed the first impression right away.
“Huh. I realize again that eating is important. Anyway, there’s nothing big about it, so listen while you eat.”
Like us, Gaendal, who was obsessed with food, began to deliver the results of his reconnaissance after filling his stomach appropriately.
“The surroundings are surprisingly normal. Appropriate monsters. Appropriate adventurers. Maybe that’s why, but they don’t seem to suspect that there are demon worshipers nestled in the abandoned dungeon.”
Rather, it is said that they proudly imitate belonging to the adventurer’s guild and show boldness by politely returning those who approach them. Everyone had no choice but to nod their heads in agreement with Gaendal’s opinion that the fact that they had the chance to see that far in that short amount of time seemed very lucky for this request.
“Of course they will take turns… I don’t know when that will be. One thing’s for sure, the guys I’ve seen didn’t stand guard. Even if they move knowing exactly what they’re doing and how dangerous a bridge they’re crossing, it will be.”
“But it wasn’t a request to eat raw at all.”
According to the information Engrim gave me, except for two bitches who were active as archers and one wizard, they were all ordinary warrior-type adventurers. Personally, I think that the one who became a wizard and took part in this kind of thing is the most dangerous both ideologically and morally, but it seems that the others also joined with a half-hearted mindset. Since they said they were in their late teens to early 20s, the possibility that they were full of motivation and less prepared couldn’t be ruled out, but since the minds of those who were once aristocrats were different, I couldn’t seem to let my guard down.
“The most fortunate thing is that we are not surprised by the approach around us, no matter how long we rest here.
“Can we see Mr. Ega’s surprise attack again like the thieves did?”
Perhaps the appearance he showed when dealing with the thieves was impressive, and the party started talking with the situation itself in mind where they could naturally surprise attack at close range. After all, it was a wise choice to show off your skills against them.
“If possible, it would be nice to start after dealing with four people according to the timing of shifts.”
“Huh? Wouldn’t it be better to deal with it separately?”
“I have a strong feeling that if they are vigilant like that, they will only be able to relax a little in an environment where they feel they have an overwhelming advantage. Eldmia?”
Gaendal’s guess sounded very plausible because it was a part that I didn’t think much about. It was a very attractive strategy because I didn’t have anything in mind and it didn’t seem very dangerous.
“To be honest, I don’t have another opinion because I didn’t think about it. But I think Mr. Gaendal’s guess is very plausible. It might be worth a try.”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
“If Engrim’s information is accurate, we wouldn’t put just one mage or two archers on guard duty. Close combat is no problem.”
In the end, in a world where meritocracy is superstitious, no matter what kind of divisions arise in your family, if you are good enough, you will be able to find a different path without having to hold hands with the demons. Rather, those with such skills would have regarded the demons as a dangerous element to the point of voluntarily jumping into the kingdom’s border area, where they were extremely sharp, and kept their distance.
“These guys had no other way than the extreme option of joining hands with the demons. Their skills will be there, so there’s nothing dangerous.”
Of course, the ones scattered inside the dungeon were more dangerous than the guards. The story about the guys outside was sorted out, but Gin, who had just finished eating, opened the inside map he had received from the guild and took out a monocle from his bosom and put it on.
“Let’s see… I heard that it was a dungeon where goblins gathered in groups, but the structure is like a temple. Among the religions that worshiped ancient gods in the past, temples related to the earth were built with a structure that burrowed underground like this.”
As expected of a dwarf, Gin mumbled his specialized knowledge while hugging the map and checking it one by one. Soon, Gin spread out a map with many X’s on the side of his axe.
“It’s a temple dedicated to the god of the congealing swamp. I’ve investigated what rose up in another area about 20 years ago. The marked place collapsed unconditionally. Structural problems deliberately twisted and land that met the conditions for building a temple at the time Because of the nature of ‘, it is designed to be destroyed quickly if management is cut off.”
“Huh, it’s quite strange. An ancient god who had to serve even while doing such imperfect architecture on purpose.”
As Gaendal said, it was a building that was not easily understood. Isn’t this more like a secret base than a temple?
While feeling that question, Gin answered while scratching his head with the back of his hand holding the charcoal.
“It seems that he was regarded as a kind of evil god. As a religion that is rejected, it was thorough in secrecy and security. Our conclusion is that it was a crime prevention device to destroy if believers were unintentionally lost or if information was to be deliberately damaged. It was.”
“Huh? But even after it became a dungeon and showed up, it was maintained intact, so wasn’t it possible to leave a map in the guild?”
“Looking at the map, the designation date for the abandoned dungeon was three years ago, right? Even if you don’t take care of it for a month, irreversible cracks will form. It’s absolutely destroyed.”
I don’t know how in the world such a person is staying in the Qing Dynasty and how Engrim knew and found it, but whenever Gin explained it, I could feel that the difficulty of the quest, which hadn’t felt so high before, gradually went down.
“It’s very strange. Still, when the dungeon appeared, you wouldn’t have known that it needed this kind of management. How on earth did it stay intact?”
The question Rellie, who had been admiring for a long time, tilted her head and threw a question was something we could all relate to. Gin, who smiled as if he had been waiting for that question, tapped the map and answered.
“That’s the fun part. It’s a structure that can be maintained just by stepping on the floor where people often step on. Those places that you must step on unless you step on it artificially. collapse occurs.”
“Oh my God… the temple is a huge mechanical device.”
“It’s as you said. Well, it’s a relief that our work has become a lot easier thanks to that.”
Even the Xs Gin had marked reached more than a dozen, so it was really comfortable. Even after that, I guessed things like a sleeping room and a furnishings room, carved a few more markers, and organized the plan.
I wanted to immediately go on a reconnaissance and check the shift personnel, but the fatigue from the forced march that lasted for 4 hours could not be ignored, so we decided to take a break.
“I and Gaendal will do the reconnaissance later.”
“Oh, did you learn that skill too?”
“Because we’ve lived together for a long time. It won’t be frustrating.”
The forest is a tracking and reconnaissance technique that I received directly from the elf, who is like my home, and received compliments.
Unfortunately, other people had nothing to do with it, so the two of us went to bed first.