CH 15

And so, I decided to experiment.

I left out small amounts of onions, carrots, and rice inside the cave.

I got a hint from a past careless mistake: roachies would be enticed by the smell of their favorite snack.

In that case, wouldn’t these roach slimes also be lured to one spot following the smell of food?

I stood in a corner of the cave, and waited for the result.

Uwah…

That’s disgusting.

Rustle rustle. Rustle rustle rustle……

The roach slimes gathered around the onions. Bleh… It was grossing me out.

Wait, this was no time to be grossed out.

「Everyone, when I count to three, throw that plank over the slimes and jump on it!」

The plan was to take a ton of slimes down at once instead of smashing them one of a time.

Since we wouldn’t know who gets which potion, we were all going to fumble around and try grabbing everything we could. Afterwards, we would split the potions equally. I hoped we get a lot. Then, I hoped everyone could save up enough money to buy better equipment for themselves, so they didn’t have to starve themselves.

Hm?

I thought I was going to feel bad about killing all these roach slimes, but I felt less mental anguish compared to yesterday. Either I was getting used to doing this, or the defense buff I got from the food actually gave me courage too.

「One, two, three!」

「I never realized we could do something like this…」

Bryce-kun uttered his astonishment as we brought the potions outside.

We got twenty good potions and ten losing ones.

Huh? We got less pity prizes than usual. Tch.

「This is crazy. Yuuri-neechan, you’re amazing! We were only in the dungeon for an hour, and already we got five potions per person! If we keep doing this, I wonder how many we can collect in a day?」

Kurtz-kun said, but I shook my head.

「Well, I was thinking that after we get five potions each, we should stop using this method. What do you think, Bryce-kun?」

「I agree. By defeating slimes, we can learn to be more nimble, raise our monster perception skill, and gain more stamina. There are many benefits we can get. Potions are not the only reason we do this. 」

As expected. Rofas-san prepared such useful tools like the vending machine. If they wanted to exterminate the roach slimes, he would’ve made something to do so. If there was nothing made, that meant there was no reason to set one up.

「Okay, for now, let’s do this everyday to train our teamwork as a party. We’ll stop when every person gets five potions.」

I said and smiled.

「How about we do our individual practices in the afternoon then?」

「Just as Yuuri-san said, let’s do what we always do in the afternoon.」

「It’s still the morning, so should we do that thing again?」

I shook my head.

「Why don’t we use this time for food then?」

I thought they were going to reject my suggestion, but surprisingly, nobody did. Perhaps they were quite pleased by the yaki-onigiri they ate for breakfast.

We had to maintain the field and collect the crops. Then, we had to polish the rice.

We could catch fish since there was a lake nearby. We could get meat by making traps to catch wild animals.

Up until now, the children spent most of their day gathering potions, but now that we could get around five bottles per person in an hour, we could use the remaining time to gather and prepare ingredients for cooking.

Since today was the first time we tried this new schedule, the morning ended with us picking crops at the field. We had bread for lunch.

「Status open. My HP’s okay. Ah, the buff effect’s gone.」

Kurtz-kun said as he checked his status before entering the dungeon again in the afternoon.

「Kirika’s went back too. It’s the same as before now.」

「I wonder when the buff effects ran out? We should’ve checked how long the duration was for.」

Bryce-kun tilted his head and gave it some thought.

「Oh yes, let me return this to you before I forget. Thank you for lending me one.」

I returned a potion to Bryce-kun.

「【Contract Complete.】」

Bryce-kun said, and then an orange light flashed on his forehead. Ahh, this is so cool.

「Also, um, I would like to test the potions we got today, so is it okay if I don’t enter the dungeon this afternoon?」

By potions, I meant the pity potions. We still hadn’t checked the contents of them. There might be other condiments other than soy sauce.

I had been itching to check them out.

「Of course. Everybody’s free to choose whether they want to take a break or not.」

「Dungeon rule, you cannot force others to enter the dungeon.」

I see, that’s good. After taking out the one I gave back to Bryce-kun, I still earned four potions, which was more than enough.

「Okay, have a safe trip, everyone.」

After I watched the children head off for the dungeon, I immediately checked the pity potions.

First was the pale yellow one.

Pop.