Chapter 346: To the Advanced Dungeon

“I’ll state this first, the basics of creating soy sauce – – creating yeast is more akin to farming than it is to cooking. After all, yeasts are living organisms.”

Borrowing a room in Suzuki’s home, the homunculus Neete was having a lecture on the manufacturing of soy sauce that they had failed to recreate for many years.

I could have explained the method to manufacture soy sauce as well but I only knew the ordinary method of creating it and didn’t have confidence in answering questions.

So I called Neete from My World. Actually, Pionia was more knowledgeable but she’s a hikikomori after all. She won’t exit My World at all.

Sheena No.3 had knowledge too but Suzuki had met her and seen her death so by the method of elimination it was Neete.

“Carol is amazing. I didn’t expect her to stumble upon an apprentice from a sprout shop within the town.”

Suzuki praised Carol. By the way, sprout shops seem to refer to yeast shops.

Neete’s existence was set as a sprout shop apprentice who was taught by a transmigrator who worked in a yeast shop in Japan and we retained her name.

“What surprises me is the number of people. I thought at most three or four would gather but I didn’t expect these many.”

There were up to 50 people. And I was equally surprised that Suzuki’s house could accommodate 50 people.

Everyone was feverishly taking memo of what Neete said.

There seemed to be some who looked like Japanese among them but the majority of the people were residents of this world.

“Among the Japanese who transmigrated to this world, creating soy sauce and rice were the two major themes. Among them, rice-making was somehow realized by the Demon Lord Army 300 years ago so now some amounts of it go around albeit at a low quantity. The taste is inferior to Japanese rice as well.”

I heard about that too.

Well, someday I’ll act as though it was a coincidence and send him some seedlings.

“By the way, Suzuki. What happened to Jofre and Elize.”

I didn’t see them yesterday at dinner and neither at today’s breakfast.

Weren’t they investigating the interior of the house? I imagined it would take at most an hour.

“Eh? They didn’t tell Kusunoki-kun either? I was convinced that Kusunoki-kun knew.”

“ … By the way, what about Centaur?”

“It ate about half of my stockpiled food after dinner and breakfast.”

Suzuki’s home food stock seemed to have taken a large loss.

“In that case, they wouldn’t have left town. Just where are they?”

“Hn- perhaps they found a hidden passage in this house and are investigating it. Apparently, there is quite a complex structure below my house that was there before I built my house. According to the records, the structure was made centuries ago.”

“Why would you construct a home at such a location?”

There’s no helping it, I guess I’ll save them with that method again.

I looked at Carol and said.

“Carol, I have a request – -“

She always received any difficult task I request of her with a smile. This time she had a smile as usual.

But I probably didn’t mistake that her smile looked a little cramped.

“ … We will need 500 tomatoes for the transaction. 300 as advance payment, 200 for success reward …”

Carol had imagined that we would ask Centaur to look for Jofre and Elize and had negotiated.

But the price was greater compared to before.

In actual fact, I anticipated something like this happening so I kept a large number of tomatoes in my item bag but it was exactly 500 pieces.

Was that Centaur actually able to accurately ascertain the contents of my item bag?

Upon passing it 300 tomatoes, Centaur consumed it in an instant. Just as though it was a magic trick.

Then it walked.

Its destination was the warehouse in the garden. After opening the lock, there were stairs that led underground.

Just as Suzuki predicted, those two actually went underground.

“Then I’m relieved.”

I left the remaining tomatoes with Suzuki.

“What do you plan to do next?”

Suzuki asked. There were still a few days until the book sale.

We could tour the town and preview the book sale venue but I was worried about the frenzy curse after all.

In order to dispel the curse, you either have to make the person drink a Dispel Curse Potion or cast the Dispel spell. Only a couple of people were capable of using that spell in the world and a Practitioners level 80 was required to master it.

“Erm, is there a dungeon in Mallegory?”

“Yup, there are three. Dungeon meant for beginners, intermediate and advanced users.”

Ooo, so there are three.

Just like Florence.

“Then, I’ll send Neete-san to her inn after her lecture is over and then head to the advanced dungeon. Haru and Carol, you guys want to tag along too?”

“Yes, I look forward to it.”

“Carol will work hard too.”

The two of them responded, showing their resolution.

In particular, Haru seemed extremely happy. She probably likes dungeon crawls. The dungeon crawl in Goats Rocky was very short and the monsters didn’t put up a challenge so she probably felt it was unsatisfactory.

“The dungeon is located at the end of the magic tool lane at Magic Street. There are street signs around town so I don’t think you will get lost but would you like me to prepare a map?”

“Don’t worry. Carol knows the town’s dungeon locations as well as the tourist attractions, public facilities such as the Adventurers Guild and Mercenary Guild, highly-rated restaurants, evacuation sites in case of disasters, and hotels with beautiful night views.”

As expected of Carol. But why did she look out for hotels with beautiful night views? We stay in Suzuki’s home at night after all.

“I gathered information on the monsters that appear in the advanced dungeon last night. The advanced dungeon monsters are mainly magical creatures.”

So Haru went to investigate too. Did she anticipate that I would suggest going there or was Haru going to suggest if I didn’t?

“Magical creatures?”

“Slime, gargoyles, and Golem. Also, living armor and type A mimics. Monsters categorized as those who move using magical power.”

“Type A mimics?”

“Mimics have type A and type B. Type A are monsters that mimic treasure boxes while type B are the type that hides within the treasure boxes set up in the dungeon. Incidentally, they generally take the shape of treasure boxes but some mimic the shape of jars too.

Haru explained smoothly.

So there are different kinds of mimics.

“Do mimics drop small medals?”

“No, mimics are not rare monsters so they will not drop Rare Medals.”

“Figures.”

I said with a wry smile.

Incidentally, Neete’s soy sauce making course greatly exceeded the scheduled ending time and in the end, it didn’t end until the afternoon.

Because of that, our departure was delayed until after lunch instead.