Chapter 27

27 – The Hero Party’s Review Meeting That Didn’t Quite Work Out 1

After clearing the fifth stratum, we moved right on to the sixth one.

Dungeons typically have a central theme to them, but in the case of the Demon King Castle, the monsters and Dungeon structure wildly changes with each stratum.

Usually, Dungeons stick just with one concept, like having all the monsters be fire magic users, or having the dungeon be based on a mine.

This makes it easy to understand for those watching as well as the ones doing the clearing. They already have an expectation of what’s about to happen, as well as the excitement in how it’d be cleared.

The Demon King Castle was very different in that regard. In a way, it was TOO freeform.

The first stratum was the domain of the watchdog.

For some reason, it was outdoors. Obviously it’d be impossible for the inside of a Dungeon to be outdoors, but the ceiling was painted with what looked like dark clouds, and the surroundings were made out to look like a wasteland.

And in the middle of the wasteland was the Demon King Castle. Of course, you’d already be inside the Demon King Castle at this point, so this was just for show. It was made this way so the viewers would see it as「once they clear this stratum, then the hero party will be able to start challenging the Demon King Castle for real.」

In this wasteland scattered with tall walls of rock here and there, countless Hellhounds prowled the area.

The Invisible Executioner Glasya-Labolas, a Monster with wings of a bird of prey and a large body of a beast, had the ability to turn both himself and the other hellhounds invisible as they made their attacks on the Adventurers. They would only become visible the moment they attacked.

The Floor Boss was the three-headed Watchdog of Hell Naberius.

The second stratum was the domain of the necromancer.

The Skeletal Knights and Living Corpses, aka skeletons and zombies, were products of the necromancer’s work. It wasn’t that those that had died were brought back to life. The necromancer was controlling the Avatars of Adventurers that had been defeated by the necromancer.

By using a special technique to eject the Adventurer out of their Avatar without harming it, the necromancer then places the empty shell that was left behind under his control.

The Spirit Commanding General Kimaris was the necromancer, and his aide was the Dark Elf known as the Black Wound Hunter Leraje. Leraje’s arrows had the ability to rot flesh.

Leraje would inflict damage to the Adventures with her arrows of corrosion, and Kimaris would use his spirit techniques to preserve the Adventurer’s Avatar the moment the Adventurer gets defeated.

The 3rd stratum was the vampire’s domain, the 4th stratum was the werewolf’s domain, and the 5th stratum was the Dream Demon’s domain.

The 6th stratum was the aquatic domain.

Since the stratums differed so much from each other, sometimes the party makeup could make Capturing quite difficult.

Take our encounter with the Lust Demon Sitri in the 5th stratum, for example. Since we didn’t have a White Sorcerer, we were very much at the risk of being completely defeated.

We were able to make a comeback since we had two Heroes, but she was still a very formidable enemy.

After clearing the 6th stratum, we headed towards the usual pub.

We have five members. Bella is the fifth member that replaced Lem after he left.

We were successful in our clear, but everyone’s face was gloomy. They weren’t adjusting to the cheerful atmosphere of the pub.

「Um, would you all have a moment to spare?」

It was Bella. Fitting of the Frost Hero, she had hair and eyes with a transparent blue shade. She had a small and slender frame. The thirteen-year-old girl’s weapon of choice was the rapier.

「I feel that Capturing Dungeons from here on out will be difficult at this rate, so I have a suggestion.」

「Huh? What is it?」

Alba’s voice was unenergetic. He didn’t get to do much this time around, and he was aware of that. The other two seemed to be just as dejected. They hadn’t touched their alcohol this whole time.

Bella turned her eyes towards me. After seeing me nod, she continued.

「Starting from the 6th stratum, the Dungeon’s Recommended Level has increased. Taking that into account, the achievements of the three of you do seem to be somewhat lacking.」

Dungeons all have a Recommended Level associated with them, with the max being 5 and the least being 1.

