Volume 2 - CH 2.1

「We need to build a bath in here.」

「Well, you won’t hear any complaints from me.」

「Mari thinks it’s necessary too!」

Lilu and Mari agreed with Aur when he proposed that in the morning when they saw Yunis and Spina back to the headquarters.

It has been known from time immemorial that a body that is smelly and dirty is not pleasant at all. And even though everyone was wiping their bodies with dowels doused in hot water on a daily basis, the happiness and bliss of soaking in hot water in a bath was something that couldn’t be easily replaced.

「If we all agree to the idea, the let’s get right into work! First we’ll need to dig up the hole all the way to the geothermal water vein and work around that.

「As if it was that simple.」

Aur shook his head at Lilu, who always showed her enthusiasm when it came to the weirdest of things.

「The situation is different than it was in the previous dungeon. We can’t just go around wasting magical energy as we like.」

The Dungeon Seed was floating besides Sofia who was sleeping soundly. And its contents… were almost empty.

「Fortunately the Forest is quite large and seems to be recovering its magical energy quite fast so we don’t have to worry about replenishing it, but in order to save as much of it as possible the current dungeon is only two floors deep: the ground floor and one basement floor. We’re not deep enough to start digging, and even if we were, we wouldn’t have enough energy to keep going.」

「Ugh, it’s so hard without the access to the dragon pulse.」

Back in their main Dungeon, they used to leave the expansion of the place to Imps, Kobolds, Goblins and the like, but here they don’t have the energy to maintain any larger numbers of beasts and servants.

「It’s a shame that Yunis couldn’t teleport water to us.」

「Don’t ask for the impossible. We’ll just have to make do with the resources we have available at hand.」

Yunis’ teleportation as a spirit seemed to be universal, but it had two major drawbacks.

First was that she could only transport the things that she was able to hold with her hands. When it came to people she could transport up to three of them, and she was unable to transport the things that were too heavy for her to lift.

As for the magical energy necessary for them to live their everyday lives normally, she transports it inside Spina’s body, but even then the amount is not unlimited.

And there was also a problem of the limited times of teleportation.

The second drawback was that teleportation over long distances involved a lot of potential risks. When she teleported, Yunis wan not invincible and therefore she could end up getting injured if she was traveling too close to the ground or the sea. Not to mention teleporting to the places where she didn’t know the exact situation. It would be bad is she wound up teleporting in the middle of a warzone by accident, so Aur planned to build a special room inside the dungeon that would act like a guiding beacon for her. Because right now, there was only one place where she could teleport safely: in front of Aur, and only because Yunis established a connection between them to help him when he was captured by the enemy. But he himself was unable to use that connection to travel back and forth. If he used that to get back to his main Dungeon, he would have to travel to the New Land by ship all over again.

「Then what are we going to do?」

「Quite a simple thing, really.」

Responding to Lilu’s question, Aur took a small bottle out of his pocket.

「If you can’t win with quality, you have to go for quantity.」

「You still have more of those, huh?」

What Aur took out was another Dungeon Seed.

「The plan is simple: We will build another Dungeon by the seaside and draw water from there. In other words, we will use the Dungeon as an artificial water vein.」

「But what if the water ends up drowning the entire thing?」

「I think it should be fine.」

Lilu answered Mari’s questions.

「As long as the Dungeon will be constructed above the sea level, there will be no danger of flooding. Of course, we would have to prepare the countermeasures against tides and waves, and find a way to dispose of the excess amounts of water.」

「In that case, why not use a lake, or a river?」

Of course, there was no sea inside the Dungeon. However, Aur had taught Mari about it and even took her to see it on several occasions.

She had a lot of fun playing in the water that stretched as far and wide as the eyes could see, and she had a blast surfing on the tall waves, but there was one thing that was not fun at all.

「The water is so salty that you can’t drink it, and bathing in such water would definitely be bad for the hair.」

「Was it really that bad?」

It was so bad that afterwards Melizand had to help her wash all the salt away from her hair with fresh water for a number of times.

「Our main concern should be cleansing and purifying the sea water to avoid poisoning. If memory serves me correctly, I made an item just for that a while back.」

「And I’ve already asked Yunis to deliver it to us tomorrow.」

「That’s our Aur for you, always thinking a few steps ahead.」

Lilu hugged Aur and smooched him playfully on the cheek.

「Um, Lilu? Why are you in such a high spirits?」

「You need to ask? Salt, Mari! Salt. Once we purify water, we can get salt out of it!」

「Okay?」

Honestly, Mari did not know what was so good about salt, but she decided to play along with Lilu’s momentum so she just nodded her head.

「And besides, if we create that Dungeon by the sea, we’ll be able to also get fish! Sea fish, Aur! Lots and lots of tasty fish!」

「Sure, if you can find some space to store them and a way to process them up then why not?」

Aur’s ideal Dungeon was the one that would make them self-sufficient.

「If we search the forest then I’m sure we’ll be able to find nuts and mushrooms that we could eat together with the fish.」

It was the first time that Mari noticed that Lilu was really passionate about cooking.

「Is cooking really that much fun?」

「Yeah, it’s lots of fun!」

“But isn’t this quite a hassle?” Mari wanted to ask that, but swallowed her words just in the nick of time.

「I’ll make sure to cook you something delicious, Aur!」

And to her overly hyped attitude, he responded in a dignified manner.

「Then why don’t we also make a fully equipped kitchen for you to use? It should be fine since we cannot allow ourselves to bring maids or the other servants from the main base, and the prospect of eating raw food all the time is not particularly appealing to me.」

When she heard that, Lilu’s eyes began to sparkle, and she started fidgeting and spinning around like a newlywed wife.

「Lilu, you and Lord Aur really are like a newlywed couple, you know?」

「You think so? I think we’re just the same as we always been.」

Lilu replied with a smile worthy of a good wife.