The Level didn’t represent the actual strength of the dungeon, but rather a measure of overall party cooperation and clearing experience determined by the Adventurer Union.

It’s called a「Recommended Level」 but essentially it means that if your Level is too low, then you wouldn’t be able to participate in Capturing that Dungeon. The Dungeon would simply reject you.

There are only 25 parties out there that have reached Level 5.

However, it wasn’t as if those 25 parties consisted of exactly the top 25 ranked parties in the world.

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After all, popularity can cause bias in terms of world ranking.

We’re both the 4th ranked party in the world and a Level 5 party.

But this also means that Level 5 Dungeons could only be cleared by Level 5 parties.

Furthermore, several Dungeons feature increasing difficulty as one progresses further into them.

One Dungeon could have varying Recommended Levels.

For example the Demon King Castle is at a Level 4 from the 1st to 5th stratum, but requires Level 5 from the 6th stratum on.

Even if a Level 4 party cleared the 5th stratum, they wouldn’t be able to progress to the 6th stratum.

We were able to proceed without any issue, as well as succeeded in doing so, but the increase in difficulty was quite palpable.

「Tch… I’ll admit I wasn’t of much help in the 5th and 6th stratums.」

Alba didn’t hide the frustration of being told that by the newbie, but he still had no choice but to admit it.

The 6th stratum took place on the sea, basically.

On the sea were paths of rocks. Those were the only roads the adventurers had to travel on.

And the sea was full of aquatic monsters.

One had to keep their guard up no matter what while progressing, as the Monsters would take every chance they had to use either water magic or jump out of the sea for a tackle. It was troublesome because the Monsters had to be taken out in an instant, otherwise, they could just swim back into the sea’s safety.

In the end, Bella helped the party to progress by freezing the water around their path.

At a certain point during our clear, a merman wielding a weapon appeared on the path, allowing the three of them to finally have a chance at battle.

But since the accuracy of Alba’s magic sword had decreased, he wasn’t able to deal as much damage as he wanted.

Lark hadn’t gotten any slower, but there were more moments where he’d be pushed down by the full brunt of enemy attacks, and he seemed to have difficulty holding off multiple enemies at once.

Lily’s Godspeed technique was as fast as ever, but her accuracy had considerably dropped. She took longer to take down enemies and grew exhausted more quickly as a result.

Even so, our clear was well received.

That’s just how influential Bella’s presence was.

The viewers loved seeing the contrast between my flames and her ice. The Hero that froze everything in sight and the Hero that burned them to a crisp.

It was understandable, considering that the Black Sorcerer had been replaced.

But some of the sharper viewers probably noticed something was off, maybe wondering if the other three were off their game or something.

But it was unlikely that anybody would realize it was because Lem was gone.

However, that might change if they continue to be「off their game」from here on out.

「Well I’m sure you just weren’t very compatible with those specific situations, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. That’s where my proposal comes in. For the 7th stratum… why don’t we challenge it under the assumption that Lem might have actually been an excellent Black Sorcerer?」

「Huh?!」

Alba cried out. But the other two were just as surprised.

When it comes to what gets said, the speaker is just as important as the words being spoken at times.

For example, you’d love to hear words of love from someone you’re fond of, but you might find those same words to be disgusting if spoken from someone you detest.

They were all tired of me covering for Lem. I had continued to advocate for Lem’s ability for several years. I avoided talking about his true strength or his master since he didn’t want me to, but I ultimately failed in my attempts.

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His abilities remained unknown as the rest of them grew increasingly convinced that I was just speaking highly of him because he was my friend.

Even on the day Lem left, Alba knew exactly what I was going to say and took advantage of it. Lem also knew that it’d be useless, so that’s probably why he stopped me.

Since I was the Flame Hero, I had no persuasive power whatsoever in advocating for my best friend’s abilities. They’d just think I’d be defending him because of our friendship.

But what if the same words were spoken from Bella, someone who had never interacted with Lem?

They couldn’t pin her words on friendship or anything like that, so how would it go?